A Starry Night
The Blood-Drinking Demon—the fiend being hunted by the authorities and the Murim Alliance at the same time.
Contrary to what the world believed, he was no mere master with a grotesque habit of sucking blood.
He was someone who used that blood as a medium to work unheard-of dark arts.
"He's using dark arts!"
The line you are required to shout the moment someone deploys a technique no one recognizes.
And after dozens of exchanges of killing strikes, another fact became clear: this man was not some novice at the entry of Peak Realm. He was a dangerous master who had reached the very edge of it.
The same realm as Poison Claw Mountain Blood, Dang Yeohye.
But we were the side of justice, and we outnumbered him more than three to one. We pressed him from every direction, and under the beating that came from front, back, and both flanks, he began, little by little, to give ground.
Clang! Screeech!
A short sleeve dagger charged with saber qi crashed into Jo Harang's greatsaber.
Bright yellow sparks sprayed as the sleeve dagger carved halfway through the greatsaber. But the successive clashes must have strained it—the blade cracked sharply and broke away.
Jo Harang drove her overbearing force straight through and slashed across the Blood-Drinking Demon's chest.
"KRAAAAGH!"
Ribs shattered with a sickening crunch, and crimson blood sprayed in every direction.
I clenched both fists, ready to leap in on the perfect opening—
Tssss—
Apparently he could work dark arts with his own blood as well. The scattered droplets drew themselves into bean-sized pellets and shot toward us like finger-flick projectiles.
Pew-pew-pew—!
"Holy shit!"
"What the hell is that?!"
My companions recoiled in shock at a sight none of us had ever seen. I threw myself sideways without hesitation, dodging the attacks as they streaked in like hidden weapons.
Boom—!
Ilhong was not about to sit still and take it. She yanked the cylindrical device she had drawn from her robes.
A storm of sharp needles erupted with the blast and hammered toward the Blood-Drinking Demon.
"Ghk!"
Needles studded his front like a porcupine's quills, and the demon crumpled.
"Hey, you bastard! Don't use that thing in front of me!"
Dang Yeohye detonated at once at the return of that hair-trigger hidden weapon.
"You gave me permission last time!"
"I looked the other way—that wasn't permission! This guy, I swear—!"
While the two of them bickered, the Blood-Drinking Demon lay neutralized, one with the dirt.
With our numbers and Dang Yeohye present, I had expected an easy fight. Instead we had nearly lost our heads more than once.
If Dang Yeohye had charged him alone, the outcome might have been far uglier.
"Cough!"
The Blood-Drinking Demon heaved a gush of dark red blood onto the ground.
His lips and face had blackened—he was fully in the grip of the extreme poison on the needles.
"Ilhong, what the hell did you put on those needles?"
"Corpse Bone Pill I got from the Black Market."
A poison designed more to inflict suffering than to kill quickly, she said.
He was clearly in agony—gasping, his whole body shaking.
"Why something that vicious?"
"Someday… I plan to put it in that traitor's back."
So she had bought it with Heuk Jin-jo in mind—the man who had murdered her father and stolen the leadership of Haoman.
Ironically, the Blood-Drinking Demon who had spent his days draining the lifeblood of common folk was the one who took those poison needles.
"Grrrkh… the Blood Arts were so close to completion…"
His eyes rolling white, coughing up bloody phlegm, the demon muttered something bitter.
He stretched a hand toward the sky and, with a hollow face, spoke his last words.
"What a pity… that I cannot join the Great Work… ghk."
And with that, the demon's breath rattled out for good.
Blood Arts. The Great Work. Just what was this man, to die spitting nothing but ominous words like that?
Slash!
Dang Yeohye borrowed Jo Harang's half-broken greatsaber and cleanly took the Blood-Drinking Demon's head with saber qi.
Then she held the head aloft like a trophy.
Talk about a savage age.
"That's disgusting. Do you really have to hold it up like that?"
"Think of it as a fifty-gold-coin head."
"Oh…"
Like a promissory note you could cash any time—same as the dagger in my robes.
Thinking of it that way, the grossness faded a little.
"What are you waiting for? Get the salt on it already."
The battle with the Blood-Drinking Demon had drained a great deal of mental and physical strength.
So we decided to rest and quietly wait in Dengfeng for Clan Leader Jo's return.
And Dang Yeohye stuck herself right up against us.
"Joining us, are you?"
"Yeah. Whenever I hang around you, I always get dragged into incidents. I like that."
"…"
She made me sound like some walking icon of misfortune, and the fact that I could not argue was a little sad.
Honestly, the Heavenly Killing Star really did seem to pull accidents in like a magnet.
"But how did you know that waiter was a murderer?"
"That's a trade secret."
I was not going to tell. No matter who asked, I would stonewall.
If pressed, I planned to say it was simply a property of the martial arts I had learned.
This was the Central Plains Murim, after all—a place crawling with every kind of eccentric.
"…Please rest at your leisure, my lords!"
The innkeeper beamed as he addressed us.
We were not unorthodox ruffians or scoundrels. We were orthodox heroes. When we wrecked something, we knew how to pay for it.
When we waved him off, he bowed nearly ninety degrees and withdrew.
Only a short while earlier he had been wailing over his demolished inn in absolute despair—but the moment we tossed him a bundle of gold coins, his face lit right up.
"But why does it have to be my money?"
Jo Harang grumbled, fondling her now-deflated money pouch.
After a heated debate lasting a full stick of incense, she had been elected the one to front the inn's repair costs.
"But Ilhong and I are barely scraping by on food and lodging as it is."
"And if I factor in Neungsam's food costs, I'm stretched thin just getting to the Murim Alliance."
Neither Dang Yeohye nor I were the type to carefully save money the way Jo Harang did.
Earn like dogs, spend like lords, you could say. Ilhong's spending had ballooned after her trips to the Black Market, too.
"Don't worry. This dagger is worth twenty gold coins, and that head is fifty."
The moment we reached the Murim Alliance, the debt would settle itself naturally.
There was not a single grain of worry—yet her expression still looked sour.
"Honored heroes, these are drinks and dishes sent by the innkeeper. Please enjoy."
At the innkeeper's word, another waiter briskly brought out wine and meat.
"Tea for me and these two, please."
Kids had no business learning the taste of alcohol this early. I told him it would interfere with training and asked for teacups instead.
Soon piping-hot tea arrived, along with a constant stream of lavish dishes.
We had just poured out all our strength, so we wolfed everything down as if possessed.
Unlike the rest of us, though, Jo Harang was barely picking at her food.
"Hey, don't you trust me? I said I'd pay you back."
I thought it might be about the loan and tried to soothe her worries.
"No, it's not that…"
Apparently that was not the problem. With a dark face, she just kept fiddling with her half-severed greatsaber.
The name of that massive blade was Hohyeop-do, wasn't it?
"In the fight with the Blood-Drinking Demon… that tiny little dagger of his almost took my greatsaber and my neck in one cut."
She muttered that if the sleeve dagger had not broken midway, it might have been her head that got sliced off.
"At this rate, never mind making my sect famous—instead…"
Trailing off, she glanced sideways at Dang Yeohye, who would likely attend the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering.
When she had left her sect and set out into the jianghu, she had been bursting with confidence. But the Central Plains were vast, and masters were many.
Facing that truth again ahead of her first Dragon-Phoenix Gathering seemed to have left her drained.
"If only… if only I could wield sword qi too…"
Her saber style, she said, was characterized by packing a massive blade full of saber qi and rampaging across the battlefield.
Right now, because of her own shortcomings, she could only perform a half-measure version of that art.
"You're progressing plenty fast already. Why put yourself through this?"
"No, this is nowhere near enough… I'm not an ordinary person."
That was something I could not just let slide.
If she was not ordinary, then what was she?
But she looked too despondent to answer any questions I might ask.
Over here I was thrilled—we had taken down a killer, made money, and racked up good deeds—but she was another story.
"Sometimes I think the Captain could use a little of that ambition too."
Ilhong muttered while picking meat clean off a duck's rib bones.
Ambition? My every single day was already a war just to stay alive.
Everyone sure talked easy.
Right, Salsung?
Kill!
As always, a conversation that was not a conversation—each of us just saying whatever we wanted.
That was Salsung for you. Consistently herself.
Anyway, after a few more days waiting at the lodging, Clan Leader Jo returned to the inn, having finished sightseeing at Shaolin Temple.
And Ma Jungcheon, who had been monitoring me the whole time, casually rejoined as if he had been off touring on his own.
"You lot—why do your clothes look like that again?"
Clan Leader Jo clicked his tongue, saying we looked worse every time he saw us.
"Well, a lot happened this time too."
The moment we collected our big payout at the Murim Alliance, we would need to change our wardrobes first thing.
If we kept traveling like this, we would end up looking like the beggars who haunted Beijing's back alleys again.
"And who is this girl, exactly…"
"She's the heroine Poison Claw Mountain Blood of the Sichuan Tang Family."
I hastily cut Clan Leader Jo off before he stepped on a landmine.
The moment I announced her affiliation and title, his eyes flew wide and his mouth snapped shut.
Then he shot me a grateful look of thanks.
Don't mention it. Without Neungsam around, if this woman threw a fit, it would be a headache for us too.
"Clan Leader Jo, was it? Mind if I join you?"
"It would be an honor! We'll specially arrange a seat in the carriage for the heroine—"
"Ah, no need. I'll ride the cargo wagon with my little brother. You're more comfortable going with your big sister, right?"
"…Yes."
This woman was truly inconvenient.
Having to share a cart with someone I was supposed to wait on hand and foot.
"So, young man. Might your family be…"
"I'm a street orphan. I just happened to get close to her."
Clan Leader Jo, who had asked just in case because of the big-sister, little-brother talk, breathed a sigh of relief.
"Haha, and here I was thinking—"
I actually liked that petty but transparent streak of his. At least the man was consistent—no hypocrisy.
"Then we'll wait for Neungsam, Poison Claw Mountain Blood's companion, and set out right after."
Clan Leader Jo exchanged a few more words with Dang Yeohye and soon settled the schedule.
"Where to next?"
Surely we would not be making any detours like Shaolin Temple again.
"Shaanxi—the Murim Alliance."
"Oh, finally!"
The holy land of orthodox heroes, where countless martial artists were gathering.
Of course, Dang Yeohye and I were going to collect money—but still, it was a place to look forward to.
On a night when the stars shone with a particularly piercing light.
Two young people lay awake for different reasons.
I had woken because I had eaten too much before departure and my stomach was uncomfortably full.
But Minor Tiger Blade Jo Harang seemed to be awake for an entirely different reason.
Whoosh! Whoooosh!
In the open ground near the carriages, a beauty danced with her massive greatsaber under the moonlight.
It was a fast, overpowering saber style—but through the gap of the half-cut blade, a pathetic whistling of escaping air rang out.
As if giving voice to her bitter present state of mind.
Hmm.
From what we had discussed before, the saber was so huge that repairs were somehow possible.
But the hole in her heart did not seem so easily mended.
"Tch."
Every time the air-escaping sound came, Jo Harang bit her lip hard and swung the saber even more fiercely.
Whoooosh!
Wind pressure that violently tore through the night air.
I stood still and observed her saber technique. Normally, studying someone else's martial arts so openly was a serious breach of etiquette—but she seemed too absorbed to notice.
"No matter when I see it, that's a vicious saber style."
The presence was always impressive. Get caught in that and even if you read the crimson trails, escaping would not be easy.
If a fast sword was a problem because of speed, this was a problem because of sheer coverage.
I quietly drew up the power of the Heavenly Killing Star and watched the directions her saber technique carved.
But the moment I opened the Heavenly Killing Eyes, I saw a certain dissonance.
"What? Why are the trajectories like that…?"
I could only stare at her with a puzzled expression.