Spoiling a Done Deal
Moyong Hwi, second young master of the great Moyong Clan that held dominion over Liaoning.
Like his father, he was cold in all things and would stop at nothing when it came to matters of the family. Unlike Moyong Cheon, however—who at least pretended at benevolence after long years as clan lord—Moyong Hwi possessed both power and authority, and with the hot blood of youth thrown into the mix, he carried the same arrogance common to every son of a great house.
"What in the hell is that damn brat supposed to mean, that my sister has to be stuck in a place like this?"
He spoke toward Moyong Cheonghye as if telling her to snap out of it.
But who was the "damn brat" he was talking about? Surely not me?
"Watch your mouth calling him a damn brat. He was still your younger brother, Moyong Hwi."
Goddamn it. It really was me.
And yet Moyong Cheonghye had joined the Demon Extermination Unit because of me? What the hell was that about?
"Is this about guilt? You think cutting down a few villains is going to make any of that better?"
"……Enough."
The look on Moyong Cheonghye's face said she had already had this argument more times than she could count and was thoroughly sick of it. She was trying to drop the subject.
But Moyong Hwi, desperate to drag her back into the clan no matter what, was relentless.
"You were the one who took the job in the first place, Sister, and you were the one who carried it out. So why keep doing something this meaningless……"
"I said enough……!"
Moyong Cheonghye finally snapped and shouted.
The building went dead quiet under the force of that outburst. She was normally so gentle with anyone who wasn't a villain that even the other unit members wore startled faces at the unexpected volume.
"……It's always like this. You're always only this harsh with me. You never once raised your voice at that brat."
Old resentment sat thick in Moyong Hwi's eyes. Moyong Cheonghye met that gaze head-on, her expression twisting with a brief, aching pain before she shook her head hard.
"That isn't it……. Haa. Forget it. I have work to do. I'm going. Don't follow me."
Her face was complicated, full of things left unsaid, but she swallowed them all and vanished.
Moyong Hwi's expression froze over cold. Left behind, he clenched his fist until the knuckles cracked with the sound of grinding bone.
"……Ha!"
And just like that, the emotional storm tore through the Demon Extermination Unit and moved on.
"What was all that about, Boss?"
Ilhong, pressed close at my side, asked in a whisper. It didn't sound like she expected any particular answer—just pure curiosity.
Ironically, she had thrown the question at the one person who knew the entire story from beginning to end.
"……."
Complicated feelings churned in my chest. My body itched to move and my mouth itched to speak, but thorough denial was the right call here.
I was trying to fade into the background like I barely existed when my eyes locked dead-on with Moyong Hwi's—still seething and looking for someone to take it out on.
"What are you lot staring at? Why are you gawking at someone else's family business like that?"
Someone else's family business? I couldn't say it out loud, but this was my family business too.
And we hadn't been eavesdropping—we had been talking first when he barged in.
"We were the ones talking first, actually."
"Who are you?"
He stared straight into my eyes and demanded my identity. Under that sharp glare, the Moyong Cheongjin still living somewhere inside me tried to curl up small—but as long as I, Dan Wonjun, who had been through every kind of hell, was here, there was no chance of that.
"Dan Mujin of the Unchilsamhyeop."
I met his eyes without flinching. He rolled my name around on his tongue for a moment, thinking, then snorted.
"Hmph. So you're that worthless wanderer my sister won't shut up about praising."
So he knew me. There was a thread of jealousy in the way he said it, and a look that said he found me thoroughly repulsive on top of that.
Pretty rude for a first meeting. Then again, this bastard had always been like that.
"Sister's always been too soft. That's her problem. Praising some petty thief who stole her honor instead of calling him out."
It was the kind of muttered aside clearly meant to be overheard. This guy still only cared about his own family and didn't give a damn about anyone else.
Unfortunately for him, there was a foul-tempered woman standing right next to me who did not tolerate that kind of crap.
"This motherfucker keeps running his mouth the more I let him talk. Where the hell did you leave your manners, huh?"
Dang Yeohye stomped forward, her dark-green eyes blazing with murder. Moyong Hwi's brows twitched as he finally noticed her—she had been hidden behind my height until now.
"……Young Lady Poison Claw Mountain Blood?"
"Young Lady my ass, you fucker. Call me a heroine. You think we're friends?"
True to form for the Poison Dog who didn't give a single shit about public reputation.
Faced with a scolding from Dang Yeohye—older martial senior of the jianghu, from a clan that didn't bow to anyone, and a Peak Realm expert just like him—Moyong Hwi chewed his lip.
"Ahem. Senior was here as well?"
"Yeah, I've been here the whole time, you little shit. And eavesdropping my ass. We got here first and were talking, you idiot."
Classic righteous-faction mad dog: answer thuggery with even bigger thuggery.
And nothing in the world was more reassuring than having a lunatic like that on your side.
"My earlier words were not directed at you. And stop with the foul language. For a heroine of the orthodox path, that is thoroughly vulgar……"
"Vulgar my ass. Don't pick a fight first, you worthless piece of dog shit."
"……Heavens."
Whoa. So she really had been holding back when she talked to me.
How was an orthodox martial artist like that? It was like watching the rough mouth of some unorthodox street thug you'd run into in a back alley.
I was pretty sure everyone else present was thinking the same thing.
"Ha. So that's what you were counting on. You."
And of course—get slapped in Jongno and glare at the Han River. With Dang Yeohye impossible to reason with, Moyong Hwi simply ignored her and fixed a seething stare on me instead.
Seeing that furious look again brought a strange wave of nostalgia. It was the exact same expression I'd gotten every single time our eyes met back when I was Moyong Cheongjin.
"You…… I hope we meet in the martial contest. So I can strip bare that luck-dressed skill of yours in front of everyone."
Grinding his teeth, the second son of the Moyong Clan declared he would make my moniker even more worthless than Unchilsamhyeop.
"What the hell are you talking about? You know how well this guy fights? He might just wipe the floor with you, you little shit."
Dang Yeohye clapped my shoulder a few times as she said it, claiming she'd watched me fight more times than she could count, openly baiting him.
"……Grr. Just wait, you wandering mongrel."
He ground his teeth, glared at me one last time, then turned on his heel and strode out of the Demon Extermination Unit building.
Only then did quiet return, and people drifted off to find their actual work again.
"Father and son taking turns being complete assholes."
Yesterday Moyong Cheon had turned my stomach inside out, and today his son was making my blood boil. I hadn't wanted to get tangled up with them at all—was this just bad luck? Even after completely changing my face and status, I still ended up tangled with the same people.
Salsung. This isn't because of you, right?
Massacre them all!
The Heavenly Killing Star suggested I just kill every last one of them, asking if I wasn't furious. Yeah. My mistake for asking.
Clink.
The heavy weight of a money pouch filled my hand.
The price for coming to collect my pay had been pretty steep.
What a thoroughly exhausting day.
While the heat of the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering blanketed all of Shaanxi, I headed toward a place that was drawing crowds to rival the contest grounds themselves.
The moment I stepped inside, noise poured in loud enough to make my ears ring. One of the buildings of the Murim Alliance Headquarters.
This was the place—the Central Plains' legal gambling den that, every few years, moved staggering amounts of money and raked in fees that beggared belief.
"Ten gold pieces on Moyong Hwi of the Moyong Clan!"
"Then I'll put five gold pieces on Poison Claw Mountain Blood, Dang Yeohye!"
"What? The Azure Cloud Sword of the Namgung Clan isn't competing? Son of a bitch!"
The atmosphere was exactly like a racetrack right before the horses ran. I checked the odds hanging on the nameplates of the various martial artists while confirming the amount in my pouch.
The money from trading in the dagger, the somewhat modest bounty on the Poison Demon, plus my share from the Blood-Eating Ghost—all told, about thirty-five gold pieces.
I was holding this much gold in my hand. An amount I had never even touched before.
But gold didn't breed if you just left it sitting there. You had to invest and make it grow, didn't you?
"Boss, who are you betting on?"
"Hell if I know. Still checking the odds."
Among the nameplates, the highest win rate belonged to the man listed right at the top: Minor Thunderbolt Sword Moyong Hwi.
Jo Harang had recently awakened to the Peak Realm herself, but ordinary people didn't know that. Only those in the know were aware.
"With the Azure Cloud Sword out, everyone's treating Moyong Hwi as the automatic champion. Are you going to play it safe and bet on him too, Boss?"
"Ha, fucking hell……"
The second son of the Moyong Clan, sitting on an overwhelming win rate.
Dang Yeohye was there too, of course, but poison users always started at a disadvantage in martial contests. You couldn't kill people, so the poisons you could use were limited, and weak poisons got purged by any expert worth the name. That meant she would be fighting with the Dang Clan's famous hidden weapons and several other tools sealed away.
"Hey there, little brother—your pouch looks pretty heavy! Who are you putting how much on?"
A middle-aged man approached, clicking an abacus as my turn to bet drew near. Seeing me lost in thought, he pointed at the nameplates and offered advice.
"If you can't decide, just put it on the Minor Thunderbolt Sword. Word is even Clan Lord Moyong Cheon himself came all the way to the Murim Alliance Headquarters with heavy steps, so that side seems very confident of victory."
No kidding. After meeting him in person, he had looked completely certain of his son's win. He clearly believed without a shadow of a doubt that his boy would elevate the Moyong Clan's honor.
And why does that piss me off so much?
The thought of those people—who spat out their own family when bitter and swallowed them when sweet—walking away with the championship and celebrating made something bubble and boil in my gut.
I had been their son once too.
"Hmm. Having a hard time deciding?"
The middle-aged bookmaker looked back and forth between my martial robes and the long staff, then tossed me another option.
"If you want, you can even bet on yourself. Make it to the round of sixteen, then just match your placement, and you could walk away with a fortune overnight!"
The round of sixteen. I shook my head at that low target.
What I wanted sat higher than that.
I wanted to see Moyong Cheon's face and Moyong Hwi's face twist at the same time, with my own eyes—ruined by the coldly abandoned child, by me, Moyong Cheongjin.
But the question was whether that was even remotely possible.
I had found a clue toward the Peak Realm, and I carried internal energy equal to it in my body. Even so, my actual realm was still First-class. I couldn't coat a weapon in qi, so the moment it met sword qi, this post-apocalyptic rebar club would get sliced clean in half.
I stroked my chin, sunk deep in thought.
Then someone answered my unspoken question by casually writing characters in the air.
Possible.
It was Salsung, red energy writhing around her. I waited a little longer in case a "not" character was coming, but that was the whole message.
In other words: it was possible.
The chance of victory pointed out by none other than the Heavenly Killing Star itself.
"Boss, if you're unsure, why not stick with your first thought and bet on Heroine Jo Harang?"
Ilhong urged me to put the money on the high-odds favorite, insisting you should never gamble in a gambling den.
But I had already made up my mind to take the biggest gamble of my life. If I didn't, the rage would keep me up all night.
I set the heavy pouch holding thirty-five gold pieces down on the counter with a solid thud.
The not-insignificant sum drew stares from the people around me, all of them watching to see what I would choose.
"Half of this goes on Minor Tiger Blade Jo Harang."
When I boldly bet on Jo Harang—still known only as a First-class martial artist—the crowd murmured in mild surprise. People started hunting for information on her, asking if anyone actually knew her.
"And the other half goes on myself—Unchilsamhyeop Dan Mujin."
With that, I pulled the gold from the pouch and poured it out in a glittering cascade in front of the middle-aged man.
"What? Unchilsamhyeop? Anyone heard of him?"
"He's not even on the nameplates. What kind of nobody is that?"
"You know, that First-class wanderer who luckily finished off the Soul-Stealing Demon Lord."
"Oh, so that's the guy?"
Someone among the bettors apparently knew of me and started spilling information. A few even gave the First-class realm enough credit to pencil me in somewhere near the bottom of the round of sixteen.
"How far are you predicting?"
The middle-aged man asked, ready to write it down.
I pointed at the highest box on the paper and said:
"Champion."
He blanked for a second—then snorts and laughter erupted from every direction.
"Ha! The bastard's insane!"
"A rich insane bastard, at that. Even if you're confident in your skill, come on."
"A First-class nobody winning the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, where every big-name expert in the land is gathering? Keheheh!"
Mockery and dismissal rained down from all sides.
I ignored every bit of it and asked him the next question.
"So, uh. The odds are high, right?"
"……High doesn't begin to cover it. They're punching a hole through the sky."
I wasn't sure whether to be happy about that. Apparently no one else was betting on me at all.
"Boss, are you sure……? I mean, I know you're an outstanding martial artist, but."
Meaning Moyong Hwi wouldn't be easy, right? But I had an edge.
Who was I? I was Moyong Cheongjin.
The Moyong Clan's footwork, sword arts, and internal methods—thanks to Moyong Cheonghye performing them in front of the Heavenly Killing Star over and over, I had them completely figured out.
And I hadn't just watched. For a long stretch I had taken that sword art head-on while my life hung in the balance. Of course it was carved deep into my body.
"Life's one big all-or-nothing throw anyway."
On top of that, the Heavenly Killing Star had said there was a way. Plus the small clue toward Peak Realm I had gained while guiding Jo Harang's enlightenment. The odds I was looking at weren't huge, but they weren't nothing either.
"Father and son spent two straight days tagging me with provocations, didn't they?"
They had gone out of their way to single out a guy who just wanted to take the money and keep his head down.
After getting baited that hard, turning tail wouldn't be very manly of me.
I wanted to watch, with my own two eyes, the faces of the people who had thrown their child away when they lost their minds with rage.
So fine. Let's go all in.
"Hey, that idiot's actually putting the money down?"
"It wasn't a joke? What a waste. He should've just loaned that cash to me."
All you bastards who bet on Minor Thunderbolt Sword Moyong Hwi—I'll suck every last coin out of you.
And Moyong Cheon, whatever scheme you cooked up for this board……
The Purple Micro Star and the Heavenly Killing Star—the two of us are going to turn the whole damn thing into a circus.