The Murim Alliance Conference
After hearing the coroner's suspicious account, Moyong Cheonghye issued a single order to the Demon Exterminating Squad.
A full investigation of every participant in the main rounds of the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering.
The results turned up one highly suspicious figure.
The Diamond Fist… Hyeseung, was it?
Young as he was, he had already reached the First-class Realm and stood on the verge of Peak. A prodigy highly regarded even within Shaolin Temple—yet word had recently reached the Murim Alliance that he had gone missing.
They had been hastily preparing wanted posters when, out of nowhere, he appeared at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering and entered the matches?
Of all times, and of all people—he's fighting Young Hero Dan Mujin, the very man those people have been targeting…!
Something about it felt wrong. The instincts she had honed cutting down countless villains were sounding the alarm.
And according to the reports, witnesses claimed he had even projected fist qi during the previous preliminary match.
A man who had only been First-class until recently could not have reached Peak so easily.
Which meant the Hyeseung competing now might not be the Hyeseung everyone knew.
Perhaps a demon wearing a human-skin mask. Driven by that rising dread, she had hurried her steps.
"Ah, Young Lady Jo Harang!"
She did not want to see that young hero—who for some reason had called her "noona"—die.
She had been heading for the arena when she ran into the greatsword-wielding woman who hung around him like a shadow, waiting in the ready room.
"Huh? Vice Captain Moyong Cheonghye?"
Jo Harang's eyes went round with surprise as the Demon Exterminating Squad's vice captain burst out of the waiting room.
"Where is Young Hero Mujin?! Is he unharmed?!"
After a moment of confusion at the question, she nodded and answered.
"Yes, he's in the middle of a match right now."
"Ah, thank goodness. Then even now, if I barge in and save—"
"Huh? I don't know what's going on, but you don't need to save him."
Saying that, Jo Harang pulled aside the tent flap at the entrance to the waiting room.
The scene on the arena floor came into view at a glance.
"…Huh?"
She had no idea what was going on, but Regular-rank vagabond Dan Mujin was unilaterally thrashing Hyeseung, who was recorded as a Peak martial artist.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
"Knees! Shins! Hamstrings!"
"Gyaaah!"
Whether to keep Hyeseung from fleeing, Dan Mujin was enthusiastically swinging his staff at the lower body, producing the juicy impact sounds of someone beating a dog while grilling him for answers.
"You bastard! What the hell are you?! Spit it out!"
Hyeseung unleashed vicious killing techniques laced with fist qi as if he couldn't answer, but Dan Mujin knocked them all aside with his half-broken staff and counterattacked.
When the man still wouldn't talk, Dan Mujin declared he would cave in the top of his skull and began obsessively targeting that gleaming bald head.
"Head! Head! Head!"
Clack-clack-clack—!
"Kraaagh!"
Whatever principle was behind it, the dizzying pain had Hyeseung clutching his bald scalp and rolling around on the stage.
This was no match—it was a one-sided beating.
"What on earth is this…"
Moyong Cheonghye stared blankly at a match result that had completely overturned her expectations.
The spectators who had been so sure of victory the moment the Shaolin martial artist projected fist qi were no different.
"Is this even possible?"
"He's thrashing a Shaolin prodigy like a dog? The Luck-Seven-Three Hero?"
Bewilderment and incredulity. Frustrated sighs erupted from the gamblers all around.
Paying them no mind, Dan Mujin continued the assault, claiming he would avenge the staff that now only bore the characters for "Demon Staff."
"Groin! Groin! Groin!"
"H-huuurgh!"
A sight hard to call a bout between orthodox martial artists. Everyone instinctively clutched their own crotches.
Whatever was impersonating Hyeseung could only scream and yelp at the indescribable pain of having a man's most precious part struck.
"If you don't want your balls to explode and die, tell me what you are!"
Dan Mujin pressed the interrogation as relentlessly as if he were a Demon Exterminating Squad member himself. A sharp light seemed to gleam from his bloodshot eyes.
"I-I yield! I forfeit! I forfeeeeit!"
But with no intention of answering, the self-proclaimed Shaolin martial artist hastily performed a Falling Leaf Descent and grabbed the referee's legs, declaring his surrender.
The referee was left speechless for a while, stunned by the ugly, tear-and-snot-streaming declaration of defeat.
"You little shit… Who said you could?!"
Only when the enraged Dan Mujin came flying in with his split staff did the referee snap out of it and accept the forfeit.
A white flag fluttered over the stage—the signal that this bizarre match was over.
"It's not a forfeit! Invalid! Invalid!"
"What nonsense… Stand down!"
Regardless, Dan Mujin declared the forfeit invalid and swung his staff like a madman. The referees panicked and rushed him.
"The match is over! If you are an orthodox martial artist, uphold courtesy and righteousness!"
"No, I'm telling you that bastard isn't orthodox! He used the Penetration Sutra on me!"
"What baseless slander against a Shaolin prodigy…! Watch your tongue!"
But to the referee's eyes it had been fierce but still Shaolin martial arts, and the Penetration Sutra was hard to detect unless you were the one hit by it, so they could not simply leave a Shaolin prodigy to be beaten to death.
"Damn it! Then let me hit him just one more time! I was right on the verge of an epiphany…!"
Deciding it was hopeless, referees swarmed from every direction. In the end, Dan Mujin was grabbed by both arms and dragged off the stage.
A brief silence fell over the arena at the sight of the victor.
"W-well… I'm glad you're unharmed."
Truly an extraordinary young man.
Moyong Cheonghye allowed herself a slight smile and a sigh of relief.
Ilhong was in an excellent mood.
The betting money she had put down with great resolve had come back sevenfold.
"…Congratulations. Here's your money."
One side a vagabond with a bizarre moniker, the other a Shaolin prodigy—and a betting board for the winner of the Round of 16.
The middle-aged man who had finished calculating on his abacus set the pouch on the table with a heavy thud, his face thoroughly bitter.
"Ehehehe."
Ilhong grinned ear to ear at that weight. Back when she was the Haomu Gate heir and everything was taken care of for her, money had only been numbers. After living as a beggar once, she had learned how precious it truly was.
She basked proudly in the envious and jealous stares pouring in from all around.
"What do you plan to do with that money?"
At the middle-aged man's question, luxury and pleasure immediately sprang to Ilhong's mind. But she soon shook her head and wiped them away.
In their place she called up the words "Heuk Jin-jo" and "revenge."
"I was thinking of getting another weapon."
"Hmm, a weapon? Are you a martial artist as well?"
The middle-aged man muttered that he hadn't realized—she carried no blade, and her body didn't look as solid as a fist fighter's.
"The martial artists who look like that are the most dangerous ones."
A famous saying of the Murim. The short blade that slips through a person's unguarded moment hurts the most. Hadn't she already been burned once by Haomu Gate?
"Well then."
The pleasant weight of the pouch in her hand. Ilhong toyed with the hidden weapons in her robes and headed straight for the Black Market of Shaanxi.
Figuring a little luxury was fine, she licked something sweet she had bought on the street as she went.
"Hmm? Come in."
An ordinary-looking old man greeted her at a shabby inn.
Ilhong carefully tossed three copper coins, five silver coins, and eight gold coins in sequence and said carefully:
"I've come to buy white board."
"White board"—another name for tofu.
"This is already your fourth visit. Forget the code and just say what you want."
The old man shook his head as if asking what nonsense this was. Ilhong's face fell as the secretive atmosphere she had been trying to create fizzled out.
"Is that thing finished?"
Perhaps her second personal hidden weapon—one that would make the Dang Clan's second daughter cry out in despair yet again.
One foot had always left her wanting more. So she intended to prepare several things, like someone who scattered poison bombs and hidden weapons in every direction.
"Couldn't finish it."
"…What?"
But today the Black Market old man had disappointing words. Ilhong asked again as if to say, I already paid—what is this?
"There were circumstances. Ran completely out of poison and black powder, you see."
"Why would that suddenly run out?"
She poked the inn table with her finger as she asked for the reason. Instead of answering, the old man quietly held out his palm.
Here, information was money. If she wanted to know, she had to pay.
With a short sigh, she placed five silver coins on the old man's hand.
"Someone cleaned out the entire Shaanxi allotment. Supposedly made them into poison bombs and small thunder bombs and the like."
Dangerous things just from the sound of them. Planning to overthrow a country or something?
"Who is that someone?"
The old man held out his palm again.
"…."
With trembling hands, Ilhong pulled out more silver and pressed it into his palm. Then came the answer.
"I don't know either."
"Then why take the money?"
"That there are suspicious types even the Black Market doesn't know about is information of a sort."
"What kind of…"
Had Haomu Gate done business like this too? Ilhong felt heat rising inside her.
"Still, you paid more silver than I expected, so I'll throw this in as compensation."
"…What is it?"
"We've got a master on our Black Market side who's good at eavesdropping on people."
For reference, Haomu Gate had martial artists like that too—masters who cultivated techniques that extremely refined their hearing.
"The words 'Dragon-Phoenix Gathering' and 'great enterprise' came up from their mouths several times. Also a few vagabonds and a Dang Clan master."
The first part was one thing, but the latter couldn't be brushed aside.
With a slightly stiffened face, Ilhong took out more silver and asked for the names of the vagabonds mentioned later.
"That would be…"
And the moment she heard those names, she realized.
Ah. This isn't someone else's problem.
Shaolin Temple's rising prodigy, Diamond Fist Hyeseung.
The one presumed to be his impersonator had tried to kill me under the guise of a match, only to be thoroughly wrecked by me, then vanished without a trace from the medical tent to escape Moyong Cheonghye's pursuit.
The Demon Exterminating Squad vice captain had immediately informed the Murim Alliance and convened a meeting.
With only a single specially crafted long needle that had discolored as evidence of the failed capture, Moyong Cheonghye had brought me to this meeting as a witness to fill the gap.
Well, more precisely: me, Jo Harang, Ilhong, and Dang Yeohye—who had faced the Bloodsucking Ghoul back then—had all been dragged into this meeting full of old men.
"What on earth is going on…"
Jeok Unyeop clutched his head tightly over the major incident his vice captain had caused while he had left her with paperwork.
I felt for the guy every time I saw him—he really suffered because of his freewheeling vice captain.
"Boss, that man is the Abbot of Shaolin Temple, Master Gongryun."
Bald heads radiating no ordinary presence were clustered in one corner of the Murim Alliance conference hall.
And with Hyeseung—whom they had believed to be Shaolin's future—missing, and some scoundrel having impersonated him and even unleashed killing techniques…
"Ahem, ahem!"
Their expressions made it clear this conversation topic left them deeply uncomfortable and distressed.
If Moyong Cheonghye was right and a demon had snuck in wearing a human-skin mask, then those people were victims of a sort as well.
"That side is the Sect Leader of Mount Hua."
Bushy tiger-like brows, a middle-aged Murim figure who looked powerfully built at a glance yet wore Daoist robes. He reeked of being a master.
"And that person is…"
Ilhong pointed somewhere.
White hair like scallion roots, a lanky giant of an old man so covered in age spots he looked ready to die any moment. The kind of figure who would collapse at a single poke.
"That's the current Murim Alliance Leader—the Heavenly Sword of the Namgung Clan."
Looking again, dignity seemed hidden behind the shabby appearance, and the hunched posture was more like a tiger coiled and ready to explode at any moment.
In the Murim, you really can't judge people by appearance.
I'd been through this enough times and still fell for it every time.
All because I came from modern Earth, where appearance is almost everything.
Who would believe that a frail-looking old man like that could actually slaughter thousands—tens of thousands—of people?