The Investors
"Mom, why are you hiding in a place like this? Embarrassed of your son?"
Honestly, the second she gets an opening, she tries to ditch me again.
When I muttered that teasingly, Il-hye-hyang glared daggers at me with a vicious look on her face.
"You bastards… just what the hell are you? How do you know the method to break the Palbang Mihwanjin and Haoman's mechanism formations this thoroughly…?"
She meant we had it all mapped out like the lines on our own palms.
Well, of course we did—we had the heir who inherited every scrap of Haoman's knowledge right here with us.
"So, Ilhong, what kind of place is this supposed to be?"
If the upper floor had been a lavish space for distinguished guests, this place was a deeply suspicious underground chamber that barely let in any sunlight and reeked of mildew.
In the middle of the room lay a middle-aged man who looked like he'd been knocked out cold, along with an array of suspicious tools and bottles lined up on a table.
"Isn't it obvious? It's an interrogation room. The place where Haoman gathers its secret information. And those bugs in the bottles on that table…"
Ilhong narrowed her eyes as if sifting through hazy memories and stared hard at the insects inside the jars.
The middle-aged woman who had been watching her with a tense, jittery look gulped audibly and spoke up.
"They're just… insects used as medicinal ingredients…"
"Ah, I remember now!"
True to her nature of rarely forgetting anything she had studied, Ilhong identified the bugs in no time.
"They're divided into male and female. This must be that gu poison I've only ever heard about."
Gu poison—those vicious venomous insects from the martial arts tales that people used to blackmail others.
I'd heard they were extremely hard to come by.
"Judging by the traces, it looks like they were trying to implant the male insect to control this old guy."
She pointed at the unconscious middle-aged man and exposed exactly what the madam of Honghwaru had been about to do.
Upstairs they were reeling in high-ranking guests; downstairs they were pulling stunts this vicious.
"Wow, Mom was kind of a bad person, huh?"
Il-hye-hyang's face crumpled at my snide remark.
"Do not call me 'mother' with that detestable mouth of yours, you little beggar brat."
"Hey now, 'beggar brat'? I'll have you know I'm a Peak Realm master these days."
And not just any Peak Realm martial artist—one who carried the monstrous power of the Heavenly Killing Star and a vast store of inner energy.
The kind of expert who could wipe out a thriving courtesan house and Haoman's main force in one go, thank you very much.
"What kind of fortuitous encounter did a gutter rat like you even have to become a Peak Realm master…?"
"Fortuitous encounter, my ass. It's all talent. Pure talent."
The damn talent the heavens had bestowed specifically so I could smash people and beat them into the ground.
Of course, I was resisting that fate with everything I had.
"And just who the hell are you? You've been rattling off sect secrets nonstop… Don't tell me you're a traitor to Haoman?"
Having watched her instantly recognize the interrogation room, the gu poison, and the methods for breaking both the formation and the mechanisms, Il-hye-hyang now eyed Ilhong with open suspicion.
"This one and that one… It's absurd how they keep turning the tables and acting like the victims."
People who had stabbed others in the back were always the most paranoid about getting stabbed themselves.
Ilhong looked thoroughly fed up with being called a traitor yet again.
"Sinbigakju, has the comfortable profit from your courtesan house dulled your vigilance?"
"How… How do you even know my position?"
"There should have been one person Haoman was searching for in this age range."
The heir who had vanished without leaving a corpse on the day the Beijing branch of Haoman burned—someone with a legitimate claim to succession who even carried the sect's sacred seal of the Gate Leader.
Ilhong asked whether she truly did not remember that girl.
"That age range… Wait. That way of speaking—could you be…?"
Il-hye-hyang's puzzled expression slowly hardened into something grave as she closed in on the truth.
Watching her, Ilhong deliberately peeled off her human-skin mask in full view.
"Traitor Ilsoyeong. Do you recognize my face now?"
The neat, delicate features and slender jawline transformed the androgynous-looking young man into a lovely young woman in an instant.
"Y-You… Young Gate Leader Honggeum?!"
Sinbigakju Ilsoyeong shrieked in horror, her face turning deathly pale as if she might faint on the spot.
"Fortunately for you, I have never forgotten your face for even a single moment."
A cold smile Ilhong had never worn before filled the basement air with a chill.
Now that she knew Ilhong's true identity, Sinbigakju Ilsoyeong had only two choices left.
Death, or submission.
"Ah. Open wide. Say ah."
The moment I lifted my staff as if ready to crack her skull, she immediately started begging for her life.
Which left only one choice remaining.
I picked up one of the grotesque insects and, in the same tone Ju Wolay used when feeding me, told her to open her mouth.
"Come on, say ah~."
"Mmph!"
I used to take food perfectly well like a baby bird, but this woman clearly had no intention of cooperating.
In the end I forced her jaws open with sheer grip strength and shoved the insect deep into her mouth.
The very bug she had planned to implant in someone else was now inside her own body; Ilsoyeong's eyes bulged as she thrashed wildly.
"Mmph! Mmmph!"
"There we go. All gone."
"Cough! Cough! You son of a bitch—!"
But the gu was already settled inside her, living up to its expensive reputation.
She had tried to hit Cheonhwaru and gotten her own house wrecked instead; she had tried to plant a poison insect in some old man and ended up swallowing it herself.
Looking at it now, this woman was living a textbook life of reaping exactly what she sowed.
"Khhhk! I'll kill you! You worthless beggar bastards…!"
She foamed at the mouth and spewed every curse she knew, eyes blazing with pure hatred as she hurled invective at us.
"Huh? Why the swearing? Our little female gu is going to hear you at this rate."
I cupped the remaining bottle containing the other gu in both hands as if to say this was getting out of hand. She abruptly stopped mid-curse and flinched hard.
If I crushed that bottle and killed the female, the male would release its lethal poison and die as well.
In other words, the moment my grip slipped even a little, her life was over.
"W-Why… why are you doing this to me…?"
Was she seriously asking that?
Yet the genuinely aggrieved look on her face made me almost admire the sheer gall.
"Sinbigakju, from this moment on you will be our eyes and ears. The latest intelligence from Haoman, the movements of the traitors—report every single action to me."
Ilhong's command was absolute.
To bring down an enemy bigger than yourself, you had to hollow them out from the inside.
If we could plant a high-ranking officer as a mole deep within Haoman, it would be an enormous help to the revenge that lay ahead.
"I-I can't. Those people are far too sharp… The second I show even the slightest sign of spying, they'll take my head! Please, withdraw the order!"
A woman who clearly valued her own neck far more than any loyalty to the organization.
Then again, that was probably exactly why she had stabbed the Gate Leader she once served in the back.
"And that's my problem how?"
"…"
My way of cutting the conversation dead left her staring blankly for a moment, speechless.
Judging by how she was talking, she still hadn't grasped her situation. This wasn't a request.
"Our little gu looks lonely already without her husband."
I took another gu out of its bottle and toyed with it as if I were about to crush it; she lunged forward and grabbed my hand in a panic.
"A-Alright, just stop!"
"Stop what?"
"…I understand completely. I will become Young Gate Leader Honggeum's faithful eyes and ears."
Coming from someone who had already betrayed once, the words didn't exactly inspire confidence.
"You understand, right? Even the slightest funny business and this little guy gets it."
"Eek!"
When I made a twisting motion with the insect, her whole body jerked and she sucked in a sharp breath.
As someone who had once intended to use gu herself, she clearly knew exactly how deadly the things were.
"Ahh… How did I end up like this…"
Realizing there was no way out, the madam of Honghwaru slumped to the floor in despair and clutched her head.
We were still in the middle of establishing dominance and extracting information when—
"Ugh…"
A groan rose from the center of the basement as the middle-aged man pushed himself upright.
He slowly scanned the surroundings with half-lidded, dazed eyes, trying to get his bearings.
Then his gaze met ours and he opened his mouth.
"Who… are you people?"
"…?"
This old guy just asked the exact question we wanted to ask him.
I whispered to ask if she knew his face; Ilhong only shrugged and said she had no idea.
He took one look around the now-silent Honghwaru where every martial artist had been subdued, then slapped his knee as if everything had clicked into place.
"So that's it…! You came to rescue me, didn't you? To have noticed my crisis so quickly—as expected of Her Highness the Princess!"
The middle-aged man was beating the drum and playing the janggu all by himself without us saying a single word.
I had a sinking feeling we had just saved a very strange person.
We had gone to Honghwaru for revenge and somehow ended up seizing one of Haoman's funding pipelines and information channels.
That also laid the groundwork for Ilhong's revenge, and—though we never intended it—we rescued a certain Lord Hwangbo who turned out to belong to the Third Princess's faction.
"Dan Mujin, was it? I will never forget this debt of gratitude."
"Yes, please don't forget—and tell the people around you. I'll be opening an office in Beijing soon, so if they ever need anything, they should come find me."
"Of course. I'll make sure not only the officials around me but also Princess Dohwa herself hear of your existence."
The middle-aged man thumped his chest as if to say we could leave it all to him.
"I already know her, actually."
"Huh…? How…?"
Lord Hwangbo asked what on earth my identity even was.
In any case, we safely returned the man who had paid the price for his debauchery to the Imperial Palace, then headed back to Cheonhwaru, which was still under repair.
Tap-tap. Thud-thud.
The courtesan house staff were still cleaning up after the fierce battle.
A good number of the guards who protected this place had been injured as well; if I pulled out now, it would leave a massive hole in their fighting strength.
There was also the question of whether rival establishments that had always eyed Cheonhwaru with envy—or black-path thugs looking to collect protection money—would simply sit back and watch this opportunity pass.
So even though the Honghwaru problem was settled, I told them I would stay for the full period I had originally promised Eun Hwaran.
Madam Okryeong and the courtesans welcomed that decision with open arms.
From then on we received the most lavish guest treatment for the entire remainder of our stay.
"So when Hero Mujin shouted 'Halt!' hundreds of enemies were so startled they turned tail and ran?"
"That's right. A true master doesn't even need to draw his sword."
On the cool, breezy main veranda of Cheonhwaru, I was in the middle of heavily embroidering my exploits for the courtesans who had come by during their break.
"My, how incredible. You really are a great hero."
"I knew it ever since you drove those Jeollyongmun bastards out of the house."
"How can someone be so dashing?"
No matter what I said, the women responded with huge enthusiasm and praised me as a great hero, practically lifting me up on a pedestal.
I hadn't realized it before, but there was a reason Cheonhwaru's revenue was so high.
"Looking at you now, Hero Dan Mujin might actually be better-looking than Young Master Ilhong."
That was it—the secret. These courtesans knew how to tell soulful lies.
No wonder customers flocked here one after another.
"Wow…"
Ilhong, who knew the actual truth, shot me a pitying look over my shameless bragging, but what could I do?
Opportunities to strut like this didn't come often.
Especially when most of the time people kept knocking me down with talk of "seventy percent luck" or "you just set off bombs well."
"Hero, please try this."
And then there was Ju Wolay, who somehow still found time to come feed me delicious things even though she had to be the busiest person here.
I looked at the somewhat roughly shaped dumplings and asked,
"Oh, these from the kitchen? The taste is a little different from last time, though."
"…I had some free time, so I tried making them myself."
I never imagined a guy like me would get to enjoy this kind of luxury.
Truly, you never know what life will bring if you live long enough.
"Nom nom."
We spent a few weeks just like that—eating, lounging, and eating some more—until Ilhong finally spoke up beside me.
"Play and eat, play and eat… Don't we kind of look like freeloaders…?"
Freeloaders? That was going a bit far.
"Hey now, freeloaders my foot. This place is peaceful thanks to us."
She was basically saying we should disband the army because there was no war.
She wasn't even considering that other factions didn't dare touch Cheonhwaru precisely because I was holed up here.
"Boss… is that tasty…?"
"Yeah, want a bite?"
I nodded while chewing on one of the dumplings Ju Wolay had left behind.
She narrowed her eyes into slits and glared at me.
"…Freeloader."
"…"
For some reason, the longer we stayed at the courtesan house, the more sharp-tongued Ilhong seemed to become.
A week later, once the agreed-upon term ended and the courtesan house returned to normal, I took a sulking Ilhong and returned to the Eunseong Merchant Group.
When we visited the main office to report everything that had happened, sworn sister Eun Hwaran greeted me with a strange little smile.
"I heard an interesting rumor."
She tapped the corner of her mouth with the tip of her fan as she spoke.
"Oh? What rumor?"
After putting on a show in front of so many people, it seemed all sorts of stories had started circulating.
I asked back with a hint of anticipation.
"Apparently you have a secret mother?"
"…"
Come to think of it, I had also shouted "Mom!" at the madam of Honghwaru in front of a huge crowd.
Of course, at the time I'd only done it to provoke her.
"…It's a misunderstanding. A complete misunderstanding."
"Is that so? I was surprised thinking you had a hidden family."
"The only family I have is you, Sister Eun Hwaran. Yes, yes."
"Hehe, of course."
Apparently pleased with my answer, Eun Hwaran set a heavy chest on the table with a grin.
"Madam Okryeong said she wanted to chip in for the investment as well, so I packed a little extra."
When I carefully opened the chest with a soft click, a thick pile of gold coins greeted me with a dull yellow gleam.
"That's my sister!"
Are you watching, Moyong Cheonghye?
I jumped to my feet on the spot as if I had just found a long-lost sister.