Cleaning House
And here I thought. Something did get caught after all.
I could tell the formation had been triggered the moment we stepped out of the gate. The distance between the gate and home wasn't far to begin with, and the instant we emerged, I had swept my qi sense toward the house.
The formation activating meant someone had opened our front door without permission — but there was no cause for worry. The formation was still intact, holding strong, unbroken.
In truth, I had half expected an intruder. Even in Murim, the period when wars between sects raged most fiercely was always in the immediate aftermath of one sect's collapse.
"Let's hurry. Looks like we have guests waiting at home."
"What? How could you possibly know that— Actually, no. If it's you, Uncle, then of course you'd know."
After the training at the gate, Seoyeon had reached the point where she believed anything that came out of my mouth, and I headed home wearing a satisfied expression.
When we arrived, the guests standing in front of the house were, as expected, entirely unexpected ones.
"...Uncle, something's off about those people."
The moment Seoyeon laid eyes on them, she flinched and said that to me.
There were four people caught inside the formation in total. Three of them wore outfits suspicious at a single glance, while the fourth carried a completely different vibe from the rest.
Not bad, actually.
Where the three suspicious men had been reduced to terrified, hollow-eyed shells, the lone woman among them stood upright in her place. No one knew better than I did just how vicious a formation the Blood Jade Resonance Barrier was. The instant you were caught inside it, your whole body froze, and all you could see around you was an endless sea of crimson blood.
Anyone hearing that might ask what the big deal was, but the pressure of that formation went far beyond simple fear. Being unable to control your own body was an experience no person ever went through in a normal lifetime, and inside the formation, even one's sense of time blurred away. An ordinary person would usually pass out in under five minutes.
Yet this unidentified woman was somehow enduring on her own two feet, cold sweat streaming down her.
Hm?
Though, to be fair, her posture was a little... odd.
"Huh? That person...?"
"You know her?"
At Seoyeon's startled reaction, I asked her about the woman. If someone Seoyeon or Seojun knew had been caught in the formation, it would have been nothing short of awkward for me.
Fortunately, the woman had no such connection to Seoyeon.
"That's Kang Iseol. Guildmaster of Baekya — White Night — the number one guild over in Yeongdeungpo. But why would someone like that be at our house...?"
At Seoyeon's words, my eyes narrowed faintly as I studied the woman. I could roughly piece the situation together. From the three thugs sprawled in front of the door and Kang Iseol's position, I could reconstruct what things had looked like when the formation triggered. Most likely, the woman had gotten swept up in the formation's activation while the thugs were trying to pry the door open.
"Well then, time to clean this up."
Clap.
I brought my hands together with a light sound, and in that same instant, the energy filling the entryway dispersed.
"Ah..."
The first to react was, of course, Kang Iseol. The moment the formation released her, she began looking around with a startled expression — and that was the exact moment her eyes met mine.
"Ah, um. The bathroom—"
"What?"
The woman asked in a desperate voice, and at such an absurd request, I could only stare back at her, dumbfounded. But she cried out to me once more, her face pleading.
"Th-the door. Please let me use the bathroom. Please!"
I nodded and pointed toward the front of the house. The formation was already released, and the door had long since been forced open by the three men lying sprawled on the ground.
Kang Iseol flung our front door open hard enough to nearly break it off its hinges and dashed straight inside.
"I was... a fan of Kang Iseol."
Seoyeon's hollow voice drifted from behind me. I, meanwhile, was glaring coldly at the three men lying on the ground.
"I'm Kang Iseol. My apologies for earlier."
Her sister's living room. Kang Iseol addressed me and Seoyeon as if nothing had happened at all. When people are in an awkward spot, the courteous thing is to pretend not to notice, so Seoyeon and I were willing to let it slide.
Well — mostly.
"Uncle, that lady's face is all red."
Expecting that same courtesy from young Seojun was asking a bit too much. Seoyeon scolded him, telling him you don't say things like that right in front of the person, but the exchange only made Kang Iseol's face burn even redder.
"First things first — an explanation. Why did you come to someone else's home?"
I had no intention of watching this comedy sketch any longer, so I posed the question to Kang Iseol. Her eyes wavered almost imperceptibly for a moment before settling.
"...I came to see Miss Choi Seoyeon."
"Me? Why?"
Seoyeon, who had been busy lecturing Seojun until then, turned to Kang Iseol with a startled look. She apparently couldn't fathom why a woman who commanded an entire guild would come looking for her.
But despite Seoyeon's reaction, Kang Iseol answered in a calm voice.
"I wanted to propose an alliance. It's an embarrassing admission, but Baekya is currently under pressure from a coalition of neighboring guilds. However, the situation changed when the Blood Bird Guild collapsed. I would like to propose an alliance to you, Miss Choi Seoyeon."
A faint smile escaped me as I listened. I could roughly picture the circumstances, and I'd watched the same drama play out countless times in Murim. Whether she accepted Kang Iseol's proposal or not was entirely Seoyeon's decision to make.
"What about those ones?"
I jerked my chin toward the thugs lying unconscious on the floor, their blood vessels pressed shut, and asked Kang Iseol.
"From what I gathered, they intended to abduct your younger brother to gain leverage in negotiations. I tried to stop them, but as you saw..."
That was the moment Kang Iseol's freshly composed face flushed red again. She seemed mortified at herself, by her own accounting, for having gotten caught in the formation alongside us while trying to help.
"Thank you. For the intention. Though the results left something to be desired."
I said that to Kang Iseol. Strictly speaking, her stepping in like that was a kindness owed to me. It hadn't helped much in the end, but turning away someone who had risked herself to help me was not something I could allow.
The men lying collapsed with their blood veins sealed, on the other hand, had stacked a grudge against me. And a nasty one at that — for daring to lay hands on my nieces and nephew.
"Seoyeon. Uncle's going to step out with these gentlemen for a bit."
"Right now?"
"Yeah. There are a few things I need to confirm."
Seoyeon nodded without a word of protest. She was hardly an oblivious girl; she knew perfectly well what I intended to do. And though she didn't show it, she had reflexively clenched her jaw at the news that they'd tried to take Seojun.
"Um — the proposal I made earlier still stands. Cooperation between Baekya and Guro. I'd sincerely appreciate it if you'd give it serious thought."
As I rose from my seat, Kang Iseol hastily pressed the point.
"That's not something you should be saying to me. The owner of this place is her."
I looked at her for a moment, then gestured toward Seoyeon with my chin. Fortunately, Kang Iseol seemed to grasp my meaning; she nodded and didn't trouble me any further.
"Why in the hell is there still no word?!"
Jang Yeongsu slammed his fist on the desk, glaring at a phone that hadn't rung for hours now. The Blood Bird Guild collapsing at precisely this moment was nothing short of a bitter blow. Just a little more pushing, and he'd been poised to strip away nearly all of Baekya's aggravating, thorn-in-his-eye interests.
But crisis had always been another word for opportunity. Jang Yeongsu learned that the one who'd taken Guro was a girl of barely eighteen, and a brilliant move to flip the board came to him. The method was simple. Secure the girl's ten-year-old little brother, and Guro would be all but in the palm of his hand.
With that method, it didn't matter what the girl's ability was, or what her Awakened rank might be.
"How hard can it be to grab one brat, and still no news? These useless bastards."
Yet as time dragged on, Jang Yeongsu couldn't shake a growing unease. The problem was the call he'd just received from Oh Pilsang of the Blood Bird Guild.
"Choi Seoyeon? President Jang. Consider this a warning, out of respect for our old ties — do yourself a favor and sit still. Touch nothing."
Oh Pilsang delivered his warning, and Jang Yeongsu merely scoffed. What business did a man who'd just lost to a girl of eighteen have giving anyone advice?
But that wasn't the end of it.
"Hyung-nim. Isn't this the girl that guy mentioned?"
What made Jang Yeongsu doubt his own decision was a video one of his underlings brought him.
Choi Seoyeon TV.
A gate-raid stream from the girl who had newly become the master of Guro. The word that it was a mere D-rank gate made Jang Yeongsu's interest cool rapidly — until he learned that a Golden Goblin had appeared in that D-rank gate. And that some unknown man accompanying Choi Seoyeon had caught the thing without so much as breaking a sweat.
By stepping up into empty air, no less.
Unless he was a fool, any man who'd watched that much of the video could figure out — belatedly — who the true master of Guro was. The thought crept over him that perhaps he had poked a monster he couldn't begin to handle.
No, come on. Even if things go south, those bastards wouldn't sell out my name, right? They're trained professionals, after all.
That single thread was all Jang Yeongsu had left to cling to. For all his faults, the man was fairly cautious by nature, which was why he had commissioned the job from a highly reliable outfit — even at a steep price.
"I-I'll talk! Jang Yeongsu ordered all of it!"
An apartment rooftop. I regarded the man who said those words to me, his face drained of all color, and savored a cold smile.
Of course, they hadn't opened their mouths so readily at the start. Perhaps they'd received some professional training, because they'd worn the resolute expressions of men prepared to take their secrets to the grave.
But they had chosen their opponent very, very poorly. I was confident I could turn even the deadliest assassins of Salmak — Murim's supreme guild of killers — into babbling chatterboxes.
Three thugs had broken into the house. Two of them were already rolling across the rooftop with every bone in their limbs shattered. As for the one who had watched his comrades die before his own two eyes, it took him less than a minute to spew out truths I hadn't even asked for.
"Who is Jang Yeongsu?"
"Ah — D-Director of Cheongseol Guild. He's a director there."
I stared at the thug with frigid eyes. That meant his explanation was still lacking, and the man immediately began dumping everything he knew.
"Cheongseol Guild is based in Yangcheon-gu, and they've been teaming up with other guilds to squeeze Baekya in Yeongdeungpo. Then the Blood Bird Guild fell recently, and the plan fell apart..."
What the thug recounted was essentially identical to what Kang Iseol had told us. Once I judged I'd wrung out all the information worth having, I smiled at the man trembling before me.
"Thanks to you, I've confirmed everything. So I'll make your death painless."
The man desperately tried to say something more, but it was too late. His head was already in the process of separating cleanly from his body.
I looked down at the face that had dropped to the ground and let my expression go cold. Since returning to Earth, all I had done was restore to my nephew and nieces what should rightfully have been theirs. And still, strange vermin kept crawling toward us.
My master's words rose unbidden to my mind.
'Everything you gain in life, everything you enjoy, every action you take — for some people, it can become a grudge. So stacking up grudges is something like a byproduct of being alive. And what should you do with that byproduct? Just as you clean your room when it grows dirty, you must clear them away each time they catch your eye — only then does life grow comfortable. And what I have just done is precisely that, you foolish disciple of mine.'
I smiled as I recalled my master clicking his tongue after saying all that.
"Master. Your disciple's cleaning list just keeps growing."
Not a single word of it had been wrong, after all — and I found myself thinking that, just as he'd said, clearing things away whenever they caught my eye was indeed the way to an easier life.