The Pursuers
"I'm sorry—what did you just say?"
Wei Jinsheng couldn't hide the bewilderment written across his face at the words of the man standing before him.
He had risked his life to reach Korea for a number of reasons, but one of the most important was that very gate of unknown origin.
The truth was, the gate Lee Jaeseong had emerged from was peculiar in every possible way. Nothing came out of it except Lee Jaeseong himself; China's strike teams had attempted to enter, only to find access itself impossible; and every attempt to measure its grade had returned nothing but errors.
Even China—widely regarded as the nation that had cleared more gates than any other—had never once seen anything like it.
"No, wait. Now that I think about it, isn't that partly your fault? You people attacked me out of nowhere, so I forgot about it. That's on you."
Yet the sole person to emerge from that gate was speaking as casually as someone who'd merely stepped out without locking their front door.
Under the circumstances, Wei Jinsheng's confusion was rapidly curdling into sheer absurdity.
And the most shocking statement of all had yet to come.
"That thing? I built it to come back to Earth."
Wei Jinsheng's jaw dropped at Lee Jaeseong's words.
"So you're telling me... you created the gate from Murim to Earth yourself?"
That was why he was so stunned.
He had known, of course, that Lee Jaeseong was somehow different from the other returnees. With the others, the norm was to return to Earth at the very moment they lost their lives in the other world.
The reason Wei Jinsheng had felt such intense curiosity about Lee Jaeseong in the first place was precisely that he had appeared through some other means entirely, without passing through that process.
But never—even in his wildest imagination—had he entertained the notion that the mysterious gate was something Lee Jaeseong himself had created. Forcing open a door between dimensions—could a single human being truly possess such power?
"Well, no, technically not me. My master built the formation for it... Ah. Then the Blood Sect bastards might be able to come this way too?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
Wei Jinsheng asked, gazing at Lee Jaeseong with a dazed expression.
Wei Jinsheng hadn't exactly been sitting idle since his political fall, either. The Sword Emperor Namgoong Hwi's surveillance had been fairly tight, but he had still maintained a network of his own.
Thanks to it, he had managed to uncover at least a partial picture of the Blood Sect.
A faction that had, one day, unified the entirety of Murim. That was the true identity of the organization Lee Jaeseong referred to so dismissively, as if calling out to a pack of neighborhood kids.
"...Is that even possible?"
"Hmm. Seems like it could happen? The formation was designed to open a passage from there to this world in the first place. Assuming nobody's gone and dismantled it, that is."
Wei Jinsheng swallowed hard at those words.
It meant that beings even the Sword Emperor feared could potentially cross over into this world.
Mind you, that might have mattered had he been ousted before the fact—but after being driven from his post, Wei Jinsheng no longer had any reason to concern himself with China's safety.
The problem was that this wouldn't remain China's problem alone. If people with that degree of power crossed dimensions as a group, the entire world order—not just China's—could be turned on its head.
"Forgive my boldness, but... what is your relationship with this Blood Sect?"
Wei Jinsheng asked the question carefully. The way Lee Jaeseong spoke of the group carried a certain familiarity, which led him to judge that the man had to have some connection to it. If Lee Jaeseong were at least in a position to mediate with the Blood Sect, some measure of the coming chaos might yet be averted.
But in response to the question, Lee Jaeseong only scratched his cheek with an embarrassed look on his face.
"It—it doesn't have to be anything impressive. I'm well aware Murim is a rather exclusive place."
In truth, Wei Jinsheng hadn't held out much hope even as he asked. Officially unrecognized though it was, word had it that within Murim, the Sword Emperor had been nothing more than the Outer Hall Master of the Namgoong Clan.
Granted, that Outer Hall Master position was among the highest a non-direct-line member could reach—and Wei Jinsheng thought that if Lee Jaeseong held even that much standing, it would be fortunate indeed.
"...I was the Cult Master."
"Pardon? I didn't quite catch that."
"...I said I was the Cult Master. Of the Blood Sect."
At Lee Jaeseong's mumbled admission, delivered mid-scratch of his cheek, Wei Jinsheng—and indeed everyone present—could only wear expressions of utter shock.
"...My brother-in-law. My brother-in-law was actually the Cult Master? Of the Blood Sect?"
My brother-in-law asked me that, ever so cautiously, while we were doing the dishes after dinner.
He had insisted we couldn't possibly keep the premium hanwoo beef Kang Iseol had brought to ourselves, and had gone so far as to rope in both Kang Iseol and Wei Jinsheng for a full-blown meat feast.
Anyone watching might have thought him a man obsessed with throwing parties, but I knew exactly why he did it.
Ever since I was young, my brother-in-law had always wanted to surround me with as many people as he could.
Wei Jinsheng I couldn't speak for, but Kang Iseol was certainly one of those people now.
"Still—the Blood Sect? You mean the Blood Sect I've heard about? The one so drunk on blood that even the Demonic Cult steers clear of them?"
"That's just slander the Demonic Cult bastards spread..."
At my words, my brother-in-law regarded me with an expression caught somewhere between many emotions. It was, for a moment, the look of a family member watching a loved one slip into a cult.
That he would talk about the Blood Sect that way was more than understandable. The truth was, the only reason I had managed to survive that hellish place called Murim—the Blood Sect, no less—was partly thanks to him.
One of my brother-in-law's hobbies was reading martial arts novels, and thanks to that, I'd been able to build at least a rough working knowledge of Murim before I went.
'Most of it turned out to be wrong, mind you.'
Of course, the Murim of fiction and the one I'd actually lived through differed in countless ways, but that didn't mean the knowledge had been entirely useless either.
Anyway.
"It's not as bad a place as all that. I met my master there, after all. Well, technically it was the other way around? I met my master, and then joined the Blood Sect."
"Your master?"
"Yes. As it happened, the one who took me in turned out to be the previous Cult Master of the Blood Sect. Eccentric temper aside, he was truly good to me. It was thanks to him that I was able to return to Earth at all."
I let out a small chuckle as the image of my master's face surfaced in my mind. The Blood Jade Demon Lord, notorious throughout all of Murim, had been to me a presence second only to family.
It was at that moment that the expression of my brother-in-law, who had been listening quietly, changed.
"I see. Okay. I'm sorry for running my mouth about something I didn't understand. Anyone who looked after you like that is a good person in my book too. Absolutely."
My brother-in-law said that as he went back to wiping the plates.
It was moments like these that made it impossible for me to dislike the man. I knew better than anyone how difficult it was to overturn a prejudice once it had taken root.
"So... are the Blood Sect people all decent folk too?"
"...Ah. Well. About that."
I let my answer trail off with a vague look.
To be fair, "decent" was a subjective judgment—but even by my own standards, the members of the Blood Sect all seemed to be missing a few screws, each and every one of them.
'Still, would they really come over?'
I paused mid-scrub, the sponge going still against the bowl, as the thought occurred to me. By now, it had to be about time for the Blood Sect to notice I'd vanished.
"Eh. If they come, I'll just put them to work while they're at it."
Murmuring that with perfect equanimity, I simply went back to lathering the dishes with foam.
"Ghhhaaargh! Wh-why... why China...?"
The headquarters of the Iron Blood Guild, near Incheon Port.
The guild office that, on any normal day, would have been throwing its weight around with an iron grip on the district's rackets had become an outright sea of blood.
Across the floor, the Iron Blood Guild's elite Awakened lay groaning, not a single one of them with an unbroken bone to show for themselves.
And at the center of it all stood a dozen or so men in black battle robes, their faces utterly indifferent.
"Pathetic. And these are the ones holding down an entire territory."
The man with a single missing ear spoke through a grimace.
Yes—this man was Chen Lei, leader of the pursuit team the Sword Emperor Namgoong Hwi had dispatched to bring back Wei Jinsheng.
"You blocked my path on nothing more than this level of skill?"
To be fair, Chen Lei hadn't set out to pick a fight with the Iron Blood Guild. Their objective had always been simply to capture Wei Jinsheng.
The problem was that while Chen Lei was quietly trying to gather information on his target, one of the guild's members had picked a quarrel with him.
'What, you staring at me, pal? Oh, right—like I'm supposed to remember every single one of the hundreds of people who walk past here every day, you deaf-eared freak.'
Some second-rate nobody—no, not even second-rate—had hurled that insult straight at Chen Lei.
Ordinarily, he would have swallowed the humiliation for the sake of the mission. But this time, the situation was a little different. The Sword Emperor's orders had been to bring Wei Jinsheng back—nothing in them said to handle things quietly.
Besides, the wound where his ear used to be was still fresh. Swallowing that particular insult was beyond him.
"...P-please, spare us. Whatever you want, we'll give you anything."
And so it had come to this.
The man called the Guild Master of Iron Blood was prostrating himself before Chen Lei, begging for his life.
Chen Lei looked down at him, then drew a photograph from inside his robe and tossed it down.
"We're looking for this man."
The face in the photograph lying on the floor was none other than Wei Jinsheng's.
The Iron Blood Guild Master snatched it up in a panic and began studying the face.
"He was confirmed to have entered Incheon aboard a smuggling vessel a few days ago. Can you locate this man?"
At Chen Lei's words, the Guild Master's eyes darted rapidly. Had the man entered through normal channels, it would be one thing—but a smuggling vessel meant Iron Blood could well be connected.
Afraid the man's mood might turn, he answered without a moment's delay.
"W-we can find him. Without fail. Just give me time."
"You won't be getting much of it."
"I'll find out right now!"
The Guild Master swallowed hard and immediately pulled out his phone.
"F-found him."
Those words left the Iron Blood Guild Master's mouth in under an hour.
"After disembarking from the smuggling vessel, he apparently headed toward Seoul."
"Where in Seoul?"
"Guro-gu. We confirmed the driver who took this man ran the fare all the way to Guro-gu. If you'll only spare our lives, I'll report his movements from here on as well."
Guro-gu.
At the sound of that name, a bitter smile spread across Chen Lei's lips.
Before crossing over into Korea, he had already mapped out the rough landscape of its hunter circles. He had no idea what could possibly have driven Wei Jinsheng to flee to such a minor country—but the prey's tail was beginning to show.
"The target has moved toward Guro-gu. We will take Wei Jinsheng, that rat, alive—without fail. And anyone who sheltered him or aided him..."
It was at that moment that a thick bloodlust welled up in Chen Lei's eyes.
"...man, woman, young, or old—feel free to turn every last one of them into butcher's meat."
"Understood!"
At his words, the men in black battle robes answered as one.
Chen Lei looked down at the Iron Blood Guild Master, who still gazed up at him in terror, and spoke with icy calm.
"If this information proves false, I'll erase the name Iron Blood from this world entirely."
With that, Chen Lei turned and walked out.
It was his first time in this country called Korea—but he was thinking it wasn't half bad.
The morning after the meat feast.
I woke up and shuffled into the living room with a long yawn. The remnants of the previous night's party—thrown at my brother-in-law's insistence—had already been tidied away without a trace.
"Why is there so much trash?"
I frowned at the bulging recycling bags and garbage bags piled in one corner of the veranda. With me back home, plus my brother-in-law, the household had grown—and with yesterday's guests on top of that, the mounting trash was only natural.
'Well, guess that's my job.'
Dragging my slippers along in gray sweatpants, I hefted the garbage bags in both hands and stepped outside. Dawn had only just begun to break, the world still washed in pre-dawn gray, but the air felt crisp and clean.
It couldn't compare to that pure air of Murim, but at this hour, it was far from unpleasant.
It was at that moment that something foreign mingled into the morning air.
'A stench like this, in the neighborhood, first thing in the morning?'
Faint as it was, that unmistakable, fishy body odor unique to the Salmak assassins—the people I had hated most in all of Murim—was drifting through the dawn air.