Little Divine Thief
Kaifeng was the kind of city you could reach only after walking yourself half to death for another whole day.
Probably because this was where the Murim Alliance stood, the place was neat and orderly.
The city where the Yang family estate had been, and the city where the Chaeryong Sect had stood, hadn’t been bad places by any means, but this one felt like it belonged to an entirely different world.
Except for the beggars.
There were so many beggars. I’m not joking — there were absurdly many.
Of course, I knew why. Kaifeng was home to the Beggars' Sect’s main branch, after all.
Anyone who knew murim would know that much. It was common knowledge. And yet...
How could there be this many? Could all of them really make a living by begging?
But when I looked closer, most of those beggars seemed to be heading toward one place or coming from it.
Oh. So they’re basically the Beggars' Sect’s messengers? That area must be the main branch?
That explained why they were all running around like that.
Still, every time one passed nearby, a faint sour smell drifted by with them.
Ugh. That’s a little much. It’s basically the smell of a homeless encampment.
No matter how important the lineage was, that was still pushing it.
So I skirted around the Beggars' Sect’s main branch and headed off to do the next quest.
Find a lost family heirloom for some rich house in Kaifeng.
That one also had the horrible prerequisite of a twenty-four-step chain quest, but since this wasn’t actually a game, I didn’t need to do everything standing in my way.
I knew where the heirloom was, didn’t I? So all I had to do was go and get it. Simple as that.
Ugh. I should’ve remembered a few more of these quests before coming here.
Then again, who could’ve known I’d end up inside the game?
Anyway, because I knew the heirloom’s location, I stopped to think for a moment.
If this were a game, I would’ve needed to accept the quest before I could obtain the quest item. But this wasn’t a game, so that shouldn’t matter.
Which meant I should just go get the heirloom and take it straight to the rich house, right?
In the game, this quest was called the Little Divine Thief chain quest.
In other words, the Little Divine Thief. More accurately, the disciple of the Divine Thief.
It was tied to a boy who, following his master’s last will, honed his skills in Kaifeng and tried to make a name for himself as a thief.
That meant I didn’t even need to meet that boy.
I already knew where he lived and where he kept the things he stole, so all I had to do was go and take them.
But by then the sun had already gone down, so I’d have to go tomorrow.
There was no way that would be easy to do at night. I was already going to get lost in broad daylight.
So, the next day.
After spending the night in a clean inn, I started searching for the Little Divine Thief’s hideout first thing in the morning.
The problem was that there was no map here. No minimap, either. And I wasn’t exactly following a guide, either.
All I knew was the general area, which made things a pain. So I spent the whole morning wandering around.
Two full days. It took me two whole days of searching before I finally found the Little Divine Thief’s hideout.
On the outskirts of Kaifeng. A place packed with shabby little houses.
Behind one of those houses stood a ramshackle storage shed. And on the floor inside it.
The Little Divine Thief wasn’t anything impressive yet. He was just a mid-teen kid with nimble hands.
But the hideout had been left by the previous Divine Thief, so it wasn’t something you could take lightly.
About ten of the twenty-four chain quests existed just to learn how to open it.
Still, that didn’t matter to me since I already knew the walkthrough.
So I waited nearby.
I didn’t know when the Little Divine Thief would come, so I planned to slip in right after he’d visited and left again.
That was one of the differences between this and the game.
There, the Little Divine Thief existed solely for the sake of this quest, but here he was a real person, wasn’t he?
A living, breathing person who moved however he liked.
While I was waiting, the Little Divine Thief finally slipped into the house sometime after lunch.
He carefully checked his surroundings, then quietly entered the shed.
A long while later, once he seemed to have finished what he came to do, he came back out and drifted away as casually as ever.
Just in case, I watched him go until he was far away, then waited a little longer before approaching the shed.
After that, I followed the memory of the walkthrough and lifted the floorboards to open the hidden door.
It was a crude secret door, a lot like a modern combination safe, only far rougher around the edges.
The door would open only if five iron handles were set into their proper positions. If even one lock was off, the door wouldn’t budge.
After opening the door, I pulled the iron bar beside the ladder.
If I hadn’t done that, poisoned arrows would’ve been fired.
Arrows, I might have been able to deal with even if they hit me, but poison was another matter.
I wasn’t immune to all poisons or anything, so if I got hit by one, that would be the end of it. I didn’t even have any healing pills.
After climbing down the ladder, I pulled the iron rod at the very bottom of it.
If I hadn’t, there would’ve been invisible poison needles scattered around the floor.
If you didn’t know any better and just stepped down there, they’d pierce straight through your shoes and poison you on the spot.
Seriously... they really do love poison. I mean, to be fair, it’s effective.
Anyway, that should do it. This was the end of the walkthrough I knew.
Nothing else should’ve been added. If it had, I’d be in serious trouble.
The interior was pitch-black. Using the faint light from the entrance, I looked to the side.
A flint and a single oil lamp. I found them, lit them, and only then did the Divine Thief’s hideout reveal itself.
It was called a hideout, sure, but there weren’t that many valuable things in here.
The Divine Thief’s later years hadn’t gone especially well. That was why the disciple called the Little Divine Thief was still out there stealing things.
If he’d left behind a rich inheritance, the boy probably would’ve ignored his master’s last will entirely and lived in style by selling off all the forgotten junk.
What had been left here was just a few martial manuals and odds and ends that would be difficult to sell casually anywhere else.
Things so obviously stolen that anyone would notice right away if they were sold as loot. In other words, objects that couldn’t be turned into cash.
And then there were all the petty little things the Little Divine Thief had stolen from here and there to check his own abilities.
Still, I was short on time, so I grabbed the quest item first.
The missing heirloom from the rich house was a jade hairpin.
I had no idea why the Little Divine Thief stole something like this.
Of course, it was because of the quest, but still... I had no idea.
Would this sort of thing even be implemented in detail? Would there be a backstory, or memories, about why he took it?
Maybe the Little Divine Thief doesn’t even know why it’s here.
Anyway, while mulling over those thoughts, I rummaged through the pile of junk and found the jade hairpin.
There. That’s one thing secured.
Normally I should’ve headed straight back outside, but since I was already here, I looked through the rest of the place.
I wasn’t interested in the Little Divine Thief’s stolen goods, of course.
If I carried them around, I’d probably just get accused of possessing stolen property.
So what I was after wasn’t loot. It was martial manuals.
In the game, you couldn’t obtain manuals from this place.
But this wasn’t a game now, was it? Which meant the manuals could become priceless treasures to me.
Of course, I wasn’t getting my hopes up too much.
When I checked the place where the manuals were kept, there were only four of them.
I pulled one out, and it had a pitch-black cover with no title written on it.
No. It wasn’t black, was it? It was dark red.
What the hell is this, blood...? No matter how I looked at it, it really seemed like it was.
Because of that, I didn’t feel like opening it. Still, I did, and inside were lines and lines of text written in a crooked, flowing hand.
I couldn’t make head or tail of it. And it gave me a bad feeling, too.
I put that manual back and took out the second one.
A manual titled Moonlight Divine Art. Whoa. A divine art? That’s impressive.
So I opened it, and... huh?
Moonlight Divine Art
A message popped up!?
I hurriedly opened the skill window, and sure enough, beneath Golden Dragon Body, Iron Body Weight-Adding Force, and True Origin Divine Art, there was Moonlight Divine Art.
And of course, the twelve-star slots were all empty. On top of that, even though I’d only looked at the first page, the entire contents were already etched into my memory.
Wow. That’s broken as hell. You can learn it just by looking at a manual?!
Of course, knowing a technique and actually using it are two different things. If not a single star is filled, I can’t use it any more than if I didn’t know it at all.
Wait, then why didn’t the first manual register? Was it because I couldn’t recognize it?
Either way, a martial art you haven’t learned is meaningless. So I quickly took out the remaining manuals.
The third manual turned out to be called Divided Light Sword Technique.
Splitting light apart? Wow. That sounded pretty cool. Fine, I’d learn it. Onto the next one.
And when I pulled out the last manual, I was a little dumbfounded.
Ice Soul Divine Art? Why the hell is this here?
I’d already been asked several times whether I’d come from the North Sea Ice Palace, and now a manual connected to exactly that place was sitting right here in front of me.
Was this fate? Or had someone arranged things to turn out this way?
After a moment of thought, I... went ahead and learned Ice Soul Divine Art, too.
Then I didn’t put the manuals back. Instead, I tucked them into my robes.
Somehow, I had a feeling I might need them. So taking them with me was the right call.
Maybe someone from the North Sea Ice Palace, the place people kept misunderstanding me for, was looking for this exact manual.
After gathering up the manuals, I quickly restored the hideout to its original state and headed outside.
I had no idea what the point of putting everything back was once I’d already taken the manuals, but still, I might as well.
Once I was out and on my way back to the inn, a new worry began to nag at me.
Where was I supposed to put these manuals? Carrying them around all the time was a bit much.
In wuxia stories, manuals always seemed to be tucked inside someone’s robes.
No matter how I looked at it, that didn’t seem easy. How did they even do that? It was a real mystery.
For now, I put the manuals into the bundle I was carrying.
Then I lay down on the bed and thought carefully about where to store them.
The problem was that they were books. If I left them lying around anywhere, they’d deteriorate quickly. Rain would be a problem, too.
It looked like the paper had been treated with oil, but still... ugh. This was a headache.
The best option would be to leave them somewhere trustworthy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anywhere like that.
Should I hand them over to the Murim Alliance instead? Or maybe ask the Beggars' Sect to deliver them somewhere?
Maybe that was actually the best choice.
The problem was that I’d have to explain where I found them.
The best option would be to meet the person who supposedly came from the North Sea Ice Palace in person.
Nothing could beat that. It really was the best plan.
For now, I should gather more information. It’s not like I have any more quests to do anyway.
Tomorrow I’ll bring back this jade hairpin and think it over. For tonight, I’ll sleep first.