Arson
Jeokwol kept watching Harin.
The girl stood in front of a candy shop, hesitating for what felt like forever.
Then, at last, she bought some sweets. A shocking amount of them, too.
No, seriously. Why buy that much candy? Was there even any reason to buy that much?
Of course, Jeokwol had no way of knowing.
Harin had come to this world without really understanding what a tael was worth, so her sense of money was still a little off.
That was why she could buy such expensive candy without batting an eye.
And the reason she thought the shop owner was bowing and scraping like he was serving some noble patron was probably just: Wow, this place has really good service.
In any case, Harin bought a heap of sweets and headed back.
Jeokwol watched her and felt absurd all over again.
That girl was really a martial artist? Seriously?
A martial artist, and yet she was carrying things in both hands like that.
To Jeokwol, who had lived his entire life on the edge of a blade, it was an incomprehensible sight.
At the very least, shouldn’t she leave her sword hand free? Why was she like this?
And so Jeokwol’s conflict only deepened.
Both hands occupied. Not a shred of caution in her posture.
It almost looked like an invitation. Like she was wagging a tail and begging someone to attack her on the spot.
That was how provocative Harin looked.
Provocative enough to make even a cold-blooded man like Jeokwol lose his cool.
His anxiety kept growing.
The girl might not come out again.
Geukseon, who was always by her side, was nowhere to be seen.
Both hands were busy with the candy, leaving her helpless.
There was an opening, plain as day.
Humans were that kind of creature. There was a reason people opened their wallets for limited editions before they even knew what they were doing.
An opportunity. The fear that if this chance passed, he might never get another like it.
The fear of himself, regretting it later.
I should’ve done it then! Why the hell did I let that chance slip away like an idiot?
If you’d ever tried investing in stocks, you’d understand. You could always run into yourself every day, cursing your own stupidity with a bitter laugh.
Jeokwol didn’t know anything about stocks, but he understood that feeling just fine.
He’d had that same experience more times than he could count. Everyone had.
So Jeokwol made up his mind. He would take aim.
The problem was that he didn’t have much time left.
It was like trying to buy a limited-edition item when the discount would end in five minutes.
So Jeokwol had to think fast.
How could he kidnap that girl?
Harin had the appearance of a woman, but her core was still male.
And men were simple. She’d come out to buy candy, so once she had the candy, she’d go right back.
If Harin had truly been a woman, she probably wouldn’t even have made it to the candy shop yet.
She’d have browsed the peddlers, stopped by the cloth merchants, looked at everything else in sight, and only then wandered into the candy store.
After that, she’d probably keep wandering around for ages before coming back much later to buy the sweets.
But Harin’s core was male. So she bought the candy and went straight back to the Murim Alliance.
The Murim Alliance drew closer and closer.
Jeokwol wracked his brain, searching for the best place.
He couldn’t let her get too close to the Murim Alliance. And causing trouble in broad daylight, in the middle of a main road, wasn’t exactly easy either.
So Jeokwol immediately put his mind to work.
He moved ahead of Harin and set fire to a building by the roadside.
Arson. The sort of thing that could get you executed if you handled it carelessly.
Fire safety was not something that belonged to any one age or era.
Especially in a place with so many wooden buildings, fire was nothing short of a horrific disaster.
In a place where even the fire you used had to be handled with care, Jeokwol deliberately set one.
He chose a place that would catch easily, and the flames spread at once, devouring everything in sight.
There was nothing better for drawing people’s attention elsewhere, and for stealing the gaze of that girl trying to return to the Murim Alliance.
Nothing beat a fire.
Watching a fire and watching a fight were both irresistible spectacles, as long as they didn’t involve you.
At least, that was the rule.
The blaze shot up quickly, and the uproar from the crowd followed just as fast.
People surged toward it in a rush, scrambling in chaos to put the fire out.
In the modern world, a firetruck would show up and snuff it out in no time, but that wasn’t how things worked here.
First someone had to fetch water, and then people had to carry it back by hand.
And even if they managed to douse it, that didn’t mean the flames would die so easily.
It wasn’t easy to stop the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings, either.
Jeokwol, having lit the blaze and not caring what happened next, quietly hid himself and watched his target.
Harin had come all the way to the scene of the fire. She stopped in her tracks and watched the burning building, holding still as she considered what to do.
Harin was thinking.
Could she perhaps extinguish the fire with the Ice Soul Divine Art?
But Ice Soul Divine Art wasn’t some water technique. It didn’t create actual water or anything like that.
Still, couldn’t she do something? At the very least, it didn’t seem like she’d get burned or anything.
Her hesitation didn’t last long. The flames were growing bigger by the second.
So Harin looked around. Then she spotted a beggar with two knots tied at his waist and headed straight over.
“You’re with the Beggar’s Union, right? Could you watch this for a moment? You can eat one.”
Trusting that a beggar from the Beggar’s Union wouldn’t just run off with it, Harin handed over the basket stuffed full of candy and then leaped into action.
She rushed toward the burning building, channeling the Ice Soul Divine Art as she went.
The people watching it all went, “Whoa!” in surprise.
Jeokwol was no different. He’d stopped moving because he wanted to wait for his chance, but he had never expected her to charge straight into the flames.
Still, another thought occurred to him: this might actually be a chance. At the very least, no one would be watching inside that burning building.
And so Jeokwol, too, bolted into the building. It felt like the sort of opportunity that wouldn’t come again if he let it pass now.
Once inside, Harin struck the blazing pillar with the Ice Soul Divine Palm.
Not as an удар, exactly. More like she was just pouring out cold.
Then frost spilled from Harin’s palm and snuffed out the fire in a single breath.
Huh. It actually works?
Even Harin found it a little strange after doing it herself.
Cold and extinguishing fires had nothing to do with one another. And yet the flames went out.
Had she lowered the ignition point in an instant? Or was it because she had blasted the air away so quickly with a palm strike?
Thinking through the scientific principles in her head, Harin kept extending the hand steeped in Ice Soul Divine Art toward the blaze.
Fire rose upward from the bottom, so if she put out the flames below first, maybe that would do it.
And then Jeokwol lunged at her.
A surprise attack, launched from within the flames.
Even with one arm broken, an assault from a master of the Hua Realm was nothing to sneer at.
Harin didn’t sense Jeokwol approaching, and he swung the arm braced in its splint hard against the back of her neck.
With a sharp thwack, Harin staggered forward.
Since pressure-point strikes hadn’t worked, Jeokwol had poured in enough internal force to knock her out.
It was a powerful blow that could have snapped her neck or even burst her skull if things had gone wrong.
But Jeokwol trusted that girl. He believed she wasn’t that flimsy, so he hit her as hard as he could.
Seeing Harin stagger forward and collapse, Jeokwol silently cheered to himself.
Got her! Finally! I did it! Yeah—whatever the reason her pressure points didn’t work, she won’t stop this one!
But his triumph didn’t last long.
Just as Harin was falling forward, she kicked off the floor and thrust out a palm.
Huh?! Jeokwol thought in shock, and reflexively yanked his body backward.
He had started to raise his arm to block, then changed his mind at the last instant and chose to evade instead.
He’d been burned once before. That was how his arm had ended up broken in the first place.
And Harin, even while missing her first strike in midair, didn’t hesitate for a second before following up.
What she did was simple. She drew the sword at her waist and hurled it without a second thought.
Wielding a sword in a cramped building was a terrible idea.
Besides, Harin’s Hanjunggeom was a mass weapon in its own right.
She wasn’t yet used to swordsmanship, so she didn’t feel much attachment to the blade, which meant she could choose to throw it without hesitation.
The sword flew straight at Jeokwol. It was a short distance, but the weapon sliced through the air with a terrifying shriek as it shot toward him.
Jeokwol knew he couldn’t dodge it. It was too close.
It was fortunate he’d already seen her throw a sword once before. Otherwise, that blade would have pierced straight through his body.
But even when you’re prepared, a move you never expected still creates an opening.
So Jeokwol had no choice but to trust the splinted arm and knock the sword aside.
There was nothing else he could do with that blade bearing down on him.
“Aghhh!”
And Jeokwol let out a scream he had never once made in all the years of carrying out missions.
The arm that struck the sword was crippled as the splint snapped, sending a hideous jolt of pain racing through him.
Even through the shock, pain so intense it felt like it would empty his mind entirely, Jeokwol sensed an even greater threat bearing down on him.
White hair, blue eyes. Harin’s left hand shimmered with purple light, while her right was wrapped in pale frost.
She hurled the Purple Sunset Divine Art-infused left palm straight at him.
Jeokwol grit his teeth and dodged the palm strike, but then he turned in horror as he saw the right hand flying toward his flank.
Twisting his body at an awkward angle, he barely managed to evade that one too.
And in that instant, he knew he had failed completely.
In truth, the outcome had been decided the moment he failed to knock her out with the first blow.
So Jeokwol decided without hesitation to land one final strike.
The real failure wasn’t this moment. The true failure would be getting pinned down here, captured, or taking even more damage.
So he drew his sword with the other still-usable arm and concentrated as much internal force as he could into it.
He’d probably need a long recovery after this, but there was no other choice now.
He had to wound her badly enough with one powerful attack to take her with him, or at the very least create some distance and flee this place.
Thus Jeokwol swung his sword with all the finesse he could muster, even in the cramped space of the building.
A strike heavy with the full inner force of a master of the Hua Realm. A sword no one could simply block with ease.
When Harin saw that blade, she suddenly felt as though it were moving toward her in slow motion.
And then she thought: Huh?! No way! Is this one of those life-flash-before-your-eyes moments?!
So she fought desperately to keep the memories from flooding up and fixed all her attention on the incoming sword.
It was a strike she knew she was too late to evade.
No matter how she moved, the sword would follow. The distance between them simply wouldn’t allow anything else.
So Harin clenched her teeth and did something no ordinary martial artist would even think to attempt.
Her left hand, steeped in the Purple Sunset Divine Art; her right, steeped in the Ice Soul Divine Art; and her Golden Dragon Body, strengthened by the Iron Body Weight-Adding Force—with all of that to rely on, she made her move.
Harin reached out with both hands and caught Jeokwol’s sword as casually as though she were grabbing a flying insect.
Empty-Handed Blade Snatch.
A feat most people would only ever try once.
Which made sense. The ones who failed would have ended up as failures, after all.
But Harin succeeded. Utterly and shamelessly.
And at that very moment, a massive shockwave erupted from where her two hands met the blade, blasting out in every direction.
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