The Great Heist Plan — 3
[Miss Ok-ryeon, are you hurt anywhere? Sit down. Let me treat that.]
At the Pungun Martial Academy, the Shadowless Divine Thief had been tending a wound from her latest battle alone when Jin Soyu, stirred awake by the noise, discovered her.
[It's nothing.]
It was time to leave. Muyoung Shintu said so while concealing the bundle she had quietly stashed at her feet.
Restless, she had stepped in too deep. No matter how thoroughly she disguised herself or warped her voice, one day he would see through her true identity.
Unhyeon. A man who gnawed at her thoughts, yet somehow a man whose company was a joy. But it was time, at last, to part ways.
[You keep disappearing at night. Is it that orphanage you mentioned?]
Slipping away after dark was hardly grounds for praise, but Jin Soyu asked as if it were nothing at all, dabbing at the thief's wound.
[Yes. I go to see how the children are doing.]
[I'm raising your wages starting next month. Rest properly at night.]
[There's no need.]
[Think of it as a donation to the orphanage. Take it. On a sentry's wages, you can barely look after yourself. Honestly, you're remarkable.]
[Hff! There was a friend I couldn't save when I was little.]
Why was she saying this? Because of the strong liquor she'd swallowed in place of the sleeping draught? Had she opened her heart to Miss Jin without realizing it?
Or had Unhyeon's face reminded her of someone?
[A friend you couldn't save?]
[Our village was raided by bandits, just like Young Hero Unhyeon's. It happens all the time, doesn't it? A childhood friend—the one I used to play house with—told me to live on instead, shoved me into the river, and took the blade in my place. I managed to survive somehow.]
In truth, it hadn't been playing house. It had been playing war.
She had dressed her friend in a crude wooden armor she'd thrown together, then jabbed playfully at him with a wooden sword.
I can't hit you back, you're a girl. Her friend had grumbled even as he played along, and lost in their rowdy game, neither of them noticed the bandits creeping close.
In the end, her friend had died to save her. Would he have lived if not for that heavy straw cloak she'd draped on him? He had been a good swimmer, after all.
Happiness is so easily destroyed.
Her grudge against the wicked, her friend's sacrifice, the grief of a lost family—these were what had turned the woman under the alias Ok-ryeon into the Shadowless Divine Thief who haunted the night roads.
So she chose a hard road in a woman's body. That's no mere thief—that's truly a chivalric hero. But... I feel like I've read a story just like this... Ah!
Was it déjà vu, because the tale so resembled Unhyeon's? Looking at the tattered second volume in the corner, the young man seized on a memory.
[How strange. I've heard a story just like that.]
[Pardon?]
[Young Hero Unhyeon. They say when he was a child, bandits attacked during a game of war. The friend he tried to save vanished without a trace, but he survived. Supposedly it was the wooden armor that friend had made for him that let him hold out until his master arrived.]
[...Pardon?]
"What?! No way! Could the two of them be childhood friends?!"
How could their fates be woven together like this? Shocked, the young man turned the page—only to fall into despair.
"Why! Why! It's the last page!!!"
[A small village once raided by bandits. That day, the world made two chivalric heroes.]
[So it really is Young Hero Unhyeon?]
[Something about Miss Ok-ryeon seems suspicious.]
The Shadowless Divine Thief had glimpsed Unhyeon's true face. And the rivalry between the two women was accelerating.
[All this chaos over a mere thief and some snot-nosed Taoist!]
A master of the Unorthodox factions hunts Unhyeon and the Shadowless Divine Thief, and Unhyeon finds himself utterly outmatched.
[Can't Taoists of the Wudang Sect marry??]
While the Shadowless Divine Thief struggles to sort out her own heart, Jin Soyu strikes again. What fate awaits the three of them?
"N-no! Why!!! Why would you cut it off here!!! Next voluuuuume!"
As always, the young man could do nothing but wail at the preview.
"Form a line! Form a line!"
"Does Daseogak ever have a day without lines?"
The news of Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero Volume 3's release had thrown the area around Daseogak into days of turmoil.
"Is this the line to buy Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon?"
"The second floor of Daseogak!"
"I'm sorry, you're telling me even that vast second floor of Daseogak requires a queue now?"
"That's what I said! If you want a book, get to the end of the line over there!"
"I don't see where it ends?"
"You came early, so you'll get a copy today!"
"Good heavens..."
When you visit Wuhan, make a stop at Daseogak.
First Dangga Pungun, and now Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon. Riding a wave of acclaim, not only Wuhan's residents but travelers passing through the city had begun lining up from the early morning hours to buy a copy.
"It really was Master Hopil all along!!"
"Who knew he could sublimate a chivalric hero's anguish into an enlightenment of the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique!"
Naturally, the hottest response to Master Hopil's new work was found on Daseogak's second floor.
"My little brother read Volume 3, abandoned his studies, and announced he's joining a martial academy!"
"Our academy's master was moved to tears—he lectured us for an hour that everyone must read Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon."
"He took a tale of chivalry that could have been dry as dust and made it this rich and this entertaining. Of course they reacted that way!"
"Who knew a story of the martial world could be this gripping! Perhaps I should seek out more tales from other sects."
"I ransacked every bookstore in the city nursing the faintest hope, but nothing like Master Hopil's work exists anywhere else!"
Wuhan was where every novel in Hubei Province gathered. The devoted members of the Daseohoe had toured the bookshops clinging to hope, but no other novel came close to satisfying them.
"Then we must simply wait for the next release! Why did I only discover Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon now! How long am I to wait!"
"Ah, you must be a newcomer this time around! Well, that's what our Daseohoe is for! Come, come, talk with us!"
The more one read, the more the novel felt like drinking seawater to quench a thirst.
There was no substitute to be found. The only way for the devotees to cool their burning thirst was to gather and talk about the story itself.
"Unhyeon was charming, of course, but this time the Shadowless Divine Thief was truly captivating as well."
The Daseohoe members had begun to discuss the novel's other new star.
"A thief, yet a chivalric hero. Someone like the Shadowless Divine Thief deserves the title, doesn't she?"
"Agreed. She commits such outlandish acts that people call her a phantom thief, but behind it all lies a heart that genuinely cares for others."
"Calling a thief a chivalric hero—isn't that going too far?"
"An uicheok—a righteous thief. She does what is right, but she is still a thief. As the Divine Thief herself said in the story, she'll shoulder infamy rather than hesitate to reach out a hand to others. 'Chivalric hero' may be debatable, but 'righteous thief' is beyond dispute."
She was unlike any ordinary thief. She aided the destitute and judged the wicked rich. Whether the fictional thief of the pages or the very real one haunting Wuhan, neither seemed a villain in any true sense.
Every member of the Daseohoe nodded.
"A righteous thief, hmm. I wonder if the thief who's been terrifying Wuhan's wealthy lately is driven by the same conviction?"
"Probably. Though safe money says it's some grizzled old man."
"Excuse me, it could be a beautiful woman!"
"Why is it that everything in Master Hopil's novels turns out to be true?!"
"Hahaha!"
Each new release from Master Hopil breathed fresh life into the Daseohoe. Volume after volume, Daseogak burned hot as a roaring furnace with talk of novels.
But the furnace had not yet reached its true heat.
"Everyone! Have you heard the news!"
One Daseohoe member kicked open the door and hurried to find his friends.
"What news?"
"The novel has become reality!"
The man delivered news that would set not just Daseogak but the entire city of Wuhan ablaze.
"The reception is tremendous."
"We debate a hero's anguish, then announce the phantom thief. I poured my heart into it—glad it paid off."
A subtle love triangle, a hero's moral dilemma, advice from a heroine who doubles as an ally, a power-up through enlightenment, even a secret from childhood.
I had distilled the best elements of martial arts fiction and phantom thief capers into a single volume, so I was satisfied too.
"If it were up to me, I'd lock you in a room and make you do nothing but write."
Was I speaking as her devoted reader? Or as the Shadowless Divine Thief herself? Lady Hayeon gazed at me as though torn between the two.
"Would you be in that same room, Lady Hayeon?"
"Hff! Wh-what are you saying!"
I smirked at the crimson spreading across her face, as though she'd taken a clean hit.
It would be lovely if fame rose and money flowed simply because I wrote novels.
Reality was different. To raise my name, I had to write with the Shadowless Divine Thief's publicity in mind. To build wealth, I had to earn money. And whenever a heroine appeared before me asking for help, I had to run myself ragged.
There wasn't much time to simply sit at a desk.
"As planned, Volume 3 has cast the bait. The response is more than sufficient—now it's your turn, Lady Hayeon."
I drew a black sheet of paper from the drawer and began to fold it.
"Not a hollow claim, but an achievement. If this goes as you intend, no one will be able to deny it."
"Not as I intend—as we intend."
However well I drafted the plan, it was impossible without Lady Hayeon's skill.
"Domun Hyangju... can I truly become one?"
"You can. And a Domun Hyangju would only be the beginning. Succeed, and you'll become a thief without precedent in the history of the Central Plains."
"If you say so, then I suppose it must be."
"It's because you can do it, Lady Hayeon."
There was so little left now. For a long moment, we simply looked at each other, each certain of the other.
"Get ready. We begin with that thing in your hand, don't we?"
"The fellow who'll put every rich man in Wuhan in fear of his life."
We smiled at the object in my hand.
If we performed the righteous thefts and had the Haomen spread the word, would the Gambler Division grant recognition?
And if they refused, what then? We would prepare for that too.
It was a plan we had been building since I wrote Volume 2—since the day Lady Hayeon first became the Shadowless Divine Thief.
'To become Domun Hyangju, there's no need to raid the Wudang Sect, no need to scale the walls of the Zhuge Clan Compound.'
The way to become the most famous thief in Hubei Province—no, in all the Central Plains—was right here in my hand.
I hurled the black paper from my hand out the window.
An achievement no one in the history of the Central Plains had ever accomplished.
A feat of audacity no thief before would ever have dared.
It was—
The Shadowless Divine Thief's declaration of a coming crime.
A black paper airplane—
Soared up across the clear blue sky.