The Big Score — 5
Sending an advance notice as the Shadowless Divine Thief came with one natural perk.
Who handled the Shadowless Divine Thief case in Wuhan? And when a notice came flying in, whose door would they come knocking on first?
"If a black-haired barbarian can become a constable and make a name for himself, that must mean he has the talent to match. Tag along with the Chief Steward, and if you spot anything worth pointing out, point it out."
A black-haired barbarian making a name as a constable, hm? He must be quite capable. Go inspect our home's security, then.
Determined to repay words so magnanimous they could wring tears of gratitude from even a racist, I nodded solemnly.
If the master of the house is kindly offering to walk me through the vault's passcode, far be it from me to keep him waiting.
"It seems there are quite a few storehouses to guard besides the vault room."
"Haha. His Excellency's virtue is so renowned, and he's hardly the sort to refuse a gift, so even emptied storehouses fill right back up before long."
Like master, like steward. The man has quite the gift for gift-wrapping a rapacious, corrupt official of a master.
I was about to add a word of my own when a choked, tearful voice from the entrance turned my head.
"Y-Your Excellency! Where in the law does it say a man's land gets seized because he couldn't repay triple his state grain loan! Let me see His Excellency!"
"Whose office do you think this is, barging in and raising a ruckus! Throw him out at once!"
Corrupt clerks they may be, but playing games with grain the state lends out? Even loan sharks don't charge triple.
"Heh heh......"
The eunuch, evidently unprepared for the scene, stole a sideways glance at me and laughed awkwardly.
In moments like these, someone has to tidy things up.
"Tsk, tsk. So they lean on His Excellency's virtue when they borrow, and the moment repayment comes due, it's a whole world of men who've suddenly never seen your face. What a town."
So that neither side had to feel awkward, I crossed the line first, casually and with great ease.
For an instant something flickered through the Chief Steward's eyes—well, well. Look at this one—before his face settled back into ease and he opened his mouth.
"They know no gratitude, like beasts, so is it any wonder they live like beasts?"
I couldn't let it end there. This was a moment to rack up points with a few well-chosen words.
"On the other hand, there are those who feel gratitude for His Excellency's virtue, are there not? And thinking that some wicked thief might be eyeing storehouses brimming with the devotion of his gift-givers, I find myself resolved to work all the harder."
If the man you'd asked for help thought exactly as you did and showed even more zeal for it, who could dislike him?
I'm on your side. I see the world through the same eyes you do. So show me everything, so we can fleece one more place before long. I jumped into the conversation at speed.
"Heh heh heh. Quite right! No wonder they call you a capable constable! Come along, then! I shall show you the vault room!"
With a thoroughly satisfied look, the Chief Steward led me away.
"The vault room was commissioned from an expert famed for his mechanism formations. Jeong Howon! What sort of hour is this to finally show your face!"
Before the vault room, the Chief Steward introduced me to the martial artist in overall command of the estate's security.
"What does a barbarian know, that he has to go waking a man in the middle of the day?"
Jeong Howon shot me a look of pure annoyance.
He reeked of liquor. Did the man drink himself blind every day off? Still, there was something out of the ordinary about his qi—he looked like a man who had lived by the blade as much as the bottle.
"Jeong Howon. Mind your tongue."
"Mind my tongue, my ass. Hey. Barbarian. I sleep till sundown, so quit pestering people—give it a glance and get gone. I'm going back inside. The Chief Steward can handle the rest."
Waving his arm at me as though shooing a bothersome fly, Jeong Howon turned on his heel.
"Constable Kang. Allow me to apologize on his behalf."
"What reason has the Chief Steward to apologize? I'd rather hurry up and see this vault room."
Once Lady Ha Yeon has robbed this place, I'm dying to see that bastard's face.
"I'll open it for you!"
When the door swung open, gold and silver treasures beyond anything I had imagined met my eyes.
The common folk under this so-called Provincial Governor had to worry over a single meal a day, yet the official had piled up wealth as though he meant to live several hundred years.
"The room itself looks rather ordinary."
I barely smothered a scoff and scanned the surroundings.
"That is because it opens by key. The key is what disarms the mechanism formation."
"There's a mechanism formation installed in the room itself?"
A mechanism formation, no less. Wasn't that the wuxia equivalent of a bundle of cutting-edge technology?
Though for some reason, in this world the science did seem to congregate in the kitchen.
"Should anyone attempt to force their way in, arrows come flying to pin them down. And even if they dodged the arrows, a single step on the floor plates drops the iron grille there, sealing window and door shut."
Troubling. Could Lady Ha Yeon even get inside?
"Seeing it now, I begin to think I needn't have come at all."
I needed information. I would have to play the useless one so convincingly that the other side explained, himself, why I was needed.
"Not so. What in this world is all-powerful? Even a mechanism formation has its weaknesses."
Good thing I'd laid the flattery on thick. The moment I feigned disappointment, the Chief Steward stepped into the room and began his explanation.
And who knew he'd point out every hole inside one by one—exactly how the arrows flew, which floor plates were deadly—spilling the whole of it?
The arrows fired only toward the door and the windows. So once inside, one had to move without ever touching the floor.
"I believe I have shown you everything there is to show. Is there anything else you would point out?"
I had seen all there was to see and gathered every scrap of information I needed. I could head back now and still have accomplished my purpose.
Just then, the faces of the Provincial Governor, the Chief Steward, and Jeong Howon flashed through my mind. Perhaps I'd give them a taste of trouble.
"There is something I would point out."
So that the Shadowless Divine Thief can rob it nicely, that is.
The Provincial Governor's estate.
An estate no ordinary thief would even dream of scaling. Martial artists stood watch over it, and the treasures to be stolen were locked behind a working mechanism formation. On top of that, an advance notice had already been sent, promising the heist to come.
All of Wuhan was shouting it flatly impossible—unless she were the Shadowless Divine Thief straight out of the novel.
But.
"I-It's only a basic-level mechanism formation. I'll teach you how to dismantle it from outsideee."
Our household also happened to have the youngest daughter of the Zhuge Clan.
"The shift schedule of the Governor's guards. I've marked the stretches where the watch runs thinnest, too."
And there was a black-haired constable carrying information no outsider could ever have obtained.
"At this point I could rob it with my eyes closed."
And there was the Shadowless Divine Thief, who would one day be hailed as the finest thief in the Central Plains.
"Make it a blazing heist."
"I'm off."
Before long, word that the Provincial Governor's house had been robbed spread through every corner of Wuhan.
"The Provincial Governor's estate has been robbeddd!"
"So the Governor's house really was robbed in the end?"
"That's right! The Dark Iron Heavy Ingot and every treasure in the place—swept clean!"
"Robbed, even after the thief sent an advance notice?"
"Just how extraordinary must a thief be, to announce the job and still walk off with the treasure!"
The robbery set all of Wuhan abuzz, but the loudest place of all was wherever I had been summoned.
"Constable Kang! What is the meaning of this! If you have a mouth, then explain yourself!"
With the Dark Iron Heavy Ingot and a mountain of treasures gone in a single night, the Provincial Governor had called me in to hold his stewards to account.
Your house got robbed, not mine.
"We did everything exactly as Constable Kang instructed!"
Someone had to absorb the Governor's fury, and the looks the Chief Steward and Jeong Howon were trading over my head boded nothing good.
Why did this feel like joining a company where the boss swaps out his imported cars with the seasons, pays starvation wages, staffs itself with spiteful veterans—and then dumps every mistake on the new hire?
Planning to shove the whole of the blame onto me, were they?
Not that I intended to take it lying down.
"Who was responsible for the defenses of the western wall?"
I asked it, sweeping the room with an indifferent expression.
"Me."
Jeong Howon stepped forward without a shred of doubt.
"Did I not warn you to watch the west before I left?"
"I was not lax with the defenses. They must have come in from another side—"
Right. They came in from the east, not the west. But here's the thing.
"There are traces of lightfoot technique on the outer face of the western wall."
Facing the enraged Governor, I laid out the false particulars of the case like a constable who had coolly, brilliantly deduced the truth.
"What?!"
"To clear a wall that high, even the Shadowless Divine Thief would have had to drive her inner energy through the Bubbling Spring acupoint. I found the gouge marks."
"I-It's true! There are gouge marks on the west side!"
One of the estate guards reported his discovery with a look of astonishment.
The marks I'd had Lady Ha Yeon leave behind, then told her to half-bury under a few leaves.
"There is a more pressing matter."
"Which is?"
With evidence found, everything I said from that point on would be taken as gospel. As the household's people fixed their eyes on me, I offered up one more discovery.
"The mechanism formation never stirred."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The vault room was opened with a key. And who keeps that key?"
"The Chief Steward!"
"I-I am innocent! This key is the true one, I swear it!"
Floundering before the furious Governor, the Chief Steward held the key aloft.
"Rather than a room no mechanism could open, it would have been far simpler to slip in and out of the Chief Steward's own quarters, wouldn't it?"
"......"
The incompetence of the hired sword. The carelessness of the trusted steward. The Governor's face flushing redder by the breath. The whole estate filled with the hush of a pot on the verge of boiling over.
Anyone who moved without leave, or spoke out of turn, would be swallowing that wrath in its entirety.
"It appears I was the only soul in this room who worked hard to protect His Excellency's property."
Except it wasn't me, was it? I detonated it, light and easy, right then and there.
"You wretches!!! Do you have any idea what the Dark Iron Heavy Ingot is worth?! Even stripped of every last treasure in my storehouses—Aaargh!"
"Your Excellency!"
"Your Excellency!"
This much, I hadn't seen coming.
It seems something in the Governor's head had well and truly burst.
Time I headed home, I suppose.
"Constable Kang! Where do you think you're going?"
"I have yet to catch the Shadowless Divine Thief. I can only pray that next time, you'll heed the black-haired constable's counsel on where the notice leads."
Thanks for the meal. I'll leave three stars. Do clean up after yourselves.
"So the Shadowless Divine Thief from Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero has truly appeared in the world?"
"How uncannily elusive must she be, to steal that priceless Dark Iron Heavy Ingot from an estate crawling with martial artists on watch?"
"Good heavens. It would make a ghost weep!"
"The Dark Iron Heavy Ingot, stolen. A treasure any number of martial artists begged the Governor for and never received—and it enters the world like this. What could the Shadowless Divine Thief intend for it?"
"She is the Shadowless Divine Thief, after all. Perhaps she means to forge herself a divine weapon?"
"You dolt! Have you forgotten who she is? A righteous thief! She'll sell it to fill the bellies of the poor! That's precisely why the black market's in an uproar this very moment—everyone hunting for the ingot she sold!"
"...Maybe I'll use it as a laundry paddle."
Countless people burned to know where the Dark Iron Heavy Ingot had gone, but once it was stolen, it turned out to have no use beyond a fame achievement.
No sense selling it and risking her identity for nothing.
It was certainly heavy. Even slinging a rifle on a field march had been a burden—martial artists truly hauled weapons forged from iron this heavy?
"If you entrusted it to a master smith and had even a single blade made from it, a martial artist of a great clan would hand over his own daughter to possess it."
"It's worth that much?"
So it was affection-point currency for the heroines of martial clans. Suddenly it looked rather different. Now, who else among the original cast had been a woman of a martial clan...?
"You... You appear to be entertaining an extremely indecent thought, or am I imagining it?"
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Lady Ha Yeon had closed the distance in an instant, thrusting her face close with a look of deep suspicion.
"Y-Young Master Kang."
Even Lady Jegal crept toward me with anxious eyes.
"Whatever do you mean? I was thinking of having a bracelet made."
I was not thinking that. Only a little.
"A bracelet?"
"It's a tremendously heavy metal, no? You wear it on your limbs in daily life, then release it when the moment truly matters. 'Until today, I have used a mere thirty percent of my power'—and leave the whole room aghast."
Hurling the bracelet and splitting the earth where it lands, kicking up a storm of dust—or entrusting it to a fellow martial artist for safekeeping, only for him to drop it under its sheer weight with a boom that shakes heaven and earth.
I had described staging that could only be called a man's romance.
"......"
"Not impressed?"
Why was everyone silent?
"So feeble he must lean on a trinket because he cannot even govern his own strength—how does that qualify anyone as a martial artist?"
Lady Ha Yeon asked, as though the concept simply refused to compute.
She knew nothing of a man's romance.
A bracelet that seals away your strength. A half-closed eye snapping suddenly open. The odds of combination: one percent! There is no hope! The remaining ninety-nine percent we fill with our courage, our friendship, our love!—and then roaring the combination a success anyway.
It was cool either way, wasn't it?
"I-I think it sounds rather nice..."
Seeing me look crestfallen, Lady Jegal tugged at her sleeve and nodded, ever so carefully.
"Lady Jegal..."
I was moved.
"Nngh. Lately you keep sneaking it in again...! I-I suppose, thinking it over, it does sound nice."
At last, everyone understood a man's romance.
"Oh! Did you bring that thing back from the Governor's house?"
Thinking of the day I might one day write a man's romance into a novel, I asked Lady Ha Yeon.
"Right here. But weren't you finished with the Governor once you had the ingot?"
Lady Ha Yeon handed over what she had carried and asked.
"Not a chance. I had to rob him grandly enough that the whole world would cheer."
The Shadowless Divine Thief had sent her notice and made off with the treasure of treasures, the Dark Iron Heavy Ingot.
It was certainly true she was piling up staggering fame as a phantom thief. But it would be a shame to end the story at phantom thief, wouldn't it?
The Shadowless Divine Thief was a phantom thief and a righteous thief both.
What Lady Ha Yeon handed me was a treasure that was no treasure, lifted from the Governor's house on a second pass.
The secret ledger, crammed full of the Provincial Governor's every dirty secret.