Thieves Gate (1)
"Heard the news about the Provincial Governor?"
"Who hasn't! Dragged off to the Imperial Inspector bawling his eyes out the whole way!"
The Provincial Governor, who had spent years sucking the lifeblood from the common people, had been bound on charges of corruption and hauled away by the Imperial Inspector. From children still wet behind the ears to elders too frail to leave their rooms, the corrupt official's downfall was on every tongue. The news spread beyond Wuhan, where I made my home, until there was not a soul in all of Hubei Province who had not heard it.
"And they say it was the Shadowless Divine Thief who helped the Inspector."
"What? Is that true?"
"True as true can be! The Divine Thief handed the Inspector the decisive evidence! The Inspector himself admitted as much!"
"Good heavens! Then it wasn't the Inspector who caught him at all — the Shadowless Divine Thief stripped the Governor bare!"
"That's it exactly! Stripped him clean down to the very last coin!"
A righteous thief who had appeared out of nowhere. A phantom who sent advance notice of his heists and then brazenly emptied the mansions of corrupt officials. Either piece of news alone would have been enough to set Hubei Province abuzz, but word that he had aided the Imperial Inspector in bringing down a notoriously vicious official carried a weight all its own.
"Hold on a moment. Isn't this precisely the tale of Muyoung Shintu and Unhyeon from the end of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon? Has Author Hopil prophesied the future?"
"Less a prophecy than a lesson, I'd say! He was showing us that a thief must do at least this much if he hopes to become a chivalric hero!"
"Author Hopil is a remarkable man indeed. Who else could turn a common thief into a righteous bandit!"
"There's been no end of debate over whether the thief was inspired by Author Hopil or not, but this settles it once and for all! He's following the Muyoung Shintu of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon to the letter!"
"If the Shadowless Divine Thief stood before me this instant, I'd nominate him for the Dark Tea Book Club on the spot."
Muyoung Shintu. Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon. Author Hopil. Talk that had once been confined to the walls of Daseogak had spread so far that a simple stroll down the street caught nothing but the same three names on every tongue.
"Well, what man alive could read Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon without his heart catching fire! My elder brother has done nothing but study books his whole life, yet after reading it, he turned up a few days ago with some wooden stick carved like a sword and started swinging it about!"
"My cousin is a proper martial artist, and he praised it to the heavens!"
"Martial artists too? Is that really true?"
"He said he couldn't find a single flaw in it — save for the scene where Muyoung Shintu walks across the surface of water."
No, why not? A master on Muyoung Shintu's level could absolutely walk on water.
"That part did go too far, I'll grant. Even among the great masters of the Nine Sects and One Gang, I've never once heard tell of a man walking on water."
"Well, Author Hopil is a writer, isn't he? He simply embellishes things here and there."
In my own novel, Muyoung Shintu walks on water. To have the lore of my own Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon picked apart to my face. Muyoung Shintu was a genius of qinggong — if she couldn't manage even that much, it wouldn't fit the setting at all.
I wanted to argue, but a mature author does not disrupt his readers while they are at play. So I resolved to bear it with dignity.
"Manager Kang? Why are your hands trembling like that?"
It's nothing.
"What have you been counting raffle tickets for all this while?"
Even with Muyoung Shintu dominating every conversation, she was not the only topic at Daseogak.
"That's a secret."
"Just how many tickets do you have, anyway? Why aren't you putting them in the box?"
One Tea Book Club member asked, watching several others sort through a pile of raffle tickets stacked high as a hill.
I'd like to know too. If you've got tickets, put them in. Why hoard them? Feigning busywork, I pricked up my ears.
"We're biding our time."
"Biding your time?"
"We've made a tremendous discovery, you see."
"What on earth do you mean? Share it with me as well."
"It's premium information I can't simply give away..."
"Would three Chivalric Mindset Sets cover it?"
"At that price, there's nothing I won't tell you. Look at that raffle box over there."
Had some flaw surfaced in my merchant's craft? Dry rag in hand, I drifted naturally toward the members, pretending to wipe down the tables.
"The box?"
"People underestimate it because it looks small, but pack the tickets in with real purpose and a thousand slide in without a fuss."
"True enough. Could it hold two thousand?"
"Winners do come up from time to time, so folks keep feeding tickets in with hope in their hearts — but in truth, the odds of winning are next to nothing."
How dare he state facts so shamelessly. I could already smell a toxic consumer in the making.
"And what does that have to do with counting your tickets?"
The member clutching the tickets glanced around, then opened his mouth carefully, as if for our ears alone.
"Trickle your tickets in a handful at a time and you'll never win. So we're aiming for one decisive strike."
"One strike?"
"We form a little circle and pool our tickets into a single hoard. Then, right around when the raffle box is nearly full — what if our tickets blanket an entire layer of it?"
"Our odds would leap by orders of magnitude!"
"We've taken to calling it the Pity Ceiling — building ourselves a ceiling over the raffle box with cold, hard coin."
The Tea Book Club member's eyes gleamed like an inventor who had just changed the world.
"The thicker we build that ceiling, the likelier the grand prize lands inside our own circle! At the very worst, I'll get to visit a friend's home and see it with my own eyes! And with this, I shall claim the illustration of Young Hero Unhyeon's moment of enlightenment!"
"I want the one of Lady Jin Soyu leaning on Young Hero Unhyeon's shoulder!"
"Tsk, tsk. Clearly the finest of all is the scene where Muyoung Shintu falls head over heels for Young Hero Unhyeon!"
"Ooooh! L-let me in on this too!"
Thankfully, this month's revenue appeared to be in no danger whatsoever.
"My dear, what are you doing out on the grass in the moonlight?"
Lady Hayeon appeared without a sound and asked, watching me run my light-body art across the grass of the inner garden.
"You startled me. Back from work already?"
Lady Jegal was asleep and Lady Hayeon had gone out to work; I'd meant to practice in secret, and I'd been caught red-handed.
"It looked like qinggong practice, so I watched quietly — but something seemed off about it."
"Haha. Well, everyone keeps insisting it's impossible. I was testing whether the realm described in Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon can actually be achieved."
I answered with an embarrassed smile.
"Don't tell me — walking on water?"
"Water is obviously beyond me. But Grass-skimming Flight — crossing the grass without doing it any real harm — who's to say that isn't possible?"
Content that was said to unlock only when one ground one's qinggong to the very limit. Grass-skimming Flight, crossing grass without greatly harming it. Treading Duckweed Across Water, walking upon a river's surface. Snow-Treading Without Trace, crossing snow and leaving no footprint behind. And even Void-Treading Steps, walking upon empty air itself. What I had attempted was the most basic of these max-level qinggong challenges: Grass-skimming Flight.
"I think I see the problem."
Lady Hayeon looked at me the way a hardened veteran watches a fresh newbie blunder into endgame content.
Perhaps I should have hit max level before attempting endgame content after all. Still, tackling endgame content underleveled has a charm all its own.
I'd thought I had the knack of it, more or less. Relax the foot at the moment of landing, touch down soft as a falling leaf...
"You only reached the second star of the Shadowless Body Art a few days ago. Perhaps if I just... Waaah!"
I slipped at once.
"Watch out!"
Lady Hayeon closed the distance in a heartbeat and caught my back with both arms before I could hit the ground. She had been a good twenty paces away, and she crossed it in a single stride. That's the Shadowless Divine Thief for you.
"Maybe I need to lose some weight."
If I were light enough to live on dew alone, it might just about work.
I muttered this while savoring the feeling against my back — a feeling that made me hope I never shed a single pound.
"It's not a realm you reach by dieting."
By my ear came a small sigh from Lady Hayeon — the sigh of a woman pondering what to do with this blockhead.
It's just that everyone kept saying it was impossible, and my stubborn streak got the better of me.
"Coo!"
"Gugu? What brings you here?"
At the familiar cooing I looked up to find Gugu gliding in a wide circle above my head.
"It seems the Gi-mun Hyangju has sent a letter."
And he really was carrying one. These days Gugu was stationed with the Gi-mun for confidential correspondence with the Hyangju, so I hardly ever saw his face anymore.
"Let's go inside and read i... Gugu. What are you doing?"
"Coo-good!"
Instead of settling on my shoulder or Lady Hayeon's, Gugu touched down on the grass and spread his wings as if showing something off. Apparently he'd been watching me.
"No — you're a bird, of course you can stand on grass. I'm a human and you're a pigeon, you feathered birdbrain."
"Good? Coo-good! Coo-coo-good!"
When I protested, Gugu — cooing with a smugness no pigeon should possess — went hopping merrily across the blades of grass.
"Gugu, you really mustn't mock your master like that."
Lady Hayeon tried to rein him in, but Gugu's Grass-skimming Flight knew no end.
To think a mere pigeon would dare challenge me. After all the days I fed you and sheltered you, you tease your own master just because you changed departments?
I could have said it with a smile — well done, our Gugu, truly a spirit beast among birds — but instead:
"Look at him. Gugu sits down and the grass stalks bend. Just how much has he been eating at the Gi-mun, that grass wilts under a bird? Give him a little longer and he'll be making friends with the chickens."
For I was a man of South Korea, one who met even the tiniest challenger at full strength.
"Coo...? Coo-good!"
Gugu froze for an instant, examined his own wingpits, then let loose at Lady Hayeon a stream of coos that sounded for all the world like a cry of slander.
What's with the shock?
"Gugu, if I recall, you practiced your destruction beam a while back — and when the moment came, you couldn't fire it."
"Coo-good! Coo-coo-good!"
And how exactly was I supposed to fire that?! I could almost hear Gugu's voice, but it made no difference.
Either way, that made it one win, one loss.
"Master and bird alike..."
Lady Hayeon regarded the two of us with weary pity, but with my win rate now sitting at a perfect fifty percent, I had no regrets.
"He started it — he's the one who mocked me."
I am entirely innocent. The moment Gugu comes back from the Gi-mun, I'm drilling some discipline into him.
"Whew. Gugu, the letter, please."
"Coo!"
Sulking, was he?
Gugu alighted on a branch tucked into the grass at the heart of the modest little garden, then turned his head away and refused to look at me.
If I blundered into the flowerbed under the moonlight and carelessly crushed some expensive bloom, they could declare my lease void and bill me for it. What to do? This was precisely the moment my practiced Grass-skimming Flight was made for...
"Gugu. Hand it over, quickly, please."
As if she hadn't a moment to waste, Lady Hayeon swept into the grass in a single breath, plucked up Gugu, and returned.
"Huh? What was that just now?"
"Wh-what do you mean?"
Lady Hayeon dodged my gaze as though something had pricked her conscience.
"Grass-skimming Flight? You could do that all along, Lady Hayeon?"
It had lasted only an instant, easy to miss — but I was certain. Lady Hayeon had trodden on nothing but blades of grass, snatched up Gugu, and come back.
"Back when you were explaining volume three of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon, I wondered whether it was truly possible... so I practiced."
"You practiced?"
"And it... it worked."
Unable to face my astonishment, Lady Hayeon confessed while shyly turning her eyes aside.
What the — she dismissed my practice as pointless, and she'd been training in secret herself all along?
"Good heavens... Then could you walk on water as well?"
"Th-that one didn't work."
She tested that too?!
"Well then. All the more reason to train the Shadowless Body Art with renewed diligence."
Challenge accepted: Grass-skimming Flight! I will walk across grass if it's the last thing I do!
"Haah. This is exactly why I hesitated to tell you... If you must use the Shadowless Body Art, do it on bare earth. The maids who poured their hearts into this garden are suffering terribly watching from behind."
Lady Hayeon said this while gazing at the sunken craters pocking the yard and the sorry remains of what had once been the maids' lovingly tended grass.
Sneaking a glance at the maids who had somehow assembled behind us, I decided they looked ready to fire lasers straight from their eyes.
Next time, I'll practice in secret.
"And what does the letter say?"
Having escaped the maids' laser gazes and retreated to my office, I asked Lady Hayeon.
"She says she has matters to discuss and asks that we come see her. And..."
The corners of Lady Hayeon's mouth curled upward in a most peculiar smile.
"And?"
The summons I had expected — but could there be some other happy news besides?
"A certain notice has been passed among the officers of the Thieves Gate throughout Hubei."
"A notice from the Thieves Gate? Then don't tell me—"
It was hardly common for word to reach every officer across an entire province at once. Not unless it was momentous news that every one of them needed to hear.
When I met her eyes with a look that dared to hope, Lady Hayeon nodded and said:
"Yes. Word is that a new Hyangju of the Thieves Gate may soon be chosen."