What No One Ever Taught Her
Click.
The wooden door creaked open, and Yeon-woo stumbled outside, her jaw unhinging in a tremendous, full-body yawn. She stretched her arms and legs as far as they would go, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with small fists. After blinking blearily at the sunlight for a few moments, her gaze landed on the courtyard.
“Huh? Scarry Mister!”
Yeon-woo pointed in surprise at the man standing in the yard.
He was a middle-aged martial artist with a grim, intimidating aura, distinguished by a jagged scar that slashed diagonally across his face, beginning above his left eye and cutting past the right corner of his lips. He was the Scar-faced Warrior, sent by the Guan Clan—the very family that had purchased her.
The warrior’s gaze swept over Yeon-woo, coolly inspecting her small frame. Having confirmed she was unharmed, he turned on his heel without ceremony.
“Follow me. The Patriarch summons you.”
“Okay!”
Slipping into her shoes, Yeon-woo scampered after his long strides with light, pattering footsteps.
High above the clearing, perched among the branches overlooking the house, Woon-hyeon pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead as he watched the little girl trot along without a single ounce of suspicion.
“I have far too much to teach her.”
Beside him, Dark Shadow Demon Lord chuckled softly.
“Tell me about it. That kid gets attached way too easily. It’s practically a defect.”
Woon-hyeon glanced sidelong at him.
“Are you certain? That he is truly a warrior of the Guan Clan?”
Only moments earlier, Woon-hyeon had sensed an approach toward the cottage and rose with sword in hand. It had been Dark Shadow Demon Lord who blocked his path and assured him that the approaching martial artist belonged to the Guan family.
“You saw it yourself, didn’t you? She followed him without a fuss.”
“What would a child that young understand? She may simply be obeying because an adult told her to follow.”
“Aha—Gramps, you really don’t know that brat at all, do you?”
She’s sharper than you think when it comes to things like that.
Dark Shadow Demon Lord still vividly remembered their first encounter—the razor-sharp, instinctual wariness she had turned on him. If he had approached her harboring even the slightest shred of malice, she never would have let him within arm’s reach.
Though how on earth she senses ill intent is beyond me.
In that regard, she was nothing like ordinary children.
“She’s nowhere near as naive as you—.”
“Why on earth have you not left yet?” Woon-hyeon interrupted flatly.
Dark Shadow Demon Lord’s casually wagging hand froze in midair. Slowly, his finger drifted toward a spot just behind Yeon-woo’s hut.
“I live over there.”
Woon-hyeon narrowed his eyes and followed the direction of his finger.
“……?!”
His brow furrowed into deep crevices. There, standing unobtrusively just a short distance behind Yeon-woo’s cottage, was a brand-new, single-room cabin. It had certainly not been there yesterday.
“Don’t tell me….”
Did he build that? Overnight?
“Had my subordinates take care of it,” Dark Shadow Demon Lord said smoothly.
“You…!” Seeing the man looking so brazenly proud of himself made Woon-hyeon roar in frustration. “I am asking why you refuse to leave!”
Why are you squatting here of all places?! You went so far as to build a whole house?!
“Ah, well, it turns out there’s more than one or two bastards gunning for Yeon-woo’s neck.”
“…!”
More than one or two?
“I promised I’d handle the assassins, right? So I caught them and asked a few polite questions.”
He had interrogated the killers who raided the hut that first night, as well as the ones he crossed paths with on his way down the mountain. Quite politely, too—letting them keep their lives and all.
“Curiously enough, their stories didn’t quite match. No matter how you look at it, they were operating under completely different masters.”
“Which means….”
“Yeah. The Guan Clan has made enemies of more than one faction.”
Woon-hyeon’s expression turned grave. If the Guan Clan had multiple enemies, it meant the number of blades aimed at Yeon-woo was far greater than they had anticipated.
“So I figured I’d stick around and keep watch for a while. Makes sense, right?”
“I see.”
If that was his reasoning, there was no cause to drive him away. More importantly—
“Then we must hurry.”
If her safety was in such dire jeopardy, they had no time to sit around idly—
Grab.
“Going to tail her?”
Dark Shadow Demon Lord caught Woon-hyeon’s sleeve just as the elder was about to leap through the canopy. Woon-hyeon frowned deeply.
“If so many harbor designs on her life, is she not in danger at this very moment? Naturally, I must make haste.”
“I don’t disagree with that part.” Dark Shadow Demon Lord lightly tapped his own cheek. “Are you sure you want to show yourself looking like that, though?”
“……?”
“Our cult might have closed its gates to the world for a long time, but we haven’t completely plugged our ears to news from the Central Plains.”
In other words: someone might recognize the Imperial Sword, Namgoong Woon-hyeon. He was, after all, one of the most renowned and peerless masters in the entire Central Plains.
As Woon-hyeon hesitated, realizing the dilemma, Dark Shadow Demon Lord grinned wickedly and reached into his robes. He produced a half-mask identical in shape to his own, only pitch-black.
“Care to borrow it?”
With an intensely sour expression, Woon-hyeon glared at the mask dangling provocatively from the demon lord’s fingertips.
“Incompetent fools!”
Crash—!
The sharp shatter of porcelain ripped through the silence of the darkened chamber. The masked figures lined up against the wall exchanged tense, uneasy glances.
“Is killing a single brat so monumental a task?! You couldn’t even handle a trifling chore like that, and now you bring this humiliation upon me?!”
The man’s breath came in ragged, furious gasps. His fist, planted firmly against the polished desk, trembled with suppressed rage. One of the masked figures stepped forward from the ranks.
“Could it be that Guan Yun saw through my lord’s designs?”
“What?!” The man glared daggers at the speaker.
The masked subordinate bowed his head slightly before continuing in a measured tone.
“The martial prowess of the old man accompanying the child far exceeded our projections. Could he not be an escort secretly assigned by Guan Yun?”
“An escort…?”
An old man who had suddenly materialized at the child’s side. At first, they had dismissed him as a nameless beggar—and reasonably so, given his ragged attire and the way he simply trailed after the girl. But what if that had been a ruse? What if Guan Yun had foreseen the plot on the child’s life from the start and posted an elite protector disguised as a derelict?
“That sly old fox Guan Yun… plotting behind my back…!”
“Grant me the order, my lord.” The masked man bowed even lower, his voice hardening with conviction. “Entrust this task to me, and I swear upon my life to present the child’s severed head before you.”
Knock, knock.
“Patriarch, I have brought the child.”
From within the study came a calm, resonant reply. “Enter.”
The door slid open with a soft rattle. The Scar-faced Warrior placed a hand on Yeon-woo’s back, giving her a gentle nudge.
“Go on in.”
Yeon-woo peered up at him once, then trotted inside. The door slid shut behind her.
At the far end of the room, behind an expansive wooden desk, sat Guan Yun, the Patriarch of the Guan Clan. He sat with impeccable posture, awaiting her.
“Welcome. It has been some time.”
“Yeah.”
Yeon-woo naturally scrambled up into the large chair across from his desk. The seat was far too high for her short legs, requiring a fair bit of squirming and clutching at the armrests, but she managed to settle in without tumbling off. Guan Yun watched her plop down. Because of the desk’s height, only the bridge of her small nose and above were visible over the edge.
Her dark eyes suddenly narrowed into slits.
“Where’s the stuff you promised?”
Guan Yun let out a low, weary sigh. Reaching beneath the desk, he produced a small tray and set it on the tabletop. Arranged upon it was an assortment of sweet, colorful dried fruits.
“!”
Yeon-woo’s eyes lit up, and her hands darted forward to grab a generous handful. As she began merrily chewing on the dried fruit, her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel’s, Guan Yun’s eyebrows arched in mild exasperation.
“When did I ever make such a promise to you?”
“Didn’t you say you’d give me whatever I wanted to eat?”
“I did. And that is precisely why I offered to send dried fruits directly to your cottage, yet you adamantly refused.”
“They taste way better when I eat them in your room, Mister.”
Popping another piece into her mouth with a contented hum, she beamed at him. Guan Yun let out another deep, long-suffering sigh.
“Right. Has anything out of the ordinary occurred?”
“Out of the ordinary?” Yeon-woo chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then shook her head. “Nope.”
“Do you still possess no desire to learn martial arts?”
“Nope.”
“Have you read the manuals I provided?”
Again, Yeon-woo shook her head vigorously.
A bitter smile touched Guan Yun’s lips. He had merely purchased a starving beggar child from the gutters—a child who had declared she did not care if she died, so long as she never had to feel hunger again. He had placed a handsome sum of silver into her mother’s hands and ensured the child received three full meals a day alongside whatever treats she desired.
Yet, paying for her life did not mean he genuinely wished for her death. In fact, precisely because she was not of the Guan bloodline, he had hoped her odds of survival might be slightly better. She would enter the Demon Dragon Hall under the Guan name, but the proctors would easily discern that she was merely a surrogate from the streets. Even so, he had desperately hoped she would at least master the fundamentals of martial arts before entering that slaughterhouse.
To think she would despise martial training to this extent.
She refused to attend the clan’s training grounds, and when he dispatched clan warriors to instruct her at the hut, she turned them away without hesitation. She insisted she would be perfectly content simply eating delicious food until the day she died. As if fully aware of her grim fate—and entirely unbothered by it—the child stubbornly rejected martial arts.
Guan Yun exhaled softly, his gaze turning serious.
“What manner of person is he?”
“……?”
“The old man… who stays with you.”
That old man had claimed he would teach the child martial arts. That was the sole reason Guan Yun had skeptically agreed when requested to reduce her food rations.
“Is he a good person…?”
The words felt shameful on his tongue. To this child, the most villainous person in the world was arguably himself.
“…Is he truly a good person?”
“Yeah.” Yeon-woo nodded without a shred of hesitation. “Grandpa is a good person. He’s been good from the very beginning.”
“Do you even know who he is?”
“Ah! Come to think of it, I never asked his name! I only told him mine!”
Watching the girl tremble with righteous indignation at her own oversight, Guan Yun found himself thoroughly bewildered.
How can she speak so favorably of an old man whose name she doesn't even know?
“Is he truly a good man?”
“Yeah! I only pick up good things!”
Pick up?
“It was kind of a hassle when I had to feed him and tuck him in, though.”
Feed him and tuck him in?!
“Now he runs around just fine, so I like him.”
“…….”