Haomen
The moment Hyeong Pung heard that Hyeong Jin was running an errand to the Tang Clan, the corners of his mouth climbed until they nearly touched his ears.
Freedom at last. God, how wretched it's been.
Face to face with Hyeong Jin, he couldn't smother the grin.
"Junior brother, it breaks my heart to see you go. What am I supposed to do with all this regret?"
"Doesn't it? Senior brother. I'll miss you too."
Something in Hyeong Jin's bright smile set a prickle of unease crawling up Hyeong Pung's spine.
"I've brought someone to look after things in my place while I'm gone."
"This brat, working his senior brother like a servant. Not a scrap of respect for rank."
Grumbling, Hyeong Un stepped out from behind Hyeong Jin.
Hyeong Pung went rigid.
"Senior Brother Hyeong Un... no. Tell me it isn't."
A smile touched Hyeong Un's mouth.
"It is."
Hyeong Pung collapsed onto the ground.
"My freedom, my peaceful life... gaaah!"
"I'm counting on you, senior brother."
"Yeah, yeah. Come back in one piece."
"Oh, right. Senior brother, you haven't forgotten Senior Sister Hyeong Chae, have you?"
Annoyance settled over Hyeong Un's face.
"Haa... fine. Come back without gifts and you'd better be ready."
"Don't worry."
Hyeong Pung's eyes lit.
"I'll bring something for you too, senior brother, so don't worry."
"Yes!"
Hyeong Pung clenched a fist.
Watching from a distance, Hyeong Chae shuddered from head to toe.
"Senior Brother Hyeong Un is going to oversee my training? The moment he picks up a sword, he's a completely different person..."
Leaving the two of them trembling in his wake, Hyeong Jin made for the stables.
A martial artist of the Peak Realm could cover two hundred li in a day, some sixty miles, about the pace of the relay posts. Push a journey like that, though, and one's internal energy ran dry, and if a fight found you then, it became a problem. So even people of the jianghu made a habit of taking a horse when the road was long.
The stables, entered for the first time in a while, smelled of dung and hay. A black horse caught Hyeong Jin's eye.
A fine animal. It would hold its own against the mounts of the North.
Sensing his gaze, the horse licked his cheek.
"All right. We'll go together."
He swung up onto its back, and the horse tapped the ground with a hoof. Hyeong Jin smiled.
"Good. Then run."
The black horse galloped down from Jeomchang Mountain.
He had no intention of riding straight for Sichuan.
Two years remained before the Blood Cult moved. Even while he hunted spirit medicines, he needed eyes and ears to track them, and Haomen, with its web of informants spread across the whole of the jianghu, could provide them. He already held the card that would set that web in motion.
The first place he went was Cheonghwaru.
"Proprietor! Two bottles of cloudy rice wine!"
"Hey, you hear about that?"
"They say silk's dried right up lately."
"Word is Tubo's holding some grand affair and buying every bolt. Can't sell what isn't there, or so they say."
Inside, the clink of cups and the rise and fall of voices filled the air. Hyeong Jin swept the room once.
Cheonghwaru was a pleasure house of five stories. The first and second floors were a tavern anyone with coin could walk into. Above that, it changed. Money alone would not buy the stairs.
He climbed without hesitation. His destination was the Haomen branch on the highest floor.
The moment he reached the second, eyes began to fasten on him. Five presences. Two of them had reached the Peak Realm.
The instant his foot touched the stair toward the third floor, men in martial robes barred the way.
"Our apologies, young hero. This isn't a place just anyone can go."
"I have business with the branch head."
Their faces hardened. One of them let out a short laugh.
"You must know that charging in like this won't earn you an audience with the branch head."
Hyeong Jin nodded.
"That's true."
Their faces brightened.
"The new wine is excellent."
One man raised a thumb. Hyeong Jin's expression didn't shift.
"Then tell Moon So-wol I want to see her."
"Never heard that name."
"Just pass it on."
The men looked at one another. One of them went up.
Hyeong Jin folded his arms and waited.
"And what business might you have with Haomen, great hero?"
The hem of a silver gown drifted, light as gauze. Snow-white skin, scarlet lips, a figure to undo a man—the woman every guest of Cheonghwaru longed after, gathered into one.
For an instant, the woman of twenty years on laid itself over the one before him. Haomen, brought down by rebellion. The figure who had raised it again out of the ashes. The woman of iron who would one day become Clan Leader of Haomen.
So this is what she looked like young. No need to worry about her ability.
Hyeong Jin spoke.
"Moon So-wol."
She smiled, bright and easy.
"Yes. This girl is Moon So-wol. Come up, Great Hero Hyeong Jin."
How does a first-generation disciple of Jeomchang know a name only kin would know? There's a rat somewhere.
At a flick of her eyes, the men withdrew.
"We were discourteous, great hero."
Hyeong Jin climbed the stairs in silence.
Unlike the splendor of the third and fourth floors, the fifth was spare.
"And what is it you've come for?"
While Moon So-wol poured the tea, her eyes raked him from head to toe.
"Is your father well?"
Her fingertips trembled, just barely.
"Starting straight in with an interesting tale, I see."
Hyeong Jin took a sip before he answered.
"Ah. Should I have said Clan Leader?"
Her eyes sharpened.
"I'm not sure I follow."
"You know."
"Then you also know you could die for the words you're speaking."
Moon So-wol smoothed a finger along her lip. Hyeong Jin answered, calm.
"Suit yourself. Then you won't be getting the information I have."
"And where did this information come from? The Beggars' Sect?"
He gave her nothing.
"Work that much out for yourself."
"You insist on being dull to the very end."
With a snap, Moon So-wol folded her fan.
"Information first. I take payment up front."
Hyeong Jin looked at her.
"I'm looking for an organization."
"I'm sure you understand what 'up front' means."
"Help me, and I'll tell you how to save your father."
For the first time, Moon So-wol let the smile go.
"That isn't something you say lightly."
"You can cure a father that even renowned physicians couldn't?"
Scorn touched her mouth.
"An amusing joke."
The air in the room grew heavy. Hyeong Jin drank his tea as if nothing were amiss. Their eyes met, and at the ease on his face Moon So-wol bit down on her lip.
"Go on, then."
"The Blood Cult. That's the organization you're going to find."
Color rose in her face.
"The joke ends there. Haomen must look easy to you."
"If Haomen were easy, I wouldn't be giving it work."
Her voice climbed.
"You're ordering me to find a group that exists only in the history books, and you're toying with me?"
Hyeong Jin drained what remained of the tea and stood.
"When you find the information, contact me."
"I don't believe I said I would."
He turned.
"A gift, then. If your father keeps taking that decoction, he'll only get worse."
"You'll have to answer for those words."
Moon So-wol's gaze pinned him, sharp as a needle. He met it without a flicker.
"I've said what I came to say."
He left the fifth floor of Cheonghwaru as if it meant nothing at all.
Alone in her seat, Moon So-wol pressed a hand to her throbbing head.
"Find out everything about the man called Hyeong Jin. Don't leave out a single trifle. Comb through all of it."
"Understood."
Yu Ha, who had been keeping her place at Moon So-wol's side, was just about to move.
"Wait."
Moon So-wol's finger tapped the table.
"The decoction Father takes. Investigate it from the beginning, all the way through. Check the physician again as well."
"There won't be a single gap."
If it was a lie, he'll pay for it. He has to.
Left alone on the fifth floor, Moon So-wol bit her lip.
Stepping out of Cheonghwaru, Hyeong Jin let out a short breath of a laugh.
Young, still. Unpolished.
The woman she would become flickered before his eyes, the sort you could drive a blade into and draw not a single drop of blood.
This life, I won't let her come to that.
He put Cheonghwaru behind him and headed for the market.
Plenty to prepare before the Tang Clan.
"Aigoo, it's been a while, young master. Alone today?"
The proprietress of the noodle shop the martial siblings stopped at whenever they came down to the market greeted him warmly.
"I ought to have a bowl before I go."
"Say that, and I'm grateful."
Seated and eating at his ease, Hyeong Jin's hand stopped. A black martial robe lay reflected on the surface of the broth. The proprietress's face went white.
"Got the protection money ready?"
The thug at the front spoke as if it were only natural.
"No coin, we just take it out of the shop."
The thugs grinned at one another.
Hyeong Jin's gaze drifted slowly to the backs of their hands. A familiar mark. A crimson viper coiled around a sword. His chopsticks settled, unhurried, across the bowl.
The Black Serpent Sect.
Hyeong Jin's form vanished.
The face of the lead thug slammed straight into the floor. The rest grabbed for their weapons a beat too late, but before a single sword could clear its sheath, wrists and knees folded in turn. It was over in an instant.
Hyeong Jin looked down at the back of the fallen man's hand. Unmistakably the mark of the Black Serpent Sect. A ruined mountain gate and blood-soaked robes flickered across his sight.
"Live. Even if it's only you."
Ungeuk's ragged voice came back to him. Hyeong Jin let out a slow breath, then set his foot on the nape of the fallen man's neck.
"Where did you come from?"
"You think you'll walk away if you know that? We're the Black Serpent—"
The weight in his foot increased, just a little. The man's face ground into the floor.
"Answer only what I ask."
"O-outside the West Gate. The manor."
"Leave the coin you shook out of the merchants, and get out."
The men hastily spilled the coins from inside their robes.
"Out."
"You know who we are and you're still pulling this?"
Hyeong Jin's gaze rested a moment on the back of the man's hand.
"I know exactly who you are. Remember it. The next time I see you, you die."
At the sound of his voice the men trembled. They scrambled up and fled. Watching their backs recede, Hyeong Jin's eyes sank cold.
He sat again.
The manor outside the West Gate. The Black Serpent Sect's headquarters lay on the Tubo border. There was no chance their sect leader, Wi Chang-un, was here. Then there was no reason to hesitate.
Hyeong Jin put the soggy noodles in his mouth. The proprietress approached, careful.
"Young master, will you be all right? Men like that will come back with more. No question of it."
"Which is why I mean to call on them before they do."
He emptied the broth to the last drop and rose.
"Would you mind holding my horse a little while?"
"Where are you off to?"
Hyeong Jin set the price of the meal on the table and took up his sword.
"I'll go walk off the meal."
The manor outside the West Gate was ringed by a high wall. Four men in black martial robes stood before the main gate. The ones who had fled the noodle shop were nowhere in sight.
Hyeong Jin walked toward the gate without pausing.
"Halt."
One of them drew his sword and blocked the way.
"State your name."
"Hyeong Jin of Jeomchang."
Their expressions hardened.
"Where is the one in charge of this manor?"
At the question, their hands went to their swords. Hyeong Jin's form blurred.
The sword of the man at the gate shot into the empty air. Hyeong Jin's scabbard cracked straight into his jaw.
Crack!
The man's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed. The rest rushed him at once. Hyeong Jin slipped half a step into the rain of blades.
The scabbard struck a wrist. An elbow drove into the pit of a stomach. Before the last man could thrust, Hyeong Jin's foot swept his knee. Three bodies tumbled across the ground in succession.
He passed the fallen men and kicked the gate.
Boom!
The bar snapped, and the doors fell inward.
Every man in the manor turned at once. Twenty of them at least. Hyeong Jin checked the backs of their hands first. A crimson viper coiled around a sword. Without a doubt, disciples of the Black Serpent Sect.
"Kill him!"
At someone's shout they surged in. Hyeong Jin's eyes went still.
The enemies who, in his past life, had burned Jeomchang's mountain gate and killed his martial siblings. They had not yet committed that deed. That did not mean they were innocent. The goods heaped in a corner of the manor bore the seals of trading companies, and inside the open storehouse, merchants lay collapsed, soaked in blood.
The hesitation vanished.
Hyeong Jin kicked off the ground. He did not draw his sword.
Every time the scabbard swung, the sound of breaking bone followed. Wrists gripping swords snapped. Knees folded the wrong way. Not one of them so much as brushed his collar. Half of them were down in an instant, and the feet of those who remained began to falter.
"It's only one man! Surround him!"
A thickset man of middle years walked out of the hall. The point at his temple stood out in a hard knot, and his stride never wavered. Late first-rate, by the look of him. He drew a broad saber.
"A Jeomchang whelp, and bold enough to let his liver hang outside his belly."
"You're one to talk."
The man kicked off the earth. The force behind the saber was heavy enough, but to Hyeong Jin's eye the path of the blade was plain. He slipped the first stroke by half a step and turned the second aside with his scabbard.
As the saber was deflected, the man's balance pitched forward. Hyeong Jin's scabbard drove into the flank left bare.
Thud!
The sensation of ribs breaking traveled up through his fingers. Blood sprayed from the man's mouth. Even so, he clenched his teeth and swung the saber up. Hyeong Jin drew and beat the blade aside. His sword-tip stopped before the man's throat.
Three exchanges. That was all it took before the officer in charge of the manor was on his knees.
Hyeong Jin stamped down on his shoulder.
"You dare lay hands on common folk inside Jeomchang's domain?"
The sword-tip bit shallowly into the man's neck.
"Gaaah!"
"Get out. Show your face here again, and you die."
"P-please, just spare me."
Hyeong Jin withdrew the sword and took his foot from the man's shoulder. The disciples who had been watching threw down their weapons and fought one another to flee the manor.
He freed the merchants locked in the storehouse and turned the ledgers and the stolen goods over to them. Then he stopped at the market and gathered what the journey required—jerky, a waterskin, and the rest.
Around the time the sun began to sink, he returned to the noodle shop. The proprietress's eyes went round at the sight of him, whole and unhurt.
"Back already?"
"Those thugs won't be throwing their weight around anymore."
He took the reins from her and mounted the black horse as if nothing at all had happened.
Wi Chang-un.
Hyeong Jin's gaze deepened.
The man who had burned Jeomchang's mountain gate after the sect was spent from the Blood Ritual. The leader of the Black Serpent Sect, who had killed Ungeuk in the previous life. Back then, Wi Chang-un's realm had been the mid-stage Cho-jeoljeong.
Early Peak Realm, and mid-stage Cho-jeoljeong. Several walls stood between where Hyeong Jin was now and where Wi Chang-un stood, a gap that even the experience of a past life could not fill. To catch him, he first had to recover the internal energy he had lost.
Azure Stone Milk was the first step.
The moment he regained his former realm, he would tear the Black Serpent Sect out by the root.
The black horse broke into a run toward Sichuan.