Dual Frontlines
The Lee Family Merchant Group
The chief administrator of the Yeongwa Merchant Group hung his head low.
"…I shall arrange for our merchant group to be sold to the First Young Master."
Sang-gwan Nan-hwa pointed to the blank space on the documents with an expression that said, I knew it.
"Please write your name here, affix your seal, and stamp the merchant group's official seal and your fingerprint."
"…No."
At her words, the chief administrator of the Yeongwa Merchant Group shook his head.
"First we must settle the amount clearly."
"Oh my, so we must."
Sang-gwan Nan-hwa, who had been quietly hoping to take it for free, smiled as though it had merely been an oversight.
"Would this amount suffice?"
When the chief administrator checked the sum written on the slip of paper she drew from her robes, he shot to his feet.
"A-Absurd! That paltry sum is no more than the price of a single large inn in Luoyang's entertainment district! To think of acquiring this vast merchant group for such a pittance…!"
His eyes blazed crimson, foam flecking his lips.
"You claimed you would pay a proper price, yet this is no better than highway robbery! However far the Lee Family's fortunes have fallen, better to… better to hand it over to anyone other than the First Young Master, who is practically our sworn enemy, for such a price…!"
Sang-gwan Nan-hwa smiled faintly.
"Better to?"
"Better to…"
He could not finish the sentence.
There was no other path left to him; that was precisely why he was enduring this humiliation.
The Yeongwa Merchant Group of today was nothing more than a massive, helpless beast with its oil-slicked flesh laid bare.
No one would ever pay a fair price to acquire it.
"True enough, this sum is far too meager to be called the sale price of the Yeongwa Merchant Group."
Watching his vacant expression, Sang-gwan Nan-hwa tapped the table.
"But what if we thought of it this way?"
He lifted unfocused eyes toward her.
"If one regards this amount as someone's 'funds for a life of exile abroad,' it becomes more than enough to live in great comfort."
A meaningful smile curved her lips.
"As you said, this is enough to purchase a large inn in the heart of this great city of Luoyang."
"……"
His deliberation did not last long.
There was no reason to sink with a foundering ship.
The thought rose unbidden: it was time he received payment for all the years he had devoted to the family.
"…You will guarantee my safety, of course. You may need a witness for this transaction later on."
"How does the prosperous kingdom of Haedong sound? Or the eternally warm lands of Yue, or the peaceful highlands of Tibet? If any of the adventurous spirit of your youth remains, you might cross the great ocean to the New Continent, or travel to Europa itself to witness the power of the great nations there."
She smiled with radiant, blossoming warmth.
"To acquire this vast merchant group that once linked Gangnam and Luoyang by land… for the mere cost of one man's exile abroad…!"
I-ryeong's eyes sparkled as she looked back and forth between the documents concerning the Yeongwa Merchant Group and Sang-gwan Nan-hwa.
"This much is nothing at all. It was only possible because the Representative paved every road for us beforehand."
"Hehe. Just as I thought, yes? The abilities of my master, the First Young Master, are the finest under heaven…"
At Sang-gwan Nan-hwa's modest reply, I-ryeong—who for some reason had been puffing out her chest and rolling her shoulders—suddenly paused.
"Hmm? Come to think of it…"
She turned to Sang-gwan Nan-hwa.
"Even if Master owns this merchant group, won't it be difficult for a business whose very core is crossing Sapaecheon's territory to operate properly?"
In truth, "difficult" was an understatement; it was nearly impossible.
Sang-gwan Nan-hwa nodded with a gentle smile.
"Exactly. That is why, from this point onward, we must leave the matter in the Representative's hands."
She carefully sealed the documents and handed them to the waiting branch chief of Hyeonwol Pavilion.
"Ah?! Then that means I won't get to see for myself what becomes of the Yeongwa Merchant Group?!"
At I-ryeong's near-wail, Sang-gwan Nan-hwa beamed.
"Instead! Since we saved a great deal of operational funds this time, I plan to use them to acquire additional promising businesses starting now…"
"Wonderful! Perfect! Let's leave at once!"
The Hyeonwol Pavilion branch chief left behind the delighted I-ryeong and the laughing Sang-gwan Nan-hwa.
They had their war.
He had his.
He once more secured the sealed documents tightly against his chest.
"……"
There was something almost grimly resolute in the gesture.
The Second Young Master's intelligence network, the Great Immortal Merchant Group, was mounting an increasingly fierce counteroffensive against Hyeonwol Pavilion.
It would not be strange for him to lose his life at any moment, in any manner, should he fall into their web of spies.
"……"
He descended into the street and melted into the throng.
Swiftly, secretly, precisely, and safely.
He repeated the most fundamental principles to himself while sharpening his senses to their utmost.
He must not raise his qi sense.
He could rely only on the keen natural senses he had honed to a razor's edge.
Enemies sensitive to qi would notice him all too easily otherwise.
"……"
He boarded a rickshaw that had been waiting in advance, passed a designated point, and was moving by small skiff along a narrow waterway toward the next when it happened.
Without question or conversation, the boatman who had been silently rowing suddenly coughed up blood.
"……!"
The arrowhead that had pierced through the collapsing boatman's chest gleamed wetly with blood.
Damn it—enemies!
Agents of the Great Immortal Merchant Group, or specialists hired by them, without a doubt.
There was no time to wonder by what path they had tracked his movements.
First, escape—!
He reflexively launched himself into lightfoot to leave the skiff—then froze.
The experience he had accumulated as an operative, and his razor-sharp instincts, screamed a clear warning.
In that instant, enemies erupted as one from the foul, opaque water.
It was an ambush by those who had mastered uncommon water arts.
Five of them.
No gap for escape presented itself.
In the brief moment the enemies surged from the water and hung in the air, blotting out the sun, the branch chief steeled himself.
Until reinforcements arrive, I'll give an arm or a leg if I must…!
He prepared for a desperate last stand and reached for a signal flare—when a sound transmission slipped into his ear.
[You Hyeonwol Pavilion agent—duck.]
He instantly flung himself flat as ordered.
And of the enemies who had been descending upon him, two jerked to a halt midair as though caught in spider silk.
Through the wall of the building on the left side of the waterway, a pair of hands had thrust out and seized their heads, one each.
The arms were impossibly, grotesquely long.
"Kh…!"
"Ugh—!"
Before the captives could even begin to resist, a sickening crunch rang out as their skulls were crushed.
As the two headless corpses tumbled into the water trailing blood, the remaining three enemies also lost their lives and fell into the water like logs.
Each of them sprayed blood from the nape of the neck—exactly one cervical vertebra missing from each spine.
The bodies of the enemies struck the water and sent up great plumes of spray.
"…Who are you?!"
The startled branch chief lifted his head at the sound and beheld the owner of those grotesquely long arms.
By some unknown art the man had moved like a spider through the narrow gaps between buildings and now revealed himself.
A man with a reed-thin torso and abnormally elongated limbs.
"Sichuan's Silencer…!"
Also called Gigigoegoe—the bizarre one—he was the infamous freak once known as the worst assassin the Sichuan Tang Family had ever produced.
He was the final member of the innermost circle surrounding the Fourth Young Master Yeon Bi, after the Red Poison Spider, Tang Baek, Tang Ye-rin, and Old Woman Gwak.
"For this seat to dispose of two while three fall…"
The man whose face was wrapped in a hood turned his frowning gaze not upon the branch chief, but behind him.
"This seat has never heard of an assassin such as yourself. What, precisely, is your identity?"
At his words and gaze the branch chief turned—and nearly fainted.
"……?!"
Behind him stood a woman who had approached without the slightest trace of presence.
"Hmm…"
Makeup that bordered on stage paint. Garments so exquisitely beautiful they were hard to overlook. Seo Rim-cheong let out a nasal hum and smiled with a wicked edge.
"Gigigoegoe, is it? An assassin whose name is widely known is a bit… questionable, don't you think~? Fame only raises the target's guard; it hardly helps the success of an assassination~."
She tossed the three cervical vertebrae she had been holding behind her back and tilted her head in an infuriating manner.
"Rather than an assassin, one might say you are more like a propaganda tool the Tang Family system created to spread terror, wouldn't you~?"
The soft, coquettish tone carried a venomous edge as sharp as a freshly honed blade.
It was exactly the sort of remark one would expect from a woman who recognized no one but herself as a true assassin.
"What?"
Killing intent erupted from Gigigoegoe, Sichuan's Silencer, like a tidal wave.
He who had clung to the wall leapt and landed upon the skiff.
The branch chief reflexively lowered his body, bracing for the small boat to rock violently.
Yet astonishingly, the skiff did not so much as sway; it remained utterly calm.
"…Try saying that again to this seat's face."
With a series of cracking sounds from his long neck, Gigigoegoe bent down and thrust his face right into Seo Rim-cheong's.
"My, my~ shoving your face at a lady first. A man who lacks both skill and manners~."
At Seo Rim-cheong's words, Gigigoegoe's teeth ground together with an audible scrape.
Caught between the two of them and bathed in their killing intent, the Hyeonwol Pavilion branch chief felt as though his entire body had frozen solid.
"You two. How nice that you get along so well. Quite a sight."
At that moment a girl's face peeked over the rooftop of the building beside the waterway, accompanied by a mocking drawl.
She addressed the two assassins locked in their standoff.
"If the two of you have so much leisure to deepen your friendship in the middle of a mission…"
She was Sam-ryeong, the third of the triplet maids.
Having eliminated every enemy on the rooftop, she now revealed herself.
"My master, who will receive the report later, will be ever so pleased, won't he?"
Her mention of Yeon So-hyeon proved the most effective restraint of all upon the two assassins.
"Tch."
"Hmph."
Clicking his tongue, Gigigoegoe moved with the same bizarre motion that had given him his name, slipping through a narrow gap between buildings and vanishing from sight.
In the brief instant the branch chief glanced up at the girl on the roof, Seo Rim-cheong also snorted and disappeared as if she had never been there.
"Ups-a-daisy!"
Sam-ryeong leapt down from the rooftop and landed on the skiff.
The boat rocked gently.
"I'm sorry we couldn't inform you in advance."
"Pardon?"
The Hyeonwol Pavilion branch chief took the hand she offered and rose to his feet.
Sam-ryeong smiled at him apologetically and explained.
"Actually, we were the ones who leaked the information that the branch chief was carrying important documents."
Those words alone were enough for him to grasp the entire situation.
"…So I was the bait. To lure the enemies out."
Deliberately expose genuine critical intelligence so that the enemies lurking in the shadows would reveal themselves—then devour them.
He felt neither shock nor betrayal toward the master of Hyeonwol Pavilion or the First Young Master for keeping the plan from him.
In the intelligence trade, things always unfolded behind someone's back.
Today it had simply been behind his.
Moreover, far from being abandoned, he had received powerful reinforcements.
"Yes, exactly. Together with those two uncooperative individuals just now, I form a special strike team targeting the Great Immortal Merchant Group. I'm Sam-ryeong."
"I am…"
Just as he began to introduce himself, she sprang into the air.
[Now! Run for your destination! Our strike team will handle every enemy that gathers!]
He nodded silently and began sprinting the shortest route to his destination.
At every turn along the way, the hunting dogs the enemies had loosed leapt out—but he concentrated solely on his lightfoot.
A grotesquely long hand shooting from a narrow window; a woman who had already seized an enemy from behind; figures that appeared and vanished.
No one managed to bar his path.
Somewhere in Luoyang's entertainment district.
"I present myself before the First Young Master."
The branch chief offered the documents he had received from Sang-gwan Nan-hwa to Yeon So-hyeon, the First Young Master.
Receiving the sealed papers, Yeon So-hyeon's gaze lingered on him for a moment.
"My thanks. You have worked hard."
"…It was merely my duty."
The First Young Master clapped him on the shoulder, rummaged in a nearby drawer, and held out a small object.
"It is nothing much, but I hope it will aid your rest."
"I am grateful."
After a respectful bow he left the pavilion and headed into a back alley.
Once free of watching eyes, he immediately sank down against the wall of the alley.
"Haa…"
He unwrapped the package the First Young Master had given him.
From within the silk wrapping emerged the finest quality cigarettes.
From the faint scent clinging to him, the First Young Master must have discerned that he was a smoker.
Leaning against the wall, he chuckled under his breath, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with a portable flint device.
"Delicious."
While the eyes of all Luoyang were fixed upon the Lee Family's collapse at Yeon So-hyeon's hands…
Behind the scenes, a war raged between the First Young Master's Hyeonwol Pavilion and the Second Young Master's Great Immortal Merchant Group.
That war had begun the very moment the First Young Master ascended Mount Beimang, and it continued even now without a single moment's pause.
Moreover, the Great Immortal Merchant Group was a far larger adversary than Hyeonwol Pavilion in sheer scale.
"…Good."
After exhaling two long streams of smoke and savoring the brief respite, he rose to his feet.
Leaving a trailing ribbon of smoke behind him, he vanished into the far end of the alley.
It was time to return to his battlefield.
The Lee Family's merchant group—and the last remaining power of the Lee Family.
Having confirmed the documents that contained every right of ownership over the Yeongwa Merchant Group, a smile curved Yeon So-hyeon's lips.
The problem remained that he himself could not operate this vast merchant group that linked Sapaecheon's territory of Gangnam to Luoyang. Yet it did not matter.
That was precisely why he had arranged this gathering.
When he opened the door and entered, the spacious, opulent chamber was thick with tobacco smoke.
"I have kept you all waiting."
Confirming that every gaze had turned to him, Yeon So-hyeon smiled.
"I trust you have all come with your bills of exchange well padded?"
The gathering chuckled softly at his joke.
They were the representatives of merchant groups famous even within the Central Plains, and if nothing else, funds were something they possessed in abundance.
"Well then."
Yeon So-hyeon shook the documents in his hand for them to see.
"As the new master of the Yeongwa Merchant Group, this First Young Master shall now divide the Yeongwa Merchant Group by region and sell it off."
At his words, every pair of eyes in the room flared with undisguised greed.
Every person present belonged to a different competing enterprise that had long contended with the Yeongwa Merchant Group in the same sphere.