Tan Lang
The old quarters of Luoyang.
Atop a building overlooking Tanryung District — one of the city's most famous thoroughfares — the Captain of Tan Lang, the former special-operations unit of the Martial Alliance, gazed down upon the bustling streets below.
Beneath the setting sun the avenues blazed as bright as day, lit by lanterns of every color. On the faces of those who came and went, not a shadow could be found.
Whether the Second Young Master's faction clashed with the First Young Master, or the Third Young Master's side collided with him; whether the First Young Master, returned after nearly a decade, tore through all of Luoyang as though it were his own; whether the Central Investigation Department's inquiry upended the Luoyang Sword Family itself — the passersby remained indifferent.
His subordinates gathered around him.
[As ordered, Teams One through Five are tracking the targets through the Underground Great Waterway.]
[Teams Six, Seven, and Eight have dispersed and are continuing the search on the surface.]
Masters of concealment and stealth, they melted into the shadows cast across the rooftop until the naked eye could scarcely make them out.
[These may well be people with the First Young Master behind them. Tell the teams not to lower their guard simply because they look like some vagabond swordsmen playing at heroics.]
[Understood.]
A soft rustle, drowned beneath the noise of the street, and a messenger revealed himself.
It was hardly a difficult guess. They were the ones on the ground. That the government offices had not moved was something they had already felt for themselves.
[…Yes.]
[Understood.]
He did not even ask for the reason. When your profession was dirty work, asking questions usually only got you hurt. There were far too many things beyond anyone's power to fix, in any case.
The messenger bowed his head and carefully finished his report. The subordinates who had overheard the transmission clicked their tongues.
[If they were going to do that, they should have handed it over from the start.]
[In other words, if this operation falls apart, they mean to pin the blame on us.]
The Captain sent a brief transmission.
Every subordinate linked to the transmission fell silent at once. Well-trained hunting dogs, the lot of them.
The Captain's gaze turned to the messenger.
The messenger's head dropped even lower.
The Captain gave a short nod.
[Nothing has changed.]
[Find the targets and capture them.]
The arid transmission, drained of anything resembling emotion, reached every subordinate around him. There was no one to cover their backs, and no one to clean up their mistakes — because they were the ones who covered other people's backs and cleaned up other people's mistakes.
His empty gaze turned toward the street. This city of several million, a metropolis almost without parallel in history, seemed utterly indifferent to the petty power struggles of mere men.
And yet—
The Captain answered shortly.
[At your own discretion. Sever limbs if necessary. Kill if you have no other choice.]
[…And if the First Young Master or his subordinates stand in our way?]
[I will deal with the First Young Master myself.]
The people within the city were neither as vast nor as indifferent as the city that held them.
Receiving his command, the Captain's personal squad flung themselves from the building. Before the light of the lanterns that flooded every direction could even touch them, they had vanished without a trace.
Through gaps in shadow, through folds of darkness — the gaze of a man who had crossed the wall could just barely make out the moving forms of his subordinates. The Captain's eyes followed them toward their destination.
There, occupying grounds so broad it was hard to believe they stood in the middle of Luoyang's entertainment district, a garden came into view. At its heart rose a lavish pavilion.
Geum-jan-ru.
The subordinate tasked with reconnaissance reported in.
The trail of certain targets who had fled into the Underground Great Waterway had begun at Geum-jan-ru. Pursuing them was the work of the other team leaders. The Captain's own role was different.
The moment he reached the rooftop of the building directly across from Geum-jan-ru, a report came in.
The scout's report followed at once.
[Horse-drawn carriage spotted in front of Geum-jan-ru's main entrance. Every feature matches intelligence on the Ironclad Fortress. Owner: First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.]
[No activity confirmed outside Geum-jan-ru.]
The First Young Master had not even bothered to hide his carriage. Was it confidence in his own skill — or the arrogance peculiar to a boy still in his teens?
It was time to find out for himself.
The Captain gave a short, decisive order.
The firmly shut main doors of Geum-jan-ru's pavilion exploded under a strike of martial arts refined for precisely this purpose.
Those waiting pressed against the walls slipped inside without a sound — and at the same moment, others stationed at the principal windows on every rooftop smashed through the glass and poured in.
For a breach through the square opening in the ceiling, the Captain alone was more than enough. He dropped. No lightfoot technique, no movement art — the superhuman body of a man who had crossed the wall simply fell onto the restaurant floor. The table he landed on shattered, and the abandoned tableware and food upon it went flying into the air.
Before those dishes could even hit the ground and break, his sharp gaze locked onto a boy leaning casually against the second-floor railing. The boy was being attended by a woman who might have stepped down from the heavens themselves, leisurely chewing on a piece of fruit.
"You there."
The boy glanced at him and spoke.
"I'll be charging the Third Young Master's faction for every scrap of property damage. Prepare yourselves."
Tan Lang's hunting dogs, who had breached through the main doors and windows, began revealing themselves one after another.
[Fourth floor — corridors clear. Checking individual rooms.]
[Third floor — corridors clear. Banquet hall located, entering now.]
[Second floor — identities of the First Young Master and the Chief Maid of Wongak Pavilion confirmed. Continuing additional search.]
[First floor — searching.]
Amid the tangle of incoming transmissions, the Captain looked at Yeon So-hyeon. He could sense none of the legendary realm the rumors spoke of. Had the stories been exaggerated? Or had the boy, even at his age, already grasped the subtlety of Return to Simplicity?
"First Young Master."
His lieutenant stepped forward.
"Cooperate quietly. Otherwise—"
BOOM!
In that instant, the Captain's outstretched hand produced a detonation like a falling artillery shell.
The lieutenant realized a beat too late that without the Captain's arm barring his path, his own head would have been blown clean off.
They could smell a sweet-and-tart fragrance spreading through the air.
…The latter, then.
There was no doubt about it. The First Young Master had already awakened to the subtlety of Return to Simplicity — for the thing that had struck the Captain's hand hard enough to leave it tingling was the apple Yeon So-hyeon had been chewing.
[You will take command of the field.]
[…Understood.]
Having grasped from that single exchange that he was no match for the First Young Master at all, the lieutenant withdrew obediently.
BOOM!
The Captain's hand flashed again. This time it was no fruit. Yeon So-hyeon's Hundred-Pace Divine Fist had targeted the retreating lieutenant's head.
BOOM!
This time, the Finger-Bullet Divine Art. The lieutenant hurled himself behind a massive stone pillar. Cold sweat poured from his brow and spattered onto the marble floor.
"That the First Young Master favors Shaolin techniques is already fully known to us."
Yeon So-hyeon met the Captain's emotionless eyes, twitched an eyebrow, and opened his mouth.
"Kill him."
"By your will."
His chief maid, Jeong-a, bowed her head to him and launched herself over the railing. The Captain's thick brows twitched as well.
The price for carelessly running his mouth before the First Young Master of the Sword Family.
Jeong-a unfurled her movement technique and slipped nimbly past the Captain's side — but he could not afford to intervene. Turn my back, and I die. Under Yeon So-hyeon's gaze, he felt as though he stood naked before the sights of a fortress cannon.
"Not even a word of conversation."
His lips moved.
"However rude the other party may have been, your hand is rather heavy, First Young Master."
Behind his barren voice, the metallic clang of his lieutenant parrying Jeong-a's blade rang out loud and sharp.
"We will withdraw once we take custody of the targets we are pursuing."
"Conversation?"
Yeon So-hyeon's lips twisted.
"Just because a dog can rattle off human speech does not make it a man."
The Captain's lips twisted as well — but it was nothing like the sneer that had curved Yeon So-hyeon's mouth. It was killing intent boiling up through a thick hide of a face and breaking into expression.
"…Hunting dogs do occasionally bite people, First Young Master."
His hand crept toward the long blade strapped across his back, fingers flexing.
"Dogs don't understand the ranks of the human world, you see."
Yeon So-hyeon shifted from his leaning posture and set a foot down from the railing. The mockery at the corner of his mouth deepened.
"Even if a dog cannot recognize status, a dog that cannot recognize its master must be put down."
The Captain's spirit stretched taut as a drawn bow, but his flesh, by contrast, went slack. The natural body — the method of a master who had crossed the wall.
"First Young Master. You are not my master."
The closer the Captain's hand drew to his long blade, the more inner force gathered in Yeon So-hyeon's hand where it rested on the railing.
"No."
Yeon So-hyeon spoke. His arrogant gaze, filled with boundless self-assurance, looked down upon the Captain.
"I am the ordained master of the Sword Family."
A declaration so absolute that for a fleeting instant, the Captain of Tan Lang nearly found himself accepting it.
He gripped the hilt of his long blade, twisting his hold, and thought: So this is the first son of the Sword Lord.
Mugeomza. The Swordless One.
The killing edge that flowed from the entire body of a teenage boy who did not even carry a sword was enough to rival a famed blade renowned across the realm. It was enough to raise goosebumps.
In that brief moment when Yeon So-hyeon's eyes and his own met in midair and sparks leapt between them—
CRASH!
The fourth-floor railing shattered, and a member of Tan Lang in night gear went flying through the air.
One of the men searching the fourth floor.
Nearly simultaneously, those searching every floor came under attack. The ones who revealed themselves as they struck Tan Lang wore masks of every color — those who had remained behind after the rest, already wanted, had fled Luoyang through the Underground Great Waterway.
"Hahaha!"
Spring of Luoyang.
The righteous swordsmen who had been lying in wait struck at the perfect moment.
"Kh—!"
The man who had crashed through the fourth-floor railing collected himself midair and corrected his posture. And in the instant he landed on the first floor—
He realized he had stepped into a line of fire about to be loosed. He realized, too, that his landing was the signal flare for a collision between the Captain of Tan Lang and First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon — two men whose martial arts stood at a level he could not even begin to measure.