Sword Threads and False Maps
Father Dancheon Gang remained silent for a long while, as though weighing something grave. I had not realized my departure into Jianghu was a matter serious enough to warrant such deliberation from him, and the unfamiliarity of it left me feeling oddly exposed.
At any rate, time flowed on, and a conclusion was soon reached. It meant Father had made his decision.
"Then let us do it this way. Hak will return within seven weeks. Myeong, how would it suit you to set out on your journey after that?"
That Dancheon Hak would be returning soon was news to me as well.
"I will do as you say."
Seven weeks was ample time to wait without strain.
"In return, you must be back within two months."
It was rare indeed for a journey into Jianghu to carry a fixed deadline. Dancheon Gang was not a man who dealt in rarities without cause, and it did not take much to guess his reasoning.
He was telling me, without saying it outright, that the contest for succession would proceed in two months' time.
"Understood."
I had bowed my head to Dancheon Gang and was about to step out of the patriarch's hall when it happened.
A chill.
A vicious killing intent. And with it, the unmistakable sensation of a blade hurtling toward my back.
I had trained under Uncle Yeo-baek's relentless assaults long enough that my body moved before my mind could form a single thought. Planting my footing on the internal energy coiled at the Dragon Spring acupoint, I twisted sharply, using that force as a pivot to whip around and launch a counter-strike at the incoming projectile.
Hwoong!
But my counter-strike sliced through empty air.
"Hm?"
It wasn't a miss. There had never been a projectile flying at my back in the first place.
"Good. At that level, you'll manage a journey into Jianghu without difficulty."
"Ah......"
Only then did I grasp what had happened.
No blade had flown at me. Father Dancheon Gang had simply unleashed his killing intent directly at my person.
That he could wield his intent with such precision meant very little time remained before he took his next step beyond the Harmony Realm.
"Take care of yourself out there."
"......Yes, Father."
And there stood Dancheon Gang, wearing the face of a father.
Only now could I be certain: I had received his blessing for the road ahead.
"......"
Perhaps he had simply never been given the chance before. Perhaps, all along, he had been a good father.
Seven weeks passed.
"It's been a while."
"It has, Brother."
I stood face to face with Dancheon Hak, who had spent the better part of a year wandering Jianghu.
Why he had come to find me first, setting aside our mother Baek Yeo-hae and his own master Iljang, I could not say.
He studied my face.
"You've changed a great deal."
"So have you, Brother."
The two of us had indeed changed enormously in the interim. In appearance, and in spirit alike.
Who could have imagined a day would come when he and I would stand across from each other and hold something resembling a conversation?
Dancheon Hak at twenty-two.
He remained one of the most vivid figures in my memory.
But the Dancheon Hak of my memories no longer existed.
Whether it was the weight of all he had endured on the road, the naive young heir of a great clan had vanished, and in his place stood a swordsman whose eyes carried a depth that had not been there before.
In truth, I knew Dancheon Hak had been changing well before he ever left for Jianghu. If my own life had pivoted at the moment of my regression, then his had pivoted at the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
It was not merely that his epithet had shifted from Lone Dragon to Sword Dragon. The man himself, Dancheon Hak, had fundamentally changed.
Even this journey he had just returned from would never have happened in my previous life. Back then, having earned the title of Lone Dragon, he had basked in his own renown, living comfortably within the clan's walls until the contest for succession, where he had crushed me without effort and claimed the position of Young Patriarch.
He was the eldest son of a great clan, born with the talent to claim a dragon's epithet. The outcome had been inevitable.
Facing an opponent like me, he had never needed to learn what effort meant.
But what of Dancheon Hak in this life?
Immediately after the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly ended, he had refused to rest on the laurels of his Sword Dragon title or his standing as a pillar of the Jianghu's young generation. I had not personally observed his training, but rumors of a regimen far more brutal than anything he had attempted before had spread like wildfire through the clan.
If word of it had reached even my ears — and I had no particular connections within the family beyond Uncle Yeo-baek — then the training must have been nothing short of punishing.
And then, without warning, Dancheon Hak had declared his own journey into Jianghu last year and vanished. Now he stood before me, returned.
"You're leaving on your journey?"
"That's right. I was just about to head out, actually."
Dancheon Hak fell silent for a moment, lost in thought.
"Then there's no time like the present."
Shring.
With those words, he drew his sword. The same blade that had pierced through Baek Ryeon Jeong-gang at the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
I felt no alarm at his sudden movement. First, I trusted he was not so dull-witted as to attack me here without provocation. Second, and more tellingly, there was not a trace of killing intent in his mind or body.
Wuwoong.
Internal energy gathered along the edge of Dancheon Hak's famed blade. A bluish, formless aura clung to the steel — sword qi, the hallmark of one who had reached the Peak Realm.
And then......
Saaaaaaa.
The sword qi began to ripple and weave, strand intertwining with strand. Bundles of qi braided together like threads into a spool, forming something far more potent — a qi-sword of a higher order entirely. Sword threads. The proof of one who had stepped into the Super-Peak Realm.
"Don't forget. The position of clan head belongs to me."
He was declaring to my face that he had entered the Super-Peak Realm.
Having finished his self-appointed business, Dancheon Hak turned and left without so much as a farewell. He was consistent in this, at least.
Two years since the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
I was not the only one who had grown.
A year of punishing training and a year of wandering Jianghu had carried Dancheon Hak, the prodigy of the Dancheon Clan, to the threshold of the Super-Peak Realm. A talented swordsman who had poured his entire being into his craft — the result was only natural.
This, too, was something that had never happened in my previous life.
But I was not worried.
My journey into Jianghu was never meant to be a leisurely tour.
Two years had elapsed.
Which meant I knew exactly where the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root lay at this very moment.
On this journey, I would complete the Fourth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision and set my foot firmly into the Harmony Realm.
Brother — the position of clan head belongs to me.
In this life, that was how it would be.
The first step of my journey.
My destination had already been decided.
The safe house of Haomun — hidden even from the eyes of the Beggars' Union. It was there that I met Ma Sok, the man known as Soul-Chasing Life-Taking.
"It's been a while."
"Yes, Young Master. It certainly has."
Things could hardly remain as they once were.
When I had been nothing more than the illegitimate son of the Dancheon Clan, invisible to every watching eye in Jianghu, perhaps. But a late-stage master who had claimed a dragon's epithet could hardly afford to saunter in and out of Hwawollu, Haomun's Anhui branch, as though it were his own courtyard.
I knew better than anyone that the eyes and ears of those beggars were everywhere. Constant vigilance was the only sensible course.
Silently.
I could feel Ma Sok's gaze measuring me, probing for something he could not quite name. After a moment, he shook his head as though conceding defeat.
"You have become truly unfathomable."
"Thank you."
That was likely the limit of what he could express. Having achieved the reversal to truth through the Golden Body stage of my Fourth Step, my martial arts had likely transcended his ability to gauge.
At my composure, Ma Sok let out a dry chuckle and spoke his mind.
"The more I look at you, Young Master, the less I understand you. In all my years, I have never met anyone like you."
"Is that a compliment?"
"For an information broker to call someone a mystery — you may take it as the highest praise there is."
"Haha. Much appreciated."
Part of it was the steady relationship we had cultivated over these two years. But there was also the simple fact that he regarded me as someone who had saved his life.
Having earned the trust of the man who would one day become the right hand of Haomun's Supreme Matriarch — that was a harvest worth savoring.
"You're looking well yourself, Master Ma."
"Me? What difference would you expect to find?"
He answered with practiced modesty, but Ma Sok had changed enormously.
He had spent the better part of two years fully assimilating the Empty Blue Stone Milk into his body.
He had always been a Super-Peak Realm master capable of representing Haomun at the highest level. Now that he had obtained the elixir and made its power entirely his own, if he so desired, he could stand among the foremost masters of the entire Jianghu.
The renown of Soul-Chasing Life-Taking could echo across the Central Plains a full five years ahead of schedule.
And yet even his reversal to truth could not match the completeness of mine, which allowed me to glimpse, however faintly, the depth of his current realm.
At least by my senses, his bearing seemed comparable to that of my father, Dancheon Gang.
Creak.
The door of the safe house opened, and someone stepped inside. Only one person could be arriving at this hour.
"It's been a while, Young Master Myeong."
"It has, Matriarch."
Yeo Wol, the Matriarch of Haomun, her face veil now removed. The fact that she would bare her face before me was itself a testament to how far our relationship had come.
Having been tempered by Yang Su-rin — hailed as one of the Five Flowers of Anhui — I was hardly susceptible to beauty. But I would concede that Yeo Wol's loveliness was more than sufficient to ensnare most men.
Yeo Wol took her seat.
"Isn't this a bit too formal?"
"The Matriarch of Haomun and the second son of the Dancheon Clan meeting too frequently — wouldn't that raise its own questions?"
Yeo Wol's lips pursed.
"And yet you seem to have no qualms about making use of Haomun at every turn."
"Haha. What's good for one is good for all, isn't it?"
The small talk wound down, and with Yeo Wol's next question, we moved to the heart of the matter.
"So. What information are you selling this time?"
Anticipation flickered across her features.
Selling information. That had been the currency of our relationship for the past two years. In truth, what I had gained was not money but the trust of Yeo Wol and Ma Sok both, so calling it a friendship would not have been far off the mark.
Haomun had two kinds of clients. Those who sold valuable intelligence to Haomun, and those who purchased the intelligence Haomun possessed.
In terms of added value, the former were far more precious, and so their treatment reflected that.
I couldn't say for certain, but I suspected I ranked among their very top-tier clients.
After all, Yeo Wol — the Matriarch herself, with direct oversight of the entire Anhui branch — had come in person.
Naturally, most of the information I sold to Haomun consisted of things that held little personal importance to me. But I understood that my indifference did not diminish its worth. That was simply the relativity of information's value.
"You've recently acquired a certain treasure map, I believe."
The moment I opened, Yeo Wol and Ma Sok both sharpened their focus and masked their expressions. They were assessing the veracity of my claim — the practiced instinct of seasoned information merchants.
"If I had to guess, the marker site would be Changxing, in Zhejiang Province."
At those words, Yeo Wol's eyes went round.
"How on earth do you know that?"
She had abandoned her composure almost immediately, pressing the question before any verification could occur. It meant she trusted my intelligence without needing to test it first.
The treasure map pointing to Changxing in Zhejiang Province.
This was the map that had begun circulating around this time. At the present moment, only an organization of Haomun's or the Beggars' Union's caliber would have been capable of tracing even the first thread of it.
The reason it remained so vivid in my memory was that this particular map had stirred up an extraordinary bloodbath.
But......
"Don't pursue it. Pull your hands away from that one."
That treasure map was a fake.
"Young Master Myeong."
It was Ma Sok who stepped forward, sensing that Yeo Wol's composure was not yet fully recovered.
"I trust you."
The goodwill we had built between us was not thin.
"But a treasure map of this scale is not something one discards lightly. You understand that, don't you?"
He was right.
The reason treasure maps drew blood was precisely because something of life-and-death value lay sleeping at their end.
"You're saying you need proof that the map is false?"
"That's correct."
Unfortunately, I had no such proof to offer.
No matter how deep our mutual trust ran, I could hardly tell them, I know because I lived through this in a previous life.
But if there had been no way forward, I would never have selected this as information worth selling in the first place.
"Then merely dip a toe into the treasure map. And in the meantime, dig into the Sorcery Spirit Palace."
It would take at least three more years for the truth to surface on its own. The fact that the map had been fabricated by the Sorcery Spirit Palace — the regional hegemon of Zhejiang Province and a member of the Sado League.
They had carried out the scheme in secrecy even from the Sado League's own headquarters, so it was only natural that Haomun remained in the dark.
But Haomun had not earned its reputation as a rival for the title of foremost intelligence organization under heaven for nothing.
With fragments of information this scattered, an organization like Haomun could assemble the full picture.
At the mention of the Sorcery Spirit Palace, Ma Sok's gaze turned razor-sharp. Sharing a banner in the Sado League did not make them friends.
"Thank you. We will treat your information with the weight it deserves."
They had profited from my intelligence often enough that they would not dismiss it out of hand.
Amid all this, Yeo Wol studied me with an air of artless innocence, probing all the while.
"And how exactly did you come by this information?"
"Someone you'd know told me."
Naturally, I did not take the bait.
"Tch."
I had long since stopped falling for such transparent theatrics — that particular lesson had been learned and buried ages ago.