No. 104 Black Snake Chamber (4)
Meanwhile, Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol were advancing along a narrow, lightless passage.
This secret passage had been carved when the Black Snake Chamber was first founded, but with the passing years it had gradually slipped from living memory. And when the previous Chamber Master and his entire leadership were "replaced" in one stroke, it became a place no one alive knew existed. How Kim Ho had managed to dig it up was anyone's guess, but as infiltration routes went, it could hardly have been better suited.
Boom—!
The distant roar came rolling down the corridor, shaking loose a fine drift of dust from overhead.
"Brother Kim has made his start, has he."
"Man, that's loud."
Proof that Kim Ho was raising hell at the front gate. It meant an opening had opened up for them to slip inside all the more easily — and an opening like that had to be seized while it lasted. The two men quickened their pace.
The Black Snake Chamber beyond the secret passage was in a state of utter chaos. Some madman had just detonated what amounted to a thunderbolt at the front gate; had the place stayed calm through that, it would have been the stranger sight by far.
"What the—! What's going on?!"
"The front gate! It's the front gate!"
"Fire! Get the fire out first!"
The Black Snake warriors sprinting this way and that paid hardly any mind to Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol — the two had already changed into the black uniforms they'd stolen ahead of time.
As for the snake tattoo on the back of the hand, Shin Byung-cheol had sketched that on rough and freehand. The serpent did look a touch clumsy, admittedly, but Go Hyeon-woo decided this much would do. Still better than whatever the young miss would have managed... Had Seo Ye-in held the brush, he suspected, the result would have been an earthworm rather than a snake.
The vault of the Black Snake Chamber, their true objective, lay deep underground. That meant walking in precisely the opposite direction from every warrior streaming toward the front gate, and the men they crossed paths with now and then shot them glances that plainly asked, and where do you two think you're going? A few even stopped short, studying the pair closely with expressions that said those faces were utterly unfamiliar.
Every time, Shin Byung-cheol jabbed a finger toward the front gate and bellowed.
"Hey! Are you deaf?! The gate — the front gate!"
And with that he'd brush past the head-tilting warriors and hurry on. Of course, such shallow sleight of hand stopped working the moment they were properly underground.
Two men in black stood sentry near the entrance to the depths, untouched by all the commotion, silently holding their post. Judging by the measure of them, they ran half a step to a full step above the men they had crossed back in the guest hall. Elite warriors of the Black Snake Chamber, then.
As Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol drew near, one of the warriors stared at Go Hyeon-woo for a long moment — then drew his sword.
"An intruder, I see."
"..."
When Go Hyeon-woo asked with a raised brow how he'd seen through him at a single glance, the elite warrior answered.
"Plenty of men have set foot in this place and left it headless — no one who truly works these halls could fail to know as much. And besides..." He went on in a tone that made clear he took no pleasure in admitting it. "...I have no memory of ever seeing a face like yours. Pretty as a courtesan's orchid, you are."
To be likened to a courtesan's orchid was, in the language of men, simply another way of saying unfairly, irritatingly handsome.
Shin Byung-cheol, listening in beside him, had his face crumple up like a wad of tissue. Goddammit, life is so unfair. He got busted for being too handsome? Let me get busted like that for once.
Sadly, though, Shin Byung-cheol in his black uniform rang not one false note — he was a perfectly unremarkable, low-rank Black Snake foot soldier, Model C, through and through. So while Shin Byung-cheol cursed the world in his heart, Go Hyeon-woo smiled pleasantly and stepped slowly forward.
"You do me honor, praising this humble face. Still, I must ask your understanding."
"Your understanding of what?"
A golden blaze flickered at Go Hyeon-woo's hand in that same instant. The elite warrior's reflexes were nothing ordinary either — his sword came up in a blink to meet it. Yet a heartbeat later, blade and man alike had been cloven in two. And at some point, a golden ritual sword had found its way into Go Hyeon-woo's grip. Looking down at the man now coming apart, Go Hyeon-woo finished what he'd been saying.
"That I must cut you down."
He turned his gaze on Shin Byung-cheol, and found—
"Hey, hey! Help! HELP! Hurry up!"
—him hard-pressed, stumbling backward one step at a time. If this was how he fared against a rank-and-file warrior, an elite one could only be worse. Left with no choice, Go Hyeon-woo waded in and settled the matter with a sweep of his sword.
Leaving the fallen elite behind them, he remarked, half in jest.
"You must strive yet harder, Brother Shin."
"I mean, you're not wrong, but honestly? This is less about me slacking and more about you two being freakish monsters."
Really — wasn't it strange, if anything, for first-years to be romping around loose in a B-rank dungeon? Shin Byung-cheol had points of his own to make, too.
"And I didn't come here to swing a sword, alright? I was brought in as a technician. High-skilled labor, thank you very much."
"I know it. My expectations of you run high, Brother Shin."
Go Hyeon-woo answered with a smile. He understood well enough that each of them had his own role to play — and that within his own field, Shin Byung-cheol's skills were nothing short of first-rate. If all he could offer was an awkward extra spoon at the table, Brother Kim would have cut him loose long ago. It was precisely because that wasn't the case that he was here, part of this operation — which was as good as an endorsement under Kim Ho's own name.
Stung awake by those "high expectations," Shin Byung-cheol drew out a long, chopstick-like tool and sent it spinning over his knuckles, all but itching for a mechanism to show itself.
"Just watch. I'll show you right now."
The road to the vault was a labyrinth of passages in every shape and size — corridors held by elite warriors lying in wait, corridors stuffed full of traps and machinery. And the strategy guide had been explicit: concentrate on punching through only where the mechanisms were. The corridor stretching out before them was a textbook example. Sleek and spotless on the surface — yet beyond the wall, one could just barely catch the faintest rattle of something shifting. Mechanisms, in all likelihood.
At long last, the hour of Shin Byung-cheol had arrived.
"Mark this well," Shin Byung-cheol declared, borrowing the grave diction of the Black Snake warriors. "The sight of this great Shin Byung-cheol in action."
"Haha..."
Hugging one wall, Shin Byung-cheol crept along crabwise, then abruptly jammed two chopsticks into a seam barely visible to the eye and churned them about. A moment later a distinct clack sounded from within, and the faint rattling in their ears fell silent all at once.
"That's it done, then?"
"Yep. Let's go."
Shin Byung-cheol sauntered on ahead. Externally nothing seemed to have changed, so Go Hyeon-woo braced himself in case the trap still triggered. But the corridor stayed quiet from end to end.
Another passage suspected of harboring a trap appeared, and this time Shin Byung-cheol strolled calmly forward before abruptly dropping to one knee. He rapped the floor in a few places, then beckoned Go Hyeon-woo over with a wave of his hand.
"Step here."
Go Hyeon-woo set one foot where Shin Byung-cheol pointed, then bore down with slow, steady force, the subtle leverage of the thousand-pound pendulum doing the work. Crunch— his foot sank deep, opening up a small cavity. At a glance, something like the nerve center of a mechanism sat nestled within. Shin Byung-cheol matter-of-factly drove a single chopstick deep into it and rose to his feet.
"Next. Moving on."
From there on out, Shin Byung-cheol made a mockery of every trap that appeared, one after another, dismantling them far too easily for comfort. Go Hyeon-woo gave voice to his honest admiration.
"Your hand with mechanisms is truly remarkable, Brother Shin."
"You see that? Did you see it?! This is what it means to actually use your head. You don't get there by swinging a sword all day."
Preening, Shin Byung-cheol launched into a lecture of everything he knew, and Go Hyeon-woo nodded along with a good-natured expression, hearing him out. Then, sensing something, he raised a hand to cut the lecture short and tipped his chin toward what lay ahead.
Beyond the corner where the corridor bent in a sharp L, three sets of footsteps were closing in. Go Hyeon-woo gathered his momentum and mouthed the words without a sound. We cut through in one stroke.
Exactly as expected, three elite warriors rounded the corner. At the sight of Go Hyeon-woo, they reacted just as the sentries before them had.
"Intruder!"
The instant the word left his mouth, two of them drew and charged while the third spun on his heel to flee his post — to spread word of the intruder's presence. But by the time any of them had reacted, Go Hyeon-woo's blade was already in motion.
A single stroke riding the sudden gale — speed beyond the eye.
A lone current of gale-force wind came tearing through the windless underground. Go Hyeon-woo shot forth in the same instant, as though he and the storm had become one body.
The two elite warriors swung on pure reflex, but he was past them before their blades could bite. The next heartbeat, deep sword-wounds bloomed across their chests.
"Ugh!"
"Kch—!"
And without shedding an ounce of that launching speed, he ran the fleeing man's back through. So blinding was the whole sequence that all three bodies struck the floor nearly at once.
Go Hyeon-woo glanced back at Shin Byung-cheol with a faint smile.
"Technique is a fine thing, but would it not be wiser to shore it up with strength of your own?"
"...I'll get right on that."
And so Shin Byung-cheol recovered his humility.
Taking turns at the fore and trading feats as they pressed on, the two soon found themselves at the Black Snake Chamber's vault — or to be precise, at one of its walls. The entrance itself would surely be watched by masters even beyond the warriors they'd cut down so far, and anyone hoping to do his work quietly had no choice but to dig himself a mouse hole.
"Brother Shin, stand back a moment."
Once Shin Byung-cheol had retreated a safe distance, Go Hyeon-woo drew his blade through the air a few times, smooth as flowing water. The thick stone wall parted like tofu, revealing an inner layer built entirely of machinery.
That part, naturally, belonged to Shin Byung-cheol. He drove several chopsticks home and gave the signal, and Go Hyeon-woo swung once more. Only then did a wide hole yawn open in the wall, and the two slipped inside.
And the vault, sure enough, was crammed full of precious and costly things — gold and silver treasure, porcelain, famed swords, secret manuals, rare elixirs...
Shin Byung-cheol wandered from pile to pile, drool streaming from the corner of his mouth.
"Hnnngh... sell just one of these and it'd fetch a fortune..."
But if he valued his life, drooling was as far as it could go. Every last item was plastered all over with black talisman-like slips — poison-laced talismans, specially crafted through the Chamber Master's own martial arts. So much as graze one with a fingertip and every slip in the room would vent its toxic mist at once, and this cramped little vault would be choked to the brim in the space of a breath. Unless one was fully warded against poison arts, hands-off was the only sane policy.
And there was exactly one thing in the room that bore no talisman.
There it is.
Sharpening his inner sight, Go Hyeon-woo swept the vault corner to corner — and there, tucked away in its deepest recess, sat a small chest lacquered head to toe in black. He'd nearly walked right past it without ever noticing. It was hidden so cunningly that one could well believe even the sitting Chamber Master had glanced over it carelessly once and never thought twice — which might have been exactly why no talisman had ever been affixed to it.
Shin Byung-cheol took the chest in hand and gave it a gentle shake, this way and that — not a whisper from within. Just as he cocked back to shake it harder, Go Hyeon-woo stopped him.
"Save it for later. Let's be quick — lingering will do us no favors."
"Fair enough."
They'd already felled a fair number of Black Snake gang members on the way in, and every extra minute raised the odds of discovery. So the two retraced their steps at speed, the disabled mechanisms letting them make good time. All that remained was to walk out of the Black Snake Chamber and move to safe ground.
Shin Byung-cheol, his nerves already gone slack, started running his mouth.
"Man, that really was easy. Nothing even popped out at us."
"Do not tempt fate, Brother Shin."
"Yeah, yeah. My big mouth, my big problem."
Shin Byung-cheol playfully mimed dragging a zipper across his lips.
But words, once spoken, take root...
Before long, Go Hyeon-woo at the point slowed sharply — and came to a dead stop.
"What now, what is it this ti—"
Shin Byung-cheol's question died in his throat. At the far end of Go Hyeon-woo's gaze stood an old man.
The old man was white from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. His skin held no trace of blood, pallid as bone, and even the pupils of his eyes were a stark, bloodless white. White ought to read as clean and pure — but worn this far past its limit, it turned skin-crawling instead.
Go Hyeon-woo knew exactly who this strangely accoutred old man was; Kim Ho had long since told him his identity. A corner of his heart settled low and heavy.
Brother Kim said I would hardly ever cross this one's path. So things have taken a difficult turn after all...
The old man looked down at the wounds carved into the dead gang members, then lifted his eyes to meet Go Hyeon-woo's.
"Very clean handiwork. Was it yours?"
"It was."
Go Hyeon-woo gave the honest answer, then bowed with full courtesy and asked in turn.
"Might you be Senior Baek Hyeok-seo — elder of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult?"
At the sound of his true name, something unusual flickered through the old man's eyes; then, slowly, he nodded.
Baek Hyeok-seo. His identity was none other than the vice-master of the Black Snake Chamber — and in days past, a venerable elder master of the Demonic Cult, one half of the Black-and-White Twin Serpents.
The hidden boss — White Snake.
They had just come face to face with the worst opponent the Black Snake Chamber could possibly offer.