The Blacksmith Who Forges Wings
A master craftsman’s weapon?
Gwak Yeon’s eyes lit up.
The proprietor of the free-meal shop, still casting furtive glances around them, leaned in and went on in a low, secretive voice.
“Among the rumors running through Hangzhou’s back alleys, there’s one about an eccentric craftsman who forges wondrous weapons. That Ma Gwan-wol—whenever he drank, he’d start singing about kidnapping the man and forcing him to make a signature weapon of his own.”
“A signature weapon?”
“Yes.”
Gwak Yeon hummed thoughtfully.
Come to think of it, even in the Central Plains of his previous life, finding experts who carried their own signature weapons had hardly been rare.
Everyone but me.
He himself had been the exception—fighting with whatever came to hand from the bottom up until he’d forged his own unique martial art.
A signature weapon. A custom armament, built to the wielder’s martial arts, physique, tastes, and even habits.
An underworld mongrel, overreaching himself with talk of a signature weapon…
Then again, hadn’t the special chain-sickle Yeom Ja-dan, the Shadowless Old Monster, had used in their final clash also been that man’s signature weapon?
Even after his reincarnation, Gwak Yeon had wondered about it from time to time. If he had possessed an ultimate weapon of his own, might he have brought the man down without that last mutual destruction?
Who could say.
At any rate, the shopkeeper’s tale was more than a little intriguing.
“They call him the blacksmith who attaches wings.”
“Wings?”
“Yes. Stick a pair on a rat and it wouldn’t amount to much—but wings on a tiger would be terrifying.”
“True enough. In this trade, everyone likes to think of himself as the tiger.”
“Exactly. The Honcheon Sect lot probably thought the same.”
The shopkeeper ground his teeth for a moment, then resumed.
“It wouldn’t have done them any good either way. They say only the one that old man chooses ever gets to meet him.”
“You don’t even know where he is?”
“No. No one does. Whether he’s hidden in the middle of the pleasure quarter, living out on the city’s fringe, buried among the crowds, or somewhere near the mountains and rivers…”
“Is that even possible? Hammering an anvil, stoking a forge, raising all that racket—that’s smithing.”
“They say he tempers weapons by forging starlight.”
“Hah.”
“There’s no other way to explain it. For all we know, he may not even exist. If you aren’t the one that old man chooses, they say you’ll go your whole life without ever laying eyes on him…”
“And has anyone been chosen?”
“Still rumor. People claim an old man appeared out of nowhere while they were walking, handed them a weapon, and vanished. The problem is, some start using the same story to excuse stolen goods or other shady pieces.”
“Hmm.”
“But the martial artists who truly received that old man’s weapons are said to show a level of skill so different you have to rub your eyes and look again. That, too, is only rumor—yet the Honcheon Sect seemed to take it seriously enough.”
Hangzhou was a city where tens of thousands drank in a single night. In the back alleys of a place that size, stranger rumors than this were bound to circulate.
“He was drunk enough to talk about spending real money to recruit someone just so he could get his hands on one.”
“That someone wouldn’t happen to have been named Jang Po, would he?”
“Ah! That sounds right.”
So the name turned up here as well.
Injung-jangpo—that ridiculous moniker had been so memorable it had stuck with him.
“So where did he say he was taking that man?”
“The rumor is there’s a place with a peculiar smell of liquor. The scent is so distinctive that, compared to what we serve at our shop—”
Gwak Yeon listened in silence to the description that followed.
He paid close attention. It was the kind of talk one might as well dismiss—but committing it to memory wouldn’t hurt.
In this life, having a signature weapon of my own might not be such a bad idea.
His plan was to train by day and, by night, hunt down the more vicious underworld trash of Hangzhou whose names Ma Gwan-wol had given him.
For the month remaining until the duel, there were no better targets for gathering information and rumors about the hidden forces tied to his past life—and for practicing his vampire abilities in real combat.
And while he was at it, he could keep his ears open for leads like this one and hone the senses that vampirism had sharpened.
“—That’s about all of it, for now. After all that talk of gratitude, I’m embarrassed to offer something this thin.”
“Not at all. Thank you.”
“If I hear anything else related, or anything else that might be of use, I’ll keep it in mind and let you know… Ah! No, I couldn’t!”
“Take it.”
“Truly, it’s fine. I didn’t speak up to receive something like this.”
“That isn’t why I’m giving it.”
As the shopkeeper stubbornly refused the silver Gwak Yeon had drawn from his robes, Gwak Yeon twisted and turned his arm, pressing the coins on him again and again.
“It’s a bribe.”
“I—pardon?!”
“Your shop’s noodles are excellent. This is a bribe so you’ll keep the place running and I won’t find myself unable to eat them again.”
“Ah—no, even so…”
“Please accept it.”
The shabbily dressed shopkeeper shook his head over and over in mortified refusal, while Gwak Yeon smiled and insisted it was fine, the two of them locked in a gentle tug-of-war.
“………”
“………”
At the family gate, the eyes of the estate’s doorkeepers watching the pair took on a curious glint.
A rumor began to circulate within the family estate.
The Second Young Master had changed—
It was a whisper that had been spreading little by little ever since the duel with the Third Young Master. Of course, it had nothing to do with the still-contested outcome of that match.
Plenty of people still refused to believe in Gwak Yeon’s skill, going so far as to claim he had seized a once-in-a-millennium stroke of luck, or that the family head had secretly intervened between brothers.
But when someone becomes a topic of talk, people look at him again. And once they have reason to look, the changes in his manner leap out.
“The Second Young Master… hasn’t he changed?”
“Well, he’s kind enough.”
“More than that—he seems more confident.”
It wasn’t only the family’s warriors.
“Young Master Yeon was always kind, you know.”
“That’s true. He always made a point of greeting us first.”
“Lately the shadow’s gone from his face.”
“Even his walk seems brighter, doesn’t it?”
“Like he has confidence?”
“It’s a good look on him.”
“He talks more, too.”
“Well, I always liked him before.”
Those who cleaned every corner of the manor, the maids and servants running errands, the cooks, and everyone else hired across the various halls to keep the family’s affairs in motion—
And beyond them, the retainers serving in every hall and office found themselves noticing, one after another, how different Gwak Yeon’s every gesture had become.
“I hear he’s often seen on the training grounds.”
“He looks surprisingly practiced at training. Does that mean he used to train alone in his quarters before?”
“I keep mixing him up with the way he used to look.”
“Any effort to grow stronger is good to see. They say he’s been going out more often lately… Maybe he wants to test his strength.”
“I heard Iyeongak was cleaned not long ago.”
“Looks like he’s finally starting to move. The Seoho Gwak Family is the Seoho Gwak Family, after all.”
Gwak Yeon’s transformed presence—and that new self-assurance—seemed, for most of the household, to cast him in a positive light.
…Hah. Now, of all times?
Chief Steward Yu found the atmosphere thoroughly distasteful.
In his view, the one who ought to become Young Family Head of the Seoho Gwak Family was, without question, Gwak Ho-shin.
After all the effort I’ve poured into the Third Young Master…
Even as chief steward, he had volunteered to manage the ledgers of the hall under the Third Young Master’s charge. Busy enough with his own work, he had still cast his lot with the man he judged the next family head.
Each young master’s pavilion activity was bound up with the question of succession. Once a family retainer’s name was entered under a particular hall, it could not be changed without Family Head Gwak Seo-ryong’s leave—at least not until the Young Family Head was decided.
So why does everything have to go sideways right there!
This should have been the Third Young Master’s moment to surge ahead.
Samho-gak, having completed one commission after another large and small throughout Hangzhou, was already a famous hall. The epithet of Hangzhou’s Mad Dog, Soundless Thunder, had long since left the city and spread across Zhejiang.
The Young Family Headship was almost within reach…!
A victory in the duel against Baek Jung-hyeok of the Jusan Baek Family would have made it more than possible. And that duel carried the commercial rights of a great trading house that dominated Zhejiang Province.
Thwack!
He struck his own knee in anger—and the mere sound was enough for someone outside the room, sensing a guest’s foul mood, to speak carefully through the door.
“Honored guest, is there anything you might need—”
“I’m fine!”
The fury in his reply was not solely because his plans had hit a snag.
…Damn it. ‘Guest,’ of all things.
Even if this wasn’t Hangzhou, he disliked the way this tavern addressed him as a mere “guest” instead of “my lord.”
…And why is that miserable bastard so late?
He also disliked having to wait first for the man with whom he had arranged a meeting even before the Gwak brothers’ duel.
Would they have treated me like this if I’d been a senior of one of the Seven Great Families?
Chief Steward Yu ground his teeth. The old hunger flared in him again.
To be someone important in every room. To hold more influence than anyone else.
In short—
To rise in the Central Plains—
Stripped of every ornamental value, the desire was simple and ferociously strong. He had ground himself down for years to achieve it.
Should I never have come to the Seoho Gwak Family? No—no regrets. At the time, this was the best choice.
When he had first stepped out into the world, he had not been enough to become a retainer of one of the Seven Great Families. That was precisely why he had chosen the Seoho Gwak Family.
He remembered the veiled looks the family’s key figures had worn in those days. Only after becoming someone important in the household had he heard their talk of a “hidden force” they were pursuing… Honestly, he still didn’t fully understand it.
But he did know one thing.
That “vengeance” was the greatest engine driving a family’s growth. You didn’t even need the old saying about sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall—the Sichuan Tang Family itself had climbed to its height that way.
Hoo.
The Seoho Gwak Family, which had grown so sharply in so short a time, still ran on that engine. For the moment it might look inferior to the Jusan Baek Family, which had risen slowly over long years—but if things continued as they were, it could climb above them.
That madman’s taking forever.
Where ignorant men saw one or two years, he looked ten or twenty ahead. After long weighing of the scales, Chief Steward Yu had entered the Seoho Gwak Family instead of the Jusan Baek—and that conviction had never changed.
And it still hadn’t.
Which was to say—
Bang—!
“…You’re early.”
From here on, he would outstrip that damned man who had entered the Jusan Baek Family in his place. He would rise higher. Without fail.
“Hahaha. How long could you have been waiting? Sit, sit.”
Hiding the thought behind a laugh, Chief Steward Yu welcomed the man who had just entered—Chief Steward Gam of the Jusan Baek Family.
“It’s been some time, Chief Steward Gam.”
“A pleasure, Chief Steward Yu.”
And so the two chief stewards of the great rival families—once classmates at the same academy—sat down together.
“By the way, about that proposal of yours regarding this coming duel…”
On the eve of the crucial match between the two families’ successors.
“…is it still good?”