The Hidden Forge
Day by day, the inter-family duel drew closer.
Some sought meetings with the people of the Jusan Baek Family. Others wagered on the outcome of the match. Elsewhere, worry and expectation for Gwak Yeon — who would stand as the family's representative — continued to swell. And already a full week had passed.
Thud—!
"Y-you, you, what the hell are—"
"Me?"
Gwak Yeon stood in a back alley of Hangzhou, black mask covering his face.
"A vampire."
"Gyaaaaaaah!"
Those were the last words the man ever spoke. The blood-thread driven into the chest of the blood-soaked underworld figure burst apart. A notorious black-path moneylender who had driven any number of ordinary townsfolk to suicide. Gwak Yeon felt no regret in cutting him down.
He stood over the corpse.
"Hm."
This had been the daily routine for the past week.
Training by day; by night, prowling Hangzhou's back alleys to hone a vampire's strange abilities.
In the course of it, he had discovered something.
There's no question — the amount of blood I can use has grown since last time.
Blood he could store. The limit of blood he could accumulate beyond what he needed simply to survive was expanding, little by little, every time he drank the blood of the wicked he executed. Like inner energy gathering in a dantian.
The blood steadily amassing now had increased enough that he could fire a considerable number of blood-threads all at once.
And that was not all.
Clench.
The power in his fists was different, too. Hardened muscle — the change wrought by steady training of the flesh. Gwak Yeon's body now was considerably altered from the moment he had first become a vampire.
My leg strength feels greater as well.
Even a single cun more spring in the legs opened up several new techniques he could deploy. A stronger body meant he had drawn one step closer to the martial prowess of his previous life.
This duel is definitely going to be more entertaining than the last one, but…
Even amid this steady growth—
…information is still sorely lacking.
There had been no progress whatsoever regarding the forces in the shadows. Not only the man he had just killed — he had sought out black-path figures who, by rights, ought to have been steeped in underworld rumor, and still he had not been able to pry free any easy intelligence on an organization called the Ilwolgyo.
Step. Step.
Gwak Yeon emerged from the alley. Even at midnight, Hangzhou's pleasure district blazed as bright as day, and the silhouette of a towering brothel far ahead cast its shadow across his masked face.
An eight-story pleasure house that seemed to climb toward the moon itself. In Hangzhou — where staggering sums of money changed hands in a single night — even a place like that was not especially luxurious.
The black-path man he had just killed was much the same. Filth though he was, according to the underworld information Ma Gwan-wol had provided, he had not been anyone of real consequence in Hangzhou's underbelly.
Proper intelligence means I'll have to go after a larger-scale black-path outfit after all…
But that would complicate matters. The black-path organizations that ranked among Hangzhou's top three dealt with figures of considerable influence throughout Zhejiang Province as a whole — officials, merchant houses, even righteous-path martial artists. Strike a tangled giant of the underworld like that, and the odds that Gwak Yeon's secret would reach the ears of the Seoho Gwak Family in the process were uncomfortably high.
If I don't want to become a public enemy of the martial world as some demonic-arts practitioner, I'll either have to hide my vampire powers when I strike, or put together a thorough plan.
Either way, it would take time. Of course, there was no need to rush. If he won this match against Baek Jung-hyeok, Family Head Gwak Seo-ryong had promised to give him information on those forces in the shadows — which, in all likelihood, meant the Ilwolgyo.
Baek Jung-hyeok.
In the end, everything came down to winning that duel. At that thought—
Gwak Yeon gave a quiet snort of amusement. He pulled off his mask and turned his steps back toward the main thoroughfare, where the crowds were beginning to thicken once more.
He had not gone many paces when he focused a vampire's keen hearing toward the night sky. Faintly, a sound reached him.
Caaaw—! Caaaw—!
At the same time, a small shape took wing from the roof of a distant tavern. It almost seemed as though it had been searching for Gwak Yeon after he had vanished into the back alleys.
…So it wasn't my imagination.
He was nearly certain. For the past week, that bird had been following him. It was almost certainly the same creature that had left its droppings at the family estate last time. Whenever Gwak Yeon passed along Hangzhou's pleasure avenue — lined with brothels and wine houses — the bird would drop a little closer, as if it assumed he would never notice it among the thronging crowds.
Caaaw—!
Just in case, whenever he hunted the black path he had always moved in the bird's blind spots — between wine houses, through the layered shadows of other buildings and alleys — and only then had he worn the mask.
Step. Step. Step…
Gwak Yeon glanced at the bird trailing the direction of his walk. He had a fairly good idea of where the creature had come from.
Even so—
Sorry, but I'll have to lead you on another wild goose chase.
Melting into the crowd, he set his feet moving briskly once more. What he had grown accustomed to over the past week was not only daytime training and nighttime judgment of the black path.
Once again slipping the bird's gaze, he threw himself into the alley behind a wine house stacked with carts and crates, and drew every sense in his body to its peak — to pursue yet another objective beyond martial training, black-path justice, and the search for information.
In other words: to find the blacksmith who forged unique weapons — said to be hidden somewhere in Hangzhou.
A manor filled with strange and fantastic rock formations. Boulders shaped like clouds, mountains — even waterfalls — ringed the walls on every side.
Clang—! Clang—!
A man hammering red-hot iron came into view. The left arm gripping the tongs that held the metal, the right arm swinging the hammer — both were thick with scarred muscle. An impressive blacksmith.
With a long breath, he wiped the sweat from his brow with his elbow, turned his head for a moment, and muttered,
"Still can't get used to it."
Smoke rose from the forge chimney. Once that smoke crossed the manor's boundary, it would transform into the kitchen smoke of the five-story wine house pressed right up against them. No — the vast manor itself would appear, to ordinary eyes, as nothing more than an enormous blank wall without a single door. At most, people would take it for a warehouse attached to the tall wine houses crowding it from either side or from behind.
"Among all those Hangzhou fools drowning themselves in drink, not a single one can tell the sound of my hammer from their side dishes."
"That's the power of a formation for you, isn't it, elder brother?"
"Creepy business, either way."
"Haha. The countless sects and families of the martial world who study formations would faint to hear you say so, elder brother."
A white-haired man seated in the opposite pavilion, scratching away at something with a brush, answered with a laugh.
"Studying the principles that explain the order of the cosmos — the Book of Changes, the Eight Trigrams, and the rest — then using them to work a slight change upon nature's harmony. How much devotion it takes to achieve even that simple change… I hope elder brother is beginning to appreciate it."
The principles of formations were uncanny. A place that looked like ordinary forest from outside revealing a cave within; a path that had clearly been there, only to become a cliff's edge the moment one set foot on it — such things were hardly rare in the martial world. The very idea of concealing a large manor with a forge attached in the middle of a great city like Hangzhou had likewise been made possible only by the power of a formation.
"Even the renowned Jegal Family, famous throughout the realm, grows humbler every time they study this very subject — formations. Is that not so?"
"Not to my taste."
Hissss—!
After plunging the fiercely heated iron into a tub of cold water, the blacksmith lifted the wine flask at his waist and gulped it down. Then he grinned and pointed at the brush in the white-haired scholar's hand.
"Not to yours either, I'd wager."
"Haha. However marvelous formations may be, how could they compare to the lifelong wish that defines a man's life? What metallurgy is to you, elder brother, these written words are to me."
The scholar gently set his brush down upon the countless sheets of paper stacked inside the pavilion, then grinned and nodded toward the blacksmith.
"Is that not precisely why you honored Grandfather's dying wish, elder brother?"
"…Spare me the nonsense."
Ha Mu-won the blacksmith — called a hidden legend of the city of Hangzhou — nodded with a bitter expression. There was a reason a craftsman of his caliber forged weapons in secret within Hangzhou.
My grandsons.
It had been their grandfather's final will.
A blacksmith is one whose livelihood is made through weapons. If you would not come to regret it late, as I did, then wield your talent with the utmost care.
Ha Mu-won's grandfather had once forged a unique weapon for one of the most infamous villains in the martial world. His lifelong conviction that a blade had no eyes had turned to tears after that weapon claimed the lives of hundreds of ordinary people.
Judge their worth.
And so the Ha brothers' lifelong wish had begun. There was no better place than this for Ha Mu-won's secret manor — where he fitted unique weapons only for righteous chivalrous heroes who might change the world for the better. Hangzhou. A great city where every kind of martial-world grudge was tangled like a spider's web was the perfect stage on which to observe warriors of every stripe.
"In that sense, don't we make a rather fine pair? You with that hammer, I with this brush — encouraging chivalrous deeds throughout the martial world."
In truth, his younger brother's words were not wrong. This manor itself was proof. Without the secret formation his brother had prepared, even Ha Mu-won could never have settled so discreetly at the very heart of Hangzhou—
Creeeak.
—and in that instant, both Ha Mu-won and his brother whipped their heads around.
"…!"
"…!"
The great gate, shrouded in mist. A door invisible from the outside swung wide open, and at the same time—
"Is anyone there?"
—someone appeared.
Gwak Yeon understood, in a vague way, the bewilderment of the two men whose sanctuary beyond the formation had been exposed.
"W-we, uh, we're all out of wine~~~"
"Come, come! We're closed for the night, so out you go~~~"
"I'm not drunk."
"…"
"…"
They might have taken him for a lucky drunk who had staggered in on wine-soaked feet.
"Hahaha! So you've wandered into the Three Crossings of the Underworld, have you!"
"If you value your life, get out of this dream at once!"
"I'm well aware this is not a dream."
"…"
"…"
They might have taken him for a man who believed the place he had stumbled into was some kind of dream.
But—
"I came here knowing what this place is."
"…!"
"…!"
Gwak Yeon knew.
This is it.
This was the place where the legendary craftsman who forged unique weapons for the righteous made his hidden home. Using a formation — the sort usually employed to conceal a family estate or a treasure vault somewhere in the mountains or by a river — to hide a place within a city was quite impressive.
"…"
"…"
Beyond the mist, the heads of two faintly visible human figures turned toward him.
"You claim you knew what this place was when you came?"
"I did."
"Then say it."
"Is this not the secluded dwelling of Hangzhou's master craftsman — the one who forges unique weapons for chivalrous heroes?"
"Hrm."
There was composure in the reply. No doubt because the manor's various defensive systems had already been set in motion. The faint sound of dozens of iron arrows being loaded into mechanical array-formations reached him — ready to fire at a single signal — but Gwak Yeon was in no hurry.
It's fine.
He already knew this was a forge that made unique weapons for the sake of chivalrous deeds. That much could be roughly inferred from the rumors circulating through Hangzhou alone.
But—
"In that case… how did you find this place?"
The answer to that question was different. This was not a location one could easily pin down from Hangzhou's floating rumors alone. Reaching it through a great city awash in every kind of sound and scent was no simple task, even with a few clues in hand.
A sharp iron tang mixed into a particular smell of wine. The ring of metalworking buried beneath a particular strain of music. Strip every branch from the rumors and those clues remained. Hangzhou was so vast that finding this place from those scraps alone would not have been easy even with a vampire's sharpened senses.
"And the Seven Directions Formation laid over this manor is not the sort of array one commonly sees in the martial world."
Breaking the formation itself. Finding the precise point of a place that, from the outside, looked like nothing more than an iron-plated wall deep in an alley — and opening the manor gate — was harder still.
"Unless you merely staggered in while drunk and knocked by chance… how exactly did you dismantle this formation?"
"As to that—"
It had been the same for Gwak Yeon. The candidate sites matching those clues had numbered in the dozens, even with a vampire's senses. Without the memory of his previous life that had surfaced while he walked Hangzhou's streets, finding this place in a mere week would have been impossible.
Damn it. From now on I shouldn't take just any customer. Once I've made a little money, I'll hide myself away somewhere and forge only for those who show real promise.
That was it.
Hiding in a city of the martial world and forging unique weapons for promising chivalrous heroes.
That had been the dream of a close friend — one Gwak Yeon had heard with his own ears in his previous life.
By the way, where do you think would be best to hide?
He had even recommended candidate sites and the precise location. Recalling that memory of his previous life, Gwak Yeon broke into a quiet grin.
"…It would seem I must have earned a little good fortune in a past life."