“I should get going.”
Stepping outside, Salk looked up at the sky.
A full moon was up.
“It’s filthy bright.”
Just then, a ringtone sounded.
Salk took his cell phone out of his pocket.
-Old Man Man-bok
A bear-like emoticon with those characters written on it was trembling.
Salk chuckled and put the phone to his ear.
“What is it?”
[Viper sent his boys.
It seems Kim Yeong-chan’s boys have moved too.
Leave that place quickly.]
He said Viper had sold him to the prosecution.
Since Viper had sold him, he probably wanted to package him up nicely and offer him.
“Don’t worry.
I was planning to leave this dirty business as of today anyway.”
He could have called Su-yeon out to another place.
But he couldn’t because of Viper’s surveillance.
[Are you really planning to go to China?]
“I’m serious.
I’m going to go and see all the sights in China.
Who knows?
Maybe I’ll even be able to learn some real divine martial arts.”
[I’m sorry, this is all I can do for you.]
“What’s there to be sorry about… I won’t resent you, old man, so don’t worry.”
Just then, he saw two cars turning quickly from the intersection up ahead.
They were the vans that Viper’s gang usually rode in.
“Fuck.”
Spitting out a curse, he quickly ducked into an alleyway.
The next day.
A ship that had departed from Incheon was heading to China, coolly cutting through the West Sea buried in darkness.
Salk, who had been sleeping in the cabin, opened his eyes to the light coming through the window.
Soon realizing that he was on a ship, he raised his body.
With the help of Detective Lee Dong-hwa, whom he thought of as a sworn brother, he was on his way to China aboard the Jinchon Ferry.
Once he went to China, he intended not to return for a while.
Honestly, he had no lingering attachments to the Miracle Faction or Kim Man-bok.
His role was over anyway, and he was leaving because his time was up.
He was just dissatisfied that a bastard like Viper was manipulating what he had achieved.
Since he was awake, he left the cabin with the thought of getting some fresh air.
As he went out to the deck, a giant iron monster with eight legs standing in the sea in the darkness far away caught his eye.
Fire was blazing brightly at the end of the long, extended excavation tower.
“Ah, that must be a drilling rig.”
He had once heard a story about oil drilling in the West Sea on television.
Oil was discovered near the economic zone of the West Sea, and after South Korea and China both claimed it was theirs, they eventually decided to jointly develop it.
Salk took a cigarette out of his pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it, took a deep drag, and exhaled.
Watching the blazing fire in the vast ocean brought back a past he thought he had forgotten.