Jang Geon slid off Jojo’s back and crawled to the lip of the cliff. Down below, with the cliff at her back, Ju Yeorang faced a man blocking her path. He saw their mouths moving and quickly focused his inner energy to sharpen his hearing.
“...So you’re saying you won’t cooperate?”
“No—how in hell is any of that my responsibility?”
The man—tall as a lamp post—stood ramrod straight with his hands clasped behind him, looking down at Ju Yeorang.
“The heir of our house put a rope around his neck without so much as a proper farewell letter. Over a mere female minstrel. Lucky for him we caught his breath before it left him, but he still hasn’t come to. Tell me it isn’t natural for the elders to want to know what happened.”
“Why the hell would I be responsible for some brat who hanged himself?”
Despite Ju Yeorang’s shout, the man slowly shook his head.
“There’s testimony from Miss Seom Jiyeong. She says you and the young master were far too close. Even if every word of hers isn’t true, it’s certain you’re involved somehow. And if you’re truly clean, then just come to the house and prove it.”
“Are you insane? Walk into your house while tied to an attempted-suicide scandal with your heir? You sure anyone comes back out alive from that?”
He took one step toward her.
“If you’re clean, that won’t matter.”
Ju Yeorang clenched her teeth, sank her stance, and gripped the hilt strapped across the small of her back.
“...Says the gentleman who killed my line first?”
He unfolded his hands and answered.
“That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t tried to run.”
When he brought his hands forward, Jang Geon finally saw it: the hilt jutting over the man’s right shoulder. Astonishingly, it had been there all along—completely unnoticed until he showed his hands.
Watching from above, Jang Geon knew at once the man was the real thing—lineage-trained, a proper master from an ancient house. One of those old houses that not only produced elite palace experts for ages but left their mark on the Imperial Army’s methods.
People say the houses who crossed to the New Continent were those pushed out of the Central Plains, but drifters on the frontier rarely outstrip that kind of art. What Ju Yeorang showed at the inn was decent, but it was hard to believe she could beat this man.
Staring down at their standoff, Jang Geon rolled onto his back and looked up. The blue sky, the white clumps of cloud, sun-warmed and blanched at the edges.
“...Wonderful. Folks are about to kill each other and the weather’s having a lazy day. Should’ve been reborn as a cloud.”
While he was talking nonsense, Jojo ambled up beside him. The horse stared blankly at Jang Geon, then at the cliffside scene, then bumped his head as if to ask how long he planned to lie there. Jang Geon shoved the head away, annoyed.
“Fine, you oaf.”
He got up, dusted himself off, glanced once more at the sky, sighed lightly—then stepped off the cliff.
He dropped right between Ju Yeorang and the man who looked ready to explode. For a fall from roughly four jang, the sound was surprisingly light.
The sudden appearance startled them both; they stared wide-eyed at Jang Geon crouched on the ground. Only when he slowly straightened did the man find his voice.
“...Who are you?”
“Jang Geon.”
The man spent a heartbeat parsing the words before realizing it was the name of the person who’d just fallen in. He hadn’t expected a straight answer to “Who are you?”, and his mouth shut in awkward surprise.
“You’re the one from the inn yesterday, aren’t you?” Ju Yeorang recognized him—the last patron to remain had stuck in her memory. The man scowled at that, flicking his gaze from the cliff to Jang Geon and back.
“...Fine, Jang Geon. Leaping from that height—that’s some agility. But why drop between me and this woman?”
“It’s flat here.”
He looked; true, the footing was good. He scowled harder.
“This isn’t a time for jokes. You’re interfering with the Je Family’s business. If you don’t step aside, I’ll remove you by force.”
Jang Geon straightened his crooked bamboo hat.
“Business, huh. What business?”
“Why do you care?”
“Tell me and I’ll move.”
The man’s gaze sharpened. Under the hat brim, Jang Geon’s eyes stayed calm—still as a quiet lake.
“...The transfer of a criminal.”
“Criminal, my ass!” Ju Yeorang exploded. “Didn’t you just say all I had to do was be clean? So you brand me first and then tell me not to run?”
“If you’re truly innocent, you can simply say so before the elders.”
Ju Yeorang spat on the dirt.
“After they pull out my nails and toenails? Don’t bullshit me.”
Ignoring her curses, the man turned his eyes back to Jang Geon.
“Step aside. If you interfere, remember: your name goes on the Je Family’s kill list.”
Jang Geon didn’t move. He slid his right foot forward and stood there, gaze steady on the man. After a moment of staring into those eyes, the man smiled—as if amused.
“A lone hero stepping up on a deserted forest path to shield the weak... I didn’t expect to meet someone playing knight-errant here. Foolish.”
With that, he shifted into a stance very close to Jang Geon’s. He slid his right foot back so the left came forward, and except for the right hand raised toward his shoulder, his quiet, still bearing matched Jang Geon’s.
Seeing the sudden faceoff, Ju Yeorang looked at Jang Geon in dismay. Even if she wanted to say something, the force between two poised fighters warned her not to intrude.
Facing Jang Geon, the man reached—unhurried—for the hilt at his shoulder. Then, all at once, inner energy surged. His senses expanded. In the storm of power and sharpened perception, only his opponent—Jang Geon—remained. Five senses, battle-sense, all spiked—and sketched the next heartbeat.
Two blades clearing scabbards. Two streaks of light angling for each other’s necks. Then the other man’s blade splitting into two blurred afterimages, scissoring in. One he could block. The other he could not.
“Hup!”
He drew breath and took a step back. A bead of cold sweat ran down his cheek. He blinked hard, sorting the vision he’d just seen from the reality still before him. Jang Geon hadn’t moved; he was as calm as ever.
Watching the man retreat, Jang Geon even asked, flatly, “What are you doing?”
The man licked his lips without meaning to.
“...You’re formidable. Which house are you from?”
Jang Geon frowned at the foolish question.
“From the Jang house, obviously. Didn’t you catch my name?”
“Jang? If you’re not from a great house, are you Imperial Army? No, not that—the Army’s cleaner than this. You’re too rough.”
He eased back a step at a time.
“All right, Jang Geon. To rush in without strength is a fool’s recklessness, but if you can shoulder it, that’s a true knight-errant. My name is Je Unseong. I’ll withdraw for today. That doesn’t mean the Je Family is giving up. We’ll see if you can truly bear our weight.”
Je Unseong backed away and vanished between the trees. As he disappeared, Jang Geon sighed lightly and muttered,
“...Ancient house arts really are something.”
He could guess what image had sent Je Unseong fleeing. The man’s conscious mind hadn’t felt danger, but decades of training had honed his battle-instinct; it had stitched scattered cues together and shown him a step ahead.
In a one-on-one where drawing steel means one man dies, that danger sense—and the house tradition that lets a man swallow his pride and withdraw—are exactly what set the ancient houses apart from other martial artists.
And Jang Geon felt it too—the boundary he’d crossed after beating the three demonic brothers. Without that step up, he wouldn’t have been able to drive off a noble-house warrior with mind-games alone.
Still, he clicked his tongue at missing the chance to test that house’s art firsthand. Not that he had any wish to chase a man down just to force a fight. He turned—and found Ju Yeorang watching him with a strange look.
She said, bluntly, “You should have killed him.”
“...What?”
“To buy time, at least. You should have killed him. He’ll use his house now to come after both of us.”
Jang Geon snorted.
“Kill him, and then what? They stop chasing?”
“I told you—time. We could’ve bought a day, at least, while the Je Family sorted itself out.”
He shook his head at the bloodthirsty logic. Typical martial world: say “just kill him” like asking for tea. He looked away from her and whistled toward the cliff. Jojo appeared, picking his way down around it.
Ju Yeorang watched, hands on her hips. “Hey. Why’d you help me?”
“Looked like you were about to be hauled off.”
“...If you hadn’t stepped in, yeah. I’d probably have taken a knife somewhere and been dragged along.”
“Then there’s something you say first.”
His eyes never left Jojo as he spoke. She hesitated, then straightened her clothes, bowed with fists together, and said:
“Ju Yeorang of Gamsan Province thanks you for your aid. You kept me from being hauled off in injustice. Whenever it may be, as soon as I can, I’ll repay this debt. Truly—thank you.”
Jang Geon scratched the tip of his nose. “Gamsan Province is home?”
She straightened with a sly smile. “Why, worried I worship the emperor? Gamsan got rich early thanks to the Imperial Army, unlike other parts of the New Continent. Doesn’t mean everyone from there loves the throne. If life were that good, I wouldn’t be scraping by out here.”
“That’s fair.”
He grabbed Jojo’s reins as the horse came up. He put a foot in the stirrup and swung up, and Ju Yeorang flustered.
“W-wait. You’re just leaving?”
“Why not? That Je Unseong ran. You should get moving too.”
She stepped closer, hurried. “Didn’t you hear him? He said he’d hunt us both.”
“I doubt it. If we split, they’ll chase you before me.”
“...That’s true. But then why help me at all?”
“You want me to sit and watch someone get snatched in front of me?”
She opened and closed her mouth, at a loss. It had been a while since she’d heard anyone say that.
Jang Geon ignored her and settled in the saddle, turning Jojo to go.
“Wait! Help me.”
He looked down at her. “...You want me alone to fight one of the ancient houses?”
“No, no. Not that far. I’ve got people to ask. Old ties from Gamsan. If they hear what I’m in, they’ll help. The Je Family won’t act rashly against them. With their help, we can fix this.”
She let out a long sigh and kept going.
“This whole mess is nonsense anyway. I took money to play the pipa, that’s all. The Je Family heir started mooning over me on his own, and when I wouldn’t have him, he hanged himself. Shit—how is that my fault?”
Jang Geon watched her rant, then asked, “And that witness?”
“Witness? Seom Jiyeong? Ha. She’s worse. She was the heir’s fiancée. The moment he told her he liked me, she told me to get lost. I was doing fine in Shinsa Province singing for a living—until her. I’m sure she smeared me every way she could and made me a bitch in their eyes. Otherwise this wouldn’t be happening. Bastards.”
She even punched the air, furious—ready to mash faces if they were here. Oddly, maybe because she was beautiful, it didn’t look ridiculous.
Catching Jang Geon’s and Jojo’s blank stares, she coughed into her fist. “Anyway—just help me until I link up with my people. I can’t handle that Je Unseong guy alone.”
Jang Geon leaned on the pommel and looked down at her. “For free?”
She grinned. “I’ll pay, of course... Jang Geon, was it? You’ve trained a fair bit. If you don’t belong to a house or sect, you’ve had it rough.”
“Wasn’t that bad. Why?”
Her eyes lit. “If you help me, my people could get you Imperial Army methods.”