Near the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy lay a lively town called Clear Mirror Town.
Since long ago, people had gathered along Clear Mirror Lake, whose waters were as clear as a mirror, and now a rather respectable market district had formed there.
When they entered the marketplace, the merchants' cries poured out along with the fishy scent of water.
“Catfish caught fresh this morning for just twenty coins!”
“We've got plenty of fresh ones! Come take a look!”
As befitted a lakeside town, fish was the most common sight in the marketplace.
With half the townspeople working as fishermen, fish was both the staple food here and the most common side dish.
“Hmm.......”
Cheon Su-rin, who had been heading to the academy, stopped walking.
He looked quite serious, his brow furrowed in thought, so Bong Du-chil, who was beside him, asked curiously.
“Hyung, what's wrong? Are you sick?”
“I'm torn.”
“Huh?”
“I'm torn about what to make for today's lunch.”
The one who kept house at the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy was Cheon Su-rin.
In particular, he was responsible for the disciples' lunches, so his shoulders were always heavy.
“How about pork? Something nice and greasy!”
“Oh, not bad.”
“Really?! Then to the butcher's......!”
“Yeah, today's lunch is going to be this guy.”
Where Cheon Su-rin's hand went was the fish stall.
Bong Du-chil's face, which had been swollen with anticipation, crumpled at once.
“Fish again?”
“You like fish.”
“No matter how much I like it, eating it for half a month straight is torture!”
Had it already been half a month?
Now that he heard it, it did seem like it had been a bit much.
But Cheon Su-rin had something to say as well.
“Can't be helped. Our academy's finances are a little tight. Fish is the cheapest thing around here.”
Compared to meat and vegetables, which were relatively expensive, fish was the most sensible choice in Clear Mirror Town.
Looking at Bong Du-chil's dejected back, Cheon Su-rin scratched the back of his head.
‘The Heavenly Slaughter Calamity had a sister too.’
He was an only child now, but to him, Bong Du-chil was as good as a real younger brother.
They had been together since eight years ago, back when the academy had only a single disciple.
Not all of his past life's memories had returned.
Even so, the image of himself at Fallen Star Lake, lamenting his sister's death in vain, came back vividly.
Was it because of that memory? Lately, Cheon Su-rin found himself especially fond of this dopey kid.
“Let's definitely have meat tomorrow.”
“Really?”
Bong Du-chil's expression brightened instantly.
But he soon glanced warily at Cheon Su-rin and whispered.
“Didn't you say the academy's finances aren't great? Where's the money coming from?”
“I found out where Father hid his emergency stash.”
“E-emergency stash?”
“Yeah. So the two of us will spend it and wipe our mouths clean.”
Bong Du-chil was desperate for meat, yet he seemed afraid of the aftermath.
“Won't it be scary when the Principal finds out......?”
“I'm using it to feed his disciple. He's not going to kill me for that. Just trust me.”
It was a boast that inspired no trust whatsoever, but lured by the temptation of meat, Bong Du-chil quietly nodded in the end.
CRASH—!
Just as he was about to take the fish, a sharp shattering sound rang out nearby.
When he turned his head, one of the market stalls had been smashed to pieces.
It was no mere accident.
At the center of the commotion stood men in clothes embroidered with a black tiger on the chest. They were members of the Black Tiger Gang.
“Those bastards again.”
The fishmonger clicked his tongue in disgust.
“Do they do this often?”
“Don't even get me started. Lately they've been picking fights over every little thing and running riot. Five or six merchants have already been hurt.”
He had heard the rumors, but the scene unfolding before his eyes was even more vulgar than he had expected.
So-ho, a squad leader of the Black Tiger Gang, was raising his voice.
“My little brother ate meat he bought here yesterday and complained of stomach pains all night!”
A large man beside him clutched his stomach and exaggerated his pain.
Anyone could tell it was an act, but the powerless shopkeeper turned ashen and rubbed his hands together.
“I-I'm so sorry! I'll refund the price of the meat right away, so please.......”
“Of course you will! You think just paying for the meat is enough? You've got to pay for my brother's medicine too.”
“O-of course. How much should I give you?”
“A hundred taels of silver.”
It was as though cold water had been thrown over the marketplace.
A hundred taels of silver for stomachache medicine. A hundred taels was a huge sum, on par with the price of an ordinary house.
“That's far too much! Where would I ever get that kind of money?!”
“No money? Then you'll pay with your body.”
At a single glance from So-ho, his underlings burst into the shop and began smashing everything in sight.
The shopkeeper tried to stop them, but a gang member shoved him and he tumbled to the ground.
The bastards even rained kicks on the fallen shopkeeper.
“They're going to kill someone at this rate! Hyung, I'll go get people from the law enforcement office!”
“Law enforcement?”
Cheon Su-rin handed the fish he was holding to Bong Du-chil.
“Officials and martial artists can never stand together. Even if those law enforcement bastards came, these guys would only get a punishment as soft as a cotton club. It wouldn't fix anything at the root.”
“Then we're just going to watch?”
“When did I say that?”
Cheon Su-rin slowly walked into the center of the commotion.
Only then did Bong Du-chil realize what his hyung meant to do, and he held his breath.
“Isn't that enough? Stop muddying the waters of the market.”
At the chilling voice, So-ho turned his head.
When a boy barely of age, still green behind the ears, stared straight at him, So-ho burst into an incredulous laugh.
“Are you lecturing me right now?”
“Yeah, you. The guy from the Black Tiger Gang or the Shit Tiger Gang or whatever.”
So-ho first sized up his opponent.
After all, the murim sometimes had young masters.
“What's your name? Which prestigious family's brat are you to be so full of yourself?”
“Cheon Su-rin. I teach kids at the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy over there.”
The Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy. So-ho searched his memory.
And reached a conclusion.
A nameless backwater academy stuck in a corner of Clear Mirror Town.
“Where does some dog-bone academy nobody get off acting so cocky? You learned a few lines of martial arts and think you're some chivalrous hero, but this isn't a place for games.”
“Aren't you just a backwater thug too? I heard the Black Tiger Gang only struts around with its head held high in hick towns like this.”
So-ho's face twisted savagely.
He had only meant to scare the kid a little since he was young, but that mouth definitely needed to be dealt with.
“You, today's the day they hold your memorial rites.”
So-ho seized the saber at his waist, radiating killing intent.
It was at that very moment.
“Don't draw it.”
“......?”
“The moment you draw that, something you really can't handle is going to happen.”
Cheon Su-rin's voice dropped low.
The playful look in his eyes had, at some point, sunk as cold as the blood-red waters of Fallen Star Lake.
The blade, half drawn from its scabbard, stopped in midair.
So-ho did not move. No, to be precise, he could not move.
‘A nobody from a backwater academy?’
The boy blocking him now was by no means an ordinary academy student.
What kind of life did one have to live to give off such vicious killing intent?
So-ho had seen every kind of ugliness at the very bottom of the dark path, but this was the first time he had ever felt such visceral fear.
Not even his master, the Boss of the Black Tiger Gang, could give off killing intent like this.
“......?”
But soon, So-ho tilted his head.
The chilling energy that had been binding his whole body like lead had vanished like a mirage.
‘Was I imagining it?’
It was easier on his mind to think so.
After all, the killing intent had lasted barely a second.
By So-ho's common sense, killing intent was not something one could control at will.
Unleashing that much energy in an instant and then erasing it without a trace was beyond the realm of common sense.
‘What was that just now.......’
Just as much as So-ho, Cheon Su-rin was also deeply shaken inside.
The way he had just spoken, and the sensation that had taken over his body.
It was a strange sense of alienation, as though he had become someone else, if only for a moment.
‘......Was that the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity?’
He shook his head, telling himself it could not be.
He was not the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity Jeok Geon-ho, but Cheon Su-rin of the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy.
Even if it was his past life, that bond should have ended in the cold waters of Fallen Star Lake.
Had the recurring dreams finally begun to gnaw through the wall of reality?
Cheon Su-rin secretly clenched and unclenched his fist.
Fortunately, his fingers moved as he willed.
That trivial sensation brought him a strange relief.
Clack—.
A sound from in front of him brought him back to his senses.
It was the sound of So-ho sliding his half-drawn blade back into its scabbard.
“We're pulling back.”
In the end, So-ho chose not to draw his blade.
Whether he had imagined it or not, an instinctive warning told him that if he drew his blade now, something irreversible would happen.
When in doubt, don't step in.
In the world of the dark path, where you could get your nose cut off with your eyes wide open, he had survived this long by keeping to that iron rule with blade-like strictness.
“Squad Leader? We're just leaving?”
His flustered underlings asked again, but So-ho scowled and shouted.
“Didn't you hear me?! We're withdrawing!”
At the fierce roar, the gang members hurried off.
So-ho cast one last glance at Cheon Su-rin and left as if being chased.
“Hyung!”
As soon as they disappeared, Bong Du-chil came scurrying over.
“That was amazing! You chased those guys off with a single word!”
“I didn't do anything. Those bastards got scared on their own and left.”
“That's even more amazing! You won with just your presence, without even fighting!”
He was not wrong, but Cheon Su-rin felt uneasy.
He could not be sure whether the presence that had driven them off was his own, or whether the monster within had briefly raised its head.
“Heh heh, I'm going to brag about this to all the kids at the academy!”
Oblivious to how his hyung felt, Bong Du-chil seemed simply proud that he had driven off the dark path gang.
“Thank you, Young Master.”
The shopkeeper came over and bowed.
There was blood at the corner of his mouth, but fortunately the injury was not serious.
“Not at all. I only did what anyone should.”
“The Principal of the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy has a great sense of chivalry too, and it seems his son has inherited that very disposition.”
The shopkeeper let out a deep sigh as he tidied up his ruined shop.
His gaze, cast down on the broken stall, was forlorn.
“With the orthodox sects' power waning, those dark path bastards run wild as if this were their own home. How long must we endure such a world...... For common folk like us, it's truly unbearable.”
The current state of the Central Plains was strange.
Unlike the past, when the orthodox sects had held the upper hand throughout history, the momentum of the dark path had lately soared to the heavens.
“The Heavenly Slaughter Calamity.......”
At the name that left the shopkeeper's mouth, Cheon Su-rin's eyelids trembled faintly.
“If not for that devil, such a dark era would never have come.”
The Bloody Battle of Fallen Star Lake.
That incident was the watershed that shook the landscape of the murim.
A hundred masters who had been called the pillars of the orthodox sects were massacred there.
Though the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity had died as well, for the orthodox sects it was a painful annihilation.
When the great trees of the orthodox sects vanished all at once, the balance of power collapsed, and the dark path gangs devoured the empty space.
The so-called Era of the Black Forest.
That was precisely why a third-rate sect like the Black Tiger Gang could rampage through the marketplace in broad daylight.
“Still, with people like you around, Young Master, there's still hope. Isn't that right, everyone?”
The merchants around them nodded in agreement.
Cheon Su-rin found it painful to meet their kindhearted gazes.
Did they know? That the very one who had opened the Era of the Black Forest they so hated was the boy before their eyes.
If they learned that the sword his past self had wielded was what had made their lives so wretched, what kind of expression would they make?
“I have nothing to offer as thanks, but would you at least take this?”
What the shopkeeper held out was a hefty chunk of pork.
It was a generous portion, enough to need both hands.
“It's all right. I didn't do it expecting anything in return.”
“My heart won't be at ease otherwise, so please accept it.”
Just as Cheon Su-rin was about to refuse, he felt a hand tugging at his sleeve.
When he turned his head, Bong Du-chil was sending him a desperate look, practically drooling.
At that pitiful sight, Cheon Su-rin finally swallowed a hollow laugh and nodded.
“......Then I'll gratefully accept it.”
Fortunately, it seemed he would be spared from becoming an unfilial son by raiding his father's emergency stash.
Cheon Su-rin took the heavy chunk of meat and left the market street, where a bitter air lingered.