Jin Sohan saw Dogon off, then met Choo Sahyeok as he returned from handling the West Gold Escort Agency matter, and the two of them went inside the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe together. In the meantime, unfamiliar martial artists who had been following Choo Sahyeok saluted Jin Sohan in stiff tones.
“Troupe Master, we greet you.”
Jin Sohan paused for a moment, watching their faces, then nodded and spoke as he stepped into the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe.
“There are some I don’t recognize.”
“They’re Ghost Blade Sect men from the merchant caravan and the black market. I explained who you are, Troupe Master. I wanted to ask whether it’s all right if I keep them with me……”
“Do as you like. Nothing happened at the West Gold Escort Agency?”
“Yes. It was handled cleanly. About that escort master, though. I didn’t get a proper look at her face, but she seemed like quite a beauty. You saw her, didn’t you, Troupe Master?”
“Shut up.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, and I’m moving my room to the third floor.”
“The Pavilion Master’s room is the largest.”
“It’s fine. I’ll be using the entire third floor.”
“Yes.”
As Jin Sohan climbed the stairs to the third floor, he continued.
“Put the medicinal herbs and the poisons in one place. Put the money in a different room. Empty every room we aren’t using. And take the books and documents we brought from the Blood-Whisper Sect and gather them in a separate empty room, too. I’ll need to look through them when I have time.”
“Understood.”
“And especially where I’ll be sleeping… make sure no one can enter. Hell, no one should enter any room on the third floor…… but especially where I’ll be sleeping, tell them not to come near it. The maids don’t need to go in, either. Tell them not to wander in and cough blood and die for nothing.”
Choo Sahyeok had assumed Jin Sohan was simply being a bit particular about his sleeping quarters, so he hadn’t asked any questions, but then Jin Sohan’s next words were unexpected.
“Understood.”
“I’m told assassins might come.”
“Yes?”
Jin Sohan sat at a table on the third floor as he spoke.
“Why are you so surprised? Assassins coming and going is always happening. Here.”
“There’ll be five in total.”
“The enemy. The Blood-Whisper Sect Master, the Sword Wolf you mentioned, and the Great…… what was it?”
“The Great Dragon Society leader.”
“What are they.”
“First-rate.”
At that, Jin Sohan bared his teeth in a grin.
“So first-rate was that pathetic.”
Choo Sahyeok’s expression turned sour.
He’s low-key showing off.
This time, Choo Sahyeok asked.
“Troupe Master, what level is your inner energy? You seem to have already surpassed first-rate.”
“Me? No idea. I’ve eaten so many different things…… I’ve never run into a situation where I lacked inner energy.”
Choo Sahyeok hurriedly hid the irritation creeping into his face.
“Yes. Ah—come to think of it, I took a look at the bodies you killed, Troupe Master, and you barely used any inner energy. Is that correct?”
“You’re pretty sharp.”
“Most of the wounds weren’t that deep. And you used poison appropriately, too……”
“What’s that supposed to be? Praise, or sarcasm?”
“Praise. Troupe Master…… I’ll learn a lot from you.”
Jin Sohan tapped the table.
“We’ll talk later. For now, have the kids tidy up the rooms. And tomorrow, gather those second-rate men you mentioned.”
“Yes. Are you going to have them do something……?”
“Second-rate. I want to see what they’ve got.”
“Understood.”
Even then, Choo Sahyeok still hadn’t properly grasped what it meant for Jin Sohan to “see what they’ve got.” When Jin Sohan said he would see their skill, he meant he would face all of them with real blades in hand.
After Choo Sahyeok withdrew, Jin Sohan drank and thought.
If it’s just assassins sent by a bunch of first-rate punks, it doesn’t seem like anyone impressive will come…… but should I prepare anyway.
Jin Sohan kept draining his cup until the third-floor cleanup was finished. Since a sleeping place had to be arranged for him, Choo Sahyeok’s men rushed about, carrying things and putting them in order.
*****
A courtesan house was convenient because it had so many rooms.
The entire third floor had effectively become Jin Sohan’s office.
And because all those rooms were built with closed, compartmentalized layouts, Jin Sohan liked it even more.
In the inner apothecary on the third floor, the medicinal herbs Choo Sahyeok had brought and the poisons sold in the black market had been sorted and laid out. Jin Sohan stayed there deep into the night, preparing in advance the poisons he would use going forward.
Some were poisons you smeared onto tables or furniture.
Others were poisons you burned, or heated, and spread through the air like incense.
That was why he had ordered his men not to enter the third floor.
Jin Sohan had resistance to poison, so it didn’t bother him, but if maids or subordinates were poisoned, it would become troublesome.
After closing the outer door, Jin Sohan set Twin Moon on the table.
He wiped the blades with cloth first, then cleaned the mechanism in the handles until it gleamed. He didn’t remember the exact number, but he had cut down more than a hundred people, so the Walk-to-Death Mist Poison was depleted. So Jin Sohan filled Twin Moon’s handles to the brim with paralyzing powder he had taken from Moonlit Night Pavilion’s warehouse.
He packed away the remaining paralyzing powder for storage, then began examining the poisons from the black market again. Rather than lethal toxins, most of them were aphrodisiacs, paralyzing powder, and poisons that interfered with circulating your energy. If they had been left in pure ingredient form, he could have blended them anew, but most were finished products sold as-is, so Jin Sohan poured them into kitchenware he’d taken from downstairs, ground them down, then recombined them according to their properties.
Even as he worked, Jin Sohan, as always, kept chewing and swallowing rare elixirs that normally sold for thousands to tens of thousands of taels.
On days he drank heavily, chewing medicinal herbs like this had become a habit.
But while he organized herbs and poisons late into the night, his mind was elsewhere.
He had already heard, until his ears rang, who he needed to be wary of in the martial world, straight from the Demon-Immortal masters.
His masters were famous in the martial world, but that didn’t mean they were the greatest under heaven.
As Jin Sohan checked Medicine Immortal’s White Fan, he recalled the masters the Demon-Immortal had warned him about. Of them all, the most frequently mentioned were, of course, Venom Demon’s counterparts in infamy: the other members of the Four Great Villains.
Because their spheres of activity overlapped, he had to be especially careful.
When the Four Great Villains appeared in places where the orthodox faction’s influence was thick, chaos erupted, so the Four Great Villains used Unorthodox territory after Unorthodox territory as their refuge.
If Jin Sohan expanded his power, it was only a matter of time before he ran into them.
That was why Jin Sohan was paying more attention to the Four Great Villains than to the powerful figures of the Thousand Sun Unorthodox Lands he would have to fight right away.
*****
Each of the Four Great Villains was obsessed with a different vice.
Venom Demon committed countless atrocities by experimenting with poison on the human body.
Lust Demon was exactly what the name implied: a villain endlessly fixated on women. If he met a woman who matched his taste, he didn’t care whether she was married or a virgin. Some were even wives of sect leaders, or women from martial families. He kidnapped such women at will to satisfy his lust, making him the most problematic of the lot.
Mad Demon was a villain with problems of every kind, but the biggest problem was this: he was meticulous enough to never reveal that he was mad. In the history of the martial world, those called Mad Demon usually had personalities that ran wild and out of control, but the Mad Demon of the current age was, quite literally, a silent madman. He hid his face, wandered under false identities, set organizations against each other, and took pleasure in personally hunting down and killing masters—an unparalleled lunatic.
And then there was the Enchanting Demon. A woman. She had a knack for raising female disciples, and unlike the other Four Great Villains, she was not lacking in any respect. Martial arts, intellect, schemes, atrocities…… she fell short in nothing, and because she also had disciples she had painstakingly cultivated, she was a difficult opponent.
Jin Sohan combined what Choo Sahyeok and Dogon had told him and prepared for assassins, while also needing to prepare for the Four Great Villains who would someday emerge as major enemies.
Either way, they were masters as strong as his own teachers.
He had to, to survive—and to swallow this Unorthodox world whole, they were mountains he would have to climb.
*****
Jin Sohan carried the powdered poison incense he had made in the apothecary into the room where he would sleep and set it up on the table. He sprinkled the powdered poison incense into a small brass bowl, laid a flat stone beneath it, then heated the stone with his inner energy until it grew hot. Jin Sohan’s inner energy shared a root with Venom Demon’s, and it always carried the kind of yang energy that could burn poisons at will. Once the heat from the stone surged up, the powdered poison incense in the brass bowl slowly spread through the room.
Before sleeping, Jin Sohan drew the powdered poison incense into his lungs.
To Jin Sohan it was a poison with no particular meaning, but if an assassin entered the room, something fairly entertaining would happen. It was half a prank, and half a way to stop thinking and sleep in peace.
And so Jin Sohan went to bed, breathing in the faint poison scent as it began to seep through the room. Perhaps because some aphrodisiac had been mixed into the blended poison, a hazy sensation quickly rolled over him like a sleeping draught.