The hairpin Tang Mu-jeong had always worn.
It was an item by the name of Traceless.
Tang Mu-jeong had left no separate word about it.
But was he not an old man who had only ever been prickly on the surface?
Surely he had wanted Jeong I-shin to use it. He decided to think of it that way.
“I will do it for you. Please hold still.”
In the end it was the woman who had followed behind Jeong I-shin who received the hairpin.
She was the woman who had been dragged along by the hair in a bandit's grip when Jeong I-shin first arrived at this keep.
She was also a woman with a story utterly fitting of this age: her village had been plundered and she had been taken captive.
“There, it is done. It suits you wonderfully, Master.”
“Thank you.”
Watching her withdraw with a clear smile, Jeong I-shin thought.
‘Strange.’
Karma was truly a strange thing.
Looking around made it more so.
Beggars with sullen faces for some reason, and a Nam Tae-gang who looked deeply angry.
In truth Jeong I-shin had little interest in them.
‘To meet a monk of Shaolin this quickly!’
Only Deok-myeong.
The fact that he had met the man like this was all that astonished him.
He had meant to begin by investigating the state of the jianghu.
‘A very good start.’
He had not expected matters to progress this fast.
Inform Shaolin of the truth, make contact with the other old men's clans.
Join forces and beat the traitor to death!
It felt as though everything would unravel smoothly.
That was how it felt, until he heard the talk about the Green Forest.
“It is a famous story that the Green Forest King divided his own learning among his underlings. He is a fellow with an inborn feel for handling people.”
It was a remark that came up while they discussed the Ink Tiger Keep's Boss, who had met his end at Jeong I-shin's hand.
Bang Si-jeong picked up from Yeom Tak-gang's words.
“The present Green Forest King is different. He is not like the former Head Bosses who reigned by force. That bastard is managing the Green Forest Seventy-Two Keeps.”
“Did he use parasites or something?”
“Amitabha! Senior Tiger Beggar!”
“Ahem, ahem! Well, I only mean he is that troublesome.”
Jeong I-shin, listening quietly, nodded.
Parasites, he had been told, were demonic creatures made by the Demonic Cult bastards.
So they were still being tormented by the Demonic Cult.
‘How much time has passed?’
In the Bottomless Abyss even the old men had stopped counting the days at some point, they had said.
“In any case, these days the Green Forest is the most bothersome of the Eight Overlord bastards.”
A voice reached the ear of Jeong I-shin as he wondered whether it had been twenty years or thirty.
For him, who had listened diligently to Tang Mu-jeong's lessons on jianghu history, it was not content he could let slide.
Jeong I-shin asked casually,
“Eight Overlords?”
“Yes, of the Unorthodox Hegemon Heaven, it is the bandit bastards who are the most troublesome. In the old days force settled it, but these days...... tsk!”
“Th-That must be a headache for you.”
Laughing awkwardly, Jeong I-shin bit down on the inside of his lip.
‘Why not Seven Overlords?’
I definitely learned it as the Seven Overlords of the Unorthodox Path.
‘And what is the Unorthodox Hegemon Heaven?’
Wasn't it the Unorthodox Alliance?
Nine Sects One Gang, the Eight Great Clans, the Unorthodox Alliance, the Demonic Cult.
......Or was it not?
‘What is this? Has more time passed than I thought?’
A great question mark lodged itself in his head.
There was a problem with the structure of forces he had memorized like a formula.
And yet he could hardly ask Yeom Tak-gang to recite the Eight Overlords on the spot.
As he chewed at his lips, Bang Si-jeong came into Jeong I-shin's view.
‘......Ah!’
He had seen Yeom Tak-gang make use of the man several times.
He was a machine that produced answers when pressed.
At this table he would be the intellectual second only to Jeong I-shin himself.
“Ahem. Excuse me.”
“Hm? Do you mean me?”
“Yes, Bang...... Bang Sil?”
“......It is Bang Si-jeong.”
“I-I am sorry.”
Having apologized politely, Jeong I-shin asked casually,
“So...... which generation is the current Heavenly Demon?”
“......?”
“Ah, I heard there was a Heavenly Demon who became a soul that never returned in some formation......”
Bang Si-jeong's expression turned even stranger than before.
After staring at him for a long while, Bang Si-jeong suddenly broke into a wide smile and put a hand on Jeong I-shin's shoulder.
“Hahaha! Well now! For one of the younger generation, there is nothing at all shameful about inquiring into jianghu history.”
“Y-Yes? R-Right, of course.”
“I never thought I would meet, in a place like this, an intellectual who marks the hundredth anniversary of the Three Paths Transference Formation's unfurling!”
“......What?”
Bang Si-jeong was a young man with naturally dry eyes.
The sort of young man with eyes that could look hollow at a glance, or bored.
But now was different.
‘Why is he so delighted?’
He seemed a different person.
Bang Si-jeong's eyes overflowed with life.
He looked like a man who had heard the sound of rain after a long drought.
And like a man who had at last fought his way out of a hopeless forest path.
Which is to say, an enormous gladness had settled in them.
“More bullshit.”
Unlike Yeom Tak-gang, who muttered that he was starting again, Deok-myeong asked back with a startled face.
“Ah! Has it already been a hundred years since that affair?”
“It has, Sir Deok-myeong. This year marks exactly one hundred years since the Five Heavenly Stars sank the Heavenly Demon into the River of Three Paths.”
“Ha ha...... Amitabha.”
Leaving behind Deok-myeong, who chanted with a solemn face.
Bang Si-jeong patted Jeong I-shin's shoulder again and again.
“The ones who only swing their blades like ignorant brutes have no interest in this sort of thing. The Heavenly Demon of that age was a monster for whom the word Demon God was hardly too generous, they say. All the more reason that, without the Five Heavenly Stars and the Three Paths Transference Formation...... the murim of today would truly have been a hell. The ones these days do not know that. They have no interest! Bah, tsk.”
“You are also one of the ones these days...... n-no, you are right. One ought to take an interest...... yes.”
Jeong I-shin, about to ask something back, closed his mouth.
He could not properly hear the things Bang Si-jeong kept chattering beside him.
‘......A hundred years?’
His head filled with a single word.
A hundred years.
***
The chirping of mountain birds could be heard.
It had been as long since he heard it as since the previous night's meal.
Only, he had not been woken by the sound.
“A hundred years?”
The words that had tormented Jeong I-shin all night still circled in his head.
“Does this make any sense?”
A hundred years since the Three Paths Transference Formation was unfurled.
If that were truly the case, then the old men?
They had been over a hundred years old? No, that was absolutely not it.
Then what was it?
“Time...... was twisted?”
It was an absurd notion, but this was the most likely one.
Because his falling into the Bottomless Abyss in the first place.
And his crossing back from the Bottomless Abyss into the Central Plains.
Not one of it made any sense.
“Hah! Even so, a hundred years is shi——”
Jeong I-shin, rolling about on the bed, sprang up.
He strode over and flung open the door.
The man who had been standing in front of it dropped down onto his backside.
“Hugh! Y-You startled me! A-Are you awake?”
Looking around, Jeong I-shin crouched down before him.
“Hwang Gong-mang.”
“Y-Yes, yes. Master Jeong.”
“......Do you know the name Jaegal Gi-cheon?”
Jaegal Gi-cheon.
It was not a name to be spoken lightly.
It was the name of the man Tang Mu-jeong had told him to forget, the man who had thrown the old men into the Bottomless Abyss.
Contrary to Jeong I-shin's feelings, Hwang Gong-mang's answer was light.
“Ahaha! Master Jeong, really! I may not look it, but I spent a full year at a village school......”
“Short. Just the answer.”
“One of the Five Heavenly Stars! Is he not one of the five heroes who gave everything they had to drive back the Heavenly Demon? The genius formation master of the Jaegal Clan! And the First Principal of the Heavenly Martial Academy, the pinnacle of prodigy cultivation! His achievements and virtue were so tremendous that the whole jianghu sank into great sorrow when he passed away. Heh heh, how was that?”
......Bullshit.
“......How? My head hurts like death.”
“What?! Are you all right?”
He waved off Hwang Gong-mang, who tried to support him, and sat down where he was.
Leaning back to stare at the ceiling, he asked blankly,
“The Five Heavenly Stars...... the rest of them?”
“Haha. I am only a one-year village school man.”
“......”
“B-But I do know that they were figures of Shaolin, the Namgung, and the Tang Clan!”
“......Understood. You may go now.”
Hwang Gong-mang withdrew, carrying Deok-myeong's message that they would depart shortly.
Only then did Jeong I-shin quietly face reality.
“......Dead? That traitor bastard is already dead......”
Should he be glad? He was dead, after all.
Was it selfish to feel regret that he had not been the one to kill him?
Why had he died?
Might he be secretly alive?
Jeong I-shin went outside and walked the keep in a daze.
It was as he passed beneath a large tree.
SQUEAK—
Along with the familiar cry, the flying squirrel landed on his shoulder.
Its belly, covered in snow-white fur...... was bulging conspicuously.
“......You ate plenty. You don't eat lightning qi anymore?”
SQUEAK!
“I do have something to give you.”
SQUEAK—
“All right, eat it later then.”
Scratching behind its ear with a small forepaw, the flying squirrel climbed down his body.
He expected it to go straight into his robes, but the place it headed was unexpected.
“You brat, that's dangerous.”
An iron sword with nothing whatsoever to distinguish it.
The flying squirrel clung to its hilt and squeaked.
“Ssh! Come here, now.”
The creature's behavior was different from usual.
Dodging Jeong I-shin's hand this way and that, the flying squirrel suddenly snatched up the snake coiled around his wrist, spread its gliding membrane, and vanished into the distance.
“......What was that?”
Giving and then taking back.
He was blinking at the wrist left bare by the missing bracelet when.
Jeong I-shin realized that the hand he had stretched out lay before the hilt of the iron sword.
“......Huh?”
Astonishingly, only then did Jeong I-shin perceive the iron sword.
It was an exceedingly strange thing.
He had strapped it to his own waist as he left the room.
“This is......”
Come to think of it, it had been that way from the beginning.
If Heo Ung had not pointed it out, he would not even have known he was carrying it.
It was not weightless, so how had he failed to perceive it?
Worse, even after realizing it was there, he had promptly forgotten it again.
This was absolutely...... not an ordinary sword.
Was it not, from the start, a sword standing alone in the blackly burning White Silk Web Forest?
It had been dragged along when he crossed the torn space.
The moment his thoughts reached that far, something flashed in his head.
“......!”
The torn space leading from the Bottomless Abyss to the Central Plains.
Whose doing in the world was that?
‘The Heavenly Demon.’
From the black flames burning the White Silk Web Forest to the demonic qi felt just before it...... this was certainly connected to the Heavenly Demon.
That bastard had torn space in the Bottomless Abyss and vanished.
A ‘why?’ attached itself to all of it, but.
To Jeong I-shin that was not important.
‘An enemy...... remains.’
***
The flying squirrel that had escaped Jeong I-shin's hand.
The grey-white Heavenly Thunder Flying Squirrel crossed the Ink Tiger Keep at its leisure with the pitch-black snake in its mouth.
Racing hard on its little body, the place it arrived at was a great cliff behind the keep.
It was a dead end, but the flying squirrel did not stop and ran straight at the cliff.
SQUEAK!
Sure enough, there was a small gap where the cliff met the ground, so it could slip right through.
Past the pitch-dark gap, the place it reached was a small cave.
The cave was full of all sorts of goods, but the flying squirrel's aim lay elsewhere.
SQUEAK!
Following the smell that pricked its nose, the flying squirrel stood before a large bundle and only then spat out the snake in its mouth.
The pitch-black snake dropped with a soft thud and lay limp.
The creature, in truth closer to an earthworm, still showed no intention of moving.
SQUEEAK!
The flying squirrel slapped the ground with its bushy tail.
There was a human waiting for it.
Since he had said they would leave soon, it had to get back quickly.
CRACKLE—
The instant the flying squirrel drew up its energy, two dark crimson lights came on in the pitch-black snake's head.
HISSS—
Beneath the two slowly blinking eyes, a very small, thin tongue flicked out.
But only for a moment; at the sight of the snake soon slithering its eyes shut, the flying squirrel jumped.
SQUEEEAK!
Crying long and clamping down on the snake, the flying squirrel leapt into the large bundle.
That place...... was paradise. Every direction was full of good smells.
It was absolutely no match for the food the human gave, but the wooden boxes seemed to hold plenty of energy worth staving off hunger with.
The energy inside its body twitched as though welcoming it too.
HISSS.
The snake, awake at some point, seemed to have caught the smell as well and kept flicking its tongue.
Slithering forward, the snake opened its mouth wide toward a wooden box.
The exceedingly thin snake's mouth stretched on without end.
One wooden box, gulp. Then another, gulp. And another again.
The snake swallowed the wooden boxes inside the bundle and swallowed more.
Even as it kept swallowing things dozens of times its own body, its belly promptly sank flat again.
SQUEAK!
The flying squirrel cried in satisfaction.
The night before, it had found this place and been sorry it could not take everything, so this was a real relief.
Meanwhile the snake, having swallowed every wooden box, came out of the bundle and began looking the cave over.
It had been a while since the snake swallowed anything, so its spirits were rising too.
And as it happened, this small cave held a great many of the shiny things it loved.
HISSS—
And so it swallowed whatever it saw, losing track of time.
Right up until the Heavenly Thunder Flying Squirrel clamped it in its mouth again and left.
RUUUMBLE—
And so, in the small cave the two beasts had left.
A vibration that began somewhere relatively far off drew gradually closer.
And soon the wall shook hard and a faint shaft of light fell across it.
“Green Forest or not, the level of bandit bastards is obvious.”
A moment later, Bang Si-jeong stepped into the small cave with a face full of triumph.