"Tang Yu-hyeon......?"
"That is right. It is me."
At the confident answer, the furrow between the Red Tiger Keep Boss No Sam-ho's brows deepened.
Was this his first time seeing Tang Yu-hyeon?
It was not.
When the boy was guzzling liquor at the Hundred Flower Pavilion, he had slipped in disguised as a commoner and eaten his fill of meat and wine.
But for that Tang Yu-hyeon to come looking for No Sam-ho personally was a strange thing.
However tightly the Red Tiger Keep and the Hundred Flower Pavilion had joined hands, coaxing the boy and squeezing money out of him had been the Pavilion's share of the work.
'Could that woman, the Pavilion Mistress, have made a move?'
Cutting the tail loose at this point?
If the Tang Clan attacked, the Red Tiger Keep, a newborn mountain keep, would be swept away without resistance, unlike the Hundred Flower Pavilion, which had long been rooted in Sichuan and was seizing the underworld together with her sworn sister.
'She dares betray me!'
His insides seethed.
But he must not let it show.
No Sam-ho feigned ignorance and manufactured a wheedling voice.
"What brings the Master here?"
"There are a few things I have come to collect."
"Collect, you say?"
"Money. Spiritual medicine. Ledgers."
Has this young master gone mad from the soul-befuddling drug?
We are the ones who should be collecting.
"I mean to take back the thousand taels you people swelled up as you pleased, and since one place already said it could not pay, I have come all the way here in person."
"Why look for it from us?"
"Talking back?"
Tang Yu-hyeon cocked his head and blinked.
Crrrunch.
At conduct past shameless and into fearless, No Sam-ho ground his teeth.
'Calm down. I must endure a while longer.'
Watching a worm strut about made him itch to kill it, but the time was not yet right.
Keeping Tang Yu-hyeon alive and squeezing the juice out of him was more profitable than killing him.
'I should ask the Pavilion Mistress soon whether we might use a stronger soul-befuddling drug.'
Was it not because they used the weak sort that he suddenly came to his senses like this and did mad things?
Drugged properly, he would be a simpleton unable to do a thing.
"My apologies to the Master, but what you seek is not with us. If you need money, look elsewhere."
At the tone one uses on a nuisance, the other bandits snickered.
"Boss. Surely we could lend him five hundred taels at least? He is a young master of the Sichuan Tang Clan!"
"Well said! Well said!"
"If we could not lend even that, the Red Tiger Keep's reputation would be in tatters. Heh."
When Tang Yu-hyeon simply listened, as if inviting more, the bandits grew more excited and rowdier.
"Silence! What are you doing with a guest before you!"
Only when his ears began to ache did No Sam-ho rein the bandits in.
Beneath the smug look of a man commanding loyal followers lay a faint sneer.
"I do not know whether it will satisfy the Master, but we can lend you around five hundred taels. We will see to the interest ourselves, so only pay it back before it comes due."
"Enjoying yourselves."
"What?"
At the flat tone, the face of the snickering No Sam-ho cracked.
"Bastards who in the old days could not have lifted their heads. Listen to them quietly and they think they are something."
Crrrack.
Tang Yu-hyeon cracked his stiff neck from side to side.
"This is why a man should keep doing things the way he always did."
In an instant even the faint trace of laughter vanished.
The twisted line of his mouth was as sharp as a beast's.
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Lower your eyes."
WHUMP!
Tang Yu-hyeon, who had somehow flown right up in front of No Sam-ho, struck his jaw with a knee.
"Guhk!"
Then at once he seized his head and hauled his face down.
WHUMP!
The nose struck by his kneecap caved in.
"Aaargh! You bastaaaard!"
No Sam-ho grabbed the saber standing beside him and swung it hard.
WHIIISH! WHIIISH!
Saber qi rushed in from left and right.
By the speed and force, his skill was at the threshold of the peak realm.
An ordinary first-rate martial artist would have gone down without a chance to raise a hand.
'But I have a way to win.'
Tang Yu-hyeon bent only at the waist to slip it, loaded qi into his leg, and kicked him in the side.
"Ugh......!"
At a fearsome force that could not be believed to come from so small a frame, No Sam-ho's body staggered.
WHIIISH!
He swung the blade again, and the result was the same.
Tang Yu-hyeon evaded at his leisure and drove into the openings.
The side. The arm. The leg.
Not once but again and again, until the face full of fighting spirit filled with alarm.
'Alone, I am losing!'
He could not see a path to victory anywhere.
He could not attack one-sidedly with his underlings standing about as spectators, the way he usually did.
To survive, he had to bring in his men, even at the cost of losing face.
"You lot......! Why are you not attacking——"
THUD!
A dull sound cut No Sam-ho's words short.
THUD!
"Guhk!"
THUD!
"Ack!"
The close followers lined up before No Sam-ho dropped one after another like leaves before the wind.
"Little one. Did no one ever tell you to be wary of the Tang Clan's martial artists?"
SHWIIISH!
"Aaagh!"
A throwing blade loosed at some unseen moment lodged in No Sam-ho's right shoulder.
At the sudden attack No Sam-ho clutched at his shoulder.
When he put strength into pulling out the deeply buried blade, blood came surging out.
"Our gaze. Our breath. Our gestures of hand and foot. Even the smallest action."
The voice went on softly, as though reciting a song, but No Sam-ho could not pull out even one blade and dragged rough breaths instead.
It was not because the unexpected attack had startled him.
His body was sluggish and no strength would come.
"Unless you watch closely, you never know when or where we will bring out poison. Just as I loosed poison in this place."
"Huff! Huff!"
Poison in small pellets that burned away on contact with the air.
Tang Yu-hyeon had released it from the moment he met No Sam-ho.
Very quietly, so that no one would notice.
So that the poisoning would come on gradually.
Colorless and odorless, it was all the more lethal, yet to Tang Yu-hyeon, who had handled poison his whole life, it was a toy.
Even in a body that fell far short of the one he had before.
Tang Yu-hyeon wore a faint smile as he stepped closer to No Sam-ho.
"How many fingers does my friend have?"
"Pardon?"
"How many?"
When unblinking eyes came in close, No Sam-ho forgot all his arrogance and answered in a voice that crawled small.
"T-ten, sir."
"Right. I will ask exactly ten questions. One for every time you fail to answer, you know?"
Tang Yu-hyeon raised the edge of his hand and mimed a cut.
"Y-yes!"
Use force and suddenly the words get through.
This is exactly why a man should keep doing things the way he always did.
How much simpler it was.
Tang Yu-hyeon shoved No Sam-ho over and crouched down to meet his eyes.
"Money. Spiritual medicine. Ledgers. I need those three. Where are they?"
"Th-there is not much of any......."
CRUNCH!
In an instant the thumb was gone.
"Aaagh!"
His body locked by the paralytic poison, No Sam-ho could not even clutch the severed finger and only choked.
"Working your head, are you? Do you still not understand the situation?"
"Khhh! No, sir!"
"I will ask again. Money. Spiritual medicine. Ledgers. Where are they?"
"U-under where I was sitting!"
Tang Yu-hyeon jerked his chin toward the ornate chair standing alone amid a keep filled with animal hides and rough weaponry.
"That?"
"Yes, sir!"
"I will give you an antidote, so go and bring it."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Tang Yu-hyeon took a pill from a small vial and tossed it into No Sam-ho's mouth.
No Sam-ho chewed and swallowed it in haste, as if it were the herb of immortality.
"Are you not going to hurry? Cannot even purge that much?"
'Am I a man of the Tang Clan?!'
He thought it, but he had not the courage to let the words out.
No Sam-ho waddled over and lifted the chair aside.
In a hole about knee-deep on a grown man lay crates of spiritual medicine, gold ingots, and ledgers stored separately in a case.
"......Shall I bring all of it?"
"Bring only the ledgers."
"Yes!"
While No Sam-ho sorted out the ledgers, Tang Yu-hyeon studied the space hidden beneath the chair and twitched a brow.
Stacking gold ingots, or keeping ledgers in a case for safety, was nothing strange.
But the two long vertical wooden boards mounted on the wall were somehow odd.
Exactly as though a sword had been hung there.
'Suspicious.'
Yeo Hong-ran, who had tried to keep him away from the Moon-Crossing Pavilion, and the Red Tiger Keep, which the Hundred Flower Pavilion had backed.
Tang Yu-hyeon sorted out the likeliest possibility and touched his arm.
"Here it is!"
No Sam-ho offered up a case decorated with mother-of-pearl.
When he opened the hinge with a click, neatly arranged promissory notes and ledgers came into view.
At a glance it was not his own work.
"Finances by proxy, brains by proxy. What is it you can actually do?"
"......."
"Now you cannot speak either? Or do you not want to? If it is the latter, shall I make it so you never speak again?"
"No, sir! Not at all! Only spare my life!"
"Pathetic bastard."
Tang Yu-hyeon clicked his tongue, drew out a ledger, and flipped through it.
It was nothing but a record of the money slipped to the pleasure houses and taverns across Sichuan to ask them to look the other way, and of the weapons entrusted by the Moon-Crossing Pavilion.
'Weapons, is it.'
The small clues gathered, and a thread took shape.
The Moon-Crossing Pavilion, which had meant to spread its power across Sichuan, would have joined with the other pleasure houses that knew how to use their heads, and handed the awkward work to mountain keeps, whose wits turned slowly compared with their bodies.
For instance, when something precious came into their hands, it was safer to route it through somewhere than to take it directly.
Just as the Moon Shadow Sword, obtained through some means, had been routed through the Red Tiger Keep so that no one could trace it back to them.
'It will need confirming, but this is certain.'
Because unlike the other weapons, the Moon Shadow Sword was in neither 'Tang Yu-hyeon's' memories nor the secret cavern. That one alone.
"The Pavilion Mistress and now this. There are more people backing you than I thought."
"......!"
"With nothing in your head, you must have looked convenient for taking on the filthy work."
The way he tipped his chin as he spoke was a picture of mockery.
Even at words that stung his pride, that he was no more than a pawn on a board, No Sam-ho could not protest.
Tang Yu-hyeon's presence had already been branded into him as fear.
"No wonder. For a keep only recently founded, the growth was fast. And it never caught the Tang Clan's eye either."
Fallen as its standing was, the Tang Clan was still the one and only hegemon of Sichuan.
There was nowhere in Sichuan its power did not reach.
But even the Tang Clan did not touch the secret business of the underworld.
One might think that for a clan so exacting about debts and grudges it was strange to be so particular, but it went against the Way.
So if those people set out in earnest to bury something, even the Tang Clan had no way of knowing.
Just as it had felt nothing amiss while the Red Tiger Keep operated openly in Sichuan.
Leaving men like these alone was no different from letting Sichuan, and beyond it the Central Plains, sicken.
"I meant to kill you once you had served your use, but living will be more painful for you than dying."
Tang Yu-hyeon flicked the ledger with a finger.
"I will deliver this properly to the ones you kept begging to look the other way. They must all have thought your loyalty was theirs alone. Their reactions will be entertaining."
No Sam-ho's face went ashen.
That ledger was the one thing no other hand had touched, only his own.
It was the wealth he had pushed on every group with a name of its own in the shadows of Sichuan to raise the Red Tiger Keep safely, a ledger reckoning what he would be owed later.
"N-no! If you do that I really will die!"
"As if that was not already the case."
"If you mean to leak the ledger, then kill me now instead!"
"Why would I?"
SNAP.
Tang Yu-hyeon tilted his head with only the corners of his mouth raised.
"Hic."
At a sight fit for a ghost story, No Sam-ho flinched.
"Your turn will come without you rushing it. Wait quietly until then."
Tang Yu-hyeon returned his head to its place and drew a sheet of paper from his sleeve.
It was the same material as the one he had handed Yeo Hong-ran.
"Fortunately the thumb on the other hand is still there."
Crrrunch.
"Aaaaaargh!"
Tang Yu-hyeon wrenched No Sam-ho's arm around, smeared it in blood, and made him press his thumbprint.
He ignored the screaming that came like background noise.
"You look stupid, so explaining would do no good."
Tang Yu-hyeon rolled the paper up and slid it into his sleeve.
"Consider it the price of daring to touch the Tang Clan."
"Ughh......."
There was no answer but a groan.
"If you want to survive, run hard. Before I come looking for you again, those steadfast backers of yours will be coming to kill you."
At the low words, as though they were a signal, No Sam-ho's body went limp.