At Tang Yu-hyeon's provocation, the wanderers' faces twisted.
"You brat, how dare you!"
FWOOSH!
In an instant the wanderers drew their blades and rushed him.
"The place being what it is, how about putting the dangerous things away?"
Tang Yu-hyeon dropped low and struck Number Two in the stomach.
THWACK!
"BLEEEEUGH!"
Number Two clutched his stomach and spilled up bile.
The other wanderers who saw it charged with faces gone fiercer still.
"All at once! Let's teach him a lesson!"
Tang Yu-hyeon indifferently extended his leg and kicked Number Three in the belly.
Where his foot landed caved in like a hollow.
His innards crushed and his bones perhaps broken, Number Three vomited blood.
"Gaack!"
"My thanks. That saves me some bother."
These were the foremost wanderers of Sichuan?
What a joke.
If men who were merely second-rate, let alone peak realm, were called that, a passing dog would laugh.
Then who were they?
'Most likely men tied to the Hundred Flower Pavilion or the Moon-Crossing Pavilion.'
The chance they knew anything about the Moon Shadow Sword?
Judging by their skill, none at all.
They would have to know something for threats or torture to be worth anything.
As it was, all he had done was make a scene.
Tang Yu-hyeon clicked his tongue and hauled the fallen Number Two up by the scruff of his neck.
Just as he was about to throw him to block Number Four's path, something caught at Tang Yu-hyeon's eye.
BLINK.
Number Five, who had hung back, moved his eyes left and right.
Exactly as though sending some signal.
It did not take him long to turn judgment into action.
WHIRL—
Pretending to turn his body, Tang Yu-hyeon followed the line of that gaze.
The one the glance was meant for.
The end of that line of sight.
There stood Seon U-yun.
'Did I see wrong?'
No. Impossible.
My eyes are accurate.
'Enough playing ignorant. You knew from the start.'
From the moment he bumped into him of all people among the passersby, made himself suspected of pickpocketing, and stole nothing.
From the moment he led him — underworld of Sichuan or not — into a place anyone could see was tied to the Moon-Crossing Pavilion.
'A point of contact rolling in on its own two feet. Lucky me.'
At the very least, unlike those fake wanderers, Seon U-yun might know the heart of the Moon-Crossing Pavilion, and beyond that, the whereabouts of the Moon Shadow Sword.
'For now, keep him alive.'
Tang Yu-hyeon threw Number Two like a sack of baggage, broke Number Four's balance, and mounted him.
Number Four took it in the belly.
Number Five in the waist and the jaw.
The sound of bones shattering and joints bending came, but the merciless movement did not stop.
TILT.
Having pounded five grown men to pulp without so much as a stir, Tang Yu-hyeon tilted his head for the first time.
"Ah. I have become the noisy one."
He took a few pieces of silver from his robes, set them on the table, and put on the black wide-brimmed hat.
"Let us go."
***
The moment he left the place, Tang Yu-hyeon went into a tavern he had marked on the way over.
Like any tavern it was decked in red cloth all the same, but at least there were no two moons, so the Moon-Crossing Pavilion's breath would be thinner here.
"The food went to waste because of me. Let me buy, by way of apology."
Tang Yu-hyeon ordered food and liquor before Seon U-yun could say anything.
Seon U-yun stood blankly for a moment, then laughed and dragged over a chair to sit.
"Do you even know what sells best here?"
"I may not know Sichuan well, but I know what sells everywhere."
"You've been to a tavern or two, I take it?"
"Often enough."
When he did not lose a single exchange, Seon U-yun let out a breath of disbelief.
"Fine. All right, then. Only, if you're staying in Sichuan long, don't go near Deyang."
"Is something the matter there?"
"There's a plot of land in Deyang with especially good water and air, and rumor has it a mad sword ghost lives there and kills every wanderer who comes near. You haven't heard?"
"Not at all."
"I'm telling you out of concern, as a fellow wanderer. Even if it costs you more time, go around it without fail. That's how you stay alive."
"I shall do that."
Tang Yu-hyeon silently sipped the Dukang liquor the serving lad had brought out.
The chance that Seon U-yun had no ties to the Moon-Crossing Pavilion and had not caught on to Tang Yu-hyeon's identity?
None. Not even if the heavens split in two.
Even now, was he not avoiding names for fear of slipping on a form of address, rattling off only what he wished to say?
'Seems they have something hidden in Deyang. I had better take a look.'
Exactly half a day after that thought, Tang Yu-hyeon arrived in Deyang.
'A stream running through and a mountain at its back — this must be the place with good water and good air.'
Only, in one respect, it was not a place with a good smell.
"Ugh! Is someone cooking the mountain? The stink of oil is everywhere."
Tang Yu-hyeon screwed up his face and looked around.
Perhaps because it was near the mountain, there was nothing in sight that could be called a village.
"Hm?"
In the dreary mountains stood a hut darker than the shadows of tangled trees and more glistening than the moonlight.
And not one, but several.
Finding it strange, Tang Yu-hyeon drew closer.
DRIP. DRIP.
It was not a sound that would come from a cool streamside.
Against the chance of trouble, Tang Yu-hyeon circled wide along the stream.
And when the moonlight lit the foot of the mountain fully, he finally saw it.
That the several huts were linked together by oil-soaked rope.
His premonition was not good.
The senses sharpened by raising his realm to the peak brought an ominous possibility to mind.
"Hh. Please, spare me......."
"Will you be quiet?!"
From inside one of the huts came the shout of a man around his mid-thirties.
Tang Yu-hyeon expected the sound of a blow to follow at once, but what followed was weeping.
The weeping of all manner of people, men and women, young and old alike.
An oil lamp must have been lit, for he could not see inside well, but he had no trouble grasping the situation.
'Slave trading.'
Having reached his conclusion, Tang Yu-hyeon set his nails and dug them into his palms.
Otherwise he would not have been able to hide the killing intent seeping out of him.
Eyes lit with understanding flashed fiercely.
Who dares do such a thing, in my Sichuan?
As he chewed his lip and tore at his own palms to hold down the killing intent, the man inside the hut came out.
"You bastard. I told you to just scare them."
"Shut it. They're bawling their heads off — would anything nice come out of your mouth?"
"When did I say anything about nice? If one of them dies at this rate, we're all finished. Hostages are worth something while they're alive; dead, they're useless. Understood?"
"So she has to hold the families hostage and work the rest like hands and feet? What a brilliant mind."
Looking them over in the moonlight, the faces were familiar.
Broken Saber Dog Ghost Ma Sam-gu and Chaotic Saber Ghost Guest Jang Do-pal.
Wanderers whose names he had heard often enough while making the rounds of the pleasure houses.
"I don't know why that bitch, the Mistress of the Moon-Crossing Pavilion, sets us such a bothersome task. Just kill them all and tell the families left over that they'll live if they do well."
"Mind your mouth unless you want your head off. If that reaches her ears, you'll burn to death."
"One of them's going to die soon anyway. Might as well kill the lot while we're at it."
"Ah. That beggar brat?"
"That's the one. Wonder if she knows her older brother's been licking other men's feet trying to save her."
"He's running a con these days, they say. Told him he'd get the medicinal herbs if he hooked another big fish, and off he ran."
"The Tang Clan good-for-nothing? As if that's easy."
"Not my concern."
"He's a naive one. That bitch of a Mistress wouldn't hand over the herbs even if he brought her the Emperor, never mind a Mister of the Tang Clan."
"Stupid beggar. Taken for a ride like that and still he learns nothing. Tsk, tsk."
There was nothing more worth hearing.
Tang Yu-hyeon drew poison needles from his sleeve and threw them at Ma Sam-gu and Jang Do-pal.
"Ugh!"
With short groans, the two hulking men collapsed.
Coldly settled eyes swept over them.
Suppressing his energy lest the innocent commoners be startled, Tang Yu-hyeon pressed the mute point and then the paralysis point in turn.
'Think coolly.'
No. Forget it.
Even without such thoughts his mind was working so well it was driving him mad.
Tang Yu-hyeon clenched his fists to keep his hands from moving first.
As a result of swallowing his feelings, his hands trembled faintly.
The guess that had risen from the moment he hid in the dark and listened had become certainty.
The Mistress of the Moon-Crossing Pavilion, having recognized Seon U-yun's talent on the street, had taken his sister hostage and wrung him dry.
And it was not Seon U-yun alone. She had seized the families of other lesser talents as well and worked them as she pleased.
All the while leaving those families to live or die without the slightest care.
It was a scheme hard to carry out unless one saw people as tools.
'.......Be a little colder. Killing these two now solves nothing.'
His heart burned to save the commoners locked inside that hut.
But if he saved them, the ones Gwak Hwa-ran worked like hands and feet would clearly be killed.
To save both, he could not move rashly.
Why else would the huts be linked with oil-soaked rope?
If it came to it, they meant to kill them all.
'The source of this evil is the Moon-Crossing Pavilion, and only by destroying them can it be pulled up by the root.'
The fake wanderers and Seon U-yun, Ma Sam-gu and Jang Do-pal, were no more than a corner of it.
A trap built to catch a tiger cannot catch a fox.
Tang Yu-hyeon hauled the two terrified men up, pressed their death points, and threw them into the stream.
GLUG-GLUG-GLUG.
In water that was not shallow, bubbles rose in a froth and soon vanished.
RUSHHHH.
Two corpses drifted away along the stream.
Was there not a saying? If someone does you harm, do not strain to take revenge; simply sit by the river and wait. Before long you will see that person's corpse float past.
Tang Yu-hyeon thought as he vanished, as though sucked into the darkness.
That tomorrow, whoever laid eyes on those two might stop shedding tears of blood in the grip of vengeance.