Yeop Ji-chang, master of the Black Tiger Gang, was bowing his head before the county magistrate of Yichang.
"I should call upon you for happier reasons. I am deeply sorry to trouble you with a matter such as this."
"Ahem!"
The portly magistrate tucked a promissory note into his coat and spoke.
"Yeop, I am an official who serves the throne and the nation. It is fundamentally unthinkable for a man of letters to involve himself in such sordid affairs. You understand, I trust?"
"Of course. I shall wrap things up quietly."
"Then you may go."
Yeop Ji-chang kept his head bowed as he backed out and closed the door behind him.
"Bwa ha ha! Now then, shall we have some fun!"
"Allow me to pour you a cup, Your Honor!"
Raucous laughter soon erupted from within.
"......"
The face Yeop Ji-chang turned away with was cold enough to belong to a different man entirely.
He returned to his office without a word.
THUD!
Even after sinking into his chair, Yeop Ji-chang stared out the window for a long while.
The atmosphere was thin as ice. Then, abruptly, he spoke.
"Where are the steward and that fool Pyeong-i?"
"Not yet returned, sir."
"Send them straight up the moment they arrive."
"Yes, sir."
"And bring a bottle."
After the subordinate left, a serving girl brought the liquor. Yeop Ji-chang began pouring the fiery spirits down his throat with nothing to chase them.
'How did the great Fierce Tiger Blade end up here?'
Memories of bygone days flickered through his mind.
A time when he feared nothing and nothing stood in his way.
With a single saber, he had risen to the upper echelons of the Assembly, and even the vaunted warriors of the great orthodox sects had balked at crossing blades with him.
He had been a king of the mountain. He had believed himself the king destined to dominate this forest of blades and mountain of swords they called the martial world.
'If only that day had never happened......'
Yeop Ji-chang's eyes trembled finely.
That was when.
"Father, I'm here."
Yeop Ji-chang squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, shaking off his reverie.
"Come in."
CREEEAK!
Yeop Gun-pyeong sauntered in with his characteristic swagger.
Baek Seo-gun, the chief steward, trailed behind with his head hung low like a man awaiting sentencing.
"What's the rush? I was in the middle of the job you gave me."
"You were doing the job?"
Yeop Ji-chang smirked.
Something was off about his father's reaction, and Yeop Gun-pyeong furrowed his brow.
"Father? Why are you......"
The word "...acting like that" never came. Because Yeop Ji-chang's fist struck his face first.
CRASH!
"GACK!"
Yeop Gun-pyeong slammed gracelessly into a bookshelf and tumbled to the floor.
Yeop Ji-chang flexed his hand and gazed down at his son with indifference.
"Why did you do it?"
"Cough! Hurk! Wh-why......"
Yeop Gun-pyeong staggered to his feet.
CRACK!
Yeop Ji-chang swung again.
"Why did you do it?"
"F-Father!"
"I am asking you. Why did you do it?"
"P-please!"
THWACK! CRACK!
The punishment—no, the beating—continued.
"......"
Baek Seo-gun stood trembling, face white as paper.
Yeop Ji-chang did not care that the steward was watching. If anything, he seemed to be beating his son more savagely precisely so it would be seen.
CRASH!
The blows were so merciless that Yeop Gun-pyeong's hair and clothes were left in complete disarray. Even the sword at his hip was knocked loose and sent clattering across the floor.
"F-Father, please! Wh-why are you doing this all of a sudden?!"
"Why, you ask. That is the question I asked you."
Finally, Yeop Gun-pyeong screamed as though having a fit.
"All this over a little arson?! Yichang is our territory! Why do we have to keep skulking around like rats?!"
At that, Yeop Ji-chang turned a glinting stare on Baek Seo-gun.
The steward could only sweat and keep his head bowed.
"Steward Baek, tell him. Why we had to hide like vermin."
"N-negotiations have been underway with a senior figure in the Iron Blood Fortress. If we secure Yichang and fulfill certain conditions, we would receive the Fortress's protection......"
"There we have it. He knew all along. And here I thought he had forgotten."
"I-I am deeply sorry."
Yeop Gun-pyeong's ears could not believe what they heard.
"The Iron Blood Fortress? You mean that Iron Blood Fortress?"
Was it not the most feared power in the entire unorthodox martial world?
He had never known such a deal was in play. Cold sweat broke out.
"Yes. That is why I have been swallowing Yichang quietly, so as not to attract other factions' attention. Do you understand now?"
"I-I didn't know......"
In that instant, Yeop Ji-chang kicked without mercy.
CRUNCH!
A scream ripped free alongside the sound of breaking bone.
Only then did Yeop Ji-chang click his tongue.
"......Worthless."
He glared at his groaning son and dropped into his chair.
"Sit."
"Ugh. Ungh."
"Sit."
Yeop Gun-pyeong clutched his forearm and dragged himself into a chair.
"When your arm heals, you will enter seclusion. One year...... no, two years. You will stay shut in."
"T-two years?"
Ignoring his son's trembling voice, Yeop Ji-chang looked at the steward.
"Steward Baek, you had better clean this up. If you do not...... we understand each other?"
"O-of course."
"Father! Please! Please forgive me just this once!"
Yeop Ji-chang rose, coldly disregarding his son's desperate plea.
That was when.
His gaze, sweeping toward the door, locked onto something.
'......What is that?'
Yeop Ji-chang forgot to breathe.
An old sword.
Lying on the wrecked office floor, it had been knocked from Yeop Gun-pyeong's waist moments ago.
Yeop Ji-chang reached for it slowly.
Slowly. Very, very slowly.
With the utmost care, he lifted the sword and drew it halfway from its scabbard.
SHIIING!
A gleam of razor-blue light spilled forth.
In that instant, Yeop Ji-chang turned to stone.
"Father? What is it?"
Yeop Gun-pyeong looked at his father's face and flinched.
The look of a man who had seen a ghost.
Yeop Ji-chang's complexion was draining of color at visible speed. His wide-open eyes shook as though an earthquake had struck.
TREMBLE, TREMBLE.
His entire body began to shake.
The tremors were so violent that even Baek Seo-gun and Yeop Gun-pyeong were gripped by fear just watching.
"......You."
Yeop Ji-chang slowly turned to his son.
"Where did you get this sword?"
***
A quiet neighborhood somewhere in Yichang.
In a lean-to at the corner of a back alley, a group of beggars had gathered.
"YAAAWN! Smack!"
One beggar stretched into a cavernous yawn.
Leaning against the wall, he nudged the beggar beside him with his foot.
"Hey, Wang Pal. Anything happen today?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Then tell me something interesting, at least."
"Sir! Branch Master! Would you please stop kicking me!"
"What's with the attitude? I'm the man who taught you how to beg for a living!"
"Agh, give me a break! Things have been insane ever since the Esoteric Sect War!"
The Beggars' Sect, Yichang Branch.
Branch Master Jang Chil-sam cackled and yawned again.
The world was still unsettled even after the Esoteric Sect War had ended, but the martial world was recovering quickly.
Yichang, moreover, had suffered little from the war and had stabilized even faster.
Which meant that Jang Chil-sam, as the local branch master, could afford to spend his days in leisure.
'The Black Tiger Gang lot have been a bit suspicious, though.'
Then again, they were just a local underworld gang, were they not?
They had been somewhat fishy of late, but for criminals they kept things clean, and they disciplined their own when lines were crossed—hardly enough cause to investigate.
Leaving bad men alone was galling, but stirring the pot only worsened public order. A necessary evil, as it were.
'Hmm. Maybe I should look into that arson on the civilian house the other day.'
Jang Chil-sam smacked his lips.
"Can't complain about peace, though."
"Would it kill you to do some actual work? You served in the Alliance's Intelligence Division, for heaven's sake!"
"That's my life's biggest regret. After all that grueling work, this is the good life! Heh heh!"
When the coffers were full, the heart was generous—and when the martial world was peaceful, panhandling was easy. He wished things would stay exactly like this.
But then.
"Branch Master!"
A young beggar burst in, pushing aside the cloth flap.
"What is it?"
"Someone's here looking for you!"
"For me? Someone came here? To the branch?"
Jang Chil-sam and Wang Pal's eyes met.
The Beggars' Sect was both a martial organization and an intelligence network.
That a branch's location was kept secret was only natural.
"Who was it? Don't tell me someone from the Alliance?"
"H-he said to show you this and you'd know."
The young disciple held out a dark, polished medallion.
The instant Jang Chil-sam laid eyes on it, his expression changed completely.
"Wang Pal."
"On it. I'll gather the men."
Jang Chil-sam hauled himself up with a grunt and stepped outside the lean-to.
He entered a ramshackle building behind it, and there, seated in a chair, was a well-built man.
Jang Chil-sam stiffened.
'What is that air about him......'
Was it his imagination?
Something about the gloom seemed to pool more thickly around the seated figure.
"Ahem!"
He dropped into the chair across and narrowed his eyes.
"And who might you be?"
"Would you be the Beggars' Sect branch master of Yichang?"
"Never mind that. Answer first."
Jang Chil-sam crossed his arms and fixed the man with a glare.
The man—Jin Cheong-un—replied evenly.
"A branch master should know well enough what a Black Dragon Badge is."
"Oh, I know."
"I wish to purchase information. Do you have any findings or files prepared on the Black Tiger Gang?"
"The Black Tiger Gang, you say."
Jang Chil-sam muttered to himself, then smirked.
"But here's the thing."
"......?"
"That Black Dragon Badge you brought? It was recalled half a year ago."
Jang Chil-sam grinned.
WHOOSH!
In that instant, beggars who had been scattered around the ruin rose to their feet in unison.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
The sound of their dog-beating staffs being gripped and regripped was distinctly menacing.
Jang Chil-sam smiled coldly.
"The Black Dragon Badge is recalled at regular intervals and reissued. Because it is given only to those who carry out missions important and dangerous enough to warrant it."
"......"
"And anyone with the right to carry one would know that."
The moment he finished speaking, Jang Chil-sam's hand shot out like a bolt of lightning.
GRAB!
Seizing Jin Cheong-un by the collar, he leaned in with bared eyes.
"Who sent you? The Fortress? The Coalition? Or are you a remnant of the Esoteric Sect?"
The atmosphere was a hair's breadth from violence.
Yet Jin Cheong-un merely returned Jang Chil-sam's stare, making no move.
'Would you look at this one?'
Not so much as a flinch?
Jang Chil-sam looked the man up and down—then paused, his brow knitting deeply.
What on earth did a man have to do to end up with a body like this?
The collar torn open by his grip revealed a chest covered in scars of every shape and size.
And that was not all.
'Hm? What's that?'
Jang Chil-sam's eyes narrowed.
Amid the scars, a pattern that looked deliberately carved caught his eye.
"Well now. A tattoo?"
Marking one's body was, by tradition, an act of defiling what one's parents had given.
Only three kinds of people bore such marks.
Slaves, heretical outsiders, or madmen.
On closer inspection, the pattern appeared to be the character for four overlaid with the character for ten.
Fourteen—a number whose pronunciation closely resembled words meaning "certain death," making it deeply inauspicious.
'Some kind of shadow organization? What does it mean? Fourteen, fourteen, four-te......'
Jang Chil-sam recoiled with a start, and his grip on the collar slipped away.
"Wh-what!"
He had heard a rumor once.
About the Black Dragon Corps—deployed only on the most perilous missions the Martial Arts Alliance had to offer.
Within that corps, there was said to be a tradition: those who survived the single most dangerous mission of their generation were paradoxically branded with that very pattern.
And in the current era, only one person bore that mark. The news of his retirement had spread in whispers across both the orthodox and unorthodox worlds alike.
The sharpest blade the Alliance Leader wielded.
An apex master whom even the martial world's greatest had been loath to face.
His epithet was—
***
GRAB!
In a frenzy, Yeop Ji-chang lunged at his son and seized him by the collar.
"Tell me! Why do you have this sword?!"
"Wh-why are you like this? It's just that school master's sword!"
"What? Whose? A school master......?"
For an instant, Yeop Ji-chang's face contorted.
"You cannot mean the martial arts school master?"
"Yes! I found some beat-up sword lying around in his room and just took it!"
"D-describe him......"
"What?"
"Describe him! Appearance, features, anything! Now!"
"The thing is, I actually didn't...... see him myself......"
Seeing the veins in his father's eyes, Yeop Gun-pyeong sucked in a breath.
Baek Seo-gun cut in hastily.
"A-around thirty years of age, roughly six feet tall, sh-sharp eyes but a strikingly handsome face, and......"
The steward's voice shook as he continued.
But before long, the color drained from his face as something clicked.
"S-surely not?"
"......"
"It cannot be. There is no...... there is simply no way?"
Silence fell.
Then Yeop Ji-chang let out a laugh that sounded half-deranged.
"Ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha!"
Yeop Gun-pyeong looked between the two men in alarm.
"What is going on?! Who is this man?!"
"Who? Heh heh? You want to know who?"
Yeop Ji-chang's breathing grew ragged.
He stared down at the old sword in a daze and spoke.
"The Sword Ghost."
"What?"
"You set fire to the Sword Ghost's home...... and stole his blade!"