Jang Chil-sam was bowing repeatedly.
"I-is this enough?"
"Do you have a structural layout of the estate?"
"Uh, no, but I can have it looked into!"
"If you don't have it, that's fine."
"No! I'll have it immediately! Hey, all of you! Move it!"
"I said it's fine."
"He says it's fine! Come back!"
The beggars wore flat expressions.
'Has the branch master lost his mind?'
Why was a man who was normally all jokes and easy confidence wound this tight?
"How much for the information?"
"Information fee?! Absolutely not! How could I possibly!"
"I will say it again—I am no longer Alliance personnel. Just a retired martial artist. There is no need for such deference."
"No! I am simply more comfortable this way!"
Is that man's back ever going to straighten? How does he stay bent like that?
The visitor eventually forced a coin purse into his hands.
"Then consider this payment for a favor."
"Sir? If, if I may ask—you are not requesting our direct involvement......?"
"Not that far. I just need you to handle the aftermath."
Jin Cheong-un rose from his seat.
"I shall be going."
"If, if it is not too forward...... may I ask one thing?"
Jang Chil-sam wiped the cold sweat with his grimy sleeve and spoke.
"Is it true, then...... that your retirement was a cover, as the rumors say?"
Jin Cheong-un shook his head, expression blank.
"It was not a cover. I truly did retire."
"Then...... why are you making new enemies?"
"......"
Jin Cheong-un studied Jang Chil-sam through narrowed eyes.
"You seem to know who I am."
"I served in the Alliance's Intelligence Division in the past. I was with you during the Specter Heaven Valley incident...... Do you not remember?"
The beggars' eyes went round.
Who in the martial world did not know about the Specter Heaven Valley incident?
The day the murder-addicted warriors of Specter Heaven Valley were found dead overnight, slaughtered to the last man.
"One of the support team, I take it."
"It was the first time I ever saw your real face without a mask or disguise. Forgive me for not recognizing you immediately."
"What is it you wish to say?"
For an instant, Jang Chil-sam's expression turned deeply solemn.
"If you have truly retired, why would you wade back into muddy waters?"
"......"
"Grudges are like tangled thread—the more you try to unravel them, the tighter they bind. You know that better than anyone."
"I do."
Jin Cheong-un turned away.
"That is precisely why I intend to cut it before it tangles further."
"......!"
"I am counting on you."
With that, Jin Cheong-un departed.
Even a visit from a Sect Elder would not have moved the branch master, yet he scrambled after his guest and escorted him all the way out before returning.
"......"
Silence hung over the branch.
After a round of traded glances—you ask, no you ask—the youngest beggar finally spoke up.
"Branch Master, who on earth was that?"
"Could he be an inspector from the Audit Hall?"
"......I'd take one of those over him."
"What?"
Jang Chil-sam stumbled to a chair and sank into it.
"Uuughh."
After staring into space, half his soul seemingly departed, he dragged a hand down his face.
"Wang Pal, get the men ready."
"Sir?"
"The Black Tiger Gang's signboard is coming down before long."
***
The Sword Ghost?
That was a fairly common epithet, was it not?
"I-I don't know him. Some underworld chieftain?"
"An underworld chieftain?"
Yeop Ji-chang let out a hollow, bitter laugh.
"He is the blade the Alliance Leader sent whenever those underworld chieftains needed killing."
"What?"
"You would not know. And yes...... you would have no reason to."
Yeop Ji-chang pressed his hand over his eyes. His hand was still trembling.
"Did you kill him?"
"What?"
"Did you only set fire to the house? Or was that school master...... there at the time?"
"W-well......"
At his son's fumbling response, Yeop Ji-chang suddenly began to laugh.
His shoulders heaved, and the laughter carried a tinge of madness.
After laughing alone for a long while, Yeop Ji-chang spoke as if tossing out the words.
"Do you know how Yeo Un-baek came to hold the prestige he has now?"
"Yeo Un-baek? The Alliance Leader? Is it not simply because he is the Alliance Leader and a powerful martial artist?"
"Because he is the Alliance Leader? Ha."
Yeop Ji-chang laughed as though the idea were absurd.
"Strong men are everywhere. And the title of Alliance Leader was originally nothing but a figurehead's seat."
"What?"
Yeop Ji-chang removed his hand from his eyes and leaned back.
His face no longer held any trace of composure.
"His personal abilities aside, Yeo Un-baek was a man of unremarkable origins. The orthodox factions used to select only puppets for Alliance Leader. So that the elders could manipulate whoever sat in the chair......"
"B-but the current Alliance Leader is......!"
Yeo Un-baek.
His prestige in the current era was anything but that of a puppet.
A leader who had seized the Alliance's reins of power, and a formidable warrior who had led the war to victory—was he not acclaimed as both?
"Yeo Un-baek was no different at first. At first......"
Yeop Ji-chang drew out the words and slowly rose from his seat.
"Then one day, he acquired a very sharp blade."
Eyes laced with both fear and fury turned on his son.
"A viciously sharp blade. Willful, cruel, one that always drew blood when unsheathed...... yet one that accomplished every mission by whatever means necessary."
Yeop Gun-pyeong realized his father was not speaking of an actual blade, but of a person.
"There was a time when the sect master and all the senior officers of Green Mountain Sword Gate—a sect rivaling the Nine Great Sects in power—were assassinated overnight. Six masters, all at once."
Yeop Gun-pyeong had heard that story.
The culprit's identity—whether orthodox or unorthodox—had never been established. And so the martial world had given the unknown master an epithet.
"Do you mean the Black Asura?"
"That was the first name he carried."
Yeop Ji-chang let out a bark of incredulous laughter.
"The Sword Ghost—the sharpest blade that turned a puppet into a true Alliance Leader."
The laughter vanished. Yeop Ji-chang's voice sank to something bleak.
"The Blue-Eyed Yama—who assassinated the leader of the Heaven and Earth Society, once the greatest power in the underworld."
"......"
"And the reason this father of yours...... fled like a rat and hid in a backwater like this!"
SLAM!
Yeop Gun-pyeong was shoved against the wall by his father's brutal grip.
"It was all him. All because of what he did."
"N-no, no......"
"And you! Of all people, my own son provoked him!"
THUD!
Yeop Gun-pyeong's legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor.
"......"
Yeop Ji-chang glared at his son as though he might kill him, then wrenched his gaze away.
It was one of the martial world's untold secrets.
No—in truth, those who needed to know, knew. Calling it a secret was generous; the man had strode openly through the martial world for all to see.
Yet the Alliance Leader who owned the blade, the grandees the blade had cut, and even the blade himself had all conspired to bury it as deeply as they could.
Within that peculiar equilibrium, a secret that was no secret had given birth to a ghost with a sword.
"Th-that makes no sense!"
"......"
"A nobody like that being someone so great?! Why would a man like that be in a place like Yinghua Village?!"
Yeop Ji-chang scoffed.
"I heard he retired from injuries...... It seems his hometown happened to be here."
He turned from his son and walked to the window. His hands, gripping the sill, quivered.
Then he spoke in a voice sunk deep.
"Steward Baek."
"Y-yes, Gang Master."
"I will not simply lie down and die. Prepare for a fight. And you, Pyeong-i......"
Yeop Ji-chang smiled bitterly.
"You had better pray his injuries are real. No—you should pray he is on his deathbed."
"......!"
"Because I have never once heard of anyone succeeding in running from a man the Sword Ghost had decided to kill."
***
The days that followed were quiet in Yichang.
The Black Tiger Gang members who had been stationed throughout the surrounding villages had vanished overnight.
"......Gang Master, are you alright?"
Yeop Ji-chang, noticeably gaunt in just a few days, received Baek Seo-gun's report.
"What is the situation?"
"All gang members have been recalled, and a perimeter of fifty zhang around headquarters is locked down tight."
"Not that. The intelligence on him."
"According to a reliable source, he does appear to have sustained serious injuries."
"Can it be trusted?"
"Yes, we paid a premium for this information. And the man is notorious for...... moving without caution. Word has already been spreading on its own."
"How serious are the injuries?"
"Internal damage so deep that his qi vessels and muscles were badly harmed."
"How serious, exactly!"
Yeop Ji-chang's sudden shout made the steward flinch.
"A-accounts vary, but many say he cannot raise his inner arts above thirty percent of their peak, or that he is so incapacitated he will need lifelong convalescence."
"Thirty percent and incapacitated......"
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Yeop Ji-chang drummed the table, face taut.
Baek Seo-gun swallowed once and spoke.
"Gang Master. I may never have seen the Black Asura of old, but when I met him recently, his bearing was nowhere near what the rumors described."
Baek Seo-gun had seen a physical description of the Sword Ghost before, yet had failed to recognize him in person.
Because the Jin Cheong-un he had met in the flesh exuded nothing remotely fitting the man's infamy.
"What are you getting at?"
"Think about it. If he were the man he used to be, would he have let me walk away? Would things have even escalated this far?"
"......"
"And has our organization not been building its strength precisely for contingencies like this?"
Strength.
Yes, they had been building it.
Yeop Ji-chang closed his eyes and turned those words over.
The memory of that day was still vivid.
The monster that had stormed the Society leader's estate with a mere ten men and felled every guard in sight.
—Captain, he is not on the ledger. Shall we dispose of him?
The blue-tinged sword that had been leveled at his throat. The very sword now in his hand.
He had begged on his hands and knees that day. Groveled for his life, swearing he was nobody, a mere foot soldier.
—Clear him out. No point wasting time on someone not on the ledger.
They had left him with internal injuries he could never fully heal, and let him live.
But worse than the injuries was the terror seared into his soul like a brand.
THROB!
The old scar ached.
The man's eyes from that day were still seared into his memory.
The epithet Asura had not been given lightly. Those eyes had held nothing human—only killing intent and cold-blooded indifference.
From that day, he had taken his men and fled to Yichang to hide.
He had never dreamed of revenge.
No—he had not allowed himself to dream of it. Even now, just picturing the man's face......
SLAM!
Yeop Ji-chang struck the table and his eyes blazed.
"Yes...... I cannot live like this forever."
"G-Gang Master?"
"If he does not come to us, we go to him."
His eyes, glinting with killing intent, fixed on Baek Seo-gun.
"What is the state of his school? Still under construction?"
"Yes, the work is still ongoing. By the look of it, he is simply biding his time."
"We strike first. And...... bring out the stockpile."
"Sir?"
The steward blanched.
"You mean the gunpowder?"
"Yes. Prepare it."
"Gang Master!"
All this time, the Black Tiger Gang had kept its head down and expanded within the bounds of the law.
But underworld was still underworld. In the process of absorbing the region's existing criminal factions, they had amassed a trove of illicit materiel.
"......Understood. I shall prepare it."
Baek Seo-gun signaled a subordinate, and one gang member slipped quickly out the back.
"Perhaps this is for the best. How long was I supposed to rot in this backwater?"
Yeop Ji-chang stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing out the window.
If he could take the Sword Ghost's head, he might not merely trade with the Iron Blood Fortress's masters—he might gain entry outright.
And if he were rewarded with a rare elixir, he might even purge the old internal injuries that plagued him.
That was when.
"Gang Master, the Fierce Tiger Captain reporting."
"What is it?"
A powerfully built man strode into the office.
"A letter just arrived for you, sir."
"A letter? Let me see it."
It was suspiciously thick.
The moment he cracked it open.
TAP!
A slip of paper fell out. Yeop Ji-chang picked it up and frowned.
'A promissory note from a Central Plains bank?'
Promissory notes had been devised to move large sums without the burden of heavy gold or silver.
The letter wrapped around the note bore exactly eight characters.
Debts repaid in full. Now karma collects its due.
"Who delivered this?"
"A young courier. He insisted the Gang Master had to receive it personally."
"Not six hundred nyang, not seven hundred, but six hundred and seventy-four...... What is this?"
Baek Seo-gun froze.
"How much did you say?"
"A promissory note for six hundred and seventy-four nyang of silver."
"......!"
The color drained from Baek Seo-gun's face.
"What is the matter?"
"The amount on the note...... matches the Jeong household's debt down to the last coin."
"What?"
That was when.
THOOM—the building shuddered.
"......?"
Yeop Ji-chang turned his head, dazed.
Then.
CRAAAASH!
A massive explosion rocked the Black Tiger Gang's headquarters.
It had not come from outside.
Nor from the main gate.
From inside the front gate. The outer courtyard.
The man was already within their walls.
"AAAARGH!"
"Intruder! We have an intruder!"
Screams of agony erupted in the wake of the blast.