TSBIRBV Ch 112

Chapter 112 Mission Complete (8)

Haryang, having at last withdrawn his hand from the priest’s cheek as if waking from a faint induced by the unexpected act, stepped out of the manor.

He moved along streets where shadows stretched endlessly in dark ribbons. Passing buildings of Hangzhou that had lost the night’s splendor beneath the sun and had dozed into silence, he crossed a bustling bridge and slipped into a back alley.

He could see the way to the dyeing workshop.

Taking Yegyeol to the dyehouse under the pretense of finding Hwang Noya had been a kind of verification. The priest’s attachments outside of Haryang needed to be confirmed. Only then could he truthfully dismiss the apprentice’s ramblings as nonsense.

Without knowing what he might find, Haryang pushed at the priest’s back.

The dye shop he reached after winding through alley after alley lay in ruins, the aftermath of someone’s raid. Haryang realized, belatedly, that he had acted on impulse without scouting the place first.

Yegyeol’s gaze, as he took in the wrecked workshop, wavered like the reflection of the moon on a storm-tossed sea.

In the next instant, the priest curled inward and whispered that they should leave this place—now.

Fear had taken root in the hazel-colored eyes. He, who had once surrendered his body so readily to another, who had claimed he was not afraid even of the Black Ghost’s ferociousness, was now the first to attempt to flee.

“Regardless of what I want, this workshop is finished. Even if someone remembers Hwang Noya, it’s best not to get involved,” Yegyeol said.

So Haryang grabbed him. He had to.

“It’s only incense and a single visit. Not some great vow. If the elder had not asked, you wouldn’t have even remembered. Why bother dragging yourself into something troublesome and dangerous?”

Maybe Yegyeol was right. It was a messy, dangerous affair that offered nothing in return.

But Haryang could not willingly encourage him to simply shrug it off.

He did not want the priest to give something up. Had he not sworn to bring anything and everything to him?

‘If only Hwang Noya were still alive…’

Though he knew the hope was futile, the wish rose in him nonetheless, and it had been a very long time since he had felt such a thing.

To keep his promise to the priest, Haryang began digging into the dyehouse’s past. An unexpected name surfaced on the end of that line.

It was Jangchil of the Osam Trading Company. The priest recognized his face immediately: a rogue affiliated with the Akhyeol faction’s fringe, a man who had preyed on the orphans of Hangzhou, among them Yegyeol.

The priest spoke of twin-blades and venomous snakes as if it were nothing. But it could not have been nothing.

Even listening, Haryang felt a dizzying churn inside him.

As if he already knew the road he must walk, Haryang’s steps carried him without hesitation deeper into the alley. The stench of blood and pus and the acrid tang of dye were still in the air, lingering atop the sachets of thousand-li chase incense he had scattered earlier.

A shabby cloth, more rag than door, hung across the leaning doorway. Haryang, seeing the dark crimson stains soaked into the curtain, pushed the fabric aside with the sheath of his sword.

In the dim corner of a room bereft even of a window, Jangchil crouched.

A smile ghosted at the corner of Haryang’s mouth upon sighting his quarry.

The venomous snake had long been killed in a gangland clash; at least the twin-blade remained. Haryang was genuinely relieved by that fact.

When he had cleaved the eighth disciple of Ma-ui, slicing Jinpal through, there had been no sweet taste of vengeance—only the tired satisfaction of completing a long-awaited duty. Erasing Ma-ui’s traces from the world had become merely another obligation.

But standing before the twin-blade Jangchil, the thrill that ran so vividly through his veins and along his arteries was entirely different. His heart beat with a liveliness he had not felt in ages.

Ever since Ma-ui had forced upon him its demonic arts and he had been compelled to master them, Haryang had stifled his emotions to hide how crueler and sharper he had steadily become.

He had come to realize, with an uneasy surprise, that he unconsciously craved blood. When killing began to feel easier—and even preferable—to saving lives, Haryang found no recourse but to repress these impulses. Thus his dulled emotions seemed irretrievable—until he faced the living Yegyeol again.

Haryang advanced slowly and waited.

He was willing to grant Jangchil a measure of mercy; the man did not yet seem fully prepared to receive a visitor.

When the courtyard fell unnaturally silent, Jangchil raised his head. A shabby bandage, of unknown origin, was wrapped about his forehead, and beneath it sat his bloodshot, reddened eyes.

Frightened and sleepless, he was slow to react to Haryang’s presence.

“M-my chief…!” Jangchil screamed.

Realizing this was no dream, he bolted for the door. The instinct to survive sent him running faster than he ever had. Jangchil’s judgment had usually been decent—enough to let him survive when the venomous snake died—but this time fortune was not on his side.

As he reached to grab a thin thread of light slipping through the torn rag covering, something seized the back of his neck and yanked him backward so violently he could not even cry out.

Jangchil toppled, rolled, and slammed into the wall. Disoriented, he scrambled to see what had grabbed him; Haryang, who had been standing where he first appeared, remained frozen in place.

Then what had hauled his body back?

‘A g-ghost…?’

Having lived a life at the very bottom, this fringe thug of the underworld could not conjure the name Heogong-Seopmul at once. The strongest warriors he had met were the subcommanders dispatched from the Akhyeol faction.

Haryang’s cold gaze fixed on the man sprawled like a rag at his feet.

“Please—my chief… spare me,” Jangchil whimpered.

For the past day he had narrowly escaped the dyehouse and slipped into the back alleys of old Hangzhou, hiding in a place once used by urchins. He had no idea when the Akhyeol would resume their search; the darkest place is always beneath the lamp.

He had neither the money nor the connections to flee to Luoyang; having become a criminal, he had no one to turn to.

As he paced helplessly, his hiding spot was discovered by the chief of the Cheonghae Trading Company.

‘Is he really a chief?’ Jangchil had thought on first sight—there was something extraordinary about him. The man had stood a step back from his merchant lord as if leading from the rear, never flaunting his full force.

But now the chief before him—no longer merely holding a brush—wielded a sword as he faced Jangchil.

Having lived as a ronin on the margins of the martial world, Jangchil had seen all manner of people: murderers who claimed hundreds of lives, pirates and brigands. Yet none of those encounters compared to the murderous imminence he felt now.

Even while Haryang did not lift a finger, Jangchil was struck by hallucinations of his throat being crushed. No, it was not mere hallucination.

As if some invisible hand had grasped him and dragged him back, an unseen power gripped Jangchil’s scruff and stood him upright.

Only then did he understand what had been moving him.

“H-Heogong-Seopmul?” he gasped.

A power that, among martial artists, was spoken of only in legend—an ability to manipulate objects at a distance through internal force. The thought made Jangchil reel. Why would someone of such caliber be serving as a mere chief? He wished to believe it was the work of a ghost.

“Why… why have you come for me?” he stammered, trying to steady himself.

He tried to muster composure, to assume some intention, but could not bring himself to look Haryang in the face.

“Has the Lord of the Cheonghae Trading Company ordered my throat taken?” he cried, wanting to curse before death.

“Young master wanted him alive, so I will not take your life,” Haryang said.

Haryang had left his sleeping priest not to defy his wishes but to carry out an act that might contravene them.

“But this mark is more than you deserve to hold,” Haryang murmured, pressing the tip of his sword against Jangchil’s brow.

At that, the bandage Jangchil had wrapped clumsily came undone with a soft snap. In the center of his forehead, where Yegyeol had seared him with a strike of lightning, the skin was blackened and oozing foul pus.

The tip of the sword hovered, almost touching. Jangchil clenched and unclenched his fists to dislodge the tension.

The man who had introduced himself as “my chief” carried no tremor in his fingertip; Jangchil’s own trembling body feared that it might accidentally press against the blade.

“Would you prefer I lop it off in one breath? Or strip the skin from you, layer by layer?” Haryang asked, his tone almost lyrical.

“A-any way, won’t I die either way?” Jangchil blurted, then burst into sobs. Haryang inclined his head with an expression as blank as a stone.

“No. The Lord said he wished you kept alive, did he not?” Haryang said.

The man who had earlier spoken as if he were the real chief, correcting the title to “merchant lord,” had been maddeningly deceitful.

“Because the boy wanted it, you shall live,” Haryang added.

The words left Jangchil hollow. Kidnapped and dragged through Hangzhou’s night, struck by lightning while still alive by the eerie chief of the Cheonghae Merchant Company, he had fled into the back alleys hoping to escape before the dyehouse folk returned. He had hidden in a place once used by beggar boys, heart pounding every time a footstep neared.

And now, having survived by sheer will, he learned that the monstrous man had spared him for no grand reason at all.

Tears streamed down Jangchil’s face; he could not comprehend why such a calamity should befall him in his old age. He had thought he had buried all his grudges and stood up from them—this reality was unbearable.

Who, in the past, had the Lord of the Cheonghae been?

Jangchil ran through countless faces in his memory, hoping to recall a name to beg from. But nothing came.

Haryang watched the man flail for escape and spoke indifferently.

“If you sever it in one stroke, the pain will be intense but it will end in an instant. But you might thrash about and smash your head against something and kill yourself.” He had seen it happen before.

“If I peel the skin layer by layer, the chance of death is lower. But it will take longer and prolong the pain…”

Haryang lowered the sword. Expecting him to thrust again, Jangchil followed the blade with desperate eyes, but Haryang did not move.

“Choose,” he said.

If he could, Jangchil wanted to claw at the author’s feet and beg. But if pleading worked, he would have already backed down.

“F-First… please,” he said, tearing his sleeve and holding it against his mouth, staring only at the shadows on the ground.

A long, sharp shadow advanced very slowly. Jangchil clenched the hands on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut.

And—