TSBIRBV Ch 66

Chapter 66 The Bride Lies Sleepless (4)

So that was why he called him.

Even if Tang Seoak quietly erased the man, no one would have complained; but for the one acting, not as Je Haryang but as the Black Ghost, a pretext was needed.

“This happened to my body. It will be handled at the level of Qinghai Trading,” Yegyeol said, shaking his head. He was, in truth, a little peevish. After entwining bodies, the man spoke as if nothing had happened, showing concern only for Tang Seoak—aggravating, even if that concern was murderous intent.

Yet his refusal proved moot; Je Haryang had already secured the justification he needed.

“Black Spot bears a share of responsibility for this poisoning,” he said.

“Black Spot?”

“The toxins that afflicted you were smeared upon the bridal sedan Black Spot supplied. A mercenary in the escort was suborned.”

“Because the Golden Dragon affair left a trail?”

“Yes. That is my supposition.”

A sliver of smile tugged the Black Ghost’s mouth.

“Even if Black Spot will do anything for money, a minimum of good faith must be kept.”

Yegyeol looked into the teacup.

“What you want is to set an example?”

“To deal with lawless men, rules are required.”

“Do as you wish,” Yegyeol answered readily. The brutal face flickered with something like a smile—though to others it would seem only as if the mask’s scar twitched.

“The drug was harsher than expected. It worried me,” Haryang added.

So we’re not pretending it never happened, after all.

The remark caught him off guard; Yegyeol lowered his gaze. It hadn’t been that potent. Not to an esper.

Hardly harsh, he thought. The flood of guiding last night had burned out aphrodisiac and venoms alike; only when Haryang mouth-fed the counter-poison had he been briefly re-intoxicated. In truth, he had been no more than an esper rutting helplessly under a guide’s touch.

Not a word of that, even on pain of death.

“…Thanks to you, I kept my life,” he said instead.

“Last night, you—” he began, seizing the opening like the greedy esper he was.

“I merely provided what a client required, as Sichuan branch master of Black Spot,” Haryang cut in.

Ah. So that’s your line.

Even as he found it infuriating, Yegyeol kept his expression steady, eyes lowered.

“Still—you moved yourself. I took it as uncommon.”

From what he knew, Haryang was not a man to do such things lightly. If it were common… what then? He might rampage a second time in his life, and Black Spot’s Sichuan branch would vanish neatly from the Central Plains.

Stay sharp, he told himself. He did not want to break what Haryang had built.

“…I do not care to touch others,” Haryang said.

Yegyeol hurriedly schooled the involuntary twitch at the corner of his mouth. If Haryang had noticed, he did not show it—but that had been close. To feel so pleased at the possibility that a person—no mere object—might be “new”… he seemed a vulgar soul.

Vulgar indeed, he admitted, forcing his gaze away from the lower half hidden by the desk. It had been good to imagine—but knowing precisely what lay there was better. Sight breeds desire; once taken, the thirst swelled rather than abated. Espers were born greedy that way.

“Will what happened last night remain a secret between us?” he asked, shaking off the dark drift of thought.

“Black Spot is not so hard up as to sell a client’s intimacies,” Haryang replied.

He would not have minded if it were shouted across the Central Plains—but Yegyeol lowered his eyes like a man relieved.

“Thank… you. For many things.”

“Do not call it a debt. If anything, I should apologize.”

“Why?”

Surprise flashed across Yegyeol’s face. He was neither a libertine nor a slave of lust—yet Haryang had spent the night in tireless “service,” pouring on guiding besides. For what would he apologize?

“I did not obtain proper consent, even if my purpose was to help,” Haryang said.

Yegyeol’s mouth opened and shut without sound.

A man this good—surely it would be best to confine and protect him, whispered the esper’s favorite self-justification.

Clear-eyed about himself, he bit his tongue hard enough to sting in penance.

“I am glad it was the Black Ghost at my side in my weakest moment,” he said simply—the raw truth.

“Do you not resent your Senior Brother for not coming?” Haryang asked.

Yegyeol stilled. Instinct knew whose question that truly was—not the Black Ghost’s, but Je Haryang’s.

“I resent myself,” he said, without a heartbeat’s hesitation.

“Why would you think so?”

“Because I am weak and foolish, and try to lean on him each time crisis comes,” he said, laying soft flesh bare—not to Je Haryang, but to the Black Ghost. Let him lick like balm—or tear like a beast. Either way, it carved a path for Je Haryang to come to him.

“It is fortunate he does not know of this. And I hope it remains so,” he added.

Before the Senior Brother, he would create a secret that Je Haryang must never learn—white pebbles dropped on the path home, like the children in the tale.

So long as he hid that he was Je Haryang, the Black Ghost could answer only one way.

“…The secret will be kept,” Haryang said.

Yegyeol smiled. “Thank you.” Je Haryang’s veil of deception could be used by Yegyeol as well.

— — —

Back on the river, during the earlier battle, Tang Seoak had betrayed Golden Dragon and captured several of their pirates alive. One recalled that it had been a Black Spot mercenary who ferried the signal flares.

“Black Spot, is it.”

Black Spot—so the name went—was the organization that, for a price, found whatever a client wanted: a vanished imperial treasure, a rare spice from across the sea, a celebrated calligrapher’s ancient work.

If one could pay the price, they produced it and connected it to the buyer.

They functioned as a black market, but not only goods passed through their hands: identities, labor—and death. For all the enemies such a trade bred, for all the greedy men who swarmed them, Black Spot endured. From time to time, rumors sifted through the alleys: those who tried to shake Black Spot had vanished forever.

No survivors, no witnesses—only ghost stories remained, because the ones who should have told it were erased before anyone could confirm what had happened.

A few clients who glimpsed the truth and lived swore that, for those who paid the proper price, Black Spot delivered not just objects—but what they truly desired.

Tang Seoak sneered at Black Spot’s mystique. In his eyes, they had merely been lucky in keeping rumors contained; their doors were for third-rate mercenaries and swords-for-hire.

The Golden Dragon chief had claimed that with Black Spot’s backing, the Yangtze River Alliance’s throne was in his pocket. To shut that noisy mouth, Tang Seoak had tossed Tang Eonbo’s funds to Manak.

He decided to watch Black Spot closely. Attending an auction by chance, he saw Qinghai Trading’s stolen consignments—and summoned Eonbo to pick out anything from their recent caravan that she recognized.

Scattered though they were, the items she identified filled both hands twice over. Tang Seoak drew a provisional conclusion: the uppity new guild master had deceived him.

Insulted above all by being fooled—by being looked down on—he burned. Whatever the closeness between Qinghai Trading and the Jiaolong King, they would pay as he had, cast out from his clan.

He moved on all fronts to intercept the “ransom” Qinghai Trading meant to send the Jiaolong King. For once, his cousin’s contacts among merchants proved useful.

Fool, he thought. If his own father had been rich and capable like Eonbo’s—a true merchant—he would have lived far better than his cousin ever had. So he cherished her—and despised her.

“…Again, via Black Spot,” he scoffed. He had been toyed with long enough; now it was his turn. Using the purse Eonbo had once given the Golden Dragon chief, he baited the mercenary. Fortune favored him: the same man who had almost joined hands with Manak was assigned to escort Qinghai’s goods.

Learning the ransom would be disguised as a wedding procession, Tang Seoak’s curiosity sharpened. A hunch told him the “bride” was the most precious item in that train.

Indeed, he spotted Mun Yegyeol in bridal robes—“a hostage of Jiaolong,” now to cross the river as a bride with dowry for Yeon Sosho.

Impudent to the last.

He seethed.

So he chose to kill Mun Yegyeol.

He coerced and coaxed the mercenary—and meddled with the carriage. He mixed venoms, hiding the stimulant at the base—purely his taste. With a delicately balanced brew, he would make the victim suffer without end; then, just as others relaxed at successful detox, the stimulant’s heat would strike the weakened body. If lucky, the victim lived—mad; if not, the heart burst.

He loved the despair of those who writhed to live.

Soon, the Jiaolong King would receive the guild master’s corpse; Namgung Un and the Azure Corps, standing by to escort the hostage, would witness Yeon Sosho’s frenzy at a collaborator’s death.

Then Qinghai Trading would receive a bill they could not easily pay; upon that, Tang Seoak would rebuild his good standing.

Thus he ran directly to Namgung Un. Strong in martial skill yet green in Jianghu experience—a prodigy like that he could toy with.

But now, the Namgung Un before him recalled the last words of the Golden Dragon chief before he died.

“If I die—beware the first to come calling.”

— — —