“I’ve had my eye on Cheon Suryeon for quite some time. Since the first external mission she was sent on. It would have been to deal with the bandits who raided an escort agency the Cheon Clan runs, I believe.”

Seo Woojin tilted his head at that.

“Bandits? They dared touch a Cheon Clan escort agency?”

“Heh. I thought Young Master Seo would find that strange. It was the first thing I wondered about myself. What bandit in all the Central Plains has a liver big enough to touch a Cheon Clan agency? Even the King of the Green Forest would turn his head and pretend not to see.”

Seo Woojin’s eyes glinted.

“So the bandits were dealt with first, and the reason attached afterward?”

“Just so. The Fierce Tiger Stronghold, they were. Bandit strongholds always take grandiose names, but by all accounts these were as fierce as theirs suggested — and large with it.”

“And they sent Cheon Suryeon into a place like that alone, and the bandits were wiped out?”

“Cheon Suryeon was seventeen at the time.”

“…!!”

Seo Woojin was genuinely startled.

Whatever her talent for martial arts, that they had sent her into a bandits’ den at that age was hard to credit. No — more than that: killing does not come easily at so young an age, warrior or not.

And she had left none of them alive.

“Well? Doesn’t that seem worth wondering at, worth taking an interest in? From that day I put three parts in ten of the Cho Clan’s eyes on it.”

Seo Woojin let out a dry laugh.

“I said earlier that if the information turned out to be nothing much, this promise is void. You’ve watched the Cheon Clan since then and there’s been no noise about it at all — doesn’t that mean you came up with nothing?”

“Tsk, tsk. Don’t be hasty. It makes you look as though you have no room to breathe. It doesn’t suit the dignity of an Alliance Lord.”

Seo Woojin’s brow furrowed, and Cho Igyeom hurried on.

“In any case! Your concern isn’t entirely misplaced. For several years’ investment, the results were far from satisfying. Even so, hear it out and you won’t be disappointed. Obtaining this particular piece was genuinely a matter of chance.”

What could it be, to warrant all this fuss?

Seo Woojin kept his composure with an effort and nodded.

“Then let’s hear it. As I said, I’ll listen to all of it calmly and judge afterward.”

He sent a look carrying a clear warning of what would follow if it turned out to be nothing. Cho Igyeom was unruffled.

“In fact it wasn’t the eyes watching the Cheon Clan that found it. It simply caught the notice of the men collecting general word from the streets of Hangzhou. The dead of night. A fixed interval. A fixed hour. A young woman appearing in the back alleys. Well? Peculiar, isn’t it?”

“And that’s Cheon Suryeon?”

“Yes. My man, who had been watching her, confirmed the face. Her face, as she was carried out unconscious, drenched in blood.”

Seo Woojin’s eyebrows twitched.

“Unconscious?”

“Strange, isn’t it? A woman called a killing machine, turning up unconscious in a back alley of all places. Stranger still — she was drenched in blood, and nowhere in those alleys was there any blood at all.”

“The traces were deliberately erased? By whom?”

Cho Igyeom nodded.

“That is precisely the part I found most curious.”

“The most curious part?”

A light stirred behind Cho Igyeom’s eyes.

“Cheon Clan warriors were standing by around the alley Cheon Suryeon entered. Hidden from our eyes as well.”

Seo Woojin’s mind began working fast.

“The Cheon Clan knew she would go there? And foresaw that she would lose consciousness besides? Her, drenched in blood — and a place with no trace on it.”

“Connect that to the Cheon Clan’s deliberate concealment and you arrive at one conclusion.”

“Martial arts…?”

Cho Igyeom smiled at the answer, satisfied.

“Just so. The martial arts must be the problem. So what art would need concealing? What comes to mind at once are those of the murim’s public enemies — the ones who set the Central Plains in an uproar down the years. As is usually the way, such men’s arts are hard to master in proportion to their power, so there may well be side effects. Not quite the right example, but something on the order of qi deviation.”

“If that assumption is true, the Cheon Clan’s behavior makes sense. If it came out that she had mastered a public enemy’s martial arts, the Cheon Clan would face pressure from the Murim Alliance.”

Tak.

Cho Igyeom rapped the table lightly.

“Tsk! The trouble is there’s no proof. We tailed her in secret, but lost her almost every time. And the one occasion she was carried out unconscious is the only one we ever witnessed.”

Set in order, what Cho Igyeom had amounted to one thing: the interval and the hour at which she appeared on Hangzhou’s streets.

Seo Woojin shook his head, unimpressed.

“This seems rather a poor bargain for me.”

“Poor, he says! Where else could you get information like this! If you catch that girl’s tail, do you know how many advantages come out of it? Handled well, you might even come away with grounds to drive the Cheon Clan out of the Dark Alliance!”

Seo Woojin snorted.

“Don’t overstate it. You could bring political pressure to bear, but how would you drive them out? Grounds for it, should a civil war break out — that much I’ll grant.”

Cho Igyeom scratched his head, looking sheepish.

“Haha. Sharp as ever. So what will it be? Shall we overturn our secret pact here?”

Seo Woojin sank into thought.

What it came to was that he was being told to uncover the truth himself.

‘There’s no telling what scheme Cheon Doyun will devise next. So I do need a card of my own.’

Reckoned by what he was giving up it was a poor trade — but it is the thirsty man who digs the well.

Seo Woojin let out a faint sigh.

“Tell me, then. When does she appear?”

Cho Igyeom grinned and was about to hand it over when something seemed to occur to him, and he raised a hand.

“Ah! One moment. I’m truly sorry, but might I attach one more condition?”

Seo Woojin’s expression turned cold.

“That doesn’t seem a good choice. Must you insist on testing my patience?”

Cho Igyeom waved both hands and shook his head hard.

“No! Not at all! How could I! I call it a condition, but this is something that will certainly benefit Young Master Seo as well!”

Seo Woojin glared at him, suspicious. He weighed it a moment, then nodded.

“Let’s hear it. But this is the last time.”

Cho Igyeom wiped away a cold sweat and gave an awkward laugh.

“Haha… You do have a fiery side to you. Ahem. My condition is this. The Clan Head of the Black Dragon Woon Clan wishes to meet Young Master Seo. Will you see him?”

Seo Woojin could not hide his surprise — because it was exactly as Woon Seorin had said.

[My father will have you in mind again. He’ll deliberate over it, of course — he’ll have realized he can’t control you as he pleases. But rather than drive a disciple he cherishes into a death trap, in the end he’ll want to use you once more. Word summoning you may even come before long. Thinking, most likely, that he’ll see for himself and judge.]

Though in the event, rather than word arriving, he had come here himself.

“Ah! Not immediately, of course. I’ll arrange the timing—”

“Very well.”

There was no reason to refuse. He would have accepted had the man simply asked.

Cho Igyeom likely knew that too, and had called it a condition anyway. Framing it so that Seo Woojin appeared to be granting him something left him owing an invisible debt — which meant he wanted to carry the relationship forward on friendlier terms.

Seo Woojin read the intent behind it, feigned ignorance, and gave a nod.

“Then tell me properly this time.”

Cho Igyeom clicked his tongue as if reluctant, but spoke readily enough.

“Truly, the way things fall out is a curious business. As it happens, it’s tomorrow before dawn.”

A significant smile crossed his face.

“Tomorrow, before dawn. The Hour of the Ox.”

The Hour of the Ox.

Seo Woojin lay concealed at the place Cho Igyeom had named. By his account, once a month or so, at this hour, she always appeared on this street.

‘And he said Cheon Clan warriors would be hidden nearby. The problem is I can’t sense them at all.’

That they escaped his senses entirely meant one of two things. Either their concealment was far better than he expected, or they were stationed too far off for him to reach.

‘Given that I can’t feel any ordinary people around here either, the latter is more likely. They’ll be controlling the area from a distance.’

It was a pity. Had she appeared at shorter intervals, he would have worked slowly inward from the outskirts. With time short, he had had no choice but to come straight here.

‘First confirm what it is they’re hiding so carefully. That’s the urgent thing.’

Had she mastered a public enemy’s martial arts, as Cho Igyeom guessed? Or was there some other cause — a defect of character, say?

One rumor he had heard as a child was of a madman who fell into fits if a day passed without the taste of human blood.

If she were that sort, the thorough concealment made sense. A temperament satisfied only by killing would be hard to accept even on the dark path.

Seo Woojin shook the thoughts off.

Seeing it for himself was best. Whatever one imagined, until it was confirmed it was only fantasy.

Just as he was settling himself—

‘She’s here.’

As Cho Igyeom had said, a woman appeared.

Her hair hung long and loose, and her clothes were pure white. Her face was not clearly visible, but the skin — pale past whiteness — suggested it was indeed Cheon Suryeon.

She walked slowly and turned into an alleyway. Seo Woojin adjusted his mask and followed carefully.

There was no urgency in her slow progress. She seemed simply to be drifting, with nowhere to be — she even doubled back along the way she had come.

‘What is this? Is she not in her right mind?’

It was a pity the dark kept him from seeing her eyes.

Still, unlike what Cho Igyeom had described, he had not lost her. That anyone could lose her, moving this slowly, was almost puzzling.

‘What in the world is this. What has you walking through this dangerous place in the dead of night?’

The longer it went on, the more impatient he grew. Was he going to come away with nothing after all?

‘At the last, I’ll simply have to step out in front of her.’

He wanted to know what they were hiding badly enough to go that far.

But that intent went unfulfilled as well. The moment she rounded a corner, Cheon Suryeon vanished as though it were a conjuring trick.

“What in the—?”

Tatat!

He kicked off the wall and went up fast to a high vantage. She was nowhere to be seen.

“Hah…”

A hollow laugh came out of him. He might have been bewitched by a ghost.

Tak.

Seo Woojin shook his head and dropped back to the ground.

“So this is why they kept losing her. She can’t have vanished like a ghost, so… at the least I know she’s stealthy and fast.”

If she came at her enemies moving like that, the unbelievable results she had produced were easier to credit.

“Awkward. Do I go back like this? Or wait for her to come out?”

No. Cho Igyeom had said that after losing her, they had seen her reappear only once — leaving aside the time she was unconscious.

He was moving on, turning over one approach after another, when a woman’s scream came from somewhere ahead.

“Again? Do these people never sleep. What are they up to now at this hour.”

He remembered the time he had escaped the Dark Alliance. He had stepped in then too, for a woman about to be taken.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Seo Woojin turned toward the sound.

And what met him when he arrived was nothing he had expected.

“S-spare—!”

Thunk!

“Guhk—!”

A sword stained blood-red drove into the back of a man crawling along the ground, begging for his life.

Spurt!

As the sword came free, blood shot up like a fountain.

Perhaps the blood already covering it was not enough. The blood-sword moved again, for more.

‘What in the world is this…’

The woman whose direction he had not even been able to guess at.

Cheon Suryeon.

She was butchering what appeared to be a gang of thugs.

Yes — butchering, quite literally. Of some thirty men, not one showed the least will to fight back.

Having cut down the last of them, Cheon Suryeon looked behind her, then began walking slowly that way. Seo Woojin shifted position quickly to see what she was looking at.

“…!!”

A woman.

So consumed by terror that she could do nothing but tremble where she stood.

And Cheon Suryeon’s sword moved toward her.

“Damn it!”

Whoosh!

CLAAANG!

Seo Woojin moved fast and caught her sword — barely in time.

And at last he could see them.

Stained blood-red. Shining with something ominous.

Her eyes.

(End of Chapter 39)