Chapter 29
The moment my eyes met the man’s, my mind went completely blank.
Why was there someone here?
No, more importantly—how had I not sensed his presence?
I had to subdue him quickly.
If he shouted, it would be over.
But before I could rush him, he drew his sword first.
Clang!
He muttered sharply, “Who the hell are you?!”
I froze, puzzled.
He whispered? Why?
Shouldn’t he have shouted loudly to alert the guards?
Then, the blanket beside the man twitched, and a woman—also completely naked—peeked out.
She was young and stunningly beautiful.
When she saw me, her eyes widened in shock, and she whispered urgently, “Sangrang! Close the door quickly! If the noise gets out, we’re done for!”
Huh? Close the door? Noise getting out?
Hearing that, I glanced behind me at the door.
I could clearly feel two people flinch.
Well, well, what do we have here?
I slammed the door shut.
Immediately, all sounds from outside were cut off.
The room was perfectly soundproof.
Seeing the man and woman finally relax after the door closed, I could roughly guess their situation.
The man, now at ease, brandished his sword and shouted at me, “What are you doing?! How dare you break into the Black Market’s master’s chamber wearing a mask! Are you a thief?!”
Well, yeah, technically I was a thief.
But I didn’t think they were in any position to talk.
I smirked and replied, “I don’t think it’s any of your business what your master does with his concubine in his own room.”
His face instantly drained of color.
Stammering, he asked, “Y-You’re not… sent by Father? You knew about us from the start?”
Father? So this guy—
I smiled coldly. “Gomu-sang! Do you even realize the crime you’ve committed?!”
He was so shocked he stumbled backward and collapsed onto the bed.
With a dazed expression, he muttered, “N-No way! How… how could this be?”
That was the truth.
This was Gomu-sang, the son of Go Ju-yong.
The same man who, after Go Ju-yong’s death, had killed Majonghwan’s daughters in a fit of rage.
I’d thought he was a dutiful son, but here he was, secretly consorting with his father’s concubine.
Then, the woman beside him, still pale, suddenly hardened her expression and shouted, “Sangrang! We haven’t been discovered yet! Kill him! If you kill him, there’ll be no evidence!”
At her words, Gomu-sang snapped back to reality.
He raised his sword again, eyes blazing as he stared at me.
The woman urged, “Hurry! Kill him before anyone outside notices!”
Before anyone outside notices…
Well, that was convenient.
I grinned and swiftly turned to grab the door handle.
Both of them screamed, “No!”
Gomu-sang lunged desperately, stabbing his sword toward my back.
“Die!”
Shu-hak!
His skill was roughly intermediate—good, but not exceptional.
If we’d fought head-on, it might have been tough, but rushing like this was just what I needed.
I barely moved, dodging his blade with a slight twist of my body, then used that momentum to draw my sword and strike.
Shyaaak!
“Ugh!”
My blade grazed his neck with all my strength.
His throat was cut, and he collapsed, eyes wide in disbelief.
Blood gushed from the half-severed wound.
I considered just subduing him, but from my past memories and his reputation, he wasn’t worth keeping alive.
Better to kill him while I had the chance.
Without hesitation, I plunged my sword through the woman’s heart.
She stared at me in shock before collapsing.
Had she been less cunning, I might have hesitated.
But I couldn’t spare a snake like her.
I was glad Seolpung, the squad leader, hadn’t come this way.
If he had, knowing it was a lie but being averse to women, he’d have been paralyzed and unable to act.
After that, I found a passage inside the room leading down to the master’s private storage on this floor.
To be honest, it was a dead end.
I realized as I entered that this storage wasn’t designed to imprison people.
But I wasn’t disappointed.
In fact, I whistled in admiration.
“Wow, this is impressive.”
The storage was filled with treasures—gold plates, gold bars, jewels, rare weapons, and even piles of elixirs.
Go Ju-yong had hoarded these elixirs here, yet still coveted others’ property, causing all this trouble.
My eyes sparkled as I surveyed the hoard.
“Hmm, look at this.”
Meanwhile, Seolpung had no trouble finding his way to the prison.
The prison was the most heavily guarded place.
But because the security was so tight, sneaking in like Sunwoo Jin had done was nearly impossible.
After some thought, Seolpung gave up on stealth.
The prison was a single-story building, but according to intel, it had three underground levels designed to hold prisoners.
Six guards stood watch at the entrance, while four others patrolled around the prison in a rotating pattern.
Seolpung hid in the shadows, waiting for the right moment.
Like a crouching beast, he sprang when one guard rounded a corner.
Smack!
Before the guards could react, Seolpung’s fists struck their heads.
“What—!”
“Ah—!”
Bababababak!
All six guards collapsed unconscious in an instant.
He didn’t stop there.
Charging toward the opposite corner where another guard was returning, the man’s eyes widened in shock.
“What—!”
Thud!
He was silenced before he could make a sound.
Seolpung knocked him out and quickly circled the prison, taking out the patrolling guards one by one.
The entire sweep took only three breaths.
He briefly considered killing them all but shook his head and locked them in the first cell inside the prison.
Having lived on the front lines, killing was easy for him.
But he preferred not to kill unless absolutely necessary.
He fought monsters but didn’t want to become one.
After securing the guards, Seolpung asked the prisoners inside, “Are Majonghwan’s two daughters held here?”
The prisoners, who had been watching closely since the guards were locked up, shouted in unison.
“There’s no one like that here! Please free me instead!”
“That’s right! As far as I know, there are no women here! Who are you, hero? I’m Nosangwon of the Central Mountain Guild, a man with a clear conscience! If you free me, I’ll repay you!”
“Hero! Hero!”
The prisoners clamored.
Seolpung smiled wryly and said, “If you’re going to make such a fuss, I won’t free you. I’ll just leave.”
At his words, everyone fell silent with a collective “Hup!”
Sunwoo Jin had told him that the first floor mostly held petty criminals, while the second and third underground floors contained those who had opposed the Black Market.
When Seolpung asked what to do with them, Sunwoo Jin had casually replied, “Just free them. If the Black Market locked them up, there are probably more good people than bad. And even the bad ones aren’t dangerous enough to be a real threat.”
For Seolpung, the idea of possibly freeing bad guys wasn’t pleasant.
But sorting them out individually would take too long.
He addressed the prisoners.
“I promise I will release all of you. But only after I’ve checked every floor down to the lowest level. So please, stay quiet and don’t get caught until I return.”
At once, the prisoners fell utterly silent, as if a mouse had been silenced. Seol Poong then headed down to the lower floors.
In the end, Seol Poong’s search was fruitless.
The two daughters of Saengsa Goeui were not locked away in the prison cells.
Instead, Seol Poong freed all those imprisoned on the third basement level who had been enemies of Heuk Sangbang.
Among them was Jong Won-ik, the leader of the Killing Assembly—a group formed by those who had lost family or fortune at Heuk Sangbang’s hands.
Tears streaming down his face, Jong Won-ik thanked Seol Poong.
“Thank you! If not for you, I would have died here, locked away by those Heuk Sangbang scoundrels, unable to avenge my family’s suffering. I will never forget this kindness!”
After freeing everyone on the third basement floor, Seol Poong made his way back up, ordering that the prisoners on the first floor be released as well.
Of course, this was partly to free the innocent, but it was also a calculated move to throw Heuk Sangbang into chaos.
Amid all this turmoil, there was no way they would discover who was behind these acts.
If the righteous sects bestowed the title of “Phoenix” on female martial artists past their prime in their twenties, the heretical sects often called such women “Magpies.”
Among them, the bloodthirsty assassin Ya Woon-hyang, known as the “Yan Magpie,” had been employed by Heuk Sangbang for six months.
She hadn’t done much since arriving.
Like all her previous employers, Heuk Sangbang’s master, Go Ju-yong, hadn’t hired her for her skills alone—he wanted to spend nights with her.
But Ya Woon-hyang, though a free-spirited woman of the heretical sect, was no easy catch.
She never gave herself to a man unless she truly liked him.
So there was no way she would allow herself to be with an old man like Go Ju-yong.
Despite the awkwardness caused by her constant refusals, she wasn’t worried.
She always insisted on payment upfront, and if an employer got too pushy, she’d simply return the money and walk away.
By that standard, Go Ju-yong hadn’t been a bad employer—at least, he hadn’t forced her into anything.
“Until now, anyway.”
But after witnessing what he did to Saengsa Goeui, she had grown disgusted with him.
Betraying someone she had just dealt with, then capturing their family to use as leverage—she realized he was capable of far worse.
Though a heretical sect member, she still believed in certain codes of honor, and his actions were unforgivable.
So she refused the order to track Saengsa Goeui and stayed with Heuk Sangbang, already resolved to leave.
“I’ll leave as soon as Go Ju-yong returns.”
Honestly, she had even considered killing him to get the Saengsa Goeui’s elixir for herself.
But she didn’t want to stoop to his level by betraying him like he had just done to their last employer.
At that moment, Ya Woon-hyang was moving toward the rear of Heuk Sangbang’s compound.
There had been a commotion near the front gate, drawing everyone’s attention that way.
With so few people left inside, the back was vulnerable.
Not that she cared much for Heuk Sangbang, but she believed in doing her job properly while employed.
Just then—
“Hm?”
She caught a faint disturbance from the prison cells.
It was brief, but that only made it more suspicious.
Curious, she went to check—and found the guards who had been posted there were all gone.
Something was definitely wrong.
She considered calling for help, but with so few people around and the distance too great, she decided to investigate alone.
At that moment, prisoners began pouring out of the cells.
Their clothes were tattered, their faces worn—no doubt they had suffered greatly.
“Hmph.”
Just as she feared, trouble had arrived.
A nuisance, to say the least.
She muttered lazily, “Work is work.”
Suddenly, the black whip coiled around her slender waist writhed like a living serpent.
In an instant, it lashed out, striking the ground before the prison with a sharp crack.
“Wha—what is that?!”
“What’s going on?!”
The prisoners who had been rushing out froze in place, unable to move.
The whip had carved a deep, thick groove in the earth, as if a dragon had passed through.
Ya Woon-hyang’s voice was calm as she addressed them.
“Stop right there. If you don’t move, I won’t kill you.”
Their eyes met hers under the moonlight—mysterious, almost hypnotic.
Clad in tight black martial attire that revealed her alluring figure, the black whip coiling and writhing around her like a living thing, she was a name known to every warrior in the southern lands.
Someone swallowed nervously and whispered, “The Blood Whip Assassin.”
“Blood Whip Assassin Ya Woon-hyang.”
She spoke again, her voice lazy but firm.
“Sorry, but while I’m employed here, escape attempts are off-limits. If you quietly return to your cells, I’ll pretend I didn’t see anything.”
With that, the whip whipped the ground again with tremendous force.
Ka-BOOM!
The impact was so fierce that smoke rose from the deep groove scorched into the earth.
Displaying such overwhelming power with ease, Ya Woon-hyang warned in her usual languid tone.
“But if you resist, I won’t hold back.”
The nickname “Blood Whip Assassin” came from her beauty—like the legendary Xi Shi—and the countless stains of blood on her black whip.
Especially infamous was the night she single-handedly wiped out the master of Heuk Galbang, the ruler of Guangxi Province, and his entire cadre of henchmen after they drugged and tried to assault her.
That story had become a legend among female warriors in the southern region for years.
Just then, as the prisoners who had been eager to escape froze in place, a man wearing a black mask slowly stepped forward.
It was Seol Poong.
Ya Woon-hyang’s eyes flickered with interest.
“A black-masked man? So you’re the mastermind behind this.”
At her words, the black whip coiling around her began to writhe again, ready to strike.
She clearly recognized Seol Poong as a formidable opponent.
But while her eyes flashed with competitive fire, Seol Poong’s gaze darkened.
Of all people, it had to be a woman.
Damn it.