Chapter 92. Return

The people Haerak mentioned all shared a similar scent—a fishy, rusty tang of iron. It was an unpleasant smell, reminiscent of blood or old coins.

Though their appearances varied from children to the elderly, the smell was exactly the same.

So-hwa looked at the stall owner and the young customer in front of him and asked,

“They look so different, how did you recognize them?”

It didn’t seem likely that those mocked by Haerak as “foot-wipers” would proudly reveal one by one about the human-skin masks they made.

He leaned in and whispered into So-hwa’s ear.

“Look closely at their clothes. Although the dyed colors differ, the fabric is unusually dense. It’s a cloth woven by overlapping warp and weft threads. It’s a technique from a famous textile shop in Shaanxi.”

Though it was clear he cared about clothes, it seemed he had a habit of scrutinizing others’ attire in detail.

Suddenly, he sighed.

“It’s their first time in Central Plains, so it looks like their subordinates got clothes from one place. From the textile shop owner’s perspective, since they ordered several clothes, they made them all with the store’s proud fabric but just dyed them in different colors. The guy obviously didn’t have the eye to notice that and just roughly took and handed them out to wear.”

Haerak clicked his tongue.

“If you don’t understand Central Plains culture, it’s useless to change the design of the fabric or human-skin masks. They’re not even family, so how could they all wear clothes made of the same fabric as if coordinated? Of course, it raises suspicion.”

So-hwa was about to say that ordinary people don’t look at warp and weft of fabric, but for Haerak, it seemed so natural that he shook his head with pity.

“A plain personality can become a poison at times like this. No, since ‘poison’ probably has a good meaning for you, let’s think of it as a ‘side effect.’”

“……”

So-hwa stopped responding.

Soon, the two left the busy street and entered the road leading to the headquarters.

So-hwa thought it was good that she came to find Haerak on the first day.

If she hadn’t gotten a tip, she would have just thought the smell was that of some commoners from the outskirts.

Being able to recognize the opponent first was a great advantage.

No matter how they entered, if they approached her at the headquarters, she’d be able to notice them.

‘The stories I heard by the river might be useful after all…’

So-hwa brushed the silk pouch in her sleeve. Inside was a paper on which Namgung Hyun had calculated her birth date using the calendar method.

Originally, she planned to use it to test Haerak, but she postponed that plan.

Haerak had told her that the Blood Demon was connected to time.

But he didn’t mention anything about Namgung Hyun.

‘He probably doesn’t know Namgung Hyun is connected to time, or he’s hiding it.’

Haerak seemed to explain the Blood Sect well, yet he knew how to withhold information.

He didn’t tell her about Five Minerals Powder, even though he said he had met a foot-wiper in Guangdong. Surely he would have asked about the Five Minerals Powder.

If he hadn’t found anything, he would have said so. But he acted as if he had erased the Five Minerals Powder from his memory altogether.

For someone who prepared such a vivid play to reveal the Blood Demon’s past, this was careless.

Now that So-hwa realized the Five Minerals Powder had a brainwashing function, she couldn’t easily overlook Haerak’s secretive attitude.

She even suspected that he might be using the Five Minerals Powder himself.

He hides the Five Minerals Powder from her, but revealing Namgung Hyun’s secret would seem foolish.

Since she still didn’t fully understand Namgung Hyun’s secret, she couldn’t let a Blood Sect member exploit that precious clue.

Suddenly, Haerak sighed bitterly.

“Something’s lacking.”

“What is?”

“My personal physician finally came to my territory, and I feel like I couldn’t properly host her.”

“I’ll come again before the Martial Arts Tournament ends. There are things I need to ask anyway.”

“What things? What do you want to ask?”

“Later.”

“You’re doing this on purpose, just to make me die of curiosity, aren’t you?”

“Don’t die.”

“…Oh, you’re even making jokes? Was the Hubei alcohol liquor that strong?”

Ignoring their banter, they walked toward the Murim Alliance headquarters.

They kept a subtle distance with light words, hiding their true intentions from each other.

***

“Young Lady, I want to quit.”

Han-won spoke calmly.

“Before I find that Blood Sect bastard who tried to kill me, I think my liver will give out and I’ll die. Since I have a task to complete, please let me go.”

“The guard was assigned by the Tang Clan Head, and as you know, I have no authority to refuse the Clan Head’s orders.”

So-hwa took off her cloak and looked at Han-won standing outside the window.

“And if finding that insignificant bastard is your mission, doesn’t it make the name of the Black Tiger Unit seem worthless?”

“Young lady, you may not know, but usually those low-level guys are the hardest to find. If they had some fame or strong skills, they’d stand out like a melon seed among rocks, but those guys are as common and indistinguishable as grains of sand in the Yangtze River. Maybe the corpses we found over the last three years are even theirs.”

Han-won, who had been talking alone, suddenly flinched.

“Are they really among them? What, I didn’t accidentally accomplish my mission, did I?”

“…You’re tired, so go to your room and talk nonsense there.”

“How can a guard go to his room and sleep?”

“You said you weren’t going to be a guard.”

“That’s just talk. How could someone like me refuse an order from the Clan Head?”

So-hwa stared at Han-won intently.

“…I just tried to speak boldly. I thought if I said I was quitting, Young lady might stop saying things like ‘just wait a moment’ or ‘I’ll be back before midnight.'”

Han-won’s eyes darkened from exhaustion. It seemed he was more worried than usual about being caught, given that even the Clan Head was staying in the same pavilion.

So-hwa felt a little guilty.

“I won’t need to go out again until the Martial Arts Tournament ends, so don’t be so tense.”

“Really?”

“Oh, wait. Maybe just for one day.”

“… You’re teasing me, right?”

“No, I’m just distracted.”

As So-hwa loosened her hair ornaments, she was startled by an unfamiliar sensation. It was the platinum hairpin Haerak had placed in her hair.

Wrapping the hairpin with a cloth from the desk, she said,

“I’m going to sleep now, so you can go back and sleep or stay here, whatever you want.”

“I’ll stay here.”

“Aren’t you tired? You probably haven’t recovered from your travel fatigue yet.”

So-hwa naturally took one of the boxes piled on the desk and opened it. Inside were about twenty pills.

“Take one. It will relieve your fatigue.”

“Do I look like an idiot to you, Young lady?”

Han-won glared at So-hwa, revealing the whites of his eyes.

“That night, when we were crossing from Hubei to Sichuan, you gave me a pill saying it would relieve fatigue, and I fell asleep after taking it. The thought of it still makes my head spin, so how can you use the exact same trick without changing a single word?”

“……”

So-hwa closed the box and shut the window.

Then she heard Han-won’s voice, laced with a sneer.

“Don’t have dangerous thoughts, just sleep well. You’ll need to relieve your travel fatigue to come up with clever ways to fool me tomorrow.”

Hearing this from outside the window, So-hwa let out a bitter laugh.

She didn’t really need a clever mind to fool Han-won.

But since she had indeed underestimated him, So-hwa quietly changed into her nightclothes.

Sitting at the desk, she wrote a short letter.

Before leaving Sichuan, she had sent a warning about the Five Minerals Powder to Anhui, but there was no way to confirm if it had been received.

‘I heard the closed-door training has already ended.’

The Namgung Clan Head was said to be away on Anhui branch business and did not attend the Martial Arts Tournament.

She didn’t know the details, but seeing him leave so soon after his training ended, it seemed he had prepared well before entering closed-door training.

She had intended to send Han-won back to the Tang estate to deliver the letter, but So-hwa gave up on that idea.

As Han-won said, she was too overwhelmed by today’s events to think clearly. With the Blood Sect chasing her, trying to get rid of Han-won would be reckless.

Thinking something might be wrong with her own mind, she narrowed her eyes. Then she remembered Haerak scolding her for not eating well.

‘No, that can’t be. If the Five Minerals Powder had entered my body, I would know.’

Feeling her anxiety intensify, So-hwa hurried to finish the letter.

She went up to the third floor.

Approaching the birdcage where the messenger bird rested, she stroked the hawk sprawled beside it.

The hawk raised one wing, exposing its side, as if encouraging her to continue.

Thinking it was quite a fuss, So-hwa scratched the feathers a few more times to please Mae-hwa, then placed the letter inside the hollow bamboo tube.

She took out a small cloth and let Mae-hwa smell it.

“It’s the same request as before. Go to the Anhui branch. It would be even better if you could deliver it to the one who smells like this.”

Although three years had passed and the scent might be gone, she still hoped.

She had sent letters like this before.

Mae-hwa opened its drowsy eyes and glared at So-hwa. Its expression clearly showed annoyance, but the messenger bird, who had risen, spread both wings and took off into the sky in an instant.

Watching Mae-hwa disappear into the darkness, So-hwa hoped her anxiety was unfounded.

***

In the mountain stronghold overgrown with old trees, the scent of blood hung thick in the air.

It had been less than a year since the pillars were erected, yet the thick pillars were already broken and scattered on the ground.

The Namgung martial artists were rummaging through the chaotic stronghold, as if searching for something.

The faces illuminated by the red torches were tense and urgent.

Creak.

At the sound from somewhere, as if on cue, the Namgung martial artists rushed in that direction.

When they opened the door of a small pavilion that looked like a storage shed, they let out a sigh of relief.

“Why rush so much? Why not come together?”

One man, unable to hold back, lowered his mask and complained. The person being blamed smiled as he opened the piled-up boxes.

“Why bother yourselves with the effort?”

Namgung Jin, a longtime friend and the Young Lord Namgung Clan, answered calmly, causing the martial artists’ eyes to narrow.

That was clearly mockery, not concern.

To find the bandits who had attacked the Guangdong trade caravan, they searched through more than ten mountain strongholds.

By “searched,” it meant they had torn everything apart. There was no warm host in this world who would simply allow them to inspect their own vaults.

Each time, the Young Lord, undeterred by rejection, went in alone to check the vault, as now.

What in the world had he realized in two years? The Young Lord, already monstrous, had returned even more fearsome. The martial artists, though diligent in training themselves, felt the gap was vast.

The Namgung martial artists moved the bandits sprawled at the door aside and helped Namgung Jin.

Knowing what the Young Lord was looking for, they eagerly rummaged through the boxes for the mineral.

“Huh? Isn’t this amethyst?”

A martial artist searching through a box in a corner held up a finger-sized mineral. Even under the dim torchlight, the stone shone with a clear glow.

Namgung Jin approached, glanced over the box, and took out a stone from his own chest—a piece of amethyst as well.

“Seems like it.”

Namgung Jin frowned as he rummaged through the box with the scabbard and sighed.

“There’s a lot.”

The accompanying martial artists fell silent.

This amethyst was said to be a very dangerous mineral. Individually, each piece wasn’t too dangerous, but when five of these minerals were combined in a certain ratio, they could cloud one’s mind.

Seeing the large box full of amethyst, everyone remained quiet.

The items stolen from this stronghold were goods destined for Anhui.

One sharp-witted martial artist sighed and said,

“I’ll bring a cart.”

While raiding several strongholds, they had learned something — there were always good carts at these places. When they looted the trade caravans, they’d put the goods on the carts and bring them along, so they seemed to leave the better items behind at the strongholds rather than discard them.

With growing experience in raiding strongholds, the Namgung martial artists quickly prepared for the next task. Then, a strange sound came from the window.

Flap, flap.

And something even stranger caught their eyes.

A hawk was struggling, squeezing itself through the narrow window bars.

Namgung Jin recognized the bird and chuckled softly as he approached the wall.

“Make way.”

Pushing the hawk back, Namgung Jin broke the wooden bars to widen the entrance. A martial artist nearby widened his eyes.

“Hey, isn’t that the same hawk messenger bird from before?”

It was a messenger bird, the hawk, that had visited the Anhui branch. It had pecked at others’ hands to shoo them away, but had boldly approached the Young Lord to deliver a note—an incredibly clever bird.

As Namgung Jin took out and read the note, one of the martial artists took out a water pouch and approached the messenger bird. As he held it out, the hawk, seemingly thirsty, buried its beak in it and gulped down the water noisily.

The martial artist clicked his tongue in disbelief at the sight.

“Is this a spiritual creature? This isn’t even Anhui, so how did it know to come here?”

“That’s nonsense. Why would a spiritual creature obediently act like a messenger bird?”

When his comrade teased him, the martial artist looked embarrassed and fell silent. Suddenly, the messenger bird lifted its head. For a brief moment, deep self-loathing shone in the animal’s eyes.

Namgung Jin smiled.

“Maybe the master is blessed by heaven.”

After finishing reading the note, Namgung Jin folded the paper into his chest and looked up.

Just then, another martial artist arrived with a cart. Namgung Jin shook his head at him.

“All the amethyst will be incinerated here.”

“What?”

“We have a long journey ahead, so we need to lighten the load. Let’s grind it all to powder and burn it.”

At his firm words, one martial artist furrowed his brows and lowered his mask.

“Where are we going? Didn’t you say we would move the amethyst to the branch if we found it?”

“Something more urgent has come up, so there’s no choice.”

Namgung Jin put his hand into the box of amethyst and squeezed it. With every crack, purple dust fluttered above the box.

“We’re going to Hubei.”

“Huh? Hubei?”

The startled martial artist’s mouth dropped open.

Namgung Jin tilted the corner of his mouth as he looked at them.

“You must be very tired, so you can rest for a while. It seems you’ve become weaker than before I went into closed-door training.”

The martial artists, offended by that, forgot to ask why they were going to Hubei and instead came beside the Young Lord, smashing the amethyst.

“No, no, Young Lord, you should rest first. Didn’t you have a hard time breaking apart the stronghold alone?”

Their hands eagerly tore into the boxes as dust filled the warehouse.

Mae-hwa watched their foolishness with a disdainful gaze, then flew back to her master.

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