Chapter Title: The Circumstances of the Heavenly Wind Martial Hall
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A white light sliced through the darkness of the night.
I drew the sword from its sheath in my hand and struck it down.
-Clang!
The light was deflected helplessly, embedding itself into the ground with a thud.
Narrowing my eyes, I saw it was a slender steel needle.
It was too thick to be used for medical purposes.
And it had been thrown directly at me.
"…An assassin?"
Could she be an intruder instead of a guest?
As I circulated my internal energy and expanded my senses, the presence of the hidden foe became even clearer.
She was clad in tight black garb that clung to her body, her face concealed by a mask.
But those curves… a woman?
While I was momentarily stunned by the fact that my attacker was female, another steel needle came flying.
Three white glints hurtled toward me at once.
I bolstered my eyesight with energy and swung my sword wide, knocking two aside.
Before the last one could pierce my shoulder, I blocked it with my scabbard.
Her eyes, barely visible above the mask, widened in surprise that I had thwarted the entire assault.
I didn't know who she was, but I wasn't fool enough to stand there taking a one-sided beating.
Adopting a thrusting stance with my sword, I charged toward the female assassin before she could loose more projectiles…
"Wait a moment!"
…I didn't make it.
The main hall's doors suddenly swung open, and our youngest junior sister Chu slipped between me and the assassin.
"Youngest junior sister? Why are you blocking me… Do you know her?"
"Yes. I apologize on her behalf for the rudeness she showed Young Master Goon. Please, sheath your sword."
…How should I put it? My youngest junior sister's manner of speaking felt utterly unfamiliar.
I'd never been fond of her calling me senior brother anyway, but hearing her suddenly address me as "young master" this way created this strange distance.
"…Fine? Here I thought some assassin had snuck in to attack me."
"She is my bodyguard. I too apologize for my subordinate's impudence."
A third voice I'd never heard before.
Turning my head, I saw an unfamiliar middle-aged man peering down at me from between the wide-open doors of the main hall.
"Who are you?"
"I apologize for the unannounced visit. I am Bang Jin-myeong, who runs a modest trading company called Changcheon."
"…You're a merchant?"
"That's right."
Where did this cuckoo come from?
The aura I sensed from him through my energy wasn't quite on par with Master Bae Wang-sam's, but it surpassed Senior Sister Jang's—and even that female assassin's—by a wide margin.
A trading company head traveling with a bodyguard weaker than himself… Hmm, intriguing.
Suppressing my quickening pulse, I cupped my hands in greeting and introduced myself.
"Pleased to meet you. I am Goon Ja-seong of Goon Family Manor."
"I've already heard about you from the young mistress. They say you're quite the prodigy?"
"You flatter me. I'm barely at the crawling stage."
At my response, Master, senior sisters, and everyone else stared at me in disbelief.
What? Did I say something wrong?
It had only been a year since I'd completely overhauled the Three Disasters Technique and begun retraining from scratch.
No matter how you sliced it, that put me at the crawling stage.
And don't get me started on my internal energy reserves.
Out of everyone here, mine were the weakest.
Even weaker than our youngest junior sister's!
A fourteen-year-old having more energy than me? Was this right? Had she secretly popped some spirit pills?
Every time I looked at Chu junior sister, I just wanted some of those elixirs myself…!
I was seriously thinking of begging my parents for some when Bang Jin-myeong's laughter rang out.
"Hahaha! Excessive humility is worse than none at all. I've already heard that the young mistress challenged you to a match and lost."
"Merchant Bang…"
"Oh dear. My apologies, young mistress. My mouth runs away with me."
He awkwardly scratched his head while glancing at Senior Sister Jang, who was furrowing her brow at being addressed that way.
It was like watching an uncle at a loss with his sulking niece.
But that form of address wasn't ordinary. Young mistress?
"…My suspicions about you keep growing deeper. I suppose today we'll finally clear them up?"
"Yes. I'll tell you everything, young master."
Senior Sister Jang nodded slowly and led me inside.
As soon as I stepped into the main hall, Chu junior sister, who had followed behind me, quietly closed the doors.
"Hm? That assassin's just going to wait outside?"
"Yes? Oh, yes. We have to stay vigilant against any possible intruders."
Chu junior sister answered with a flustered look, as if she hadn't expected the question.
Hm, really?
The night breezes had been getting quite chilly lately. Tough job.
I shrugged while sensing the assassin's presence atop the roof.
Continuing inward, my eyes fell on a table that had been prepared in advance.
A round table held five chairs, but one was conspicuously set apart.
From the atmosphere, it seemed I was meant to sit in the isolated one.
I took the hint and sat quietly.
Thankfully, it was the right spot; the others wordlessly took seats around the opposite side.
What was odd, though, was that Senior Sister Jang took the center seat—the head of the table—leaving elders like Master Bae Wang-sam and Merchant Bang to the sides.
"I sensed it when the merchant called you 'young mistress' earlier, but it seems our Senior Sister Jang's status is far from ordinary."
"For now, I'm just a martial artist."
For now.
Meaning it had been different in the past?
"Young Master Goon. Allow me a proper introduction. My true name is Joo Hwa-ryeon. My father was Joo Cheon-moo, the Tyrant Sword, former fortress lord of Tyrant Heaven Fortress."
"…"
I clamped my mouth shut.
Perhaps taking my silence for shock, Master Bae Wang-sam spoke up.
"I'm sorry for hiding my identity all this time. But we had circumstances beyond our control."
"…"
As I continued to stay silent, Merchant Bang stepped in.
"Young Master Goon. You've probably guessed from hearing 'Tyrant Heaven Fortress,' but we're currently fugitives hiding from those accursed brigands. Deceiving you was undoubtedly our fault, but please understand that we had no choice…"
"Wait, wait!"
Unable to bear the story progressing on its own, I raised both hands to cut him off.
The merchant promptly shut his mouth without protest.
Four gazes, eight eyes, fixed on me.
Meeting them, I let out a long sigh.
-Gulp.
Hearing someone—probably Chu junior sister—swallow, I slowly opened my mouth.
I voiced what I absolutely had to say right then.
"So, what's Tyrant Heaven Fortress?"
Silence.
Then a distant thud from outside.
Something heavy had fallen.
"Assassin lady outside, did you fall off the roof? You okay?"
"…"
"…"
Even after my question, the room remained steeped in icy silence.
*
Tyrant Heaven Fortress.
It was the single largest martial faction in the Central Plains, effectively dominating the murim for decades.
The sect was named Tyrant Heaven Fortress not because it occupied a mere manor, but because an actual fortress served as its base.
"Under my father, Great Hero Joo Cheon-moo, Tyrant Heaven Fortress grew and grew, surpassing the Nine Great Sects and Five Great Clans to become the murim's premier faction."
After a moment of stunned silence at my question about what Tyrant Heaven Fortress was, Senior Sister Jang—no, Joo Hwa-ryeon—recovered and explained. I let out an impressed "Oh!"
"The Nine Great Sects, the Five Great Clans…!"
Weren't those names enough to make one's heart race just hearing them?
Joo Hwa-ryeon's gaze turned askew as she watched me murmur excitedly.
"…Why are you so fixated on that?"
"Huh? Because when you say murim, you think Nine Great Sects and Five Great Clans. Nine Great Sects and Five Great Clans mean murim. Obviously?"
When she asked with a subtly sullen expression, I answered lightly, only for her eyes to cool from askew to frigid.
A look accusing me of knowing them while we don't.
But I had a rebuttal.
"Senior Sister Jang. Or Joo Hwa… Young Mistress Joo? What should I call you? Anyway, you tend to overhype me. You need to view people more objectively."
"…Objectively?"
"Yeah. Objectively. Look at me. What do I seem like?"
Pointing at myself with both index fingers, I asked. She pondered briefly before hesitating.
"…A somewhat handsome youngest son of a rural landowner?"
Her answer came laced with a description I hadn't quite anticipated.
As the two adults' odd gazes pinned her simultaneously, Joo Hwa-ryeon cleared her throat softly, her face slightly flushed.
"…Hm, thanks for the compliment. But it's not my handsome face that matters—it's what comes after."
"What comes after… youngest son of a rural landowner?"
I nodded at the follow-up question.
"Yeah. Youngest son of a rural landowner. What does that imply? Huh? It means a country bumpkin who struts around his village but knows nothing of the wider world. You think someone like me would know about Tyrant Heaven Fortress, a group with just a few decades of history?"
"…Ah."
Finally getting it, Joo Hwa-ryeon let out a short exclamation.
This place, Goon River County, was such a backwater that before Heavenly Wind Martial Hall arrived, there wasn't even another martial school around—cut off from the murim entirely.
As a result, aside from what I'd read in past-life wuxia novels, I'd heard almost no murim tales or news.
At best, snippets of old stories from the storytelling madam at the village tavern.
Escorts from passing caravans occasionally came through, but most just quietly stayed the night.
The villagers mostly shunned outsiders, so conversations were rare.
The one time, at five years old, I asked an escort about lightness skill and got laughed at—that was my first and last.
Ah, thinking of that escort still pisses me off.
Anyway,
"Most villagers don't give a damn about the murim, right? Isn't that why you hid out here, Master Bae Wang-sam?"
"Ahem."
Master cleared his throat softly in affirmation.
But his gaze toward me was peculiar.
As if asking why a local yokel like me knew so much about the murim.
Well, because I'm a wuxia novel fanatic.
I even memorized the names of every sect's signature techniques.
Of course, this world's murim seemed quite different from what I knew.
Anyway, having accepted why I was ignorant of Tyrant Heaven Fortress, Joo Hwa-ryeon sighed softly and continued her explanation.