“…A small escort bureau.”
Cho Yoon studied the knot—a design he had grown reluctantly accustomed to over the years—and murmured a faint acknowledgment.
Hui, who used the peony as a personal crest, would never entrust his correspondence to just anyone; Wang Jeong’s self-deprecation was undoubtedly a calculated display of humility.
As expected, Wang Jeong smoothly caught the tail end of Cho Yoon’s trailing words.
“Compared to your boundless insight, the Peony Escort Agency is but a trifling gathering of merchants,” the man simpered. “Being granted a direct audience with you is the crowning glory of my assignment to this cramped, chaotic province.”
“…”
Shaanxi was practically a sprawling metropolis rivaling Henan, teeming with colossal martial factions.
Labeling it ‘cramped’ and ‘chaotic’ was a deliberate linguistic pivot, tailored specifically to appease a mountain recluse like Cho Yoon.
Deciding against lecturing the man on his excessive groveling, Cho Yoon simply accepted the missive in silence.
Wang Jeong seized the opportunity to bow profoundly once more.
“Should you wish to dispatch any replies, honored guest, spare yourself the tedious journey to the agency. Entrust them to me. I stake my life on delivering them with absolute swiftness and security.”
“…Wait,” Cho Yoon commanded.
He had indeed planned to visit the agency that very afternoon to correspond with his former disciples, just as he had resolved that evening to hasten his return to the Point of No Return Mountain Range amid Shaanxi’s unsettling political tremors.
As Cho Yoon reached toward his medicine chest to retrieve his writing implements, the ever-observant Wang Jeong seamlessly produced a premium inkstone, brush, and parchment from a mother-of-pearl cabinet. The man’s intimate knowledge of the room’s inventory proved his claims of managing the estate were no idle boast.
Appropriating another man’s home and supplies felt immensely burdensome. Yet, his own meager prescription pads could never contain the mountain of advice he intended to impart.
Swallowing his reservations, Cho Yoon accepted the brush.
Crafted from mouse whiskers, it glided effortlessly across the luxurious paper, his movements dictated by years of ingrained, elegant penmanship. Though he possessed volumes to share, he loathed making the caretaker wait. Conversely, writing at a leisurely pace through the night and visiting the agency at dawn risked unwanted entanglements.
Ringing the silver bell to summon a servant felt like a grotesque abuse of his own notoriety; even in his modern life, he had been the sort of patron who preferred politely requesting items directly from a restaurant kitchen rather than pressing a call button.
Before long, pristine, textbook-perfect calligraphy filled two pages. Cho Yoon folded them meticulously, inscribed the characters for Hyeon and Yeong on the respective envelopes, and handed them over.
Wang Jeong slipped the letters into his robes with reverent care, ensuring not a single crease marred the paper, before offering another deep bow.
“I pray your stay within these walls alleviates your burdens,” Wang Jeong said. “I shall intrude upon your nights no longer. Please, consider this estate your own. Serving you has been the absolute pinnacle of my life.”
“…”
Please, stop. Just stop.
Cho Yoon desperately wanted to express a simple, modern gratitude for the man’s accommodations, but ‘Cho Yoon’s’ imposing persona strictly forbade such warmth. Opening his mouth would likely only unleash a scathing rebuke against the useless flattery.
Instead, Cho Yoon dismissed the caretaker with a silent turn of his head toward the window.
The moment the door slid shut and Wang Jeong’s presence evaporated, Cho Yoon exhaled a heavy breath and dissolved the soundproofing barrier. His gaze settled on Hui’s sealed missive resting on the table.
…This makes four.
The memory of Hui’s initial correspondence remained seared into his mind—a visceral shock that had struck him the night they first met, read only after Cheon-oh was safely asleep.
Framed as a gift, the broker’s message had been chillingly concise:
The black Imoogi swimming upstream seems to have incurred Heaven’s wrath and lies trapped beneath the earth. Having heard and seen, I shall send word again the day my hands graze its scales.
The metaphor was transparent.
The ‘black Imoogi’ represented Cheon-oh’s father, Joo Yeok—wielder of the Dark Python Sword. ‘Heaven’ undeniably referred to Joo Pae-gun, the Heavenly Demon and absolute ruler of the Demonic Cult, while the ‘earth’ signified their subterranean dungeons.
Hui possessed knowledge of ‘Seomun Cheon-oh’s’ existence, casually dangling the whereabouts of a father never once mentioned in the original novel. The revelation had struck Cho Yoon like a physical blow.
Locating Joo Yeok could be rationalized through deeply embedded Cult spies, but uncovering Cheon-oh was an entirely different impossibility. Cho Yoon had spirited the boy away in absolute secrecy, confining him to the mountains for four years.
Cheon-oh had never uttered his surname to another soul.
After a sleepless night wrestling with Hui’s motives, Cho Yoon had opted for silence. If the broker intended to use Cheon-oh as leverage, demands would have accompanied the letter.
Furthermore, the revelation that the legendary Immortal Healer harbored the last scion of a massacred family possessed a strict expiration date; the moment a fully grown Cheon-oh marched into the orthodox plains seeking vengeance, the secret would become public knowledge.
Factoring in Hui’s existing misconceptions about his character, Cho Yoon deduced that the broker wasn’t flaunting his intelligence gathering. Rather, operating under the assumption that Cho Yoon already knew that he knew, Hui was simply offering a professional courtesy regarding Joo Yeok’s location.
That left Cho Yoon with a single, agonizing dilemma: Did he tell Cheon-oh?
The question had tormented him relentlessly, haunting his days even after returning to Estate of Deep Mists.
Burdened by the emptiness left by his departed disciples and the sheer weight of this explosive secret, he had unearthed a hidden jug of liquor behind the estate—a vice he never normally indulged. Relying entirely on a martial artist’s legendary alcohol tolerance, he had drank himself into a stupor, ultimately babbling incoherently to the boy.
It was a humiliating lapse in judgment he still bitterly regretted.
Ultimately, he had chosen concealment.
Hui’s promise to ‘send word when certain’ provided a convenient excuse to delay the truth until the intelligence was verified and Cheon-oh had matured enough to temper his inevitable impatience.
Cho Yoon dreaded the psychological fallout of telling a traumatized ten-year-old that his grandfather had entombed his father.
Two subsequent letters had arrived containing strictly essential intelligence.
The first confirmed the siblings had securely integrated under an elite master, receiving the humane treatment they deserved.
The second verified Cho Yoon’s own prediction: the youngest young master of the Moyong Clan was behaving as if his very soul had been replaced.
Cho Yoon never penned direct replies, opting instead to slip discreet, tailor-made gifts for Hui into Sa-yeong’s monthly care packages—harboring a slightly manipulative hope that the broker might reciprocate by watching over the siblings.
And now, the fourth letter.
Hui never wasted ink on trivialities.
Breaking the luxurious peony knot, Cho Yoon unfurled the parchment and immediately released a weary sigh. It was the exact confirmation he had anticipated, and the very news he had dreaded most.
I have touched the black Imoogi in the deepest abyss. Its scales are shed, its vitality withered, and its mind clouded, yet Heaven’s fury remains unquenched. It appears the heavens cannot forgive the Imoogi for communing with a mortal and attempting treason for her sake. Extraction exceeds my current capabilities, but should you desire it, I will lend my strength to the bitter end. May you enjoy boundless health.
To the uninitiated, it read like a stanza from a forgotten myth.
To Cho Yoon, the translation was brutally clear: Joo Yeok was rotting in the Demonic Cult’s deepest, most inescapable hell, his mind and body systematically broken.
Joo Pae-gun refused to pardon his son’s cardinal sin—loving an orthodox woman and siring her child.
The security was so utterly impenetrable that even a phantom like Hui found a rescue operation practically impossible.