In the fleeting moment the masked men drew their blades and advanced, Sa-yeong’s mind raced with thoughts. She considered urging her siblings to climb the wall and attempting to shield herself with her body. However, Sa-hyeon’s footwork was inadequate for a swift escape, and Sa-yeong knew she couldn’t withstand the onslaught of six assassins for an extended period.

No. I won’t know until I fight to the bitter end. Even if it means crawling through the dirt to desperately cling to their ankles, I have to hold them back for as long as humanly possible.

Just as Sa-yeong opened her mouth, her face twisted into a mask of venomous, fierce determination, a sudden thread of telepathy struck her ears. It was Cheon-oh’s voice, who had been following her without uttering a single peep.

[I will create an opening. Run, Senior Sister.]

There was no time to ask how, nor even a fraction of a second to harbor doubt. Gritting her teeth, Sa-yeong reached backward, desperately gripping her two siblings’ hands once more. Even as her blood-soaked palms slipped, she squeezed their fingers with brutal, uncompromising force.

The masked assassins raising their blades seemed to move in agonizing slow motion. As every entity within her field of vision appeared virtually frozen in time, only the violent, rapid pounding of her own heart—thump, thump, thump—registered vividly at its original speed.

Finally, just as the tips of their swords reached their highest apex.

A formless shockwave rippled outward from behind Sa-yeong, sweeping across the space in a massive arc.

It was essentially the exact same technique the siblings had used during their telepathy practice a few days ago, when they had playfully slapped their master’s ears with condensed lumps of internal energy; Cheon-oh had simply amplified the scale and overlaid it with a consistent, violent amplitude.

Yet, when a peerless prodigy—one who had steadily accumulated boundless internal energy by consuming spiritual elixirs in a mountain overflowing with divine qi—unleashed that power with the deliberate intent to harm, the resulting destructive force was utterly impossible to ignore.

“Guaaaaah!”

“Aaaaargh!”

Exposed to the tidal wave of colossal vibrations, the masked assassins dropped their swords in unison, frantically clutching their ears. Their eyes rolled back into their skulls, and their fingertips trembled violently as an agonizing, head-splitting pain overwhelmed them.

They collapsed heavily to their knees, writhing and thrashing against the dirt path as they began to violently dry-heave. Even as they desperately tried to stand, the sensation of the world violently tilting and spinning robbed them of all equilibrium.

The severe vibrations that had ruthlessly bored into their ear canals had simultaneously ruptured their eardrums and devastated their semicircular canals—a devastating secondary effect even Cheon-oh hadn’t anticipated.

Sa-yeong had absolutely no idea what had just transpired, but she refused to let the miraculous opening slip away.

Lowering her posture and pouring explosive strength into her thighs, she tore straight through the gap between the incapacitated assassins.

Cheon-oh, drenched in cold sweat after expending a massive sum of internal energy in a single breath, leaned down just as they brushed past the assassins and snatched a fallen sword from the dirt.

One of the masked men, grinding his teeth in agony, blindly threw out a hand and hooked Cheon-oh’s clothes, but the fabric violently tore away with a sharp rip.

Seeing his sleeping garment torn, Cheon-oh immediately lowered the sword he had instinctively raised to sever the assassin’s hand.

Instead, he snapped his gaze forward, focusing entirely on moving his feet. He felt that if his speed dropped by even a fraction, his senior sister might literally rip his arm out of its socket.

Meanwhile, staring intently at the distant, undiminished flames and entirely consumed by the singular goal of escaping the area, Sa-yeong felt a fleeting moment of relief. 

Ah, at this rate, we can actually escape.

“Useless fools. Did I not explicitly order you to leave the Immortal Healer’s disciples untouched?”

She couldn’t comprehend when he had arrived.

The path had been entirely empty a mere heartbeat ago, yet when she instinctively glanced forward after using the distant, churning flames as a fleeting landmark, his solitary figure was already standing motionlessly, entirely obstructing their escape route.

Sa-yeong abruptly halted her desperate sprint, entirely baffled.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her entire body paralyzed.

The man, standing several jang away, hadn’t even drawn the sword strapped to his waist; he was merely gazing silently at Sa-yeong. Yet, she felt as though she had been ensnared in an inescapable, invisible net. The more she struggled to break free, the tighter it seemed to constrict around her windpipe.

It was a suffocating, absolute dread she hadn’t felt even when multiple assassins had blocked her path.

I’ve stepped into his range. There is absolutely no way I can escape this with my own strength. 

Realizing this on pure instinct, Sa-yeong bit down on her lip until it bled. To think that in the face of this tidal wave of despair, the only thing she could do was stand perfectly still and pray it bypassed them—she had never felt so devastatingly powerless.

Like the other assassins, the man was clad in pitch-black stealth garb, his face entirely concealed by a mask. The gloomy darkness of the night cast deep shadows over his eyes—the only part of his face exposed to the air. The only physical features visible were his hands and his hair; his long, brown, curly hair was tied up tightly and secured with an obsidian hairpin, a detail that stood out distinctly.

Slinging a massive burlap sack over one shoulder, the man closed the distance with long, unhurried strides.

“I told you to clear a path. I did not order you to butcher every witness you encounter. If there happened to be people at our designated rendezvous point, you should have exercised some basic flexibility and met me a little further away. Yet you stubbornly attempted to silence witnesses and ended up in this pathetic state.”

“We have… we have no excuses.”

“Oh, I’m sure he will be absolutely thrilled to see you like this. You fail to keep a secret, you inflict wounds upon the Immortal Healer’s disciple, and you get yourselves reduced to crawling on the ground by a mere child. What exactly is the immense gold paid to you every month for? Where is the trust placed in you for this mission? Do you think his resources are a charity?”

“N-No… Absolutely not.”

As the man delivered his scathing reprimand in a blunt, entirely emotionless voice, the previously silent assassins squeezed out their desperate replies and staggered to their feet. Though they continued to sway violently, their sense of balance still shattered, they forced their bodies upright out of sheer terror.

Without sparing Sa-yeong and the children a single glance, the man walked straight past them.

The moment their figures crossed paths, Sa-yeong, who had been holding her breath, turned her head with agonizingly stiff movements to track his departing back.

She had a fairly accurate guess as to what he was carrying in that sack.

If it truly was that man, it meant this lone assassin had successfully breached the Tang Clan’s defenses, slipping past Nan Wi-jeong and all the esteemed elders entirely single-handedly. And he had done so while carrying a massive, heavy burden on his shoulder.

Conversely, Cheon-oh, shocked for an entirely different reason, stared after the man with wide, pitch-black eyes in sheer disbelief.

He was absolutely certain.

He had heard that voice before.

He had met this person.

“We have no time to delay. The Immortal Healer and the Single Drop Execution have undoubtedly seen the flames by now. Rather than being overtaken and spilling everything you know, kill yourselves.”

“Yes, Captain!”

Having ordered his subordinates to turn back, the man briefly turned his head, his gaze locking with Cheon-oh’s.

In that exact fraction of a second, something highly combustible within the distant, burning Pavilion of Snow Leaves detonated. A colossal, deafening roar tore through the air as a massive pillar of fire violently erupted into the sky.

The ferocious flames painting the pitch-black heavens reflected sharply in the man’s eyes, causing a brilliant, golden light to flash within his irises. Meeting that golden gaze, Cheon-oh shuddered violently, struck by a lightning-bolt of realization.

The explosion rapidly subsided.

Turning around in heavy silence, the man vanished completely into the darkness without producing a single footstep.

The moment they disappeared, the surroundings plunged into a profound, eerie silence, as if the chaotic bloodbath had merely been a hallucination. The only ones left standing were the three children, still trapped in a state of stunned disbelief after narrowly brushing past death.

Breaking the heavy silence, Sa-hyeon was the first to speak. “S-Sister. Your, your arm…”

“Ah…”

Right. I was hurt. 

Wearing a vacant expression, Sa-yeong attempted to lift her arm to inspect the wound. Suddenly, all strength vanished from her knees, and she collapsed heavily onto the dirt path.

“Sister!”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

Letting out a sound that bordered on a scream, Sa-hyeon dropped to the ground beside her. Even as Sa-yeong repeatedly insisted she was fine, Sa-hyeon, his face completely crumpled as if he were on the verge of sobbing, frantically tore a strip of cloth from his clothes and bound it tightly over her bleeding wound.

“I’m really okay. Are you hurt anywhere? You tripped and hit your knee earlier. I’m sorry for pulling you so hard.”

“Ugh… hic…”

Hearing Sa-yeong’s slightly dazed, gentle voice, Sa-hyeon finally burst into tears. He clamped his jaw shut tightly to prevent the sound from escaping, frantically wiping away the heavy tears cascading down his cheeks, but it was painfully obvious he was crying.

“Hey, hey. Why are you crying? It’s nothing to cry over. It’s just a shallow cut on my skin.”

Flustered by the rare sight of her younger brother weeping, Sa-yeong hastily reached out to wipe his tears. Unfortunately, the half-dried blood smeared across her hands only made his face look significantly worse.

“No, wait… what do I do about this. Hold still. Let’s wipe your face. People are going to think you’re a beggar from the Beggars’ Sect.”

“Ugh… hng… Waaaaaah!”

Unable to hold it in any longer, Sa-hyeon began bawling at the top of his lungs, burying his face directly into his sister’s chest.

“A-Ah, hey. I told you I’m fine.”

Thoroughly startled, Sa-yeong repeatedly assured him she was alright, gently stroking his back and head, but the boy refused to budge. Feeling her sleeping garments rapidly growing damp with a mixture of tears and snot, Sa-yeong spent a long time soothing her crying brother.

Amidst the commotion, she eventually turned her head.

Cheon-oh was still standing in the exact same spot, completely motionless, staring deeply into the suffocating darkness where the man had vanished. Seen from the side, Cheon-oh’s profile bore a bizarrely flushed, unnatural expression—one steeped heavily in a twisted cocktail of sheer euphoria and awe.

“You…”

Sa-yeong opened her mouth to call out to him, but firmly shut it instead. Whatever it is, only take on as much as you can handle. Her master’s previous lesson briefly flashed through her mind.

And whatever profoundly disturbing emotion Cheon-oh was experiencing right now, Sa-yeong intuitively realized she was utterly unequipped to handle it.