The four-horse carriage moved smoothly toward its destination. Despite being the same horses and the same carriage as yesterday, the ride quality was on another level. That was because the driver had been replaced. Hyeok Mujin, finally freed from the driver’s seat and sitting next to me, spoke with a look of relief.

“I guess people are just born to do certain things. I’m absolutely terrible at driving a carriage.”

Terrible, my ass.

The man was brought by Wol-hwa, the Shanxi Branch Manager of the Hao Sect. Of course, he wasn’t an ordinary driver. The man silently holding the reins was a level 50 first-rate master. A driver who doubled as an escorting warrior; the picture was clear.

“Mujin.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s just go quietly, please. That’s the least you can do.”

“Why do you always pick on me?”

“Because you’re the one who’s always spouting nonsense, you punk.”

Wol-hwa, sitting across from us and watching, let out a dry laugh.

“It’s nice to see you two so informal with each other.”

“This guy just has no manners.”

“No manners? I didn’t want to bring this up, but I’m two years older than you, Squad Leader. Even my friends have kids.”

“But you don’t.”

“Well, no. That’s true, but still.”

“And even if you were twenty-two, you’re still younger than me. Anyway, you’re younger.”

“What are you talking about? Even the stray dogs in Shanxi know you’re barely twenty.”

“If you don’t believe me, we can have a round.”

“…There are other people here, so I’ll stop here.”

Wol-hwa smiled brightly at Hyeok Mujin’s pathetic excuse.

“Oh my, I don’t mind. Though I’m not sure about Young Hero Jin over here.”

Naturally, everyone’s gaze turned to one person.

Jin Mu-gyeong, who had kept his mouth shut until now, flinched and then spoke, “I-I don’t mind.”

“……?”

What, did that guy just stutter?

At his unexpected reaction, I stared with wide eyes, and Jin Mu-gyeong subtly avoided my gaze.

Whoa, what’s with him.

That wasn’t his usual character at all. Normally, he would have glared and asked what I was staring at.

I asked with sincere concern.

“Are you sick?”

“…Not at all.”

“You should look at a person’s eyes when you talk to them.”

“…Be quiet. Don’t talk to me.”

He’s being really weird today.

There was no way a peak master could get carriage sickness. He was perfectly fine this morning, but his condition was now off.

Come to think of it, I think he’s been like this ever since we got on the carriage.

Just as I was narrowing my eyes and observing Jin Mu-gyeong…

Nudge, nudge.

Hyeok Mujin poked me in the side and whispered in a voice only I could hear.

“Look at the Second Young Master.”

“What about… ah.”

Only after hearing Hyeok Mujin’s words did I notice the strange sight. It was so obvious I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it until now.

What is that?

The four-horse carriage brought from the Taiyuan Jin Family was quite luxurious. It was the size of a decent room, and the seats were wide. It could have comfortably fit twice the number of people.

And yet…

Why is he acting like that?

Currently, Jin Mu-gyeong was ignoring the wide seat and was crammed into a corner at the very edge of the carriage. No, that was more like he was compressed.

Is this Platform 9 3/4 or something?

Was he attending a school of magic[1] instead of the Heavenly Martial Academy?

Meanwhile, Hyeok Mujin and I weren’t the only ones watching this bizarre behavior.

“Young Hero Jin. You look very uncomfortable. Please come over here. There’s plenty of space.”

At Wol-hwa’s captivating voice, Jin Mu-gyeong’s body tensed up. A creaky reply came out a moment later.

“I-I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine at all. I whispered quietly to Hyeok Mujin, who had a similar expression to mine.

“You think it’s weird too, right?”

“It’s beyond weird.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”

We exchanged a meaningful look.

“Who in the world would have imagined?”

“I know, right? To think the great Heavenly Jin Blade is so painfully shy.”

“That’s what I’m say… huh?”

“What’s with that reaction? You shouldn’t judge a person’s personality. For every thick-skinned person like me, there are also shy people.”

“No, wait. Just a moment.”

Hyeok Mujin stammered on.

“What are you talking about right now?”

“Of course, it’s Jin Mu-gyeong…”

A chilling voice cut in abruptly.

“Shut your mouths.”

No matter how wide it was, we were still inside a carriage. Everyone could hear. At Jin Mu-gyeong’s murderous glare, Hyeok Mujin and I shut our mouths at the same time.

It was Wol-hwa who broke the tense atmosphere.

“My, where is my mind? I haven’t properly introduced myself yet. I am called Wol-hwa, the Shanxi Branch Manager of the Hao Sect.”

“…I am Jin Mu-gyeong of the Taiyuan Jin Family.”

“Your reaction is quite dull. Young Master Jin over there was incredibly surprised when he first heard my identity.”

“I had already heard a rough idea from him. And also that you performed a great service for our family.”

Jin Mu-gyeong made a formal fist-and-palm salute.

“Though it is late, I express my gratitude.”

“Don’t mention it. It was a fair trade.”

Wol-hwa smoothly added another sentence.

“Although I have yet to receive my proper compensation.”

“The main family will not forget the Hao Sect’s favor.”

His actions and speech were still incredibly awkward, but it was a much better showing than before.

A picture-perfect shot of a handsome man and a beautiful woman.

Hyeok Mujin let out a sound of admiration.

“A promising young master and a peerless beauty… Ahh, my heart pounds just looking at them. Don’t you think so?”

I turned my head, pretending not to hear. Seeing the murderous glare that made my skin tingle, it was clear that the time for Hyeok Mujin’s heart to pound was running out.

***

The winter day is short-tempered.

How long had we traveled along the mountain path? The sun soon set, and darkness fell.

It was two hours later, around midnight, when the carriage stopped.

“We have arrived.”

The first thing I saw when I got out of the carriage was a moderately sized wooden building. As soon as I stepped inside, I felt a chilling air. A statue modeled after a person looked down on us with dignity. What was a place like this called?

Ah, right. An ancestral shrine.

I had heard it was a place where memorial tablets of the dead were enshrined and ancestral rites were performed. Reminded of the Guan Yu shrines that often appear in martial arts novels, I examined the statue, but I couldn’t tell who it was.

“It’s a shrine that was abandoned after a famine several years ago, but it seems that nearby commoners still visit from time to time.”

As Wol-hwa said, the inside of the shrine was desolate, but there were still traces of people. For instance, human footprints on the dusty floor.

“I will prepare the place.”

At the words of the driver-slash-guard, who I presumed was a Hao Sect member, we went outside the shrine. No, to be precise, one of us had to be dragged out by someone else.

“Follow me.”

“Ugh, Squad Leader, Squad Leader!”

I ignored Hyeok Mujin being dragged away by the scruff of his neck by Jin Mu-gyeong and looked up at the sky. Hmm, the moon is quite bright today.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, just what it looks like.”

Wol-hwa smiled faintly.

“You seem to enjoy looking at the scenery.”

“I’ve started to like it recently.”

The only scenery you could see in the modern world was the night view from a high place. And even that was just the sad lights created by office workers working overtime.

This is real scenery.

There were no dense forests of buildings, no apartment complexes or factory sites. Instead of asphalt roads, the whole world was filled with damp dirt paths and fresh air.

Living in a place like this would be truly healing.

The problem was that it was also a neighborhood where it was easy to get killed. For some reason, people here were scarier than monsters. There was no need to go as far as the Grand Elder or Jo Pil; the incident at the Phoenix Inn just yesterday was proof enough.

“Ah, that’s right. What happened to those guys?”

“If you’re talking about the bandits of the Crimson Wind Brigade, they’ve been detained. Of course, we had to call a physician first.”

I had beaten them to a pulp, so they would have needed treatment.

But there was a word that caught my interest more than that.

“The Crimson Wind Brigade[2]?”

“They are an emerging power in the northern highlands. Their scale is quite large, and above all, the martial arts of their leader, the Crimson Wind Chief, are known to be formidable.”

The northern highlands. It was a place name I had first learned of through a map during the war with the Hengshan Sword Sect. One thing that was puzzling was that the distance between Hunyuan, where the Phoenix Inn was located, and the highlands was considerable. I knew that it would take more than a week even if you rode a horse day and night…

“How did guys like that end up all the way out here?”

“Lee Cheon-baek hired numerous vagrant and horse bandit groups toward the end of the war. A good number of them met their end at Baquan Gorge, but some survived and fled.”

“And the Crimson Wind Brigade was among them?”

Wol-hwa shook her head.

“The Crimson Wind Chief… he was a man whose mind worked faster than I thought.”

“Then?”

“He watched the situation until the very end. He kept a close watch on Baquan Gorge from a distance of only two hours away, and when he heard the result of the battle, he turned his horse around. Along with his two hundred followers.”

A staggering two hundred men.

What would have happened if the Crimson Wind Brigade had joined the battle at Baquan Gorge that day? There would have been enormous casualties, of course, and it might have even affected the outcome of the battle.

“That was lucky for us.”

“Indeed. And incredibly unlucky for the Hengshan Sword Sect.”

Wol-hwa packed tobacco leaves into her pipe and continued.

“The Crimson Wind Brigade headed north right after that. They were aiming for the Hengshan Sword Sect’s main base, from which most of its forces had departed.”

“…Hah.”

He was truly a natural-born predator. The moment the tide of war turned to one side, he headed north and bit into the neck of the Hengshan Sword Sect, whose main forces were mostly gone. Thanks to not participating in the battle, he had preserved his forces, and he would have been well-rested, so his condition must have been optimal.

“You’ve heard the result, haven’t you, Young Master Jin?”

“Yes.”

The fierce battle that lasted for two days ended in the Hengshan Sword Sect’s victory, but left behind the death of the young sect leader who was meant to succeed his father.

“But from what I heard, it was a mix of vagrant and horse bandits.”

“Just because a tiger has lost its teeth doesn’t mean you call it a dog. The Crimson Wind Chief had gathered a fair number of vagrants. They would have been perfect to use as shields.”

Tap, tap.

Taking out a flint, she lit it and drew on her pipe.

“The horse bandits you defeated were probably those who fled at that time. Even though the Crimson Wind Brigade is quite disciplined for a group of horse bandits, they’re not entirely without deserters. I’m not sure what they were doing in Hunyuan, though.”

“Deserters…”

“Because of that, this area has been unsettled lately. Ronin, mountain bandits, horse bandits, and even members of the unorthodox have been rearing their heads, while the Hengshan Sword Sect’s power has waned pitifully.”

“They’ll have no choice but to accept our proposal, then.”

Wol-hwa gave a sharp smile.

“To be precise, it would be the Taiyuan Jin Family, not ‘we,’ right? Well, from my perspective, it is a good time to pressure the new sect leader.”

“Excuse me, but.”

“Yes?”

“Do commoners really visit the shrine in this weather?”

“Not a chance. Unless they’re hunters. But why the sudden question?”

I pointed up the mountain path. Through the light flurry of snow that had begun to fall, I could see torches ascending toward us.