Black Sangbang Raid Incident
The moment my eyes met the man's, my mind went completely blank.
Why was there a person here?
No—more importantly, how had I failed to sense his presence?
I had to subdue him quickly.
If he made a sound, it would be over.
But before I could lunge at him, he had already drawn his sword.
Chang!
Drawing his blade, he shouted in a low voice.
"Who goes there?!"
I faltered for an instant, puzzled.
He shouted quietly? Why?
Shouldn't he be shouting loudly to summon the guards?
At that moment, the blanket next to the naked man stirred, and from beneath it emerged a woman—also completely naked.
She was a beautiful young woman with a delicate face.
Startled by my presence, she gasped softly.
"Darling! Quickly, close the door! Otherwise, the sound will leak outside!"
Huh? Close the door? The sound will leak outside?
Hearing that, I glanced back at the door behind me.
And I clearly felt both of them flinch.
Oh? Interesting.
I pushed the door shut.
Immediately, I felt the outside noise cut off completely.
Perfect soundproofing.
And when I saw the man and woman relax with relief once the door was closed, I had a rough idea of the situation.
The man, reassured now, leveled his sword at me and shouted.
"What are you doing here?! How dare you trespass into the Black Sangbang Master's chamber wearing a mask! Are you a thief?!"
Well, technically, I was a thief.
But you two weren't in any position to say that.
I chuckled faintly and replied,
"A man who's rolling around with the Master's concubine in the Master's chamber isn't really in a place to lecture me."
His face instantly went pale.
He stammered.
"Y-you… don't tell me my father sent you? That you knew about us all along?"
Well, well. Father?
Then this guy must be—
I sneered.
"Go Musang! Do you realize your sin?!"
The man recoiled in shock, stumbling back until he collapsed onto the bed.
In disbelief, he muttered,
"Th-this can't be…! How…?"
As I thought.
He was Go Ju-yong's son, Go Musang.
The very same man who, after his father's death, had supposedly killed Ma Jonghwan's daughters in a fit of rage.
When I'd heard that, I thought him quite the dutiful son.
But here he was, sneaking around with his father's concubine.
It was then—
The woman beside him, her face still pale, suddenly turned sharp and venomous as she screamed.
"Darling! We're not exposed yet! Kill him! If we kill him, there'll be no evidence!"
That snapped Go Musang back to his senses.
He pointed his sword at me again, eyes blazing.
Beside him, the woman shrieked,
"Kill him quickly! We must kill him before the people outside notice!"
Before they notice outside?
How thoughtful of her.
I grinned suddenly and darted toward the doorknob. Both man and woman shrieked.
"No!"
Go Musang hurled himself at me desperately, thrusting his blade at my back.
"Die!"
Shuak!
His martial skill seemed to be about the level of an intermediate first-rate fighter.
If we'd faced each other head-on, it wouldn't have been so easy to subdue him. But since he rushed in so recklessly—
I could only be grateful.
I rotated my body slightly, evading his thrust, and used that motion to unsheath my sword.
Shyak!
"Gughk!"
My blade barely grazed his throat as he lunged forward with all his strength.
Eyes wide with disbelief, he toppled over.
A moment later, blood sprayed from the gash in his half-severed neck.
I had considered merely subduing him. But remembering both my past life and my current reputation, I decided—he wasn't worth keeping alive.
Better to kill him while I had the chance.
Once Go Musang fell dead, Go Ju-yong's concubine froze in terror.
"Y-you… how could you kill the Master's son…?"
Then, as if realizing something, she cried out,
"You're not the Master's agent, are you?!"
I was a little impressed.
Her mind worked wickedly fast.
Then, abruptly, she rose from the bed, casting aside the blanket.
Her naked, seductive figure stretched before my eyes.
With a sultry smile, she spoke.
"Listen. If you're not the Master's man, then take me with you. I was forced to stay here. If you get me out, I'll become your woman and repay your kindness forever."
Her moist gaze and pitiful expression could have fooled anyone into believing she was a tragic heroine.
Even I might have fallen for it.
If not for the fact that, moments ago, she had screamed for my death with that venomous face.
Pook!
Without hesitation, my blade pierced her heart.
She stared at me in disbelief, then collapsed lifeless.
If she had shown less cunning, perhaps I would have hesitated. But a snake like her couldn't be left alive.
I thought briefly how fortunate it was that Captain Seolpung hadn't come this way.
If it had been him, he would have flustered helplessly, unable to deal with her, just because she was a woman—despite knowing she was lying.
His damned fear of women.
After that, I descended into the Master's private vault through a passage only accessible from this chamber.
The result, however, was a disappointment.
The vault wasn't a prison after all.
But I wasn't disheartened.
In fact, I whistled in awe.
"Whiiuu, impressive."
Inside, gold coins, gold bars, jewels, rare-looking weapons, and even medicinal elixirs were piled high.
That bastard Go Ju-yong had hoarded all this, and yet still coveted others' possessions to cause such trouble.
My eyes gleamed as I looked around.
"Well, well. Look at this."
Meanwhile, Seolpung had little difficulty finding the prison block.
The most heavily guarded area was, of course, the dungeon.
But because of the extreme security, sneaking in unnoticed—as Seon Woojin had done—was nearly impossible.
After a moment's thought, Seolpung abandoned stealth altogether.
The prison was a single-story building, but according to the intel, it extended three floors underground to hold prisoners.
At the entrance stood six guards on constant watch, while four more patrolled the perimeter in shifts like clockwork.
Seolpung hid in the shadows, waiting.
When one of the patrolmen turned a corner, he leapt like a predator at the guards at the front gate.
Pabak!
By the time the guards realized something had struck, Seolpung's fists and elbows were already slamming into their skulls.
"Wh—!"
"Uh—!"
Bababababak!
All six crumpled unconscious in the blink of an eye.
Seolpung didn't stop there.
He darted toward the opposite corner.
The patrolman coming around widened his eyes in shock.
"Wha—!"
Puhk!
But he too made no sound as he fell.
Seolpung knocked him out and immediately rounded the corner, moving in the opposite direction of the patrol's circuit, taking them all down.
The time it took him to complete the full round? Barely three breaths.
He hesitated briefly over whether to kill them, then shook his head and instead dragged them all into the first cell inside the prison.
For him, who lived on the frontlines, killing a person was far too easy.
That was why Seolpung tried not to kill unless it was absolutely necessary.
He fought monsters, but he did not want to become one.
After locking the guards inside a cell, Seolpung turned to the others imprisoned on the first floor of the dungeon.
"Are the two daughters of Ma Jonghwan, the Living Corpse Monster, imprisoned here?"
The prisoners, who had been staring wide-eyed since Seolpung shoved the guards inside, clamored to speak.
"N-no, no such people are here! Please, free me instead!"
"That's right! As far as I know, there are no women here! Hero, I am Noh Sang-won, a wandering swordsman with not a single shameful deed to my name! If you release me, I shall—"
"Hero!"
"Hero!"
The prisoners began shouting all at once.
Seolpung smiled bitterly and told them,
"If you make such a racket, I won't release you at all—I'll just leave."
At his words, the prisoners all gasped—"Heup!"—and immediately fell silent.
Seonu Jin had told him earlier:
The first floor of the dungeon would mostly hold petty criminals, while the second and third underground floors would contain those who had resisted the Black Sangbang.
When Seolpung asked how to handle them, Seonu Jin had answered casually:
"Just release them. If the Black Sangbang imprisoned them, chances are the majority are good people. Even if there are some bad ones, anyone the Black Sangbang could capture wouldn't be that dangerous."
The possibility of releasing bad men didn't sit well with Seolpung.
But indeed, it was impractical to sort them out one by one with the time he had.
So Seolpung said to the prisoners,
"I will certainly release you all. But not until I have checked the lowest floor. Until I return, I expect you to stay quiet and not get discovered."
The prisoners went deathly silent, and Seolpung descended to the lower floors.
In the end, he too came up empty-handed.
The two daughters of the Living Corpse Monster were not imprisoned in the dungeon.
Instead, Seolpung freed all those imprisoned on the third underground floor—men who had stood against the Black Sangbang.
Among them was Jong Won-ik, the leader of the Killing Conference, a group formed by those who had lost families or been ruined by the Black Sangbang.
Tears streaming down his face, Jong Won-ik thanked him.
"Thank you! If not for you, I would have died here, unable to avenge my wife and children! I will never forget this debt!"
After releasing the third floor prisoners, Seolpung ascended and freed those on the second and first floors as well.
It was, of course, to free the innocent—but also to throw the Black Sangbang into chaos.
Amid such confusion, they would never discover who was responsible.
Among orthodox sects, women who reached peak skill in their twenties were sometimes given the title "Phoenix."
Among unorthodox sects, however, young female experts who surpassed their peak were often given the title "Magpie" .
Of them, the one known as the Hell Magpie, Blood-Whip Seosi, Ya Unhyang, had been employed by the Black Sangbang for six months.
She had not done much during her time there.
As with her other employers, Master Go Ju-yong had hired her not for her martial skill, but simply because he wanted to spend nights with her.
But though Ya Unhyang was a free-spirited unorthodox woman, she was not an easy one.
If a man didn't please her, she would never share her bed with him.
So of course, she had no intention of lying with an old man like Go Ju-yong.
Though his constant advances could have made things difficult, she wasn't particularly concerned.
She always took payment up front for such contingencies.
If an employer went too far, she simply returned the money and left.
In that sense, Go Ju-yong hadn't been the worst employer. At least, he hadn't tried to force her.
At least, not until now.
But watching what he did to the Living Corpse Monster—backstabbing someone he had just dealt with and threatening their family—she was utterly disgusted.
She realized that while he had not done anything to her yet, he was more than capable of it.
Even for someone from the unorthodox world, there were lines of human decency—and this crossed them.
So she refused his order to track down the Living Corpse Monster and instead stayed behind in the Black Sangbang.
And she had resolved to leave altogether.
Once Go Ju-yong returns, I'll be gone.
She had even briefly considered killing him and seizing the Living Corpse Monster's elixirs.
But she didn't want to do to him what he had just done to others—betraying someone she had a contract with.
So she restrained herself.
At that moment, Ya Unhyang was walking toward the rear of the Black Sangbang.
The front gate had erupted in commotion, drawing everyone's attention there.
With manpower already spread thin, the rear would be vulnerable now.
Not that she cared much for the Black Sangbang—but as long as she was on their payroll, she felt bound to do at least that much.
Then—
"Hm?"
Her ears caught the faint commotion from the dungeon.
It had been brief—but all the more suspicious because of it.
When she arrived, the guards who had been at their posts were nowhere to be seen.
Clearly, something had happened.
For a moment she thought of calling others, but there were few people left nearby, and it was too far anyway.
So she decided to go alone.
Just then, people began pouring out of the dungeon.
Wearing ragged clothes, they were clearly prisoners.
"Hmph."
So something had happened.
Troublesome.
She muttered lazily,
"Work is work."
In an instant, the black whip coiled around her slender waist writhed like a living snake, then lashed out and slammed into the ground before the dungeon.
Chwaaaak!
"Uwaaaaagh! Wh-what?!"
"What the—?!"
The escaping prisoners froze in their tracks.
The lash mark gouged into the earth was deep, like a dragon had carved through.
In her languid voice, Ya Unhyang told them,
"Stop right there. As long as you don't move, I won't kill you."
In the moonlight, the prisoners' eyes fell on her.
A face as enchanting as a dream, a seductive figure outlined by her tight black martial attire, and the black whip writhing around her like a living serpent.
There was no one among the warriors of Jiangnan who didn't know her name.
Someone swallowed hard and whispered,
"Blood-Whip Seosi."
"Blood-Whip Seosi, Ya Unhyang."
In her usual drowsy tone, she said,
"Sorry, but while I'm under contract here, escape is impossible. If you quietly return to your cells, I'll pretend I didn't see anything."
As she spoke, her whip lashed down again with overwhelming force.
Kwahhhng!
The impact gouged a deep scar into the ground, smoke rising from it.
Displaying such overwhelming power so casually, Ya Unhyang warned in her lazy voice,
"But if you resist, I can't help what happens."
Blood-Whip Seosi.
Beautiful like Seosi of old, but with a whip soaked in countless lives' blood—hence her epithet.
In particular, the night she massacred the master of the Black Gall Bang of Yiju, Guangxi, along with all his high-ranking men—after they had drugged her and tried to violate her—remained a legend among the female warriors of Jiangnan years later.
The prisoners, excited at the thought of escape, were now frozen in place like statues.
And then—from their midst, a man in a black mask slowly stepped forward.
It was Seolpung.
Ya Unhyang's eyes glimmered with intrigue.
"A man in black? So you're the one behind all this."
As she spoke, the black whip around her waist coiled and writhed like a dragon once again.
She had already sensed that Seolpung was no ordinary opponent.
Her languid gaze sharpened, brimming with fighting spirit.
But unlike her, Seolpung's eyes only grew darker.
Of all people—it had to be a woman.
Damn it.