The intruders were assassins.
Having faced many assassins before my regression, I knew the aura unique to them.
A killing intent devoid of emotion.
Was it because they did not kill out of resentment or hatred toward their targets? Or was it because, upon becoming assassins, they first trained themselves to eliminate emotion?
Their killing intent was subtly different.
If I had noticed them, then Hwi naturally would have noticed them as well. No—since he was the one who discovered the intruders, he must have noticed them even sooner than I did.
Since I had stepped forward, he was probably hiding somewhere around Father’s residence, watching the situation unfold.
Of course, if I had noticed them and Hwi had noticed them, then Father must have known about the intruders as well. The Heavenly Demon Body-Protecting Art, which had reached the Great Perfection, would have naturally warned him of the danger.
Just trust me and go back to sleep. Blood splattered on that nightclothes of yours wouldn’t suit you, would it?
I quietly opened the door and stepped into the courtyard.
Standing there, I stared into the darkness, then once again put a finger to my lips and whispered.
“Father’s sleeping, so let’s fight quietly.”
Yet no one revealed a sign of their presence, as though there was no one here at all. The only sound around us was the chirping of insects in the grass.
If Father had been awake, he certainly would have said this:
You’re the noisiest one here!
The thought brought a smile to my lips.
At that moment, as though responding to my words, someone concealed in the darkness directly ahead revealed the faintest trace of their presence.
It was no mistake.
The moment they realized I had detected them, they had revealed their position and made themselves bait.
The other assassins nearby would be waiting without even breathing for me to attack him.
That was what made assassins so frightening.
Assassins were taught that even if every one of them died, all that mattered was for a single person to succeed. Thus, although there were many of them, they were also a single assassin.
Since my opponent had thrown out bait, I should take a bite at least once, if only to respect his sincerity.
I launched myself toward the assassin who had revealed his presence.
I flew forward swiftly, yet no sound of wind could be heard. Like movement in a world where sound had vanished, my footwork was smooth and silent.
My opponent did not retreat. He revealed himself from within the darkness. A black mask, black clothes, and even black shoes. He was disguised in black from head to toe.
The saying that an assassin whose hiding place had been discovered was an assassin who had exhausted his life did not apply to this man.
He was bait, but not merely bait.
His movements were exceedingly fast and precise. He possessed enough skill to kill most experts in a head-on confrontation. His martial arts were so soundly trained that I even felt it was a waste for someone like him to work as an assassin.
That was probably why he had revealed his presence as the representative. For the other assassins to wait for an opportunity while we fought, he had to be capable of enduring a direct confrontation.
Of course, I gave him no such opportunity.
To prevent the sound of sword striking sword, I decided the match with a single blow.
At the instant his sword flew toward my face, my figure vanished from that spot.
Having employed the Shadow Step, I was behind him.
Thud!
Even with the sword thrusting through his back and protruding from his chest, he desperately held back his scream. He was someone who had made it second nature never to make a sound, no matter the situation. This alone told me for certain that they were exceptionally well-trained assassins.
‘They must have paid a fortune to hire these men.’
Because the first assassin had died too quickly, no one else stepped forward. They had not obtained the chance to launch a surprise attack.
They were probably waiting for their next opportunity.
For the moment when I let my guard down, thinking that only this one man had entered.
If I searched the corpse’s clothing to find out who they were, a fatal attack would rain down upon me.
Of course, I did not move as they wanted me to.
I caught the assassin as he collapsed into a corpse, lowering him gently to the ground without making a sound.
At the same time, I looked toward the darkness ahead and put a finger to my lips.
I had not done so at random. The energy that had already spread from my body like a spider’s web had seized control of the entire area.
This time, my gesture was directed at the place where the web’s vibrations were strongest.
Realizing that his position had been exposed, the assassin immediately burst forth and flew toward me. He had abandoned defense entirely, delivering a killing blow meant only to take my life.
Shiiing.
The sword that flew at me grazed past my face. The reflection of my eyes in its blade held not a trace of emotion.
Swish! Slash!
The Black Demon Sword drew a straight line of sword light and cut across his chest. He instinctively twisted his body to evade it, but two-thirds of his chest, along with his heart, had already been severed.
The cut had been so fast and sharp that he died without even having time to feel pain.
Once again, I was slicing silently through the air.
Thud!
My sword pierced through a tree as smoothly as sinking into tofu—yet faster than any swift sword.
The assassin hiding behind the tree was impaled, but once again, he made no sound.
Instead, even as he died, he gripped the blade with both hands.
How could a dying man possibly hold my Black Demon Sword?
I pulled out the sword and sprang upward along the tree. The assassin’s fingers, still clutching the sword, were severed and scattered in all directions.
Sword light flashed through the darkness.
Thud! Thud!
There had originally been three assassins clinging to the tree. Who would have imagined that three men were attached to a single tree? It was a feint concealed within a feint, but they could not evade my energy spread out like a spider’s web.
By the time the two assassins clinging to the tree like cicadas had fallen and landed atop the first corpse, I had already touched down before the wall more than a dozen paces away.
As expected, the Black Demon Sword sank smoothly into the wall.
Shraaak!
With the sword embedded in the wall, I slid along it.
Like skating across ice, my figure raced sideways along the wall.
At the same time, the Black Demon Sword tore straight across the wall.
The bodies of the assassins who had been holding their breaths while leaning against the other side of the wall were cleaved in two and collapsed.
I could sense the assassins’ shock and confusion.
Judging by their skill at concealing themselves, they must have been assassins who had earned recognition by killing countless people. Whenever they accepted a contract, they must have killed their targets and returned without fail.
Yet today, they were falling one after another without even managing to properly raise a hand.
‘There’s a traitor among us!’
Their positions had been exposed with pinpoint accuracy. They were probably thinking something like that.
I dispatched them swiftly.
They had come here with the purpose of killing me, Father, and Hwi. They were men who killed people for money. I had no reason to hesitate.
When I climbed onto the roof, concealed weapons came flying at me.
Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!
I ran between the flying weapons. Though I was racing across the roof, my footsteps made no sound.
In the blink of an eye, I reached the far end of the roof, and the assassins who had thrown the weapons fell to the ground.
Despite falling from such a height, they made no thudding sound. Just before their corpses struck the ground, I used Empty-Catching to prevent any noise.
As I continued to find them despite their concealment, the assassins could endure no longer. They attacked first.
Two assassins attacked simultaneously, one from atop a tree and the other from the darkness to my left.
This time, I employed the Underworld King’s Step. My target was the assassin rushing in from the left.
The assassin who had sent countless people to their deaths could not stop this step toward death, just as all those who had died by his hand had been unable to.
As he fell with blood spurting from his throat, the assassin dropping from the tree was already throwing concealed weapons.
Fwoosh! Thud!
The concealed weapon and the throwing dagger passed through the air. The former disappeared into the distant darkness, while the dagger I had thrown vanished into the black-clad man’s body.
The assassin who appeared from behind the stone lantern held a concealed weapon in his hand. It was not a weapon meant to be thrown like a dagger. It was a weapon that launched poisoned needles with tremendous force from a round cylinder.
Flash!
I rushed toward him with the Flickering Step.
Slash! Slash!
Before he could fire the weapon, his wrist and neck were severed in succession.
“We agreed to fight quietly, didn’t we?”
If he had fired it, there would have been an explosion.
Assassins of this caliber rarely used concealed weapons that made such a loud noise. That they had resorted to one meant the situation had become that desperate.
One of the assassins spread out a net and threw it over me.
It was an iron-steel net used by assassins. Densely woven like a web, this special net could not easily be cut by blades—or even by sword qi. If it were fixed in place and cut with sword qi, it could be severed, but having it thrown over one during an actual fight would cause a moment of confusion and make one flail helplessly.
At that moment, another assassin flew overhead, cutting through the darkness.
Shraaak!
What he scattered was Bone-Melting Acid. It was a vicious move meant to trap me in the net and melt me away. Their coordination was so perfect that the movements of the two assassins seemed like the movements of a single person.
With two slashes, the net split into four pieces, and by the time the Bone-Melting Acid poured down, I was no longer there.
Saaaash!
The instant I slit the throat of the assassin who had thrown the net, the assassin who had passed overhead landed on the ground in the distance. A dagger I had thrown was already lodged in his throat. Naturally, Empty-Catching allowed him to fall silently as well.
That was when it happened.
Shrieeek!
A sword sprang up from the ground and passed within a hair’s breadth of my face.
It was the assassin’s desperate final move from concealment.
He had dug his way underground and waited at precisely this spot.
The power behind that strike told me everything I needed to know. He was the most skilled of all the assassins I had faced so far. This attack had been the core of today’s ambush.
But that was their concern.
To me, he was merely an assassin who had failed to kill me—and perhaps the assassin who had killed the most people of them all.
My sword was already buried deep in his shoulder, extending downward.
At the last moment, he tried to scream. I could not tell whether he intended to ruin the end of this silent battle, or whether he simply could no longer endure the pain of being stabbed from his shoulder into his vitals.
But my hand was faster. I covered his mouth with my left hand and pulled out my sword.
As the sword slid free, he breathed his last while vomiting blood. Half of his body was still in the pit in the ground.
I released my qi and surveyed the area. There was no assassin left alive or hiding in this courtyard.
I slowly moved toward the building and entered.
* * *
The assassin crawled across the ceiling.
There were only a few rooms left before he reached the target. The situation outside was clearly not normal.
Even beneath the ceiling he was crawling along, the sounds of swords cutting through flesh and tearing it apart could be heard. He could not see what was happening, but instinctively he knew. The men who had come with him were dying one after another.
He instinctively realized that the success or failure of today’s contract rested on him.
‘Even better.’
He would be able to keep all the money that would otherwise have been divided among them.
‘I’ll be the one to kill him.’
He moved little by little, ever so slowly.
An assassin’s true skill lay in infiltrating without revealing his presence, enduring unseen for hours if necessary, and determining the precise moment when the enemy could be eliminated with certainty.
In that regard, he was the most patient of all the assassins who had come today. Once he reached the spot directly above the target’s head, success was assured.
No one could block a poisoned needle fired silently from the ceiling while asleep.
Moreover, it was not an ordinary poisoned needle. This needle, thin as a strand of hair, was a special concealed weapon that killed its victim without them even realizing they had been pricked.
It was so thin that even an autopsy afterward would not reveal where the victim had been struck and poisoned.
To check how far he had come, he made a hole in the ceiling.
The instant he looked down through it—
“!”
He was terrified.
Someone below was looking up through the hole.
The next moment—
Thud!
A sharp sword pierced upward and passed through the assassin’s neck.
The one who killed him was Hwi.
Blood trickled down from the ceiling pierced by the sword. Then a voice came from behind.
“It’s raining heavily in here.”
Geom Mugeuk entered the room and gazed at the blood running down from the ceiling.
Corpses were strewn across the corridor as well. Every assassin within the residence, including those who had approached from behind, had been eliminated.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. What about you, Uncle?”
“I’m fine as well.”
I was certain that even if I had not been here, Hwi alone would have stopped today’s intrusion.
An assassin and a guard warrior.
Within that natural enemy relationship, Hwi stood at the very pinnacle of an assassin’s natural enemies.
A martial artist might be able to kill me, but an assassin could never kill me.
Hwi possessed that kind of pride.
At that moment, a presence stirred inside the room.
“Father’s awake. Let’s go in.”
Geom Mugeuk and Hwi entered the room.
Geom Ujin had risen from his bed and was drinking cold tea poured from the kettle on the table.
“I tried to deal with things as quietly as possible. I’m sorry.”
At Geom Mugeuk’s words, Geom Ujin turned his head and looked at his son.
“All I heard was your voice.”
Geom Mugeuk smiled. This was why he had been talking so loudly. He had wanted to hear those words.
“That was me restraining myself as much as I could.”
A faint smile appeared at the corner of Father’s mouth.
Hwi reported to Father.
“The intruders were assassins.”
The faint smile that had appeared on Father’s lips vanished. Father disliked the Poison King and the Soul-Subduing Demon Venerable—how could he possibly like assassins?
Geom Mugeuk asked Hwi.
“Did you happen to determine where they came from?”
As the Heavenly Demon’s chief guard, Hwi was the person most knowledgeable about the assassins of the martial world. The more famous they were, the more he knew about them.
As expected, Hwi knew who their opponents were.
“Judging by their methods of attack, these men were assassins from the Underworld.”
The Underworld.
It was one of the Three Great Assassin Organizations of the martial world, infamous as a symbol of dread and terror.
The moment Geom Mugeuk heard the name Underworld, one man came to mind.
He had many titles.
The Supreme Assassin, born with an innate talent for killing.
The Ruthless Assassin who killed his father, the leader of the Underworld, and seized the organization for himself.
The man who would later unify the assassin world and become the king of all assassins.
The God of Death, said to be capable of cutting even Yama’s head from his shoulders.
But the title with the greatest meaning to Geom Mugeuk was this one:
The Fourth King among the Twelve Zodiac Kings—the Killing King.
He could not know what the situation was yet, but he instinctively sensed that the Killing King was behind the matter involving the Golden Dragon House. Where there was money, blades were sure to follow.
The Killing King.
He could not let down his guard. None of the Twelve Zodiac Kings were easy opponents, but the Killing King in particular had to be approached with caution.
He was a man born with the greatest talent for killing others, regardless of the means or methods required.
The wind blowing in through the window carried the hot scent of the dead assassins’ blood.
With his gaze deepened, Geom Mugeuk calmly said,
“It seems we’ll have to see a great deal of blood this time.”