Chapter 167: The One Who Must Explain
While Seo Yu-gyeom was basking in a sense of superiority over Seomun Ak,
the Beggar King, Hong Myeong-gae, who had been inspecting the dungeon, let out a short sigh.
His gaze landed on the corpse of a man who had frozen to death, sitting against one side of the dungeon wall.
“So that fellow must be the magistrate.”
The magistrate, who had opened the watergate at Ha Joo-yeon’s request, had frozen to death when Jin Baek-cheon first exploded with cold qi.
Clicking his tongue, the Beggar King tore his eyes away from the magistrate and walked toward a body so badly damaged that it was hard to even recognize its form.
After staring at the corpse for a long while, the Beggar King finally spoke.
“It really is Jin Baek-cheon.”
With that, the Beggar King suddenly closed his eyes and began twitching his nose, looking like a hound sniffing the scent of grass.
How much time had passed?
“Other than you lot, who else was here?”
He spoke with his eyes still shut.
A faint, but extremely sinister energy lingered nearby. It was certainly no trace of orthodox martial arts.
“There was no one else.”
Seo Yu-gyeom was the one to answer.
Having personally witnessed Jin Seong-un unleash the martial arts of the Blood Demon, Seo Yu-gyeom instinctively realized that this fact must be hidden.
So he deliberately changed the subject.
“Was it a master from the Ice Palace? He wielded cold qi.”
“That’s right. A man who once contended for the position of Palace Master of that era. Who would’ve thought he was still alive, after disappearing decades ago? But tell me…”
The Beggar King’s nose twitched again.
“What in the world is this aura? It isn’t the Ice Palace’s martial arts either.”
“You can smell martial arts?”
“I’m sensing the aura.”
“Then why the nose…?”
At Seo Yu-gyeom’s question, Elder Byeok beside him answered quietly.
“His nose often gets clogged. Especially when he heightens all of his senses, the stuffiness feels even worse.”
“Ah, I see.”
Not understanding a word of it but nodding anyway, Seo Yu-gyeom replied.
“In any case, no one else came here. That sinister aura must be from that Ice Palace master’s arts. Perhaps he had trained in some kind of demonic art. He was spewing cold qi everywhere before suddenly coughing up blood.”
“So you weren’t the ones who killed him?”
Only then did the Dragon Head Division Leader open his eyes and peer at Seo Yu-gyeom with narrow slits.
Seo Yu-gyeom thought the look flashing through those slits was as sharp as an assassin’s dagger.
“Well, we did finish him off. But he had already half-destroyed himself.”
Seo Yu-gyeom was good at lying.
He had been trained from the start to conceal his emotions.
The Beggar King’s eyes narrowed further.
“Lucky, weren’t you?”
“We’ve always been lucky men.”
“Your tongue is slick with oil. Enough from you. Guest Dragon, answer me. Is everything that boy said true?”
“Well, the fight only just ended, so let’s not—”
“Silence! I wasn’t asking you, I was asking Guest Dragon.”
Seo Yu-gyeom shut his mouth.
Even he had no way to resist when someone of the Dragon Head Division Leader’s level pressed down with sheer force.
‘Damn, that guy can’t lie to save his life.’
Seo Yu-gyeom looked at Jin Seong-un with worry.
All eyes were now on Jin Seong-un, who remained silent for a moment.
“Guest Dragon, aren’t you going to answer? Speak quickly—”
“Cough!”
Jin Seong-un suddenly vomited a mouthful of dark blood.
He had sustained internal injuries while fighting Jin Baek-cheon, and they had worsened when he helped suppress Seo Yu-gyeom’s rampaging qi.
Though it wasn’t to the extent of coughing up blood,
when Jin Seong-un made the act, Seo Yu-gyeom immediately played along.
“What! Dragon Head Division Leader, is this how you treat our innkeeper? What did you just do to him?”
“Wh-what? I didn’t do anything—”
“Nothing? And yet he’s vomiting blood?”
Right then, Jin Seong-un vomited blood once more. He wasn’t good at lying, but coughing up the blood that had been welling inside was easy enough.
The Beggar King was flustered.
Jin Seong-un had looked perfectly fine on the surface, so he hadn’t imagined his internal injuries were this severe.
Could his loud outburst from earlier have worsened them?
“M-my apologies.”
The Beggar King blurted out an apology.
As expected of a top-class assassin from Deathshroud, Seo Yu-gyeom never missed a weakness when it revealed itself.
“Then I’ll leave the cleanup to you. Our innkeeper’s life is in danger thanks to someone here.”
“W-wait a moment—”
Before he could even respond,
Seo Yu-gyeom swiftly slung Jin Seong-un onto his back and hurried out of the dungeon.
Seomun Ak, watching this, cast a resentful look at the Dragon Head Division Leader.
He said nothing, but his expression screamed: So this is the greatest chivalrous hero of the orthodox faction? He’s no better than a thug.
He gave a half-hearted nod and quickly followed after Jin Seong-un and Seo Yu-gyeom.
“……”
The Beggar King stood dumbfounded.
Feeling a burning gaze from beside him, he turned to find Elder Byeok glaring at him with narrowed eyes.
“I told you, I didn’t do anything!” the Beggar King shouted, leaping in protest.
“……Disappointing, old man.”
Elder Byeok shook his head and hurried out of the dungeon.
Of course, a master of Elder Byeok’s level could tell that the Beggar King truly hadn’t done anything.
But if he stayed, he’d be roped into cleaning up the dungeon alongside the Beggar King. Seizing the chance, he made a swift escape.
Left alone, the Beggar King let out a hollow laugh.
“Heh, those youngsters aren’t ordinary.”
One had spat blood at the perfect moment to shift the atmosphere.
Another had immediately seized the opportunity to drive the situation to his advantage.
And even the second son of the Seomun Clan had played his part, finishing the performance with a resentful glare, as if it had all been planned.
Of course, Seomun Ak had merely been fooled by their act, but it still raised his reputation alongside theirs.
Clicking his tongue, the Beggar King glanced once more at Jin Baek-cheon’s corpse.
“They said the third son of Myriad Gold Manor kept this man by his side, didn’t they?”
His gaze deepened.
Just what kind of existence had the current Myriad Gold Manor Master become?
It had grown too powerful to be considered a mere merchant force, yet it had no ideology to be called a Murim faction.
The Beggars’ Union, which handled all the information of the world.
And its peak, the Beggar King, knew well. Myriad Gold Manor wielded power far stronger than what it revealed on the surface, often enough to sway the world itself.
The fact that a master like Jin Baek-cheon had belonged to Myriad Gold Manor alone was proof. Who could predict how many more like him might be hidden inside?
How many masters throughout history had suddenly vanished without a trace?
“I must meet with the Chief Strategist soon.”
For if anyone disrupted order, it was the Murim Alliance’s duty to set things right.
But how many within the Murim Alliance itself had already grown fat on the money and power of Myriad Gold Manor? Just the thought made his head throb.
The next morning.
Crowds flooded the street where Seong-un Inn stood across from Geumun Inn.
The great disturbance at the magistracy the night before had already spread far and wide.
While people murmured with speculation since dawn, Jin Seong-un, Guest Dragon of Seong-un Inn, suddenly declared that he would reveal everything that had happened the previous night.
As Jin Seong-un stepped out in front of the inn, the crowd’s whispers grew louder.
The white cloth draped over his shoulder hinted that something extraordinary had indeed taken place.
Jin Seong-un looked over the crowd.
This was a method suggested by Seo Yu-gyeom and strongly supported by Elder Byeok.
Since the wealth and influence of Myriad Gold Manor were overwhelming, they had to ensure the truth spread openly, leaving no escape for Ha Joo-yeon.
‘Quite the turnout.’
Because the cooking competition was scheduled, countless chefs and officials from across the nation, along with the wealthy and martial artists, had already gathered in Yichang.
Just as the people’s curiosity reached its peak,
Jin Seong-un finally opened his mouth.
As always, his voice was calm, with little rise or fall.
“Ha Joo-yeon, third son of Myriad Gold Manor and master of Geumun Inn, colluded with the magistrate of Dangyang County to open the watergate.”
The murmuring quieted at once.
All had seen with their own eyes how the Yangtze had risen dangerously in recent days.
Jin Seong-un continued, explaining in that same calm tone. He laid bare every deed Ha Joo-yeon had committed, without omission or embellishment.
As the explanation went on, murmurs broke out again.
Some cursed aloud, others were struck with shock.
And some raised objections.
“Why would Myriad Gold Manor stoop so low? What need would they have for such schemes?”
Jin Seong-un turned to the speaker.
Judging by his clothes, he was clearly an official, though Jin had never seen him before in Yichang.
He must have recently been transferred here from Jingzhou Prefecture’s offices. Which meant he was tied to Ha Joo-yeon.
Once one voice was raised, several others quickly echoed it—every one of them officials from Yichang’s branch office.
“A fair question! Are you saying Myriad Gold Manor did all this just to oppose you, Guest Dragon?”
“Ha! What arrogance. If your words are true, why haven’t the people of Geumun Inn fled in the night?”
“At that age, it’s easy to think the whole world revolves around oneself.”
The officials were skilled in politics.
They deftly painted Jin Seong-un as nothing more than a conceited young man drunk on his own importance.
But there was one thing these smooth-tongued officials hadn’t anticipated.
“Exactly right.”
A sudden voice of an old man rang out.
All eyes turned at once.
“As expected of men who serve the nation, your reasoning is clear. Everything you said is correct. Myriad Gold Manor did indeed commit such madness, merely to deal with one inn and one Guest Dragon. That’s the kind of Manor it is.”
The stench arrived before the old man himself did.
Most of the officials didn’t recognize him.
But the woman at his side, standing respectfully with hands folded, did.
There was only one beggar in all the world before whom Mad Rooster, that deranged chicken, would show such courtesy.
“Every word of Guest Dragon’s is true. I and the Anchaesa of Hunan Province saw it with our own eyes.”
The officials who had been slyly pushing blame onto Jin Seong-un fell silent at the Beggar King’s appearance.
He swept his gaze across them as though committing their faces to memory before continuing.
“Also, the man who entered the dungeon to silence the magistrate was Jin Baek-cheon of Northern Sea Ice Palace. Once, his name had been listed as a public enemy of Murim. Though he vanished decades ago and was presumed dead, he was never a man of righteous deeds.”
Indeed, during his days in the Ice Palace, Jin Baek-cheon had carried out massacres during wars with the Central Plains.
For the same reason, most masters from the Outer Regions had been branded as Murim’s enemies.
The Beggar King struck his Green Jade Staff hard against the ground.
“Does anyone still require an explanation?”
His gaze swept across the assembly.
Without even raising his qi, this one old man overwhelmed the countless people present.
“Or perhaps there is someone who must explain themselves.”
With those words, the Beggar King raised his head and looked up at the second floor of Geumun Inn.
The window appeared empty.
But to the eyes of a master at the Huajing Realm, the man crouching silently behind the wall was clear as day.
Perhaps some formation was masking the sound, but no formation could completely hide one’s existence.
The Beggar King projected his voice, laced with powerful inner force, for the hiding Ha Joo-yeon to hear.
“It isn’t that you haven’t fled, it’s that you couldn’t.”
He was right.
By the time Ha Joo-yeon had grasped the situation, it was already too late. With Jin Seong-un, Seo Yu-gyeom, the Beggar King, and Elder Byeok holding firm in Yichang, how could he possibly have escaped in the night?
Every eye now turned toward Geumun Inn.
Their gazes clearly demanded the truth.
The shrewder officials began slipping away one by one. Meanwhile, those whose farms had been ruined by the flood, those who had nearly lost their lifelong homes, their eyes burned brighter with growing fury.