Chapter 631

Sometimes you can tell just by meeting someone’s eyes that they dislike you. That no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get along.

My second meeting with Baeksang, great chieftain of the Bai people, felt like that.

“You…”

Baeksang recognized me at once, even though my face was hidden behind a mask. Given his martial prowess, that wasn’t surprising.

At least early Supreme Peak.

That was my estimate. A Supreme Peak master was hard to find even in the Central Plains. It would have been stranger if a crude tiger mask had fooled him. Once martial artists reached a certain realm, they could recognize someone by their bearing.

The important part wasn’t that Baeksang knew who I was. It was that he wasn’t the least bit pleased to see me.

“So we have an unwelcome guest.”

Unwelcome, was it? If he’d said that when we first met, he might have scratched my tender heart. After everything I’d heard about him, though, I took it fairly calmly.

I scratched the back of my head. “They say you should speak straight even if your mouth is crooked. So, to set the facts straight, I’m not an unwelcome guest. I was invited.”

“Invited?”

His gaze shifted to Yohi. She met his eyes with a sweet smile.

“It’s true. I invited him.”

A beautiful woman’s smile worked wonders in most situations. Baeksang, apparently, wasn’t most people.

“Do you intend to collude with the Han Chinese?”

His voice had grown colder. Yohi shrugged theatrically.

“Collude? I was only a little curious. It’s not as if we were alone from the start.”

“But only you two and the heavens know what you discussed after sending Heugung away.”

“Set your worries aside. I haven’t forgotten the promise we made that day.”

I had no idea what they’d promised each other, but it sounded suspicious enough. Baeksang’s gaze darkened.

“You’re saying pointless things in front of a Han Chinese man, Yohi.”

Fwoosh!

An invisible wave of qi rolled off Baeksang and swept through the tent.

The air grew heavy. Pressure from a Supreme Peak master bore down from every direction, and for the first time, Yohi’s smile began to fade.

That was when I spoke up.

“Hey, the Han Chinese bastard is standing right here and can hear you. How about we stop with the ‘bastard’?”

Whoosh.

The pressure building around us suddenly broke. Baeksang’s eyebrows twitched as my words scattered the waves of qi.

“You bastard.”

“Young Hero Jin. Pavilion Head Jin. Blazing Flame Divine Dragon. Or just ‘you.’ Pick whichever one you like. At this point, I can’t tell whether I’m from the Jin Family of Taiyuan or the Bastard Family of Taiyuan.”

“……!”

“Good with words, aren’t I? I know. But I trust you realize I didn’t become a Murim Alliance Pavilion Head by running my mouth. Otherwise, my sobriquet wouldn’t be Blazing Flame Divine Dragon. It’d be something like Wind Style: Mouth Dragon.”

That should have made two things clear to Baeksang. First, my martial prowess was in no way beneath his. Second, I wasn’t merely some young Han Chinese. I held a senior position in the Murim Alliance, formed from the martial world of the Central Plains.

Either one was enough to make me someone he couldn’t simply dismiss.

Baeksang studied me in silence for a while.

“Now that I’ve had another look, you’re certainly the successor to the Fire Gate Clan. Speaking and acting without a thought for the consequences… You truly are the Fire King’s disciple.”

“Old Master—no. Have you met my master?”

“The Palace Lord and I were always together. Including the day we first met the Fire King, whom we’d only heard of until then.”

I had a sudden hunch. “Oh. Then were you…?”

“The Palace Lord went down before we could do a thing. I was next. I’d called him a crazy old man, you see.”

Baeksang lifted his white robe slightly, revealing a burn scar on his side.

“……”

What was he, a cut of beef with a grade stamped on it?

That’s practically a certification mark.

After showing me the mark left by the piping-hot Fire King hand pie he’d received decades ago, Baeksang continued coldly.

“It was a long time ago. But every time I see this scar, I remember it.”

Jeok Cheongang had once warned me to be careful of gratitude and grudges in Murim. Now the ones he’d incurred in the past were coming back to me like a boomerang.

Is this Murim-style gratitude-and-grudges payback?

For a moment, I had nothing to say. Baeksang stared at me, his gaze dark and steady.

“I don’t care whether you’re the Fire King’s disciple or a Murim Alliance Pavilion Head. Nanman has already shed enough blood for the Central Plains, and the Palace Lord’s judgment is wrong.”

“……”

“That is all I have to say. Get out of my sight before I deal with you myself.”

Baeksang’s manner was downright threatening. Rather than argue, I got to my feet.

Not because I was afraid of him, but because there was more to lose than to gain. This was a time to think calmly.

Step.

I was about to leave the tent when I stopped. There was something I wanted to tell Baeksang, and I didn’t know when I’d see him again.

“That blood wasn’t shed for the Central Plains.”

“What?”

“The blood your people shed wasn’t for the Central Plains. It was for the whole world.”

I added quietly, “The same goes for someone’s son.”

Whoosh!

A fierce wave of qi erupted into a gale. Yohi, who had watched our exchange without a word, went pale. The huge tent swayed like a leaf caught in a typhoon.

At the center of it all stood Baeksang, trembling with rage.

“You…!”

Fire blazed in his eyes. His voice seemed to boil. I held his gaze.

Faced with all that fury, I found myself remembering someone who had been buried deep in my memory.

This…

I didn’t know whether this suspicion was true or whether it would end as nothing more than a guess.

But before that, I had to show the proper respect for the reverse scale I had touched.¹

I bowed my head slightly to Baeksang and left the tent. All the way back to my quarters, I thought about a man who was unmistakably different from Baeksang, yet somehow resembled him.

…The Head Elder.

The Blade of Flowers, Jin Baekyang.

A hero of the Great Faction War born in Shanxi Province. A man who had nearly become Family Head of the Jin Family of Taiyuan despite being the second son.

And a traitor who had spent decades under Dark Heaven’s shadow.

I didn’t know why he’d come to mind at that particular moment.

But perhaps… perhaps…

Damn it. I don’t know.

I let out a long sigh. Ahead, outside the quarters we’d been temporarily assigned in the Inner Palace, Hyuk Mujin was roasting a whole wild boar. I had no idea where he’d gotten it.

Look at him. What a thoughtful little punk.

I gave him a hard time whenever I got the chance, but we’d been through thick and thin together since our days with the Jin Family of Taiyuan. And as a former gate guard, he knew more about the Head Elder than anyone else in the Fire Dragon Pavilion traveling with me.

Maybe he can offer some decent advice.

Just as I was about to wave at him happily, Hyuk Mujin spotted me approaching and abruptly raised one hand, holding a red-hot iron skewer.

“Who goes there?”

“……”

Advice, my ass.

I took off the tiger mask. “Put your head to the ground.”

“Oh. Ha ha. I was joking.”

“Good. I’m not. Put your head to the ground.”

“……”

Clank.

The skewer slipped from Mujin’s limp hand.

Two days passed in the blink of an eye.

Despite telling us at our first meeting to wait because he would summon us soon, the Beast Miao King hadn’t sent for us once. Yayul Mok, on the other hand, had been visiting more often than I’d expected.

Thump.

White Tiger dropped the wild boar from his jaws and puffed out his chest proudly. I looked at Yayul Mok, who was stroking the tiger’s neck.

“Where’d you catch this one?”

“In the western grass.”

He answered without thinking, then hurried to correct himself.

“…I mean, I found it on the way here.”

“Why bring something you found here?”

“Hmm. It seemed a shame to throw it away?”

“Funny. For something you found, those bite marks on its neck look exactly like a tiger’s.”

“My boy is well trained. He doesn’t bite just anything, beast or human.”

“……”

What kind of bullshit was that?

Was this one of those ideas that there were no bad tigers in the world?

I studied White Tiger’s teeth, caked with blood and bits of flesh. “Looks like he’d chew up a beast or a person in one bite. You mean he’s not a picky eater?”

“Anyway, he didn’t do it. Must’ve been another tiger.”

“Then why’s there only one set of bite marks?”

“How should I know? I found it dead by the road and brought it here.”

“Ah, right. A big, healthy wild boar died of natural causes by the road, and White Tiger just went chomp to carry it here?”

“Exactly.”

“……”

There came a point when someone was so shameless I didn’t have the energy to answer. I stared at Yayul Mok, then sighed at the mountain-sized boar.

“Another wild boar, though?”

“It’s a wild boar. Is that a problem?”

“The boar again?”

“……Do Han Chinese have no conscience? Think of the trouble I went to catching it and bringing it here. Shut up and eat.”

“Thought you found it.”

“Ah. I misspoke. I found it.”

This bastard was something else.

I only found out later that the meat Mujin had been roasting two days earlier had also come from Yayul Mok. No one had seen him bring it, of course, and he’d stubbornly denied being the one who had.

“Wild boar’s fine for a day or two, but it’s been days of nothing else. I’m sick of it. Sick of it.”

“Then I’ll take it back.”

“Mujin. Get the meat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yayul Mok and White Tiger gave me identical flat looks. I’d been thick-skinned too long for that to bother me.

Yayul Mok clicked his tongue as Mujin bustled about getting ready to cook, then turned back to me.

“How is your work going?”

I shook my head.

“So you haven’t found anything.”

“Not yet.”

It wasn’t as though I had spent the past two days doing nothing. The Fire Dragon Pavilion members and I had been investigating both inside and outside the Nanman Beast Palace.

I had Ju Hwaran and Hyuk Mujin investigate what was happening in the Inner Palace, while I led the remaining members in scouting the surrounding area.

We might find traces of Dark Heaven.

But despite our efforts, we had nothing to show for it. If there were no traces of Dark Heaven near the Nanman Beast Palace, that was good news. If we simply hadn’t found them, it was another matter.

“For now, we’ll keep looking. At least until the Tribal Grand Council.”

The council, which would bring together all of Nanman’s tribes, was tomorrow. Yayul Mok nodded, then lowered his voice.

“You’d better put it off today.”

“Put it off? Why?”

“The Inner Palace has summoned you.”