Chapter 15

Back at the Iron Sword Sect, Seong Cheon-wol had refused to see off the other guests.

However, he could not ignore the departure of Jegal So-myeong, the Grand Strategist of the Murim Alliance.

After seeing him off with a bitter expression, Seong Cheon-wol went to the prison where Seong Mo-hyeon had been causing trouble day after day.

“You bastard! Do you think you can survive after causing this disaster? Who will inherit the Iron Sword Sect in the future?”

Despite being responsible for losing the founder’s sword, Seong Mo-hyeon remained confident.

“Grandfather, something is wrong! He definitely learned the Great Star-Absorbing Art. If we summon the Murim Alliance’s Execution Pavilion—”

“Shut your mouth! Do you intend to destroy what remains of the Iron Sword Sect?”

“I am certain! My techniques kept breaking apart—”

“You fool……”

Seong Cheon-wol finally realized that leaving the Iron Sword Sect in the hands of this foolish grandson would eventually bring disaster.

“Bring Mo-ran here.”

“Pardon?”

“Seong Mo-hyeon, if you can endure fifty moves against Mo-ran, I will pardon everything you have done.”

“……What do you mean?”

Seong Mo-hyeon, Seong Ju-tak, and the other Iron Sword Sect warriors stared at him in confusion.

“Mo-ran, show me everything you have.”

“……”

“Do not hide your strength. As you have seen, the Iron Sword Sect is already standing at the edge of a cliff.”

Seong Cheon-wol glanced at Seong Mo-hyeon.

“Can we truly allow a fool like him to inherit the sect?”

“……I understand.”

The others could not understand what was happening.

“Grandfather! You cannot do this! I am the eldest son!”

“You fool……”

“I gave everything I had to the Iron Sword Sect!”

With nowhere else to direct his anger, Seong Mo-hyeon turned on Seong Mo-ran.

He had always treated her as family.

Yet now, he realized she had also been a rival for the position of successor.

“Mo-ran! How dare you betray me!”

“Stop talking and attack.”

Seong Mo-hyeon felt even more furious than when Jin So-un had defeated him.

The betrayal he felt toward the sister he had grown up with turned into hatred, and soon, killing intent filled his eyes.

“You……!”

He unleashed the Tenth Star of the Mountain-Shattering Sword Art from the very beginning.

It was a killing move.

His sword moved wildly and violently, reflecting his unstable state of mind.

However—

“……!”

Crash!

The sound of clashing metal did not even ring out three times.

Seong Mo-ran struck him with the flat of her sword.

Seong Mo-hyeon flew three jang through the air before crashing to the ground and rolling across it.

“What……?”

“Stand up, Elder Brother.”

Crash! Crash! Crash!

This was completely different from his duel against Jin So-un.

The two Mountain-Shattering Sword Arts collided, sending thunderous explosions in every direction.

Seong Mo-ran remained calm, but Seong Mo-hyeon’s face was already filled with shock and desperation.

He tried to gather his strength, yet no power entered his body.

Even though his inner cultivation and mastery of swordsmanship were clearly superior, he felt completely helpless.

Boom!

This time, Seong Mo-hyeon was sent flying four jang.

He could not even spring back to his feet. He simply lay there, staring blankly at Seong Mo-ran.

He had always believed she was beneath him.

She had occasionally launched sharp counterattacks, but he had always overwhelmed her in the end.

So what was happening now?

His techniques kept breaking apart before he could complete them, and the strength in his body seemed to drain away.

His hands and feet, which should have moved naturally together, fell out of rhythm as though they no longer belonged to him.

“This is……”

A stern voice cut through Seong Mo-hyeon’s daze.

“Did Mo-ran also learn the Great Star-Absorbing Art?”

“……”

Seong Mo-hyeon could not answer.

“Drag him away.”

The warriors of the Iron Sword Sect seized Seong Mo-hyeon, whom they had once treasured, and handled him as roughly as they would a traitor.

They began dragging him toward the prison.

Drag. Drag. Drag.

Still too shocked to walk on his own, Seong Mo-hyeon could only let himself be pulled away.

‘But when that bastard touched me, I clearly felt……’

The doubt remained in his mind, but he could not bring himself to say it aloud.

Seong Mo-ran had already proven just how badly mistaken he had been.

Now, he was afraid even to open his mouth.

Before I could drive the Gyeryong Merchant Guild out of the Taeul Sect, I first had to solve the sect’s financial problems.

There were probably many ways to deal with its constant lack of money.

I could collect and sell the spiritual medicines recorded in the Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines.

I could also retrieve treasures from hidden vaults and ancient tombs that had not yet been discovered.

However, I needed the spiritual medicines for myself, and most of the treasures were hidden in distant provinces. There was no way I could obtain them immediately.

“Even if I found them, transporting and selling them would be another problem.”

Spiritual medicines and hidden treasures caused the same kind of trouble.

The moment rumors spread that one had appeared somewhere, greedy people from across Jianghu would swarm toward it like hyenas, and a bloody conflict would soon follow.

Such battles often caused as much damage as wars against the Black Path or the Demonic Cult. Because of that, the Murim Alliance responded to reports of spiritual medicines and treasures faster than almost anything else, hoping to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.

People had even learned to take advantage of this.

Whenever mounted bandits or mountain brigands attacked a village, the villagers did not report that robbers had appeared.

Instead, they claimed that a spiritual medicine had been discovered.

In any case, the most practical solution was to find another sponsor like the Gyeryong Merchant Guild, even if it was only a temporary measure.

There were several merchant guilds in Anhui Province that could potentially replace it.

Nanjing in Jiangsu Province and Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province were both nearby. Because of that, Anhui was a convenient place for merchant guilds and escort agencies to expand their influence, and many wealthy families had settled there.

The problem was that none of them had any interest in the Taeul Sect.

Merchants carefully calculated profit and loss, and the Taeul Sect had nothing valuable to offer them.

In that case, I did not need a mutually beneficial deal.

I needed someone to sponsor us out of gratitude.

And when a wealthy person felt grateful, the reward could be enormous.

“They say the Wang Estate became so large that they eventually had to build an entire village around it.”

“Just how many servants and dependents do they have? I heard neighboring provinces even offered them free land if the family moved there.”

“I helped build that Wang Village!”

“Do you work at the Wang Estate?”

“I said I built it. I put up the roof tiles, raised the beams, and everything else.”

“……Are you joking, Gwak? Stop talking and eat your side dishes.”

The Wang family was an old and respected household that had begun with a small fabric shop and accumulated immense wealth over ten generations.

They now operated countless businesses, including the Wang Money House, Wang Merchant Guild, Wang Escort Agency, and Wang Inns.

They had even obtained the right to trade salt, a privilege granted and controlled by the government.

Their wealth was so great that they were considered one of the three richest families in the entire world, not merely in Anhui Province.

Naturally, such a powerful family had no reason to deal with a small sect like the Taeul Sect.

“But things will be different if their precious daughter is involved.”

Wang So-so.

She was the only daughter of Wang Geum-san, the current head of the Wang family, born to him late in life.

He treasured her so much that she had never stepped outside the estate before turning fifteen. All her lessons and hobbies took place within the enormous mansion, which was said to be as vast as the back of a whale.

They even said that when she wanted to go for an outing, she simply rode a carriage around the estate grounds.

That alone showed both the extent of Wang Geum-san’s wealth and how dearly he cherished his daughter.

“They say Wang So-so is so beautiful that anyone who sees her once becomes enchanted, and anyone who sees her twice falls ill with longing. Her father supposedly hides her because he fears even the Emperor might take her away.”

“I heard she already entered the imperial palace and no longer lives at the Wang Estate?”

In my previous life, that very girl had gone missing and was never seen again.

Wang Geum-san spent the entire fortune his family had built over ten generations searching for her.

Even so, Wang So-so was never found.

But I knew who had taken her—the culprit Wang Geum-san had failed to uncover despite exhausting all his wealth.

“When I first learned the truth, I nearly fainted. To think…… they had moved her there……”

The Murim Alliance gathered information from all across Jianghu before distributing it where necessary.

Its archives contained everything from insignificant rumors to secrets that could never be allowed to spread. Mantongbu was responsible for sorting and grading all that information.

Most of Mantongbu’s records were classified no higher than Grade A.

Even so, every document contained information important enough to influence the balance of Jianghu, so access was tightly controlled.

However, there was one place that made even Mantongbu’s most valuable records seem insignificant.

Sim Hyeon-gak, Mantongbu’s secret archive.

Most of the information stored there was classified as Beyond Grade A.

Only three people were allowed to examine its contents: the administrator of Sim Hyeon-gak, Mantongbu’s Grand Strategist, and the Alliance Leader.

Once a record was declared confidential and sealed, even the Alliance Leader could never open it again.

What kind of information required such extreme secrecy?

Most of it concerned the weaknesses and hidden crimes of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans.

Sim Hyeon-gak had gathered those secrets to keep the great powers of Jianghu under control.

“Perhaps my fate was already sealed the moment they forced me to memorize the records of Sim Hyeon-gak.”

The final moments of my previous life briefly surfaced in my mind, but I quickly shook them away.

In any case, it was through Sim Hyeon-gak that I learned the truth behind the Wang So-so Disappearance Case, an incident that had shaken the entire world.

The culprit had been someone no one would have suspected at the time.

“The Blue Sky Merchant Guild……”

Three sects had been blamed for Wang So-so’s disappearance.

The Dog Thread Sect and the Blood Pearl Fortress, both Black Path factions, had been completely destroyed.

Even the Tanghyeon Sect, an Orthodox Path sect, had failed to escape annihilation.

Despite that, no trace of Wang So-so had ever been found.

Wang Geum-san, who had recklessly pushed the investigation forward, was eventually forced to pay enormous compensation to both the Murim Alliance and the Black Path Alliance.

“From the very beginning, they were dancing on a stage prepared by the Blue Sky Merchant Guild. No matter how hard they searched, they could never have found Wang So-so.”

The Blue Sky Merchant Guild was a newly established merchant guild founded by the Namgung Clan.

At the time, its greatest weakness was its lack of history and reputation compared to the Wang Estate.

To overcome that disadvantage, it entered the bidding for the state-granted salt trading rights.

However, it could not defeat the Wang Estate, which had held those rights without interruption for one hundred and ten years.

Namgung Sang-won, the head of a collateral branch of the Namgung Clan and the true owner of the Blue Sky Merchant Guild, had reached a simple conclusion.

If the Blue Sky Merchant Guild wanted to grow, it had to crush the Wang Estate and rise in its place.

That was why he had planned the entire kidnapping.

“And this time, I intend to ruin that little scheme of yours.”

It was not as though this was the only useful information I remembered from my previous life.

Even so, I had deliberately chosen to interfere with the Blue Sky Merchant Guild.

It was not because of some shallow sense of justice or chivalry. Dealing with a merchant guild backed by the Namgung Clan would be anything but easy.

“At the Iron Sword Sect, they acted as though none of it concerned them.”

The bloody battle against Seong Mo-hyeon.

The incident involving the so-called forbidden art, which had even drawn the attention of the Murim Alliance’s Grand Strategist.

While all of that was happening, Namgung Sang-won had sat on the platform yawning as though he were bored.

The Iron Sword Sect could only commit such atrocities within Anhui because the Namgung Clan silently allowed it. The Blue Sky Merchant Guild’s influence had also played a part.

Knowing that, there was no way I could look kindly upon Namgung Sang-won’s attitude.

He had driven another person to the edge of a cliff, yet behaved as though it had nothing to do with him.

“In that case, you should not mind if I ruin your business a little, should you?”

My opponent was the Blue Sky Merchant Guild, which had the Namgung Clan behind it, but I was not particularly afraid.

The guild’s warriors had likely learned the Boundless Firmament Sword Art.

However, I knew exactly how the kidnapping had been carried out, which gave me plenty of ways to prepare.

Most importantly—

“Perhaps Seong Mo-ran is not such a bad person after all.”

The spiritual pill Seong Mo-ran had given me was a Steel Guardian Pill.

It could not compare to Mount Hua’s Snow Plum Pill, but it was still an incredibly precious spiritual medicine—far beyond something like an Iron Heart Pill.

Only the most direct descendants of the Iron Sword Sect were allowed to consume such a pill, yet she had handed it over to me without hesitation.

After fully absorbing the Iron Heart Pills and the Steel Guardian Pill, my internal energy had rapidly approached forty-five years’ worth of cultivation.

“Let us see how you like having your own filth splashed back onto you.”

Sooner or later, I would have to face both the Demonic Cult and the entire Murim Alliance.

Compared to enemies like those, a mere collateral branch of the Namgung Clan was hardly worth fearing.

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