"You damned woman! I told you I'd break your legs if you ran away again!"
"Kyaaah! Go ahead and try, you bastard! If you can!"
A familiar scream and string of curses. I turned my head, and there, in the flesh, was a familiar face.
A complexion so pale it was almost white. A body so gaunt the outline of her bones showed through. And yet, there was a strange, seductive aura about her.
She seemed far more fragile and precarious than the woman in my memories, but how could I ever forget her?
Seol Ri-hyang. Before the regression, she was known as the Ghost Sound Witch, a member of the same Iron Blood Faction as me.
Her martial level had reached the Peak Realm, so she was hardly lacking, but her true worth lay not in her level, but in the martial arts she had mastered.
Seol Ri-hyang was, unusually, a master who had cultivated the Yin Art.
The Yin Art was a martial art that was difficult to master, but precisely because of that, it was also a martial art that was peculiar and hard to counter.
Thanks to that, she was one of the most highly regarded assets in the Iron Blood Faction…
Well, that was saying a lot, really—at best, it just meant she stood out a bit in a group of barely a dozen or so people.
In the first place, the Iron Blood Faction was a place like a penal colony, where the Black Alliance gathered the problem children who had caused trouble.
If the Iron Blood Faction Leader's martial level hadn't been the same Harmony Realm as the Lord of the Black Alliance, it would have been called by a different name.
I wasn't exactly easygoing myself, and Seol Ri-hyang was such a nasty piece of work that we could never get along on a personal level, but we did acknowledge each other's abilities.
So why was that Seol Ri-hyang here, getting beaten so helplessly like this…?
"Ah."
So today was the day.
Just because someone belonged to the Unorthodox Sects didn't mean they were born into them. Sometimes, it wasn't a twisted nature but a twisted situation that forced people into extreme choices.
To put it plainly, these weren't people with warped personalities—they were people with warped lives.
The Iron Blood Faction, which gathered only the sharp-edged, had more than its fair share of such people, and Seol Ri-hyang was no exception.
After a sparring bout where we'd tried to kill each other, we once shared a bottle of the Iron Blood Faction Leader's liquor that we'd stolen on the sly, and I got a chance to hear a bit about her past.
Even to me, who thought I'd lived a life that was no walk in the park, Seol Ri-hyang's history felt profoundly tragic.
"How dare you! Just because you get a little attention from the branch head, you think you're something special?! You're nothing but a courtesan! All you're good for is spreading your legs and batting your eyelashes!"
"You can't even manage a single courtesan and you're making a fuss? And why would I be a courtesan? Is kidnapping people and turning them into courtesans the Haomun's way?"
"…Insolent wench. Fine. This time, I'll carve the rules into that worthless body of yours."
The burly man, his face twisted into a deep scowl, strode over and slapped Seol Ri-hyang across the cheek. He'd even drawn on his internal energy to do it.
THWACK!
"AAAH!"
The impact was so strong that the dull sound echoed all the way to where I stood, a fair distance away.
Seol Ri-hyang's head snapped to the side, and her frail body, unable to absorb the shock, toppled over sideways.
The power was clearly different from the beating he'd been giving her up until now, and the crowd around them began to stir.
However, as if this too was no different from everything before, Seol Ri-hyang slowly lifted her head.
Her disheveled hair fell away, revealing cheeks stained red.
No matter how much internal energy was packed into the blows, they couldn't have swollen already. It was simply that her lips had split, blood was flowing from her nose, and half her face was dyed crimson.
With a body so frail from not even eating properly, let alone training in martial arts, the shock must have been nearly unbearable.
Seol Ri-hyang staggered involuntarily, but she somehow managed to force herself back up.
She glared silently with eyes so fierce they were almost venomous.
Overwhelmed by that gaze, the giant flinched for a moment and took a step back.
Yes. This was the kind of woman Seol Ri-hyang was. Seeing that foul temper of hers, a wave of delight rose up in me unbidden.
At the same time, he fiddled with the sword at his waist and quickened his pace.
If my memory served me right, today was the day that added another twist of misfortune to Seol Ri-hyang's life.
As I pushed my way through the crowd, I wondered if he was bothered by the fact that he had been frightened by Seol Ri-hyang.
The giant, his face flushed as if he might explode at any moment, stomped his feet.
Thud!
"What's with that look? Haven't you had enough?!"
"…If I were you, I'd have thrown another punch instead of running my mouth like a little girl. It's not like you can do anything else anyway. Fitting for a degenerate who beat his own mother to death."
"You bitch!"
The giant glared, raising his fist. As if Power Control could go to hell, the bastard poured every scrap of his paltry internal energy into the blow.
Getting hit by something like that would leave a body ruined. In fact, before the regression, Seol Ri-hyang had lost an eye, gone lame… and become unable to bear children.
She said she didn't care, but knowing that prickly side of her, that was surely a lie.
Yes. Say what you will, Seol Ri-hyang and I were comrades who fought side by side. The kind of bond where you learn things about each other whether you want to or not.
"That's far enough."
"What now—"
Sreung.
Before he could even finish speaking, I pressed my sword to the neck of the bastard as he turned to face me.
Was it because he was only a Second-Rate martial artist at best? The burly man couldn't even react properly to my sword draw, just staring at me with wide eyes.
I tilted my chin toward the tense bastard.
"Leave this woman and go. Then nothing will happen."
"…For what reason would the live-in son-in-law of the Sichuan Tang Clan take an interest in a woman like this?"
"You know me?"
"Of course. Though I made a poor showing just now, I've worked at Haomun for over twenty years. I make it my business to know which distinguished guests are visiting."
The burly man adopted a courteous posture, all traces of his earlier thuggish demeanor gone.
Well, I supposed. If he'd survived that long at Haomun, he couldn't be written off as a simple thug.
I nodded and gave the sword a slight flick, drawing a thin red line across the man's neck.
"Since you understand, back off quietly."
"I can't do that. You may not know this, but this woman is someone the Yanzhou branch head of Haomun has his eye on."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Pardon?"
"I'm asking why I should care about some branch head's opinion when I'm not even dealing with all of Haomun."
"…If you're saying that with the Tang Clan in mind, I'd ask you to reconsider. Surely you haven't forgotten the favor we've shown you."
The man stressed the words "Tang Clan" and "favor" with particular weight.
It was true that Haomun had helped me a great deal in this matter. And Karmic Debt was one of the things the Tang Clan held in high regard.
I paused and thought it over. I had stepped forward reflexively at the sight of Seol Ri-hyang getting beaten, but was it truly right for me to get involved in this?
If I weighed only the gains and losses, the losses were greater. That was only natural. No matter how much of a Peak Realm master Seol Ri-hyang might become later, if you asked whether she was worth clashing with all of Haomun over, the answer was no.
No, in the first place, it was uncertain whether she would even reach the Peak Realm.
Seol Ri-hyang's talent had grown by feeding on the tenacity unique to someone who had fallen to rock bottom.
I wasn't even sure whether I could resolve Seol Ri-hyang's problems, and even if I did, she would never show that gwigi-laden appearance I knew.
So if I pursued pure profit alone, it would be better to let Seol Ri-hyang collapse and be trampled, wait for the moment her talent blossomed, and then bestow my favor upon her.
Not only could I make use of the proven talent I had seen before my regression, but she would also owe me a debt, making her easier to handle.
But I didn't want to.
I remembered Seol Ri-hyang's drunken ramblings. I recalled the Iron Blood Faction Leader's words about not living just to survive. I replayed Tang So-wol's words about wanting to show me a different view.
And with that, my heart felt at ease.
Before my regression, Tang So-wol had harbored a poisonous heart under the threat of death. That was likely why she had been able to grow strong so quickly.
So why hadn't I waited for Tang So-wol to melt her own face with her poison energy, to embrace that poison and be reborn as a true Martial Artist?
The answer was simple. Because I didn't want to.
This time was the same. I didn't want to. That was reason enough for me to act.
"I'm sure you acted for your own gain, but I know that Haomun has shown favor to the Tang Clan."
"If you let me go…"
"That's exactly why you get to keep your life."
I channeled internal energy into the sword pressed against the giant's neck and slashed upward.
Thwack!
The short distance meant I couldn't put much force behind it. But the martial energy carried by the blade biting into his chin and rattling his head was a different story.
"…"
His unfocused gaze drifted. The man tilted to one side and crumpled to the ground.
Thud!
I looked down at the body for a moment, then turned my gaze toward Seol Ri-hyang.
She looked far younger than the woman I had seen before my regression, but her overall features were unchanged.
Her hair was disheveled and loose, and judging by the old, bluish-purple bruises peeking through the gaps in her clothes, she was used to being beaten.
Her slightly upturned eyes held confusion rather than venom, but that didn't mean she trusted me—she kept scanning me from head to toe.
I let out a hollow laugh at her wary expression and asked.
"Seol Ri-hyang. Right?"
"Yes, that's me. And you are?"
Seol Ri-hyang, who had unconsciously spoken to me in banmal since I looked to be around her age, then clumsily tacked on a polite ending.
Thinking about it, I had barged in without much of a justification. More precisely, I did have one, but it had already been buried and lost to the reversal of time.
So I needed to invent a new one. A justification that Seol Ri-hyang herself, and the Haomun agents hidden among the onlookers surrounding us, would all find convincing.
I fell silent for a moment, sifting through my memories. Seol Ri-hyang's past, which she had once lamented in a drunken murmur. I decided to twist a part of it.
"When you were a child, I received a great favor from your father, Lord Seol."
"What?"
"And so, I intend to repay that debt."
"That man would never—… I mean, he wouldn't, sir?"
"Speak comfortably. I have no intention of being addressed with such formality by the daughter of my benefactor, who is around my own age."
"Ah, yeah."
Seol Ri-hyang nodded as if she had been waiting for that answer. She wasn't openly wary like before, but she still looked confused.
That was only natural. Her father was the kind of man who, after losing his wife, fell into gambling and squandered the family fortune, eventually even selling his young daughter Ri-hyang to a brothel.
He'd even blown that money on gambling as well. After that, he'd vanished somewhere and his whereabouts became unknown.
It was the easiest part to fabricate, but it was inevitable that she'd tilt her head in doubt.
At any rate, this established my justification.
I curled up the corners of my mouth into a grin and shouted toward the onlookers surrounding us.
"I am Cheon Hwi of the Sichuan Tang Clan! If you guide me to the Yanzhou branch head of Haomun, I will reward you handsomely!"
A moment of silence. Through the crowd exchanging glances, those who appeared to be Haomun members rushed forward in a scramble.
***
The conversation with the branch head ended badly.
So I kidnapped Seol Ri-hyang.
"Damn it."