Chapter 2: Chapter 2

– Martial Alliance Hubei Branch.

To the south, the beautiful waters of Dongting Lake stretched below. Behind it, green mountains cradled a serene estate.

Nestled in Hubei, a province pacified by the Wudang Sect, it was a small, peaceful branch of the Martial Alliance with nothing to do.

But this was merely the tip of the iceberg, a camouflage meant to deceive outsiders.

The real operation lay beneath the estate.

The Martial Alliance’s most powerful ultra-secret intelligence organization, whose very name was scarcely known.

The Hidden Pavilion.

This was their headquarters.

*

“A mission has been assigned to Agent 103.”

In the deep darkness, a masked woman delivered her report to the man seated in a grand chair embossed with a tiger pattern.

Her name was Jegal So-mi.

Vice Pavilion Master of the Hidden Pavilion, and a genius rising star known throughout the Gangho as Ji-hwa.

“Hmm.”

And the elderly gentleman seated in the grand chair.

Looking like Zhuge Liang reborn, he wore a scholar’s cap and fluttered a fan. This was the master of the Hidden Pavilion, the Martial Alliance’s former chief strategist, Jegal Sang.

“But Grandfather.”

“Enough! Separate public and private matters!”

“M-my apologies, Pavilion Master.”

Jegal So-mi flinched and immediately prostrated herself. They’d walked to work hand in hand that very morning, yet the moment they stepped through these doors, he became a man possessed by some dark mastermind.

She wanted to tear off her mask and argue, but her opponent was, before being her grandfather, Jegal Sang, a man who surveyed the world from his seat.

Showing proper respect was only natural.

“You may speak.”

With Jegal Sang’s permission granted, Jegal So-mi shook off her distracting thoughts and asked what she’d been wondering.

“This mission you’ve assigned to Agent 103. Making the Seventh Young Master the Young Cult Leader. I’m curious about your intentions, Pavilion Master.”

“Intentions?”

“Yes. Agent 103 has been completely neglected by the Hidden Pavilion. He’s practically a ghost. To order someone like that to elevate a good-for-nothing the Cult Leader himself cast aside… That’s an impossible task.”

“Hmm…”

Jegal Sang neither confirmed nor denied, his eyes impassive as he spoke.

“How long do you think the current peace in the Gangho will last?”

“Excuse me? That… depends on what people make of it, doesn’t it?”

“Three years.”

Jegal Sang held up three fingers.

“Exactly three years remain.”

“That can’t be…”

“The current peace was forged by our generation. And we have grown old. The time has come to pass the torch to a new era.”

“Even so, so suddenly…?”

Jegal Sang fell silent. There’s something more. Jegal So-mi was certain from his expression. But she asked no further. Prying when someone refused to answer wasn’t the Jegal clan’s way. That was something she’d have to uncover herself.

“The Heavenly Demon Jin U-gwang bestowed divine artifacts upon his seven children, but took none of them as disciples.”

Jegal Sang changed the subject. Jegal So-mi nodded. She knew this better than anyone. Over nineteen years, Jin U-gwang had taken in those with talent from within the Demonic Cult as adopted sons and daughters, regardless of their origins.

“At first it seemed like he was grooming successors, but for whatever reason, he never taught the peerless Heavenly Demon Divine Art to any of them.”

“Soon he will name a Young Cult Leader.”

Not speculation. Certainty. Jegal So-mi’s expression darkened like storm clouds gathering.

“The most likely candidates are the First Young Master, the Second Young Master, and the Third Young Lady. None of them… bode well for us.”

She was right. All three harbored extremely hegemonic ambitions. If any of them became the next Heavenly Demon, the current peace could shatter.

“Nineteen years. All this time, the Hidden Pavilion has worked solely for peace. And now it is time to reap what we have sown.”

“But making the Seventh Young Master the Young Cult Leader…”

“Have I not taught you time and again? When the enemy is strong, you don’t counter with a single move. You bind them with many.”

“Ah…”

Jegal So-mi felt her mind clear like fog lifting. So that was it. He wasn’t betting everything on a single piece, Agent 103. He meant to mobilize every possible move at his disposal.

Naturally. Her grandfather would never attempt to solve things with such an unreasonable gambit. Who was Jegal Sang? A man who had reigned as the greatest mind under heaven, from the previous generation to the present.

“Thank you. My curiosity is satisfied. I’ll go meet with the operatives now.”

Jegal So-mi bowed and withdrew with a lighter step.

But there was one thing she had yet to realize.

And that was…

‘Agent 103 was never neglected. He was being hidden. Furthermore, when facing powerful enemies, one must always conceal a decisive variable among the many.’

Heh heh heh. Jegal Sang fluttered his fan, his eyes growing distant. An image of someone took shape in his mind.

A child brimming with venom toward the world and a fierce sense of justice.

Agent 103.

The third operative to pass the grueling training with a perfect score. At fourteen, without a shred of internal energy, he had grasped every subtlety of the martial principles the elders had only comprehended in their twilight years, and even wounded the Alliance Lord. That audacious kid.

The Hidden Pavilion’s greatest variable.

Jang I-seo.

‘How much you must have grown. I can hardly wait.’

A warm smile settled on Jegal Sang’s lips.

* * *

“Huuuh, haa.”

While Hidden Pavilion Master Jegal Sang was anticipating Jang I-seo’s growth…

The man himself was pressing a gold bar to his nose and making strange breathing sounds.

“Nothing sharpens the mind like the smell of money. Go ahead, quiz me. I’ll get every answer right.”

There was no one around to quiz him, but Jang I-seo had certainly grown up a little differently from what Jegal Sang expected.

He’d received the mission last night, and morning had broken.

The old bed was piled with gold bars, and a cool breeze drifted in through the broken ceiling.

“I should make a trip to the village.”

Hah. The more he thought about it, the more audacious it seemed. That bastard who dropped off the missive last night and vanished. Strictly speaking, wasn’t he a fellow Hidden Pavilion operative?

Yet he’d concealed his identity completely and fled in a hurry. Even swung a blade at him.

What could that mean?

‘If my luck’s bad, it means they’ll silence me once I’ve served my purpose.’

He scratched his forehead. He’d expected as much. Someone in the Hidden Pavilion was surely watching him from somewhere. And when the time came, they’d reach out to make contact.

That might have been fine in the past, but a breach of etiquette like this was problematic now.

Because hidden within this house was a special secret no one knew about.

“You don’t know everything about me.”

Jang I-seo sighed and cracked his neck. When things got complicated, keep it simple. That was always the answer.

“Anyway, if I don’t follow orders, this loneliness will consume me. And the price for this mission was looking after my brother. So I’ll do it. I’ll do it, but…”

How.

Right now, he was merely a Seventh Grade Ghost, Third Squad Leader of the Counter-Espionage Division. The Seventh Young Master was a First Grade Ghost, one of the highest-ranking figures in the cult. The master of the Inner Palace, whom approaching alone was nearly impossible.

At the very least, he needed to meet the guy before anything could progress.

“Can’t be helped. I’ll have to request a transfer.”

Right. That would do it. It was just a shame. There was no better place than the Counter-Espionage Division for raking in money and skinning demonic bastards alive.

But it couldn’t be helped.

“If I ask the Division Commander for a transfer, he obviously won’t do it, right?”

As if. Absolutely not.

When it came to greed, Counter-Espionage Division Commander Gyeom Sa-ik was even worse than him.

There were many anecdotes about the man, but Jang I-seo could confidently declare him a lunatic obsessed with results and money.

So he’d never just let go of his top squad leader, the one with the highest arrest rate and the biggest kickbacks. Throwing a tantrum wouldn’t work either.

“Then I’ll have to grease his palms. There’s no one immune to bribery. The amount is just never enough.”

Jang I-seo smiled knowingly and stepped toward the bright window to survey the outside. Quiet as could be, not a soul around.

Daytime was always safer than night.

He hummed a tune and rolled up the rug. Then he began prying up the floorboards that looked perfectly intact.

Creeeak.

They came apart without hesitation, as if he’d done this many times.

Was there a passage leading underground?

No. Nothing. Just flat dirt. Then what was the point of all this?

But this was all smoke and mirrors to conceal the truth.

‘A spy’s cardinal rule is to deceive, and then deceive again.’

Jang I-seo loaded yesterday’s gold bars onto a cart, fetched the shovel and jars he’d prepared in the backyard, and began transferring the dirt.

An hour. Two. Sweat dripping, after digging a fair amount, a hidden space finally peeked through.

A lid. A round lid. More precisely, a wooden board sealing the way down.

And astonishingly, when he pulled it free, a deep shaft resembling a well appeared, complete with a ladder.

A secret passage.

Jang I-seo climbed back up, shouldered the cart load, sealed the jars, covered the hole with the rug, and began descending.

Reaching the bottom of the shaft, a narrow side path branching off appeared.

From there, the walls on either side were carved with ancient bas-reliefs, and torch holders were spaced at intervals.

Relics of an ancient civilization.

He’d discovered this place seven years ago.

While searching for a place to urgently hide his embezzled wealth, he’d tossed something into an empty well he’d spotted by chance. That was how it began.

He’d come down to retrieve it and made the discovery.

That a tremendous secret was hidden here.

Of course, the side path hadn’t been open like this back then. A cipher written in dot patterns had been inscribed, and because Jang I-seo was fluent in dozens of cipher systems, he’d been able to open it after extensive study.

Perhaps no one other than him, the Hidden Pavilion’s perfect-score graduate, could have cracked it.

And this place seemed to have been forgotten so completely that even the current Cult Leader would know nothing of it.

But it was too soon to be amazed.

How long had he walked? After pressing deeper inside, the ceiling soared upward, and a massive wall blocked his path.

Jang I-seo glanced casually at the torch holder beside him. Click, click. He rotated it sideways twice.

Then.

RUMBLE!

A faint tremor began, then with a tremendous roar, the wall started to open.

“Huuuh, haa.”

Jang I-seo closed his eyes with a look of pure rapture and drew a deep breath.

His eyes flashed open.

Unbelievable.

A vast cavern stretched before his eyes.

Overflowing with gold, silver, and jewels, bathed in a wondrous, ethereal blue mist.

“Hello, Heavenly Demon Treasury.”

The incredible bounty Jang I-seo had gained since infiltrating the Demonic Cult as a spy.

A treasure vault tucked deep within the Ten Demon Peaks, revealing itself to the world at last.

*

The Heavenly Demon Treasury.

Actually, the name wasn’t entirely accurate. When Jang I-seo first discovered this place, two large characters were carved into one wall: Heavenly Demon. He’d merely extrapolated the rest.

But the fact that this was a treasure vault was very real.

Gold, silver, and jewels piled like a burial mound in the center sparkled blindingly, while the outer perimeter displayed all manner of extraordinary weapons on ornamental racks.

An astounding fortune. With this much, nothing was impossible.

However,

“This is why the Demonic Cult is the best. Even if three generations of my family worked at the Martial Alliance, they’d never amass this kind of wealth.”

Grinning ear to ear, Jang I-seo dumped the gold bars he’d brought into the center with a crash.

Indeed.

This wealth hadn’t been in the Heavenly Demon Treasury.

This was how much he’d skimmed over ten years of Counter-Espionage Division work.

A true master of embezzlement and fraud.

But that raised a question.

Why call it a treasure vault at all?

The reason lay elsewhere.

“Alright. Let’s go all the way.”

Jang I-seo walked deeper into the cavern and stopped about twenty paces from the massive wall.

But up close, something was peculiar.

This expansive wall, glowing with a faint blue light.

It wasn’t just ordinary rock.

Moreover, thin yet deeply carved grooves covered its surface in a bewildering maze-like pattern.

Its name combined the character for demon and wall.

The Demon Wall.

Why, you ask?

Seeing is believing.