CHAPTER 10

That night, as soon as Heo Jung-man heard Chief Steward Im Ho-pil’s report in his study, he unconsciously asked again.

“Did Cheon-i really say that?”

“Yes, Manor Lord.”

“Hmm. The number one in Hangzhou…”

Heo Jung-man rested his chin on his left hand and lightly tapped the desk with the fingertips of his right.

It was a habit he unconsciously displayed whenever he was deep in thought.

‘So that was why. Back then, when he suddenly said he intended to overhaul the manor’s martial arts.’

At first, he had thought it was merely an excuse to avoid the subject of marriage.

Who would have thought that Heo Cheon had been planning something this ambitious from the very beginning?

As a father, and as the Manor Lord of the Heo Family Manor, Heo Jung-man could only feel ashamed.

‘He’s far better than I am.’

Of course, Heo Jung-man had done his best in his own way for the future of the Heo Family Manor.

His attempt to improve the incomplete Clear Void Heart Method had been part of those efforts, even though it had nearly cost him his life.

‘Fortunately, the problem with the cultivation method has been solved thanks to Cheon…’

But there were still many obstacles the Heo Family Manor would have to overcome before it could become the strongest faction in Hangzhou.

The most urgent problem among them was money.

‘Sigh. I never realized the manor’s finances had deteriorated this badly.’

At present, the Heo Family Manor’s main sources of income were the crops produced by the farmland passed down through the generations and the profits from a few small shops.

Originally, they had also owned several inns and restaurants, but those had been sold off long ago.

It had been necessary to pay for Heo Jung-man’s treatment after he collapsed from qi deviation.

‘It was all my fault.’

In an effort to keep him alive by any means possible, they had summoned every famous physician in the surrounding area.

They had even spent precious medicinal ingredients as though they were ordinary water.

Thanks to that, they had managed to hold on until Heo Cheon returned.

But there was no denying that those expenses had severely damaged the Heo Family Manor’s finances.

Overwhelmed by guilt, Heo Jung-man could barely raise his head.

‘If only I hadn’t meddled with the cultivation method in the first place, things wouldn’t have gotten this bad…’

There was no point regretting it now.

Nothing would change simply because he regretted what had happened.

For the time being, rather than recklessly expanding the Heo Family Manor, their most urgent task was to secure and increase a stable source of income.

Until then, the title of Number One in Hangzhou was nothing more than an empty fantasy.

“Chief Steward, is there any way we could reclaim ownership of the inns and restaurants we sold?”

“It is possible, but I cannot guarantee that the current owners will willingly agree to negotiate with us. Furthermore, there is no telling whether they would sell them back to us at the same prices we originally received.”

“Hmm. So, as expected, money is the problem.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

The crops from the Heo Family Manor’s farmland and the income from their small shops were nowhere near enough to buy back the inns and restaurants.

Nor could they simply borrow money from the neighboring clans without consideration.

Faced with such a frustrating situation, Heo Jung-man let out a deep sigh and muttered,

“Sigh. It would be nice if a fortune suddenly fell from the sky.”

“Is this what they call having a fortune fall from the sky?”

Heo Cheon muttered as he stared at the stacks of banknotes and piles of gold and silver treasures covering the table.

At his feet lay a large safe that had been cleanly split in half.

It was immediately obvious where the money and valuables had come from.

‘That bastard Jeon Baek-gwang. Now that I think about it, he really was a gold goblin.’

Amazingly, the safe’s original owner had been Jeon Baek-gwang, the former leader of the Golden Tiger Gang, who had now been reduced to an idiot.

More precisely, it was the safe where he had hidden his secret funds.

While destroying the Golden Tiger Gang, Heo Cheon had somehow managed to find it and secretly taken it for himself.

Originally, he had intended to check its contents that very day.

But afterward, he had become so focused on creating the Clear Void Unhindered Technique that he had completely forgotten about it until now.

Today, having finally found some free time, he had opened the safe and was checking what was inside.

‘He really scraped together every last bit.’

For someone who had run both an illegal gambling den and a loan-sharking operation, the amount of hidden money he had accumulated was considerable.

‘There must be at least several thousand nyang of silver.’

Ordinarily, one nyang of silver was worth roughly 100,000 won when converted into Korean currency.

So several thousand nyang of silver would amount to at least several hundred million won.

Yet Heo Cheon remained completely unfazed even after seeing such a huge fortune.

‘It’s still less than my company’s average revenue.’

Heo Cheon’s company had been a fairly solid small-to-medium-sized business.

Since Heo Cheon had been its owner, it would have been stranger for him to be shocked by this amount of money.

Of course, that was only by Korean standards.

By the standards of the Central Plains, this was unquestionably an enormous fortune.

‘Come to think of it, this is strange. No matter how profitable gambling and loan sharking are, could he really have accumulated this much money?’

There was no way he could have amassed such a fortune simply by exploiting the common people of Hangzhou.

But that wasn’t the only strange thing.

Heo Cheon’s gaze shifted toward three books lying conspicuously among the stacks of banknotes and precious metals.

The title of the first book was Empty-Handed Soul-Seizing Hand.

The second was Shadowless Steps.

And the final book was Profound Heaven Fist Manual.

All three were martial arts manuals.

But the only one Heo Cheon was interested in was the final one.

The first two weren’t bad, but at best, they were useful somewhere between the First-Class and Peak Realms.

Besides, their names gave off such a strong impression that they were techniques meant for pickpockets or petty thieves that after giving them a brief glance at first, Heo Cheon had never spared them another look.

The Profound Heaven Fist Manual, on the other hand, was a treasure of an entirely different caliber.

‘I never expected to see that man’s martial arts manual here.’

The Heaven’s End Fist Dragon, Nam Cheol-ak.

He was from the Heaven’s End Sect, a one-successor-only martial sect, and had been one of the masters who fought during the great war between the righteous and demonic factions.

Had he survived until now, he would easily have reached the Transcendent Realm.

The Heaven’s End Fist Dragon possessed a rare martial talent.

Sadly, however, he had met his end during the war after being caught in a mutual death battle with five Blood Apostles of the Blood Demon Cult.

As a result, his signature martial art, the Profound Heaven Fist, had also died out with him, and many people had mourned its loss.

‘And yet, it survived as a manual like this.’

If this was indeed the signature martial art of the Heaven’s End Fist Dragon, then it was a treasure whose value could not possibly be measured in money.

There would be countless people who wouldn’t sell it even for an astronomical fortune.

‘This is troublesome.’

The manual itself was unquestionably authentic.

There was no way someone of Heo Cheon’s caliber could fail to distinguish a genuine martial arts manual from a fake.

That was precisely why he was reluctant to dispose of it.

But at the same time, it was difficult for Heo Cheon to learn it himself.

The Profound Heaven Fist Manual only recorded the forms and principles of the Profound Heaven Fist.

It contained absolutely nothing about the specific method of circulating internal energy.

‘In other words, if I want to learn this properly, I’ll have to find a separate cultivation method.’

In short, it was a beautiful shell with nothing inside.

‘Well, if it had included the cultivation method, there’s no way this manual would have ended up in Jeon Baek-gwang’s hands in the first place.’

That explanation made sense.

Nevertheless, there was one question that had bothered Heo Cheon from the moment he first saw the manual.

‘How did Jeon Baek-gwang get his hands on this?’

Of course, if he really wanted to, there were plenty of ways to obtain a martial arts manual.

Several names immediately flashed through Heo Cheon’s mind.

The most likely possibilities were the Black Market and the underground auction house of the Golden Flower Pavilion.

‘Well, at those two places, you can probably obtain almost anything that isn’t completely impossible to get. But realistically, that can’t be it.’

Neither place was somewhere just anyone could enter.

If any random person could freely come and go, there was no way the Black Market and Golden Flower Pavilion could have earned the infamous reputations they had today.

Naturally, with Jeon Baek-gwang’s status and level of martial prowess, he couldn’t have entered either place even in his wildest dreams.

‘Then…’

Another possibility suddenly occurred to Heo Cheon.

‘Could someone have temporarily entrusted it to him?’

Like stolen property, perhaps.

Jeon Baek-gwang happened to operate a loan-sharking business as well.

Using that business to secretly trade or dispose of stolen goods would have been easy enough.

‘That certainly makes more sense.’

And the moment Heo Cheon considered the possibility that it was stolen property, the other two martial arts manuals—ones he hadn’t even looked at until now—suddenly caught his attention.

‘Could it really be a coincidence that these were stored in Jeon Baek-gwang’s safe together with the Profound Heaven Fist Manual?’

There was no way.

He had a strong feeling that the two manuals were somehow connected to whoever had entrusted the Profound Heaven Fist Manual to Jeon Baek-gwang.

And no thief in the world would enjoy having the stolen goods he had stolen stolen from him.

There was a high probability that whoever had entrusted them to Jeon Baek-gwang had secretly planted some kind of trick that only they knew about.

‘Why do I have such a bad feeling about this?’

Just as Heo Cheon was thinking that he should dispose of the safe and the manuals as quickly as possible, every light in the room suddenly went out, even though there wasn’t the slightest breeze.

Darkness descended in an instant.

At the same time, a small figure appeared like a ghost from the ceiling and silently dropped straight down toward Heo Cheon’s head.

As she descended, the figure’s left hand trembled and suddenly split into several images before simultaneously striking the acupoint on Heo Cheon’s body that would cause unconsciousness.

But—

Ssshh—

Before the figure’s hand could even touch his body, Heo Cheon’s form distorted like a reflection rippling across the surface of water before scattering into nothingness.

The unexpected turn of events caused the figure to panic inwardly.

Then—

“Enough. Don’t move.”

Heo Cheon’s voice suddenly came from behind her.

Heo Cheon hadn’t visibly stood up.

He hadn’t even taken a step.

Yet somehow, he was already standing behind the figure.

‘Changing Forms and Exchanging Positions!’

Realizing what technique Heo Cheon had used in an instant, the figure hurriedly raised both hands above her head and turned around.

“W-Wait! I didn’t come here to fight you!”

‘Huh? A woman’s voice?’

Her build was smaller and more petite than that of an ordinary grown man, so Heo Cheon had already suspected it.

His suspicion proved correct.

The figure was indeed a woman.

And judging by her voice alone, she didn’t seem very old either.

At most, she sounded like she was in her early to mid-twenties.

But Heo Cheon didn’t lower his guard or show her any mercy simply because she was a young woman.

Before she revealed herself, Heo Cheon hadn’t even sensed her presence.

Given Heo Cheon’s level of cultivation, that should have been impossible.

It was proof that the concealment technique she had mastered was an extraordinary martial art.

‘Twenty years ago, there was only one thief capable of mastering a concealment technique at this level…’

Heo Cheon didn’t know how things stood now, but he decided to ask just in case.

“You. What is your relationship with the Shadowless Divine Thief?”

“……!”

The figure flinched at Heo Cheon’s question.

She had never expected the name Shadowless Divine Thief to come out of his mouth.

Seeing her reaction, Heo Cheon became certain that his guess had been correct.

‘A successor of the Shadowless Divine Thief. Now that’s something I never expected to see in my lifetime.’

Twenty years really was a long time.

He was curious about her exact identity, but there was no need to speculate when he could simply ask her directly.

“Are you his disciple? Or are you related to him by blood?”

“……”

“Why did you suddenly become quiet? You were talking quite well just a moment ago. Did you forget how to speak already?”

“……”

“If neither of those is the case…”

Heo Cheon’s expression turned cold.

At the same time, his right hand gripped the hilt of the long sword hanging at his waist.

“Are you saying my question isn’t even worth answering?”

Under Heo Cheon’s pressure, the figure bit her lip beneath her mask.

Now that he was taking things this far, remaining silent would only provoke him further.

In the end, with a quiet sigh, she opened the lips she had kept tightly sealed like a clam.

“…Sigh. Yes, your guess is correct. I’m the Shadowless Divine Thief’s disciple—or, to be precise, his biological granddaughter.”

‘So that’s how it is.’

After all, someone wouldn’t casually pass down a technique of that caliber to just anyone.

The figure—the granddaughter of the Shadowless Divine Thief—continued speaking.