Episode 39. The Winner Doesn’t Take Off Their Mask
I glared at Hongshin. “Hand over every coin you have and out of respect for our sect I’ll let you leave today with your limbs intact.”
I said it, but I never intended to let her go.
“Bring me a fat purse and I’ll accept another challenge then. If you ever beat me even once, I’ll return every last coin. Heard of wagered duels?”
Wagered duels — literally, fighting for money.
Thievery and gambling go hand in hand, so Hongshin couldn’t refuse that offer.
Her eyes changed. “Are you serious?”
I provoked her with a smile I hid behind the mask. “Sister, consider yourself lucky I’m not killing you. If you’re frightened, hand over the money and be gone.”
That should force her to accept, right?
Hongshin answered, “A wagered duel… you wouldn’t set the terms for my match yourself, would you, Senior?”
“You decide.”
I planned to beat her badly if she lost the bet.
She took a breath, surprised at my offer, then said, “Then we won’t drag it out. Let it be a match: within half an hour, if you remove my mask by any means, I lose. Should we settle it with brute fists? That favors me. If it’s just running, I’d win. A time limit suits me. The wager: revealing my mask—what do you say?”
I nodded. “Fine.”
Having read the briefing on her, I’d expected she’d pick a match involving light-footed tricks. This made the duel easier.
“I already said I won’t restrict means. Take place inside the Black Cat House only—crossing the outer wall means defeat.”
She could throw knives, smoke, use evasive footwork to kill time. I yawned lazily. “Let’s begin. After this, I’ll take a nap.”
Hongshin laughed—a strange, high sound—vaulted up onto the outer wall, and tossed a small hourglass toward my underlings.
“Referee: turn it over. When the sand runs out, half an hour’s up. Start.”
She gestured at me: “Come on, Senior.”
I walked toward her with my hands clasped behind my back.
‘Presumptuous.’
She smirked. “You slug? What are you doing?”
“A game of tag.”
Because I approached so slowly, Hongshin had no reason to flee quickly.
She kept an eye on me and retreated along the wall.
I ambled after her and, without hurry, hoisted myself up onto the wall.
“Ugh…”
Hongshin said, puzzled, “Half an hour isn’t long.”
“Shut up, daring to lecture me.”
I rolled up my sleeves. “I’ll teach you a lesson today. I said if you just handed over the money I’d let you leave in one piece—yet here you are, stepping out of line.”
I closed the distance and caught her eye.
There was no need to sprint; catching her could be done in an instant when it mattered. She kept backing away, checking my position. Eventually she leapt down into the courtyard to avoid the wall and roof entirely.
“You’ve got nerve,” she said.
I followed her down at a snail’s pace, a deliberate psychological game. My slowness forced her to attempt moves she didn’t need—because the real outcome would hinge on a single, split-second moment when my hand would be faster than her eyes.
“It’s not too late. Hand over the money now and I won’t humiliate you in front of my men.”
“Oh, how scary.”
I stopped and watched her.
We were about three jang apart—some nine meters.
She inched backwards, beginning to speak: “Se—”
Before she finished, I launched like a lightning bolt in a reversed arc—directly over the spot above her head.
Her “Senior” never left her lips. She reacted, nearly disappearing for a beat. Instead of turning and running, she backed up as if to watch my next move, which only gave me the upper hand.
I curved through the air and closed the distance from three jang to one in the blink of an eye, then used the rebound of the ground to snap forward like a drawn bowstring.
Hongshin rifled into her sleeve and scattered a white powder into the air.
Before my vision clouded, I blew the powder aside with a gust of qi and listened—then planted my foot and closed in like a ghost to her back.
She shrieked and launched herself into the air with every ounce of strength.
At that instant my outstretched hand and her newly airborne foot were almost touching—so close it was dangerous.
Just as she narrowly escaped, I deliberately vocalized the name of the technique I’d honed from the elixir room.
“Absorbing Technique.”
Calling a move like that is childish in the martial world—a faux pas to boast one’s technique name—but shamelessly uttering it was part of the taunt. Maintaining that narrow gap, I snagged the ankle she was using to escape.
In a panic, she channeled force with a twisting motion. I seized her ankle, swung, and slammed her to the ground.
She clawed at the earth and wailed, “Spare me—”
But Hongshin, resilient thief that she was, bounced off the ground with her qi and turned to throw a vicious palm at me.
Anything goes in a fight like this.
I calmly struck the center of her palm with a palm-technique infused with ember qi, and at the same instant used the Absorbing Technique to yank at her mask.
There was a pop like a drum, and Hongshin’s body rocketed back, ignited in patches of flame. Her tunic blistered and fell away in ash, revealing flesh—though, as expected from a thief, she wore a reinforced underlayer to protect herself.
The courtyard burst with the odd noises of my followers.
“Whoa.”
Her upper garments were scorched away in places, exposing bare skin, but she was not dead. The force I felt on impact told me her internal power rivaled the previous Black Cat leader’s—she was no weakling.
‘Not bad,’ I thought.
The briefing’s note that she fattened her inner power on stolen elixirs was true.
While my men ogled, I flicked the back of my cloak to snatch her black robe’s collar and flung it over her.
“Enough gawking,” I said.
“Yes, Lord.”
I turned the red mask in my hands and observed it. “That was easy, clean, and without real danger—just as I expected.”
“Congratulations.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I guessed she’d be coming to soon after the shock; she didn’t move.
I used the moment to give my men a lesson on battlefield psychology.
“Look at Sister Hong. Still out cold?”
“Yes.”
“No. She’ll rise on a litter at night, steal from our elixir room, and slip away with our funds like some midnight thief. But she won’t get far from me. Be wary of temptation—beauty is a tactic. Especially in the underworld.”
At my words Hongshin sprang up as if possessed and fumbled into the black robe I’d thrown over her.
“Senior, today I have learned much.”
Only then did my men see her face with the mask removed. Her unmasking was itself a seduction—she had a pretty face the sort that would make a crowd forget their senses. A trained female martial artist’s body also tends to be well-formed; the men’s eyes shone with admiration.
‘Tsk,’ I muttered. The power of beauty—dangerous indeed.
“Don’t try to run. Kneel. The moment you’re caught, I’ll take your robe. I am faster than you.”
Her legs wavered; she collapsed to her knees.
“Senior, I committed many offenses today. I hadn’t realized your skills had advanced so rapidly.”
“Shut up. Spit it out.”
She glared and produced a heavy purse from her bosom. I reached for it and activated the Absorbing Technique.
Swoooosh!
The purse flew into my palm as if by a reverse whirlwind. The more I used the technique, the more natural it felt.
‘This is incredible…’
It was heavy.
Inside were long strips of thin gold and silver currency used across the region.
“You are wealthy, Sister.”
She looked up at me. “Senior—this Absorbing Technique—what is it?”
“It’s the Absorbing Technique. My signature art. Why? Don’t you think it would make an excellent skill for thieves? Master the art and you could become the greatest thief in history.”
But I couldn’t teach it. The technique drew on the jade core I possessed—no one else had it. If the cult leader ever tried to reproduce it, I’d be the one to stop it by killing him. There was time for that later.
Hongshin suddenly pleaded, “Senior, will you teach me? I’ll bring anything you want. You know what I can do…”
“My secret art is not for sale. Dream on. Even if you stole the world and laid it at my feet, I wouldn’t teach it.”
“It seems like a form of void-grasping one learns naturally with deep cultivation. It’s harsh to refuse.”
“Think whatever you like. Tell the lesser chiefs too. Let the gap grow—then leave me alone.”
She seemed to accept defeat. “I will tell them. And — thank you for sparing me.”
I eyed her mask. It was crafted as well as the Black Cat’s had been.
“Sister, give me your mask.”
I wondered what that mask meant to her.
“Free? Not a chance. Bring one hundred silver coins and we’ll trade. I’ll keep it safe.”
She replied coldly, “You really mean that?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’m closer to the Four White seniors—you know that. I’m friendly with Baiyu.”
“Three hundred.”
“Give it back.”
“Four hundred.”
“I’ll tell my master.”
She stormed off—threatening to complain to her teacher—and in that instant I slammed both of her shoulder acupoints with a wooden-claw palm technique.
Her body went rigid as a wooden rooster.
“Put her in the barn. I’ll personally interrogate her.”
To inspect her frozen expression, I stepped forward and stared.
Only then did Hongshin peer at me from behind the mask and hiss in a lower voice, “Who are you?”
I answered with a grin and slapped her cheek. The smack echoed through the Black Cat House.
“What a tone, Sister. You act so bold. Take her away.”
The men hefted the wooden red monkey and dragged her off to the barn. The officers watched me blankly. I said, “That should be enough rest. Afternoon training, begin.”
I yawned and let sleep pull at me: I’d been up late mastering the Absorbing Technique and was running low on rest.