At the exact same time the Grand Elder was making his moves, Wol was casually roaming through the crowded outer market of the city.
He was walking with a relaxed, unassuming posture, his sharp eyes quietly scanning the bustling streets. He was looking to see if he could spot any familiar faces from his past life—anyone who had ties to the underground black market, or any people from rival clans who had no business being in Namgoong territory.
He was still not wearing Elder Han's flawless mask. If he was going to navigate the underbelly of the city, it was better to be his true, forgettable self rather than risk exposing the 'Chung Mu' persona they were using inside the estate.
After walking for a while, Wol turned off the main dirt road and stepped into a loud, incredibly busy inn. He knew from years of experience as a wandering mercenary that these kinds of crowded, chaotic places were the absolute best for gathering information. Rumors and news always circulated fastest where alcohol flowed freely.
He found a small, empty wooden table in a dark corner of the room and sat down, blending in perfectly. He kept his head slightly lowered, acting like a normal, exhausted traveler, drawing absolutely zero attention to himself.
A waiter quickly rushed over, wiping the table with a rag. Wol ordered a regular bowl of hot noodles and a simple side dish.
While waiting for his food, Wol picked up the warm cup of cheap tea the waiter had placed in front of him. He brought it to his lips, taking a slow sip. As he did, he closed his eyes slightly and expanded his hearing.
He carefully circulated a thin thread of Qi to his ears, filtering out the loud clinking of cups and the roar of drunken laughter, isolating the specific conversations happening at the tables around him.
Most of the chatter was completely regular. Traveling merchants complaining about heavy toll taxes, low-rank mercenaries bragging about cheap bounties, and locals gossiping about the harvest.
He kept listening, taking another sip of tea, pretending to mind his own business.
It was all useless noise... until his ears caught a hushed, nervous conversation from a table of rough-looking smugglers two rows over. He heard a piece of news about the Namgoong Patriarch.
"I'm telling you, it's bad," one of the men muttered, leaning over his table. "The Patriarch's health worsened suddenly last night. Apparently, they brought in some outside medicine and it completely backfired. He's in critical condition."
The other man's eyes widened. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious," the first man replied, lowering his voice even further. "From what I heard from a servant inside the inner walls, it's like he is already dead. Barely breathing. The elders are just hiding it from the public so the city doesn't fall into chaos."
The waiter arrived at Wol's table right at that moment, placing the steaming bowl of noodles in front of him.
Wol didn't react visibly. He picked up his wooden chopsticks, his face perfectly blank, but his mind was racing.
*Fake news,* Wol thought coldly.
The Patriarch wasn't barely breathing. He had actually stabilized. More importantly, the detail about an 'outside medicine' being administered was something that was supposed to be kept strictly private. The only people who knew about that were the immediate caretakers in the room.
*Which means Guard Jin is behind this rumor,* Wol deduced as he stirred his noodles. *Or someone directly above him.*
But why? Why spread a rumor that the Patriarch was dying from the medicine now?
Wol stopped stirring. The realization hit him like a physical blow. He understood exactly where this was going.
*They are planning to kill the Patriarch soon,* Wol thought, taking a small sip of the hot broth. *They are manipulating information ahead of time to stop any possible doubts in the future. If everyone already believes the Patriarch is dying from a botched medicine, no one will question it when he actually turns up dead tomorrow.*
The timing of the rumor was just too fast. It was incredibly calculated.
Wol didn't glance toward the table of smugglers. Giving them an obvious look would only draw suspicion. Instead, he kept his eyes on his food, slowly eating his noodles while he formed a plan.
He decided to follow the man spreading the rumor. A low-level thug like that wouldn't come up with this information on his own. He had been hired to spread misinformation, which meant if Wol followed him, he might lead him straight to the handler.
Wol finished his broth, keeping a careful ear on the smuggler's table.
As soon as the man stood up to leave, Wol placed a few copper coins on the counter to pay for his meal. He slipped out of the inn a few seconds later.
Wol didn't follow the man directly on the crowded streets. That was amateur work. Instead, he moved silently through the narrow alleyways behind the buildings, occasionally pulling himself up to the low rooftops to keep the man in his line of sight from a safe, undetectable distance.
The man moved through the crowd with practiced caution. He walked quickly, glancing over his shoulder once or twice to make sure he wasn't being followed.
Eventually, the man turned down a quieter street and stopped in front of a small, mundane vegetable shop that also sold dried goods.
He looked around one last time before slipping inside.
Wol immediately closed the distance. Remaining perfectly hidden in the shadows of the adjacent alley, Wol moved swiftly toward the back of the building.
He found a small, barred window in the rear storage room. He pressed his back against the brick wall, inching closer to the window.
The sound of hushed talking drifted through the wooden bars.
Wol peeked inside from the very edge of the window.
The smuggler was standing in the dimly lit storage room. Standing across from him was the shopkeeper—a man in his thirties with a long, unkempt beard and deep, dark circles under his eyes.
The shopkeeper tossed a heavy leather pouch of coins to the smuggler. The unmistakable clink of silver echoed in the small room.
"Good job," the shopkeeper said quietly, his voice sharp and authoritative. "Keep doing this for the next few days. Make sure to find crowded places and don't draw any unnecessary attention. Keep it low."
*Just as I thought,* Wol mused inwardly.
When the smuggler finally left with his pouch of silver, Wol didn't follow him. The smuggler was just a hired mouth. The shopkeeper was the real lead.
Wol remained perfectly still in the dark alley, his eyes fixed on the rear window of the shop. He watched as the shopkeeper went to work. For a shop that had absolutely zero customers at this hour, the man was incredibly busy. He was taking goods out of crates, meticulously listing items on a ledger, organizing the store, and shifting heavy, packed loads around the storage room.
Wol waited patiently.
After two hours of continuous observation, it was close to midnight. The shopkeeper finally walked toward the front to lock the doors and close up the shop for the night.
As soon as the man was out of the storage room, Wol saw his chance.
Moving with the silent agility of a seasoned mercenary, Wol scaled the brick wall and climbed onto the tiled roof. He checked his surroundings—the streets were completely empty. Satisfied, he carefully lifted a single clay tile, finding a gap just large enough, and slipped inside the building, dropping down from the rafters like a practiced thief.
He landed soundlessly in the storage room.
The room was filled with large clay pots containing fresh vegetables, sacks of rice, and dried roots. But the sealed packages Wol had seen the man moving earlier were completely gone.
Wol narrowed his eyes. He had been through these kinds of situations countless times in his past life.
He crouched down and began walking slowly across the wooden floorboards, gently tapping the heel of his boot against the wood. He was listening for a change in rhythm—a hollow echo that would indicate a hidden trapdoor.
Nothing. The floor was solid.
Wol moved to the walls. He began knocking his knuckles lightly against the wooden panels. *Thud. Thud. Thud.*
He moved along the back wall, his knocks steady and rhythmic, until—
*Tak.*
The sound changed instantly. It was hollow. Wol paused, tapping it again to be sure. He placed both of his hands flat against the wall, measuring the approximate width and length of the hollow space. Once he found the edges, he pressed his weight against the right side of the panel.
With a soft, grinding click, the hidden door pivoted inward on a central hinge.
It was pitch black inside. Wol quietly walked back into the main shop, grabbed a small, unlit oil lamp, lit it, and brought it back. He stepped into the hidden room and raised the light.
His eyes widened slightly at the sight.
Stacked neatly against the walls were hundreds of the exact same sealed packages he had seen the shopkeeper carrying earlier. Wol didn't even need to open them to know what was inside. It was the exact same packaging Shin Daesok had carried when Wol intercepted him during the supply run—the highly addictive drug elder Han told about.
Shin Daesok had been carrying around fifty or sixty of these packages. Here, there were easily over a hundred. This meant Shin Daesok was just one of many low-level runners, and there were definitely others delivering this poison across the city.
Wol stepped closer and pressed his fingers against one of the packages. He didn't rip it open, but the coarse texture of the paper and the faint, bitter, sickly-sweet smell seeping through the cracks confirmed it. It was the same drug.
Wol raised the lamp, illuminating the rest of the hidden room.
In the corner, there was a small wooden workbench. Wol walked over to it. Laid out across the table were various specialized tools: extremely sharp, thin-bladed knives, long hollow needles, thin steel pipes, and a small brass weighing scale with precise stones.
Wol frowned. *Why are these here?*
The drug was usually sold in its raw, powdered form. He didn't understand why a distribution hub would need surgical needles and thin pipes.
He leaned in closer, bringing his nose near the tools.
The sharp knives and the long hollow needles... they smelled like raw onions and earth.
Wol froze. The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water.
*No. It can't be.*
He looked back at the main storage room, where the large clay pots of fresh vegetables were kept.
They were using the vegetables as the delivery method.
They were using the hollow needles and steel pipes to inject small, diluted doses of the liquid drug directly into the vegetables before selling them in the open market. A small dose in daily food wouldn't kill anyone immediately, but it would cause normal, everyday people to become slowly addicted without ever knowing why. Once the addiction set in, the populace would crave it, and the syndicate could step out of the shadows to sell the pure drug directly to a desperate city.
It was a terrifyingly brilliant, flawless plan to mass-distribute the drug without getting caught.
Wol took a slow, deep breath, forcing his rapidly beating heart to calm down.
This was far worse than he had anticipated. The people buying vegetables in this market weren't just vagrants or martial artists. They were the elderly. They were normal adults. They were young children. Some of them might die from the side effects before the addiction even took hold. And the absolute last place any city guard or physician would look for the source of a drug epidemic would be a common vegetable stall.
Worse yet, this shop was likely just one node. The contaminated vegetables might have already been shipped out to other markets and restaurants across River Dragon City.
Wol stared at the hundreds of packages of poison.
His hand instinctively drifted toward his waist. He could choose to burn this entire building down right now. He could turn the hidden room, the drugs, and the contaminated food into ash in a matter of minutes.
His heart screamed at him to strike a match and burn it all.
But his mind coldly analyzed the situation.
If he burned this place down, the situation might spiral entirely out of his control. The masterminds behind this massive operation would immediately know they had been compromised. They would panic, change their plans, bury their tracks, and go deeper underground where Wol couldn't find them.
He closed his eyes, his hand falling away from his waist.
He looked further down the shelf. The bottom column was neatly lined with stacks of folded papers and letters.
He picked them up carefully, making sure to memorize exactly how they were stacked so he could place them back without missing a single detail.
The first few papers were delivery ledgers.
His eyes scanned the list of goods. There was a column of names. The first name, simply written as 'Shin', was crossed out with a harsh streak of black ink. Below it were five more names: Kang, Choi, Jeon, Lee, and Kwon. These names were checked off, not crossed.
*Shin Daesok,* Wol realized instantly.
The scout who fled must have reported it back.
He moved to the unsealed, open letters. Most of them were mundane reports of deliveries—no names, just dates and the successful amount of goods transferred. But one of the recent letters confirmed his suspicion. It was a brief report detailing the sudden death of a runner named 'Shin' by an unknown attacker.
Wol's eyes narrowed at the last line of that specific report: *'No movement or interference reported from allied troops within the Alliance.'*
*As I thought,* Wol mused, a cold smirk touching his lips. *There are traitors deeply embedded in the Murim Alliance as well.*
That single sentence explained exactly how the underground Black Market had been able to spread its influence so widely and efficiently while completely avoiding the Alliance's detection. And one of those high-ranking traitors was undoubtedly the Grand Elder of the Namgoong Clan.
Wol set the open letters back exactly as he found them.
Then, his eyes caught it.
Tucked slightly beneath the ledger was a single, sealed letter. It bore no official crest or mark, and the parchment looked brand new.
In his past life, Wol had spent years trapped in the hidden archives of dead sects, reading through thousands of forbidden scrolls just to cure his boredom. He had learned a very specific, nearly impossible trick to open and reseal absolute-security documents without leaving a single trace.
He called it the Archivist's Lift.
He didn't touch the seal immediately.
He held the letter near the small oil lamp, rotating it slowly under the dim light. He noted the microscopic cracks already present in the thick wax, checking which side had adhered to the parchment more strongly. Years of practice had taught him that no two wax seals aged or settled the exact same way.
Instead of heating the wax directly and ruining the impression, Wol held the letter several inches above the oil lamp's flame, merely warming the air around it. Old wax softened slightly long before it visibly melted. He watched carefully until it lost its brittle rigidity, ensuring the seal didn't shine or deform.
Reaching into the wooden workbench, he picked up one of the thin-bladed surgical knives. He didn't use the sharp edge. Instead, using the smooth, unsharpened back of the blade, he gently worked around the outer edge of the wax. He wasn't lifting it. He was simply encouraging the wax to separate from the parchment, never pressing into the seal's face.
Next came the crucial step.
Wol pulled a single, almost invisible thread of fine silk from the inner lining of his robe. He looped the thread beneath the slightly loosened edge of the wax. Using a slow, meticulous sawing motion, he slid the silk thread entirely beneath the seal.
The thread seamlessly cut the microscopic bond between the wax and the parchment without ever breaking the wax itself.
Once it was completely free, Wol lifted the entire wax seal like a tiny coin. The impression remained absolutely perfect. He immediately placed it face-down on one of the cold brass weighing stones from the workbench so the wax wouldn't soften any further.
With the seal removed, Wol untied the thin cord and unfolded the letter.
His eyes sharpened as he read the contents.
Everything was exactly as he had deduced. The letter was a direct order. The Patriarch's death had been officially scheduled for two weeks from now. The blame for the sudden decline and death was to be placed squarely on Elder Han and the group of mercenaries—Wol and Jo Mak—who had delivered the 'faulty' medicine.
The rumor he had heard in the inn tonight was explicitly mentioned in the letter as the first step to prime the public for the tragedy.
And finally, the letter ordered the recipient to bring the final, concentrated dose of the Black Lotus Poison to the estate immediately.
*it could be the Grand Elder who wrote this,* Wol realized, his eyes cold. *Guard Jin must have contacted him about the Patriarch's stabilization, and the Grand Elder immediately sent this order out to accelerate the plan.*
Wol memorized every word, then carefully refolded the parchment, matching the original creases flawlessly. He tied the cord exactly as it was.
Taking the intact wax seal from the cold stone, he lightly warmed only the flat back of the wax over the lamp. He placed it back into its original position over the cord. The remaining warmth in the wax made it tacky enough to grip the parchment. He used the flat side of the knife to press the edges down gently, ensuring the original signet impression remained completely undisturbed.
Finally, he pressed the cold brass stone against the seal to rapidly cool it, instantly restoring its original dull, matte finish.
As a finishing touch, Wol rubbed a tiny trace of dust from the wooden shelf over the edge of the seal.
Now, it perfectly matched the age and look of a freshly delivered, untouched letter. Only a master archivist would ever notice that the seal had been lifted.
Wol stepped back, extinguishing the oil lamp. He placed everything back exactly as he had found it and closed the hidden door.
Before leaving the storage room, Wol looked back at the hidden panel one last time. He gritted his teeth, his fists clenching so tightly his knuckles popped.
He had a choice to make right here, right now, but he absolutely refused to be swayed by his emotions again. If he gave in to his anger and burned this place down, the Black Market would simply vanish into the shadows and reappear somewhere else. The public and the officials would never know the truth about the contaminated food.
Because the syndicate was only using small, diluted doses right now, the immediate danger to the public was still low. But if Wol let this operation run just a little longer, if he could gather undeniable, concrete evidence and expose this entire distribution network to the officials and the major orthodox clans... the Black Market would suffer a devastating, irrecoverable blow to their standing in the Murim world.
He would tear them out by the roots.
Taking one last, calming breath, Wol grabbed the wooden rafter and pulled himself back up to the roof. He slipped through the gap, carefully placing the clay tile perfectly back into its original position so it looked completely undisturbed.
He checked the dark surroundings one last time. The streets below were still completely empty.
Like a ghost, Wol climbed down the side of the building, melting back into the shadows of the alleyway as he began the quiet walk back to his guest quarters.