​〔 ♬ BGM: Gun's N Roses - Don't Cry 〕

It was early dawn, a day when the darkness was soaked by a mixture of snow and rain.

Namgung Hu, the Mad Demon, was ambushed by assassins who struck like dry lightning. He yielded the first exchange due to a splitting headache, but his eerily settled sword intent severed the opponent's neck in a single strike.

How do they keep finding my whereabouts so well?

Occasionally, worthless fools seek their own graves in pursuit of the bounty. It was a persistent, tiresome, and foolish greed.

"…Was there poison?"

Dark red blood trickled from the gash on his left shoulder. Roughly wiping the blood away, he used his lightfoot technique to slip into a remote cave in Haesong Pass, far from the reach of the Murim Alliance. However, as the chronic headache—feeling as if his skull were splitting—and the poison surged at once, he ultimately failed to enter the cave and collapsed at the entrance, losing consciousness.

...How much time had passed?

The snow and rain had stopped, and the noon sunlight filtering through the clouds shattered against his eyes.

Through his faintly opening vision, he saw an unfamiliar figure with their back to the sun. The moment he realized that mysterious hand was touching his wound, Namgung Hu instinctively grabbed the stranger's wrist with a bone-crushing grip. A low, raspy, heavy voice echoed coldly at the cave entrance.

"...Are you so desperate to die?"

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【Year of Gyeongsin, January 19th | Hour of the Horse (11 AM - 1 PM) | Entrance of the cave behind Haesong Pass | Clear】