That night, the Guo estate erupted into chaos.
Torches blazed bright as noon, and armed guards combed every inch of the compound, inside and out.
But the thief.
Was already gone.
A streak of blue lightning, vanished into the dark.
Before the shattered doorframe.
Guo Tianxiong, patriarch of the Guo clan, stared into the empty air with cold, still eyes.
The afterimage still burned in his vision—a vivid slash of electric blue.
A single bolt of lightning that had cleared the wall in one breath and disappeared.
His weathered hands trembled.
Not from anger.
It was fear—the kind that comes when a memory you buried long ago claws its way back to life.
Thirty-some years ago.
When Guo Tianxiong was still a young patriarch, hot-blooded and full of fire.
That night, too, the Guo estate had been turned upside down just like this.
A man had broken in.
From among the rare medicinal treasures the Guo clan had purchased for a fortune, he had taken exactly three roots—the most precious ones—and nothing else.
The Guo clan's finest fighters had surrounded him, and not one of them had managed to grab so much as the hem of his robe.
The man had drifted through the storm of blades as if he simply wasn't there.
And at the end.
With blue lightning crackling at his feet.
He had vaulted clean over the Guo estate's wall and vanished into the night sky.
When the young Guo Tianxiong had ground his teeth and demanded the man's name, the figure had laughed freely from the darkness and left behind exactly one sentence.
"The Cheonroe Sect. Remember that name."
That humiliation.
Guo Tianxiong had carried it for thirty years without forgetting a single detail.
He had asked around among the old masters of the martial world, but the name Cheonroe Sect floated only in legend—something untouchable, like mist you could never quite grasp.
A sect said to pass down a lightness art faster than the Somersault Cloud, master to single disciple.
A reclusive order of eccentrics that had vanished from sight for centuries.
Guo Tianxiong had grown old carrying that unanswered question in his chest, never finding that man again, never finding that sect.
And yet.
Tonight.
That same blue lightning had crossed the Guo estate's wall once more.
"……The same lightning."
Guo Tianxiong murmured quietly.
"Identical to what that man showed me thirty years ago.
Not one bit different."
That was why.
When the thief had shouted from the top of the wall—*Pung Hyeon of the Cheonroe Sect*—
the cry had torn out of Guo Tianxiong's throat before he even knew it was coming.
"What's your connection to that man from back then!"
Whoever that thief was, he was clearly a descendant of the man from that night.
"Patriarch."
Guo Tieshan, elder of the Guo clan, approached with a grim expression.
"The investigation is complete."
What Guo Tieshan had uncovered was strange.
"He was among the day laborers hired to help with the banquet. The servant Deokbae, who had been carrying the medicinal supplies, was drugged and put to sleep."
"……So he infiltrated us in disguise."
"Yes. There were no signs of anyone scaling the wall, no broken locks. He simply walked in through the front, mixed in among our own men."
Up to that point, it was unremarkable.
A fairly clever trick for a common petty thief.
But.
From Guo Tieshan's next words, the story began drifting in a strange direction.
"And yet, Patriarch—no matter how I think about it, none of it adds up."
"What doesn't."
"How would a common thief have known the location of the hidden vault beneath your private chambers? And how could he have known that the guard posted at the vault would happen to be away at precisely that moment? And how did he find the spare key on the very first try?"
Guo Tieshan's voice wavered.
"This was no coincidence. Only someone who had spent days reading every weakness of the Guo estate like water finding its course could have pulled this off. We were…… dancing in the palm of his hand."
In truth.
Every single one of those things.
Was nothing more than a chain of accidents—Deokbae caving to a bribe of snacks, a guard who genuinely had an upset stomach, a sharp eye for hiding spots trained by years of catching animals, and the miraculous kick of a millennium snow ginseng root swallowed at the last second before getting caught.
But.
Inside Guo Tieshan's head.
Every one of those accidents was being magnificently reassembled into the calculated groundwork of a legendary master.
"And furthermore."
Guo Tieshan swallowed.
"That blue lightning at the end…… That was no human's lightness art. It's clear he had that level of skill from the very beginning and was simply toying with us, letting himself almost get caught. And then there's the name he shouted at the last moment."
"The Cheonroe Sect."
Guo Tianxiong said it for him.
By now, one of the guards had been dragged before them and was on his knees, pale as a sheet, trembling and prostrated on the ground.
The vault had been robbed on the very night he'd stepped away with a stomachache—ten heads wouldn't have been enough to pay for that.
But.
"This is not your fault."
The words that came from Guo Tianxiong's mouth were unexpected.
"How could a single guard have stopped the legendary Cheonroe Sect when they set their sights on something? Count yourself lucky you weren't killed where you stood."
The guard looked up with an expression that said *what on earth are you talking about*, then wisely dropped his gaze and simply wept with relief that he was still alive.
He had no idea that his upset stomach.
Had just been reclassified as *an act of force majeure engineered by a legendary grandmaster*.
The misunderstanding.
Had begun rolling forward.
Quietly.
From the closest possible place.
Guo Tianxiong was silent for a long moment before he spoke.
"This is not the Guo clan's matter alone."
"The Cheonroe Sect, hidden for centuries, has revealed itself in the martial world once more. And of all places, they've targeted our Guo clan twice. What they're after, what they intend—we cannot fathom it on our own."
Guo Tianxiong's eyes gleamed cold.
"At this point, pride has nothing to do with it. Send word to the Martial Alliance. Their strategist, Zhuge Yan—if anyone can read the design hidden behind all this, it's him."
"As you command."
Guo Tieshan stayed up through the entire night writing a single report.
A list of what had been taken.
Several medicinal roots including the millennium snow ginseng, and a bundle of gold coins.
The fact that there had been no trace of forced entry whatsoever.
The fact that the Guo clan's finest fighters had failed to lay a hand on him.
And.
The name the thief had called out at the end, and the blue lightning that had scattered from his feet.
One stroke.
At a time.
Beneath Guo Tieshan's brush.
*A hungry petty thief's lucky one-night raid* was being.
Perfectly rewritten.
Into *a significant incident dispatched by the legendary Cheonroe Sect*.
At dawn the next morning.
The fastest carrier pigeon, report tied to its leg, took flight toward the Martial Alliance headquarters in Hubei.
Even there—where every piece of intelligence in the martial world flowed in like a river—
a strategist's grand misunderstanding.
Was just now spreading its wings.
Meanwhile.
Pung Hyeon, who had no idea any of this was happening.
Was snoring away without a care in the world at an inn several days' travel from the Guo estate.
The fat bundle he was using as a pillow clinked softly with gold coins.
Five empty plates that had held pork buns were stacked by his head.
The warm energy radiating from the millennium snow ginseng settling in his gut.
Made for the most comfortable, well-fed sleep he'd had in a long time.
He had no idea that his one night of thieving.
Was about to shake the Martial Alliance's entire intelligence division.
And send the whole martial world into an uproar.
Pung Hyeon mumbled contentedly in his sleep.
"……More buns…… just two more plates……."
The greatest misunderstanding the martial world had ever seen.
Was growing deeper.
Without a sound.
While its unwitting architect dreamed of dumplings.