Chapter 8 — Sword God Appears

The next morning, Bach Trinh decided to learn more about the Ghost Shadow Police Department, the mysterious assassin organization that was chasing Dieu Vy. He knew that relying on Thanh Phong's notebook alone was not enough to confirm the connection with Thien Ba. There needed to be more actual evidence from those who were acting out there. He remembered the two assassins he had targeted in the fight the night before, wondering if they were still lurking somewhere in the citadel or had been killed by their accomplices to silence them.

He spent all day wandering around the streets, pubs, and ferry stations, using the information detection skills he learned during his time as a martial-world figure to follow the trail of the assassin organization. Finally, through some vague rumors from a smuggler familiar with the underground the martial world, he learned that a mysterious group of people frequented an abandoned warehouse on the western edge of the city, which used to be the warehouse of a bankrupt merchant, now abandoned for many years.

That night, Bach Trinh quietly went to that warehouse, hiding in the darkness to observe. Sure enough, there were several gray-clad figures entering and exiting this area, moving with the caution and discipline of those accustomed to keeping secrets. He patiently waited until there was only one assassin left standing guard alone at the back of the warehouse, then quietly approached and applied pressure points to control the assassin before he could make an alarm sound.

He pulled the assassin into a hidden corner, gently opened a part of the acupuncture point so he could talk, his cold eyes looked straight at him: "I don't want to kill you, I just need you to answer a few questions. Who ordered you to hunt down the girl at the Nhan Tam Duong pharmacy?" The assassin was stubbornly silent at first, but when Bach Trinh gently applied more pressure to the acupuncture point, making him feel the piercing pain, he finally surrendered and tremblingly confessed that all orders came from an anonymous commander nicknamed Black Eagle, no one in the organization had ever seen this person's true face, all instructions were transmitted through intermediaries and coded letters.

"Do you know who Black Eagle is? Where did he come from?" Bach Trinh added another sentence, his voice showing no mercy. The assassin shook his head, his forehead dripping with cold sweat, saying that even the high-ranking commanders in the organization did not know Black Eagle's true identity. They only knew that this person had extremely profound martial arts skills, had single-handedly defeated a group of masters vying for power in the organization many years ago to consolidate his top position, and had a strange habit: always carrying a bronze mask engraved with an eagle's head whenever appearing before his most trusted subordinates.

"So why did you pursue that girl?" Bach Trinh continued asking, his hand gently squeezing the acupuncture point as a reminder that his patience had its limits. The assassin shuddered and quickly replied that he was just an executor. He was ordered by his superiors to find an old notebook that the girl might be keeping. If he found it, he brought it back. If he couldn't find it, he had to destroy it to avoid future trouble. He absolutely must not let that notebook fall into the hands of others. Hearing this, Bach Trinh became even more certain about the connection between Thanh Phong's notebook and the mysterious plot taking place.

"Where is your headquarters located?" The next question came out coldly, but the assassin said that he himself was just one of the low-level henchmen, assigned to monitor the target in Lang Uyen Citadel. He did not know where the headquarters was actually located. He only heard rumors that it was a very secret place, hidden deep in the rugged mountains, few people could find it without the guidance of someone in the organization.

Bach Trinh asked in a low voice about how the organization worked, wanting to know if there were any rules in giving orders. The assassin, now completely subdued by the excruciating pain, added that the Ghost Police Department was divided into many small branches scattered throughout large towns, each branch only received orders through a single contact point, absolutely not knowing the faces of other contacts to avoid exposing the entire network if a branch was exposed. This strict organization surprised Bach Trinh, because in order to build such a sophisticated system in so many years, the leader must have had a more strategic mind than others, and a terrifying patience to quietly build it for nearly two decades without revealing any traces.

This reminded him even more of Thien Ba, a person who had the disposition to patiently bide his time, willing to endure many years to wait for an opportunity, just like how he secretly colluded with outside forces for a long time before killing Thanh Phong. If Black Eagle is indeed Thien Ba, then the fact that he was able to build a large and methodical assassin organization like the Ghost Shadow Police Department during eighteen years of anonymity is not difficult to explain.

After extracting the necessary information, Bach Trinh rechecked the acupuncture points that made the assassin faint, then quietly left the warehouse and returned to the motel room with a heavy heart of thought. The bronze mask shaped like a eagle's head, the habit of hiding his face completely, the ability to single-handedly defeat a group of masters to consolidate power, all of these details matched what he knew about Wei Thien Ba's personality in the past: a person who always craved power, always wanted to prove himself superior to others, and was willing to use every trick to achieve his goals.

But Bach Trinh also understands that speculation cannot be a substitute for authentic evidence. Maybe Black Eagle is just someone else who happens to have similar characteristics, not necessarily Thien Ba. The world is vast, there are so many people ambitious for power, so many people willing to use cruel tricks to achieve their goals, we cannot rush to conclusions based on just a few coincidences.

However, deep down, a strong premonition still urged him to believe that he was on the right track. There was something, a strange coincidence between the time Dieu Vy started being pursued and the existence of the notebook containing clues about the old conspiracy, that made him unable to help but think of the possibility that the person who killed Thanh Phong, after eighteen years of anonymity, was now trying to erase the last traces that could reveal the entire truth.

The next morning, when stopping by the pharmacy as usual, Bach Trinh noticed that Dieu Vy looked tired, her eyes were dark from lack of sleep. Upon asking, she found out that last night she had a strange dream, in which there was an image of a man wearing an eagle mask standing quietly looking at her from afar, not saying a word, only cold eyes piercing through the mask, making her shiver and wake up in the middle of the night.

Hearing her story, Bach Trinh couldn't help but be startled. He did not believe in premonitions or supernatural premonitions, but the coincidence between Dieu Vy's dream and what the assassin had just declared last night made him even more confident that he was not going in the wrong direction. Perhaps, Thanh Phong's blood flowing through her body still retains some of the sharp intuition of a person who had lived in danger in the streets for many years, even though she herself had never been taught anything about martial arts or survival intuition by her father.

"Don't worry too much," he reassured her, even though his heart was filled with hundreds of tangled threads. "I will find out the real reason behind this, and will not let anyone harm you." Dieu Vy looked at him, there was an absolute trust in her eyes that she could not clearly explain why, she only felt that, even though this man had many unspoken mysteries, she could still put all her trust in him, as if some invisible string had connected the two of them long before they actually met.

That afternoon, the two of them sat at the pharmacy counter, and Dieu Vy told him the little details that remained in her childhood memories, about the nights her mother cried alone after lulling her to sleep, about the times her mother woke up in the middle of the night calling her father's name in delirium. Bach Trinh listened quietly, each small detail was like a puzzle piece helping him better visualize the silent pain that Thanh Phong's wife had suffered for many years, a pain that perhaps she herself never dared to tell her daughter in full, leaving only vague traces through each recurring nightmare.

"Sometimes this young lady wonders," Dieu Vy said, her voice low, "whether mother knew something about her father's death that she didn't dare say. But now that mother has passed away, perhaps that truth will forever be buried with her." Bach Trinh looked at her, thinking in his heart that the truth was not buried, but was gradually being revealed right before their eyes, it was just that the road to get to the end of that truth was still very long and full of thorns ahead.