Chapter 1060

Great Sir.

An unidentified Supreme Peak master. No one knew his name or anything about him.

About a dozen years ago, he had subdued the lawless Ningxia Province in a single stroke, then defied everyone’s expectations by settling into a life of idleness. My first impression of this extraordinary man was:

He looks like a beggar.

That wasn’t just a figure of speech. He really did.

His hair and beard were so long they covered his face and reached his waist. Worse, they were matted together.

His clothes were torn and stained in so many places that “rags” would have been more accurate. And the stench coming off his grime-caked body was innovative—no, revolutionary.

A beggar among beggars.

An utter pauper. The king of beggars.

Even Gung Gibang, the Beggars’ Sect’s Successor Beggar and a bona fide minor chief among its hundred thousand beggars, would take one look at this man and cry, “You beg like shit!” I could guarantee he’d cut the rope tied around his waist.

And yet…

“So this really is the beggar everyone’s heard about—or, I mean, the Great Sir?”

“Hard as it is to believe, it’s all true.”

The Bow Saint answered in a nasal voice. She was already standing well away, pinching her nose shut.

That was when—

“Greeeaat Siiiir! Why did you take so long to come?!”

With a plaintive wail, Ma Junggeol, eldest of the Seven Masters of Baekma Bang, came sprinting from far off and threw his arms around the strange man.

Or, more accurately, he tried to hug him, then recoiled as if burned and doubled over like a shrimp.

“Ugh. Blegh.”

“……”

Yeah, I understood.

I’d spent enough time rolling around in Gates to be able to stand there and take it. Even now, the stench was bad enough to make me wonder if it could really be coming from a human body.

Of course, even I was reaching my limit.

“Wait, just—give me a little space. Why are you doing this when we’ve only just met?”

My initial shock didn’t last long.

I desperately breathed through my mouth to block out as much of the smell as possible, then tried to push the man away. But his legs were planted deep in the ground like a thousand-geun¹ boulder. He didn’t budge.

Looking at that, he really does seem to be the Great Sir…

Even though I’d held back, my strength was so far beyond ordinary limits that even a decent Peak master would have struggled to withstand it.

My head understood. My heart didn’t.

It was like finding out that Kim, the homeless guy who ruled the second exit at Seoul Station, was actually the chairman of a major corporation.

But seriously, why are you crying so hard?

As I stood there, unsure what to do and darting my eyes around, the strange man—no, the Great Sir—who’d been wailing in my arms finally spoke in a congested voice.

“Ahem. Ahem. Forgive me. It was such a moving moment that I couldn’t help crying.”

I looked down at the front of my chest, soaked and sticky, and corrected him.

“I don’t think tears were the only thing coming out.”

“My nose was running, too.”

I could understand tears and a runny nose, but why he had to let them both out while clinging to me was beyond me. Still, I nodded, summoning the bare minimum of patience and respect for my elder.

“Uh, sure. So you’re feeling better now?”

“Thanks to you, I’ve calmed down a little. Do you mind if I blow my nose?”

“You really do everything, don’t you?”

“Hmm? What was that?”

“Nothing. Go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

The Great Sir thanked me in a guileless voice, then blew his nose with a sound that seemed to clear out his entire head.

Phaaaang!

Into the hem of my clothes.

“Whew, that feels much better… Why are you making that face?”

“……”

Ah.

I was really about to snap.

To sum it up, even with half my sanity gone, I somehow managed not to punch the Great Sir in the head.

Starting a fight in the middle of a battlefield that hadn’t been fully secured yet would have been unwise. More than that, Perfected Being Hyeoncheon had quickly grasped what was happening and stepped in.

“Here you are, Great Sir.”

Anyone would have found the sight surprising. No, astonishing.

Who was Perfected Being Hyeoncheon?

The Sect Leader of the Kongtong Sect, one of the Nine Sects and One Gang; a hero of the Great Faction War; and a Supreme Peak master representing Gansu.

If we were talking about the Marine Corps, he’d be a legendary first-class veteran who’d taken part in the Incheon Landing Operation.² He had the seniority to stand in the middle of the world and shout, “Everyone below me and above you, fall in!”

And yet this man, whose standing in Murim and martial prowess both ranked among the highest in the world, was the first to offer a fist-and-palm salute with the utmost respect.

To a strange man who looked worse than even the Beggars’ Sect leader.

It was enough to make Jeok Cheongang, watching from nearby, mutter:

“What the hell does he have on him…?”

For that moment, I had more or less the same thought.

Maybe the filthy-looking fellow had a video file titled something like Kongtong’s Perfected One H and His Secret Hand Games.

But there was a reason anyone could understand why Perfected Being Hyeoncheon would show such respect to a strange man followed by a bunch of former mounted bandits.

“This Great Sir was of tremendous help to us.”

The story went like this.

After their defeat at Dunhuang, Perfected Being Hyeoncheon and the Kongtong Sect survivors had no idea where to go.

They had to flee east to avoid Dark Heaven’s forces gathering like clouds in the west. But now that they felt betrayed by their allies, heading east would have been like walking straight into a tiger’s jaws.

So they chose to go north, toward the grasslands.

“We considered turning south for Qinghai, but we had no idea what Dark Heaven might already have done there. We had no choice but to head for the grasslands, where far fewer people lived.”

Though Qinghai lay at the far edge of the Central Plains, there were still plenty of eyes watching from every direction.

The grasslands, by contrast, were vast and sparsely populated, making them better for evading pursuit. If Dark Heaven had reached both places, anyone would have chosen the latter.

“We kept heading north without rest. Even after passing Anxi and entering the grasslands, we couldn’t let our guard down. We thought we might pause long enough to recover, then see what was happening in Gansu. Or perhaps cross the grasslands and go all the way to Shaanxi.”

But for the Kongtong Disciples, already suffering injuries both serious and minor from the fierce battle at Dunhuang, it was a grueling march.

Even Perfected Being Hyeoncheon, who had to lead them all, had reached his limit from a severe Internal Injury.

“Still, we couldn’t stop. Miserable and unsure what lay ahead, we had no choice but to keep moving. Then, after several days on the road, we saw a light flickering in the distance one night.”

The nights on the grasslands were deep and silent.

For the fugitives crossing that endless expanse, any light in the dark was something to be wary of.

“We crept closer, keeping as quiet as we could. A strange man was roasting camel meat. It was the first food we’d seen in four days, and we were all half out of our minds.”

Hyuk Mujin had drifted closer at some point and was listening intently. He let out a low, “Ah.”

“Was that the beggar—sorry, the Great Sir?”

Perfected Being Hyeoncheon nodded.

“Indeed. He saw us shivering in the cold and invited us to sit with him without hesitation.”

“Now that’s generous. He even offered you food. No wonder you’re grateful, Sect Leader.”

The heartwarming story made the air around us feel a little warmer. Then Perfected Being Hyeoncheon spoke again.

“No, we didn’t get any.”

“What?”

“As soon as he saw us, he wolfed down all the meat and told us we could warm ourselves by the fire for a while before we went our separate ways.”

“……!”

“……!”

What the hell?

Everyone’s eyes turned toward the Great Sir, mine included. He bashfully smoothed his wild, tangled hair.

“I only had enough for myself at the time…”

The air turned cold again. Perfected Being Hyeoncheon continued.

“Regardless, the Great Sir helped us greatly. He gave every Disciple of our sect, myself included, a place to hide for a while and treated the wounded.”

A master could recognize another master.

At first, Perfected Being Hyeoncheon had been wary of the unidentified Supreme Peak master, but he hadn’t had any other real options. Before long, he’d come to feel the man’s sincere goodwill.

“While we were there, we also had an unexpected visitor.”

“An unexpected visitor?”

“At first, we thought the enemy had found our hideout and come to attack. But that wasn’t it. It turned out some men called the Seven Masters of White Bones had come to escort the Great Sir.”

“The Seven Masters of Baekma Bang,” Ma Junggeol interjected through gritted teeth.

“Oh, I must have mixed that up. The Black-Horse Seven?”

“I said the Seven Masters of Baekma Bang! Honestly, this is driving me insa—”

Bap!

I smacked Ma Junggeol on the back of the head without question or explanation and shut him up. Then I looked around.

Quite a few riders were moving across the battlefield on snorting horses.

They wore relatively light leather armor and carried weapons such as lances and crescent-bladed polearms. Now I could finally be sure who they were.

“Then could those people be…?”

“You’re thinking of the right people. They’re the horse caravans of Ningxia Province.”

Ma Junggeol, grimacing as he rubbed the back of his head, spoke in a tiny voice.

“More precisely, the horse caravans centered around Baekma Bang… Gah!”

He clamped his mouth shut when our eyes met. But this time, instead of hitting him, I patted him on the shoulder.

The Seven Masters of Baekma Bang had promised a few days ago that they would bring the Great Sir back. They’d returned with the horse caravans under their command, and thanks to them, we’d been able to deal a decisive, fatal blow to the enemies who were on the verge of collapse.

So that’s how this worked out.

I’d more or less forgotten they existed.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I hadn’t expected much from them.

You always had to prepare for the worst in a battle, and the horse caravans, made up of former mounted bandits, weren’t exactly people you could trust.

But they had kept the promise they made to me, even if they were a little later than planned. And with the Great Sir’s help, Perfected Being Hyeoncheon and the Kongtong Disciples had recovered from their injuries and returned to Gansu alongside thousands of horse-caravan riders.

Still, one question remained.

So who the hell is that guy, really?

I looked at the man they called the Great Sir, my eyes full of questions.

A moment ago, he’d clung to me and sobbed as if we were reuniting with a long-lost family. Now he was yawning widely just because the story had gotten a little long. As expected, he seemed far from sane.

Just as Ma Junggeol and his sworn brothers had told me.

Quietly, secretly, I reached out toward the Great Sir.

With a hand of detection, invisible and granted to me alone.

Skill: Activate Qi Sense.

Whooooosh.

The blue circle spread outward from me and finally reached the Great Sir.