Chapter 322

Wolhwa seemed even more beautiful than she had been a year ago.

A dazzling outfit and an alluring smile. She approached me gracefully, like a peacock, and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Our Young Master Jin. You’ve gotten even more dashing since I last saw you.”

At least this part of her hadn’t changed.

I let out a quiet laugh and pushed her hand away.

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I’m hurt. After a whole year, is that all you have to say?”

“Hmm. I suppose you’ve gotten a little prettier, too.”

“It feels like I had to fish for that compliment myself, but… fine. This is enough to pass. Coming all the way here after dropping everything I was doing was worth it.”

As Wolhwa gave me one of her characteristic eye-smiles, a young beggar in shabby clothes approached from beside her with a displeased expression.

Three knots were tied together at his waist, symbolizing his position within the Beggars’ Sect.

In other words, he was a three-knot disciple of the Beggars’ Sect.

“I’m the Black Beggar, head of the Beggars’ Sect’s Xi’an branch.”

“Yes, I’m from the Jin Family of Taiyuan—”

“I already know. You’re as handsome as I’d heard. With a face like that, you could easily earn dozens of silver nyang a day if you went begging. Have you ever considered joining the Beggars’ Sect?”

“…”

“Well, forget it if you’re not interested. In any case, it seems someone who should be here is missing.”

Huff, huff.

Heukgeol Beggar looked around, blowing hard through his nose, until he found his target and shouted.

“Gung Gibang! You son of a bitch!”

When did that bastard get over there?

Gung Gibang was crouched beneath a table some distance away. He gave us an awkward smile.

“Oh, look. My twenty-year buddy Big Nose is here. What brings you here?”

“I told you not to call me Big Nose! And what brings me here? You miserable bastard! I warned you over and over to make sure this didn’t happen, but you went and did it anyway…!”

Heukgeol Beggar furiously shook the wooden slip in his hand.

Beneath the message telling him to gather the necessary information and come to Tengwang Pavilion, eight yellow hairs had been attached. They had apparently been plucked from a stray dog wandering the neighborhood.

Anyone else would have wondered what the hairs were supposed to mean, but according to Gung Gibang, they were the mark of an eight-knot disciple of the Beggars’ Sect.

In other words, the mark of the Successor Beggar.

“Ahem. I told you, I couldn’t help it.”

“Damn it. If the Law Beggar comes looking for you over this, remember that it’s all your fault.”

“Now, now. You have a lot to say for a mere three-knot disciple. You should be attending to the Successor Beggar instead.”

“You’re no Successor Beggar. You’re a successor mutt.”

Despite the words, Heukgeol Beggar reached out and pulled a chair away so that Gung Gibang could climb out more easily.

Judging from their conversation, the two seemed to have been close friends since they were young beggars.

That makes things even better. This should go smoothly.

For someone else, however, it would be very bad news.

I turned my head, and Hwangbo Eom’s twisted face entered my view. The corners of my mouth rose of their own accord.

“If this is your first time meeting, you should at least exchange greetings. Both of them are major figures in Shaanxi Province.”

The Zhongnan Sect could not compare to Huashan, but its position in Shaanxi Province was by no means insignificant.

There was no way Hwangbo Eom did not know the branch leaders of the Beggars’ Sect and the Lower District Sect. I had only added that last part to sour his mood.

“You…”

As I had expected, Hwangbo Eom already knew who they were. He bit his lip. His fingers twitched, and he looked desperate to draw the sword propped beside the table and swing it at someone.

Go ahead. Draw it.

But Hwangbo Eom was not nearly as easy to provoke as the Roaring Fury Swordsman.

The eyes of the sly old man slowly turned cold.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The answer came from behind me.

“Indeed. I’m looking forward to whatever our Young Master Jin gets up to next, so my heart is already pounding.”

Hwangbo Eom raised his eyes sharply toward Wolhwa, who had spoken without warning.

“This is not a matter for the Lower District Sect. I do not know why you came here, but… it would be best for you to withdraw at this point.”

“Great Hero Hwangbo, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do that.”

Wolhwa continued with a radiant smile.

“I’ve already accepted a commission. Of course, the client is the Young Master Jin standing here. Isn’t that right?”

“Oh, absolutely. Did you receive the silver nyang retainer I sent through the attendant?”

“Of course I did. But one silver nyang is terribly stingy. I’ll make you pay me plenty later, so be prepared.”

I had no idea how much she intended to fleece me for, but that was a problem for later.

Hwangbo Eom silently glared at Wolhwa and me as we chatted amiably. His next target was Heukgeol Beggar.

“And what does the Beggars’ Sect intend to do?”

“Great Hero Hwangbo, this is quite a situation.”

Heukgeol Beggar scratched his lice-ridden head and bowed deeply.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not a matter I can do anything about.”

“Is that the will of the Beggars’ Sect?”

Heukgeol Beggar bent at the waist in alarm.

“What? Oh, heavens, no. How could a mere three-knot disciple like me presume to speak for the Beggars’ Sect?”

“Then withdraw. Unless you wish to make an enemy of our sect.”

“Well, the thing is, we have something called sect rules on our side, too. That might be difficult.”

“You call that an excuse?”

“It isn’t an excuse. It’s the truth. Isn’t that right? No, wouldn’t you say so, Successor Beggar?”

Gung Gibang avoided Hwangbo Eom’s gaze and nodded.

“Well, yeah.”

“This old man went easy on you because you were a young prodigy of the Beggars’ Sect, but you’ve gone too far…”

Hwangbo Eom looked back and forth between the two of them, then shouted like a thunderclap.

“Enough excuses! Beggars’ Sect, will you get the hell out of here already?”

Boom!

With a furious roar, Hwangbo Eom slammed his palm into the center of the table.

A low rumble rolled through the room. The table could not withstand his profound internal energy and burst open, leaving a hole shaped like his palm.

And then…

“Good heavens.”

“Well, this is something.”

At that moment, the atmosphere around the bowing Gung Gibang and Heukgeol Beggar changed.

The two men looked at each other’s grime-covered faces and let out quiet laughs.

“Hey, Gibang. I guess we really are beggars. Even here, people treat us like beggars.”

“Tell me about it. I’m in a lousy mood today, too. Should we just call every beggar in Shaanxi Province?”

“As the branch leader, that’s my job. If we gather only the people in Xi’an, we should have about a thousand.”

“That’s not your call, three-knot. I’m an eight-knot—the one and only eight-knot disciple in the Beggars’ Sect! If the Successor Beggar calls, they’ll come running even from the neighboring province.”

“Shaanxi will become a den of beggars. At that point, wouldn’t it be looting rather than begging?”

“Now, now, what do you mean, looting? I hear there’s a great deal of food on Mount Zhongnan… Let’s wipe out every edible thing while we’re at it.”

It wasn’t Alibaba and the Forty Thieves.

It was Gung Gibang and ten thousand beggars.

I already knew that the Beggars’ Sect was a great sect with a hundred thousand disciples, but hearing them talk about it made me want to piss myself.

At minimum, it would be a swarm of locusts.

If ten thousand beggars swept over Mount Zhongnan, it would become a desert within a month. The complete annihilation of the mountain wildlife would be a given, and they would strip away every edible blade of grass and shred of bark.

“Y-you bastards, what kind of nonsense are you spouting…?”

Hwangbo Eom’s wrinkled hand trembled.

“Do you think this old man would stand by and watch such a thing happen? I will personally demand that the Sect Leader punish both of you!”

“Do as you wish. My Master will beat me within an inch of my life, but surely he won’t kill his only Disciple. However…”

Gung Gibang was no longer the man who had been edging his feet backward, trying to escape the situation. His voice had settled low, deeper than a swamp.

“As the Successor Beggar of the Beggars’ Sect, I have issued an order to the Xi’an branch. And there are only two people under heaven who can rescind an order from the Successor Beggar: the Dragon-Head Gang Leader, who leads the hundred thousand disciples, and the Law Beggar, who enforces the sect rules.”

“…”

“My Master, the Dragon-Head Gang Leader, has told me again and again: we may not have homes, but does that mean we have no pride? Great Hero Hwangbo, you have touched the pride of beggars.”

A veteran beggar, all right.

It wasn’t easy to look that cool and that pathetic at the same time, but he pulled it off effortlessly.

Maybe he’s actually good at begging.

With a voice brimming with tragic grandeur and words that made him sound utterly pitiable, Gung Gibang dominated the room before turning to Heukgeol Beggar.

“You brought everything I listed in the letter, right?”

“How could I fail to, when it was the Successor Beggar’s order?”

At Heukgeol Beggar’s gesture, the Beggars’ Sect disciples from the Xi’an branch, who had been waiting behind him, began stacking the bamboo slips they had brought.

There were a full one hundred of them.

But that was not all.

“What are you all waiting for? It’s time to get to work.”

When Wolhwa’s alluring voice rang out, the Lower District Sect members standing quietly nearby placed bundles of paper beside the bamboo slips.

Their number was roughly equal to that of the Beggars’ Sect’s documents.

The sight before him made Hwangbo Eom’s complexion turn rigid.

“What—what is all this?”

I gazed fondly at the bamboo slips and sheets of paper.

“Can’t you think of anything? For example… the Yongbong Escort Bureau’s unending run of bad luck over the past two years.”

“…”

“Let’s swim upstream like salmon and retrace the past. And while we’re at it, let’s find out how the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng that was on its way here without a problem managed to disappear so completely.”

The energy of the two people thrashed with the vigor of salmon fighting upstream.

One was Hwangbo Eom, overwhelmed by confusion.

The other was Ju Hwaran.

Her luminous eyes, frozen cold without a trace of anger or excitement, turned toward Hwangbo Eom.

“So that’s what happened after all.”

“Did you know?”

“I couldn’t not know. I suspected it all along, but I had no choice but to let it happen.”

“Because we were up against one of the Nine Sects and One Gang.”

Her voice drifted away into the empty air.

For the past two years, the Zhongnan Sect had manipulated the Yongbong Escort Bureau’s failures from the shadows. Someone who did not know the circumstances might say that she had brought down the Escort Bureau in a mere two years, but that would be wrong.

The Yongbong Escort Bureau had already been a listing ship, and Ju Hwaran had become its captain at an age when she was not even twenty.

She was the reason the bureau had endured the threat of the enormous monster known as the Zhongnan Sect.

But now… everything would be different.

“You’ve been through a lot.”

At my brief words, Ju Hwaran bit her lips tightly.

And what she chose was not tears, but a smile.

“Thank you, Young Hero Jin. But I’ll hear that after this escort mission is over.”

She was right.

Just as Ju Hwaran had said, the Yongbong Escort Bureau’s escort mission was not over yet.

I gave Heukgeol Beggar and Wolhwa a small nod.

“Let’s begin.”

Hwangbo Eom suddenly wondered.

What is happening?

Everything had been proceeding smoothly. He had taken each step carefully over the past two years, and all that remained was to bring it to a close.

There had been a time when he thought so.

He really had.

“Last summer, the Yongbong Escort Bureau suffered a loss of one thousand silver nyang when its deal with the Geumo Merchant Guild fell through. A man named Hwang Cheolsim secretly intervened in the process. According to what our sect uncovered, he was a lay disciple of Zhongnan, and…”

The voices reaching Hwangbo Eom’s ears felt distant and unfamiliar.

Most of the information uncovered by the Lower District Sect and the Beggars’ Sect was true.

By cross-checking their findings, they had confirmed the facts more thoroughly and uncovered new incidents. The information continued to branch and spread like the stem of a plant.

This is impossible.

Hwangbo Eom stood frozen like a statue, repeating the same thought over and over.

Then one person entered his field of vision.

The corners of his mouth were raised. His clear eyes seemed capable of seeing straight through the human heart.

Jin Taekyung was laughing at him.

It’s all that bastard’s fault. If only he hadn’t been there, if only…!

People said that Taeeul Merciless Sword Hwangbo Eom was different from his two martial brothers.

But they were wrong.

At this very moment, Hwangbo Eom’s mind was being bleached white by rage.

The cold, poisonous heart that had occupied that space was gone. In its place was something even worse—a murderous intent that filled him to the brim.

“You bastard—!”

Shiiing!

Seizing an Object Through Empty Space.

The scabbard flew into Hwangbo Eom’s grasp, and a silver line burst from it.