Chapter 326

The negotiations went smoothly.

“To begin with, looking only at the year before last, the Yongbong Escort Bureau suffered losses amounting to twenty-five thousand silver nyang because of the Zhongnan Sect’s schemes. Do you acknowledge that?”

“Twenty-five thousand silver nyang? What nonsense! This old man absolutely does not acknow—”

“Ha. This old bastard’s starting again.”

Smack!

“Guh! I acknowledge it! I acknowledge it!”

Of course, there were times when things did not go smoothly. But all that mattered was making them go smoothly.

The Beggars’ Sect organized the mountain of information they had gathered, and the Lower District Sect used it to calculate the losses on their abacuses.

“Let’s see. The contract cancellation with the Nakcheon Merchant Guild on the seventeenth day of the first month last year. The Zhongnan Sect was involved in this one, too.”

“How much were the damages?”

“Six hundred and thirty-two silver nyang.”

I had been quietly listening to the Beggars’ Sect disciple and Lower District Sect member talk when I suddenly spoke up.

“Seven hundred nyang.”

“Pardon?”

“Seven hundred nyang.”

“……Yes.”

The middle-aged Lower District Sect member, clearly seasoned in financial dealings, hastily crossed out the character for six and changed it to seven.

As I watched them work, I suddenly picked up one of the bamboo slips that had been set aside.

“What’s this?”

“Ah, that was something that happened on the sixth day of the fifth month last year…”

“Skip the date. How much were the damages?”

“Nine hundred and twenty-six silver nyang.”

“Nine hundred and what?”

The Lower District Sect member quickly corrected himself when he saw my expression.

“One thousand nyang.”

“One thousand nyang? They really bled us dry. There isn’t a single place they didn’t stick their noses into.”

Two silver nyang was enough to cover a family of four’s living expenses for a month. Income inequality might have been severe, but one thousand silver nyang was enough for an ordinary commoner’s family to live in luxury for three generations.

As I marveled at the sum, the Lower District Sect member spoke up.

“Um, Young Hero Jin. That incident was not caused by the Zhongnan Sect.”

“It wasn’t? Then why is it here?”

“Well, you see, Young Master Jin…”

A long, slender finger poked my forearm. It belonged to Wolhwa, who had been standing behind me this entire time, giving off a strange fragrance.

“We brought every piece of information that seemed even slightly suspicious. When we compared everyone’s records, quite a few turned out not to have been Zhongnan’s doing. Young Lady Ju, the Young Bureau Head, would know that well.”

“Oh, really?”

Ju Hwaran was already examining the bamboo slip. After quickly scanning its contents, she nodded.

“That’s right. I remember this one clearly because the loss was so great. This escort mission failed because of a mistake on our side. Isn’t that right, Uncle Heo?”

Under everyone’s gaze, Chief Escort Heo Jun cleared his throat before answering.

“That’s correct. I personally took charge of the escort, and Chief Escort Song here accompanied me. Unfortunately, several misfortunes happened at once, and we failed to meet the deadline. In the end, we had to pay a contractual penalty of one thousand silver nyang.”

His face was filled with shame.

But I did not miss the suspicious look Heo Jun shot at Song Ilseom when he discreetly turned his head.

Nor did I miss Song Ilseom, standing far away with his back against the wall as though he had nothing whatsoever to do with the matter.

“Hmm.”

“What is it, Young Master Jin? Is something wrong?”

“No. Let’s move on.”

“All right, then. We’ll set this one aside separately.”

At that moment, someone’s hand blocked Wolhwa’s pale, slender fingers as they reached for the bamboo slip.

It was not a woman’s hand, but the rough hand of a martial artist.

Its owner was Ju Hwaran.

“Wait a moment.”

“Yes, Young Lady?”

“I’ve thought it over carefully, and I think this was probably the Zhongnan Sect’s doing after all.”

“……What?”

“……Huh?”

While everyone stared at her in confusion, Ju Hwaran paid them no attention. She picked up the bamboo slip and smoothly handed it to the Lower District Sect member who was calculating the damages.

“Add this one, too.”

“Y-Young Lady Ju.”

I feel like I’ve seen this scene somewhere before.

The Lower District Sect member glanced between Wolhwa and me, squeezed his eyes shut, and moved his brush.

With just a few strokes, Ju Hwaran added the hefty sum of one thousand silver nyang. Then she picked up another bamboo slip.

“All right, shall we take another look at the others?”

“……”

“……”

“This one, too. And that one. Oh, hand me the one over in the corner. Yes, that one.”

Ju Hwaran examined the bamboo slips and checked the amounts with lightning speed. Every time she did, the damages multiplied like a litter of rabbits.

The calculations taking place in her head were precise, and her fraud was audacious.

“This part seems suspicious, too.”

“Um, that was determined to have been a mistake by Chief Escort Heo Jun.”

“No. It was the Zhongnan Sect’s doing. Add it.”

“Th-then we’ll add another one hundred and fifty silver nyang…”

I let out a quiet laugh and spoke up.

“Two hundred silver nyang.”

“Pardon?”

“Let’s make it two hundred nyang.”

Ju Hwaran shook her head.

“Three hundred nyang.”

“……”

“……”

She called it and doubled the amount. Talk about bold.

Hwangbo Eom, who had already given up halfway, cried out in a blood-choked voice.

“I-I’ve never seen a pair of highway robbers like you!”

A pair of highway robbers?

Hwangbo Eom seemed intent on eating food set out for the dead starting tonight.

I was just about to start preparing the funeral rites when—

“Did you just call us highway robbers?”

Ju Hwaran stared at Hwangbo Eom with an icy expression I had never seen on her before.

“Our Yongbong Escort Bureau is demanding what we are rightfully owed. If you refuse even that… then I will let the whole world know who the real highway robber is.”

“How dare you…”

“If every one of these facts is revealed in full, will the disciples of the Zhongnan Sect still be able to show their faces in public?”

Ju Hwaran had been forced to lead the Yongbong Escort Bureau at an age barely shy of twenty, after her father collapsed from qi deviation.

She had lost so much because of the Zhongnan Sect’s schemes, and the grief of those she had been forced to send off had sunk deep into her heart.

“Escort Captain Seok Domin, escorts Gil Wangjun, Hong Seokjeong, and Noh Dusam, and caravan porter Seok Sam…”

She recited the names of people whose identities I did not know in a trembling voice, then glared at Hwangbo Eom with tear-filled eyes.

“Thirty-three in total. These are the people who lost their lives on this escort mission. Every one of them was family to the Yongbong Escort Bureau. Even when the bureau’s finances deteriorated so badly that we could no longer pay them properly, they stayed with us until the very end.”

They had not shared blood, but they had been like family.

Just as I had lost my former teammates, Ju Hwaran had lost people precious to her—people who had believed in her and followed her.

“Do not expect us to make any concessions. And neither I nor anyone else in the Yongbong Escort Bureau will ever forget this.”

“……!”

“Do you have anything else to say, Great Hero Hwangbo of the Great Zhongnan Sect?”

His tightly clenched fist trembled. Hwangbo Eom closed his eyes instead of answering.

Hyuk Sopyung stepped forward and gave Ju Hwaran a martial salute on his behalf.

“On behalf of our sect, I offer you our apologies, Young Lady Ju.”

“Please call me Young Bureau Head. And I will not accept an apology that consists only of words.”

At her blade-sharp reply, Hyuk Sopyung sighed.

“Of course not. I will immediately report this to my Master and the other Elders, who are still unaware of what happened.”

“I sincerely hope they were unaware.”

I did not know what sort of person the Zhongnan Sect Leader, Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord, was.

But the former Sect Leader, whom Jeok Cheongang had described as “quite the Daoist,” had personally named him as his successor. I could only hope that meant he was someone who could be reasoned with.

The Yongbong Escort Bureau’s situation is one thing, and my own situation is another.

As the old saying goes, a crayfish sides with a crab, and an arm bends inward.¹

I had killed too many enemies to count, but Hwangbo Eom was not merely one martial artist.

The name Taeeul Merciless Sword represented the Zhongnan Sect, and on a personal level, he was also the Sect Leader’s Senior Brother.

I could eliminate him if I wanted to… but what comes after that is the problem.

The Zhongnan Sect was powerful enough to belong to the Nine Sects and One Gang.

If I had cut off Hwangbo Eom’s head, would they have simply stood by and watched?

Hyuk Sopyung, who had tried to stop me, and everyone else here must have guessed the same thing deep down: that I would not kill Hwangbo Eom.

Should I be satisfied with leaving him half-crippled?

It left a bitter taste in my mouth, but there was nothing I could do.

Hwangbo Eom would need at least a year of recuperation to recover from the injuries he had suffered today.

The important thing was that he was still alive—and by the time he recovered, I would be even stronger.

Since they were kind enough to shit all over themselves first, things became much easier.

Hwangbo Eom had made two critical mistakes. The first was drawing his sword. The second was ordering the Taeeul Sword Unit to seal off the pavilion.

Drawing his sword was one thing, but the second mistake had been fatal.

Because it dragged not only the Beggars’ Sect and the Lower District Sect into this, but Huashan as well.

The Zhongnan Sect’s position would become even more precarious because of this incident—not only in the Murim, but financially as well.

The final number written on the bamboo slip after all the calculations were complete proved it.

“For the material and human losses suffered by our bureau, along with the enormous contractual penalty we would have owed your sect if this escort mission had failed… the total comes to four hundred thousand silver nyang. The Zhongnan Sect’s finances should be able to handle that much, shouldn’t they?”

Ju Hwaran’s voice was calm, but the same could not be said of the people listening to her.

Gung Gibang dropped the bamboo staff he had been holding in shock, while Wolhwa clicked her tongue and whispered to me.

“Young Lady Ju—no, the Young Bureau Head of the Yongbong Escort Bureau—is something else, isn’t she?”

“How large an amount is four hundred thousand silver nyang?”

“Well, if I told you that the annual budget of a prestigious major sect belonging to the Nine Sects and One Gang was just under one hundred thousand silver nyang, would that give you a rough idea?”

“……Huh.”

“Young Master, you just don’t know enough about it. If they paid that much all at once, half the Zhongnan Sect’s foundations would have to be torn out.”

In modern terms, would that be several trillion won? Thinking of it that way made the sum feel more tangible.

I was briefly rendered speechless by the astronomical amount when a gentle voice slipped into my ear.

“Not bad. She’s beautiful enough to topple kingdoms, she’s intelligent, and she has backbone. Our Young Master is going to have his work cut out for him.”

“Pardon?”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“No, I’m sure you just said…”

“Did I? When?”

What was that? I feel like I just heard something awfully strange.

It was just as I was giving Wolhwa a suspicious look that Ju Hwaran’s powerful voice rang out.

“Great Hero Hwangbo, please stamp your handprint yourself as proof.”

We had already reached the final stage.

Hwangbo Eom was visibly furious, but he had no options left.

As though he intended to curse every person in the room until the day he died, he took each of them in one by one with his eyes. Then he pressed his bloodied palm to the bamboo slip as a seal.

“Is that enough now?”

“That is sufficient. From this moment on, no contract exists between the Yongbong Escort Bureau and the Zhongnan Sect aside from the compensation payment.”

Ju Hwaran then gave a deep martial salute.

“I will not see you out. Return safely to your main compound. I hope we never have cause to meet again.”

“You…!”

Hwangbo Eom tried to shake off the hands of the Zhongnan disciples supporting him, but even that was no longer easy.

After coughing several times, each cough wet with blood, the last person he glared at was me.

“I have one question.”

“You can ask, but think before you open your mouth. Otherwise, you’ll be buried right there.”

Hwangbo Eom shuddered once before speaking.

“Did you truly… truly cross the wall?”

“Oh, so that’s what you were so curious about.”

“What I saw was that your Force was not yet complete. Then how…”

“My Master once told me that people see only as much as they can see, and believe only what they want to believe.”

“What does that…”

“Is it because you’re so old? You can’t seem to grasp the point. Think whatever you want about my realm. But…”

I could understand why he had his doubts.

But what could I do? In both reality and the Murim, I was the kind of existence that could be summed up in three words: beyond common sense.

That was the System, and that was who I was.

I gazed steadily at Hwangbo Eom and continued.

“Let’s remember two things. You’re weaker than me, and I’m stronger than you. And this place is… the Murim.”

Might Makes Right. The strong devour the weak.

The ground beneath my feet was the Murim, and I was a martial artist standing upon it. Hwangbo Eom, who had lived as a martial artist for eighty years, understood the meaning of my words better than anyone.

“The Murim. You said the Murim.”

His mutter sounded almost like a sigh. After a brief, hollow laugh, his face became utterly cold.

“We’ll meet again. We will!”

“I’ll come pay my respects at your funeral next time. I promise!”

Half a shichen ago, he might have ground his teeth at me, but he had no teeth left for that now.

Hwangbo Eom turned away, radiating cold fury, and shook off the disciples’ hands as he shouted.

“Let go! I’ll walk on my own!”

Though staggering from his serious injuries, Hwangbo Eom forced himself to walk away. Hyuk Sopyung bowed his head heavily before departing, while the Zhongnan disciples hurried after him.

As I watched their backs, one word suddenly came to mind.

Gratitude and grudges.²

One of the great gears that drove the Murim.

I did not know what consequences today’s events would bring in the future. But I did not regret it. I was already at odds with the Zhongnan Sect, and ignoring an obvious scheme would have left a bad taste in my mouth.

Pests have to be exterminated before they grow any bigger.

Pest control. That was all.

Just as I reached that conclusion with a lightened heart, another thought suddenly crossed my mind.

Oh, right.

There was still one left. A pest I absolutely had to catch.

A remarkable pest, too—the kind that had swapped Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng for Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng.

And I had not been the one who drew the sword to exterminate it.

Shing.

A supple flexible sword slid into view. Dagger Hidden Flower Ju Hwaran’s deep-red lips parted, and a toneless voice flowed from them.

“Now there is only one last matter left. Isn’t that right?”

One person was reflected in her dark, gleaming eyes.