The Chief of Socheong-chae
Han Yuhyeon looked up at the towering Green Forest giant—not quite to the eyes, but about as high as the philtrum. Those eyes were far too fierce and bulging to meet head-on. To be honest, he was a little scared.
This was wisdom he'd learned in his previous life. When you ran into someone who looked mean, keeping your gaze down made survival a whole lot easier. Especially if that someone had weird tattoos crawling up the bare, sleeveless arms.
"Have you anything left to say in your defense?"
"And what would you do if we did?"
The bold voice that answered was, of course, not Han Yuhyeon's. It belonged to Baekri-wan, who had been watching the whole situation unfold with clear displeasure from the side.
Perhaps the sudden, hard push from the woman who'd been standing quietly beside him threw him off. For a moment, the Green Forest giant stood there like a mute who'd swallowed honey.
"I asked what you'd do if we had something to say. Answer me."
"Wait—you're a woman? With a face like that?"
Ah. So he was the one who'd been thrown off. A small ripple passed through the giant's massive eyes.
"Damn. What a pitiful wretch. But it changes nothing of what I must do."
The Green Forest man shook his head, as if steeling himself in his own way.
"What would I do if you had an excuse? You ask because you don't know? Obviously, I'd still kill you."
"So if we don't have an excuse, you won't kill us? That can't be right either."
Baekri-wan pressed him sharply. This time the giant shut his mouth again, genuinely cornered by the logic. Baekri-wan rested a hand on one hip and spoke as if addressing an idiot.
"So why bother saying pointless things? You were going to charge in and kill us either way."
"You're right. I apologize."
The giant scratched the back of his head, looking as though he had sincerely accepted that Baekri-wan's words made perfect sense. She spoke next in the firm tone of a teacher correcting a student.
"Try it again."
"I must kill you both."
"Put a little more feeling into it. Right now it just sounds like you're reading lines someone told you to say."
"I must kill you both!"
"Yes. Speak with that kind of conviction."
"Did I do well?"
"You did well."
Hearing Baekri-wan's praise, the giant threw his head back and laughed loudly.
"I like a woman of the Dao with such a straightforward temperament. If only your face weren't so stomach-turning, I'd be tempted to propose dual cultivation."
"Your looks aren't exactly a prize either."
"Even if I'm ugly, I would never dare compare myself to that face."
The laughing giant instantly turned serious. Baekri-wan pulled a mirror from her storage pouch, checked her current face, and nodded.
"Fair enough. I'll apologize for that one."
Baekri-wan and the giant both laughed. What kind of conversation even was this? Stuck in the middle of it, Han Yuhyeon sank into deep contemplation. The flow of this dialogue was something he could live several hundred years in his previous life's Korea and never once overhear. His mind felt hazy.
"So you've just been waiting here the whole time?"
Belatedly recovering his wits, Han Yuhyeon asked the giant.
"When you sell goods from So-ui-ju, the shops that take them are usually fixed. I have Green Forest men stationed at the other stores as well."
"Tighter organization than I expected. Still, those friends of yours didn't seem worth this much effort—stationing people and hunting us down just for revenge."
"I don't think those bastards were particularly valuable either. But if I don't move like this, other cultivators will mock us—and even my own men will mock Socheong-chae. I have a duty to stop that."
True to the Green Forest tradition that mirrored the outlaw bands of the martial world, they used the word chae—stockade—in their name. Socheong-chae, though. The Green Forest men of So-ui-ju? They sure had slapped that name together without much thought.
"Then… are you the chief?"
"I am. I am Geom Jung-gun, Chief of Socheong-chae."
"Damn it. Of course it had to be the chief."
"Indeed. You should consider yourselves quite unlucky."
"Is there any way you could just look the other way and let this slide?"
Han Yuhyeon spoke in the sly, servile tone of a man begging a public servant who'd come to crack down on smoking. Geom Jung-gun shook his head firmly.
"There is not. Unfortunately, however, we cannot fight here."
Geom Jung-gun glanced around. This was an officially recognized demilitarized zone agreed upon by the cultivator sects of So-ui-ju. Even a Green Forest chief leading a band of outlaws apparently wouldn't go so far as to violate that.
"So you'll wait until we leave and then strike?"
"I will."
"Until we leave?"
"Until you leave."
"And if we never leave?"
"Then I suppose I'll have to keep waiting."
Geom Jung-gun answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, wondering why anyone would even ask. Han Yuhyeon sighed. This was about average for cultivators. No interest in repaying kindness, but a grudge? That they'd settle with interest piled on thick. Filthy human nature.
"Do you even know which faction we belong to, to come out swinging so carelessly?"
While Han Yuhyeon was still searching for something to say, Baekri-wan cut in.
She had a point. Handled poorly, this could escalate into a full-blown faction war. As the head of an organization, a Green Forest chief ought to run the numbers first.
"Hmm. A sharp observation. But the Green Forest men who went silent were patrolling the border region with Yeongil-ju—so you're the riffraff from Yeongil-ju, aren't you?"
"That's right."
Han Yuhyeon's eyes flew wide as he stared at Baekri-wan. Why would you just admit that so easily?
"But we're not exactly a pushover faction either. Green Forest? You're just a pile of the local mountain trash from that region scraped together into one place, aren't you?"
"That's also true."
This time Han Yuhyeon looked at Geom Jung-gun. He'd thought that was a fairly insulting remark, but the Green Forest chief accepted it without the slightest hesitation.
"The only reason you're coming after us now is to keep that pathetic joke of an organization called Socheong-chae alive. If you fight us and get wiped out, you'll only make things worse."
"Don't call it a pathetic joke of an organization. I've led it for fifty years in my own way."
Outwardly he looked like a man barely past forty—early forties at most—yet he'd led them for fifty years? He must be considerably older. Cultivators truly could not be judged by appearance.
"Your point isn't wrong, woman. If you lot are some threat I'm unaware of. But would trash that crawled over from Yeongil-ju really be a threat to people who make their living here in So-ui-ju?"
"You never know."
"That's not the kind of vague answer I can let slide. The survival of Socheong-chae hangs on this."
That serious, was it? Baekri-wan didn't argue and simply nodded, so it must not have been an exaggeration.
If he failed to avenge Green Forest brothers who died on the Yeongil-ju border, who would stay in the Green Forest at all?
Even orthodox sects would turn a blind eye to outer disciples, but they made a point of settling the debts of their inner disciples for the same reason. It wasn't family love the way it was in martial arts stories—without that much, the organization simply lost its meaning. Thinking of it that way, Geom Jung-gun's words made a certain sense.
"So. Which faction do you belong to?"
"It's called the Baekun Sect."
"Never heard of it. Then again, I don't know any of Yeongil-ju's sects."
Then why did you even ask? Cultivators were the kind of people who, in the modern world, would all be tied down with rope in a psychiatric ward.
"Then you—the one whose parents were presumably fish—what's your position in the sect?"
"Inner disciple."
"And the ugly woman beside you?"
Han Yuhyeon glanced at Baekri-wan. She gave no sign that he shouldn't say, so he answered honestly.
"She is an Elder."
"Oh. That's unexpected."
Geom Jung-gun let out a small sound of surprise.
"Then prove it. Prove that you're a faction that poses a real threat to us."
"How do we do that?"
Han Yuhyeon asked back. He felt like he could do almost anything if ordered. Kneeling was well within his skill set.
"By fighting me and showing how strong you are."
"Ah."
Cancel that. This he probably couldn't do. Honestly, kneeling was the only thing he was confident about. Han Yuhyeon spun his gears, hunting for a scheme, and was about to open his mouth—but Geom Jung-gun spoke first.
"For reference, don't even think of handing this off to the woman of the Dao. I want to see the level of an inner disciple, not an Elder."
"……"
He'd been planning to dump it on Baekri-wan somehow, but his intention had been completely seen through.
And Geom Jung-gun had a point. A sect's strength was usually measured by the level of its most basic members—the inner disciples.
"Fine. Screw it. Let's do this."
"If you don't try, what exactly can you even do?"
"I said I'll do it, you bastard."
Han Yuhyeon had been watching his mouth as carefully as he could, but the moment the fight was set, his language turned rough at once. Geom Jung-gun let out a hearty laugh.
"Good, good. But before we fight, I have a request."
"What now, at this point?"
"Those storage pouches you took from my men. I'd prefer you didn't sell them."
"Why?"
"They're keepsakes, in their own way. Those bastards had families. I was thinking of delivering them to their relatives."
What was this, all of a sudden? Looking after even his subordinates' bereaved families? Was this the rare sight of actual responsibility in a cultivation world?
Moved despite himself, Han Yuhyeon walked straight over to the merchant who had been standing there blankly. Laid out before him on the table were the storage pouches of the Green Forest men from earlier, along with the goods they'd looted from Biyong's house.
"How much for all of this?"
"I'll value it at a total of two hundred eleven lower-grade spirit stones."
"Sold."
He sold the lot on the spot without a second's hesitation. The total came out higher than expected, which put him in a good mood. The Green Forest pouches were one thing, but the haul from Biyong's house must have done a lot of the heavy lifting. The merchant from Jeongga Commerce had already rummaged through the pouches and set the prices in advance—no ordinary skill. Places that did good business did good business for a reason.
The moment the shop owner held out the pouch of spirit stones, Han Yuhyeon snatched it and stuffed it into his own storage pouch. Geom Jung-gun's face twisted as if a whirlpool were spinning across it.
"You crazy bastard."
"If it bothers you that much, buy them back yourself, you son of a bitch."
Accounts had to be kept clean. By the long-standing rules of the cultivation world, these were Han Yuhyeon's now. Who did this guy think he was, trying to freeload?
"You're dead."
"Would you have not killed me if I hadn't sold them?"
"Well, no."
"Then that was another useless remark, just like earlier. Seeing how you never learn from the past, your intelligence must be deficient. That's why you've spent fifty years as nothing but a bandit stockade chief."
"Looking at how you dodge the fight and only open that mouth of yours, I suppose your sect teaches oral arts instead of actual techniques."
Seething with rage, Geom Jung-gun's eyebrows climbed all the way to the top of his forehead. If they were going to fight anyway, stoking the other man's emotions could only improve the odds.
"Follow me outside the north gate this instant, you bastard."
Geom Jung-gun stormed out of Jeongga Commerce, fuming. Han Yuhyeon, however, felt no particular urge to hurry. Watching the chief's rapidly shrinking back, he turned to Baekri-wan.
"I'll just step out to the latrine for a moment."
"In this situation?"
"If I soil myself mid-fight, we're in real trouble."
"You're a cultivator and you can't even hold that?"
"No. I'm rather sensitive about… convenience."
"Disgusting."
Baekri-wan furrowed her brow. Han Yuhyeon asked the owner of Jeongga Commerce for the latrine's location and headed over.
The moment he shut the latrine door, a thick, sticky stench of shit hit him from below. The times Han Yuhyeon missed the modern world the most were exactly moments like this—visiting a latrine. How he longed for a clean western toilet.
It was a place he preferred to avoid whenever possible, but whether modern world or cultivation world, few spaces made being alone feel as natural as a latrine. Right now, Han Yuhyeon needed time and space to himself.
"Hoo."
He stopped breathing through his nose and switched to his mouth. Then he opened the Mongan Hyeolseo. Baekri-wan and Geom Jung-gun would be waiting outside, so he needed to make his purchases quickly. That was exactly why he'd sold the Green Forest men's keepsakes on the spot. He had to raise his odds of winning even a little.
His funds were the ten lower-grade spirit stones Un Song-byeok had given him as expedition money, plus what he'd just sold—two hundred twenty-one spirit stones total.
"Let's see…"
Since he'd gone to the latrine, Han Yuhyeon dropped his pants out of courtesy and began scrolling through the shop list of the Mongan Hyeolseo.
"Hmm."
Besides, the one waiting was Geom Jung-gun, not him. Hadn't the man said it with his own mouth? He'd wait until they left. Then he ought to keep his word.
"Nngh…"
Han Yuhyeon strained and kept scrolling. The screen raced downward, herbs, artifacts, techniques, and junk items streaming past. Once again, he was reminded just how many items the game Yeonhwa Seonrok actually had.
As he skimmed the goods, something suddenly caught his eye. NPC information. When the grade of the Mongan Hyeolseo had risen, it had started selling NPC intel as well, hadn't it?
Then…?
On a hunch, Han Yuhyeon searched the name Geom Jung-gun. Sure enough, it came right up.
Price: 150 Lower-Grade Spirit Stones
Cheap. That was the first thought that hit him. Apparently even NPC information was priced according to importance. One hundred fifty lower-grade spirit stones wasn't exactly low, but compared to Yeon Cho-cho's intel at a deranged one thousand upper-grade spirit stones, it felt like a bargain.
"Hmm."
After a brief moment of thought, Han Yuhyeon decided to buy it. As things stood, Geom Jung-gun looked hard for a Qi Condensation 8-star like him to take down with raw stats alone. If the intel revealed a weakness, exploiting that would give him far better odds.
Just then, Baekri-wan's voice suddenly rang out from outside.
"Disciple! Did you die taking a shit?"
"Jesus—!"
Han Yuhyeon nearly tumbled into the latrine hole from the shock. She must have come looking because he'd taken too long.
"Coming out!"
His eyes raced over the information. With the remaining spirit stones he bought every spirit-root-boosting item he could grab and shoved them into his mouth. Only after swallowing them all did he hurriedly pull up his pants and stand. One way or another, he was ready for the fight.
