In Jinjeong County
Even after lunch they kept at the archery without pause. Only when the sun began to sink did they finally set their bows aside and head down toward the mansion, reluctance trailing behind them.
"Mom, can't Un stay here?"
"Oh, you. Come on now. We can come back tomorrow."
Seop Yeong offered an awkward farewell, scooped Jo Un into her arms, and started off—though not before throwing Ian a wink on her way out.
Once inside the estate, Jang Bi and Jang Hwa turned left toward the annex while Wang Yeon and Ian walked on toward the main house.
"Madam, you've returned."
"Mm. Mimi, is the water ready?"
"Yes, Madam."
At that, Wang Yeon lifted Ian into her arms and carried him around the main building into the bathhouse, where steam already hung thick and white in the air.
Daeyeon and Soyeon were pouring fresh hot water into the wooden tub. They set the buckets down and came forward.
"Madam, you may go in whenever you like. We've ordered all the male servants out for the evening, so please don't concern yourself."
"Good. Tell Rinrin and Mimi to prepare to attend the master tomorrow. You two will handle the sand preparations."
"Yes, Madam. Thank you."
The twin girls. Both were beauties with strikingly clear features—the sort of faces one saw on actresses from modern China or Hong Kong. Being identical made them hard to tell apart, though a slight difference in eye size and a freckle on the nose marked Daeyeon from her sister.
"We'll take our leave now. Our handmaidens will sleep in the annex tonight as well. Enjoy your evening, Master, Madam."
"Very well. Haha. I do like the sound of that. From today on, An is your master."
They closed the door behind them. Inside the wooden bathhouse, lantern light cast a warm, intimate glow. Steam rose in dense clouds, and the swaying flames only deepened the atmosphere.
"An. Call me Mother one last time, won't you? Just once more."
"Mother. I'll still have to call you that when other people are around, you know."
Wang Yeon flushed with embarrassment. Her brows were dark, her eyes large and a little sharp. There was a faintly androgynous edge to her beauty, and she was a considerable beauty indeed.
When he said the word, she closed her eyes for a moment, lost in thought. Ian simply stripped off his clothes without ceremony, climbed the steps, and stepped into the tub.
It was a two-tiered structure. He settled on the inner ledge so the water came up to his belly and waited for her.
He glanced down at the abnormal cock hanging between his legs—ten centimeters soft, fifteen when hard, and thick with it.
This should be enough to keep the women satisfied, right?
He snorted.
A five-year-old fretting over sexual satisfaction with adult women. The whole situation was absurd. Probably the price of surviving nineteen years of celibacy. If the system hadn't compensated him even for this, the boredom ahead would have driven him mad.
The soft rustle of clothes being shed. He didn't bother turning around. He simply leaned back against the wooden tub and let the warm water soak into him. The fragrant scent of the wood—agarwood, maybe—was almost overwhelming, and dried flower petals floated on the surface.
Mm… nice.
A splash. Someone entering the tub. In moments the waterline rose from his navel to his nipples, and soft skin brushed against his left arm.
The tub was large—about a meter and a half deep, wide enough for four adult women to sit around it. Wasteful with water, but once they finished, Mimi and Rinrin and the others would come in to bathe themselves.
"Husband. Come up onto my thighs."
"Hm? Husband? Hahaha. I like that."
He laughed with shameless ease and let her hands take him. She lifted him and settled him across her thighs. Naturally, he cupped her right breast and began to suckle.
Suck. Suck.
"Haah… My lord. Please don't abandon me."
"Mm. Why would I abandon my mother? Don't worry. But we should leave this village."
He looked up at her and spoke the thought he had been turning over for some time.
There were three main reasons to leave Shangshan in Jizhou.
First, the Yellow Turban Rebellion would sweep through this entire region. No matter how strong he was, if he could avoid it, he should.
Second, he needed to keep clear of Yu Bi. Something about her unsettled him. Jang Bi and Jo Un—he had to keep those two from ever meeting her if he could help it.
Third, the incest with Wang Yeon. Sooner or later someone would notice. Better to move somewhere with no ties and live as husband and wife rather than mother and son, free of constant caution.
"What?"
"If we want to live without watching our backs—and have children—we should go as far as Jingzhou or Yizhou. Out there we can pretend we aren't mother and son."
"Ah!!! My lord. Yes. But then what about Un…?"
He smirked, kneading her breast. Wang Yeon looked down at him, puzzled.
"Seop Yeong's already fallen for me. Her and Jang Hwa—Jang Hwa's birthday is soon, so I'll take her that day. They'll follow us after that."
"Ahng… Yes. Un and Bi's talent is far too precious to leave behind. We absolutely have to bring them."
He nodded. Then his aunt came to mind, and he asked Yeon about her.
"We should at least send word to Aunt, shouldn't we?"
The Zhen clan of Wuji—read as Gyeon in Korean. His aunt had married into that family. Not a blood aunt, strictly speaking, but the niece of this body's grandmother. A fifth-degree relative on the maternal side. His father had raised her like a younger sister after she lost her parents. Her name was Jang Ryeon, and she was a distant relation of Jang Bi's as well.
"Yes. But I don't want to go there. Uncle's lecherous eyes…"
He nodded.
During the mourning period, that aunt and her husband—his fifth-degree uncle—had come to visit. Uncle Gyeon Il had made no secret of his lust for Seop Yeong, until the surrounding Zhao clansmen beat him and drove him off.
Peculiar tastes…
He preferred thin bodies. Most men of the Central Plains favored plump, generous figures—the sort later generations would associate with Yang Guifei—but there was always one like Gyeon Il.
"Just send a letter, and include a second copy in Hangul. Tell her that if she ever grows tired of her husband, she can come to wherever we settle."
Their relationship wasn't bad enough yet for her to leave, but within a few years she would. Gyeon Il was a womanizer; she would wear out under that behavior soon enough.
"Yes, Husband."
Suck. Suck.
He returned to her breast. She kept stroking his hair, but the hand resting on his belly hesitated, unable to go further. He reached down, took that hand, and guided it to his cock.
"Th-this is…"
He looked up at her face, blazing red with shame, and briefly released her nipple.
"Yeon belongs to me now. And this belongs to you. Stroke it while we bathe."
"Y-yes."
Soft hands—but unlike modern people, her palms were rough with calluses in places. Hands that had gripped spear, sword, and bow. That rough texture only stimulated him more strongly.
Knead. Knead.
He reached up and squeezed her breast hard in return.
"Haah—"
A jet of milk struck his face. He licked it off and took the nipple back into his mouth.
"My lord. When will you tell me your secret?"
"Mm… Hmm…"
In truth, he had been caught using the Dimensional Shop several times already. Each time he had thrown out the name of the famous Taoist Jwa Ja as cover—never expecting the real Jwa Ja to actually pass through the village.
She had looked at him as if she had never seen him before in her life. Ever since she appeared and then left the previous week, Wang Yeon had been watching him with anxious eyes.
That old hag. I even blinked at her, signaling her to play along.
By reputation she should have been a white-haired grandmother, but she had looked about thirty. She wasn't a true immortal—just a Taoist skilled in talismans and sorcery.
"Heh heh. How strange… You were supposed to have died. And the size of your soul… Hmm. I'll see you again later. But this… Hah. I'll have to discuss this with U Gil."
Then she had stuck a talisman to him. It vanished in an instant. She tossed another to the ground, there was a bang, and she was gone.
"Hmm… You want to know?"
"Yes, Husband."
He considered. Tell her the child had died? He shook his head. Better to pull in the previous life.
"The day I was born, I remembered my past life. The ability I had then is what I have now."
A-Mart — Large Cool Peach Iced Tea ×1
Cass Beer 500 ml ×1
Cost: 3 Cooper
Three Cooper were deducted. He pulled the beer from Subspace and handed it to her.
She flinched at the cold, then turned the metal cylinder over in her hands with fascination.
"Huh? This is…"
"Yeah. Subspace. And the ability to buy things from the world I came from. This is a drink I used to have there. The tab on top—give it back a second."
At the word "drink" she turned it this way and that, but couldn't figure out how to open it. He took it back, flipped the tab, and handed it over again.
Click.
She took a swallow. Gulp. Gulp.
"Kyaah. My lord. It's so cold and delicious. What kind of liquor is this? It almost tastes like a soft drink."
"Western liquor. It's called beer. Made from barley. The alcohol is low enough that in a place called Germany they drink it like water. The water there isn't much better than here."
She nodded, either impressed or simply thirsty, and kept drinking. He pulled the iced tea from Subspace and took a sip himself.
"My lord, what's that…?"
Curious eyes. He bought another iced tea, drew it from Subspace, and handed it over. She finished the beer, passed him the empty can, and he stowed it away.
One sip of peach iced tea and Wang Yeon's eyes went round.
"This… tastes like peach. It's wonderful."
"Yeah. An iced tea I used to drink whenever summer got too hot."
In a steaming bath with sweat pouring off them, the cold iced tea was pure nectar.
They drank in silence for a while. When only ice remained, he pulled out the Bacchus he had bought that morning, poured it into his water flask, and handed her three bottles. She watched him and copied the motion.
"Bacchus. A kind of tonic that's good for fatigue. Try it—it's good."
Caffeine. He deliberately avoided coffee, but quitting Bacchus had proven difficult. The taste of one cold bottle first thing in the morning was hard to give up.
"This is delicious too. My lord. You don't only have food, do you?"
"No. The time I lived in is the future. I can buy everyday goods from the future as well."
"…My lord. The price? Is it lifespan, or…"
"Don't worry. I pay in gold."
He could also buy with MG—Mana Gold—but he could sell gold to the Dimensional Shop as well. It converted at his world's gold price, then at a rate of one Cooper to one dollar.
"Ah. Husband—don't tell me Father's golden toad disappearing was…?"
Father?
"Heh… Yeah. I was experimenting."
A ten-don golden toad from the master bedroom. There had been plenty of gold jewelry, so his parents hadn't made much fuss—but they had noticed it was gone.
Two million won. Twenty MB—Mana Bronze—credited, and the toad gone.
"My lord. How many of these iced teas would one toad buy?"
"Hmm… The iced tea is one Cooper. The golden toad was two thousand."
Gold was quite valuable in this era. It was valuable in the modern world too, but nothing compared to antiquity.
"Goodness. That expensive?"
"No. In our world, one Cooper is incredibly cheap."
She fell silent, thinking. For her sake he spent five Cooper on a box of seventy iced-tea packets.
"Here. Seventy servings. Mix one with a cup of water and you've got peach tea. Much more economical, right? Five Cooper."
She took the cardboard box with great care and set it on the steps behind her.
"My lord. You said the future—is it possible to be born in the past?"
"Hmm… If I say parallel dimensions, does that mean anything to you?"
From there he explained as best he could, drawing on movies he had seen, starting with what a parallel dimension even was. She looked puzzled for a while, then suddenly lit up with understanding and began asking questions.
"Ah… So even if you change history here, the world you came from doesn't change."
"Right. I don't know this world well. I don't even know if there's history worth changing. I'm from two thousand years in the future—how would I know…"
She nodded.
"True. I barely know the history of the Xia dynasty myself. Then Hangul wasn't a script you invented either?"
She ran her fingers over the Hangul printed on the packaging and the cup, a meaningful smile on her lips.
Hangul—the cipher their family used. She had heard him called a genius, then grown puzzled when living with him proved he wasn't quite that.
"Right. A king of a country called Joseon created it in the fourteen hundreds."
"Ah… Is that the country that succeeded Gojoseon?"
He nodded.
They had already agreed that if anyone discovered the script, they would claim it as the writing of Joseon or Gojoseon. As a script of the Eastern Yi peoples, it could not be allowed to remain as a Chinese invention.
The conversation had run long enough that the water was cooling.
"My lord. In your previous world, how many wives did you have?"
"Hmm. Five."
He thought of Hye-yun, A-jeong, Hyeon-ju, Eun-hee, and Jeong-mi. A-jeong wasn't quite a wife yet, but he counted her among the five. He deliberately left out Ju-mi and the other bitches.
"And children?"
"Eleven."
He figured roughly two per woman, plus one extra, and settled on eleven.
"Do you dislike children, by any chance?"
"Hm? Ah… In the future, women usually only have one or two each."
"Ah…"
"Do you… happen to have undergarments or women's products? Things for when one has her period, that sort of thing."
He nodded.
"I'll get you some later. I need to take measurements first."
"Yes…"
When the bath was nearly finished, they stepped out of the tub, and while they were still bare he measured her.
One hundred seventy centimeters. Seventy-five D, twenty-one, thirty-nine.
A perfect figure.