Nothing But Hot Water
“It was touch-and-go.”
[Thank goodness there’s no law against dying.]
I filled my stomach with heartfelt gratitude for the first warm meal in ages.
We arrived at the village of Guryongchon.
“There must be someone here who’s a friend of the Oho-samhwa… Jin Gasung, right?”
[Since Cheongunryong said so, I had no choice but to believe it. He mentioned he had a wild younger brother named Jin Gasung, so this place is probably where he hangs out because of his brother.]
“I’ll just eat this and start asking around.”
The village was so bustling it made the word “village” sound ridiculous.
Yet it wasn’t the grand metropolis it might have been, and the single flaw was this:
“Oppa, wanna play with me?”
Thinly clad geisha girls constantly pressed against me on either side, their voices low and insistent.
In one corner of the tavern, a man with a smooth face played flute and stringed instruments endlessly, stirring the atmosphere.
On another side, an aromatic woman lit incense, weaving a unique fragrance into the air.
The place I’d walked into called itself a tavern, but it was really a brothel.
It felt like dropping a single drop of wine into a vast bucket of water.
I covered my suddenly reddening face with the rice bowl.
A geisha whispered while idly scratching the mask I’d lifted to eat.
“Oppa, I have a feeling that even the hidden part is quite handsome. Am I right?”
“U, um…”
I broke out in cold sweat inside.
Just then, the female owner who looked like a wildcat barked at the geisha.
“Girls! No money for our guests! Don’t you know who you’re talking to? An assassin who isn’t affiliated with a decent sect is nothing but a beggar!”
“Huh?”
The girls finally glanced at the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap wrapped around my left hand.
“What? You’re a martial artist?”
The geisha’s expressions hardened.
They immediately switched to a defensive stance.
“Oppa, the hidden part probably isn’t all that handsome.”
“What, you can’t even drink the wine and are sipping plain water? What a waste of time. Come on, let’s go.”
The girls let out gusts of air and slunk away toward other customers.
-Click.
The rice bowl slipped from my palm and shattered on the floor with a dull thud.
[Looks like the locals here know what a martial artist’s status is worth.]
Mumyeong murmured quietly.
“Martial artists, huh.”
[Huh?]
“When you really think about it, they’re the kind who live on rice and steel, a group whose very bodies are their sole capital.”
[That’s true.]
I stared at the water-filled cup and muttered to myself.
“I’ve never seen a martial artist who doesn’t enjoy wine. What if they get drunk and get jumped?”
[Who knows.]
Mumyeong replied.
[In this world, there are surprisingly many people who just live however they want. It’s a universal truth, regardless of era or place.]
“Here.”
I raised my hand to call out the waiter.
The waiter approached with a languid expression.
“Guest, we require one additional order per food item. One wine for every dish.”
“…One bowl of chicken gullet soup.”
“Would you like anything else?”
The waiter vanished in an instant.
“So this is what they call supplementary charges.”
I muttered with a bitter voice.
[That’s how the world is.]
Mumyeong answered.
I had money from the previous raid, so cash wasn’t an issue.
But ever since, I’d realized that travel costs far more than the money itself.
[Especially for the Host, it costs more than for other martial artists.]
I nodded.
The biggest difference from everyone else was that I could wield weapons.
Unlike others, I had built my martial arts strength through attributes.
Because of that, I naturally lacked several aspects that long-cultivated martial artists possessed.
The most glaring was the fine tuning of my inner energy.
Currently I possessed three Jiazi of inner energy.
Three Jiazi.
An enormous amount.
Among people my age, this level of inner energy was something only transmitted from the sages, something I should never have been able to possess.
Yet with me, even though I had that much, I lacked the ability to control it to any degree.
When I focused, the sword would burst out in my hand. My emotions were unstable, so the flow of inner energy through the meridians was erratic.
As a result, the lifespan of the weapons I wielded was extremely short.
This was bound to be impossible, yet it would continue forever unless I encountered a legendary weapon as rare as those mentioned in the tales of the Hwasa.
Because I relied primarily on copied martial arts, I had grown accustomed to using body techniques as the main style while occasionally employing various weapons as auxiliaries.
Even more strangely, despite having three Jiazi of inner energy, I felt the need for its enhancement more strongly than anyone else.
“I’ve confirmed it several times. It’s definite.”
After acquiring the first through fourth verses of the Baekryeon-palyajong, the foundational body art of the Baekryeon Demonic Sect I’d just learned in Sabidong, the sensation of necessity grew like oil poured on fire.
Originally, when I unleashed the rising martial arts that exceeded my limits, my body would erupt with fierce qi reflux as a backlash.
It was like forcing the cogs of a mismatched gear to turn, causing wear and creating sparks.
For anyone else, three Jiazi of inner energy would suffice even while using countless rising techniques of their sect without feeling the lack.
But even if I exerted the same power, I wasted far more than half as much inner energy as others.
In the end, the size of my three Jiazi was meaningless in the heat of actual life-and-death battles.
“Actually, it should be thought of as about one-and-a-half Jiazi.”
-Click.
I felt the split pills in my pouch.
The split pills I had carried when leaving Cheonsubaekryeonsa to prepare for internal injuries.
They had been given there with the intent to enhance my inner energy, but at my level they were pitifully inadequate.
“Is there no place to find an inner dan? Why don’t the spirit beasts in Sabidong have spirit dan?”
Filled with such confused thoughts, I hadn’t noticed the man who placed his palm on the table.
“It’s you?”
The palm was huge.
It wasn’t the hand of a mere waiter.
The man standing before me was shirtless, his powerful, muscular body towering over me.
[Lower Gate? Who is he? There’s a martial arts feel, but I can’t tell.]
Mumyeong’s voice in the background, the man looked at me and said,
“Are you the outsider who claimed to be from the Blood Death Sect?”
“…”
“Thanks to you fixing our money line, we suffered a little loss.”
I turned around.
Behind him stood the leader of the Greenwood Gang, his lips swollen and his face swollen like a steamed bun, pointing at me.
“How did the Greenwood Gang manage to set up shop right in the middle of the village?”
I couldn’t understand my own common sense.
There was no way the Greenwood Gang could stand openly in a place like this.
“Surprised? You look surprised.”
The man chuckled and patted my shoulder.
“Our little sister has owed you a lot. I heard you’re an assassin from the Blood Death Sect? Tsk, how terrifying. But even if you fool others, you can’t fool me, Jin Gasung.”
The man, Jin Gasung, slapped my cheek.
-Whoosh.
From behind, a group far larger than the Greenwood Gang from earlier rose up together.
There were at least twenty of them.
[Jin Gasung? So this guy is the wild younger brother of the Oho-samhwa…]
I looked at the man.
Jin Gasung shouted triumphantly,
“Stop talking nonsense like some backwater village kid is going to be eaten by an assassin from the Blood Death Sect. Which sect are you from? Don’t you get it? In this world, no assassin would be drinking at an inn in broad daylight.”
“Hm, that’s true, but…”
It was oddly accurate, yet in my mind flashed the image of a woman with long hair and red eyes pouring wine in the middle of the day.
I nodded.
“Anyway, looking at how things are going here…”
I scratched the corner of my eye and said.
“It seems the Greenwood Gang protects the village by handing over the protection fees they extort from passersby at the pass.”
Far away, the waiter who had taken my order placed the chicken gullet soup on the counter and hurried away.
The geisha who had ignored me retreated backward, their faces pale.
The middle-aged woman who managed the geisha, the wildcat owner, rushed over panting and shouted,
“Jin Gasung-nim, if you’re going to act up starting from broad daylight like this, we’ll starve—!”
“If you want to eat, keep complaining.”
With that one word, the wildcat owner shrank back into the corner.
Jin Gasung gestured behind him and said,
“If we just fix this, we’re supposed to starve by licking our fingers? Our subordinates told me to fix your hand.”
I nodded.
I slipped the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap back onto my left hand.
“You’re an outsider yet you’ve learned some martial arts? How dare you.”
I shoved the chair aside and stood up.
“I ordered wine, but it didn’t come.”
Jin Gasung and his group chuckled.
I walked to the counter.
I grabbed the chicken gullet soup on it.
I wiped the dew from the surface.
The group shouted,
“Lucky you. Even in the underworld you can have a drink.”
“Where’s the bad luck that made you wear dark clothes and come slinking into Guryongchon as an outsider?”
Jin Gasung approached me.
“Without more or less, my subordinate requested that you be turned into an old man on the verge of death.”
I raised an eyebrow.
The Greenwood Gang leader behind him smirked silently, curling his lip.
“Your name is Jin Gasung?”
“That’s right.”
I grabbed the cup on the counter.
I poured chicken gullet soup into it and muttered,
“The words of the Flame Eye of the Blood Death Sect are indeed correct. When you hit too hard they push back. I should have respected the words of the jianghu seniors.”
“What?”
“Will you accept the challenge now?”
I handed the cup filled with chicken gullet soup to Jin Gasung.
-Clack.
Jin Gasung slammed the cup down and laughed mockingly.
“Accept? You? Stop talking nonsense. You keep talking long because you’re scared.”
The wine spilled onto the floor and the cup rolled around.
I looked at the cup and said,
“I’ll be fair. You’re nothing but useless thugs who are not worth exerting full power against.”
“Thugs?”
-Twitch.
Jin Gasung’s brows furrowed.
“There was a similar incident before. At that time I had no strength and ended up getting beaten, but remember that memory. In the place I was at back then, I made it so that inner energy couldn’t be used. So when two groups fought, it was pure physical strength.”
I clenched my fist.
“Pure strength.”
“Ho.”
I smiled back at him.
“I’m not using inner energy. I’m not using martial arts either. How about it? No matter what the outcome, will you accept?”
“Hah. This bastard…”
We both laughed at each other.
Intense tension rose.
“Before we start, I can summarize this situation in one sentence. You’ll probably find it amusing.”
Jin Gasung turned around.
His subordinates were also laughing.
It was as if they were mocking a monkey’s performance.
Jin Gasung said,
“What is it?”
I grabbed the chicken gullet soup bottle.
“A mad dog that can’t control its anger came into the tavern.”
-Crash!!
The soup bottle smashed against Jin Gasung’s head, shattering into pieces.