The Waves of the Yangtze or Whatever - Seomun Cheong, Launch!
The waves before the Yangtze River or whatever—Seomun Cheong, launch! …Or at least that had been the plan, until Jin Jangmyeong glued herself to her side. Launch sequence: temporarily suspended.
“Unni. Don’t go.”
“I’m not leaving forever, you know? When you set the mood like that, it makes me sound like the kind of person who won’t come back.”
“What are you talking about? You were coming back?”
“I’ll go back and forth. Why would I abandon the very first house I’ve ever had in my life?”
Cheong thought of her thatched hut. A single room, a single floor, and the kitchen stove sitting outside—a shabby little place. But it was her house. The words carried a resonance that struck straight through a modern heart with unexpected power.
“You’ll really come back? For real?”
“Yes.”
“Really, really?”
“Stop tacking on more ‘really’s. Just because you’ve gotten a little cute lately doesn’t mean you’re allowed to act cute, got it?”
“Tch.”
“I’m still deciding whether I’ll come back in winter. Traveling in the cold is a pain. Anyway, train hard while I’m gone.”
“By the time you return, I’ll probably be Transcendent.”
“Sure. Next first-rate nobody.”
At the promise of return, Jin Jangmyeong finally released her grip.
“Great Grandmaster! You must come back!”
“Great Grandmaster! Have a safe journey!”
“Great Grandmaster! Bring delicious food when you return!”
“Me too!”
“Me too!”
The disciples who had come out to see her off squealed and chattered noisily. Seomun Su-rin had not appeared. That was only after Cheong had already burst into tears and performed a full kowtow, though. Looking back, it hadn’t been necessary, but she had gotten swept up in the atmosphere. It just felt like the exact right thing to do. Like some K-drama director was off-screen yelling, Now cry! In exchange for those tears, she had received a new sword. Wolgwang-geom Number 8. Welcome back, old friend.
And so—Seomun Cheong, launch!
Cheong strode out of the mountain gate with her chest puffed out. The moment she was beyond the boundary, she immediately opened the Good Karma Reward.
While the lingering sense of belonging and faint regret still clung to her, there was urgent business to handle. Saving Jin Jangmyeong had dumped an enormous amount of Good Karma on her. The total had now surpassed one thousand points, which unlocked one more exchange. Thanks to her master, the terrifyingly skilled physician who could read her pulse like a ghost, she had been unable to add new martial arts until now. The current good mood presented the perfect opportunity.
Cheong still remembered the terror of facing a Transcendent expert’s sword gang without a sword in hand. Therefore, she needed a weaponless technique. A truly powerful one.
Fortunately, she already had something in mind. Sosu Magong. Upon mastery, the area below the elbows would become as indestructible as diamond. Rocket fists capable of blocking even sword gang. The brilliant purple border of the technique would guarantee its strength.
One of the Ten Great Demonic Arts. Refines the hands into pale, indestructible weapons that inject lethal cold poison. At the 6th star, its power surges dramatically. A thrifty yet devastating investment.
Cheong immediately claimed the reward. The formulas for Sosu Magong carved themselves directly into her mind. No matter how many times she experienced it, the brain-engraving memorization method was still filthy. Unfortunately, she no longer had any training points left that could properly digest purple-grade martial arts.
Cheong raised her mastery of Sosu Magong to the sixth star. A frugal investment. For some strange reason, martial arts tended to grow significantly stronger once they reached the sixth star.
Training points would naturally accumulate as she used the art anyway, allowing her to break through to the next stage. There was no need to waste precious free training points on over-investment. She still had some ambiguously leftover free training points.
She pulled the Yeorae Shinjang that had been sitting at the second star all the way up to the sixth. Now, what to spend the rest on? As expected, nothing was more enjoyable than theory-crafting a charac— Character build?
“Stop the gaming addiction! Reality is good! Good good good!”
Cheong shouted in a hurry. The second she let her guard down, this was what happened. Her hands trembled. She had just finished a somewhat touching, human farewell, yet the moment she stepped outside it was back to this. Again. Like this.
Cheong immediately attempted a mental defense technique. Everyone, this is how harmful a gaming brain can be. She had momentarily shut off all power. That was the standard for people who had experienced the original work. It had been the customer’s individual choice, and she did not view it as damage. Losing is okay. What matters is an unyielding heart. That’s right! What mattered was an unyielding heart!
Thank you, Deft sir. Though I heard you never actually said that line?
“Huu…”
Cheong let out a long sigh. This wasn’t going to work. She needed a special measure. Something only possible right at this moment.
Cheong turned her body around. Couldn’t be helped. She would just have to sleep one more night at home.
----
Jin Jangmyeong’s early childhood had been affluent. Now those memories only produced a bitter smile. It turned out the money had been stolen from the sect. Still, for their sickly daughter, her parents had hired a retired scholar known as a tutor.
The tutor constantly emphasized the importance of words. Words were more precious than a thousand pieces of gold. Sometimes they alone could keep a person alive, he claimed.
Jin Jangmyeong had not agreed. If words could keep someone alive, then why am I in this state right now? Spouting righteous nonsense without understanding another person’s circumstances. By then she had already understood the severity of her own condition.
The tutor was dismissed not long after. She later learned the reason by overhearing her parents. He had gotten drunk, failed to recognize an inspector, and hurled every curse imaginable at the man. That was why he had been stripped of his official post.
The tutor’s words had not been empty upright talk. Every syllable had been steeped in sincerity. If a single phrase could save a life, then a single phrase could also end one. The tutor must have spoken with exactly that weight in his heart.
It was an event from a very long time ago. Something she had no need to remember. Yet that memory suddenly resurfaced inside the cold, dark tunnel.
It’s not your fault at all. What can you do about the way you were born? Just say you had terrible luck. Did you beg to be saved? No, right? So go eat shit.
From that moment on, Jin Jangmyeong had come to fervently agree with the tutor’s teachings. Those words had lifted the crushing debt that her young life had been carrying—the weight so heavy it made breathing difficult, the pressure that had crushed her chest. Because of them, she decided not to dwell too deeply on her parents’ actions. She still loved them, but in all honesty, she no longer wished to see them.
On the other hand, living as a disciple of the Goddess Sect meant spending one’s entire life among women. Perhaps for that reason, Jin Jangmyeong had witnessed one bizarre scene after another.
Senior sisters, their disciples, and junior sisters walking with fingers tightly interlocked, completely absorbed in staring into each other’s eyes and paying attention to nothing else. Having been a sickly child, Jin Jangmyeong was quick to read the room. That was not a simple display of friendship. Friendship was limited to saying someone was cute and giving a light hug, or linking arms at most. Fingers intricately intertwined was dis—dis—distasteful. An utterly, completely distasteful act.
Every time she witnessed it, Jin Jangmyeong recalled that pitch-black tunnel. That cozy darkness. The warm body heat that had warmed her. The arms that had held her small body so tightly, held and held and held her, pressed right against her so their hearts went thump thump thump, incredibly soft and fluffy, skin touching skin, touching and—
It was then.
“Uh, Jangmyeong. I decided to sleep here one more night.”
“……?”
----
After receiving a grand send-off, Cheong left the Goddess Sect only to return half a shichen later. The intersecting gazes between the two of them were unbearably awkward. Still, mental health was a serious matter. The look in Jin Jangmyeong’s eyes upon their unexpectedly swift reunion was odd, as if she were thinking, Just what kind of person is this?
Cheong felt slightly wounded. However, since she was leaving tomorrow, the girl had shown consideration by coming to find her at night to sleep together. That was enough to heal the wound. Separately from that, the very idea of sharing a bed with a female middle-schooler was so appalling that Cheong had sent her away anyway.
And then—once more, Seomun Cheong, relaunch!
Having recovered her spirit with the satisfaction of having secured her own house, Cheong set out on the road again. She had even decided on her destination during the night. A true veteran of the murim always made plans. Cheong was now a true veteran of the murim.
First, head to a city. Join any random escort company and enjoy their hospitality. No matter how she looked at it, the plan was flawless. The specific destination didn’t matter. What mattered was the hospitality.
There was a city near Wushan. Zigui. A port city on the Yangtze River. It was a place Seomun Cheong had visited several times before.
The Goddess Sect was not a feminist self-sufficient commune that practiced complete autonomy. Like other sects, they rented their fields to tenant farmers and accepted donations from female pilgrims who came to burn incense. However, they were at a disadvantage compared to secular sects because they could not collect protection taxes as a major source of revenue.
Even so, the Goddess Sect was quite wealthy. The reason? Special products.
The Goddess Sect was a mysterious order of women who served the Flame Emperor and his third daughter, the Goddess. In modern terms, the Flame Emperor was the sun god, the god of agriculture, and the god of craftsmen. Thanks to the support of farmers and artisans, he had become the most revered deity in the Central Plains.
Naturally, the special products of the Goddess Sect were rumored to possess spiritual potency. Talismans, prayer texts, embroidered handicrafts, ornaments, scraps of cloth inscribed with scriptures, and so on. They purchased what they needed with the money earned. They also purchased things they did not strictly need. After all, how could people live on rice alone?
Every fifteen days, when the list of desired items from the disciples came out, the elder-level members took turns going out to buy them. Since Cheong was also considered elder-level and often bored, she had accompanied them a couple of times. On private outings, one was required to wear a face veil. Thanks to that particular rule of the Goddess Sect, she had not enjoyed the trips much. It was hot, yet she had to cover her face with a veil the entire day while running errands according to the list. Of course it had been boring.
As Cheong headed toward the city, she kept swinging her hands through the air. Swish. Swish. The sound of air being sliced was sharp. Sosu Magong. The legendary demonic art that ranked among the five fingers of the most vicious martial arts in the world was now embroidering the empty sky.
It was so infamous that warriors who possessed it were given exclusive titles like Sosu Demon or Sosu Witch. The collective wisdom of the murim elders declared that any bastard who learned Sosu Magong must be caught and killed without fail—a will passed down through generations.
Of course, Cheong had no idea about any of that. Even her master Seomun Su-rin could not have predicted it. The very notion that a girl possessing multiple Daoist divine arts would suddenly learn a demonic art was impossible. It was the kind of idea that would make even a madman click his tongue and exclaim, “What incredible imagination!”
Yet Cheong had accomplished that very difficult feat. Admiring the vicious power of the demonic art, she muttered.
“Whoa. That’s seriously strong. Hmm. I wonder if I could attach some fire to my hands? Probably not, huh?”