The Taste of Money and the First Slap
Her friend Cheong had been truly happy until recently. Because she had money. If life felt boring, one should first consider their finances—the kind of person who says overseas travel is fun but domestic travel is boring is exactly the type who skimps on spending in their own country. The purse of that bastard Chugwi or whatever his name was had been enormous, and looting had been the victor’s right since ancient times. It was the moment Cheong had accumulated more than a gold tael’s worth of wealth for the first time in her Murim life. She had even delivered the villain’s head to the authorities. The bounty had been as substantial as his evil deeds. To exaggerate just a little, her purse had grown so heavy that it tilted her body sideways, making it hard to walk straight. And so Cheong had indulged in all the delicacies the Jianghu had to offer.
She had bid farewell to her old lover, the aged Wolgwang-geom (No. 5), and welcomed a new, young, and beautiful Wolgwang-geom (No. 6). She had always picked up and used other people’s swords, but this was the first time she had bought an entirely new one. A perfectly untouched blade that no one else had ever held. Fresh affection bubbled up inside her. I’ll take good care of you.
The previous Wolgwang-geom (No. 5) had rotted from the inside due to poor maintenance. When the blacksmith refused to even give her scrap value and told her to take it back, she had simply tossed it by the roadside on her way out. She had also bought herself sturdy, affordable new clothes.
Cheong had gained a great realization. So even this damn Murim world can be enjoyable if you have enough money! She could even overlook the status window with generosity. Her mood, elevated by her gourmet adventures, remained rock-solid even against the status window’s kicks. This was Cheong’s spending habit. People who couldn’t see the future didn’t save money anyway—it was the same behavior young people from various countries showed back in her homeland. Thanks to that, going completely broke had happened in the blink of an eye.
Ah. Those were the good days.
All that remained now was Wolgwang-geom (No. 6). A lover to a swordsman—her sword. A luxury item she had spent half a gold tael on. Wolgwang-geom, let’s be together forever, okay? That was the reason people splurged. At the very least, the things you bought stayed by your side even after you went broke.
“Order’s up.”
Thud. The waiter set the bowl down without a shred of care. Three dumplings. One bowl of soup. Buy three or more dumplings and they gave you a bowl of soup for free. It was wisdom gained in her second year of Murim life. Unlike modern common sense, dumplings in the Jianghu were the cheapest food available—nothing but plain, empty dough with no filling. Usually one coin, or two in expensive inns. Meat-filled ones had a separate name—meat dumplings—and cost a whopping fifteen to twenty coins.
Second-year Murim wisdom: When the dumplings are dry and tough, dip them in the soup. When your throat feels choked, drink the soup.
Staring down at her drastically simplified diet, Cheong looked at her lover, her beloved sword Wolgwang-geom (No. 6). If I sell this, how much would I get? It’s basically brand new—I’ve barely used it. But that was still only the wisdom of a second-year Murim practitioner. She had no idea about the secondhand price of swords or depreciation rates, so she decided to keep it for now.
Still, she really needed to earn some money. What should she do?
Cheong summoned the martial arts window from her status screen. It was a filthy thing that ruined her mood every time she saw it, but she needed to check how many free practice points she had accumulated. Free practice points were a way to instantly learn martial arts and could become a lifesaving move in emergencies.
The Wolnyeo Sword Art (Complete), Wolnyeo Mind Method (Complete), and the movement technique she possessed, Wolnyeo Mountain Stroll (Complete), had all somehow reached twelve stars. Twelve stars meant the highest achievement possible for that martial art. When people said one had reached great completion, it usually meant they had trained the art to this level. Of course, Cheong’s idea of great completion and what Murim people meant by it were completely different concepts, as different as learning through the status window.
To Cheong, the state where every form was imprinted in her mind and she gained additional ability points and special abilities for each art was what she called twelve-star great completion.
Besides those, there were various other martial arts she had dabbled in from the bookstore, their names simply floating in the list. Every single one of them had a white border.
According to the Murim Life and Death Records ranking system, they were divided into the lowest white border, then blue, red, gold, and the highest purple border. Since the creator hadn’t given them specific grade names, strategy guides had simply called them white arts, blue arts, and so on. For reference, the complete version of the Wolnyeo Sword Art was a purple-grade art. It was supposedly one of the most overpowered arts, but since she hadn’t learned any others, she still couldn’t tell. Comparison required a control group, after all.
And now, it was time to add one more purple-grade art.
Over the past year, through all sorts of suffering, she had accumulated over five hundred Good Karma points. It had been an endlessly long period of humiliation. Good Karma was extremely useful. It was the Good Karma Reward. It was a system within the game that let you select and learn any martial art you wanted once you reached a certain threshold. The exchange happened at five hundred points.
For reference, Evil Karma was useless. Evil Karma accumulated when you committed evil deeds, but you usually gained plenty of practice points in the process anyway. The Good Karma missions that required killing only bad people were hard to stack practice points with, but in return, you could exchange Good Karma for the martial art you desired.
Cheong didn’t hesitate. She had had a goal in mind from the very beginning.
The Cheonma Divine Art had sounded tempting too, but after searching during a game download and learning that Cheonma was treated as a total joke, she had lost interest. These days, apparently Cheonma ran restaurants, bakeries, was a chaebol, and even played baseball. In proper wuxia, he was only ever the protagonist’s third concubine or so, so the Cheonma Divine Art was probably just flashy in name and nothing special.
Cheong immediately claimed the Good Karma reward.
In that instant, phrases flooded into her brain. The forms and truths of the martial art, the shapes of the techniques invaded her mind, rampaging wildly and turning everything inside out. Without realizing it, a stupid sound escaped her lips.
“Ugh… ughh, ughk…”
It was a horrific and filthy experience that couldn’t be put into words—like unfamiliar knowledge burrowing into her brain while someone shoved their hand inside and kneaded it around. And after that, there was always a massive aftereffect.
Does this even make sense? Who the hell learns martial arts like this? Actually, is this even a game world? Am I really me? Am I truly moving according to my own judgment? What if there’s actually a transparent screen floating in the sky beyond and someone is controlling me by smashing a keyboard and swinging a mouse? Then what am I…?
No. Stop. Bad thoughts, cease.
Cheong forcibly changed the direction of her thoughts. In times like these, she had to act like a total clown. She desperately groped through the memories of when she had existed as a modern person, the traces of her past that defined her as a living being.
Who am I? I am the owner of the Yeorae Shinjang. Stand aside, Stephen Chow. Here comes K-Yeorae Shinjang. Try wrapping Yeorae Shinjang in kimchi and eating it. The K-Yeorae Shinjang that makes Trump gasp and Xi Jinping jealous—this martial art is now mine. Yeorae Shinjang is drawn on watermelons… Got a problem with that? You Chinese people? Then go ask the Red Army about the Cultural Revolution. Nothing happened, you say?
Thanks to her desperate clowning, she avoided feeling even worse. However, she no longer had the courage to look at the status window. She didn’t even have the courage to look at people. Right now, she couldn’t look at numbers floating above people’s heads.
Cheong squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head. She chewed her dumplings thoroughly. Even though she chewed so diligently, for some reason her throat felt hot and something seemed to catch in the middle.
She forcibly turned her attention elsewhere. With her eyes closed, the voices around her flowed into her ears. Having achieved great completion in one internal energy cultivation method, Cheong’s physical abilities were practically superhuman. Simply by paying attention, she could hear every single conversation inside the inn.
Among them, one voice stuck out sharply.
“Hey, I heard the escort leader is heading to Yongseong.”
“Ah! May I ask this young hero’s honorable name?”
“I am Paeng Daesan.”
“The Jade Qilin! My goodness, are you not the eldest son of the Paeng Clan? This is truly an honor! If it’s Yongseong, does that mean you are heading to Mt. Hua?”
“An escort leader doesn’t need to know any more than that.”
“Aha! Of course, of course. It is an honor to serve a great hero! Hey, waiter! Bring a full table here—enough to break the table!”
The conversation was a mix of incredibly arrogant speech and a voice that suddenly turned servile and fawning.
Cheong’s gloomy mood vanished in an instant. So a high-level expert gets treated like this just by joining an escort mission! My god, this is incredible! It was a whole new world.
Cheong was the type who wandered around looking for villains she could kill once her money ran out. The wuxia knowledge she possessed amounted to nothing more than the pathetic life of a penniless beggar gained from rolling around for a little over a year, plus a few scenes from Stephen Chow movies. Therefore, there was no way she would know about the Hebei Paeng Clan.
The eldest son of one of the Five Great Clans of the world was, after the incident where our respected senior Mucheon-daeje had flipped the imperial palace upside down, a person of higher status than most princes of the royal family. The Gonbung Escort Agency was no small merchant group, handling distribution across two provinces, but it was nothing compared to the name value of the Hebei Paeng Clan.
Since Cheong didn’t know any of this, she simply thought, So experts get treated like this, huh.
With her unnecessarily high action stat, Cheong shot up from her seat.
“Excuse me. I heard the escort leader is going to Yongseong?”
Cheong spoke to the escort leader. With the bold attitude of an expert.
“Uh, um. Young lady, you are…”
The escort leader made a sour face. What kind of situation was this? This was a seat meant for serving a precious guest who was practically a diamond among golden connections. In Chinese characters it was 關係 (relation), and the Chinese people read it as kwanxi—a traditional networking occasion. There was no way his expression would be bright when some random stranger suddenly butted in.
“My name is Cheong.”
“Cheong?”
The answer came from the side. It was the ultra-low-frequency jade voice of that rude bastard from earlier, the Paeng Clan’s legitimate heir Paeng Daesan. It was a deep, resonant baritone that would make any woman melt, but it had no effect on Cheong.
Since Paeng Daesan was sitting with his back to her, Cheong only saw his face after she turned her head.
Whoa! How can someone be this handsome?
The title of Jade Qilin was one of the traditional nicknames passed down through the generations. It was a special title given to the most handsome among the promising young talents of the era. And this generation’s Jade Qilin, Paeng Daesan, was praised as possessing the greatest beauty in the long history of the Central Plains. There was no need to say more when his unofficial nickname was the Most Handsome Man Under Heaven.
But Cheong was only pretending to be a woman; at her core, she was a man. Therefore, she wasn’t shaken by a man’s appearance. She was simply startled.
Whoa! What the hell is that face? He’s insanely handsome! I’m jealous! What is this? Is this unreal scene really in front of me? Does a face like this truly exist on a living man? If you lined up every man throughout the world’s future and history by appearance, he would clearly occupy the eternal first place at the very front.
That was the level of surprise felt by Cheong, whose mind was that of a man. In truth, women who encountered the Jade Qilin’s jade countenance without mental preparation would usually lose consciousness while standing or genuinely faint and collapse.
While Cheong stood there with her mouth agape in admiration of that beauty, Paeng Daesan casually tossed out a remark.
“Cheong. Do you happen to use the Wolnyeo Sword Art as well?”
“Whoa. You know the Wolnyeo Sword Art! Maybe—”
“Hah. Well. This is rather fresh.”
Paeng Daesan cut off Cheong’s words and snorted.
What? What’s with this rude attitude? Is he acting out just because he has a pretty face?
Cheong made a displeased expression.
“Is Cheong your real name?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I’ve never heard that surname before. Then may I ask what your family’s progenitor was called?”
“Uh, um. Well, you see.”
How the hell would I know that?
But saying she didn’t know would seem too suspicious. In truth, Cheong had mostly traveled alone. The only people she had associated with even briefly were fellow penniless beggars. Birds of a feather flock together, after all. Therefore, she knew nothing about the etiquette of the upper class who wore silk clothes. She only thought, So rich people even ask about your progenitor.
Cheong racked her brain. Who was the person she knew with the surname Ah?
“Why can’t you answer?”
“I was about to, okay?”
“So, the progenitor?”
“Uh… Asura?”
Is that right? It had slipped out in the heat of the moment, but Asura seemed a bit off. The 17th descendant of Asura, Cheong. It didn’t sound too bad.
“Pfft, pffft. Hahaha…!”
Then, out of nowhere, Paeng Daesan burst into laughter. Apparently it had been wrong after all.
“Good. Very fresh. You get twenty-seven points.”
“What?”
“Your face is plain, so zero points. Your figure is passable, but you’re tall so that’s a deduction. Your chest is big so it looks vulgar, another deduction. That makes seven points. But you made me laugh, so a special twenty-point bonus for a total of twenty-seven.”
What the hell? How can someone sexually harass people so shamelessly? One thing was clear—this kind of attitude was not part of upper-class Jianghu culture. Other women would have run away in shame and sorrow, but it didn’t wound Cheong at all. Instead, she got angry.
This rude bastard. I can’t forgive him.
“Hey. Is that hole in your face a mouth or an asshole? You’re shitting out of your mouth. I’ll give you a hundred points, so shall I stamp a nice, thick ‘Well Done’ seal on your face?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but it sounds like you’re saying you’ll hit me once.”
Paeng Daesan didn’t even bother hiding his sneer.
“Fine. Go ahead. Try it.”
However, there was one fact Paeng Daesan didn’t know.
Since stepping into the Murim world, Cheong rarely held back. She was someone who carried the anxiety of not even being able to tell whether this was a game or reality, the uncertainty of her very existence. She had no leisure to endure her impulses. And if someone provoked her by telling her to hit them?
So Cheong clenched her fist tightly. Then she neatly drove her fist—wham!—into Paeng Daesan’s smooth cheek.
At that sight, the escort leader’s face turned deathly pale.