How Much, You Say?
A compromise had been struck between the Martial Gods and Jin Seongun.
"Hoh. So that's the life you've lived, is it."
Sangwang, who had opposed the arrangement at first, grew fond of Jin Seongun once he heard his story. The Merchant King had risen from a lowly inn waiter to build an empire of his own, and seeing his own circumstances mirrored in the young man, he understood him all the more deeply.
The Sword Immortal taught him the sword.
Sangwang taught him the ways of the broadsword, and told him to come ask anything he liked whenever trouble arose in running the inn. To Jin Seongun, those were the most reassuring words he'd heard yet.
Daji passed on her internal cultivation arts, Shintu taught him lightness techniques and the arts of concealment, and last of all, the Blood Demon — in a thoroughly grudging mood — drilled him in palm arts, fist and kick techniques, and every manner of close-quarters brawling.
About half a month passed, perhaps.
Or maybe a full month had slipped by unnoticed.
It was here that Jin Seongun came to realize how deeply the concepts of time and space were entwined. In a place where neither sun nor moon ever rose, time was impossible to gauge. He grew strangely unhungry no matter how long he went without eating, and untired no matter how long he went without sleep.
So he simply trained.
The Martial Gods, for their part, found themselves enjoying it — watching Jin Seongun absorb everything they threw at him — and Jin Seongun, in turn, delighted in the endless unfolding of a new world before his eyes.
And so, after however long it had been, the Martial Gods gathered before him and spoke with fond, satisfied expressions.
"There is nothing more we can teach you for now. As the old saying goes, overdoing it is worse than falling short. However great your vessel may be, it cannot hold what will no longer fit. I believe it right that you spend some time consolidating what you have learned."
At the Sword Immortal's words, the other Martial Gods nodded in agreement.
By any ordinary measure, Jin Seongun had already learned far too much. But Jin Seongun possessed the Heavenly Martial Body, and these were Martial Gods counted among the greatest in all of history. Naturally, their standards differed from the common sense of ordinary people.
"How strong have I become?"
The truth was, Jin Seongun couldn't feel it at all. The only opponents he had ever crossed hands with were the Martial Gods themselves. The more martial arts he learned, the more vividly their sheer greatness impressed itself upon him — nothing else.
The Sword Immortal broke into a gentle smile. Despite his initial worries, the boy called Jin Seongun proved to be as steady and guileless of heart as he was gifted in the martial way. He worried less now about a existence like the Blood Demon ever resurfacing upon the world.
"Measuring how strong you are is a meaningless exercise. You will simply become as strong as you decide you must be."
Strange words, those. Daoist to the bone, the Sword Immortal sometimes spoke in exactly this fashion.
"Sword Immortal, speak so a man can understand you."
Sangwang chided him. Unlike the Sword Immortal, who walked the Dao, Sangwang was a man long accustomed to money and numbers. Shintu, thief that he was, secretly nodded along in agreement.
Sangwang said, "How strong you are, you'll know the moment you step out into the world. Yes, there will still be plenty stronger than you. But you have no need to fear them. So long as you remain at the inn, you can always run back to us."
In other words — unless one faced a monstrous master capable of cutting Jin Seongun down in a single stroke.
It meant that even if he could not win, neither would he lose. And an inn waiter almost never left his inn, which meant the Martial Gods would always stand behind Jin Seongun.
Jin Seongun nodded. At first he had taken them for senile old ghosts... but they were, without question, Martial Gods. They never called him their disciple, and he never once called them his masters — theirs was, after all, a kind of transaction.
Even so, in his heart, Jin Seongun regarded them as his teachers. He felt as though he had gained five masters. Four fathers and one mother.
"Then I'll see you again in a month."
That had been the agreed term. He would run the inn for a month while continuing to hone and refine everything they had taught him.
The Martial Gods nodded with warm satisfaction. And the moment Jin Seongun opened the warehouse door and stepped back outside —
...it was night, just as it had been when he entered. A breeze stirred the grass of the empty lot.
Jin Seongun understood at once. However much time had flowed within, not a single second had passed outside.
"Time means little to us. What is there to worry over?"
The Sword Immortal's words made sense in an instant. The Martial Gods were beings who transcended time — beings perhaps imprisoned within an eternity.
"Each of us carries regrets, I said."
Jin Seongun, who had lived barely twenty-odd years, could not fathom their hearts. But he could imagine it was no pleasant fate — to live through an eternity, or to be doomed to, with one's regrets left unresolved. No wonder the Martial Gods, upon discovering him, had refused to give up and pressed their case so persistently.
"...I suppose I should deal with the weeds first."
Feeling his sense of responsibility deepen just a little, Jin Seongun made for the inn. The moment he grasped the door handle and pulled, he stopped short.
There were things he could feel now that he hadn't before entering the warehouse. The grain of the wind, the qi carried in the thin moonlight, the principle hidden in the sway of each blade of grass... Or, as it happened, the uninvited guests inside the inn.
Jin Seongun quietly set the Yeowol Mind Art in motion. An elegant, crystalline energy stirred within his body, yet not a wisp of it leaked outward. That was the hallmark of the art — unless one were a truly extraordinary master, no one would even notice that Jin Seongun had learned martial arts at all.
Click.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside, and there, sure enough, two uninvited guests sat perched atop his table. Sitting on the table itself, rather than the chairs — as an inn waiter, that was not something he could easily forgive.
"Welcome to Seongun Inn."
"So that's what it's called."
The man who spoke tilted his chin toward one side of the room. There, the signboard for Seongun Inn — the one Jin Seongun himself had carved — lay split clean in half.
The man gave a dry snort. "Seongun Inn is far too grand a name, don't you think? Let's just go with this."
He drew a slip of paper from his coat and handed it over. Jin Seongun walked over at an unhurried pace, took it, and read.
The Nameless Inn
An inn without a name.
"Don't make such a stiff face. Every shop in this district goes through it. Once you've received our blessing, then you can name your place whatever you like. By the way — are you the waiter here?"
"I'm the waiter. And the owner."
"Funny fellow, aren't you."
Jin Seongun stared at the men. Black robes worn deliberately loose and slovenly. The straight blades glimpsed beneath them. Heads cocked at some inexplicable, insolent angle. Every last detail of it was so transparently staged that it was almost comical.
More than anything, Jin Seongun could grasp Sangwang's words at once.
You'll know how strong you are the moment you step out into the world.
The martial depth of the two men lay plain before his eyes. The Martial Gods had dismissed terms like First-Rate and Peak Realm as meaningless — but judged by the realms the world used, these men were roughly Second-Rate.
In Jin Seongun's mind, the fight unfolded. It lasted only an instant, yet he fought it out a good hundred times over. The result: a hundred battles, a hundred victories. Even the longest of them ended before seven exchanges had passed.
Jin Seongun stared at the paper reading Nameless Inn for a moment — then crushed it in his fist. The men's expressions crumpled just like the paper.
Permission, is it? Permission before I can name my own inn?
Jin Seongun spoke. "And who might you two be?"
His emotions had never run deep to begin with, and he had always greeted every martial artist with a smile. That was a waiter's duty — or rather, the way a waiter survived. But there was no longer any reason to force a smile. Jin Seongun was no longer an ordinary inn waiter.
Only one emotion sat on his face now: the annoyance of having to carve a new signboard. That was all. Not a shred of fear toward these men.
"Listen here, waiter."
The man suddenly drew the straight blade at his hip and drove it deep into the tabletop.
CRACK—!
He counted it a movement like a flash of light. Any mere waiter, he figured, would wet himself in terror. He watched the fellow's face, expecting exactly that. But the man's face — waiter or owner or whatever he was — didn't change by so much as a hair. The man's brow twitched.
What is this?
For the first time in a while, he felt his own weight. Within the organization he was nothing but a lowly errand-runner, sure — but against a mere inn waiter, he could pass for one of the world's ten great masters. Yet it landed on the man not at all. An ominous feeling crept over him. This one is no ordinary waiter.
"...Don't tell me — Hahomun?"
Hahomun — a sect stitched together from society's lowest: waiters, courtesans, entertainers, butchers. They were a sect in their own right, a collective of martial artists, and even men like these could not afford to slight them.
Jin Seongun studied the man for a moment, then said, "I told you. I'm a waiter."
An ambiguous answer. The two men now had to judge whether Jin Seongun was a Hahomun man or merely a waiter bluffing his guts out. And while they deliberated, Jin Seongun strode toward them, step by steady step. The moment the distance between them had closed considerably —
"We're the Prosperity Society. The Yichang Prosperity Society."
Jin Seongun's steps stopped dead.
A Prosperity Society was, by custom, a gathering of local merchants. Which meant these men might be allies rather than enemies.
"Ah, so that's what it was. So a shop needs the Prosperity Society's blessing before it can be named? Unusual rules you have."
The place where Jin Seongun had once worked had a similar organization — one that collected dues, threw the occasional feast, and lent a hand when times got hard. A merchants' guild of mutual aid. As Jin Seongun's tone softened, the two men somehow relaxed.
That was the nature of Second-Rate martial artists of the Black Dao. Against those who knew no martial arts at all, they were tyrants without equal — but anyone who had trained even a little was usually their equal or better, and so they feared them. They couldn't read Jin Seongun's depth, and his bold, unbothered bearing had unsettled them.
"That's right. A new inn opened, so we came to explain the Prosperity Society's rules."
"Then explain the rules first. And stop smashing other people's signboards over nothing."
...The two men glanced at each other. Somehow, each seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. After a brief battle of glares, the younger of the two finally opened his mouth.
"First — for inns, in the interest of the local merchants' prosperity, liquor must be purchased from an designated supplier."
"Common enough arrangement."
Those who brewed and sold liquor on any scale were large operations. No single merchant could negotiate with them from a position of strength, so merchants banded together under the name of a guild or prosperity society to face them. Jin Seongun nodded along.
"And presumably, if you refuse to go along, the Prosperity Society sees to it that you suffer for it? There's strength in numbers — we live in a world where we look out for one another, so I understand. So. How much per bottle?"
"One cartload per delivery — a hundred bottles."
"...That's a fair amount."
"Cuts down on labor costs, you see. In any case, one tael of silver per cart of a hundred bottles."
That is to say, ten coppers per bottle — exactly the price an inn would normally charge a customer for a bottle of liquor. And they pocket the whole of it? Worse, you were forced to buy a hundred bottles at a time, bound by collusion so you couldn't buy elsewhere... No wonder they've bled so many helpless merchants dry. In league with the local officials, no doubt. So this 'Prosperity Society' is a society where only they prosper.
Jin Seongun gave a slow nod. Taking it for agreement, the two men let some of their tension drain away.
"Wait here a moment."
Jin Seongun strode toward the inn's entrance. The two men watched him, baffled by the sudden movement — and then Jin Seongun shut the door of the inn.
Click.
The latch locked firm. The interior of the inn went dark. Jin Seongun turned around, and his tone changed once more.
"How much did you say?"