The Little Demon King, Part 4
Whoosh. A foul, choking stench rose from inside the shanty.
As soon as I stepped into the ramshackle building, the first thing that caught my eye was Yu Seojin’s money pouch in the old beggar’s hand.
And in his other hand were a piece of silk paper and a jade plaque.
An IOU.
The last of Yu Seojin’s money—the thing she’d been using to scrape together her travel expenses.
“H-heeek…!”
The young beggar scooted backward on his backside, dragging himself away.
The old beggar swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the club in his hand.
“W-who are you? This is Beggars’ Sect territory in Yichang! If you barge in here without permission…”
The beggar who’d stolen Yu Seojin’s pouch was nothing special, but the old one in front of me was different.
I noticed the number of money pouches hanging at his waist.
Five empty pouches.
If I remembered right, a sect leader wore eight, an elder seven, and a branch hall master six.
Which meant this guy ranked just below a branch hall master—quite a high position for a beggar.
And yet the rotten look in his eyes made him seem less like a respected hero of the Beggars’ Sect and more like a criminal borrowing the sect’s name.
The conversation they’d just had had already made their level obvious.
But being trash as a person didn’t necessarily mean being trash at martial arts.
In the Beggars’ Sect, where martial skill ranged all the way from ordinary fighters to peerless masters, wearing five money pouches meant he had to be at least second-rate.
I tensed my body slightly and surveyed the surroundings.
Any ambushes?
A handful of beggars were running over after hearing the commotion. Nothing else.
Their martial level?
The old beggar’s weapon was pathetic, but the presence and internal force seeping out of him were worth a look.
The rest were a pack of rabble.
Then this should be enough.
I pointed my index finger at the pouch in the old beggar’s hand.
Then I crooked that finger at him, once, twice.
A universal hand signal anyone could understand.
Hand it over.
“Y-you bastard! What are you asking for? We don’t have any money!”
The young beggar tried to act tough and pulled a small dagger from his robe.
What kind of Beggars’ Sect disciple pulls a dagger instead of his cane?
What a fine state the Beggars’ Sect had fallen into.
“Elder! I think this bastard’s with that Wudang Daoist woman from earlier! Looks like he chased her here!”
“What? Chased her?”
The old beggar’s eyes narrowed like a viper’s.
At first he’d looked at the young beggar with contempt, but now that gaze turned on me, full of killing intent.
Sure enough, trash was trash. The words spilling from his mouth were exactly what I’d expected.
“…Kill him.”
The old beggar growled low in his throat.
“If we let him leave alive, we die. Bury him where no one’ll ever find him!”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The young beggar gripped his dagger properly and got to his feet.
The old beggar rose too, club in hand.
At the same time, three more beggars who had come running with their clubs after hearing the commotion joined the group.
“Elder, what happened?”
“Th-this bastard barged into the branch hall and started threatening us for money!”
It was a blatant lie, but the instant they heard it, the beggars’ eyes turned savage.
It was the look of people who had lived their whole lives being robbed, turning on a plunderer with reflexive hatred.
“…”
I wanted to say it was a misunderstanding, but I couldn’t speak, and even if I could, I didn’t think they’d listen.
The Beggars’ Sect was notorious, for better or worse, for shielding its own.
If they tried to sort beggars into good and bad, it wouldn’t fit the sect’s supposed purpose of standing up for all the weak in the world.
And besides, they were the kind of people who refused outside intervention, claiming even trash like this could be beaten into shape.
In other words: let the Beggars’ Sect handle Beggars’ Sect business, and outsiders should keep their noses out of it.
A place open to everyone, yet closed to everyone.
That was the Beggars’ Sect.
Sure enough, the beggars who’d joined in without asking any more questions slowly started to encircle me.
A classic inward-curving arm.
I was completely surrounded.
“Die!”
The young beggar charged at me, swinging his dagger in a fit of reckless bravado.
At the same time, the three beggars with clubs advanced from the sides.
I shut my eyes for a moment.
And when I opened them again—
Whoosh.
The world turned black and white, and the beggars’ bodies began to glow like fluorescent auras.
The human body, made up of tens of thousands of lines.
I could see it.
The points where those lines gathered and gathered, blazing brightest in neon light.
One in the head, one in the heart, one in the lower abdomen.
Those were their dantians.
I clenched my fist.
The Mo Sect’s mental art doesn’t torment its disciples with vague, cloud-catchingly mystic nonsense like other schools do.
Subduing Strike, as my master had taught me.
A disabling technique that struck the dantian or vital points to render an opponent helpless.
I took the stance for that technique, then began to read the battlefield.
Measurement, calibration, analysis.
My eyes spun rapidly.
From the petty thief charging with a raised dagger to the beggars unleashing club techniques, every piece of information entered my head, neatly quantified.
Time until the young beggar’s dagger struck my body: one second.
The dagger’s trajectory: left ribs. Toward the heart.
Time until the three beggars’ club attacks reached me: two seconds.
Distance: three meters.
Their targets: right shoulder, left leg, right waist.
“Hiyah!”
The young beggar rushed me with a shout.
A blade thrust straight out.
It was fast, but a dagger swung on a whim always had a predictable line.
I stepped back half a pace.
Exactly three centimeters.
The dagger’s tip sliced through empty air without even grazing my sleeve.
I didn’t waste the opening.
The target was his arm, then his lower dantian.
Ten centimeters below the navel, at the overlap of the large intestine and appendix.
Crack!
“Graaah!”
First, break the arm holding the blade and disable him.
Then draw internal force into my fist.
And drive it into his lower dantian.
Thud!
“Ugh!”
He didn’t even manage a scream.
The young beggar, breath knocked out of him, rolled his eyes back and collapsed face-first onto the floor.
But I couldn’t stop moving yet.
I snatched the dagger from the fallen youth and sliced through one of the clubs.
Whoooosh!
The dagger swept up in a wide arc.
Riiip!
With the sound of wood splitting, the club snapped cleanly in two.
The beggar holding it stared wide-eyed.
I kicked out at him with a leg technique reinforced by internal force.
Crack!
“Aaagh!”
His club had been cut in half, and the beggar who’d swung at empty air took a kick to the shinbone.
Using the recoil, I surged into the chest of the beggar on the opposite side.
The target was his middle dantian.
Five centimeters to the right of the heart.
The beggar failed to react to how quickly the distance had closed and tried to swing his club straight at me.
I immediately tilted my torso and slipped past the club.
Five centimeters to the right again.
With a whistle, the club grazed the tip of my right shoulder.
At the same moment—
Thump!
“Guh!”
The beggar took a palm strike, dropped his club, and was flung backward.
Leaving him behind, I turned toward the last man.
The final beggar darted in like a snake, swinging his staff toward my waist.
I immediately loosened my belt and poured internal force into it.
Clang!
“K-kraah!?”
Mozi’s Defense Array.
A circle that emitted the faint sheen of dark ink blocked the club strike aimed precisely at my right waist.
I seized his club and closed the distance in one breath.
Riiip!
“Urrk…”
A palm strike reinforced by internal force. That was enough.
As the blade edge of my hand sank into his neck, the beggar made a strangled sound and crumpled in place.
I quietly turned my head to see where the old beggar had gone.
He’s already run.
It seemed he’d used his own men as bait and slipped away already.
Truly the method of trash.
Once I confirmed the most dangerous one had vacated the area, the tension in my body finally began to drain away.
Still, if there was any consolation, he’d left Yu Seojin’s pouch and the IOU behind.
Maybe he’d feared reprisals. Or maybe he’d figured a Beggars’ Sect thug like him couldn’t use an IOU from the Je Gal Clan anyway.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
I’d secured the goods.
I brushed the dust off the fallen pouch and IOU and sprang back up toward the collapsed roof.
The murmuring outside was growing louder.
The branch hall’s beggars were swarming in.
If I dawdle here, it’ll turn into a headache.
I quickly turned toward the direction Yu Seojin had gone.
Then I leapt across the rooftops after her, using lightness skill.
***
Yichang’s bustling main street.
And at its center, the exchange operated by the Hyeongju Escort Agency.
Yu Seojin stood dazed in front of it.
Her hands kept patting at the empty place at her waist.
“Ah… huh?”
It was gone.
It had definitely been here.
She’d checked once before entering Yichang, and then again just before parting with Wolyeon the female martial hero—no, the hero.
“Excuse me, Daoist lady? Are you exchanging money or not? People are waiting behind you.”
The clerk at the exchange prodded her in an irritated voice.
At that, Yu Seojin’s face turned red as a beet.
“I-I’m sorry! Just a moment, it was definitely here…”
She searched her sleeves, then the inside of her robes, but all that came out was dust.
Cold sweat broke out down Yu Seojin’s back.
The item inside the pouch was not something she could afford to lose carelessly.
An IOU from the Je Gal Clan.
A written promise that the Je Gal Clan would pay the money later, so please advance the funds now.
It was essentially a promissory note backed by the clan’s honor and credibility.
Something that, if lost, might be abused in any number of ways.
It was something the Je Gal Family Head had given her because he trusted her completely, and because of the friendship they had built over time.
I’m ruined.
Yu Seojin’s mind went blank.
What should she do now?
She didn’t even have enough money to pay for an inn tonight, let alone buy a meal.
Should she beg like the Beggars’ Sect disciples?
Or use the Wudang Sect’s name to charge things to an account?
No, that didn’t seem right either.
But then again, where had she lost the pouch?
Where should she look?
Should she report it to the authorities?
Would they ignore her because she was a martial artist?
Countless thoughts whirled chaotically through Yu Seojin’s mind.
The longer she stood there lost in thought, the more irritated the clerk became, and the sharper his stare grew.
Just as he was about to speak again—
Whoosh.
Suddenly, a wind blew.
“Huh?”
Yu Seojin reflexively reached out and caught what had flown toward her.
A familiar feel against her palm.
The texture of a silk pouch, and its solid weight.
“This is…?”
With trembling hands, she felt the pouch all over.
“My pouch!”
Yu Seojin shouted, clutching it in both hands like a child receiving a gift.
The clerk behind the stall was sending her a look that clearly said he wished she’d hurry up and leave already, but there was no way Yu Seojin could see it.
By instinct, she turned toward the direction the pouch had flown from.
And there,
“W-Wolyeon Daehyeop?”
Yang energy burning like blue flame, and yin energy flowing quietly like black ink.
Though she couldn’t see them, she could feel them clearly.
Wolyeon, whom she’d thought had already left, was standing before her.
In a daze, Yu Seojin pointed at her money pouch.
“You… found this for me, Daehyeop?”
Wolyeon quietly nodded. Then she placed something else in Yu Seojin’s hand.
A crumpled sheet of silk paper.
The Je Gal Clan’s IOU.
Overcome with emotion, Yu Seojin covered her mouth.
Tears began to gather in her pale, unfocused eyes.
How many times was this person going to help her?
“Daehyeop! Thank you, truly, truly thank you! How did you know I’d carelessly dropped it somewhere…”
Yu Seojin had resolved that even if she died, she would carry Wolyeon Daehyeop’s secret to her grave.
Just as she bent at the waist to thank Wolyeon—
Jing—!
Jing—!
Jing—!
A clamor of gong strikes rang through the street.
People startled and began to murmur as they moved out of the way.
“What’s going on?”
Yu Seojin turned her head.
Far off, a dark mass was flooding toward them.
Beggars.
Not one or two.
Dozens—no, it looked like more than a hundred beggars were charging down the street with clubs and staves in their hands, radiating menace.
“There he is! That bastard destroyed our branch hall!”
“Catch him! He’s the Beggars’ Sect’s enemy!”
“Break his bones!”
All at once, the beggars’ gazes turned toward Wolyeon and Yu Seojin.
“Eh?”
Yu Seojin tilted her head, utterly bewildered.
The Beggars’ Sect?
Beggars?
Destroyed a branch hall?
What on earth were they talking about?
“Um, Daehyeop? Why are those people pointing at you and getting angry? Do you know them?”
Why was the Beggars’ Sect here?
Destroyed a branch hall? Wolyeon Daehyeop?
Could it be that while searching for my pouch, Daehyeop had gotten into a fight with the Beggars’ Sect?
Or were they mistaking Daehyeop for a thief?
While the clueless Yu Seojin stood there in a daze, the beggar mob had already surrounded the exchange in a ring.
The clerk’s face twisted with shock and disgust.
His glare was fixed on the beggars charging toward his workplace—and on Wolyeon, who seemed to have brought them here.
His expression made it look as if, if he knew martial arts, he would send either the Beggars’ Sect beggars or Wolyeon to the other world right this instant.
From among the beggars encircling the exchange, a middle-aged man stepped forward.
As the middle-aged beggar walked slowly out, the others parted like a river splitting around a rock and made way for him.
His air was seasoned, his face full of authority, and six money pouches hung at his waist.
He was the branch hall master of the Beggars’ Sect in Yichang.
“You there, blue-eyed young sir.”
The branch hall master’s voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the wariness underneath it.
He nodded down toward Wolyeon.
“Why don’t you step outside with us for a moment?”
Come out of the exchange.
And let’s have a little talk.
Instead of answering, Wolyeon quietly rested a hand on the sword at her waist and rolled her eyes rapidly.
Yu Seojin, still none the wiser, could only stand there blankly between the Yichang branch hall master and Wolyeon.
“Uh… what in the world is going on?”
Even though she was one of the culprits behind this incident, Yu Seojin wore a foolish expression that suited her far too poorly.