Ever Heard of a Strike? -2
“How long do you plan on keeping this up?”
A voice so exquisite it could have pulled a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers with nothing but VLogs alone rang out.
Right now the masked woman was sweeping up every gaze among the Sichuan nangin. A beauty that rare was bound to draw eyes wherever she went, so the attention was only natural.
If I hadn’t been the one under pressure, I might have been leisurely admiring her looks and marvelling myself.
On the first and second days of the actual strike, more than a few nangin had tried speaking to her. Every last one of them had taken a smack to the back of the head from Yu Sa-yeon and fled.
Whether by choice or force, five days stuck together meant the masked woman couldn’t help but catch my eye. Every single movement of hers was lethal; more than once I’d flinched without meaning to.
If someone asked whether this was a good situation, I’d have no choice but to say yes. The problem was that beyond that, it made my heart go cold. Just from the angles I’d seen so far she was an absolute peerless beauty—so why on earth was she this obsessed with me?
“Just what is the reason for all this?”
“Because I was recommended that there is no better master than you.”
“There are plenty of reasons I’m rejecting you, miss. First, the innkeeper went completely ballistic on me. Second, she pressured the middlemen and screwed me over. Third, your beauty is so outstanding that walking around together would be a burden. Fourth, you’ve been using the Shadow Image Qi Gong that assassins use for five days straight without showing your face even once.”
No matter how free-size the black bamboo hat was—big enough to cover even large heads—and even if this woman’s face was tiny, the fact that nothing of her features showed beyond the jawline simply didn’t make sense.
Shadow Image Qi Gong was a martial art that, once you had learned shadow-type techniques, multiplied their power or enhanced stealth arts. Just from the description it was a shady art—and she’d been using it right in people’s faces for five days? She was radiating suspicion with her entire body.
The real problem was that neither this masked woman nor Yu Sa-yeon looked ready to give up. And I couldn’t keep this up forever either.
“Fine. Let’s hear your goal. What do you want?”
“I want to become the best among the Sichuan nangin.”
“Then you should go acquire martial arts or spiritual medicines.”
“The strongest martial artist isn’t necessarily the best nangin.”
Somehow it felt like the masked woman had smiled.
“Since appearing in Sichuan seven years ago, a ninety-three percent success rate on commissions. And still active with all limbs intact—you’re the only one. Even digging through the not-so-long history of Sichuan nangin, there’s no one like you, Ho Cheon-an.”
“The word ‘best’ is given to those who are qualified. If you’re not the best in martial arts, becoming the best nangin is also impossible.”
“That’s true. But improving martial arts isn’t something effort alone can solve. I always put in the effort, but achievement depends on the heavens. Shouldn’t people do what people can do?”
Having done nothing but loaf around for the past five days, I’d had more than enough time to think.
From the third day of the strike onward I’d realized this matter couldn’t be resolved with a strike alone.
Since neither Yu Sa-yeon nor the masked woman looked ready to give up, I needed a plan of my own.
The masked woman’s resolve seemed extraordinary.
Judging by her handling of Shadow Image Qi Gong and her presence, she was at least Peak Realm or higher. By ordinary Murim standards, if a mere second-rate warrior ignored her will and rolled around like this, the normal reaction would be to explode in rage on the spot.
Yet she’d endured it for five days and still kept a rational attitude… I didn’t know what the pinnacle of Sichuan nangin was supposed to be that she’d go this far, but still.
If she was going to accommodate me this much, there was no reason I couldn’t become her partner.
As long as she followed my instructions, I could manage my renown points to some degree.
It would mean going back on what I’d said publicly, but among the nangin at this inn none of them had truly thought I would win. In the end Yu Sa-yeon and I were in a vertical superior-subordinate relationship. Just as there couldn’t be an employee who beats the boss, my actions had been nothing more than resistance from the start.
After roughly a week of this ruckus, I hoped the nangin would at least rate it as “he lost, but he fought well.” Being the butt of jokes for a while was unavoidable, but…
What could I do? This was the sorrow of the subordinate.
If I had to become a defeated subordinate, I’d become the one who walked around with a peerless beauty by his side.
At this point, hadn’t I actually won?
My little buddy tried to take over my brain, but I shook my head and suppressed it.
“Hmm…”
I’d already lived as Ho Cheon-an for eight years.
A year after falling into Murim Cheonha I’d reached the limit of second-rate, and for two years I’d done everything within my power to break through that second-rate wall. And failed at every single one.
So I’d been living quietly while honing my gambling skills.
But meeting Yeo Il-ye had put an end to that quiet living.
I’d said over and over that if your renown got too high relative to your realm you’d die, but it wasn’t as if you died the moment renown rose.
Shall I compare it to a game? I don’t know when I’ll die either. Maybe in a few days, maybe I can hold out for ten or twenty years. But if I had to choose a loading point where I’d have to start the game over after hitting a bad ending or game over, it would definitely be before meeting Yeo Il-ye.
I’d just passed that point.
Now the name Ho Cheon-an was being mentioned and discussed somewhere, and people who knew of my existence had appeared.
The masked woman in front of me, and Yu Sa-yeon who had arranged her, were the same.
Renown had attached to my name, and because of that, people who wanted something from me had appeared before me. The masked woman had come because she needed me or to find something out, and Yu Sa-yeon had probably developed some expectations or revised her evaluation of me over this incident, when I’d just been one of the nangin at the Wanderer Inn.
People like this would keep appearing from now on, and someday I’d get entangled and face danger because of such things.
And while overcoming those dangers, someday I’d fail and meet an ending I didn’t want to recall.
If I hadn’t rolled the snowball, nothing would have happened, but now the snowball had left the mountainside. Even if I strained to slow the rolling speed, a snowball that had started rolling would someday become a size I couldn’t handle and crush me.
To not be crushed by that snowball, I had to soar beyond second-rate.
So I’d been thinking that someday I needed to make a gamble.
And now might be the timing to make that gamble.
It was true that in the two years since becoming a nangin I’d used every means but failed to find a path to break through second-rate. But the current situation was different from then. I held Yeo Il-ye’s favor token, and the masked woman would be active with me for a while. If needed, couldn’t I borrow Yu Sa-yeon’s power as well?
In a situation where my realm was second-rate, an opportunity to move experts of this level probably wouldn’t come again.
The problem, as always, was the price.
In full sincerity mode, how much did the masked woman value Ho Cheon-an?
Could this masked woman pay a stake worthy of this once-in-a-lifetime gamble of Ho Cheon-an’s?
“Fine. How do you plan to settle the account?”
“What do you want?”
“I have something I want, but would you like to try guessing once?”
The thirsty dig the well. Offers? Those are for the hungry to make. I had a reward in mind, but first I needed to hear her offer.
“I’ll give you a Lesser Return Pill.”
“Not enough.”
The masked woman fell silent.
Lesser Return Pill.
There were many spiritual medicines in Murim, but if you surveyed the preference for spiritual medicines sold by each sect, first place would probably go to Wudang or Shaolin. It wasn’t simply because they were made by Shaolin or Wudang that they were preferred.
Regardless of the sects’ renown, the accumulated alchemy techniques of Wudang and Shaolin were extremely high. And above all, they could produce spiritual medicines closest to natural qi that didn’t discriminate by the nature of internal energy.
No matter how good a spiritual medicine, if I couldn’t take it, it was just a pie in the sky.
The Lesser Return Pill and Taiji Pill, close enough to natural qi that anyone could take them, had value beyond just their internal-energy enhancement efficacy in terms of stability and versatility.
Since supreme spiritual medicines like the Greater Return Pill weren’t sold outside, the best spiritual medicines purchasable with money were Shaolin’s Lesser Return Pill or Wudang’s Taiji Pill. In fact, in the game, the highest spiritual medicines you could buy with currency were about those two.
To buy spiritual medicines beyond the Lesser Return Pill, you needed contribution to that sect. Simply put, you had to become a benefactor of the sect.
Anyway, back to the Lesser Return Pill—if you took a Lesser Return Pill, even a trash second-rate could become first-rate. Yeah. Everyone except me.
In my current state, even if I swallowed Greater Return Pills by the dozen, I couldn’t become first-rate.
Better to take money than a Lesser Return Pill in my situation.
“That sort of thing doesn’t matter. There’s only one thing you need to pay as the commission fee. My past.”
“…What do you mean?”
“My birth. My bloodline. Finding that out is my condition.”
The reason my limit realm was fixed at second-rate was solely because of Mixed Blood.
Final realm -?
At least it would have been -1, so I could have risen to first-rate warrior.
Mixed Blood, the lowliness guaranteed by heaven. This was the biggest gate blocking me right now. Just what was this Mixed Blood? I didn’t think I knew everything about this Murim Cheonha, but still, a penalty that chopped off the final realm in chunks was absurd.
Having played this game for over ten years, it was impossible that I’d never heard of or seen such a trait. This Mixed Blood trait definitely had something to it.
I had to understand and break through this trait.
But I didn’t know Ho Cheon-an’s past. I’d just been hit by a truck one day and become the character of fifteen-year-old Ho Cheon-an.
The masked woman was silent. From her perspective she probably hadn’t expected me to demand information.
The way she stared at me seemed like she was panicking, thinking How did he know I was from an information organization?
But you know, while showing techniques that serve the darkness like Shadow Image Qi Gong and telling me with her own mouth that she knew hidden information like the commission status of Sichuan nangin—if she’d leaked that many clues, guessing she was from an information organization was normal, wasn’t it?
I couldn’t know the inner thoughts of the masked woman who was perfectly concealing even her gaze with Shadow Image Qi Gong, and after pondering for quite a while, the masked woman nodded.
“I don’t know whether I’ll be able to find it out or not… but I promise to do my best.”
“Alright, let’s consider that agreed.”
I nodded for now.
If that woman truly couldn’t find out my past, the day I taught her everything would never come, so she’d better do well on her own.
“Then. From now on, let’s speak casually. What should I call you going forward? You should at least tell me a title to address you by, right?”
“…Call me Myo.”
“Good. From today, I’ll call you Heukmyo—Black Cat. I won’t accept any complaints.”
“The feel of it is a bit off…”
“Isn’t it the name you chose? Anyway… yeah… take care of me for a while.”
I held out my hand. For the handshake custom that didn’t exist in the Central Plains, Black Cat stared at my hand for a while before taking it.
I had become partners with a woman named Black Cat whom I knew nothing about.