Common Point -1
Clocking out.
What a sweet pair of words.
Getting off work after only about an hour on the job was already pure bliss, but escaping a place that reeked of military grind made it feel like I'd been handed a vacation.
Tomorrow I'd ask about the dress code and the rest of the day-to-day details of life in the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
For now, though — time to rejoin Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin.
Luoyang.
Having served as the imperial capital for so long, the city was packed with famous sights. Everything from historic sites where major events had once unfolded to bustling markets overflowing with things to see.
Since I'd already known their plans, I had a pretty good idea of where Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin would be.
"Hmm. This should be the place."
I looked up at the massive building in front of me. A structure large enough to house ten ordinary shops was, in fact, a single clothing store. The constant stream of people coming and going made it clear this was one of Luoyang's landmarks.
I passed under the sign that boldly proclaimed Heavenly Seamless Robes and stepped inside, asking an attendant,
"Would you happen to have seen a lovely veiled woman and a handsome young man in a headwrap? I'd like to know if my companions came through."
"Ah, those two are currently on the second floor."
Their individual quirks were so distinct they might as well have been carved in stone — just knowing their rough destination was enough to find them this easily.
Heukmyo loved pretty clothes. Bright, gorgeous colors especially. She rarely had the chance to wear them in ordinary life, so whenever the opportunity arose she clearly wanted to dress up.
With her realm advancing, her control over the Taiyin energy had improved as well. Now that she finally had an environment where she could wear bright, elegant clothes, the desires she'd been suppressing all this time had probably exploded. She was almost certainly lost in the joy of picking outfits.
The second floor was a space for women's clothing; the moment I stepped up, a soft powdery fragrance hit my nose.
"Hero! This one's pretty too!"
"Heh heh. That one suits you wonderfully as well."
How to put this. Most of the women shopping for clothes couldn't take their eyes off Hyeok Gi-rin. Judging by the shapes their mouths made as they snuck glances and muttered, it was things like "So cute…" and "I want to take him home and raise him…"
Yeah.
Let's pretend I didn't see the rest.
"So this is where you were."
"Ah, Master Ho. You've arrived."
"Senior! What about this one! This!"
Heukmyo bounced up and down holding a garment still on its hanger. Just as expected — bright and flamboyant.
"Hmm. That one's nice too. How have other people been reacting, by the way?"
Heukmyo was wearing her face veil in the ordinary style, with her eyes left uncovered. I wondered whether that had caused any major stirs out on the street.
"Walking around town seems fine enough! We'll probably need to test it more, though."
"Good. That's a relief."
A woman who covered even her eyes with a veil looked like someone up to no good, but one wearing a veil the normal way still fell within the range of ordinary. That should be more than enough for sightseeing around Luoyang.
Come to think of it, I probably didn't need to worry about random trouble either.
I now had an official identity as an external advisor to the Embroidered Uniform Guard. How many people in Luoyang would be bold enough to act up in front of someone connected to the Guard? And if we ran into anyone with truly massive power, Princess Yuya trailing behind us would quietly handle them.
In raw martial strength: two Super-Peak experts. In political power: an Embroidered Uniform Guard external advisor plus a princess. In wealth: the treasures and hundred gold taels received from the Imperial Palace, plus my original assets, putting us in the range of several hundred gold taels.
What was this invincible trinity?
The combination was so overwhelming that all my petty fretting felt downright stupid.
"It's a shame we can't have clothes tailored for Hero Hyeok."
"Yes, well. That's how it is."
Tailoring required measuring and changing clothes, so for Hyeok Gi-rin — a woman disguised as a man — it was bound to be awkward.
"So let's get clothes made for Senior instead!"
"Huh?"
"Come on! To the third floor!"
Heukmyo handed the garment she'd been holding to a clerk and shoved me in the back.
"We're going. Go…"
The only clothes I owned were a few sets of martial robes. As a martial artist who sweated every day, I always carried plenty of spares — but they were still just cheap training gear bought from whatever fabric shop I happened to pass. Martial robes were basically the equivalent of modern tracksuits. Fine for daily life, but not exactly suited to official occasions.
Now that I held the title of Embroidered Uniform Guard external advisor, I really did need attire to match…
I looked at Heukmyo shoving my back, and at Hyeok Gi-rin watching from behind without stopping her, eyes glittering with interest and anticipation.
I sighed.
I was about to become a living Barbie doll.
I had a strong feeling we wouldn't be leaving this clothing store before noon.
"Uuuugh…"
"Oh, come on! Senior! You're a first-rate warrior — why are you such a drama queen!"
Heukmyo scolded me as I slumped across a chair like a melting slime. Being dragged around nonstop by Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin — except for the brief respites of lunch and dinner — had been more than enough to drain my stamina and mental energy dry. But the real killing blow had been that clothing store.
The third floor was the men's clothing section, and it held some truly bizarre offerings…
"For a modest fitting fee, you may try on official robes. Of course, actually purchasing them requires an official's badge."
Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin's ears had perked right up…
And so I had been forced to change through dozens of outfits, starting from imperial soldier uniforms all the way through eunuch robes and even a prime minister's formal dress. And it wasn't just putting the clothes on — from head to toe, Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin had dressed me up completely.
The two of them had laughed like it was the most fun in the world. I had wanted to die.
After that massive drain on body and mind, we'd thoroughly toured the night market as well. Of course I was a limp rag by the end.
"Heh heh. Since someone has to report for duty tomorrow, let's call it a night."
"I suppose we have no choice. Come on! Let's go organize everything we bought today! And pick out what you'll wear tomorrow!"
"Yes. We did buy quite a lot, so we'll need to sort it."
Heukmyo and Hyeok Gi-rin vanished into Heukmyo's room. I let out a long breath and pulled the setting compendium from the drawer.
The setting compendium.
It was where I organized everything I knew from playing Murim Cheonha. Pure memorized enlightenment tended to evaporate from memory first, so most of the compendium was devoted to recording those insights — but it also held minor bits of knowledge that felt like they might slip away, along with the truly critical facts I absolutely could not afford to forget.
After the matter with Elder Un-jong, I'd felt the need to review my knowledge once more. Among the volumes, I'd brought along the sections related to the Imperial Palace and the empire.
"Well, it was always going to be mostly about the people."
In the end, the setting compendium was nothing more than my knowledge transferred into writing. As I'd said, enlightenment that existed only as phrases was prone to warping or vanishing inside my head — but memories of the game's characters and the flow of the story tended to stick even if some details faded.
At its core, the player was a martial artist of the Murim. And a Murim martial artist found it quite difficult to get involved in imperial affairs.
The empire did not place martial artists who weren't soldiers in important positions. Martial artists who obtained official posts would learn imperial martial arts and then desert, or use their authority to scrape together money and elixirs, raise their martial arts, and desert. It happened constantly.
As a result, it was effectively impossible for a player to set foot on the empire's official career path.
Not that there was any real need to.
While the player lived as a Murim martial artist, the empire kept busy in its own way — but major events large enough to affect a Murim player rarely occurred.
After all, Murim Cheonha was a wuxia game, and its subject was the life of a martial artist living in the Murim world.
You could say the focus had been forcibly locked onto the Murim.
But I was living in the real Murim Cheonha now. I'd already been appointed to a temporary official post I'd never held before — external advisor to the Embroidered Uniform Guard — so I needed to study the empire's history and its people thoroughly.
"I'm really glad I wrote all of this down."
At the time, creating the setting compendium had been an enormous investment. High-grade paper and ink that could last long-term were jaw-droppingly expensive. This single page I was turning now — even without counting the time and care poured into recording it — had cost about as much as a cheap bowl of noodles just to produce.
Back when I was worrying about scraping together each day's meals, I'd spent the equivalent of a full year's food budget to make a single volume. That was a serious investment.
It sounded simple when I said it out loud, but at the time it hadn't been an easy decision. Standing in a bookstore clutching my empty stomach while picking out paper, I'd often wondered whether there was any real need to record things like the imperial sections or the enlightenment of low-realm martial artists.
I smirked as I flipped through the empire's future history and its figures, recalling the various mishaps I'd run into while writing the compendium during those hungry days — and then I drifted off to sleep.
"Hurry up, Senior!"
"I'll be back soon, so I'll catch up with you shortly."
The trainee selection process still wouldn't be finished, so I'd probably just show my face briefly like yesterday and then clock out.
Today I was guided not by Song Chang-sik himself but by his aide.
"Ah, come to think of it, I never introduced myself. I am Song An-seong."
"Then that means…"
"Yes. The Admiral is my father."
"Oh — a father and son both serving as key figures in the Embroidered Uniform Guard. Impressive."
"No one else can handle Father's temperament, so I ended up as his aide whether I wanted to or not. The unit organization will be complete by tomorrow, and the trainees will be given a day of rest. Training begins after that, so you may take leave through the day after tomorrow and report the day following."
So today was just a quick stop at the workplace and then two days off. What an absolute dream job.
"By the way, about the dress code and the training manuals…"
"Hmm. An external advisor is, as the name suggests, an outsider, so there are no particular restrictions on attire… Still, we should at least issue you Embroidered Uniform Guard dress uniforms and instructor robes."
Following Song An-seong around and collecting various items left me with a whole bundle of gear.
"I was shown an instructor's quarters earlier — I have a spot there, don't I? Would it be all right to leave this there?"
"Of course. And if you wish to review the manuals, study them there. Under no circumstances are you to take them outside. They are top-level military secrets."
The PTSD triggers that snuck in whenever I let my guard down left me briefly dizzy, but I unpacked my things in my instructor's office all the same. It was about the size of an ordinary inn room and held only the bare minimum of furnishings, but even that was more than I could ask for.
Compared to the trainee barracks — bare beds and furniture with no walls to speak of — this place was heaven.
While I was here, I might as well show my face briefly.
I opened the barracks door, and the eyes of the trainees killing time each in their own way all gathered on me. Jo Ga-ju rose and saluted.
"Sir! You've arrived."
"Hmm. Looks like you're all settling in well."
Yesterday I'd run into a named figure in a completely unexpected place and ended up only speaking with Jo Ga-ju before leaving. These were people I'd be seeing for a while, though, and it had bothered me that I hadn't even done the bare minimum of introductions.
"I am Ho Cheon-an, external advisor to the Embroidered Uniform Guard. I'll be serving as an instructor for this unit, so you'll be seeing my face often."
"Sir!"
It seemed the group was a mix of those with military backgrounds and those without. The gap in salute proficiency was as obvious as the difference between someone who'd served and someone who hadn't.
Headcount was… fifteen in total?
"Right. Let's do a quick round of self-introductions, then you can rest."
"Sir! I am Jo Gap-deok. I served in the imperial army in Shandong and was recommended to take the examination!"
Simple introductions began to follow one after another.
But then…
"Sir! I am Jae Sang-hae. I studied scholarship at my family's estate in Shaanxi before applying to the Embroidered Uniform Guard!"
"Sir! I am Gwang Jae-ryeon. I was forging weapons in Sichuan when I applied to the Guard."
"Sir! I am Gang Chu-moru. From the imperial army in Shanxi…"
Every name in the unit was strange. No — it wasn't that the names themselves were strange. It was that names that should never have been gathered in this place were all here together.
Jae Sang-hae, who would one day rise to the position of Prime Minister. Gwang Jae-ryeon, who would develop a new method of steel manufacturing. Gang Chu-moru, who would revolutionize imperial military tactics. There were unfamiliar names mixed in as well, but most of them were great figures destined to leave a mark on their respective fields — and they were all gathered right here.
"Heh heh heh heh…"
What did they have in common? Nothing. These were people who would each achieve their own accomplishments in their own domains.
"Heh heh heh heh heh heh."
No — thinking about it, there was a common point.
Every single one of the people here was someone who should never become a member of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.