Sichuan's Number One Nangin, Star Instructor — Settlement Arc 1
A thought struck me out of nowhere.
Just how pitiful a creature is man?
"Chaaah! Raging Dragon Mad Saber! Flame Flower Asura Form!!"
"Haaaah! Bandit Meteor Sword!! Heavenly Palace Twelve Mansions!!!"
"Kiyoooooh! Chaotic Lotus Kick!! One Hundred Eight Consecutive Strikes!!!"
The drive for self-improvement among Sichuan's Nangin was genuinely extraordinary. That was no empty praise. Most of those currently working as Sichuan Nangin endured the ugly looks and constant abuse of martial-illiterate crowds for one simple reason: becoming a Sichuan Nangin was the path that let a wandering warrior raise his realm while still carrying the Nangin name.
I was a Nangin myself, and most of the breed were the lowest scum of humanity.
Nangin from other regions were Nangin in name only — day laborers with swords. Their skill was trash. Whatever money they scraped together went straight into booze and gambling. If there was profit in it, they would stab a client in the back without blinking, and in places without witnesses they moonlighted as highway robbers for good measure.
Because most Nangin lived like that, martial artists treated them about the same way they treated wild animals. Anyone who called himself a martial artist looked down on Nangin as lesser beings and refused to acknowledge them as fellow warriors. Ignoring a challenge letter was standard practice; if a Nangin actually delivered one, the sect's disciples would often just swarm him and cut him to pieces.
The biggest problem Nangin faced was that even if you beat someone, you had no defense when their sect came looking for revenge. Against the power of a group, an individual gets swept away every time.
Sichuan was different. You still ate every insult under the sun, but at least you never got ganged up on or had your challenge letters casually ignored. Sect retaliation could be weathered through anonymity and the community of the Wanderer Inn.
You had to swallow daily abuse from the crowds, but if you could endure that, working as a Sichuan Nangin was an excellent environment for advancing your martial arts.
Men who had left their hometowns behind, wearing black bamboo hats and roaming Sichuan for no reason other than pure hunger for the martial path. The kind of people who would smile and wade into a mud pit if it meant getting stronger — those were Sichuan Nangin.
And yet those same men…
The mere fact that Black Cat had shown up at the training ground had turned every last one of them into circus clowns.
"Crescent Moon Sixty-Four Forms!!"
"Kunyu Sea-Sun!!"
Jeong Sam's face had gone purple from unleashing consecutive strikes without breathing, Yeo Jinsang was twisting his entire body with every ounce of strength he had as he whirled his sword, and the rest of the Nangin had been burning through their internal energy since morning just to spit out secret techniques. Watching them, I couldn't help sinking into a philosophical inquiry: What, exactly, is a male?
What was so special about catching Black Cat's eye that they were firing off secret arts into empty air? Jeong Sam in particular looked one second from his face exploding, yet he still refused to stop the breath-hold combo. I was starting to worry someone was going to die.
"Let's go eat."
"Can't we watch a little longer? You still look like you haven't loosened up either, Senior."
No — it was too pathetic. I couldn't stand to watch any more.
"Hurry up."
"Fine."
The Nangin bulged their eyes at me with looks that clearly said, That bastard…
I had done them a favor by removing Black Cat for their own good, and this was how they repaid kindness? If they emptied their internal energy first thing in the morning, how exactly did they plan to take requests?
So I answered with a few knuckle-raps to the skull and fled to the dining hall.
Breakfast was simple — thin wheat noodles. Black Cat had the same. Beneath the black bamboo hat, Shadow Image Qi Gong kept her face completely hidden. I briefly wondered what she looked like bare-faced, then decided the current arrangement was better. What if a peerless beauty was hiding under that Shadow Image Qi Gong? Some of the Nangin might get so jealous their eyes flipped and they'd try to murder me.
"Senior Ho."
"What."
"Did you by any chance give enlightenment to a man named Kang Jun yesterday?"
"…What? Why would I? To a guy like that?"
It was so absurd I shot the question back on pure reflex.
"Hey. That whole story about me giving Yeo Il-ye enlightenment is pure rumor! She beat the drum and played the gong all by herself — why she keeps calling me her benefactor, I have no idea."
"So did you give Kang Jun enlightenment or not?"
"What have you been hearing? I don't have the ability to give it in the first place!"
Even if I had been a veteran of the game, there was no way I had memorized every scrap of enlightenment for some Second-rate nobody. At best I had memorized a few First-rate experts whose traits were broken enough to compete with higher realms.
"So you're saying you didn't."
"I didn't! Happy?!"
"Honestly, Senior. You could have just said so cleanly from the start instead of dancing around it."
Black Cat's scolding left my head ringing, but merely bringing up the subject was already a loss for me, so I took a deep breath and pulled myself together.
"Huuuuuh…"
"Anyway, Senior. Explain the current state of Sichuan's Nangin for me."
"Why. You don't need it."
Black Cat's bamboo hat tilted slightly.
"You went on at such length about the history of Sichuan's Nangin. Why won't you explain what they're like now?"
"Because you'll figure it out by living it from here on. Why should I wear out my mouth injecting you with preconceptions?"
"…That's fair."
"We're not taking requests today. Just so you know."
"Why not?"
I pointed to the scar that cut across my face. The golden wound medicine of this Murim Cheonha world had never given me a second thought when I was playing the game, but living inside it, the stuff was pure over-technology. Expensive golden wound medicine healed ordinary external wounds without leaving a scar if you just smeared it on.
A cut normally pulls the skin tight and draws the flesh up toward the wound, so you need sutures to hold the edges together and keep the meat from bulging out. And yet you could just carry a pot of golden wound medicine in your coat, rub it on, and the wound vanished without a trace?
Of course, wounds from attacks laced with internal energy still left vivid scars even with that medicine.
"Sichuan Nangin are forbidden, in principle, from doing anything that would reveal their identity. A Nangin with a facial scar? Instantly identifiable as an individual. Anyone who knows about the Gyeongsu Market incident will realize the moment they see my cheek healing that I was the Nangin from that market."
"If you cover it with the black hat, does it really matter?"
"You're not wrong, but after stirring up something as big as yesterday, the smart move is to keep a low profile for a while."
Black Cat, who clearly wanted to learn something as soon as possible, looked thoroughly dissatisfied, but she nodded as if she had no choice.
"And I said we weren't taking requests. I never said we were taking the day off."
"Then what are we doing today?"
"Collecting payment."
Finishing a request was important. Getting properly paid for a finished request was just as important.
"Haha, as expected of Warrior Ho. The client was extremely pleased."
Of course he was. The whole job had been a terrible deal on paper.
"So where's the extra compensation? Did you collect the sword fee properly? And the cleanup afterward — your side handled all of that, right?"
Brokers.
What exactly was a broker?
Sichuan needed its Nangin, but public opinion of them inside the province was hopeless. Anyone with social standing risked real damage just by associating with Nangin, so the Sichuan Nangin — people no respectable person would visit — needed a channel through which they could receive requests.
That channel was the brokers.
Most brokers came from famous Sichuan families or carried the blood of renowned houses. Of course, if you were actually important yourself, you didn't do broker work.
In any case, the brokers were of that pedigree, and people who wanted to hire Sichuan Nangin contacted them under the pretext of paying a social call on some famous name or great house.
The broker Hwanggeum Goburin nearly jumped out of his seat.
A descendant of the Hwanggeumga, the Golden Family, bearing a name that meant "one who guards and hoards gold" — a goblin, no, Hwanggeum Goburin — was, true to the goblin in his name, one of the greediest middlemen among all the brokers.
The broker system was necessary, but from a Nangin's point of view it was an intensely frustrating institution.
How much had the broker actually taken from the client? How much of that fee had he skimmed before handing the request to the Nangin?
As yesterday had proven, a job site changed by the minute. Extra costs appeared, the entire fee structure shifted, and every single point that needed negotiating with the client depended entirely on the broker's competence.
Goburin cleared his throat and put on airs.
"Of course! I assessed the sword fee at the highest grade and collected it, and I personally walked the Gyeongsu Market to assess the situation. The client was thoroughly satisfied and even paid an additional sum."
"You'd better keep thinking carefully."
Goburin's hand, which had been reaching into his coat, flinched.
"Those people are still debating whether to put your name on the Black Roster."
The Black Roster. Yes — the blacklist.
The Wanderer Inn chose its clients carefully. Every so often some clueless minnow who knew nothing about anything would take a request and treat Nangin like actual disposable tools.
Idiots like that got put on the Black Roster. Once the Nangin agreed, challenge letters went out and the sect was erased. In Sichuan, fools who didn't watch their step around Nangin did not survive.
The reason Nangin didn't actively wipe out sects left and right was partly because of the Jeong Cheol incident, and partly because mass-slaughtering sects left you with nothing and changed nothing. Most of them were interchangeable cabbages from the same field anyway.
So what I was saying to the greedy Goburin right now was this:
If you don't spit out what you skimmed in the middle, the sect you've been counting on as a long-term cash cow will be ground to powder and your revenue will hit zero. Behave.
Gulp.
Goburin swallowed dryly.