The Man Tang Do-gyeong Is Obsessed With -1
First, there's something I need to get out of the way.
The Blood Jade Flyer I took off Tang Do-gyeong was one of those rare items that truly deserved to be called a legendary treasure. The veil Heukmyo borrowed the instant the shell game ended—woven from the whiskers of a thousand-year-old imugi—was precious too, of course. Put them both up for auction and they'd probably fetch roughly the same price. But ask anyone who'd ever played Murim Cheonha which one they'd rather own, and a hundred out of a hundred would pick the Blood Jade Flyer. The veil was just a valuable trinket. The Blood Jade Flyer was a treasure you could actually use.
"Oh my, Senior, did you just cough~?"
I'd been about to settle in for my usual breakfast of noodles when Heukmyo latched onto me and started acting strange.
"Oh my, oh my, you look terribly exhausted."
"...What are you doing?"
"This humble girl happens to possess a talent for massage. Why not leave yourself in my hands for a while?"
She slid her fingers onto my shoulders, and damn—just the touch of those slender, jade-like hands sent a tingle racing through me. Separate from that, the way she pressed and stimulated the pressure points made the knots in my shoulders melt away on their own.
"Uuuaaah~"
A groan like some middle-aged guy sinking into a sauna slipped out of me before I could stop it. Truth was, any high-level expert who actually felt like it could give a killer massage. They knew the flow of qi through the body and every acupoint by heart, so of course they were good at it. A massage from a beautiful female master with fingers like that? Was this what paradise felt like?
"This girl has been thinking about something all night."
"Uuuaah... what?"
"We agreed to split all profits eight-to-two no matter what, so doesn't that mean I have a twenty-percent claim on the treasures we won at yesterday's shell-game table as well?"
The pressure of Heukmyo's hands on my shoulders grew stronger. She dug into the points a little harder, and the relief was so complete it felt like it was burning away fatigue from my previous life.
I was melting. Completely melting.
"So~ how about we call that twenty percent even for my veil? There are four treasures and we can't exactly cut them into pieces, so isn't it only fair that I take one?"
So that was her angle.
What did she take me for? There was no way she would seriously try to claim ownership of the veil. Yeo Il-ye or Tang Do-gyeong might, but Heukmyo was my partner. We were going to keep taking jobs together.
We'd set that whole table up together just to take Tang Do-gyeong down. Claiming ownership of a partner's item after a setup like that felt a little inhuman, if you asked me...
Maybe I'd just enjoy the massage a little longer before answering.
When I stayed silent, the force in her hands gradually increased. The pleasant relief was starting to tip over into actual pain.
Only then did I remember that Heukmyo was a master who could shatter both my shoulders if she felt like it.
"Hey, hey, I'll give it back! I never planned on keeping it in the first place!"
"Thank you, Senior."
The massage that had been about to turn into torture stopped at once. Heukmyo sat down right away. The fact that I had even a sliver of a claim on the ownership must have really gotten under her skin; the moment it was settled, her mood flipped completely. She plucked up a dumpling with light, cheerful chopsticks.
"What were you planning to do with Yeo Il-ye's sword?"
"I never intended to take that either."
"Wow. So the whole table was just to make a sucker out of Tang Do-gyeong?"
I glared at her.
"Make a sucker out of him? Watch your mouth. That was a perfectly fair one-on-one-on-one-on-one match! You hear me? If I catch you spreading that kind of talk anywhere, I'll—"
"Hmm-hmm-hmm~"
Watching Heukmyo hum to herself as she brought the dumpling to her lips, I couldn't help letting out a sigh.
"I'm dead serious, so listen carefully. If you go off and do whatever you want again like yesterday, our contract is over."
"I'm sorry, Senior. I promise nothing like that will happen again."
That was probably enough. Heukmyo had stepped in and complicated things, but she hadn't done it on purpose, so letting it go here felt right. If she ignored my intentions and acted out again, I wouldn't laugh it off next time.
We called each other partners, but in practice I still had to teach her everything one step at a time. She was basically a junior partner. That was just how it went when you took on a new hand. No matter how promising they looked, rookies always caused trouble once or twice. You had to cut them some slack.
Anyway, yesterday's mess had put a dent in my reputation management.
The anonymity of a Sichuan nangin wasn't absolute.
As long as I operated under the name Sichuan Nangin Ho Cheon-an and carried out a Sichuan Nangin commission, my renown value didn't change. In other words, even if I wiped out an entire sect while working a Sichuan nangin job, the renown counter stayed put.
Of course there was a condition.
You could only take actions that could reasonably stay anonymous.
That was why Sichuan nangin only accepted people who used swords or sabers. Unarmed specialists who trained fists, palms, or legs were fine too—as long as they still wore a sword or saber at their side.
The magic performance had been right on the edge of what anonymity could cover. Winning a gambling match against Tang Do-gyeong, though? That couldn't be hidden under anonymity no matter what.
In game terms, I'd just fleeced a legendary treasure off Tang Do-gyeong through gambling, so my renown as a gambler would have risen by exactly that much.
"Hmm."
A piece of quartz with a sinister crimson luster, cloth wrapped around one end to form a grip—that was the Blood Jade Flyer. It was made from a special scale of the Poison-Scale Jade-Horn Serpent, or whatever the beast was called. Throw it and it flew toward the target on its own; on impact it burrowed into the skin and turned the blood into deadly poison.
It didn't reverse a full hundred and eighty degrees like a heat-seeking missile, but even a rough toss sent it streaking after the target at impressive speed. A clean hit would drop anyone from first-rate up through Peak Realm without much trouble.
It sounded incredible on paper, but against a Super-Peak expert it was basically useless. A true master of hidden weapons could kill a first-rate fighter with a thrown pebble.
For an ordinary person trying to protect themselves from experts, it was a once-in-a-lifetime treasure. The higher your own realm climbed, though, the more it became a beginner's item that lost its value. The kind of weapon that would drive rich merchants and high officials wild.
Having one myself wouldn't hurt. If I learned a proper flying-dagger technique, I could probably take down even those lingering at the edge of first-rate without much trouble.
The problem was that this wasn't an ownerless legendary treasure. It already had an owner, so keeping it would be difficult.
"H-hey there, Nangin Ho!"
I was still turning over what to do with the Blood Jade Flyer when Go Bu-rin came over. The thoroughly servile smile plastered across his face made it clear the higher-ups at Hwanggeumga had given him a thorough thrashing. A fairly large money pouch dangled from his hand.
"H-here you go. I gave those Taegyeongmun bastards a proper talking-to, collected the commission fee in full, and as an apology for this whole mess I won't even take a middleman's cut this time."
"And?"
"A-and... what else is there? I'll listen carefully to whatever you say."
"From now on you properly screen out unqualified clients, dig into every background detail when you take a job, give a clear risk warning, handle the aftermath cleanly, and state the fees up front. Doesn't that sound about right?"
Go Bu-rin's lips trembled.
"O-of course. Of course I'll do exactly that! So the next time a job comes in, please, please take it!"
The whole Tang Do-gyeong fiasco must have been a disaster for him. A riot right on the doorstep meant Hwanggeumga would have investigated everything, and Go Bu-rin's position had to be pure hell because of it.
Just imagine three Super-Peak experts clashing right outside your front gate. And the root cause was nothing more than Go Bu-rin skimming commission money? The head of Hwanggeumga had to be an extraordinarily merciful man. If it had been me, I wasn't sure what I'd have done to Go Bu-rin by now.
"Yeah, watch yourself from now on~ I can always go back to pulling carts, you know~"
"I-I'll keep that firmly in mind. Hahahahahaha!"
With a face the color of ash, he offered unconditional surrender while still trying to save a little face, then set the pouch down with an absurdly hearty laugh and vanished.
The other middlemen had eyes; they'd figure out exactly what kind of spot Go Bu-rin was in and behave themselves from now on.
"Ahh~ my appetite's really kicking in. One more order of five-spice pork, please!"
Maybe she'd been holding a grudge against Go Bu-rin too. The lightness in Heukmyo's chopsticks only grew stronger. The way she was ordering more food made it look like she planned to keep eating for a long while yet, so I stood up and walked over to where Yu Sa-yeon was.
"Good morning, Innkeeper."
"You... haaah."
The moment Yu Sa-yeon saw my face she looked ready to explode, then just let out a long sigh. She raked a hand through her hair and glared at me with real heat in her eyes. I had more than a few things I felt guilty about, so all I could do was offer an awkward smile.
"Ho Cheon-an. Friction with the middlemen I can understand. I've been waiting for an excuse to crack the whip on them myself. But what the hell was that racket in front of Hwanggeumga? And the magic show? And these flyers are circulating all over Sichuan right now!"
"So a few flyers are floating around. What's the big deal?"
"They're being passed around as proof that nangin are performing magic tricks! What exactly did you show them out there that people are losing their minds like this?!"
"Look, that's not the urgent part right now. First—"
"Honestly, the second a man stands in front of a woman his dick takes over his brain! I thought you were better than that, but the moment I pair you with Heukmyo you go and cause a major disaster!"
I was aware I'd caused trouble, so I was letting Yu Sa-yeon vent. But there were things you said and things you didn't.
Was I... that kind of guy?
The kind who, when someone said "Honey, stop," would jump up and down yelling "No, those bastards need to be beaten into paste! One side kick and boom!"?
"Hey, even so, that's a bit—"
"A bit what?! What-what-what?! At Gyeongsu Market you take a mid-level job and pull every stupid stunt imaginable! Then you pick a fight over the commission fee! All just so you can look cool in front of Heukmyo, isn't it?!"
This was insane.
I couldn't help glancing over at Heukmyo. She'd clearly been listening to the whole conversation for a while; her shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.
"Oh my, Senior, was that really it? I'm so sorry for being too fatal~"
She flipped her hair with one hand as she said it, and the fact that it actually looked charming only made me angrier.
"Hey! There are things you can say and things you can't, and that is not one of them!"
"If you're going to play dumb, try looking at your own behavior first! You crazy show-off bastard! It's pathetic, seriously!"
"Haa..."
That was when the commotion started at the entrance of the Wanderer Inn.
"Tang Do-gyeong?!"
"It's Fighting Dog Tang Do-gyeong!"
"Ah."
The urgent matter I'd been trying to tell Yu Sa-yeon about.
Tang Do-gyeong had arrived first.