Secret Cave Expedition – 1
Meeeoooowww.
"Aigoo~ my little treasure~"
Black Cat found the Blue Snow Cat in no time. Finding anything in half a day across the whole of Sichuan Province counted as fast by any measure.
The rumored Blue Snow Cat was smaller than expected. Standing a little over a meter at the shoulder, it was roughly the size of a large dog — big for a cat, but a bit small to call a tiger.
Today's client, Gang Chi-san — a man who managed to lose his Blue Snow Cat more than four times a year — came rushing out of the house the moment he saw Black Cat leading the creature back through the gate.
"Master! How do you handle my precious so well? Please, teach me your ways!"
"Hmm… I've heard the Blue Snow Cat runs away quite often. You wouldn't happen to be mistreating it, would you?"
"Heaven forbid such a baseless accusation! I give my precious nothing but the very best!"
As I'd mentioned before, Blue Snow Cat retrieval jobs came in on a regular cycle. About two years now, if I remembered right. Originally a specialized four-man team of nangin known as the Blue Snow Cat Capture Squad had handled the work, but the beast had grown strong enough to smash their cages. Last time — or maybe the time before that — they'd given up entirely.
"I've seen my precious come home trussed up tight or locked in an iron cage plenty of times, but never once has anyone made him walk back on his own two feet the way you did, Master! Please, instruct me!"
"Mm. Honest eyes. I can see the true heart of a cat lover in you!"
I just wanted to get back and rest, but the truth was Black Cat had done this entire job by herself. All I could do was trail after her as she freely dispensed cat-rearing tips like a fountain of wisdom.
"Hmm! Everything in here looks expensive — I doubt the servants would just let a cat scratch it all up. Stack some logs in a corner of the yard so he can sharpen his claws."
"Where does the cat do his business? Spread fine sand in a corner of the yard and make him a proper spot."
"What's this? Kumquat scent? Mint? Get rid of all of it."
Meow.
The Blue Snow Cat clearly loved Black Cat's storm of critiques, rubbing its face all over her body. As befitting a precious Spiritual Beast, its fur gleamed with a healthy sheen that even I — someone who felt no particular attraction to cats — found myself wanting to pet.
"Master, thank you so much."
Whether something truly clicked between them or not, once Black Cat had finished reorganizing the Blue Snow Cat's living arrangements under her personal command, the creature settled into its new spot with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
"Ahh~ that feels good."
"Mm."
Gang Chi-san handed over a hefty pouch. Opening it, I found roughly five times the original job fee.
The truth was, Black Cat's actions had just cut off a nice, steady stream of income. If she'd kept her mouth shut, the Blue Snow Cat would have kept running away, and every time it did she could have strolled out, scooped it up, and collected another fee.
"Senior, you're not thinking we just threw away a recurring Blue Snow Cat delivery contract, are you?"
"No? Not? Thinking that? At all?"
"Your speech is completely weird right now. That job wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway. Another year or two of growth and he'd be nearly human-sized — a body that big couldn't hide in Sichuan Province anymore. A few more escapes and he would have left the province entirely and gone fully wild."
"Mm…"
"I figured anyone who lost him that often was just keeping a Spiritual Beast as decoration. But he turned out to have the right mindset, so I cut him some slack."
I was curious what she would have done if she hadn't cut him slack, but Black Cat looked so cheerfully pleased with herself that I had no desire to spoil her mood. I kept the question to myself.
"Looks like you've gotten a taste of most of the basic jobs by now."
"Mm. Have I? Black Path extermination. Ambush work. Delivering challenge letters. Returning runaway cats… aren't challenge matches missing from that list?"
"That's impossible. You're already famous as a Super-Peak expert."
Roughly speaking, a challenge match only shattered a sect's reputation when the fighters were evenly matched. If a Peak Realm fighter lost to a Super-Peak, who would that even hurt? The Super-Peak who issued the challenge would just get cursed out for bullying.
"So, about that…"
I carefully gauged Black Cat's expression while keeping my tone deliberately casual.
"Any interest in picking up some side income?"
"Side income?"
Purely my own estimate, but Black Cat had money — a lot of it. The face veil woven from imugi whiskers alone was an extremely expensive piece, and the way she barely paid attention to job fees only reinforced the impression.
Sichuan nangin pulled in serious money. Being a high-level expert was one thing; making a living was another. At these rates, even a grandmaster would feel some greed — yet she never once complained about the seventy-thirty split. That was only possible if she was already rich.
"Hmm… I'll hear you out, at least."
"I know the location of a Secret Cave."
"You do, Senior?"
"Do enough nangin work and you pick up all kinds of information."
At my current realm, knowing about the place and being able to claim it were two different things — but with Black Cat along, it was doable. The nangin I trusted were too weak in martial arts. And if I brought along a handful of Peak Realm wanderers, there was no telling what might happen.
"A Secret Cave… are you certain?"
"I've already confirmed the entrance, so don't worry."
And this would be my final test of Black Cat.
In this world, nothing was more certain than material interest.
If I had to name the people I'd come to trust most while living as Ho Cheon-an… Yeo Jinsang and Jeong Sam, maybe. But even those two — if I put rare treasures from a Secret Cave right in front of their eyes, I couldn't say for certain whether I'd still trust them with my back.
Whether Black Cat had truly used some scheme on me or not was still an open question. But her attitude so far, and the way she behaved when faced with extraordinary treasures, would tell me exactly how far I could trust her.
"How far from Sichuan Province?"
"About three or four days on foot."
"I'm in! I've been dying of boredom stuck in these stuffy clothes and this black bamboo hat anyway. A little outing~"
My tension proved completely unnecessary. Black Cat nodded without the slightest hesitation.
"Going out? Just the two of you?"
Yu Sa-yeon looked back and forth between me and Black Cat, then grabbed my ear and yanked.
"Are you two dating?"
"Has this innkeeper lost her mind?"
"…Ho Cheon-an, you're not the one who gets to be angry here. For a woman like Black Cat to even look at you, you'd have to bow a million times and still fall short."
It was so painfully accurate that I couldn't even argue back. That was the sad part.
"Fine, whatever. The Gyeongyang Restaurant's money-singer Da-jeoyong has been making a racket anyway. The Solar Society members are stomping around looking for the nangin who insulted him — and I hear that was your doing too?"
"What's the Solar Society?"
Yu Sa-yeon wordlessly pressed a hand to her forehead and slid it all the way up over the top of her head.
Ah. A bald-headed collective. Got it.
"Don't take the Solar Society lightly. From masters of the Hot Yang Art to wealthy tycoons and high-ranking officials — they've got members not just in Sichuan but all across the Nine Provinces. And the scariest part is that not all of them have been identified."
"If someone's a Solar Society member, you'd be able to spot them from ten li away, wouldn't you…?"
"Wigs."
"Ah."
Right. Bald men living as if they weren't bald — the Solar Society's hidden agents were probably scattered all over this world by the hundreds. I may have poked a hornet's nest I couldn't handle.
It was surprising that a group this large had completely escaped my notice, but then again, the game version of Murim Cheonha never offered a dialogue option for mocking bald people. So maybe it made sense that I didn't know.
Then again, thinking about it — Black Cat was the one who mocked the bald guy. That had nothing to do with me, right?
Well, if Black Cat got ambushed, she'd swat them aside without breaking a sweat. There wasn't a single Super-Peak baldy in Sichuan Province, at least.
"So when you leave, don't go skipping out humming a tune. Change clothes somewhere along the way and slip out quietly. Black Cat stands out in more ways than one."
"Got it. Appreciate the advice."
"If you're going to cause trouble, do it somewhere far away that has nothing to do with me, then come back. Understood?"
Anyone listening would think I did nothing but cause trouble. I'd kept my head down for seven years, and just because a few things got noisy recently, the treatment was completely unfair.
After filing our outing notice with Yu Sa-yeon, we slipped out of the inn before dawn.
"If you pull this cord all the way out and fold it like this… the black bamboo hat collapses flat, just like a bamboo slip."
"Mm, I see."
Black Cat let her bangs fall over her eyes. The fact that I couldn't see them through the strands of hair meant she was running Shadow Image Qi Gong over just that part of her face again.
I wasn't entirely without curiosity about what Black Cat looked like. But there was a saying about curiosity killing the cat. I wasn't curious enough to risk the danger, so we made our quiet exit from Sichuan Province without incident.
"Hmm. Several days out and not a single bandit in sight. Peaceful."
Normally, in a martial arts world, when a beauty and a warrior set out on the road together, the script called for bandits to appear spouting lines like:
That was how it was supposed to go. But this was Sichuan. A land where the unorthodox sects had been wiped out to the last seed, and orthodox factions twisted by their desperate thirst for chivalrous deeds swarmed like flies.
The moment word got out that bandits had robbed even a single coin within Sichuan's borders, experts from every sect would race each other to capture them, then parade the prisoners on a grand victory tour of the entire province, posting proclamations in every direction that they had caught the bandits.
For several days' walk from Sichuan Province, the land was nothing short of pristine wilderness.
Black Cat and I arrived at the mouth of the Secret Cave without a single interruption.
A Secret Cave!
In martial arts stories, countless fortuitous encounters existed, and most of them got lumped under that single vague word. But in Murim Cheonha, even fortuitous encounters came in several distinct categories.
One of them was the Secret Cave.
The greatest defining features of a Secret Cave were its mechanisms and its trials. And the most appealing part of all was that the rewards came already processed into a form ready for immediate use.
Say, for instance, you ran into a thousand-year imugi — the kind that supplied the main material for the face veil Black Cat was wearing right now. You'd fight a desperate, earth-shaking battle, overcome countless hardships, and finally bring the thousand-year imugi down. And what did it drop? An inner core, whiskers, and so on. All raw materials.
Materials needed processing before you could use them. If you managed to refine them into finished products, their value would skyrocket — but that meant hunting down other ingredients for the refinement, finding a master craftsman… turning raw materials into usable goods was no small amount of work.
Or say fortune smiled on you and you obtained a martial art. Except you couldn't cultivate it. You were training in a swift saber style, and the technique you'd found was a ten-thousand-sword method.
Even when you stumbled onto a fortuitous encounter, situations like that were all too common.
But Secret Caves were different.
The trials and traps of a Secret Cave tested whether you had the aptitude to learn the martial arts within — so if you cleared one, you could almost always cultivate whatever techniques lay inside. And even if the contents were spiritual medicines or rare treasures, they had been arranged by human hands, which meant they came in a form ready for immediate use without any further processing.
A Secret Cave was, without question, the fortuitous encounter best suited to me right now — a man who could obtain materials but had no practical means of refining them.
"Let's go in."