Journey to Yunnan with the Escort Agency -1
"Hmm. It seems the commission at the Tang Family is wrapping up."
Having received word of Ho Cheon-an, Black Cat looked down at the documents spread before her.
There were leads, but…
Clues to Ho Cheon-an's origins, or to the secret realm, had hard limits when drawn from paperwork alone. In the span of a week she had compiled every scrap of documentary intelligence available, and the effort had not been without results of its own—
"Still not enough… I suppose it can't be helped."
Wolbokdang was a pure information organization.
Black Cat selected its members with care, and the criterion was temperament. She took only those who lived by an informational instinct from the cradle—people who, faced with the greatest beauty under heaven, would set a man's desire to claim her aside and prize instead the knowledge that only they, only Wolbokdang, possessed her secrets.
That was why no Murim masters numbered among Wolbokdang's ranks.
Martial artists, simply by virtue of having trained, routinely rated themselves ten or a hundred times above their true station. Every martial man Black Cat had met in her life had been a balloon of a creature, swollen with the baseless confidence of I could take a beauty like that.
That's why Senior Ho is different.
Compared with the other men who, drunk on empty swagger, made nuisances of themselves around her, Ho Cheon-an's manner was almost austerely plain. The way he flinched whenever she drew close suggested he felt her charm well enough—yet he never pressed it.
Black Cat smiled once at the thought of him, then resolved to return to Sichuan.
"To take Senior Ho's measure as well."
What she needed next was fieldwork, and fieldwork required a master. Loose talk of a secret realm among martial artists would bring disaster as surely as sunrise; she would have to investigate in person. That meant asking Ho Cheon-an's intentions and moving by them.
Black Cat rose to return to the Wanderer Inn.
The road back was comfortable.
Rather than the Bicheon Carriage—remade by a mad technician's hands—we returned to Sichuan in an ordinary fast coach.
Of course, every time Dang Do-yeon made camp or called a rest, she would grumble,
"If this were the Bicheon Carriage, we'd already be in Sichuan with our feet up."
But her skill with the reins was excellent. No wonder people called her horsemanship divine; I could not remember a more pleasant carriage journey.
Tang Do-gyeong had been likable enough once you set aside his obsession with sparring, and Dang Do-yeon, speed mania aside, was a decent sort herself.
The coach drew up where Sichuan came into view. I pulled on the black bamboo hat and wind cloak I had not worn through the days of travel and looked at Dang Do-yeon.
"Thanks to you, Miss Dang, the trip was an easy one."
"Think nothing of it."
She drew something from her robes and held it out to me.
"…What's this?"
"Feed this pill to a pigeon and it will fly straight to the Tang Family Estate. It's one of the family's principal means of contact. Should the Beast Wanderer call for me, I will come racing aboard the Bicheon Carriage, wherever you may be."
"You needn't go that far. The Tang Family Lord has already heaped more gifts on me than I deserve."
"Hehe. I simply wanted to offer my own thanks. By now the Beast Wanderer must know—I'm serving a sentence of busywork on account of my brother Do-gyeong, and it is deathly dull. If you were to request the Bicheon Carriage in the middle of all that, it would be nothing short of a blessing."
Being able to summon the Bicheon Carriage by messenger pigeon would certainly have its uses. Its speed was no ordinary thing; in a crisis it could serve as a trump card.
"Thank you, Miss Dang."
"Hehe. Then I'll be heading back. Take care of yourself."
Dang Do-yeon cracked the reins and the fast coach shot away without a backward glance. I watched its retreating shape one last time, then set my feet toward Sichuan.
Passing through the city gate—where people could not be avoided—hostile stares I had almost forgotten came knifing in. Mm. Yes. That sharp, peppery regard, all of it aimed at me at once: that was how I knew I had truly come home to Sichuan.
Hmm.
How to put it—walking the alleys of Sichuan, I felt somehow at ease in my bones. At the Tang Family I had never known physical discomfort. Treated as an honored guest at every turn, I had probably spent the most physically comfortable stretch of my life in this Murim Cheonha. Even psychologically, the time there had not been hard.
And yet my steps quickened now for a simple reason: I wanted to flop down in my own room—the Magnolia Chamber—read a wuxia novel, and drift off to sleep.
Yes. I had been stuck to this Sichuan for seven years. This place might well be what one could call Ho Cheon-an's hometown.
It was not that I had never taken outside commissions as a Sichuan nangin, but I had never been gone this long. The moment the secret-cave expedition ended I had touched the inn and been promptly kidnapped to the Tang Family Estate, so I had spent better than two weeks wandering foreign ground. Missing my room after that was only natural.
I left the alleys behind and reached the Wanderer Inn.
"Oh, Brother Ho's back."
"So you finished the outside commission well?"
The same old scene. More than two weeks had passed since Tang Do-gyeong's departure; those who had been nursing their Great Hero Tang depression seemed to have shaken it off, and everything looked as it always had.
"Yes—finished it cleanly and came home."
I dealt with the nangins in the usual way, turned my head, and found Black Cat already close at hand.
"The timing seems good. I arrived a few hours ago myself."
"Is that so. Good to see you after so long, either way."
"Same here, Senior. Anything interesting happen at the Tang Family?"
"I'm tired today. I'll tell you tomorrow."
Aside from the group drilling the Fierce Tiger Fist Method out on the training ground, the Wanderer Inn itself had not changed in the slightest.
"You didn't cause another bizarre incident at the Tang Family this time, did you?"
"Ahem—wait till you see the commission fee hit the books. You'll faint from the shock."
"…Ugh. I'm worried. What did you do this time! Spill it. Right now!"
"Ah, I'm tired—tomorrow!"
Shaking free of Black Cat and Yu Sa-yeon, both of them hungry for every detail of my Tang Family stay, I hounded the cook into packing fried chicken and retreated to the Magnolia Chamber that passed for my room.
"Whew."
I set the chicken on the little table by the bed and pulled Gyeongsin Martial Arts Chronicles – Volume 8 from the shelf where I kept my novels. Life had been so frantic of late that I had neglected them badly. I had been on volume seven at Gyeongsu Market, and since then I had managed only a single volume more.
Tomorrow I would stop by the bookstore and check the new-release list.
Thinking that, I flopped onto the bed. Having tasted the Tang Family's finest mattresses, the softness under me was not entirely satisfying—but my heart settled all the same.
Seven years living in this Sichuan. Seven years living in this Magnolia Chamber. Of Ho Cheon-an's eight years of life, seven had been spent here; simply rolling around in the Magnolia Chamber was enough to bring peace of mind.
I ran my eyes along the novels on the shelf. The titles I had finished across those seven years were beyond counting, but few had been granted space here. The ones that survived were the ones that had passed the aesthetic of a picky modern reader—me. A true collection of masterpieces.
I opened volume eight of Gyeongsin Martial Arts Chronicles, took a bite of a chicken leg, and let out a long breath.
"Ahh~ This is the life."
This was the life. This was pure bliss. I turned the pages with greasy fingers. I had never thought Gyeongsin Martial Arts Chronicles worthy of my shelf, but you never knew. The back half might explode with entertainment. And if it turned out to be a masterpiece after all? I could always buy another copy.
Thinking that, I read until I fell asleep.
It was a long-awaited, honey-sweet rest.
"Yunnan? Hyeongwi Mountain?"
"Yeah."
I could hardly announce that Tang Family Lord Tang Gwang-ryeol had wagered hidden weapons against Tang Do-gyeong, been cleaned out down to his soul, and then summoned me as a helper—so for public consumption we had agreed to say I had been invited to the Tang Family for a rest cure.
"Amazing. Senior Ho did accomplish something significant, but to think you'd get a chance at a pulse reading from that person…"
Black Cat's reaction was more lukewarm than I had expected.
Completely outside my calculations. This was a chance to meet the Poison Doctor, one of the Three Great Physicians. I had assumed she would be thrilled. Instead she was tepid.
But her company was essential.
Yunnan was unorthodox territory through and through. Unlike Sichuan, where one could not freely draw steel for the sake of a chivalrous image, that place crawled with people who unsheathed at the mere meeting of eyes. For safety alone, Black Cat—a quasi Super-Peak master—was indispensable.
"Yes. Since it's come to this, I don't know how things will run if I'm not there… No—thinking it through, accompanying you is absolutely necessary."
I had no idea what she had just convinced herself of, but she nodded in self-persuasion all the same.
"So when are you thinking of departing?"
"I was thinking of joining a merchant caravan bound for Yunnan and hitching a ride… Would that be all right?"
"Well. I suppose we have no choice but to make do."
Black Cat looked less than pleased, but she agreed.
In truth, the Tang Family's compensation had been so generous that buying horses or a carriage for the two of us would have been no great difficulty. But our destination was Yunnan. The border between Sichuan and Yunnan, in particular, was a paradise for the worst sort of people—unorthodox martial artists shoved out of Sichuan swarmed there. If we had no choice but to travel as a pair, that would be one thing; where companions could be had, sticking together was the right call.
"All right. I'll look into the caravans. We'll leave on their schedule."
After checking around, I judged it best to move with an escort agency called the Namhaeng Escort Agency. Black Cat and I removed our black bamboo hats and paid the agency a visit, ready for Yunnan.
"Hahahaha! This young master is Ha Seon-su, third son of the Namhaeng Escort Agency!"
And immediately, a wastrel of a fellow latched onto us.