I Was Supposed to Be Dead, Wasn't I?
Back on Earth, I lived as an ordinary student. I studied like everyone else, got into university like everyone else, and the night before I was due to enlist like every other young man in South Korea—
I woke up, opened my eyes, and found myself dragged into this world.
Hauled into Murim without a clue as to what was happening, I spent ten years in the back alleys picking pockets with the sleight of hand I picked up there.
With that money, I bought the utterly commonplace Three Powers Sword Technique and the Three Powers Heart Method.
Then I shut myself away in a remote mountain valley, living in a cabin someone had thrown together, and for sixty years I trained in nothing but those two arts.
The result? One casual swing of my blade could cleave a massive boulder clean in two.
In the truest sense of the word, I had lived as a madman obsessed with the martial arts.
And so I ascended to the Peak realm.
Then... I grew old, and I died.
A madman in life, a madman in death.
Without ever once holding a woman's hand.
And so, Baek Sihyeon of Earth closed his eyes for the last time in the world of Murim.
****
Thwack—
"Kgh—!"
"You little punk, seriously!"
A dull ache bloomed across my forehead, and consciousness that had been sinking into darkness was hauled back to the surface in an instant.
"What... what is this?"
"You, punk. Judging by the state of you, you're a beggar just like me—so why the hell are you shaking down another beggar with nothing to steal?"
"...?"
Why on earth was I here?
I was supposed to be dead, wasn't I?
And what was with this filthy beggar standing in front of me?
I needed to understand the situation, so I asked him.
"...What do you do, exactly?"
"Ha, me? Can't you see the knots? I'm a Beggars' Sect man. Third rank, at that."
"Hm? Oh..."
When I spotted the three knots hanging at his waist, something clicked.
"Don't tell me..."
A single hypothesis took shape in my mind.
This younger body—and the strength and vigor surging within it.
The scene spread out before my eyes right now.
"I've... regressed?"
"Are you talking in your sleep, kid? Hey, what's your name?"
My name.
My name, huh.
It had been fifty years since I'd shut myself in that mountain valley, and I could barely recall the last time I'd told anyone my name.
I curled one corner of my mouth upward and snatched the wrist that was darting rapidly toward my pocket.
"My name? Baek Sihyeon."
Somehow, the Peak realm I'd achieved in my past life hadn't vanished.
The moment I seized his wrist with that power, a scream of agony tore from his throat.
"H... how... AAAGH, it's breaking, it's breaking! Hiiiik!"
"Haha..."
When I tightened my grip on his wrist, his mouth shut right up.
I stared at the grime-stained coin pouch clutched in his hand for a moment, then fixed him with a glare, my eyes brimming—no, his eyes brimming with tears.
"Now I remember, you damn bastard."
Right—this was from the days shortly after I'd arrived in Murim, when I was drifting through the streets, scraping by on begging and petty theft. One day, out of nowhere, a beggar picked a fight with me.
Claimed I'd stolen his coin pouch.
The bastard had slipped his pouch into my pocket with lightning-fast fingers, and I'd been cornered as the thief with no way to defend myself.
As luck would have it, he was a Beggars' Sect man, so I got beaten by him too, then dragged to the Sect's Wuhan branch and pounded by the branch leader himself.
If that person hadn't been there that day, I truly would have been beaten to death.
But this time, things were going to be different.
"Real men aren't supposed to cry, you know."
"Ugh... l-let go... please..."
"Nope."
"E-excuse me?"
CRACK—!
My clenched fist slammed into his head.
"AAAAAGH...!"
"Don't worry, you won't die. No injuries, no lasting damage either."
Because if any of that stuck around, my position would get a little awkward down the road.
Whether that meant he could rest easy, however, was another question entirely.
Thud— thud—
"GYAAAH! MERCY!"
And so, for a while, the back alley rang with the sound of fists meeting flesh and echoing screams.
How much time had passed?
"Take me to your branch."
"...Yes, sir."
He had become a well-behaved, obedient child.
Truly, the old saying held: spare the rod, spoil the child.
"...Tch. I'm so dead when the Beggar King hears about this."
"What was that?"
"...Nothing."
And so I followed him, walking at a leisurely pace toward the Beggars' Sect Wuhan Branch.
There was someone there I absolutely had to meet.
****
The Beggars' Sect Wuhan Branch.
At the sight of a dozen-odd dilapidated shanties huddled in the back of the courtyard, my brows furrowed of their own accord.
"...This is it?"
"You're a beggar yourself, what were you expecting, a palace? You mocking our branch now?"
"Raising your voice at me? Want another beating?"
The moment I raised my fist, his shoulders shrank instantly.
"N-no, that's not what I meant..."
"Say what you will about the Beggars' Sect being a sect of beggars, you can't actually be broke. You could put up at least a decent hall, couldn't you?"
"What kind of beggar builds a hall to live in?! Have some roots, man!"
"Fine. Stay a beggar your whole life, then. Don't you dare forget your roots."
"...Grrk!"
"...Come to think of it, what was your name again?"
"You're asking me that now?"
"Why would I need to remember the name of some beggar who picked a fight with me?"
"Every other word out of your mouth is 'beggar this,' 'beggar that.' Hey! Do you even know who I—"
"That's why I'm asking, isn't it? Suit yourself if you don't want to answer."
Leaving the sputtering man behind me, I walked on with a snort of laughter.
And just as I was about to step through the gate, his muttering drifted from behind.
"Cheon Seolhyeon..."
"...? What, why do you have a perfectly normal name?"
Aren't beggars usually named things like Dogdung or Chosam?
Besides, that name sounded like...
"Like a girl's name."
"Then do I look like a man to you?"
"Huh?"
At Cheon Seolhyeon's words, I gave his entire body a careful once-over.
Granted, the features were fine and delicate, pretty even.
Though it changed nothing about the fact that this was a grubby beggar with a face caked in dried sweat and a head of hopelessly matted hair.
There was one other regrettable thing, though...
"Tsk tsk... that kid's never going to nurse a baby..."
I shook my head as I stared at his flat chest.
"...Where are you looking?"
"Nothing. Let's go in."
"..."
Ignoring the burning glare boring into my back, I stepped into the Beggars' Sect Wuhan Branch.
At once, three beggars came slouching out of the shanty right beside the gate.
Young kids, somewhere between their early and mid teens, by the look of them.
The one in front glanced back and forth between me and Cheon Seolhyeon before speaking up.
"Huh, Chosam's back? And this one is... a guest?"
"Yeah, a guest. Wait... Chosam?"
"Isn't that Chosam-nuna behind you?"
The boy's gaze was fixed squarely on Cheon Seolhyeon.
"Pfft... Chosam..."
"...That's NOT my real name, okay? What I told you is my real name!"
"Right, right. Chosam. Anyway, where's the branch leader?"
"...The biggest shanty. That's the branch leader's office."
"U-um... are you, by any chance... acquainted with our Beggar King?"
The beggar boy asked me carefully. Apparently, my foul-mouthed manner had led him to assume I was on close terms with the branch leader.
For a beggar, the kid was surprisingly perceptive.
Unlike me.
"Who knows."
I brushed past the boy and Cheon Seolhyeon—no, Chosam—and kicked in the door of the largest shanty.
BOOOOM—!
With an enormous crash, the door—a shoddy weave of rice straw—burst apart, revealing the branch leader's office beyond.
There, seated at a decrepit old desk sorting through paperwork, the branch leader stared at me with an expression of sheer disbelief.
"GYAAAAH! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!!!"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU LUNATIC!!"
"Heh heh."
The boy, Chosam, and the branch leader, in that order, let out screams and groans.
Before long, the branch leader set down his brush, rose from his seat, and planted himself in front of me.
"A green young pup running wild, throwing his weight around? How old are you, exactly?"
A wild thicket of black hair had grown out past his eyes, jutting every which way like a magpie's nest. His ragged clothes gave off a stench so potent I genuinely wondered how many days—or weeks—it had been since his last bath.
A man of roughly forty, scratching at his protruding potbelly as he looked me over.
Branch leader of the Beggars' Sect Wuhan Branch—the Drunken Beggar, Bak Daehyeok.
"A pleasure to meet you, Branch Leader of Wuhan. I've often heard of the fearsome reputation of the Drunken Beggar."
"I asked how old you are."
"Right now... was I twenty-two, or twenty-three?"
The Drunken Beggar stared hard at me for a long moment, then burst out laughing.
"BWHAHAHA! The Peak realm at twenty-two? Never in my life have I heard of such talent. Are you the young master of some great clan? No, from the looks of you that doesn't fit either... and I've heard no word of any illustrious family falling to ruin..."
His sharp eyes locked onto mine.
"A hidden sect passed down to a single disciple? That would explain your manner—like a man who crawled out of some deep mountain valley after years of nothing but training—as well as a realm far beyond your years. There's no other possibility. Though where a man like that learned my nickname is beyond me... Am I right?"
He spoke with utter confidence, certainty gleaming in his eyes.
"...Nope."
"What?!"
And precisely because he'd been so certain, my denial landed like a thunderclap.
"That's impossible... then did a Peak-realm martial artist just pop out of thin air?"
"Hey, old man."
KUWOONG—!
I snatched one of the wooden swords lying scattered on the floor of the shanty and drove it into the branch leader's desk.
The rotten old table split clean in two under that single strike.
"You run an information network, and you're trying to dig up intel on me for free?"
"..."
"I came here to buy information."
"And this is how a 'customer' treats my door and my desk..."
"So, are you selling or not? It's not like that thing's worth anything anyway."
At my words, the Drunken Beggar's eyes sank.
The coarse, easygoing front he'd shown until this very moment was gone. The man standing before me now was, pure and simple, a merchant.
"...And what information would you be wanting? Depending on its grade, you may need to prove your qualifications first."
"No need. It's nothing special."
And at the words that followed, his eyes went round as saucers.
"The date and location of the Mudang Sect's entrance examination, how the test will be conducted, the temperament of the examiner who will oversee it—and every last scrap of information related to the trial."
"...Do you have any idea! That's Grade B information! I could knock it down to Grade C by trimming a few of the key secrets, but whether B or C, I don't sell to some nobody whose face I don't even know!"
"Then let's begin that proof of yours right now."
I raised the wooden sword and leveled it at the point between his brows.
"...What do you think you're doing?"
"Proving my worth."
Bak Daehyeok was a master of the mid-stage Peak realm.
For someone who had only just reached the Peak, like me, losing to him should have been a given.
And yet... why couldn't I shake the feeling that I wouldn't lose?
"I was raised in the mountains. The only martial arts I ever learned were the Three Powers Sword Technique and the Three Powers Heart Method, and that's the end of it."
"...? And you're asking me to believe that?"
"Whether what I say is true or not."
Cutting him off, I poured sword qi into the wooden blade.
A blue-white light kindled at its tip, and my mental image unfurled within it.
The image was rage—and joy in equal measure.
The fury of standing before the man who had beaten me bloody. The joy of finding the chance to pay him back for it.
"How about you judge for yourself?"
The first purpose of my return to this place was revenge.
"Ha..."
"This is going to hurt quite a bit."
First Form
Mountain-Crushing Press
The golden wooden blade came crashing down with the force to split the Drunken Beggar's skull in two.
His staff met it, and a tremendous detonation tore through the air.
Weapons locked, we stared into each other's eyes.
"...What is the meaning of this?"
"Make a deal with me. If I win, hand over everything I asked for. In return... I'll help you with your work three times."
"Ridiculous. Why would I trust the likes of you?"
"Run a con on the Beggars' Sect? Not even a stray dog would entertain the thought."
Beggars are everywhere. Which means slipping the Beggars' Sect's watchful eyes and running is impossible.
After studying my face for a long moment, he finally nodded.
"Fine, then—"
BOOOOM—!
"Let's see how well you really play!"
Swinging his staff in a great arc to knock me back, the Drunken Beggar let out a wild laugh and came charging at me. His staff traced eerie, twisting arcs, splitting into dozens of phantom copies that came pouring down on me from every angle.
"...Is this what a proper martial art looks like?"
I couldn't say why, but each of those countless phantom staves looked achingly slow to me.
Things I had never been able to see back in my third-rate days were etching themselves into my mind one by one—the underlying principles of the art the Drunken Beggar was unfolding before me.
Understanding all of it, I began to lay it out at the tip of my own blade.
"So it's done like this?"
The Mountain-Crushing Press, until now nothing more than a crude overhead smash, began to transform at my fingertips.
The Drunken Beggar's expression twisted strangely.
"Huh...?"
The blade that had split into dozens of shadows struck down each and every one of the falling staves, one after another.
And the instant I felt the power packed into those staves, only a single thought surfaced.
...Why is this old man so weak?
He'd have built his internal energy on a heart cultivation method dozens of times superior to the Three Powers Heart Method, wouldn't he?
It was so absurd that I simply let my sword droop and stared at him in silence.