I Can Just Pay It Back Later
Nok Soyun thought, feeling the rough warmth of Baek Sihyeok's hand as it stroked her hair.
It was what her father, the Green Forest King, had always repeated like a refrain. Even if you are a woman, to shoulder the seat of Green Forest King you must be possessed of the dignity it demands. To claim the name of King, the weight of that word must outweigh a thousand gold.
We had fought, my maidenhood staked against his manhood, and the defeated one had been me. So I was bound, rightfully, to keep the promise that had been made.
With that thought, she looked up at the man gazing down upon her. The faint blue light lingering in his eyes seemed to bore straight through my heart and soul.
Enduring that gaze of his, which pressed down upon my very soul, I opened my mouth with all the strength I had.
"How... how are you so strong?"
"Hmm? Who knows?"
He only tilted his head with an evasive grin.
"Anyway, we're leaving soon, so get ready and come out."
"...Yes."
So he wasn't going to tell me. Not that it mattered. From now on, I would be at his side without pause. I would stay there and observe—down to the very last detail—exactly how he trained, day in and day out.
Burning with that resolve, Nok Soyun rose from her seat.
I set a large sack down on Nok Soyun's back.
"Here, carry this."
"Yes."
It was the goods we had plundered from the Mount Taesan stronghold.
Nok Soyun slung the sack over her shoulder without a word of complaint—and the Green Forest escort, at the sight, cried out in alarm and came rushing at her.
"Milady, give it here, please."
"We will carry it for you."
"It's fine. Go away."
Nok Soyun's hand smacked the burly man's hand away without ceremony. He clutched his own hand, looking as though he were in agony, a few tears trickling down his face.
"Urk..."
"He's the one who ordered me to do it. So it's only right that I carry it."
From the look of things, she grasped her position perfectly. Watching her, the corners of my mouth curled up all on their own. As the Green Forest King's daughter, she must have been raised in silk and pampering, and I'd worried a little about that... Turns out there was no need at all.
"Chosam, come here."
I had gone looking for Cheon Seolhyeon in search of a little peace of mind. And so, the moment I stepped up behind her and brought my hand to her cheek—
"...Aren't you gonna get lost?"
"Huh?"
Smack— Cheon Seolhyeon slapped my hand away with the firmest resolve imaginable.
My hand didn't hurt one bit—but my heart ached, terribly, at being turned down for the very first time in my life.
"What... why?"
Good heavens. Seolhyeon, who had always been such a sweet, obedient junior sister... The hand she'd slapped trembled uncontrollably.
"...Is this puberty, or what?"
"Shut up. Just—shut up. I'm not talking to you. Go spend the rest of your life playing with her—Nok Soyun, Nok So-dragon, whoever she is."
"...?"
From behind us came Namgung Yerin's voice, thick with contempt. "You trash..."
"What? What did I do wrong? If it weren't for me, you'd all have been thrashed by Soyun one by one. You know that, right?"
"No self-awareness whatsoever. This is why men are the worst."
"What did I do?"
"Jin Sowol, look at him. What's the difference? They're all exactly the same."
Namgung Yerin looked to Jin Sowol as she jabbed a finger in my direction. Jin Sowol averted her gaze, scratching her cheek in embarrassment.
"Hmm..."
"Haah."
I walked up to Namgung Yerin and drove my fist into the tree right beside her face.
KRAK-BOOM—!
With a perfectly ordinary punch—one that used no internal energy whatsoever—the tree went down in a single blow.
"Quit wagging your tongue from the back of the crowd. If you've got a complaint, say it with your fists. Huh?"
This was Murim. A place where the weak hold no right to defy the strong. Of course, few would dare cross the direct bloodline of the Namgung Clan—but these days, my school no longer falls meaningfully short of the Namgung Clan either.
"If you're not confident you'd win, then keep your mouth shut. Don't go ruining the mood for nothing."
"..."
Her heart was already wounded as it was. And still this endless 'men this, men that'... It brought certain women from my old world to mind, and that made me angrier still.
And just as the mood turned properly ugly—
CLAP—!
Drunken Geolgae smacked his palms together, gathering every gaze in the place.
"All right, that's quite enough of the love-triangle squabbling. What matters right now is not that."
"...?"
His gaze came to rest on Nok Soyun, the great sack strapped to her back.
"Why is someone who's supposed to be the Green Forest King's daughter in a place like this?"
"Oh, Geolgae... aren't you the Filth-Beater?"
"That I am."
This place sat right on Sichuan's doorstep. Walk down off the mountain, and your feet would touch Sichuan soil that very moment. And Sichuan, at present, was an unknown land—almost no information slipped out of it.
I had already activated the Eye of Truth, and I peered into Nok Soyun's eyes.
Nok Soyun spoke. "To keep watch on the movements within Sichuan."
"Really? Find out anything?"
"Almost nothing of use. Save for one thing—the fact that the head of the Sichuan Tang Clan has vanished."
"Wh-what?!"
Drunken Geolgae cried out, visibly startled. "Is that... certain?"
"Yes. It was learned at the cost of one of the Green Forest's reconnaissance captains."
"He died?"
"The Tang Clan's poison arts melted his body away."
"Then... the Tang Clan head's disappearance means his own clansmen are implicated..."
"That is our assessment as well."
I slipped into the gap between their exchange and asked, "Okay, but what does any of that mean for bandits like you?"
"Ever since something went wrong in Sichuan, not a single merchant caravan has traveled there. And if Sichuan's trade routes stay sealed, every merchant guild in the Central Plains will be shaken to its foundations."
"Is that so...?"
"The tolls the merchants pay are the bandits' lifeblood. So you see, this is hardly a matter that has nothing to do with us."
"Hmm..."
That wasn't a lie, either.
"Then let's go have a look together. If it all goes to hell, we just grab whatever's worth grabbing and run."
I said my piece and patted Nok Soyun on the shoulder.
Her whole body flinched.
"...Eep."
"...?"
A strange little sound made me turn to look, but Nok Soyun had her head turned away, staring off somewhere else entirely. Well. I must have misheard. Anyway.
The ingredients for spirit elixirs that grew only in Sichuan—that was goal number one, plain and simple. Investigating the Tang Clan would be a nice bonus. If it worked out. If not, no big deal.
"So, first things first—I'm confident I can run from anything. Which means..."
Wrapping my hand around Nok Soyun's wrist, I swept my gaze over everyone once.
"This girl and I are going to step out on our own for a bit."
"...What?"
Cheon Seolhyeon stared at me, her face gone blank for an instant.
"Then I'm coming too—"
"The more people come along, the harder it gets to haul everyone out when things go wrong. One is the limit."
"..."
"And while we're gone, the rest of you have work to do..."
And so I handed over, in full, the operation that lived inside my head. Something only I could do—armed with Transcendent-rank martial might and the monstrous mobility of the Heavenly Emperor Taiji Steps.
Soothing Cheon Seolhyeon as she clung to me, insisting it was far too dangerous, I took Nok Soyun's hand and leapt into the open sky.
We became a single bolt of heavenly thunder and touched down in the very heart of Sichuan. With the Heavenly Escape Sword Technique woven through us to bury our energy and our presence completely, I doubted a single soul had noticed our arrival.
We walked on slowly, taking in the deserted street. The snow-white long robe borrowed from the Mount Taesan stronghold billowed in the wind.
"...This thing is kind of uncomfortable."
"It suits you very well."
"I'm telling you it's uncomfortable."
"Even so—if you go strolling about in a Taoist's robes, a hail of poisoned needles will come flying at you from who knows where."
"...Surely they wouldn't actually kill me?"
"Most likely they'd be needles coated in paralytic poison rather than anything lethal. The Sichuan Tang Clan still wears the name of a righteous sect, after all."
"..."
"But if you'd rather not end up dumped on some nameless hill, stiff as a board from head to toe... then spare me the complaints and follow along."
"...Fine."
And so we walked, and walked, and walked, toward who knew where. Then I asked her.
"By the way, Nok Soyun."
"Yes."
"There really is no one around. If nobody's crossing the mountains near Sichuan anymore, the strongholds around here must be taking a serious beating."
"That's right. Which is why..."
"But here's the thing."
"...?"
"You've got another purpose too, don't you? That's the feeling I got."
As she spoke, the Eye of Truth kept signaling to me that something was off. And yet the words themselves were true. Which meant, didn't it, that she was hiding something.
Nok Soyun heaved a sigh.
"Haah..."
"Thought so."
"It is a story I could hardly tell the others. Please... let you alone be the one to know it."
"Got it. I won't breathe a word to anyone."
Nok Soyun studied me with doubt in her eyes for a moment, but before long she let out another sigh and went on. Now that she'd been caught, if she chose to seal her lips instead... there was no telling what kind of rough handling she might suffer for it.
The Baek Sihyeok she had seen was a madman. A lunatic, crazed for martial arts and crazed for women alike. And so, gazing into Baek Sihyeok's eyes, Nok Soyun opened her mouth with a trembling voice.
And the words that came tumbling out of her were nothing short of shocking.
"The Evil Black Alliance is currently... split into two factions."
"...?"
"The present Alliance Master has entered closed-door seclusion for his Ascension... and two leaders who have reached the very extreme of the Harmony realm are at each other's throats over who will claim the next seat of Alliance Master."
"Huh?"
"And of the two, it is the faction led by the Alliance Master's first disciple that holds the head of the Sichuan Tang Clan captive—the one driving this land of Sichuan toward ruin."
"Then I take it the Green Forest's Seventy-Two Strongholds are with the other faction."
"That is about the shape of it."
"Ah, shit—Harmony? And at the tail end of Harmony, at that... that's seriously no joke?"
At that, Nok Soyun gave a wry little smile. "Which is why investigating deep into the Tang Clan is impossible. I don't know what they're cooking up in there... but if it's important enough to swallow an entire region, they'll have fighters of at least Transcendent rank standing guard."
"Impossible... impossible, you say..."
Nok Soyun spoke with utter conviction that the thing could not be done.
And most men, upon hearing words like those, tend to think the same thing.
No, I'm pretty sure I can pull it off.
"I'm sorry... what?"
If I understood the Heavenly Escape Sword Technique on just a slightly higher plane. In other words—if I reached the Transcendent realm.
The rebuttal came flying back at me at once. "What are you even saying? The Transcendent realm isn't some name for the neighbor's dog... breaking through the Life-and-Death Gate without so much as a spirit elixir to your name... wait. What?"
"I have an elixir, though."
I drew out the wooden case I had kept tucked away in my breast. Inside was a single Taiqing Pill—the very pill my master had pressed into my hand, telling me to use it only in a moment of true desperation.
Now why was it she'd said to save it for desperate moments only, again?
"I did steal it, but, well... I can just pick some more later and pay her back."
At those words, Nok Soyun's mouth fell open.