Even If the Sky Falls, There's a Hole to Crawl Out Of
Slam!! A guard shoved me violently through the cell door, and I hit the floor of the solitary cell face-first, unable to offer even a flicker of resistance.
"Tch. This damn cripple's nothing but a nuisance."
Clicking his tongue, the guard strode away from the bars. The moment I tried to push myself up, my skull rang as though it would split open.
"Gghk—...!!"
The memories of Jang Mancheol, which had been seeping into me piece by piece, now came surging in like a tidal wave I couldn't have held back if I tried.
Seek it—Search, the character of seeking!
Copy it—Transcribe, the character of transcription!
Whenever a character rose at the desk beside him, the stacks of documents turned on their own—halting precisely at the needed passage, ink spreading itself across the blank page.
Click. Just like that, the work was done.
And at the next seat over, Jang Mancheol sat with a brush in his hand.
Turning one page at a time. Cross-checking one sheet at a time. Copying one character at a time.
Until his knuckles were stained black with ink, until his cracked calluses wept blood.
"Tch. Still writing by hand, I see."
"Honestly, why the great Hwangbo Clan even keeps a fool without a Stroke Right on the payroll, I'll never know."
If he couldn't find a passage, he memorized it. If he wasn't permitted to copy it, he copied while the others slept.
Two hours a day. That was the entirety of the sleep Jang Mancheol allowed himself.
Then one day, deep within the ledgers, he unearthed a hole big enough to shake the entire clan to its core.
Ten straight nights without sleep, and he sealed that hole shut. This time, surely, he would be acknowledged. That was what he thought—how painfully naive.
"You've done fine work this time. A truly great feat."
"However, it will be the senior accountant's name that goes into the ledger."
"Oh come now, you of all people should understand. Official documents can't be issued under the name of a man without a Stroke Right. You do know that, don't you?"
What remained in the ledger was a colleague's name. Without a Stroke Right, not even a single line bearing your name survives. That damned Stroke Right—Stroke Right, Stroke Right, Stroke Right!
And so Jang Mancheol reached into the clan's coffers. To obtain a Stroke Right by any means necessary. The result, of course, was failure—and the Hwangbo Clan had him by the collar before the day was out.
"If only he'd awakened a Stroke Right, we could have wrung free labor out of him for a lifetime, no?"
"...Hoh. Not a single thing left to squeeze out of this one."
"This rotten—hand the bastard over to the Alliance's Punishment Hall, this instant!!"
The moment the clan registered his worthlessness, they discarded him. They handed him to the Alliance on the off chance that a shake-down might rattle loose some hidden slush fund, but not so much as a speck of dust turned up.
The punishment Jang Mancheol earned for all of this—
...A death sentence. That's what this is.
The chill of the cell floor crept up my spine.
"This is so fucked. Seriously."
I wasn't asking to wake up as some great clan's young master. Drop me into even a dirt-poor body born with a single Stroke Right, and I'd have had no complaints. But an embezzler scheduled for execution? If I just died quietly, maybe I'd return to my original body—the thought flickered through my mind for a moment.
As if that thing would ever send me off so nicely.
This was the tin can that had pulled the insane stunt of slamming a person into another world in the first place. The odds that dying here meant dying back in reality too were nothing to dismiss.
The conclusion settled, my body moved before my mind did. One door led out of here, and the lock looked sturdy enough to laugh off a saw blade.
One small comfort: this place is a holding facility for the powerless.
There couldn't be anyone formidable among the guards. I was still turning the problem over in my head when—
CLANG!!
"...!?"
The crack of a three-section staff rang through the entire prison. Every death row prisoner's gaze snapped toward one man.
"All of you, attention."
A low voice, resonant with crushing weight. There stood a man of massive build, wearing a uniform that announced his high rank at a single glance.
"I am Ma Cheol, Chief Warden of this facility."
...Ma Cheol!
A name I knew all too well. He doesn't get much page time in the original—a minor extra who appears briefly in the early-to-middle chapters. But the appearance of a character I actually recognized was a windfall I couldn't afford to ignore.
Ma Cheol swept his gaze across the cells holding the death row prisoners and said, flat as still water:
"Pleasure to meet you, trash."
"What...?!"
"D-did he say trash?"
The prisoners froze, caught off guard.
"Ears not working? I'll say it one more time, then. Pleasure to meet you, trash."
"!!!"
The prisoners exploded. Some of them jammed their faces against the food slots of their cells and howled.
"You son of a bitch! Are you done running your mouth?!"
"Take it back right now, you fucking bastard...!!"
The backlash was ferocious. Before long, the whole prison was drowning in the screams of death row inmates.
"......"
Ma Cheol surveyed the chaos, expressionless. And then ash-gray energy began to gather around his body.
No way...?
Dread began to seep up through my gut.
VMMM!! An enormous hanja character rose behind Ma Cheol's back. He intoned, low and level:
"...Crush them—Press, the character of suppression!"
CLANG!! Ma Cheol brought the three-section staff crashing down against the floor. That was the trigger.
KUUUOOOONG—!
"Gghk...!!"
A monstrous pressure crushed down on every body in the room. Lungs compressed. Spines screamed.
"K-Kghaaak!!"
"Gghuaaaaagh!!"
Slammed flat against the floor and crushed without warning, their screams came in every flavor imaginable.
"Ggak—agh—kghak—aaaagh!!"
"I'm s-sorry, I was wrong, I was wroooong!!"
"I'll die like this, I'm dying...!! Gghaaagh!!"
Screams flecked with blood. Gazing upon the death row prisoners—polite as choirboys now—Ma Cheol quietly set the tip of his staff against the floor.
CLANG!
The crushing pressure vanished, clean as a snapped thread. The character Press, which had loomed behind his back, scattered into the empty air as well.
"Hah—heuk—heh..."
"Gghk—ghk..."
The prisoners in their cells could do nothing but groan, still shackled to the terror of moments before. A few of them, desperate not to provoke Ma Cheol's temper again, clamped their hands over their mouths and muffled even the sound of their breathing.
While everyone else spiraled into panic, I alone was lost in a very different impression.
So this is the Hanja brush art...!
The unfathomable power underpinning the world of Murim Thousand Character Classic, and the very measure of strength within it. Experiencing it firsthand, the impact was simply staggering.
No source ever spelled out exactly how strong Ma Cheol was, but...
A single character, and this was the result. More than enough skill to be entrusted with total command of a prison like this.
So if I want out of here, that man is the wall I have to crack.
Users of the Hanja brush art and non-users—the gap between the two was heaven and earth. Even if every last non-user on death row were released and hurled themselves at him, they'd be exterminated inside ten seconds.
A situation hopeless beyond measure. And yet, in my head, a scenario was beginning to sketch itself.
This... this is plenty workable.
My knowledge of the original—everything I knew about Ma Cheol. That would become the master key to this prison break.
"...Good. Looks like you've finally developed attitudes worth talking at."
Ma Cheol looked over the newly silenced prisoners with satisfaction. Then he snapped his fingers.
Grrrk—
Guards rolled in several carts. Every eye locked onto them—and stacked on top were things no one could have predicted.
"No—no way!?"
"M-meat...?"
Plump, glistening meat piled high on plate after plate. Bewildered as they were, the prisoners swallowed on pure instinct.
But after what they'd just been through, nobody dared act rashly. All they could do was wait on Ma Cheol's next word.
"Quite the whiplash, I imagine. One moment I'm pounding you into the dirt with a brush art, the next I'm hauling in meat."
"......"
A few prisoners answered with silence. Ma Cheol gave a slight nod and made an unexpected announcement.
"It's simple. Cracking skulls to keep order, every single time—it's grown tiresome."
"Three meals a day, meat without shortage. In exchange, you keep your mouths shut until your execution day."
Meat slid through the food slots. The prisoners stood dumbstruck—but the moment it actually landed before their eyes, greed took them over completely.
"O-ohhh!!"
"Look at the color on that—unreal!!"
They'd been starving to begin with. Pressing their foreheads to the floor of their own accord, they started tearing into the meat in a frenzy.
Chomp, chomp!
"Mmm—mmh, it's good, so good!!"
"One more! Just one more!!"
The guards scrambled to keep the plates coming. Watching the spectacle, Ma Cheol soon clicked his tongue.
"...Beasts, the whole lot of you. Gobbling it down without a clue whether it's shit or soybean paste."
Ma Cheol shook his head and turned to leave. But then his gaze drifted toward my cell.
"Hm?"
A flicker of curiosity crossed Ma Cheol's eyes. He changed course, stopped in front of my cell, and asked:
"Hey. Why aren't you eating? Not hungry?"
He still treated it as nothing worth noting. Well then—time to start working him over.
"Food has to be worthy of the name before I'll put it in my mouth."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Ma Cheol's brow knotted at once. I met his eyes dead-on and said:
"How exactly is a man supposed to eat a lump of mud? Wouldn't you say?"
"!"
SPLAT!
The meat, flung carelessly onto the ground—and lo and behold, it transformed into a sticky clump of mud. Not meat at all.
Illusion—the character that deceives the eye. And Flesh—the character for meat. Two brush arts layered over the same plate had tricked every eye in the room into seeing mud as meat.
"...Sharp eyes. The smell and the texture are different, granted—but locked in a cell, telling them apart wouldn't have been easy."
Ma Cheol's gaze held something close to fascination. He nodded shortly and asked:
"You want a proper meal? Say the word and it's yours."
"You'd bring me anything?"
"Anything's a stretch. Within reason, though."
"Hm. Within reason."
I feigned deliberation, resting my chin on my hand. Then I looked straight up at Ma Cheol and grinned.
"If I had to name something... I could use a dose of medicine."
"...Medicine? Are you ill?"
"I am. But it isn't me who's sick."
"?"
His face asked what kind of nonsense that was. He stared at me like I'd gone insane—and I dropped the bomb:
"Your daughter. The one who's dying."
"...What?"
"Why don't you have a dose prescribed for her?"
"......"
He went utterly still. The blank expression held, but the tendons across his brow pulled taut.
CLANK!
The cell door sprang open. Everything after happened in the space of a heartbeat.
WHAM—!!
"Kghak!!"
I never even saw it. Ma Cheol's fist buried itself in my gut, and the shockwave rattling my organs nearly blacked me out on the spot.
"Khack, khack!!"
So far, exactly according to plan...!
Small talk was never going to buy me a private audience with the Chief Warden. The opportunity was made—all that remained was the conversation.
Thud. Thud.
"Appreciate the pretext. I'll have to re-drill my men on discretion soon enough, too."
Convinced the story of his daughter had leaked out through his subordinates, he cracked his neck and closed the distance—
KRAK!!
"Kkeok...!!"
His right hand clamped around my throat without a shred of mercy. And with monstrous strength, he hoisted me clean off the floor.
"If an early death is your heart's desire, I'll grant it gladly."
KRAK!!
Consciousness began to drift. But I seized his wrist and forced the words out:
"Gghk—your... daughter..."
"This bastard, still—?"
"Mi...dnight..."
"What?"
A sliver of strength bled out of Ma Cheol's arm. I seized that instant and delivered the line I'd been saving:
"...Heoh—your daughter. Come midnight, doesn't her body turn cold as a block of ice?"
"!!!"
Ma Cheol's eyebrows jerked violently. I didn't stop there.
"And yet the girl herself screams that her whole body is burning alive. Am I wrong?"
"...You—how do you know that?!"
He was rattled like never before. Judging by that reaction, he had never breathed the detailed symptoms to a living soul.
Just then, the voices of his guards floated in from behind him.
"Chief Warden! Is something wrong?!"
"Shall we come in as well?"
The cell door had flown open without warning, and the Chief Warden had stormed inside. His men were pacing outside the cell, sensing that something was very wrong.
"........."
Ma Cheol scowled over his shoulder and addressed the waiting men:
"There's someone in here who needs educating."
"Ah, in that case, we can—"
"Not needed! I'll handle this one personally. Everyone, back to your posts."
"Y-yes, sir!!"
His men scattered at the flat refusal. The audience gone, only the two of us remained.
Thud.
The grip binding me loosened, and I dropped to the cell floor in a heap.
"Khack, khack...!"
Dry coughs racked my chest. Ma Cheol pulled the cell door shut from the inside, out of the other prisoners' earshot, then came close and asked:
"You. How much do you know about my daughter's illness?"
The tone was every bit as imperious as before. But his eyes were brimming with things he couldn't hide—anxiety, desperation, fragile feelings like those.
That one landed square.
Now to drive the wedge home. Holding Ma Cheol's gaze, I answered with total conviction:
"How much do I know? All of it."
"!"
Something flickered through Ma Cheol's eyes. But he wasn't gullible enough to take my word at face value.
"...Hard to swallow. The most celebrated physicians in Luoyang couldn't identify this illness. And you're telling me you know it? A death row prisoner dragged in for embezzling clan funds—a man who's never practiced medicine a day in his life?"
Perfectly reasonable doubt. But for me, this was an easy one.
"Red Flame Ginseng. Fire Dragon Grass. Cinnabar Root."
"What?"
"Chief Warden. Aren't those the exact herbs prescribed for your daughter's treatment?"
"!!"
"Quacks who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground—she's cold, so they must've prescribed anything hot-blooded they could find to blast her full of yang energy. Am I wrong?"
"...How could you possibly—?"
Ma Cheol's mouth hung open. The name of that illness was Snowfield Fire Thirst.
An endemic disease that had crossed over from the Nanman frontier—a rare affliction most physicians couldn't so much as name the cause of.
The treatment itself, though? Surprisingly simple.
But how would this man ever know that? In the original, he never finds the cure. He loses his daughter.
To fund treatment for a daughter deteriorating by the day, he had abandoned his principles and reached into corruption. Her death is what completes his fall—until the protagonist's party puts him down, and he meets his end beneath the executioner's blade.
His daughter's life. That's the only crack in this man's armor...!
Ma Cheol swallowed hard. Sensing the moment had arrived, I tossed out an offer he couldn't refuse.
"Hey there, Chief Warden."
"...Hm?"
"Care to make a deal with me?"
"A deal? With you?"
Ma Cheol's brow writhed. A proposition from a condemned man hours from the block—of course his gut recoiled. He weighed it for a heartbeat, then shook his head.
"Sorry, but demands like breaking out of this place—that, I can never gran—"
"What nonsense. I couldn't care less about any of that."
"...What?"
He blinked—escape wasn't the goal? I laid out my terms:
"Listen carefully. What I want is—"
"......"
He swallowed, wound tight as a bowstring. He must have assumed that even short of escape, I'd ask for something far from easy. To that Ma Cheol, I said, utterly offhand:
"A handful of black bristlegrass. And half a handful of licorice."
"What?"
"Get your hands on those for me. Any village apothecary will have them."
"......"
Ma Cheol was struck dumb. He, too, clearly had some sense of just how common those herbs were.
"Black bristlegrass, licorice—aren't they both weeds you'd find on any roadside?"
"Yes. Precisely."
"And in exchange for those, I hand over a cure the physicians of Luoyang themselves couldn't find."
"......"
"If there's a hidden agenda, you'd best speak it plainly. My patience has limits."
Apparently my angle hadn't even crossed his mind—instead, suspicion was blooming. Ma Cheol bore down on me with a hawk's glare, but my answer had been prepared to perfection.
"Chief Warden. Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"Black bristlegrass and licorice. Grind the two down fine, blend them in just the right ratio, and snort them up the nose...!"
"Snort them, and then?"
"You're gone. Absolutely blasted."
"What?"
"Exactly what I said. A paradise that makes cheap opium look like a child's toy unfolds before your eyes...!!"
"......"
Ma Cheol's tongue failed him. He pressed a hand to his brow—and in that fleeting instant, I saw it.
"...Good grief. What a farce."
The wariness in his eyes evaporated as though it had never been.
The moment a man starts looking down on someone, he stops questioning them.
Sure, contempt—the kind reserved for insects—took suspicion's seat instead. But that was precisely what I wanted.
"And here I took you for an oddball with a past. Turns out you're just a junkie."
Ma Cheol exhaled a thin sigh. Then, at length, he nodded.
"Fine. I'll take your proposal."
"An excellent choice."
And so my proposal was accepted. I taught him a "temporary treatment" he could put to use on the spot.
"Kudzu root and cogongrass root. Those two, and that's truly all? With herbs that common, my daughter's illness—"
"Cure her? Of course not. It's a stopgap, obviously."
Merely opening the sweat pores frozen shut like ice and cooling her boiling blood would ease her condition considerably.
"Feed it to her. If her state improves, you honor the bargain."
"Done. You have my word."
The complete cure for his daughter. And cheap herbs anyone could buy anywhere. The two of us, sworn to trade one for the other.
I held my face in stony composure as Ma Cheol nodded and made for the door, but—
Creeeak—SLAM!!
The instant the cell door sealed shut, I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from curling upward.
"Pffh—pffhahahaha!"
The laughter wouldn't quit. Ma Cheol, you guileless bastard. Truly, thank you.
...I can do this. I can break out of here.
He would never dream of it. That those scraps of cheap roadside weeds, strewn thick along every ditch and roadside—
would awaken the Stroke Right frozen solid inside this body, and become the very key to blasting that iron door to pieces.