The Guest (2)
To me, a guest is a troublesome creature.
If I had my way, I would bar the door and drive every last one of them off. I have written it along the road up here more than once: visitors are not welcome.
Even so, there are people who never stop trying to call, as if a mountain estate simply must be hiding some tremendous treasure. Ironically, the more I expand the grounds to keep intruders out, the more often they seem to come.
Riffraff are sorted by the traps. Anyone who makes it all the way to the front gate and asks me to open it, though, I can hardly refuse to treat as a guest. Had they come threatening me outright, I could have met them with open hostility. Strangely enough, everyone who actually reaches this gate at least observes the basic courtesies.
When people who are plainly my betters in the martial world bother to be polite, I have no choice but to answer with the bare minimum of the same. I can't afford to prick their tempers and take the hard road.
"Huh? You're tidier than I expected."
The irritating remark came from behind me.
It wasn't the voice that grated. If anything, the voice was pleasant—a girl's, and a young girl's at that. What actually grated was the substance of the words. Of course I keep the place tidy.
It's my house, isn't it?
"By the way, miss, what's that big wooden cask on your back?"
"......It's full of slaked lime. Handle it wrong and you could be badly hurt, so would you mind keeping a little distance?"
Warning and all, the girl who had drawn up beside me only looked at me with a gaze somehow brimming with familiarity. The red gleam at the center of those eyes was unpleasant enough that I wasn't particularly glad to see her.
Was this another random encounter?
Phantom Jianghu, the game I used to play, had thoroughly old-fashioned roguelike graphics. There wasn't even a moving character sprite—one item or one character to a tile, and that was the whole of it. The characters were randomly generated, too. Name and surname were assigned at random, and a sprite was pulled at random from the set. The role, the stats, and the skills that came attached were all separate things, so striking first was out of the question.
"Slaked lime... were you trying to cover a smell? Did you clear away the stink of the corpses on the way up?"
"......"
She would have seen the remains that had already gone to white bone along the road. So.
"Yes. Well. Something like that......"
"What a waste. A rotten smell is a bit much to ask someone to enjoy, but blood that's only just been spilled is worth a sniff, isn't it? It's rather fragrant, in its way."
"......"
Had I drawn a bad one?
No. Calling it a bad draw wasn't quite fair. I hadn't done anything wrong. Just rotten luck.
Most of the people called masters in the jianghu have cut down a few lives, haven't they? However righteous they are, they can't be entirely in their right minds.
Me? I've caused more than a few deaths myself, yes, but I posted the warnings more than once, and I never killed anyone with my own hands to begin with. They ignored the warnings, came in, and died in the traps. That isn't my fault. And anyone determined to wedge themselves into a perfectly ordinary estate sitting in the woods can't be in their right mind either.
"Miss, have you heard? I picked up a rumor while I was staying a short while in the village down below."
"Living up in the mountains as I do, I'm rather in the dark about the world's gossip."
"Oh my. Then you'd better hear this one. They say there's a truly dreadful demonic master somewhere in these mountains."
"......A demonic master?"
"Yes. There has to be a demonic master on this mountain who eats people. No question about it."
Is that so?
Well, wuxia is wuxia for a reason. It isn't only people who fight well. The stories are packed with eccentrics out causing every kind of trouble. A villain needs personality, or the hero's chivalry has nothing to shine against.
Even so, it was probably a tale with very little to do with me. Just as I had settled here and made a point of not going far, that eccentric—that demonic master—likely didn't stir much from their own ground either. They might not even be particularly near.
"Some of the bodies that turned up were pickled in poison, they said. From the look of it, the demonic master might be a poison master."
Learning the poison arts is a very useful choice when you're living off the land in the mountains. A mountain can look, at a glance, as if food is growing in every direction, but narrow it to what you can actually eat and only a few kinds remain. I wouldn't call it the only right answer, but I had trained in the poison arts myself.
Of course, the poison arts are far too dangerous to begin if you know nothing at all. I already had a fair share of this world's rules stored in my head, so it hadn't been much of a problem. I don't know the first thing about swinging a sword. At least, if someone lays a hand on me, I can make certain that one dies.
......Or, strictly speaking, perhaps I should say I might be able to.
A true master might not take to poison at all. In practice, however diligently you train the poison arts, once an expert of the Transformation realm or higher shows up, there is simply no answer. Even if the damage over time lands, the health pool is enormous, and even a so-called instant-death poison can be endured for a while. On top of that, some enemy NPCs simply pull out a martial art that neutralizes poison outright.
Whenever that happened, I used to take the wang in the developer Wangyun's name, swap it for dung, and curse the bastard for a shit-cloud.
These days it's only a memory. A memory.
"Corpses with their innards rotted clean through come floating down the river into the village now and then, they say."
Sometimes people who aren't masters still reach the front gate. Astonishingly often, if they aren't masters, their character isn't much good either. Some charge me the moment they see me, treating me like a sworn enemy. Some I let into the house and cook for, and they try to force themselves on me. Some assume at first that I'm someone's maid or concubine, and once they realize I own this estate, they fly into a rage and come at me.
So what was I supposed to do? I had trained my strength well enough to build a house, but I don't know how to swing a blade. Poison them, and haul the bodies outside. That was all I could do.
I don't know who that demonic master is, but I feel an odd little kinship.
"Is that so?"
"You don't seem all that frightened, miss."
"Well... not really."
Even if the other party were a poison master... well, if they were far above me, poison or anything else would hardly matter, and meeting someone like that is just bad luck to begin with. The other way around, if they were about my level or a little beneath it, I had nothing to worry about, did I? Any fight would happen somewhere around here.
"Mm-hmm~ ......Huh?"
Whatever freshness she had found in my words, the girl had been letting out a somehow meaningful little laugh when she suddenly stopped. I followed her gaze and found the garden plot I had made inside the estate.
"Oh—wait. Wait a moment."
She said it and strode quickly toward the plot. I let out a light breath, set the cask I'd carried on my back down in its usual place, and followed.
"This—this is ginseng, isn't it?"
"Yes. Ginseng."
I said it flatly. It wasn't the first time I had seen a reaction like this.
Nothing to be done about it. In this age, ginseng is generally an expensive medicine. It isn't that no one cultivates it, but logistics simply haven't come that far. Some guests do drop by now and then and buy it at quite a high price. I've heard it bears comparison with Goryeo ginseng. The praise is welcome. Being paid in gold is less so. Honestly, living out here, gold isn't particularly useful.
And what can you do? Masters are the ones telling me to sell. When gentlemen who even walk around with percussion muskets insist, there is nothing for it.
"In sun this harsh?"
"Plants grow best under the sunlight, after all."
I had already heard that question several times. My answer never changed. I was raising them the way I had raised them in Phantom Jianghu. If anything, I was the one who wanted to ask. I couldn't see why a plant that grew this well was treated as such a precious medicine.
The yard had more than ginseng planted in it.
"And this?"
"A tea tree."
It's a tree, so you plant it more or less where it belongs, water it now and then, and it grows well enough. When the leaves have filled out, you pick them, dry them, and brew tea. Perfectly good for that.
"And this?"
"Pine mushroom and reishi."
A pine mushroom is the mushroom that grows under a pine—that's why it's a pine mushroom—and reishi will grow on the foot of any broadleaf tree. Honestly, I never understood why my previous world priced them so high. Cultivating them is this easy. Though I think they said pine mushrooms couldn't be farmed at all. Well, the rules of that world and this one differ a little. That may be why.
I'm not sure pine mushroom even counts as medicine, but it does taste good. Now and then I decoct the reishi and drink it.
"......Ha."
For the first time since she had arrived, the girl's face went a little blank, and that was rather satisfying. Most masters are like that, I tell you. They take such an interest in miracle herbs and the like that they recognize the crops those medicines come from at a glance, don't they?
Of course, besides these medicinal plants, I grow a few poison mushrooms and toxic herbs as well. I need them for the poison arts, and they serve nicely as defenses. Outside the estate I keep a small rice paddy, too.
Line it all up, and I really have been living diligently......
"Come along, miss. This way."
"Ah. Yes."
The girl moved only after I spoke. The sly smile from earlier had thinned a little. What replaced it was a look, perhaps, like someone staring at something uncanny. Other guests had worn that expression a few times, too.
Is a woman building a house and living alone in the mountains really so astonishing?