Jang Ho (2)
I paid off his debt for him and brought Jang Ho over to our table. My face had been remade by Hwan-gol-tal-tae, Zhuge Yang and Yeon Hwa were wearing face veils, and Zhuge Yang's hair had even changed color — so naturally, Jang Ho didn't recognize a single one of us.
"I'm grateful and all, but why did you pay off my debt for me?"
Even as he asked, his eyes kept drifting to the food spread across the table. Drool was gathering at the corner of his mouth — he was every bit as pitiful as the day we first met.
"Jang Ho. It's me, Ma Won."
At that, Jang Ho put on a thoroughly dumbfounded expression. He clearly didn't believe a word of it.
Zhuge Yang quietly lifted her veil.
"Hi there?"
"Huh? No way... Lady Zhuge Yang...? But why is your hair...?"
Yeon Hwa lifted hers as well.
"Ah...! It really is you, Family Head!"
Only then did he believe me. To be fair, when even his own parents wouldn't have known me, there was no chance he'd recognize the burn-scarred boy he'd spent only a few days with.
"You... you underwent Hwan-gol-tal-tae...?" Jang Ho asked, dropping his voice low enough that the kitchen wouldn't overhear.
"That's right."
Jang Ho knew what Hwan-gol-tal-tae meant, too. Yeon Hwa had explained it to him once, and he'd surely picked up plenty of gossip in his years of wandering.
"You've reached Hwa... Hwa-gyeong—"
"-Shh!"
I cut him off with a warning before he could shout it to the whole inn. Once I attained the full Transformative Realm I'd be able to spread a barrier of qi, but I still needed a little more training for that.
"Wow... congratulations! You turned out incredibly handsome!"
"Thanks."
Then, as if something had struck him as odd, Jang Ho asked, "But as recently as four years ago, you hadn't even learned any martial arts..."
If word got out that a man who'd been an ordinary civilian four years ago had undergone Hwan-gol-tal-tae, the entire murim would be turned on its head — everyone would be convinced some once-in-an-age miraculous treasure had surfaced.
Which said everything about how extraordinary the Rebirth Pill was.
"You must be starving. Let's eat first."
Jang Ho's face was gaunt — he'd clearly been through a great deal. And however hungry he'd been, he fell upon the food before the words had even left my mouth.
We'd ordered on the assumption of three appetites, but we had to add to the order. The extra Dongpo pork arrived in a portion far larger than the first.
It seemed to be the innkeeper's goodwill — like the relief of an aching tooth finally pulled, now that he'd recovered the room rent Jang Ho owed.
I studied Jang Ho at my leisure, and once he'd finally filled his belly, I asked, "I gave you plenty of travel money. What happened?"
He'd at least washed up, by the look of him — his face was clean, but he was unmistakably down to a single set of clothes. Otherwise he'd never be wearing something so tattered.
"The silver was plenty, but... I got robbed..."
Apparently, a few years back, he'd stepped out of his room without locking the door behind him, and someone had made off with every last coin. Careless to a fault.
I clicked my tongue inwardly, but let none of it show.
I'd been wanting to ask ever since I first laid eyes on him, and had held back just in case — but Jang Ho still looked bright and unburdened, so at last I asked the thing I'd been curious about.
"So... the revenge?"
"Thanks to you, Family Head, I took revenge on those bastards with my own two hands!"
I'd wondered what I'd do if he'd failed, but it seemed he'd pulled it off. They weren't Green Forest fortress bandits, just ordinary mountain raiders — and at Jang Ho's level, a Second-Class warrior, they'd apparently been more than manageable.
"...You've been through a lot."
"Not at all. If it weren't for you, Family Head, I couldn't have even dreamed of revenge. Thank you!"
He seemed to have wrung out every last drop of that old grief — Jang Ho looked lighter than I'd ever seen him.
"And I saw the task you gave me through to the end!"
Jang Ho thumped his chest, bam bam.
The Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng had to be in there.
Yeon Hwa and Zhuge Yang believe I track down elixirs and secret manuals by feel, but in truth, the Treasure Locator plots their locations out for me in detail. I'd warned Jang Ho never to breathe a word about the booklet I'd written him, and he'd kept that secret faithfully.
Though his clothes had been one thread away from falling apart entirely — any later, and who knows where he'd have dropped and lost the ginseng.
"What about the small one?"
I'd told him to dig up the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, but I'd also given him the location of a Hundred-Year Snow Ginseng. Selling that should have covered his travel expenses.
"That... I got scammed out of it..."
"Hmm..."
The original plan had been simple: while we attended the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament, Jang Ho would go on ahead to Mount Heng and scout out ground suitable for founding our clan — ideally handling the basic preparations as well.
But I'd since changed my mind. Send him down there alone, and I had a feeling he'd lose every last coin — the money for the estate included — or have it swindled out of him.
"Hmm... what am I going to do with you..."
Even I — a modern man transmigrated into this world without a shred of knowledge about it — had my share of hardship shuttling between Longzhong and Mount Heng digging up the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. But I was never this bad. Jang Ho was something else.
Maybe it was inexperience — he didn't have a modern man's lifetime of worldly sense like I did — or maybe it was simply the way he was made.
Watching him learn martial arts, he picked things up readily enough. Who knew he'd be this hopeless at everyday life?
I couldn't send Jang Ho to Mount Heng on his own.
Which left only a handful of options.
The first was to bring Jang Ho along to the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament. There was no real advantage to it — just a good experience for him. The downside was that founding the Ma Family would be pushed back by several months.
The second was to send Yeon Hwa down to Mount Heng with him. Everything I'd seen told me Yeon Hwa handled matters meticulously.
We'd moved house countless times over the years chasing down the ingredients for the Rebirth Pill, and whenever dealing with people was left to Yeon Hwa, things almost always resolved themselves smoothly.
When we went after the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp's inner core, too, the way she organized the local fishermen into a proper operation had been an enormous help.
She had a gift for geomancy as well, so she'd pick an auspicious site and see to everything — the haggling, the purchase of the estate, the setting-up — without a hitch.
But would Yeon Hwa truly agree to part from Zhuge Yang? I stole a glance at her face, but couldn't read a thing from it.
"Yeon Hwa."
"Yes, please speak."
"Would you be willing to go on ahead to Mount Heng with Jang Ho and prepare a site for us to found the Ma Family?"
Yeon Hwa looked back and forth between me and Zhuge Yang across the table, then gave Jang Ho a single long look.
"Whew... I'll do it."
She sighed, but she knew this was the best way, and she accepted it.
As for the sigh... judging by how much it resembled the ones she'd let out teaching me to cook, she was probably just steeling herself for the ordeal of instructing Jang Ho.
"You don't need to teach Jang Ho to be good at everything. He simply seems blind to the ways of the world, so drill the basics into him. I'll have work for him, and he'll be wandering alone often enough."
"Understood, Family Head. Please take good care of the Young Miss."
"Of course."
My body stood at the Transformative Realm, but I still couldn't properly manifest Sword Gang. My actual mastery of the arts still seemed to be lagging behind.
I needed to train the Wind Thunder Sword Art further — but short of one of the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven, no one would be laying a finger on us.
Jang Ho, understanding none of what was going on, just rolled his eyes around the room.
"Jang Ho."
"Yes, Family Head."
"Have you any thought of learning the sword instead of the spear?"
The spear has reach, and in ordinary armies it outperforms even the sword — but for a murim martial artist, its efficiency falls short.
The proof was plain: half of the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven wielded the sword, while of the masters famed for the spear, exactly one had reached the Super-Peak Realm — the rest were all Peak Realm or below.
That was why I'd raised it, but Jang Ho only clutched his spear shaft tighter.
"I like the spear, though. Must I really change?"
"No, there's no need."
"Then I'll stay with the spear! My spear skills have gotten better!"
Jang Ho declared this briskly, slapping the thing slung across his back.
"...Then where's your spear? All you've got is a wooden stick."
"That... broke during training."
Apparently he'd trained himself half to death with it, too. He had no knack for cleverness, but tell him to do a thing and he did it, and did it well.
Jang Ho would hardly ever cross blades with murim warriors anyway. He wasn't as capable as Yeon Hwa, but he had loyalty and stubbornness to spare — so as originally planned, I'd simply put him to use fetching secret manuals and elixirs.
"Good. Then go with Yeon Hwa, and keep training your martial arts while you're at it."
I handed Yeon Hwa a Mystic Elixir and the Rising Spear Art.
"A Mystic Elixir!"
Yeon Hwa was startled that I meant it for Jang Ho.
It was a secret, but one Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng like the one Jang Ho had brought could make three Mystic Elixirs, so it was no loss at all. Considering everything he'd be bringing back in the future, it was simply an investment.
We already had dozens of Mystic Elixirs between us, but that didn't make them one coin less precious.
Even absorbing half of one granted thirty years of internal energy — a truly wondrous elixir.
Take the Mystic Elixir alongside the Rising Spear Art, and he'd be First-Class at the very least, with a real shot at the Peak Realm and beyond. Then even roaming alone in search of manuals and elixirs, he'd be able to keep his own skin intact.
Of the countless secret manuals and elixirs the Treasure Locator could search out, many were extraordinarily valuable — and quite a few had simply lain too far off our routes to reach.
Jang Ho could chase those down in our stead.
Once we returned to Mount Heng, if he'd become useful enough, I'd put him to exactly that.
"Sister Yeon Hwa, go on ahead to Mount Heng with Jang Ho and get the place settled. We'll be back before you know it!"
Unlike Zhuge Yang, who waved her farewell brightly, Yeon Hwa seemed unable to make her feet move — she clasped Zhuge Yang's hands tight in both of hers and nagged on and on.
"Young Miss... please, carry yourself with dignity. I know I needn't worry with the Family Head at your side, but..."
"Yep! I'm one of the Hunan Ma Family now, after all."
She seemed to mean the moment she'd reveal her identity at the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament. I was curious how the Zhuge Family would react when it happened. If Zhuge Yang — the daughter they'd thrown away — knocked her own twin sister out of the running and took the championship, that would be a sight worth seeing.
"So this will be the first time you two have traveled together."
"Mmhm...!"
"...Do give it your best, then."
"Okay!"
I couldn't tell exactly what passed between the two of them, but Yeon Hwa was right — this really would be the first time Zhuge Yang and I traveled somewhere together.
And, come to think of it, the first time Yeon Hwa had ever been apart from her, too.
'Since Yeon Hwa will have most everything settled by the time we arrive... maybe we should take our sweet time heading down...?'
That greedy little thought crept in as well.
After piling up a mountain of further advice, Yeon Hwa finally departed for Mount Heng with Jang Ho in tow, her feet dragging every step of the way.
"Shall we go too?"
"Yeah!"