Monopolizing Fortunes (199)
Monopolizing Fortunes (199)
From small things like drying clothes like this, to larger things...... he hadn't been able to test it yet, so he couldn't be sure, but it seemed he could do something fairly formidable.
The faint heat dried the clothes fluffy in no time. They were worn through and torn here and there from being worn too long, but as long as they covered the essentials, there was no real problem.
Screech—!
A sound came from the cave wall. It was sharp, like metal grinding out of place.
"Huh? What's that?"
Rumble—!
The moment he felt the question, the cave convulsed. A stalactite broke off right beside him and shattered.
"Ack!"
Startled, Do Tong-dal ran forward. The narrowing cave made him uneasy.
If that narrow passage ahead got blocked, Do Tong-dal would be crushed to death. Dying so absurdly was worse than death itself.
Rumble-rumble-rumble—!
From behind, the sound of the cave collapsing drew closer. He ran bent at the waist, and in the narrow spots he had to crawl on all fours. Even so, he was faster than an ordinary person sprinting at full speed on flat ground. That was Do Tong-dal's will to live.
But the speed of the cave's collapse outraced Do Tong-dal's will. When he glanced back, he saw the collapsing ceiling chasing after him.
"Goddamn it! Why the hell is it suddenly collapsing!"
He gave it everything he had. He fled with all his might, to the point that stalactites and rocks shattered against his knees, his arms, his head.
The sunlight appeared suddenly. Vines had been covering the front, hiding the light outside. The moment Do Tong-dal slipped out, the cave slumped down and belched thick dust.
"Cough! Cough!"
Coughing from the dust, Do Tong-dal rolled his body farther away from the cave.
"Fuck, I nearly died."
Why had a cave that had endured for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years collapsed? Because a person came out? No, that wasn't it. He'd come out once before.
The most plausible reason was that he had operated the Boundless Blazing Fire Art. The cave sensing that and collapsing was the most reasonable explanation.
Even if it was reasonable, it was still absurd. Who would make a cave like this, and for what reason? Simply by nature, or by divine arrangement?
"Ugh...... forget it."
For answers that couldn't be found no matter how much he thought, the best policy was to store them away in the pocket of oblivion. His own rebirth made no sense anyway, so what did one cave like this matter?
Just in case, Do Tong-dal went up to the air vent of the Ascension Cave. Along the way, cracks ran everywhere, and some places had collapsed.
As the cave collapsed, the mountain itself had deformed. Sure enough, the air vent had collapsed as well and vanished without a trace.
"No need to go to the slash-and-burn village after all."
The villagers would think Do Tong-dal had been buried in the cave and died. That settled it.
Do Tong-dal decided to stop by the Righteous Chivalry Sect first.
"Everyone's doing well, right? Or would it be bad if they were doing too well?"
Namgung Seol-rin would be the first to set his back on fire, and Jang Yeon-seon would clearly resent her master for not returning for so long and keep him up all night with nagging.
"I've committed sins, so I'll take my lumps."
Still, at the thought of seeing familiar faces after so long, his steps back to the Righteous Chivalry Sect were light.
* * *
Jang Yeon-seon looked at the enemies filling the training grounds and felt despair for the first time. They had been so careful, yet in the end they had fallen for the feint.
At first it had simply been the appearance of bandits. Normally the government troops would have been dispatched, but right now the government troops were a complete cauldron of chaos.
She knew better than anyone that they lacked the capacity to mobilize a fairly large force.
The bandits' depredations were so severe that the Righteous Chivalry Sect had no choice but to step forward. They were nominally the foremost sect in Hebei Province, so they had to stop the common folk from being killed.
So one hall, thirty-two people, had set out to subdue them. She had thought that number would be enough.
But absurdly, the hall was annihilated and Hall Master Yeon Cheong-seok was taken captive. The youngest of the Twelve Zodiac Shadows had been caught by bandits, and they couldn't just stand by and watch.
Won Dae-yeon personally led three halls out on campaign, and in the meantime another incident broke out.
Jang Bu-ok, who had gone to Shaanxi Province, had been captured by the Sinmaryeon. The Sinmaryeon, an alliance of unorthodox sects in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan Provinces, was a rising new faction rapidly swelling its power.
With her father taken hostage by the Sinmaryeon, Jang Yeon-seon couldn't sit idle.
Her premonition was not good, but Namgung Seol-rin and Jang Yu-seom led two hundred sect members toward Shaanxi Province.
Since they had been attacked before, they were extremely cautious. But some disasters could not be avoided no matter how well one prepared.
This current crisis was exactly that. The attack had come now, when the Righteous Chivalry Sect's elite had departed.
The meticulous operation targeting the Righteous Chivalry Sect was a net woven so tightly that there was no slipping through.
The sect members who stood in the way fell like autumn leaves before the wind. The Dallyeong Three Swords stepped up and blunted the enemy's edge, but the situation was hurtling toward despair.
"Who in the world is targeting our Righteous Chivalry Sect?"
Though she was only thirteen, a solemn dignity befitting the head of a sect was rising from Jang Yeon-seon.
A clean-featured man in his mid-forties stepped forward. Blood from the Righteous Chivalry Sect's members dripped steadily from the sword in his hand.
"Who I am isn't important. What matters is why we attacked this place."
"I was going to ask that too, so let's swap the order of the questions. Why did you attack our Righteous Chivalry Sect?"
"When a child asks an adult something, she should be polite."
Veins bulged on Jang Yeon-seon's forehead. They had attacked and already killed over thirty sect members, and now he had the nerve to talk about politeness!
"You gray-haired old bastard! Stop spouting bullshit and tell me why you attacked the Righteous Chivalry Sect and who the hell you are! You fucking bastard!"
The middle-aged man, who had been looking at Jang Yeon-seon with disbelief, let out a chuckle.
"With a thug for a master, your mouth is starting to resemble his."
"What a load of fucking bullshit! If I'd taken after even half of my master, you bastards would've been wiped out long ago!"
"And where is that fine master of yours now?"
Jang Yeon-seon slowly pressed down her anger. She must not let rage rule her mind.
"Is that your reason?"
"What?"
"Attacking the Righteous Chivalry Sect to draw out my master?"
"You're quick on the uptake."
"They say I'm smart. But what to do about this. No matter how much you attack the Righteous Chivalry Sect, my master won't come."
"Is that so?"
"My master is not someone who moves according to other people's will. You'd know if you'd ever dealt with him. Sigh—!"
"I've never dealt with him, but I've heard about him until my ears hurt. Listening to it all, he's a thug in name only. Where in the world is there a thug who cherishes his people that much?"
"Every thug around my master is like that!"
The middle-aged man, who had been staring at Jang Yeon-seon, spoke.
"This talk has gone on long enough. If you happen to be waiting for the messenger you sent to the Northern Unorthodox Alliance, I'd like to tell you not to hold out vain hope."
Jang Yeon-seon bit her lower lip hard. Because the situation had been strange, she had requested cooperation from Ha Su-ran.
But they had seen through even that. It was as if she were dancing on the palm of their hand.
'Now I understand how the enemies who faced my master felt.'
The situation was bad, but she couldn't rush to give up. Jang Yeon-seon still had five hundred sect members and eight of the Twelve Zodiac Shadows.
On top of that, through harsh training, the members of the Righteous Chivalry Sect had attained skills no less than the second-generation disciples of the Nine Great Sects.
And there was herself as well. Jang Yeon-seon drew the blade from her back. She had never killed a person before. It was simply that there had been no need; it wasn't that she lacked the skill.
Jang Yeon-seon was a once-in-a-generation genius acknowledged by all, and befitting that talent, her martial arts rose higher day by day.
She had already surpassed eleven of the Twelve Zodiac Shadows, and she was charging fiercely toward the first, Jo Seong-un.
The talk was over, so all that remained was the fight. Jang Yeon-seon was just about to order the attack.
"Who the hell are you people! Why are you swarming all over someone else's front yard!"
Even in this situation, Jang Yeon-seon let out a helpless laugh. It was Wang Du-sik, who was clearly a member of the Righteous Chivalry Sect but didn't feel like a sect member at all.
What position could you possibly entrust to Wang Du-sik, who once he went to a pleasure house wouldn't think of coming back for ten days or a fortnight?
She was thinking, 'There are times when Uncle Wang is a welcome sight,' when Wang Du-sik pushed through the enemies and revealed himself.
The enemies must have held off attacking, thinking, 'What's this?' But Wang Du-sik was not alone.
He was with a strange figure draped in rags that couldn't be distinguished as clothes or dust cloths.
Wild, unkempt hair covered most of the face, but something deep in her chest began to boil. Without the strange figure revealing who he was, Jang Yeon-seon opened her mouth first.
"Master?"
When he pushed the hair aside to both sides, Do Tong-dal's face with a bushy beard appeared.
"You recognized me well. This guy only figured it out after getting hit once."
"Master—!"
Jang Yeon-seon felt as if all the luck in the world were rushing at her. No, even that couldn't express it. Right now, at this moment, she was simply the happiest person in the world. Without a doubt.
Jang Yeon-seon called out to Do Tong-dal and ran to throw herself into his arms. She had resolved that when Do Tong-dal returned, she would harden her heart and treat him coldly.
She had planned to interrogate him all night about where he'd been and what he'd done. But she was just so glad that tears poured out.
It wasn't simply because the enemy was before her eyes. Even if she had met Do Tong-dal while eating, while training, or while working, it would have been no different from now.
"Oh my, our Yeon-seon has grown a lot. You've become a proper young lady now."
"Master, you've...... sob! Become a total beggar. Sob! Sect Leader Baek...... sob! Will be so happy. Sob!"
"That old man still hasn't been received by King Yama? Strange how old beggars live so long."
Do Tong-dal turned his head and looked at the enemies filling the training grounds.
"What are those?"
"I don't know. Sniffle!"
Wiping away tears and snot, Jang Yeon-seon spoke.
"They're making all this fuss looking for you, Master."
"Me? Why?"
"You'd have to ask those sons of bitches. But......."
Jang Yeon-seon subtly pushed Do Tong-dal away.
"Did you come back from closed-door training, or from begging? The smell is really...... blech—!"
To Jang Yeon-seon, who was dry-heaving, Do Tong-dal gave an awkward smile.
"That's why I was going to wash up first. But then I ran into this guy."
Jang Yeon-seon looked at Wang Du-sik, whom Do Tong-dal pointed to.
"Uncle Wang should have been at the pleasure house, though? So you went to the pleasure house to wash up?"
"If you go there, they wash you without being asked."
"You came all the way here and stopped at the pleasure house first!"
"No, I was just going to wash up......."
"Who goes to a pleasure house to wash up! You definitely went with other intentions!"
"If something else happens to come up, it can't be helped. But this is a secret from everyone else. Especially from Seol-rin. Anyway, where did everyone go?"
From behind, the middle-aged man's voice rang out.
"I meant to wait, but this master-disciple reunion is too long."
Do Tong-dal turned around.
"You should be grateful. It's lengthening the time you stay alive."
"You seem to have come from closed-door training somewhere, and it looks like you've gained confidence in your martial arts?"
Do Tong-dal stared at the middle-aged man, then spoke.
"You're from Fujian. You lived by the sea for a long time. Is your surname Ju? Or Jong? No, it's Bok. You must have been a pirate, no doubt."
The middle-aged man was so startled that he stepped back without realizing it.
"How...... do you know me?"
"How would I know a small fry like you? I can just size you up at a glance."
Jang Yeon-seon raised her thumb, thinking, 'As expected of my master.' The middle-aged man wore a genuinely admiring expression.
"They said you had many talents, and it wasn't just talk. But such trifling talents won't save your life."
"My talents will save me, but what could save you today? Judging by your face, you don't seem to know all that much."
"Stop spouting nonsense. If you come along quietly, your disciple and sect members can live. Our goal is you anyway."
"Oh? That's tempting."
"Master......."
"But what to do about this. My reunion with my disciple isn't over yet, and more decisively......."
Do Tong-dal turned his gaze to the bodies of the sect members lying fallen and bleeding on the training grounds.
"I've never once forgiven anyone who touched my family."
* * *