Monopolizing Fortunes (202)
Monopolizing Fortunes (202)
"What do you mean, 'that business'? From what I heard, it sounded pretty good."
"If it sounds that good, why doesn't the physician in black go along? I'll even escort you that far."
"Nah, I've got to treat His Majesty the Emperor here. It's hard enough just keeping him holding on until you get back. If you're that set on it, go with Lord Yang here. What business of state could be more important than His Majesty's illness?"
Startled, Yang Su-pan waved both hands.
"No matter what, not me! My health's been poor lately, so even if I went, I'd be lucky to bring back a single go."
Yang Su-pan kept repeating that the night was too frightening. The physician in black and Yang Su-pan glanced playfully at Tae Jun-seo.
Tae Jun-seo, who did not know the secret story(?) surrounding the go, simply wore a baffled expression.
"Fine. Ugh—! What sins did I commit in a past life? Did I sell off the country?"
Yang Su-pan patted Do Tong-dal on the back.
"You must have saved it. How easy do you think it is to have abilities like yours? Bring back eight this time, just in case. Physician in black, do you happen to have any medicine good for virility?"
"I do. It'll probably make two more possible."
"You people, seriously! Fine! I don't have time, so I'll go, but just wait until I get back."
"What did we even do?"
Indeed, what sin could those two have committed?
"I'll be back within ten days, so keep His Majesty alive until then."
All three were startled.
"You're saying you'll go all the way to the Southern Barbarians and back within ten days?"
They had been thinking it would take at least a month. Even that would only be possible by stationing the fastest relay horses at every point along the route.
"Oh, right. While I'm gone, investigate a man named Gwon Cheol-hyeon thoroughly. He's probably from Sichuan Province or served in a military post in that region."
Do Tong-dal drew a portrait of Gwon Cheol-hyeon on a piece of paper. Yang Su-pan praised Do Tong-dal's drawing skill, saying, "I've always felt this, but you really have many talents."
"I've given you his name, his region, and even his face. If you can't find him, you're damn incompetent."
"We can't have our Tong-dal calling us incompetent. Still, ten days is a bit......"
"There are people who go all the way to the Southern Barbarians and come back."
"I'm just saying it feels short. Just feels. I'll dig up everything about this fellow down to the eighth cousin of his in-laws and the person living next door. When do you leave?"
"The Emperor's been poisoned and is living day to day, so I have to go right now."
The physician in black spoke.
"It's not exactly day to day. Perhaps because he's young, he's still holding on well. Since you said ten days, he'll manage to stay alive somehow until you return."
"Just in case, I'll grant you an official post. It'll make riding relay horses easier, and if you need government troops or soldiers, you can use them right away."
Even though Do Tong-dal said he didn't need it, Yang Su-pan plopped the official hat of Provincial Commander onto his head. It was called Provincial Commander, but in the military it was the highest rank of the senior second grade.
"Then I'll be off."
The moment he said that and stepped out of the imperial palace, a sigh escaped him on its own.
"I have to go back there again."
He couldn't know whether the Yeosan Tribe chieftain was still her (now that he thought about it, he didn't even know her name). Well, if she was still in that position, it seemed it would be easier to talk.
Just as he was about to unleash his Lightness Art, Do Tong-dal stopped moving at the thought of "no way." If he went to the Yeosan Tribe, some child might come running at him shouting, Daddy!
'No, there's no way. Children don't come about that easily.'
Even with the Heavenly One Star, they were hard to conceive, yet babies were also the sort of thing that got produced one after another, year after year.
'In my fate, there are no children. Absolutely none!'
He denied it fiercely, but the unease did not go away. That night they had done it eight times(?), so it wouldn't be strange if a child had taken root.
'Ugh...... ignorance is bliss!'
With Ju Hyeong-seon's life on the line, he couldn't exactly not go.
"Haa—! They won't saddle me with a father's duties. Just in case, I mean."
Muttering that, Do Tong-dal kicked off the ground. His steps toward the Southern Barbarians felt unusually heavy.
Still, he pushed his Lightness Art at full power. He tried hard to forget the three characters "my child" that kept surfacing in his mind.
While using his Lightness Art, Do Tong-dal realized that no spring flows forever. After running without rest for six shichen, no matter how much he had mastered the Boundless Blazing Fire Art, his breath began to come short and his stamina began to flag.
"This is what makes a person human. Hoo—!"
Do Tong-dal decided to rest briefly. In less than a day he had left Hebei Province and crossed half of Shanxi Province, which alone was remarkable.
On top of that, darkness had long since fallen over the mountains. Whether thanks to the Boundless Blazing Fire Art or because he had lived in a cave for so long, his vision was barely hindered by the dark.
That was why he could race through the mountains even in pitch-black darkness.
Do Tong-dal bathed in a nearby mountain lake and then lay down to sleep. He had eaten nothing since morning, but in the cave, eating one meal every fifteen days had been routine, so he felt no hunger.
After sleeping for a while and performing energy circulation and breathing exercises for one shichen, his stamina and Internal Energy were refilled as if from the start.
Do Tong-dal again unleashed his Lightness Art toward Yunnan Province. Do Tong-dal's Lightness Art was entirely what he had briefly learned from Won Dae-yeon.
Not everyone with high martial arts could use Lightness Art well. Lightness Art also had stages of attainment, and if one looked only at Lightness Art, Do Tong-dal would be close to a novice.
Even so, the reason he could run at astonishing speed was purely thanks to the Boundless Blazing Fire Art. In other words, he was simply fast at running through brute force. If he had learned proper Lightness Art, he could have gone two or three times faster than this.
'When I get back, I should learn a proper Lightness Art.'
There would surely be a usable Lightness Art technique in the Imperial Palace Secret Archive. Thanks to running himself half to death, Do Tong-dal took only four days to reach Yunnan Province.
No matter how great a master of Lightness Art, that time was absolutely impossible. Lightness Art also required internal power and stamina to sustain it, and Do Tong-dal was likely the only martial artist who could keep up Lightness Art without rest for six shichen.
The place where Do Tong-dal finally stopped after a long while was Wongang County. It was the region with the widest plains in mountainous Yunnan Province, and its grain was so abundant that people said the generosity of Yunnan came from Wongang.
The sight of green rice ripening across the plains was pleasing. Do Tong-dal went into the town of Wongang County and decided to lodge there a little early.
Since Ju Hyeong-seon had said holding out for about ten days was no problem, he decided to build up his stamina here. That way, when he reached the Yeosan Tribe, he would be able to obtain plenty(?) of go.
After eating a meal that fell somewhere between lunch and dinner, Do Tong-dal stood up to secure a room. At that moment, a shout of "Locust swarm!" suddenly came from outside.
Two customers in the dining hall wore baffled expressions.
"A locust swarm in Yunnan Province?"
Locusts, which swarmed once every few years, inflicted enormous damage on crops before vanishing. Sometimes not only livestock but even people died from locust swarms.
But until now, a locust swarm had never once appeared in Yunnan Province.
When Do Tong-dal paid for his meal and went outside, the murmuring people on the street were all pointing at one spot.
"I-is that really locusts?"
"Looks like it? What's a locust swarm doing in Yunnan Province!"
The people were stricken with terror. A locust swarm covering the sky black was an object of fear to anyone. For those who had never once experienced it, the horror could only reach its peak.
The locust swarm was covering the broad paddies and gnawing at rice that had not even ripened yet.
"What do we do about that! Shouldn't we do something!"
"How do we stop those devils!"
"So we're just going to stand here with our hands hanging!"
The villagers could only stamp their feet in fear. Watching the locusts, which numbered in the millions, Do Tong-dal kicked off the ground.
If nothing was done, those insects would devour all the rice, and they might even harm people.
Of course, it wasn't as if Do Tong-dal had any clever solution. Nor was it his place to step in.
Nevertheless, the reason he ran toward the locust swarm was partly to help people, but also because he had a desire to test his martial arts.
Even though he had fought at the Righteous Chivalry Sect, he had not unleashed his martial arts at full power. That was because, in the chaos of battle, uncontrolled power could kill even his own allies.
But if his opponent was that locust swarm, he could unleash his martial arts to his heart's content.
The locust swarm filling his vision black was either eating unripe rice or flying in like a tide.
BZZZZZZ—!
The fierce sound of the locust swarm's wingbeats made his fine hairs stand on end of their own accord.
Drawing his blade, Do Tong-dal raised his Internal Energy to the eighth level. From the blade came a resonant hum—! as the blade sang.
As he raised the Wonhyeong Musang Art, which was grounded in the Boundless Blazing Fire Art, heat burst outward around him as if exploding. Hundreds of locusts near Do Tong-dal dropped in a shower from that heat.
Do Tong-dal swung his blade at the locust swarm.
Uoooo—!
It was as if the very air was being shoved aside. The enormous blade curtain created by his sword fell upon the locust swarm greedily devouring the rice.
Every single locust within thirty jang in front of where the blade curtain struck burned to powder without exception. Do Tong-dal had not known the heat of his martial arts was this fierce.
He had expected some heat to burst forth, but the heat exceeded his imagination. It was so hot that it burned not only the locusts but even the green rice black.
Since the rice was going to be lost to the locusts anyway, it couldn't exactly be called damage.
The blade curtains that followed in succession rapidly wiped out the locust swarm. Everywhere Do Tong-dal moved, locust corpses piled up like bundles of straw.
Of course, no matter how hard he tried, he could not kill all of the millions of locusts.
The instinct of all living things is survival. The locusts that moved in swarms were no different.
The heat filling the area served as a warning of death to the locusts, and so it made them scatter in all directions.
It was a natural disaster that could not possibly be stopped, but Do Tong-dal had driven off that locust swarm in small groups.
Those things might cause damage somewhere else, but at least the disaster here had been stopped by Do Tong-dal.
Amid the acrid rising smoke, Do Tong-dal looked around. The mountain-like piles of locust corpses and the burned paddies—the fact that this was the result of his own martial arts did not readily sink in as reality.
"Have I...... perhaps become the greatest under heaven?"
Even Won Dae-yeon could not have unleashed martial arts of this magnitude. As far as Do Tong-dal knew, this was not a sight a person could create.
Do Tong-dal quickly shook his head.
"No, there's no way. They say the martial world is full of strange and extraordinary people, as many as grains of sand. Somewhere there's bound to be someone stronger than me. It doesn't make sense for a thug to be the greatest under heaven."
The fact that martial arts could produce this level of power also made no sense.
"If I used this on a person, it'd be a disaster."
As he muttered that and turned around, he saw people in the distance. They were the people who had been stricken with terror at the sight of the locust swarm, but now they were all prostrated on the ground.
"The locusts have all scattered, so why are they still like that?"
Then he belatedly realized that their behavior was a bow.
"Heaven has not abandoned us and has sent us an immortal! Thank you! Truly, thank you!"
Seeing the people bowing over and over, Do Tong-dal let out a hollow laugh. It seemed he would have to give up on spending the night here.
"Let's go quickly and finish quickly."
Do Tong-dal crossed Yunnan Province on that path and entered the Southern Barbarians, the land of the Miao tribes.
He had returned after about four years. The unit guarding the Southern Barbarians border looked unchanged, as if time had passed it by, then and now.
The expressions of the soldiers guarding the unit's front gate—no matter who you stationed there, they would all wear that same languid face.
"Halt! Cough! Cough! It's been so long since I raised my voice that I'm coughing......"
Another soldier patted the coughing soldier on the back.
"That's why I told you to quit tobacco."
"If I didn't even have tobacco here, what would I live for?"
There was not the slightest sign of wariness toward Do Tong-dal. This was a place where no enemy other than the Miao tribes of the Southern Barbarians could even be imagined.
To save time, Do Tong-dal took out the identity plaque Yang Su-pan had given him and showed it. But that seemed to have caused a waste of time instead.
"What's this?"
"My identity plaque."
* * *