Her Interest
In the garden of the Princess’s palace, spring blossoms of every color bloomed in riotous abundance.
Amid that flower-scented paradise, a woman of noble bearing quietly tilted her teacup.
“So that is how it is… the Embroidered Guard has gone over to Elder Brother…”
A bitter shadow flitted across her fair, delicate face.
“Considering that a man like Wang Jingong was able to pull three masters for the job… we must assume a considerable number have already defected, Princess Dohwa.”
At Cheon Su-gong’s report, Princess Dohwa’s slender fingers tightened around her cup.
She had sent someone to the head of the Seomok Family precisely to prevent this very situation.
In the end they had been a step too slow, and it seemed one of the great pillars of the Imperial Palace had fallen under her elder brother’s influence.
“Yet, Cheon Su-gong… you subdued three Peak Realm masters without so much as a hair out of place. It seems you have made quite the breakthrough of late.”
Princess Dohwa spoke with a soft, praising smile.
Cheon Su-gong hesitated a moment, then shook his head as if to correct a misunderstanding.
“Your Highness, I was not the one who subdued the Embroidered Guards. It was someone else.”
“Oh? If not you, then who…?”
“That fellow I mentioned last time—Dan Mujin.”
Princess Dohwa’s lips parted in mild surprise.
“Why on earth would that young man suddenly appear in a place like this?”
Her question was perfectly reasonable. For a troubleshooter to pop up out of nowhere in the middle of a standoff between the Eastern Depot, the Embroidered Guard, and the Seomok Family was nothing short of absurd.
“Well… the head of the Seomok Family had been slipping out every night to weigh both sides’ offers, and his wife began to suspect an affair. So she hired a troubleshooter, and… ahem.”
In short, he had come to investigate an affair, unluckily run into Wang Jingong—with whom he already had a history—and been forced into a fight against three Embroidered Guard masters he never wanted.
“Pfft.”
Princess Dohwa could not hold back a laugh. Lately her expression had grown hard from nothing but grim reports; now her shoulders shook with genuine amusement for the first time in ages.
“He truly is a man who pops up in the most unexpected places.”
“Indeed. I have no idea what sort of nonsense he gets up to on a regular basis.”
Cheon Su-gong clicked his tongue, muttering that for someone with such martial prowess and talent, the boy only ever chose the strangest lines of work.
“Cheon Su-gong, last time you said we should keep him at arm’s length because there was no telling what trouble he might cause, did you not?”
“Yes, well… I did say that…”
He gave a small nod, recalling his own words, then continued.
“But after seeing him myself, I have to admit his skill is the real thing… So I decided to keep the connection alive and slipped him a little gift.”
A gift that accounted for both his high potential and the fact that he had saved Eunuch Hwangbo, apparently.
For a man as stingy with praise as the Director of the Eastern Depot, changing his mind after only three meetings was remarkable.
“How interesting. Before, you insisted that no matter how skilled he was, his character made him impossible to keep close.”
“That part still rankles, Your Highness. Which is why I plan to throw him a job and test whether he is worth drawing in.”
Cheon Su-gong answered while wrinkling his brow in open distaste.
Princess Dohwa watched his reaction and expression for a long moment, then suddenly burst into laughter.
“Heh heh.”
Nothing particularly funny had been said this time.
“Your Highness… why are you laughing…?”
Cheon Su-gong looked at her with puzzled eyes.
“Do you know something, Cheon Su-gong?”
“What might that be?”
“Whenever that young man Dan Mujin is mentioned, your face becomes terribly entertaining.”
“…”
The cold, merciless master of the Eastern Depot would flush red and purple, snort with laughter, or flare up the moment the name Dan Mujin appeared. It was a rare sight, and watching it was quite the spectacle.
“Heh heh. Truth be told, you rather like the fellow, do you not?”
“Absolutely not! That insolent colt who does not know his place needs another hundred years of manners drilled into him!”
Just as the Princess had said, Cheon Su-gong jumped far higher than necessary in his denial.
Her smile only deepened.
“Seeing you react like this has stirred my own curiosity. Hurry and put him through that ‘test’ of yours and bring him here.”
“That is… ahem… I shall do my best.”
She drained her teacup with a satisfied look.
Only then did the garden—which had seemed nothing but muted grays—burst into color, and the flowers finally caught her eye.
To think there existed someone whose mere mention could lift her worries and cares, even for a moment.
Princess Dohwa found herself quietly hoping the young man would pass the test and become one of the Princess’s Palace.
The two-week undercover adultery investigation ended on a strange note.
Originally, the best possible outcome for an adultery case was the kind of anticlimax that went, “Ta-da! Turns out it was nothing after all!” Of course, that “nothing” turned out to be Embroidered Guard masters suddenly popping out of the woodwork, and I got stabbed half to death in the middle of it…
“No. Thinking about it again is pissing me off.”
The client was relieved it was not the affair she had feared. But what about me?
In my past life and this one, I seemed to have some cursed luck with jobs of this type. Even if work dried up for a while, I was seriously going to stay away from these.
“Hup!”
I swung the Hell Demon-Slaying Staff through another form while those stray thoughts ran through my head.
My body had been torn to shreds with life-threatening wounds, and the faint insight I had gained fighting three Peak Realm martial artists still needed settling. I had come to the trading company’s training ground for the first time in ages to organize both the realization and the rehab.
“Keh-keh. Every time you leave, you come back with new holes punched through you.”
Even after all this time, Hwang Geolgae was still guzzling rice wine and thoroughly drunk. He had finished guiding Ilhong’s martial arts and now staggered toward me like a man performing Drunken Fist.
“Amazing, right? I think so too.”
I answered while running a hand over the wounds the Heavenly Killing Star had already restored. Without this ability I would have walked the road to the underworld long ago.
“I hear you fought three Peak Realm masters this time?”
Apparently Ilhong had given him a vague account of what happened while she trained earlier.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Holding back must have been hard. Did you kill them? How much killing karma?”
“No, I just cracked their skulls. Someone else finished them off.”
The Eastern Depot master had taken their lives and even dragged off Wang Jingong, whom I had been about to beat senseless. In return—if you could call it that—he left me a gift.
“Heh-heh. Whose toes did you step on this time? For three masters of that level to come after you…”
He seemed to find his disciple’s habit of causing trouble and picking fights with masters endlessly entertaining. Hwang Geolgae tilted the wine gourd and urged me to spill the story like a side dish for his drink.
“The Embroidered Guard.”
Hwang Geolgae froze with the wine gourd halfway to his lips.
“You crazy bastard!”
Thwack!
The bottom of the gourd, wrapped in internal energy, smashed down onto the crown of my head.
“Aaagh!”
“How many times have I told you not to get involved with those imperial bastards?!”
I hastily unfurled the Hundred Knots Divine Fist to knock the gourd aside, yet it slipped past at uncanny angles and kept cracking my skull.
“Hey! You think I wanted to get involved?! What was I supposed to do when they came at me?!”
“Even so, you madman! You beat down three Embroidered Guard masters?!”
Thwack!
I had reached the Peak Realm and was protecting my body with internal energy, yet whatever penetration technique he used made my head ring with every blow.
Seriously, between Cheon Su-gong and this old man, why were the elderly always so obsessed with smacking my head? Did they think something was stored in there?
“In all my life I have never had a disciple who listens as poorly as you…!”
Despite repeated warnings I had gotten tangled up again, and this time Hwang Geolgae was truly furious. He looked ready to snap my legs—after all, they would just grow back.
“This damn…”
I urgently stamped out the Whirlwind Steps and hid behind Ilhong, who had been training alone.
“B-Boss?”
She froze mid-swing, startled as I clung to her back.
“You little shit! What kind of leader in the whole wide world uses his own subordinate as a shield?!”
Hwang Geolgae, who had been charging as if to kill me, stopped dead with an incredulous look. As expected, this old man was uniquely soft on Ilhong. It was a bit like a father looking pitifully at the daughter left alone after a rival company collapsed.
“Then what about the old geezer who beats the kid every day under the excuse of ‘training’?”
“Ahem. I clearly said it was training. Training.”
“Training my ass. This is exactly why I do not come here often, you know that?”
All I had left of this place were memories of getting the living daylights beaten out of me—by an old man who had also promised to kill me with his own hands if the Heavenly Killing Star ever swallowed me whole.
“At any rate, you do not know how to treasure your own subordinate.”
“I do treasure her, thank you very much.”
I paid her wages on time without delay, had recently given her a tool that could swing the Mystery Pavilion Master, and even guided her martial arts. I was looking after her in all sorts of ways.
“Hoo… To think I would take such a heart-stopping disciple in my twilight years.”
The fight seemed to drain out of him. Hwang Geolgae shook his head and went back to guzzling wine.
“So, if you avoided killing karma… did you at least pile up plenty of good karma?”
Having to face three Peak Realm masters, he clearly expected I had accumulated quite a bit. But I had not. It had not been a righteous hero thrashing villains for the sake of the good; it felt more like an unfortunate mix-up that dragged me into someone else’s mess.
For all the desperate thrashing I had done, the haul was pretty thin.
“I got this instead.”
I pulled from my robes a pill that radiated a strange energy.
“Hooh, what is that?”
Hwang Geolgae had clearly sensed the extraordinary aura as well.
“It is the Golden Emperor Divine Pill.”
The answer came from Ilhong, who stood in front of me. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she launched into a detailed explanation like a walking Murim encyclopedia of exactly what kind of miraculous elixir it was. In short, it was an extremely precious spiritual medicine compounded from thousand-year-old fleeceflower root, snow ginseng, and other rare ingredients in a perfect formula.
Gulp.
Even while explaining, she kept shooting envious glances at it. In a world where strength was truth, even she could not help reacting like a true martial artist when she saw a spiritual medicine. Especially someone who had lost everything for lack of power and still could not even take her revenge.
“Heh-heh. So this is the spiritual medicine you kept singing about, asking if this old man had any stashed away.”
Something that made a hundred-year fleeceflower root look like trash. I could feel a certain young woman’s intense stare boring into me from the side.
Absorb the qi.
The Heavenly Killing Star urged me to take more power for myself.
“Here. You eat it.”
I tossed the Golden-whatever spiritual medicine to her as casually as throwing a ball. She flailed in panic and barely snatched it out of the air.
“W-What? Why?”
She herself had just explained how precious it was, so casually handing it over made no sense to her.
“If I take it, it is just pouring another bucket of water into the ocean. It will be far more efficient if you consume it.”
On my end, stacking good karma and siphoning internal energy from the portable spiritual medicine was more efficient. What I needed right now was not more internal energy but that small insight.
“B-But it is a spiritual medicine… one that can raise your internal energy by half a gapja’s worth, an incredibly precious one…”
“And?”
“Normally… people draw blades on even their closest friends to claim something like this.”
Betrayed so thoroughly she had lost all faith in people, she kept repeating that she simply could not understand how anyone could just hand it over.
“You talk too much. When an adult gives you something, you just say ‘yes’ and eat it.”
So I shoved the spiritual medicine at her in full old-man mode. When opportunity knocks you should drop to your knees and say thank you like I would. This kid overthought everything.
“Th-Then… yes…”
She did not know I was only passing it along because it was useless to me, so she looked completely dazed. Cradling the pill carefully in both hands, she sank into complicated thoughts.
“Master, why are you looking at me with those warm, heartwarming eyes?”
I asked, side-eyeing the strange gaze I felt nearby.
“Funny little bastard. I will look however I please. Heh-heh.”
He guzzled more wine as if I were the finest drinking snack imaginable. With a loud “Kah!” he set the gourd down.
“But who gave you that?”
The drink must have sparked the question.
“Someone named Cheon Su-gong of the Eastern Depot.”
Hwang Geolgae’s face twisted into something demonic.
“You crazy bastard! Embroidered Guard, Eastern Depot—you got tangled with both sides?!”