I'll Put It to Good Use
How had things come to this?
Bang Sobyeok stared blankly into the void, replaying the wreckage of his life so far.
Underhandedness had been the only way he knew how to live. To seize the post of chief steward at the Mangeum Money House, he had stabbed superiors in the back and crushed every subordinate who tried to climb past him. Trust became betrayal; loyalty became ingratitude. Because he had clawed his way up like a dog—flattering, fawning, groveling—he had sometimes taken out his superiority on the neighborhood beggars, grinding them underfoot just to feel big.
And now every last thing he had stacked so carefully was about to collapse in a single breath.
Across the gambling table, that gigolo-looking bastard was grinning. The kid had already broken Dogwi, and now he was set on tearing down everything Bang Sobyeok owned.
“Kkugh…”
To lose face and a sizable chunk of fortune because he couldn’t even handle one green brat—would Geum Hwangdo, famous for his savagery, simply let this slide?
Not a chance. The steward’s seat Bang Sobyeok had clawed so hard to reach might be sliced off overnight.
His mind went white with panic.
“Dogwi! You said the earlier round was just a slip—said you could still win…!”
He gritted his teeth and rounded on Dogwi, but the man was just as vacant-eyed. Muttering under his breath with a face that said this simply could not be happening. When Bang Sobyeok listened, he heard the gambler claim he had no idea how the cheat worked—said the dice results had flipped as if a ghost had possessed them.
“That’s all you have to say? I paid a fortune to bring you here and you cause this disaster?”
Bang Sobyeok’s long beard quivered as he scolded the man mercilessly. When he kept hammering the same question—how the hell are we going to fix this?—Dogwi finally spoke through clenched teeth.
“There’s still one method left.”
“…What is it?”
Dogwi pointed at the blue-edged chopper waiting nearby.
“If skill isn’t enough… then we force it. Overturn the board.”
Find any excuse, brand the kid a cheat, and take his wrists. In other words, flip the table. It was a humiliating move for a gambler, but there was no other path left.
He poured killing intent toward the youth who had driven him into this corner.
Clack, clack. Thunk.
When the dice cup opened, it showed a high roll—six, six, five. Giving him numbers this good… it was the very trick Dogwi himself used when he wanted to end a game on a single-pip difference.
Then the youth casually slid a mountain of gold across the table with a confident face, as if victory were already certain. On top of that, he started chanting that suspicious mantra again.
“Asura balbalta…”
Watching him, Dogwi decided: he still didn’t know the kid’s method, but he could guess the outcome of this particular round.
So he chose another kind of gamble.
“Stop right there! Pulling another trick, are you?!”
Lightning-fast, Dogwi seized the youth’s wrist just as the last cup was about to open. Then he roared with murderous force.
“Bring the chopper! Tonight we cut off a swindler’s wrists!”
The cold blade was set in place, and both men’s fates began to rock on its edge.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I shot him a look of pure disbelief while my wrist stayed locked in his grip.
So technical skill wasn’t cutting it, and now the bastard wanted to flip the whole table.
“Look, everyone! The dice he handed me!”
Still holding my hand high for the crowd to see, he pointed with his free hand at the six-six-five showing on the table.
“Nice numbers. What’s your problem?”
I snorted and challenged him.
“Hmph. Exactly. Numbers that are too nice. Nice enough that someone would thoughtlessly bet a fortune. That’s why it’s obvious!”
Obvious how?
When I gave him a face that said what nonsense is this, he blew out a confident snort.
“Dice are meant to be the heavens’ decree. But I declare it right here: that cup of his holds a six-six-six!”
His voice boomed. Dogwi—who had built a legendary reputation at this table—was invoking the heavens themselves to brand me a cheat. The spectators began murmuring, half-convinced.
“You meant to end the game on a single pip. What a crude little scheme!”
“What garbage have you been spouting this whole time? Got any proof?”
“Proof? Sure. Crack that cup open and the answer will be right there!”
He jabbed a finger at the still-covered cup. Every eye in the room swung toward it.
“Then how about a wager?”
But I remembered a certain lesson about gambling.
The moment I proposed a new bet, Dogwi’s and Chief Steward Bang’s eyebrows both twitched.
“What kind of wager?”
“I bet everything I own—and my wrists—that it is not six-six-six. If you’re so sure, step up.”
A double-chopper match with both our wrists and entire fortunes on the line.
My burning stare made the two of them flinch for a heartbeat.
“If you’re scared, just die already.”
A blue-faced kid clicking his tongue and taunting them in front of everyone—Dogwi and Steward Bang’s eyes flipped in an instant.
“Putting on a cheap bluff to wriggle out of a crisis…”
They’d already been burned too many times; the rage was boiling over.
“Fine. We’ll both take that bet. But you’ll be losing both wrists…!”
They shouted that they would slice both my hands clean off so I could never cheat again.
“Then let’s open it.”
Under the weight of every stare in the hall, I reached for the remaining cup.
“Don’t touch that cup!”
Dogwi barked in a hurry and pointed at Ilhong standing beside me.
“Hey. You.”
“…Me?”
“Yeah. The one who looks like a girl despite being a man.”
“…”
Famous gambler or not, the guy had a sharp eye.
He put on a self-assured face and ordered Ilhong to open the cup.
“You won’t be able to lay a finger on it till the end.”
Whatever my method was, if he cut me off at the source I would be helpless—that was the look he wore.
The cup opened. The moment the inside was revealed, the entire gambling hall froze solid.
The dice faces were not sixes. Every single one was locked on one.
“Uh… those aren’t sixes?”
Ilhong’s casual murmur.
It was the lowest possible total. And yet, right now, it was also the only total that could beat six-six-five.
“No—why are they all ones…?”
As if its job were finished, a red hand slipped back to me.
While every mouth in the room hung open at the swing of the wager, Steward Bang turned on Dogwi with a face gone deathly pale.
“What is this…?! You were so confident!”
“Th-this… this can’t be…”
Dogwi’s whole body had gone rigid with shock; he could only stammer.
“Fuck, how are we supposed to clean this up? How?!”
Of course they couldn’t. Even with the steward raising hell beside him, the shock was too great—Dogwi’s mouth wouldn’t open.
His trembling eyes found me. They seemed to ask, You bet everything on a number like that?
The surrounding stares felt the same: they were looking at a mad gambler who had torched hundreds of millions on a single pip.
“What are you waiting for? Chief Steward, Dogwi—aren’t you going to lose those wrists?”
I spoke to the warriors who stood frozen, chopper still in hand.
When they showed no intention of moving, I started walking toward the blade myself, announcing that I would do the cutting for them.
“Damn it… Strike! Seize that bastard!”
Steward Bang had never planned to honor any promise from the start. He bellowed for his men to jump us.
Swords hissed free as the Mangeum Money House warriors surged toward us in a wave.
“Well, I figured it would go this way.”
For the record, weapons were completely forbidden inside this gambling hall.
But nobody had said a word about human weapons. Which is why I had brought a Transcendental Peak tiger along.
“Think you’re the only ones with escorts? Go—Tiger of Songshan!”
Even with nothing but two clenched fists, that beast was overwhelming.
“Kraaaah…!”
A woman leapt into the fray with a roar. In a heartbeat the gambling hall became pure pandemonium.
Crash!
“Anyway, that’s how we cleaned out the Mangeum Money House.”
In the sweet-scented private chamber of the Eunseong Merchant Group, Eun Hwaran dropped the folding fan she had been holding the moment she heard my sudden report that I had just wrecked the Money House’s cash flow.
“…Is that true? You hit the Mangeum Money House’s gambling hall?”
“Yes. Thoroughly wrecked it, in fact.”
True enough.
Everyone had seen it—the Money House branding a customer a cheater, then trying to crush him with force when even that failed. Once a reputation like that spreads, it’s spilled water; you can’t scoop it back up. No one would set foot in that gambling hall again.
Which meant the Mangeum Money House had taken not only a financial beating but a devastating blow to the credit and honor that matter most to a money house.
“And you did all of that… with the money you borrowed from me?”
Eun Hwaran kept asking, still looking utterly flabbergasted.
“Used it well. I’ll return it with interest.”
“I’m not asking you to return it… ugh. The idea that you just strolled in and pulled something like that off…”
“I didn’t exactly stroll.”
She picked the fan back up and rubbed her throbbing temples.
“That’s not what I mean… At first you made it sound like you just wanted to go watch a few games.”
The details had been client-confidential, after all.
So I had simply said I needed a little cash to look around the gambling tables.
For the record, our client—Mr. Paeng Hogu—had been extremely pleased when he heard about my performance. He muttered that it served them right, then promised to call on me whenever anything came up, even securing a standing arrangement for regular work.
Right after the Sichuan Tang Family, another solid regular client had just opened up.
“But Mujin… you were good at gambling too?”
“Noona, a troubleshooter doesn’t have things he can’t do.”
In front of potential clients, a certain amount of bluffing was mandatory.
Given everything I had pulled off so far, no one could easily argue. Only Salsung, alone, raised a middle finger at me in silent protest that it had all been her doing.
By the way, that insult isn’t even meant for this situation—she overuses it.
“You seem to have multiplied the borrowed money more than tenfold… ugh. You’re my little brother, but I still can’t believe it.”
She stared at the money chests I had hauled back like war trophies after wrecking the hall, muttering with a drained face. She looked as if she no longer even knew where to begin being shocked.
“Mujin. So what are you going to do with this money? Is there already a purpose for it?”
Every coin had been won through crooked gambling. On top of that, the blood from Dogwi’s and Steward Bang’s wrists was still on it, so a faintly unpleasant aura clung to the pile.
“Well…”
With this much, I could live large for a long while even in Beijing’s murderous cost of living. I could even expand the agency out of the outskirts and into the capital’s heart.
But every time greed lifted its head, the Moyong Cheongjin inside me whispered: what good is wealth and glory earned with the Heavenly Killing Star if your mind ends up swallowed by it?
“Please use this money to set up a building for me.”
“…What? What kind of building?”
Advice from a guy who had already been consumed once was hard to ignore.
I pocketed only a modest fee and pointed at the rest.
“You know… the little beggars who have nowhere to go. Kids like I used to be. Please set up a relief shelter that helps kids like that.”
Beijing, the imperial capital, was a city packed with people drier of mercy than beasts. Still, I wanted to add just a little warmth for the children.
I had felt it ever since my orphanage days: the ones who simply got born aren’t exactly guilty of anything.
“…Mujin, are you serious?”
Caught off guard by the proposal, Eun Hwaran lost her words for a moment, then asked with a serious gaze.
“Yes. I’m serious.”
At my answer Salsung leapt as if she had been betrayed. Far from letting greed take hold, I was trying to pile up good deeds—she was throwing a fit.
Seeing that only steeled my resolve further. Money earned by cheating like a dog, spent like a prime minister.
“You’re doing what even the Imperial Court and the Beggar Sect couldn’t manage…”
Pride colored Eun Hwaran’s voice.
Weighing profit and loss, chasing gain—that was the merchant’s path. Yet somehow she always seemed happy whenever I tried to step outside that logic.
“Shall we name the building the Dan Mujin Relief Shelter?”
“Make it Heavenly Love Orphan… no, please just call it a shelter.”
A decision the murderous Heavenly Killing Star would never have made.
Feeling the good karma rising from deep inside and Salsung thrashing against it, I answered that way.
A vast tide of good karma had welled up.
To strip the baleful star’s energy and settle it properly, I came to the training ground late at night.
Ilhong, who had been swinging her sword and pouring sweat, suddenly opened her mouth as if curious.
“Boss, how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That the other guy would grab your wrist and pull a stunt right then.”
“I just figured it was about that time.”
My confident face in the ripe atmosphere, the incomprehensible chant, the enormous stakes—I had sold him a soul-packed load of bullshit.
“It was Elder One-Ear’s teaching.”
“Who’s that supposed to be?”
I waved it off, saying there was just such a person.
Then, out of nowhere, a figure rose beside us like a ghost, hazy and sudden.
“Right. Who the hell is that, you brat?”
My master, Hwang Geolgae, wore an expression that said only he was allowed to teach me anything.
And having apparently heard something from Eun Hwaran, he fixed his eyes on me and asked:
“Just what kind of bastard are you?”
“About what?”
Honestly, this old man—why start a fight the second he sees my face?
“You. Weren’t you the type who loves money?”
“I love it a ton.”
Looks like he had some business with me after all.