The Suspicious Painter
Dark green nails punched through flesh, hide, and bone, raking through the Blood Night Boar's skull.
Brain matter ran down a pale white wrist. The massive crimson boar shuddered, convulsed, and died without even managing a scream.
"Whoa. What the..."
That rock-hard skull, crushed like tofu with a single strike.
I stared at the tiny woman in front of me with wide eyes.
"Heh. That's more like it—finally recognizing this body's greatness. I like that look."
Dang Yeohye held her head high and preened.
They say the fuller the rice ear, the lower it bows. So why did only foul-tempered masters like this keep clustering around me?
Maybe it was the fate of the Heavenly Killing Star—to draw only those pickled in the business of killing.
"Brat, you managed to hold out for half a ke yourself, so this Poison Claw Mountain Blood, Dang Yeohye, will specially acknowledge you."
So she could praise someone that arrogantly. Hearing it didn't make me happy at all. If that counted as a talent, it was one hell of a talent.
"Please understand—my lady simply hasn't had much practice praising others... In truth, that was practically the highest form of praise she can give."
Then Neungsam stepped up beside her and started footnoting his mistress's remarks.
A true professional attendant's moves.
"Haa? Who the hell is giving who highest praise? Ridiculous."
Dang Yeohye snapped, the red-jade corners of her eyes shooting up.
"Earlier you were so impressed, saying that brat saved your life..."
"That was just delirious nonsense from the poison qi... Ah, you keep shoving that bogus mind-reading at me and pissing me off?!"
So she'd been talking me up behind my back after strutting so arrogantly in front of me.
"Bogus? This Neungsam, who has served you since your babbling days, knows. That praise just now came straight from the heart...!"
The Sichuan Tang Family attendant laid on the confidence, claiming he'd served her since infancy.
"Ah, enough! Shut up!"
Dang Yeohye's tiny fist slammed into Neungsam's broad back.
Thwack thwack thwack!
"That hurts, my lady."
"Die! Just die already, you bastard!"
She wanted to smack him upside the head, but her height didn't match, so she was hopping like a rabbit.
And Ilhong, who'd somehow sidled up next to me the same way Neungsam had.
"Boss, you okay? Things looked pretty brutal earlier."
"I'm fine. This much won't kill me."
Looks like she was the only one who worried about me.
"Sometimes you don't even seem human. Same when you got stabbed with a sword... How are you this tough?"
She said that while poking and prodding various parts of my body.
"Ow, damn it. My whole body's already aching."
"Ah, sorry."
The pain was raw and real. But my durability was, as Ilhong said, at the level of someone who'd trained external arts to the extreme.
That was because of the star nestled inside me—the one that turns a human into a killing machine.
"That was you earlier, right? The one who stuck the needle near its eye."
"Yes, I shot it."
"Nice shot. Saved my life."
"Aw, we only survived because of you, Boss."
A pretty young man smiled sweetly in front of me.
Once cleaned up and polished, that face made everything look like a natural photoshoot.
While we were grinning at each other, Dang Yeohye seemed done with her scuffle. She drove a qi-wrapped knife-hand into the Blood Night Boar's belly with a wet thunk.
Hot entrails poured out like from a butcher's table.
"Urgh."
Ilhong, mid-laugh, gagged at the brutal technique.
What a barbaric age this was.
"Argh, seriously. Where is it? It has to be around here..."
A voice full of anticipation. Eyes gleaming, she dug through the flesh until she finally pulled out something the size of a walnut.
"Found it! Neungsam, look at this! The Blood Night Boar's poison core!"
Her face lit up like a mountain ginseng hunter who'd struck gold.
Dang Yeohye held the dark crimson poison core, thick with toxic qi, high overhead.
"Heavens, what fortune... My lady, if we refine this into a Blood Jade Pill, it will be a tremendous aid to your poison arts training!"
"Hmph, of course! With this, I'll leave that wicked older brother in the dust!"
Neungsam looked equally thrilled by the windfall.
Gone was the bickering from moments ago; the two of them were now giggling and reveling together.
"Ah, but I don't think we can make a Blood Jade Pill with this. Once you take it out, it softens quickly—I have to consume it here and now."
Dang Yeohye explained that if she'd wanted to make a pill, she should have captured the Blood Night Boar alive and dragged it all the way to Sichuan.
"But my lady, if you take it raw without refining it, the poison qi will run wild. You could suffer severe internal injuries."
"Doesn't mean I can just throw it away, right? After all the trouble getting it... I'll neutralize it carefully and fuse it with my internal energy as best I can."
She declared she would control and melt the core's energy and somehow make it her own.
"Then for the recovery period alone, we'll be stuck here in Hebei for a while. I'll find a quiet place for your training."
Dang Yeohye and Neungsam discussed their next steps.
Meanwhile, my gaze was locked on the dark crimson poison core oozing toxic qi.
"An internal core coming out of its body... That must've been a spirit beast that's lived a really long time, Boss."
"...No wonder it hurt like a bitch. Fuck."
I let out a short sigh at Ilhong's whisper.
My whole body still ached. I'd thought training with Hwang Geolgae had made me able to endure most pain by now.
"A newbie request, and that kind of monster pops out. How the hell is Branch Leader Gam Un handling his job?"
Once is coincidence; three times is sabotage.
The second I got back, I was marching in to raise hell.
And if he said he wouldn't give me more work, I'd just use Sister Eun Hwaran's connections.
"Anyway, clients—time to settle up. We're busy, so work out the rest after we leave."
The medicinal herb gathering request had been completed successfully.
No—finding ten black pine mushrooms and even acquiring a poison core meant we'd blown past the completion conditions.
So the original fee of twenty iron coins wouldn't cut it at all. At minimum, I wanted ten silver coins.
"Hmph. Fine, brat. You did work hard. Neungsam, give them some money and send them off."
Dang Yeohye gestured to her attendant, saying the Tang Family always repaid kindness and grudges in full.
"In truth, it wasn't just hard work—you saved my lady when she couldn't move a finger or toe. If the Blood Night Boar had charged in before the detox finished, she probably would have..."
"Fuck, I know that too, okay? That's why I said give them a lot of money and send them off, you shit-for-brains."
Neungsam muttered that she was truly not an honest person as he fished around in his money pouch.
Then his face suddenly hardened.
"What's with that face? You look like someone who had to cut off mid-shit."
Raw speech that made you wonder if she really was a daughter of a prestigious clan.
"My lady, it seems we've nearly run out of money."
"...What?"
At that shocking statement, Dang Yeohye's previously cocky face froze as well.
She absently patted his depleted pouch.
"No, how?"
"Didn't you say that since we were here, you'd taste every delicacy Beijing had to offer and go gallivanting all over? Prices here are murderous... Of course nothing would be left."
The culprit was Dang Yeohye, raised precious and used to spending money like water.
So, was she planning to stiff me for my hard-earned wages now?
I glared at the two of them with fire in both eyes.
Same as when I ran the office—if you pay, you're a client; if you can't, you're a deadbeat.
"Haa. No choice. Take this."
Dang Yeohye heaved a deep sigh and pulled something flat and copper-colored from her robes.
"What's this?"
The answer came from Ilhong beside me.
"It's a Favor Token that Tang Family blood kin bestow when they've received a kindness. Judging by the color, of the gold-silver-copper types, it's the copper one."
Dang Yeohye scratched her name into the copper token with her qi-imbued nails.
"Hey, you. Be grateful and take it."
She tossed what she was holding with the look of someone doing me a huge favor.
Catching it, it felt thinner and more shabby than I'd expected.
The wuxia novels I'd read when I had no clients never had anything like this.
"Ilhong, is this worth money?"
"Well, it's the lowest copper token, so... depends on how you use it, I guess?"
Depends on how you use it—about as vague as you can get.
The grade was too low for a big favor, but too precious to waste on something trivial.
I felt like a chancellor staring at a chicken rib—useless but hard to throw away.
Some eccentric eunuch had flicked me a gleaming gold coin just for thrashing a few bandits.
"Hoo. It's lacking, but I'll let it slide."
I muttered with an unimpressed face and slipped the Favor Token into my robes.
Dang Yeohye made a face like she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Wow, has this guy lost his mind? Hey! You—even with money, that thing isn't easy to—"
"Now, now, my lady. Young Master Dan sacrificed his body to hold off the Blood Night Boar for you. Please, restrain yourself!"
"I know, but that bastard pisses me off! I've never met anyone ruder than me! Just one hit!"
"What are you saying! If you hit him, it'll be a disaster!"
The moment I accepted the Tang Family Favor Token, attendant Neungsam elevated my title by one rank.
He handled the Tang Family's second daughter—who was thrashing about like a beast—as skillfully as a trainer.
"The only person who'd talk like that in front of a master is you, Boss."
That was Ilhong's quiet comment from where she'd been watching.
"I do live pretty honestly."
"That wasn't exactly a compliment."
Having died once, had a weird star jammed in my head, and gotten a terminal diagnosis on top of it, I no longer bothered fretting over other people's opinions.
"But you didn't mean that about the reward being insufficient, right? It is a Tang Family Favor Token, after all."
"No, I meant it completely."
I'd been beaten and rolled around to the brink of death, and all I got was this scrap of copper token. Wasn't the reward way too small?
And because I was completely sincere, the scales of conscience had tipped toward good deeds all this time, and my internal energy had exploded so much.
Enough that Hwang Geolgae's eyes had gone round watching me.
"Training with Old Man Hwang... looks like I'll have to work even harder."
Ilhong, reading the look in my eyes and sensing a turbulent future, heaved a deep sigh.
Anyway, what had seemed like an ordinary herb-gathering job wrapped up after many twists and turns—with a reward, no less.
We left the still-screaming short woman behind and headed down the mountain.
Beijing Ronin Association, where sword-bearing wanderers came and went in droves.
In the morning hours when the building should have been quiet, an unexpected ruckus broke out.
All because of one boy who had just stormed out after pouring out his grievances at the top of his lungs.
While everyone else looked baffled, Branch Leader Gam Un alone seemed to understand why. He scratched his scar in silence.
His expression looked less annoyed than slightly stirred up.
"Heh. So my instincts haven't gone completely dead yet."
Turns out the clients were martial artists, and on top of that a monster called a Blood Night Boar had appeared and they'd barely survived—so the two boys had complained of injustice.
He'd thought that with age, his knack for sensing ill omens had faded.
"Right. There's no way this old scar of Gam Un's would die easy. Damn right."
It just activated a bit slower with age; the ability itself seemed as sharp as ever.
But if so, that meant the boys named Dan Mujin and Ilhong had survived that bloodbath twice over.
"That's a bit strange. Whenever this scar aches, someone always ends up bleeding..."
The Eunseong Merchant Group's head of house had praised him as an outstanding kid, so he'd wondered.
Apparently, beneath that young appearance, he had a hidden card up his sleeve.
"Has a promising sprout rolled into the Beijing branch? Heh heh."
Gam Un grinned and downed cup after cup of pungent rice wine.
And then a young man who looked rather green burst through the door.
Slight of build with dark circles under his eyes—not a ronin, but a client come to post a request.
"I heard there are decent ronin here..."
Look at that.
"Of course. The ronin here all work harder than what they're paid for."
Gam Un drained the cup he'd filled with rice wine and asked what business brought him.
"Ah, I'm Neung Jinsam. I make my living painting around the Beijing area."
He added that he was still just a painter who hadn't produced a work worthy of being called a master artist.
"The thing is, I want to go deep into the mountains and take in the sights to paint, but I've been told climbing alone is dangerous."
"Indeed. Beasts that have tasted human blood, the occasional bandit, and slopes where one slip means a fall. All the more reason to have a sword-bearing helper along."
"...Ah, yes."
Just a standard escort job? A bit of a letdown.
But he had personal interest.
"So what do you mainly paint? I've got a fair amount of knowledge in this field myself—I've bought a few landscape paintings by famous masters."
Paintings whose prices had only risen now that the artists had died young.
A high-ranking member of a certain circle had recommended them, and looking back, it had been a solid investment.
"Ah, I... well..."
"Well?"
"I mainly paint furry beasts."
"...Hmm? Don't most people paint landscapes, portraits, or grand mountain-and-water scenes that capture nature in a single scroll? That's what most people look for."
A single landscape painting poured from a renowned master's heart and soul is worth more than a lump of gold.
If a famous Daoist then comes along and inscribes a poem on it, the price skyrockets.
"Still, I... I like beasts with soft fur and big round eyes. Even if it doesn't make money."
"..."
At that slightly excessive beast-love, Gam Un's mouth closed of its own accord.
Well, if the client likes it, what's a middleman to do?
But he was stuck wondering who to assign this to.
Ronin usually preferred jobs with generous pay that could raise their reputation.
They didn't much like being called for petty work like this.
"Ah. There's those kids."
The newbie ronin who'd said they were sick of dangerous jobs and begged him to broker something safe.
And this time the scar wasn't reacting much either.
"Hey, somebody go to the Eunseong Merchant Group and fetch that kid named Dan Mujin."
Seems the boy's next request had been decided.