Eun Hwaran's Once-in-a-Lifetime Escort
It was the Spring Equinox, one of the twenty-four solar terms.
The season when all living things stirred from sleep and the days grew longer than the nights.
Spring had arrived in full, and the boy and girl wiping sweat on the training grounds had each grown another year older.
Beneath the starlight, a young man and woman traded fists and kicks in the middle of training. In the half year since he had first brought them in, he had fed them well and put them to bed properly, and they had shot up like bamboo after the rain. Kids that age grew overnight, they said—and sure enough, the boy was already starting to carry himself like a young man, while the girl was taking on the air of a proper young lady.
“Hup! Hut!”
“Ha! Hyah!”
Especially the girl, Ilhong. Because it was midnight training she had even dropped the boy’s disguise, and something even more feminine seemed to flow from her.
But whether a girl his own age was blooming into full beauty or not meant nothing to the merciless boy Dan Mujin, who spotted an opening and immediately planted a sharp knuckle-rap straight on the crown of her head.
Thwack!
“Ow! That hurts!”
“That’s why I hit you.”
Watching from the side, Hwang Geolgae felt like he had seen that particular knuckle-rap somewhere before. The principle of extreme speed packed into the fingertips—somehow this insolent brat had already stolen half of his martial reasoning.
“It hurts so youth is… No. Pain’s what keeps you from making the same defense mistake again.”
And now the kid was even parroting the exact advice he himself had once given. Truly a detestable little bastard. One of Hwang Geolgae’s eyebrows crooked upward.
“Dammit!”
Ilhong clenched her teeth, face burning with humiliation, and charged again. She poured everything into the Beggar’s Heart Fist that Hwang Geolgae had specially refined for her—right foot digging hard into the dirt, left fist tracing an arc and dropping like a hammer.
But Dan Mujin’s legs blurred and both hands shot out like snares; her pale wrist was caught and she was forced to a dead stop.
“Heh. You little shit.”
Hwang Geolgae had to let out another hollow laugh. That, too, was a Beggars’ Sect seizing technique he had used whenever the brat tried to run from grueling training—the Copper Hammer Hands. Judging by how the motions flowed together like water, the kid had even been drilling its combination with Whirlwind Steps on the side.
“……Boss, how did you just do that?”
Ilhong’s eyes went round as her wrist remained sealed by that uncanny movement.
“You just whoosh and then bam.”
“Whoosh-bam? What’s that?”
“Whoosh-bam is whoosh-bam.”
He himself had learned it instinctively while getting beaten half to death just to stay alive, so explaining it with words was apparently impossible. Unlike martial artists who systematically polished their arts from the basic forms up, this kid’s life-or-death training method was simply that effective.
“Tch. I trained so hard trying to catch up, but the gap just keeps getting wider.”
Ilhong grumbled that the actual training period couldn’t have differed by more than a few months, yet the talent gap was ridiculous. In Hwang Geolgae’s eyes, though, she herself had more than enough potential to be called a high-level expert if she just kept stacking her training steadily. It was only that the monster in front of her completely broke the scale.
“Hey, overflowing with talent? Winter’s over and I still haven’t hit fifteen years of internal energy or three stars in the Seongun Simbeop. Not a single thing achieved.”
Dan Mujin wiped the sweat from his forehead as he answered her complaints. He was probably saying it with complete sincerity. Carrying something like a blasting charge that could go off at any moment inside his head made every achievement feel shaky; he couldn’t help but see himself as lacking.
Ilhong, who knew nothing of that fact, took it as him mocking her and pulled a thoroughly unimpressed face.
“Wow. That one just now was pretty damn annoying.”
“…….”
Even he seemed to feel a little guilty after saying it, because Dan Mujin clamped his mouth shut. Then the thought of that expensive talent—the kind that would get him swallowed by the malevolent star the moment he let his guard down—must have struck him as unfair, because he looked ready to start spouting nonsense with a wronged expression.
“But thinking about it, I’m kinda the one who’s— Gyaak!”
To cut that off, Hwang Geolgae immediately cracked him across the crown of the head. The kid let out a strangled cry like a duck with a twisted neck, bouncing and thrashing like a freshly caught mullet as he expressed pure agony with his entire body. As expected, this one was satisfying to hit.
“Ah! Come on! That hurts!”
“Heh heh. That’s why I hit you, you brat.”
Hwang Geolgae snorted a laugh and tossed the exact words the kid had used moments ago straight back at him. Dan Mujin put on a full theatrical performance about how his skull felt like it had split open.
“Heehee. That’s right. You said pain’s how you get stronger, didn’t you?”
Ilhong’s spirits soared; she smirked with pure schadenfreude. Dan Mujin had nothing to say and only kept rubbing the struck spot with a low “ngh.”
“You little bastard.”
“Ah, what.”
A face full of pure sulking. Back at the headquarters in Kaifeng, a single word from him would make over a thousand beggars freeze in terror. Yet one rap on the head and the kid was glaring at him like that. Absolutely no sense of hierarchy whatsoever.
“You know the Eunseong Escort Agency is setting out on an escort run tomorrow, don’t you?”
An unidentified freak had been wrecking every single run that flew the Eunseong banner. Madam Eun Hwaran had steeled herself to restore the agency’s shattered reputation and prepared this escort with renewed resolve. If even this run—scraped together from whatever trust remained—failed, Eunseong Escort Agency would truly be finished.
“Yeah, I know. Eun Hwaran unnie’s once-in-a-lifetime escort that her whole fate is riding on. Just show up and we’re good.”
“……?”
Every now and then the kid said things that made no sense. Since he had a crazy star jammed in his head, Hwang Geolgae simply decided to let it slide.
“Anyway, this old man is joining that escort as well. We’ll probably be gone on a long road for a couple of months.”
It was an escort meant to clear out every lingering job at once, so they would be covering great distances and stopping in many places.
“Heh. Well, have a safe trip then.”
After getting beaten and trained all winter long, Dan Mujin looked positively delighted at the news that the old man would be away on a long journey for a while.
“Your face looks a little too happy.”
“Aww, no way.”
Even while denying it he couldn’t hide the smug little grin, which was genuinely funny. Clearly he thought this was someone else’s problem entirely.
“You’re going too, you brat.”
“……What?”
The smile vanished instantly. He had thought he was finally free of the brutal training; learning that wasn’t the case made his face harden all over again. Watching it from the front was quite the entertaining show.
“This is insane. Why me? I’m not even an agency laborer anymore!”
“You’re a free agent now, aren’t you? Madam Eun Hwaran gladly agreed to hire you.”
“No, see, I don’t remember ever asking her to hire me?”
He shook his head hard, insisting no such thing had happened.
“Of course you don’t. I asked her to hire you on your behalf.”
When something was too absurd, words simply failed. Dan Mujin stared at Hwang Geolgae with an utterly speechless look.
“You son of a—! This is tyranny! Why the hell are you the one making that call?!”
He protested that this was pure violence—especially coming from someone who had once claimed they weren’t even master and disciple.
“Heh heh. You thought I’d leave a ticking time bomb like you unsupervised for months? Stop screwing around and come with this old man.”
For the peace of the Murim, that kid needed to stay within his line of sight. He had no intention of letting him loose until the brat reached at least a certain realm and could suppress the malevolent star.
“You damn old geezer!”
When things refused to go his way, the thunderous little savage’s true nature came roaring back. He poured out every complaint under the sun, insisting the suffering from training alone was already more than enough. But no matter how hard he argued, Hwang Geolgae didn’t so much as blink. Eventually the kid shut his mouth and started rolling his eyes this way and that. The furtive sidelong glance toward the rear was a scene Hwang Geolgae had seen once before.
The next line out of his mouth would definitely be—
“……Thirty-six Stratagems!”
Yeah. That was it.
The brat drew up his internal energy and launched Whirlwind Steps, bolting at full speed. A desperate, all-out flight.
“Tsk tsk. No matter how far you run, you’re still in the Buddha’s palm.”
Trying to shake him off with a mere two-star Whirlwind Steps? Courage that went too far simply became recklessness.
Taat!
His Yongcheon point poured out massive internal energy. Hwang Geolgae streaked across the training grounds like a swallow skimming water. The speed was nearly light itself; his form stretched long and then blurred like a ghost. With ghostly movement he suddenly rose right in front of the frantically fleeing Dan Mujin.
“Hup!”
But Dan Mujin had clearly expected at least this much. He dragged his left foot to create friction and brake, then snapped his right foot out with springy force, spinning his body half a turn. He slipped past the grasping hand by a hair’s breadth and resumed his sprint. Only the other day the kid had been spewing colorful curses in pure shock; this was genuine progress.
“Fuck this! I’m not going! Stop chasing me!”
He shouted urgently while working his feet. For a green brat to say whatever he pleased to a great senior of the jianghu—what a piece of work.
“Quit the bullshit and follow me.”
The kid probably thought he had luckily dodged the Copper Hammer Hands, but in truth Hwang Geolgae had simply measured his strength and held back. The Heavenly Killing Star could read the trajectory of an attack, sure—but if you simply moved faster than the body could react, that was the end of it.
Shwik— tatak!
Hwang Geolgae closed in from the side almost immediately. Even while running, four arms blurred and exchanged blows in midair. From within the web of trajectories that locked down his vision, Hwang Geolgae’s hand suddenly shot out and coiled around the arm like a snake.
Tuk!
“Ugh!”
A pressure point was struck; the kid lost his balance and tumbled dozens of times at full running speed. Dust rose in a thick cloud. Just in case the brat might shake the point-sealing free, Hwang Geolgae had poured in more than five times the usual internal energy. Right about now the kid’s whole body would be locked stiff, with only his eyeballs spinning wildly like last time.
“You brat. Your talent for acting up just keeps growing.”
Hwang Geolgae muttered as if lamenting it. The dantian was already full of anti-demonic energy, and a pure, clear light was beginning to leak faintly from both eyes—so apparently the kid’s personality had simply always been like this.
“Kh… ugh. Fuck! Whose fault do you think that is…! You beat the shit out of me calling it training—if my personality stayed normal after that, that would make me the crazy one…!”
Yet thick curses came flying out of the dust cloud.
“You little bastard, how did you undo the point-sealing again?”
He had definitely sealed both the Ma and Ah points, yet somehow the sealing had already come undone and the brat was flapping his mouth again. Pouring in several times the energy still did nothing. By what principle was he forcing the sealing out? Circulating true energy through the kid’s body and examining every corner might reveal the secret, but the thought of running into that hideous presence made him drop the idea.
“Huuuh, give it up, old man! No matter how many points you hit, I will never yie— Gyaak!”
In the end he had to knock the brat out the physical way, chopping the back of his neck. Dan Mujin’s eyes rolled up and his head lolled. Maybe he should have just done this from the start.
“……What kind of brat even is this.”
From being beaten so much, the kid no longer even seemed afraid of getting hit after mouthing off. Hwang Geolgae had endured every hardship as a beggar, but this one ranked among the most stubborn of them all. Maybe that was exactly what it took to keep your sanity while carrying a malevolent star in your head.
“Ilhong. Take this brat and put him on the escort wagon.”
Hwang Geolgae lifted the limp Dan Mujin and handed him over.
“……Yes, sir.”
She swallowed hard as she answered. Was there another master-disciple pair this savage anywhere in the world? Even if she learned martial arts, she vowed she would never get caught between the two of them.
When I opened my eyes, it was an unfamiliar sky.
The sun was high overhead. My last memory was clearly midnight training.
“Boss, you awake?”
A gently swaying ponytail. A pretty young boy leaned in close. Even with the human-skin mask on, it still wasn’t enough to fully hide that face.
And behind her, hundreds of laborers and cargo hands were bustling around the manor.
“Move your asses! You lazy maggots!”
“If you so much as scratch the cargo, you’re paying for every last bit out of your own pockets!”
They were making final preparations for an escort that was about to depart. Cargo hands stuffed goods and luggage into wagons while escorts checked weapons, personal gear, and all kinds of preserved rations. Out front, the escort leaders and senior officers ran around in perfect coordination, directing every process from the head of the line.
The more I watched, the more it reminded me of military pre-deployment inspections. Any second now someone was going to start barking “Fast face!” and “Issuing authority Eun Hwaran!” in that bleak, barren atmosphere.
“Fuck. I have to feel this again.”
I sat up on the wagon, body aching and stiff. This was exactly why I’d thrashed around refusing to go.
“Ilhong, so how far are we walking, exactly?”
Since I hadn’t thought of it as my problem, I had only noted the expected return date. Why did I already feel that greasy sensation of blisters forming on my soles?
“Apparently about two thousand li.”
“…….”
I swallowed a double-barreled curse. Even the special forces uncles back on Earth only marched a thousand li once every two years because it was that brutal. No matter how big the land was, this place wanted us to walk twice that. Sure, we would stop and rest in villages along the way, but it was definitely going to be a hard road.
“Hmm.”
I planted one knee, preparing to rise.
“If you run, Old Master Hwang says he’ll chase you to the ends of the Central Plains.”
“Huuuhmm…….”
I lowered the raised knee again. It was absolutely not because those words scared me.
“Who said I was running? My knee was just stiff.”
“Yes, yes.”
Ilhong snorted like she believed that about as far as she could throw it. Hearing her words, I finally understood why the people around us were loaded down with full packs like complete field gear. When you walked that far and it took that long, you packed everything that might be useful. Unlike the modern world where a convenience store sat on every corner, finding anything mid-march here would be extremely hard.
“Come to think of it, you packed a lot of stuff too.”
She had almost as much baggage as the traveling merchants who had joined the escort procession—a huge pack on her back and three or four smaller bundles hanging from the sash at her waist.
“There was a lot I needed. Some of it I bought at the Black Market.”
Ah, that dark general store that supposedly sold everything. While working as a free agent she had run to the Black Market every time she made any money, and apparently she had brought back more than I thought. She had even borrowed money from me a few more times for whatever she was buying, looking thoroughly embarrassed each time.
“I’m only asking now, but what were you buying at the Black Market that cost so much?”
Not only the gold coins I had lent her, but also a dozen or so silver coins seemed to have gone into the investment. She was a sharp kid so she probably wasn’t doing anything stupid, but the curiosity had built up.
“Heh. Most of the money went into this.”
She smiled faintly, pulled something from a bundle, and held it out in front of me. The “something” was a secret Haomu Gate disguise tool molded into the shape of a human face.
“Ta-da. A human-skin mask just for Boss Mujin.”
A custom disguise tool fitted to the shape of my face dangled in her hand.
“Wait, you were making one for me?”
“Yes. You said last time you wanted something like this.”
I had only muttered it to myself while watching a girl transform into a boy every single morning without a trace. She had caught that and secretly prepared a gift like this. It felt a little like giving a kid allowance money and watching them come back with a present for their parents.
“Look at this promising little brat.”
“Hehehe.”
When I praised her with genuine satisfaction, Ilhong beamed with pride. Investing without asking any questions had been worth it. Not a single gold coin of that gift felt wasted.
“Ohh.”
Just pressing the skin against my face made it cling perfectly. You could tell it hadn’t been made generically—it had been carved for me alone. With the special glue applied on top it would be even more flawless.
“But Ilhong.”
“Yes?”
“The skin is incredibly detailed. How did you know the shape of my face well enough to prepare this?”
Something like this should only be possible if you examined the face up close and thoroughly. There had been a few times when she stared at me with a strange look, but still.
“Boss, after dawn training you always pass out like you’re dead.”
“That’s true.”
Because the “training” was really just a full-body beating, plus being worked to the absolute limit of my stamina. Of course, that was also why my martial progress had been explosive.
“So every time you fell asleep I came over and observed your face…….”
“……What?”
So while I was unconscious she had come over and just… stared at this face? Even from Ilhong, that was a little creepy.
“D-don’t get the wrong idea! I only did it so I could secretly gift you the human-skin mask!”
When I asked with a thoroughly freaked-out expression, Ilhong explained with pure intentions, the tips of her ears slightly pink.
“Right? That’s what it was…… right?”
“Of course! Absolutely!”
She nodded vigorously. Since she was insisting that hard, I decided to leave it at that. Otherwise it was going to get… a little scary.