To the Murim Alliance
Minor Tiger Blade, Jo Harang.
She was a woman who carried a curious cheerfulness and a faint streak of mischief.
Long black hair spilled softly over her shoulders, and beneath neat bangs, mysterious purple eyes glimmered faintly.
From the nickname Minor Tiger, I had expected a small, wiry martial artist. Meeting her in person, though, she had the build of an ordinary Central Plains woman.
About my height, a body trimmed of every spare ounce of fat. The reason she earned the moniker of “little tiger” was probably that absurd greatsword strapped to her back.
Even an adult man shouldering the thing would look shrunken under its bulk; the fact that a woman swung it around made the ironic nickname inevitable.
“Hey. You, the young hero who seems to have a problem with this Jo Harang?”
On the road to meet the client who would take us to Shaanxi, just as Guildmaster Gamun had ordered, some woman started jabbing me in the shoulder.
“Hello? Hello? Hey, answer me. Answer.”
Jo Harang had been chewing dried meat in companionable silence until the quiet apparently became too much for her. She opened her mouth first.
“Yeah, what.”
She talks even more than Ilhong.
I scratched one ear as if it tickled and answered.
“Whaaat?”
“Honestly, I didn’t realize you were listening right next to me.”
“Does not knowing fix it? So it’s fine to badmouth someone when they’re not around?”
“Even the emperor gets cursed when he’s not there. What else do you expect?”
I had already unloaded a few choice dual-curses on the Beggar Sect over the entry ban, more than once.
Nothing new.
“Hah. A man who wouldn’t have enough lives if he had ten of them.”
“I am a bit of a real man, yeah.”
“That wasn’t a compliment. The problem’s serious. Even a hundred wouldn’t be enough.”
That was also Hwang Geolgae’s regular refrain.
I already walked around with a star-bomb in my skull that went off the moment I let my guard down. Living a little honestly on top of that wasn’t going to give me hives.
“Anyway, why’d you call me.”
We’d only just met, yet the distance between us already felt paper-thin.
And once we started talking, I found myself strangely drawn in as well.
The woman carried some kind of peculiar energy.
“This senior vagabond wants the new recruit to introduce himself.”
Boredom glittered in those purple eyes.
What kind of martial arts had she trained to turn her eyes that color?
“Guildmaster Gamun didn’t tell you anything about me?”
Walking beside a beauty carrying a greatsword meant glances followed us wherever we went.
Didn’t people usually give at least a basic rundown of the person you’d be traveling with?
“I heard you’re ridiculously lucky and you’ll do whatever you’re told?”
Excuse me? I’ve done real work. What kind of half-assed briefing is that?
How many of those shit-covered commissions had I cleaned up for them?
“I’m Dan Mujin, and this is Ilhong. Fifteen and fourteen this year. Once we finish this job cleanly, we’ll go from Rank-Jeong vagabonds to Rank-Byeong.”
That’s right. I, the lowest-rung vagabond who had almost been denied entry at an inn, was scheduled for promotion once this commission was done.
I had a track record of taking jobs nobody else wanted, plus connections with Merchant Leader Eun Hwaran. A little talking later and the promotion had gone through without much trouble.
Thinking about it again, I still don’t get why they squeeze Rank-Jeong vagabonds so hard.
The intermediary cut was roughly thirty percent, wasn’t it? The staff had spouted some insurance-agent line about how this rank was full of fly-by-nights who ran off or caused accidents and tanked everyone’s credit, so they had no choice but to take more.
I still didn’t understand why I had to wear the shit other people left behind. If only out of sheer spite and disgust, I needed to go independent soon.
My modest dream was to spread my name and epithet far enough that clients walked into my own office of their own free will.
The only problem was that opening an office in Beijing meant somehow overcoming the murderous real-estate prices…
“Oh right, I heard even a Rank-Jeong got an epithet. What do they call you?”
She said she had overheard the guildmaster and the strategist talking about it.
“……Lucky Dog Hero.”
I added the explanation because, if you heard it wrong, it could sound like “lucky dog.”
“Pffft!”
She clamped a hand over her mouth at once.
This bitch. Laughing in my face?
And at the first epithet I had ever earned, no less.
“Ah, sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. Ahem, what’s the word… a really profound epithet… kff, pffhahaha!”
In the end she couldn’t hold it and laughed out loud. A little rude for a first meeting.
Kill!
Kill!
Kill!
For once, the Heavenly Killing Star and I were in perfect agreement.
She shook her shoulders, fighting to keep the laughter in.
What a fucked-up world. Someone gets a cool nickname like Tiger, and someone else ends up with a half-joking chivalrous epithet that just happens to sound like a dog.
I didn’t know which busybody had coined it, but the day I caught them…
“Ah, I’m done laughing. Thanks.”
She told me it felt good to laugh for the first time in a while.
I, the one listening, felt considerably less good.
“But fifteen? You’re only two years younger than me. Just speak comfortably. We’re going to be stuck together for a while anyway.”
Most people her age who got their hands on status and power started puffing themselves up without even realizing it.
Yet here she was, smiling without a wrinkle of pretension, telling me we should get along.
“Should I?”
Outstanding martial arts and a sunny personality on top of it. A good woman.
The little equation inside me that read “master = personality disaster” cracked right then.
“……I said you could, but you drop the formal speech really easily.”
I was never the type to refuse a free opportunity when it came knocking.
And if you counted my previous life, I was the older one by a wide margin.
“What’s the problem? Cuts the awkward time short. Better, right?”
“……Yeah, you’re a pretty fun kid. This trip won’t be boring.”
An intrigued smile curved Jo Harang’s lips.
She spun lightly on her heel and strode ahead with light, springy steps.
“Then let’s go meet the Jo family people. It’s almost noon—the appointed time.”
Her black hair swayed with her footwork. Looking at it, I realized we had spent quite a while getting ready.
She waved, said she would go greet them first, and vanished.
“She was different from the rumors, boss.”
“Yeah.”
Ilhong, who always held her breath the moment a master appeared, finally spoke.
“Minor Tiger Blade Jo Harang. According to Haomu Gate intelligence, she’s been highly active for the past three years. Sect unknown, roughly estimated at First-class Realm, just short of Peak.”
Just short of Peak. Even the children of great orthodox sects who were raised on elixirs rarely reached that level at her age.
“For reference, what’s the Jo family like?”
There’s a saying that daytime talk is heard by birds and nighttime talk is heard by the Haomu Gate.
The so-called guildmaster of the Vagabond Association had tossed us only scraps of information, so detailed intel had to come through Ilhong.
“In the past they were an ordinary civil-official household that ran a few businesses and read books.”
True to her reputation of knowing everything except what she didn’t, she rattled off the facts.
“They produced a few officials through the provincial exams, used that power to expand their enterprises massively, and now they’ve become a powerful family with considerable influence throughout the Beijing region.”
“……Aha.”
In the Central Plains, collusion between politics and business was done out in the open. Once family members planted themselves in the government, of course the family got to suck on that sweet honey.
That was why they drilled their children for the provincial exams with fire in their eyes.
“In short, lots of money and lots of power?”
“Yes, exactly that.”
Most of the moneybags who had come looking for me once my name started spreading were like that.
They could become solid connections later. No harm in getting on their good side.
“We should go too.”
We couldn’t be late just because the hired hands were carrying a lot of luggage.
I hoisted the heavy packs and the thrashing wanted criminal onto my shoulders and hurried after her.
In this era, travel was an extremely rare thing.
The lack of transport made journeys long; commoners had to forgo income for extended periods; and because bandits nested in every mountain valley, expensive escorts were mandatory.
Most people therefore lived and died in the place they were born.
In that light, how extravagant were these Jo family bastards, assembling a whole sightseeing party just to watch the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering where martial artists would gather?
Two grand carriages, three cargo wagons, five personal attendants, and ten escort warriors who actually radiated decent energy.
Just feeding them over such a distance would be a burden, yet this Jo Family Head had even hired three extra vagabonds just in case.
“Makes me want a Revolution.”
Watching money get spent like water made something inside me twitch.
There was a time I had worried about every meal and boiled grass roots for soup as a beggar.
“What’s that, boss?”
Ilhong tilted her head at another of my incomprehensible remarks.
“The workers of all nations uniting as one and smashing the existing privileged order.”
In an age that still called the emperor the Son of Heaven and submitted to authority, the idea had yet to bloom.
“Interesting. The founding Gate Lord used to say that if heaven is too high, you just pull it down a little lower.”
“What.”
I had just been spouting nonsense because I was pissed off.
The guy who left behind the divine relic had been a dangerous sort.
If someone like that had been born in the Three Kingdoms era, he would have been shouting about blue skies and yellow heavens.
“Are you the vagabond called Dan Mujin?”
A voice marked by the weight of years and quiet authority reached me.
Family Head Jo, who had been deep in conversation with the rising star Jo Harang, suddenly addressed me.
“Lady Jo Harang says you’re an interesting young man.”
“……Is that so?”
I had heard that forming ties with powerful martial artists was the Jo Family Head’s hobby. Since she was taking an interest in me, he was taking an interest as well.
“And your luck is supposed to be extraordinary? I’ll be counting on you for this journey.”
Apparently I had been brought along as both porter and lucky totem.
Well, I could use the cargo wagon and I was getting paid, so it didn’t really matter.
“Is that the Venomous Demon the people of Ilpung Martial Hall took down with you?”
Family Head Jo eyed the tightly bound wanted criminal from head to toe with open curiosity.
The whole process of escorting a criminal to the Murim Alliance seemed brand-new and fascinating to him.
“Yes, that’s him, though I pretty much took him down alone.”
When I corrected the record, he gave a dry little chuckle.
“Haha, a young friend already so hungry for glory… Yes, yes, I understand.”
No, it wasn’t “yes, yes, I understand.” I really did take him down myself.
This Rank-Jeong vagabond label kept burying my actual achievements.
I needed to climb to Rank-Eul as fast as Jo Harang had and start making real noise.
“On the way to the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering we’ll pick up various famous personages, and we often run into heroes and greats. Would it be all right if I showed them this villain each time?”
Family Head Jo pointed at the Venomous Demon with an expectant look on his middle-aged face.
So this vicious bastard who had poisoned hundreds and driven entire families into mutual slaughter through suspicion and paranoia was about to become a sightseeing attraction.
“Sure, go ahead. It’s not like he wears out.”
On second thought, humiliating a human-faced, beast-hearted murderer wasn’t a bad idea either.
I could treat it as the fee for using the cargo wagon and concede that much.
“Ugh… Y-young man. Listen to me a moment.”
The Venomous Demon had come around in the meantime; he wriggled and tried to talk to me.
“I have a hideout with gold bars stashed. I’ll give you ten times the bounty if you just loosen these ropes…”
Thwack!
I brought the staff down on the crown of his head for that worthless scheme.
If he really had gold bars, why had he been so desperate to swallow a martial hall?
“Young hero, why do you knock him out with a club instead of sealing his pressure points?”
Family Head Jo asked, looking stunned by my crude method of inducing unconsciousness.
“The hand-feel is better.”
I was starting to understand why Hwang Geolgae always cracked me on the top of the head.
Once I started smashing the skull instead of sealing points, the way the guy woke up soaked in terror every time was actually pretty entertaining.
He no longer even thought the first syllable of the word “resistance.”
“As expected, every martial artist has one strange corner.”
With that remark, Family Head Jo shook his head and walked away.
“Family Head, we aren’t like that.”
His escort warriors protested the injustice as fellow people of the Murim.
What? Am I the weird one? Was I gradually entering the equation that masters equal lunatics?
“Ilhong, am I a little strange? Not ordinary?”
“……You’re ordinary, boss. You just lose it sometimes.”
Maybe I had simply grown too used to Hwang Geolgae’s violence-soaked training methods.
“Look me in the eyes and say that.”
“I’ll go load the rest of the luggage on the wagon.”
Sensing she was about to get tired, Ilhong quietly slipped away.
Kill.
The only one who kept talking to me without end was this crazy Heavenly Killing Star.
With a bitter face I wrote the character for “not” once more and completed “Do Not Kill.”
…!
The blazing red energy went berserk as if irritated.
I watched it and snorted. The road to the Murim Alliance wouldn’t be lonely after all.
As long as it didn’t try to swallow my mind, the thing was secretly entertaining.