The Later Beggar
The road toward the headquarters of the Beggars' Sect.
A damp earthy smell rose from the canal that cut through the city, while large and small vessels bustled about along the docks. Beyond that stretched Kaifeng's shopping streets, packed so tight with people there was hardly room to set foot. Merchants' cries echoed from every alley, mingling with the scents of grilling and steaming food — all of it proclaiming the city's vitality and prosperity.
Just walking around is enough of a feast for the eyes in a commercial city like this.
And once night falls, the wine houses, night markets, and blue-lantern pleasure houses all open at once and turn the place into that famous city that never sleeps.
My purse wasn't exactly overflowing, so I decided to put the night-market sightseeing off for another day.
"Kind sir! Spare a coin!"
Merchants in fine silk robes and beggars in rags mixed freely in the same space. Yet no one drove the beggars off with sticks, and no one mocked or harassed them either. That was probably because this was Kaifeng, thick with Beggars' Sect members. Treat a beggar carelessly and you might find yourself facing an angry pack of them raising hell until your shop had to close.
"If the Village of Beginning had been here, even we could have lived pretty easy as beggars."
I said it while watching the local beggars stroll the streets without a care in the world.
"The Village of Beginning?"
"There's a place like that."
"Honestly, there you go again."
At the very least the little beggars wouldn't have gotten beaten up or robbed by grown men. Begging would have been easier too, so we wouldn't have had to survive on watery gruel every single day.
Actually, if I thought about it, beggar life would have been a whole lot more comfortable anywhere that wasn't Beijing. For a moment I found myself resenting Hwang Geolgae all over again for picking a fight with the emperor and blowing everything up.
"Young hero! Spare a coin!"
A small, grimy hand caught my sleeve. Stooped posture, scrawny frame, empty begging bowl — clumsy work. Looking at him was like looking at my old self back in the orphanage.
"It's 'great hero,' kid. You think you're gonna eat with begging like that?"
"…Huh?"
The little beggar stared blankly after my sudden lecture. I didn't know how he'd ended up on the streets, but he still hadn't learned to swallow his pride. When you beg, the basics are to butter them up — boss, teacher, elder, whatever. It costs nothing to flap your tongue a little. This one was short on fundamentals. The fact that he was still alive anyway probably meant people around here were just that generous.
"Got it?"
"Ah… yes."
"Then try again."
I kept coaching him on the finer points, and the boy reluctantly launched into another round of begging.
"Great hero…! I've got a little brother who's gone three days without food! Please, just one coin!"
Lies are basic equipment for begging. No one ever checks anyway. The kid in front of me took my advice and ran with it. Quick feedback — this one wouldn't starve in the future.
"Nice lungs. Keep polishing that skill."
"Th-thank you!"
He must have written me off as a busybody for butting in uninvited. When I casually tossed him ten iron coins, he jumped in surprise and bowed at the waist. Proper coaching always costs money — that had been one of the unspoken house rules back at the orphanage. Everyone just sort of agreed on it.
"Boss, weren't we already tight on food and lodging money?"
Staying several days and covering meals and beds would leave us scraping the bottom of the purse, true. In a tiny voice, Ilhong suggested we could just take one room to save money — she wasn't opposed, she said.
"It's fine. I've got a way to pull in a lump sum."
She tilted her head at that, then her face went pale with horror.
"…You're seriously going to rat out Old Man Hwang's location?"
"Hey now, 'rat out'? What kind of talk is that, Ilhong?"
This was just information sharing — the thing the Haomu Gate and the Beggars' Sect excelled at. And the Beggars' Sect members ought to know where their own leader was, even if they didn't go looking for him in person.
"If word gets back that you were the one who told them, Old Man Hwang is going to beat you half to death."
"He already beats me half to death every training session. How is that any different from now?"
"…Oh. Yeah, that's true."
Hwang Geolgae had used training in the Hundred Knots Divine Fist, Whirlwind Steps, Dog Beating Staff Technique and the rest as an excuse to thrash me day in and day out. Every single practice was already a string of punishments. What was left to be afraid of?
"G-great hero! My little sister's starving in a shack…!"
A scruffy little brat who had clearly overheard my earlier lesson came barreling in and started with a full bow.
"All right, you get some too."
At least this one had the posture down. I handed out the iron coins I'd scraped together like a dog, dispensing them with the magnanimity of a prime minister.
"Don't hog it all yourself — share with the other kids."
"Yes sir! Thank you, great hero…!"
The kids dashed off beaming, already chattering excitedly about buying dumplings.
"Boss, I really can't figure you out. Looking at this, you seem like a good person… but then you're off to snitch on your own master, so maybe you're a bad person…"
"Human beings are complicated, contradictory creatures, Ilhong."
That particular human being had pounded on me every single day, so ratting him out didn't exactly weigh on my conscience. On the other hand, I knew exactly how hard it was for little beggars, so giving them money left me feeling pretty good. Good and evil living side by side — that was the many-sided nature of the human heart.
"Now I can breathe a little easier."
As I circulated the Starfall Heart Method, a warm current of merit energy spread through my whole body. Surviving in this rough Central Plains meant stuffing not only food but also good deeds into your belly on the regular. Otherwise you became a walking time bomb. Left alone, the Heavenly Killing Star would slowly wake up. I had to pile up merit to weaken it, then beat it up and steal its power if I wanted to stay alive.
Kill…
The scarlet Salsung, who had been trying to write characters amid the merit filling my body, staggered weakly. Worth every coin. I snorted a laugh at the sight.
"All right — time to go refill this skinny purse of mine."
The headquarters sat right in the busy heart of the city. Ilhong and I strolled through the commercial district at an easy pace, sightseeing as we went.
Then, while we were walking, a sudden commotion rose in the distance.
"Boss, what's that?"
Where Ilhong pointed, a black-haired beauty was sprinting down the main avenue with a child tucked under each arm. The huge greatsword on her back swayed with every stride.
"…What's she doing over there?"
"No idea."
It was unmistakably Minor Tiger Blade Jo Harang. I had figured she would be off sightseeing at her leisure, yet here she was tearing along as if she had gotten mixed up in something. The way she looked, she might as well have been mid-kidnapping.
"Boss, she's coming this way."
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
Rough-looking men came pouring out of the alleys around us as well. They drew gleaming blades, cut off her escape routes, and formed a ring with Jo Harang at the center.
"That bitch killed our boss…!"
"We have to stop her no matter what!"
From the way they were snarling, they had already traded blows once. Murderous intent rolled off them as they swore revenge.
"Boss, what do we do?"
"What do you mean? Pretend we don't know her."
She was the woman who had vowed to find and kill the Heavenly Killing Star. I had zero desire to get any more tangled up with her. Sure, after last night's conversation she seemed to think we were suddenly close friends. What had she said again? That she felt a clear, pure energy coming from me. Her tone and the look in her eyes had given me the exact same creepy feeling I got from cultists handing out flyers in front of the subway.
"Then let's just quietly disappear."
Ilhong and I tried to slip away as if we had nothing to do with any of it. But those bright purple eyes must have spotted me from afar — they lit up like lanterns.
"Mujin! Help me!"
She pointed straight at me and shouted for help. Instantly the martial artists nearby pinned us with sharp, suspicious glares just as we were trying to make our discreet exit.
"You've got to be kidding me…"
People called me the Lucky Hero and treated me like some martial artist who just had good fortune, but the truth was there was hardly anyone unluckier than me.
"You! Are you with that bitch?!"
A dozen blades were now pointed our way as well. The men reeked of accumulated killing karma — an ugly stench.
I've already stacked enough merit for today. I really don't want to get involved…
"No answer, huh? Get them!"
"Kill them!"
Nothing in this world ever went the way I wanted. That was the first lesson I learned the moment I opened my eyes in this place and got stabbed.
"Damn it."
Minor Tiger Blade Jo Harang.
Whatever anyone else said, she was a chivalrous hero. That said, she also believed you needed money to get by in the world, so she moonlighted as a wandering blade-for-hire. Some people sneered that that made her no true hero at all. But just last night the young man named Dan Mujin had praised her attitude as extremely practical and spent the evening building her up. Hearing it from a man who carried such vast stores of pure merit inside him had made Jo Harang happier than anything.
Maybe that was exactly why she had ended up in this mess. There had been no request and no payment, yet the moment she witnessed injustice right in front of her, her body had moved on its own.
Whoosh—!
Once the girl named Ilhong took the children off her hands, Jo Harang's arms were free. Her massive greatsword ripped through the air with a heavy sonic boom. Though it was a blade, its sheer weight and size let it function like a blunt weapon as well — her Hohyeop-do, the Heroic Greatsword.
Crunch!
The enormous edge smashed through three men's breastbones and harvested a spray of crimson.
"Guh!"
Her sword style was heavy with every stroke, which sometimes left small openings in a one-against-many fight.
Whish! Thwack-thwack-thwack!
But Dan Mujin, back-to-back with her, was cheerfully smacking and batting away the charging men with his long staff, plugging every gap she left.
"Hey! What the hell is going on here?! Don't tell me you kidnapped these kids?!"
The young man sounded genuinely worried she might have done something evil.
"Of course not! These bastards are human traffickers! They were snatching the kids in an alley!"
"Shit, if that's the case then it's a good deed, thank god…"
He let out a short sigh of relief and swung the staff again with even more force. A sharp crack rang out as one man's skull dented inward and he crumpled.
"Thank you! I knew you'd help without a second thought!"
She was truly glad. Ever since she had come out into the jianghu she had been disappointed by how many people carried something black in their hearts. And now she had finally met someone trustworthy, someone she could look up to.
"You little—! I am not helping without a second thought, you just dragged me into—! Hup!"
Dan Mujin slipped a flashing sword by a paper-thin margin, then counterattacked with a furious barrage of staff strikes. The staff bent along bizarre, living-snake trajectories, slamming into the traffickers' faces and groins without mercy.
"Ghk!"
Men clutched their faces and between their legs as they went down. No matter how many times she saw it, his staff technique was strange and profound — full of a straight, brutal force that treated people like animals to be beaten.
"Mujin! Let's finish the rest first and talk later!"
"…Fine! But you and I are having words after this!"
He grumbled the whole time yet never once refused to help. His back felt oddly reliable. Jo Harang grinned and swung her greatsword with more confidence than ever before.
"Tch. The Sect Leader can be truly heartless. How am I supposed to find the Later Beggar with nothing but this scrap of writing?"
The Seven-Knot Elder of the Beggars' Sect stuffed the letter back into his robes after studying it for the dozenth time in case some hidden message had appeared, muttering resentfully all the while. It was the first trace the Dragon Head Sect Leader had left behind since leaving the sect — and it concerned something as important as the Later Beggar, the successor.
And yet what it said was…
"He might stop by…?"
Which, if you read it that way, also meant he might not. And what exactly was "a completely wild kid who doesn't listen" supposed to mean? Put together, it almost sounded like the disciple was a disciple in name only — someone the old man could barely control.
"Haaah…"
The Seven-Knot Elder heaved a deep sigh and kept walking. Then a peculiar scene caught his eye.
"Aagh! Kyaaah!"
"S-stop! We were wrong!"
Martial artists were rolling on the ground, screaming as if they were being beaten with something blunt.
"Mujin, I think you can stop hitting them now…"
"You shut up too!"
A young man was thrashing the human traffickers like dogs with a strangely shaped staff.