Conversation of Beggars
A single sack of rice weighs roughly seven gwan.
Even a sturdy grown man starts trembling in the limbs after hauling three of them. During the last trial, the top scorer had managed four. People had been stunned at the feat, calling it extraordinary. Escort Leader Jang himself had made a fuss about training the fellow as a proper bodyguard.
And yet, today—
“Hup.”
Some kid hoisted six rice sacks at once.
He held the stack—taller than he was—steady with a pair of thin arms. The examinees around him and the onlookers near the training grounds all stood with their mouths hanging open.
“Whoa.”
“How does a body that small hold that kind of strength?”
“Has he learned martial arts?”
Anyone who didn’t know better might have mistaken it for internal energy. But Eun Hwaran, who had already heard the escorts’ stories, knew full well it was nothing of the sort.
This was pure, inborn power—what people called raw ore.
“Guildmistress, did you just see that?”
There were others fired up by the boy named Mujin’s spectacular showing: Yang Jo and Yang Wi, the two escorts who had come limping back after a thorough thrashing at his hands.
“Look at that mindless brute strength.”
“We didn’t lose for nothing, you know?”
They leaped in the moment they saw their chance, each throwing in a word. No doubt they were also hoping to air their grievances and talk their pay cut down a little.
Eun Hwaran shot them a brief, incredulous look, then turned her gaze back to the boy standing tall on the training ground.
He must have scrubbed himself down before coming; the beggar grime of his old days was gone. When he raked his hair back with a handkerchief the examiner handed him, a refined jawline and a face like polished jade came into view.
Among the gathered onlookers, women began to murmur in admiration.
“Oh my, oh my.”
“Not bad at all…”
“He’s still young, though.”
They chattered that they had only come out of boredom and had stumbled on something good. Some of them were merchants’ wives; Eun Hwaran thought them rather shameless.
Still, she agreed that if he kept growing like this, he would leave a trail of weeping girls in his wake.
“Old Hwang has picked up a curious child.”
Such power at that age. Talent enough to floor two third-class martial artists even without having learned any techniques. And he had clearly asked for work and room and board as well.
Don’t tell me he means to take him as a disciple…?
All that talk of killing him, and now it seemed he intended to raise the boy properly while he stayed here. The boy’s standing had just climbed a notch in her estimation.
“Dan Mujin, was it? I’ll have to keep an eye on him.”
While putting him to odd jobs as requested, of course.
Eun Hwaran tapped her palm with her fan, intrigued. A merchant’s gaze that weighed the worth of people and goods alike lingered on one boy for a long while and would not leave him.
A porter’s morning starts early.
We rose at the first light of the Hour of the Dragon and began hauling heavy cargo without pause. No special skills required—just moving loads until the sun went down. In construction terms, we were the pure grunt-labor position.
“A brat like that is doing porter work?”
The Eunseong Escort Agency was preparing its third caravan after two failures. The main job was touring Beijing, collecting consignments, and ferrying them to the merchant houses.
I worked until sweat poured off me like rain. It was a job I had clawed my way into, after all.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Tiny as he is, he’s a world-class strongman.”
I answered the skeptical looks with results. The agency folk started treating me as a proper porter. Being recognized was fine; what I didn’t care for was being assigned the exact same workload without any mercy for my age.
Thanks to that, I had to grind my body down like the old construction days. The moment I tried to hide somewhere and rest, the foreman-type bastard—Jang Gwe—would pop up like a ghost and yell at me to get back to work.
“This damn… porter life.”
In the wuxia novels, they were the third-rate extras who ran into bandits on the road and got wiped out. Having stepped into the role myself, I found the job had its own share of hardships and grievances.
“Gotta make a name for myself fast… become a vagabond or a troubleshooter or something.”
Endless manual labor. I felt like an Industrial Revolution child worker.
When the Hour of the Dog arrived and the sun dropped, the escort leader called the end of the day. One upside of a world without electric lights. I immediately hobbled back to the lodging.
I called it home, but it was basically quarters for third-class escorts and porters—good for little more than keeping out the wind and rain. We laid rags over loosely piled straw and spent the night that way.
Even so, I never got to sleep long. In the dead of night I would slip out and, under the starlight with Old Hwang, recite a string of bizarre verses.
After about half a month of that routine—
“Fuck! I can’t live like this!”
I was half out of my mind.
Twice abandoned by my own blood.
Still, I had thought life was looking up now that I had a new backer to lean on. But what was this?
“Heh heh. You seemed so happy about it at first.”
Old Hwang grinned right in my face, showing his yellowed teeth.
“Getting a job is great, but… you’ve got to let a man sleep!”
Honestly, the work itself was brutal, but I could scrape by somehow. My vision went yellow and doubled now and then, but as long as I didn’t die it was fine.
The problem was my right to sleep. Three hours a night and full labor? That was basically torture.
“So. Have you memorized all the formulas I taught you?”
“You mean that pie-in-the-sky nonsense?”
They were the formulas of a heart method containing the essence of some reclusive master, he claimed. Old Hwang had been force-feeding them to me, saying they could suppress my surging killing intent.
“That’s right, you brat.”
Every time I forgot a line, a sharp flick to the skull rattled my brains, so I had no choice but to memorize them.
Seongnyeong Hoeilche—embrace the stars of the vaulted sky and illuminate the whole world;
Sucheon Gipase—all things shall flow according to Heaven’s principle;
Suchaeo Jakju Gaejin—then the realm shall find peace, and the self shall be set free.
That was the opening stretch. The more I heard it, the more vague it felt. Only by unraveling the core principles within and mastering the profound meanings, he said, could one claim to have truly learned the art.
Since martial arts were a sect’s capital, they layered security upon security. That was why a master was indispensable.
“I’ve got most of it memorized, but what kind of heart method is this supposed to be?”
Talk of governing birth, growth, harvest, and storage… the Northern Dipper Star Lords and the Seven Primal Star Lords… the further the formulas went, the more it reeked of Daoist cultivation. If this hadn’t been the Central Plains Murim, I’d have yelled “I don’t believe that crap” and bolted long ago.
“You brat. Have you ever heard the moniker Divine Wind Daoist?”
I asked about the heart method’s identity, and Old Hwang suddenly tossed out a strange title.
I knew the name. Even Moyong Cheongjin, with his limited jianghu experience, had heard it at least once.
“Isn’t that the Bluffing Daoist? Some horse-ass who claimed to be a Daoist and pulled every kind of stunt across the Central Plains.”
I rattled on a little, glad to finally know some Murim trivia. Old Hwang’s face began to rot.
“That’s me.”
“…”
Oh, fuck.
Even when this life stepped on a landmine, it had to be an anti-tank mine.
I swallowed dry and scrambled to recover.
“Ahem. A few ignorant commoners must have mistaken a true Daoist’s enlightened acts for eccentricities…”
“Too late, you brat.”
Yeah. Too damn late.
I clamped my mouth shut like a clam to keep things from getting worse. He let out a short, empty laugh and silently stroked his beard.
“This old man’s name is Hwang Geolgae. I was once a member of the Beggar Sect.”
He patted the dust from his worn Daoist robe and began his story. I had thought he looked oddly beggar-like for a master; so that was why.
“For the record, I was a pretty successful Beggar Sect Daoist back then.”
He said this while picking a scrap of dried squid from between his teeth.
“Then one day, while thrashing to break through a wall, I fell into qi deviation.”
By “wall,” he must have meant the wall of enlightenment that martial artists hit at a certain realm—the one that could invite heart demons and, sometimes, drive a man mad.
“I vomited blood from all seven orifices. I thought I was going to die a hollow death… and then a Daoist of mystical immortal bearing appeared before my eyes.”
Old Hwang called it one of the few true fated encounters of his life. The Daoist saved him, and he used the crisis as a stepping stone to reach a higher realm.
“After that, I also sought to understand myself and the principles of all things through the Dao, so I left the Beggar Sect.”
But a beggar suddenly playing Daoist? Of course it wouldn’t go well. The so-called eccentricities of the Bluffing Daoist, he said, had happened in that context. At first he had believed the Dao was contained in martial arts, so he had stormed various Daoist-lineage sects and demanded they hand over their techniques.
“If you leave your sect like that and go around learning other arts, don’t they usually cut your limbs and meridians?”
In the novels there was always the uproar of “That bastard ran off with the sect’s capital!”—expulsion, destroyed dantians, the whole mess. The Murim people here seemed to take those rules very seriously.
“Of course they cut them.”
“…You look fine to me.”
“That’s because this old man was the Dragon Head Sect Leader of the Beggar Sect. Nobody dared step up and say they’d cut me.”
He casually showed me the nine knots worked into his belt.
“…”
This lunatic. So the head of the organization had just abandoned his own faction and bolted?
I stared at Old Hwang in front of me with horrified eyes.
“Anyway, the formulas you memorized are the miraculous Daoist internal heart method that pulled this old man out of his heart demon back then.”
Only then did Hwang Geolgae—no, Hwang Geolgae, Dragon Head Sect Leader of one of the Nine Great Sects—get to the point.
“Is that so?”
I lowered my speech a notch.
“…Your tone’s gotten proper.”
“I’ve always been rather polite.”
Hwang Geolgae laughed as if I were ridiculous.
Still—someone of that caliber offering to bestow an internal heart method in person. Was this a fated encounter? Was I finally going to accumulate that mysterious energy in my dantian that let people run across water or split Mount Tai with a single sword?
Martial arts without internal energy were just combat techniques. Channel internal energy through the forms, and the same punch could shatter rock.
“Do you see the stars in that night sky?”
He said he would explain the heart method, then suddenly pointed at the dim heavens. I followed his fingertip across the clusters of stars—countless lights looking down loftily on the beings of the earth.
There were so many of them.
“The mysterious Daoist who saved me was one who trained to embrace the power of the stars.”
Plenty of madmen in the Central Plains Murim, and apparently some who wanted to hold something they could never even touch. I almost snorted at the long-winded story—until I belatedly realized that I was the one who already held a star.
Oh, fuck.
“The martial art you will learn from now on is called the Seongun Simbeop—the Starfall Heart Method.”
It was a name that sounded impressive. Since I didn’t know what it meant, that was about as far as my impression went. I waited for Hwang Geolgae’s next words with a faintly expectant face.
“If you fail to master it properly, you will die.”
“…”
My mood plummeted.
Fated encounter, my ass. There were so many ways to die around here.
“Ah, I said I’d live righteously, so why do people keep talking about killing me?”
“You brat—it’s not me…”
He jabbed my head again with a finger.
“It means you will be swallowed by the Heavenly Killing Star inside you.”
At the renewed mention, a red mist began to seep up, as if in a foul mood.
“I’ve watched you for half a month. Slowly, but the baleful star is regaining its strength. Leave it alone and your consciousness will eventually be eroded. That would be the death of the being called you—and the rebirth of the Heavenly Killing Star.”
An untimely terminal diagnosis.
Why was life’s difficulty setting like this? I looked up at the star-strewn night sky.
Primordial Heavenly Lord, Supreme Elder Lord, Infinite Life Buddha—fuck.
Are You casting this body aside?
“But even if the sky falls, there is always a hole to crawl out of.”
Apparently he wasn’t simply telling me to die. He kept me from sleeping and worked me hard, but Hwang Geolgae was opening a path for me to live.
“What is it?”
“The very power of the Seongun Simbeop. Qi cultivated under starlight carries a mysterious, sacred energy that repels the demonic.”
If I wanted to live, he advised, I had to pack my body full of that demon-subduing energy. Beneath the cold starlight filtering between the clouds, he raised a dense inner force thick with virtuous qi. At that profound anti-demonic aura, the red mist that had been summoned earlier slipped back into my body as if fleeing.
“Oh.”
A sound of admiration slipped past my lips. So that was the power of the Seongun Simbeop. An opposite force to the demonic qi and killing intent of the Heavenly Killing Star, was it? Filling my body with pure, righteous energy like that…
The dream of extending my life finally seemed to be unfolding before my eyes.
“In addition, you must keep far from the karma of slaughter and accumulate good karma so that the Heavenly Killing Star can grow no further.”
Accumulate good karma, was it?
Come to think of it, every time I helped the little beggar kids in the back alleys, the Heavenly Killing Star’s energy had jabbed at me as if asking what the hell I thought I was doing. So that was why it had been so resentful.
“If I do that, I can live without being eaten by the Heavenly Killing Star?”
“Most likely. But it will not be easy.”
Train the Seongun Simbeop to protect the mind, and accumulate good deeds to weaken the Heavenly Killing Star.
“Even if it’s not easy, I have to try.”
“That’s right. If you can’t manage it, you’ll die by my hand first.”
Really knew how to make a listener’s skin crawl. Why the constant talk of killing?
“But what’s the standard for good karma?”
Good deeds done just to survive. Could impure motives still count as pure good karma? Some Buddhist said even stepping on grass was evil karma. Good and evil flipped easily depending on where you stood. By what measure was one to judge right and wrong?
“Your own conscience.”
Hwang Geolgae cut it surprisingly clean.
“My conscience?”
“The one who carries the Heavenly Killing Star, and the vessel that will hold the heart method, is you. Naturally the standard is you as well.”
How could stars so high they could never be touched, or energy that held sacred starlight, be swayed by laws and morals that mere humans had decided? Everything was stuck to me, so the measuring stick that defined it was also me—that was Hwang Geolgae’s point.
But this method had one serious flaw.
“What if I’d been a complete bastard?”
The kind of scum whose conscience was so hairy he felt no guilt even for murder or robbery.
“Then in that back alley, your head and body would already have been separated.”
Hwang Geolgae grinned and drew a finger across his throat. Brutal.
“But a fellow who took in orphans with nowhere to go in the Beggar Sect’s place isn’t that kind of trash. Is he?”
Ah—Ohchil and Ilhong. And the little ones.
In the end they had started grabbing merchants’ arms and legs on their own and bringing in begging money. The take was split evenly, so if I raised them a little more I could basically AFK-farm, but…
Well, that was only because I had taught them how to beg and blocked the other gangs’ harassment.
“…You brat. You did it out of goodwill, right?”
My expression must have been odd; Hwang Geolgae furrowed his brow and asked again.
“Ah, of course.”
It was a chaotic world. Only those with flexible moral standards could harvest both good deeds and cold cash at the same time. My conscience was the comfortably rounded sort.
“Good. From now I will transmit the core principles and profound meanings of the Seongun Simbeop. Wash your ears and listen with a reverent heart.”
The usual drunkard’s face was gone; Hwang Geolgae wore a solemn expression and dropped his voice to announce the start of training.
“But won’t you teach me any martial arts besides the heart method?”
Why did martial artists hoard internal energy like madmen? To use it. If I learned only the heart method, it would be like stacking money in a warehouse and never spending a single coin.
“Don’t even think it. Why would I teach killing techniques to the Heavenly Killing Star?”
So much for thinking I had been given trust. As expected, this Murim was a world short on faith.
“Even this Seongun Simbeop alone is a peerless fated encounter. Stop complaining and offer your bows before the transmission.”
So saying, he tapped the ground.
“What bows?”
“The Nine Bows of Rite. Don’t you even know that?”
Hwang Geolgae explained they were nine forms of bow expressing propriety and duty. Ordinarily one would do only one, but the Seongun Simbeop was worth that much, so I was to perform them all.
“Heh heh. Go on.”
It wasn’t as if it cost money; I could do that much. Feeling like I was earning New Year’s cash, I slammed my forehead to the ground and stood up.
“Ugh.”
But after the brutal porter work, both legs kept trembling. Those Jang Gwe bastards worked me harder the stronger I was. It wasn’t as if they paid more—just more jobs the more I showed off. A cursed way to run things.
I was going to have to quit this porter job one of these days.
“Nnngh.”
A groan slipped out as I rose. Simple, repetitive physical labor really was a profession that ate the soul. Back in the day I had done relatively intellectual work as a troubleshooter, a self-styled detective.
Come to think of it—if it was troubleshooter work, couldn’t I help people in trouble and pile up good karma at the same time? Gratitude from people and money. A true two-for-one. No wonder I had treated it as my calling.
“How can a human will endure the weight of stars that have piled up for endless kalpas? Even so, you must succeed.”
While I was bowing, Hwang Geolgae tossed out words that could have been blessing or curse.
“If you fail, this old man will take your life. And if you use the arts I taught you to walk a crooked path, I will personally behead you.”
I must have heard that “I’ll kill you” line about ten times by now.
“Hey… let’s stop around here.”
All desire to bow had vanished; I quit after two. The old man looked at my Two Bows of Rite as if he couldn’t believe it.
“What? Why did you stop?”
This wasn’t a funeral house—why stop after only two? he asked with a baffled face.
“Look, we’re not even proper master and disciple, you’re not teaching me real martial arts, and you keep talking about killing me. Banging my head nine times for someone like that is a bit…”
I had feelings too. Stomp on them like this and even I would turn into a ruffian who didn’t know manners.
“You brat. It’s uncomfortable, so just do one more, then.”
“No.”
This was an age sensitive about form and face; Hwang Geolgae seemed far more bothered by this than I had imagined.
“…I could teach you footwork, at least.”
That much should be fine, he muttered.
That ghostly footwork that let him spring up out of nowhere?
I prostrated myself before he could change his mind.
“Please accept my bow.”