Bonus Pay
A few days had passed since the Blood Sect's bloody raid on the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering—the so-called Dragon-Phoenix Blood Incident—had been brought under control.
In recognition of the dozens of Blood Sect scum we'd beaten down, my crew and I were allowed to stay in one of the finer guest lodgings inside the Murim Alliance: the Guest Pavilion.
"Boss, try this too. The juices are insane."
"Oh, is this pheasant? Killer."
"Right?"
Pheasant meat ranked among the Eight Rare Fowls, delicacies considered precious even across the Central Plains. Taking Ilhong's advice to squeeze every drop of luxury out of the stay, I stuffed myself three meals a day with the finest food money could buy.
We were still putting the first-class chef's back through hell with mountain-and-sea banquets when Moyong Cheon showed up out of nowhere one day.
"What brings you here?"
I asked around a mouthful of abalone dumplings. My tone must have sounded a little too much like why are you interrupting my meal, because Moyong Cheon pushed one eyebrow up at a crooked angle.
"I, the Thunder Sword Moyong Cheon, come in person, and only someone like you would react that way."
The middle-aged man shook his head as if he couldn't believe it and stepped closer. His internal injuries still looked serious, yet he had recovered to a fair degree—exactly what you'd expect from a martial artist who had once shed the limits of humanity and reached the Transcendent Realm. Behind him trailed his children, Moyong Hwi and Moyong Cheonghye.
"That mouth of yours is still the problem."
Moyong Hwi strode up with a sour face and tossed the remark out.
"Hey now, is that any way to talk to the man who saved your life?"
"…Hmph."
Finding nothing to say, Moyong Hwi whipped his head aside and clamped his mouth shut. Who would have thought I could shut that insolent bastard up? At least he seemed aware he owed me.
Still, the situation felt strange. They had no idea, but almost every one of Moyong Cheon's children—save the eldest—was gathered in this room right now.
"So why are you here?"
I swallowed the pheasant and pressed the question, since he still hadn't answered.
"Didn't you say it yourself? Don't let it slide for free."
Ah. The compensation he'd promised last time. So he'd come to hand something over. That made him a welcome guest. I quickly fixed my expression and posture.
"It seems our Cheonghye hired you as a troubleshooter. This, then, is the fee for that request. Take it."
He pulled out a small, heavy wooden case and tossed it to me. When I clicked it open, a horse-hoof-shaped gold ingot flashed a dull yellow. Unlike coinage, whose purity was carefully regulated for minting, this was a solid lump of pure gold.
"Whoa."
The golden light that stoked every human's greed washed over my vision. Considering what I'd pulled off and the lives I'd saved, the amount felt fair enough. The scale of conscience in my heart didn't so much as twitch. Even circulating the Seongun Simbeop produced no sign of the Heavenly Killing Star acting up.
In that case, I could take it.
"Oh my… You shouldn't have."
I hugged the wooden case to my chest like treasure. A grin leaked from the corners of my mouth.
"You said you came from the vagabond ranks, did you not? What of your sect and age?"
"I'm an orphan with no real sect. My martial arts are pretty much self-taught from getting beaten up. As for age, I'm fifteen."
With a fat purse already in hand, I answered the background check with a light heart. The Moyong Clan could dig all that up in a few days if they wanted anyway.
"Hah. Peak Realm at that tender age, and without proper instruction at that. Truly formidable talent."
"I'm not Peak Realm, though."
"…Hm?"
He furrowed his brow as if something felt off and glanced back at Moyong Hwi.
"So you weren't deliberately holding back your qi and still beat my son black and blue?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
At that answer Moyong Cheon's face grew a shade heavier and more serious.
"Not yet Peak, yet already possessing martial might that surpasses it…"
Anyone else might have wondered what profound dilemma he was chewing on. I knew better. That was the face of a man clicking abacus beads inside his skull.
"If you wish, I can give you one more gift."
"What is it?"
When that man started calculating, the result was usually some outrageous proposal designed to maximize the clan's profit. I let a thread of wariness enter my eyes as I asked.
"Enter our clan. Do so, and the Moyong Clan will become an impregnable backer no one in the world can touch."
"…"
My former biological father Moyong Cheon was offering to make me his adoptive son, swearing the clan would spare neither rare medicines nor every other form of support.
"…Kh."
Listening from the side, Moyong Hwi trembled with fury, then stormed out of the room. That guy really never changed. He probably hadn't meant it that way, yet here he was proposing to take back as an adoptive son the child he had once cast out. Truly a man who swallows the sweet and spits the bitter—sweet-swallow, bitter-spit.
"A martial artist standing alone is sometimes struck by storms too fierce to weather. Should he not have a thick shield to block them?"
As I listened, I felt the Moyong Cheongjin inside me surge with rage. You throw a child away to die, then decide you want him back just because it suits you now?
"…No thanks."
I spat a few more heated words, then rose to my feet exactly as Moyong Hwi had done.
"Let's go, Ilhong."
"Yes, sir."
There is a saying: if you cannot defeat an opponent, make him an ally.
Following that pragmatic counsel, Moyong Cheon, lord of the Moyong Clan, had tried to take into his house the orphan youth of humble birth whose martial skill stood right before his eyes. Yet the young man called Dan Mujin had spat a few disgusted words and stormed out.
"Hmm. Perhaps the carrot was insufficient."
He rubbed his chin and muttered. In truth the offer could have been larger. The boy was not even Peak, yet he had thrashed a Peak expert and fought the Blood Sect with ferocious vigor. And at fifteen he stood on the very threshold of Peak; if clan support helped him break through that wall…
"He might even surpass the son of that Heavenly Sword bastard who seems to have received his martial talent straight from the heavens."
The previous generation's rivalry had tilted toward the Heavenly Sword's victory. For the sake of the clan's future, the next generation could not be allowed to follow the same path. That was why Moyong Cheon coveted the superior talent.
"Cheonghye."
"Yes, Clan Lord."
"Call me Father, as I have told you."
"…The Blood Sect's raid has been confirmed, so I will retain my post as Vice Leader of the Demon Exterminating Squad. I cannot."
"Tsk."
Children these days all had their sharp corners.
"Your eyes have not left that boy for some time. Do you perhaps harbor feelings for him?"
"…"
If making him an adoptive son proved difficult, there were other ways to bring him into the clan. Realizing her father was now contemplating a son-in-law who would marry into the family, Moyong Cheonghye briefly wore a throbbing expression.
"Not in the slightest. That was never why I looked at him."
Moyong Cheon prodded her to reconsider.
"I have always said your match would be found within the clan, yet this once I could make an exception."
"…I already told you it is not like that, Clan Lord."
Moyong Cheonghye shook her head and drew a firm line. The reason she had stared so intently at Dan Mujin was because something about him felt painfully familiar. He was about the same age, and she had wondered whether her little brother might have grown into just such a presence. Then she saw a face that was completely different, and watched him confront their father with a liver that seemed to hang outside his belly, and she had thought, Ah, a different person after all.
Until the line he muttered while looking up at the sky a moment ago made that conviction waver.
Yeah, you're always like this.
Whenever the Moyong Clan Lord decided something about her third brother's treatment, that boy had always looked up at the sky in front of her and sneered those exact words.
"But… that child clearly had a star fall."
Her face trembled with disbelief. A person might deceive another person, yet no one could artificially control the stars of the night sky. The Heavenly Killing Star that had blazed scarlet and then turned a dead, ashen black was the most certain proof of her third brother's death. Even she, second only to Moyong Cheon in strength within the clan, could not have survived that height. That was why she had accepted his death even though no body was ever found.
"It can't be… can it?"
She shook her head hard, desperately trying to root out the tiny suspicion taking seed in her mind. Her nails dug into flesh as she clenched her fists.
"It's not possible. There's no way…"
It could not be. It absolutely must not be. If that boy really was her third brother, then she herself had driven a blade into a perfectly sane child who had begged her to believe him.
And so, for a long while, she had to murmur the words like a mantra, as if forcing herself to believe them.
"He's not Cheongjin… Get a grip."
When battle ends, the distribution of merit always follows.
Once my body had recovered enough, the Alliance Leader summoned me before a hall packed with exalted personages.
"You rescued many comrades of the orthodox path and dealt the Blood Sect a heavy blow. Your merit is truly great."
An old man whose hair had gone pure white and whose face was mottled with age spots—frail-looking on the surface—the Heavenly Sword Namgung Pyo, beamed as he heaped praise upon me.
"Bow your head a little, Boss."
Ilhong jabbed me in the ribs when I just stood there blankly.
"Ah—Your Grace is boundless… I mean. Thank you for the kind words."
I hastily formed the proper fist-and-palm salute. Namgung Pyo only kept smiling generously, unbothered by my disastrous protocol. What a difference in magnanimity from a certain other person.
"As Alliance Leader I must properly reward this. Bring them."
And true to the pillar of the orthodox path, he did not stop at words of gratitude. He pressed two heavy coin pouches into my hands. When I loosened the knots a little, gold light shimmered—pure gold coins, every one of them.
"Good heavens, you shouldn't have."
My super-high-odds gambling board had gone up in smoke along with the Great Thunderbolt Bomb, yet the profit I walked away with still seemed every bit as good. In short: the fair value of honest labor, and proof that showing off had been worth it.
"Furthermore, to honor the valor and spirit you displayed both at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering and in battle, I, the Heavenly Sword, bestow upon you the title of Dog-Beating Dragon."
Titles usually arose through word of mouth. But when you stood at the very top of the orthodox Murim, you could simply pick something suitable and announce it. Who was going to argue when the Alliance Leader himself decided to call me that from now on?
"But why Dog-Beating Dragon of all things? Dragon that beats dogs?"
"Boss, shh. Don't pick a fight."
Ilhong clamped a lid on my mouth, warning that plenty of experts were listening and I might put my foot in it again. Beside us, Jo Harang, who had also been standing in salute, let out a quiet snort of laughter.
"Ahem… Thank you for the title. But still."
I, Dan Mujin—whose liver had long since migrated outside my belly from endless beatings, and who simply could not leave a question unasked—pressed on.
"Why does it have to include the 'dog-beating' part…"
I hadn't even won the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, so receiving "Dragon" at all was a happy surprise. But slapping "Dog-Beating" in front of it completely deflated the grandeur. It felt a lot like those "seventy percent luck, thirty percent skill" titles.
"Heh heh. That is because my son described to me the way you fight."
Namgung Pyo jerked his chin toward Namgung Jin, who stood nearby. When my eyes met the young man's, that strange sense of déjà vu washed over me again—a faint kinship mixed with an inexplicable revulsion.
"He said you swung your staff like a mad dog thrashing everything in sight. A most vivid description."
The man who bestows the title gets to decide it, so don't overthink it, Namgung Pyo advised.
"Still, if you're going to give me a title, a dog-catching dragon feels a bit low on dignity…"
"Does it not suit you? Especially for the one who is about to set Kaifeng stirring."
"…"
Looks like the old man had already half-figured out my identity. I scratched the side of my head, thinking, Well, damn, he saw through me.
"Anyway, thank you for the bonus pay and the title."
"Not at all. I am the one who is grateful—and apologetic. I should have heeded your warning from the start."
The Alliance Leader stroked his white beard and spoke with gentle kindness.
"You can say that again."
"Aigoo, Boss, for real!"
Ilhong jabbed me in the side as if she were about to lose her mind.
"Pffft."
Jo Harang finally couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing.