A Sort of Triumphant Homecoming
"You're pretty impressive, you know."
That was what Dang Yeohye spat out the moment we stepped out of that suffocating space after the endless awards ceremony finally ended.
"Yeah, I did put on quite the show this time."
"No, I mean the way you mouthed off right in front of the Alliance Leader. Nobody's ever had the guts to go that far before."
Ah. So that was what she meant.
But I'd only said what needed saying. If they'd actually taken the warning seriously back then, wouldn't a lot of pointless deaths have been avoided?
And to get a lecture on social skills from a foul-mouthed poison dog who had zero social sense herself—I just stared at her with a look that clearly said, And you of all people are saying this?
"This crazy bastard is staring me down? The more I look at you, the less fear you seem to have."
She let out a hollow laugh like she couldn't believe it.
But hearing her say it… she might not have been entirely wrong.
Had the Heavenly Killing Star's influence gotten stronger after all the killing karma I'd piled up this time? My words and actions felt a little freer than before. I needed to rein it in a bit.
"Young Master Mujin, since everything here is finished… will you be returning to Beijing now?"
Neungsam, the attendant, suddenly popped out from behind Dang Yeohye and asked.
Dang Yeohye herself pricked her ears up, clearly curious about my next move as well.
"Yes. There's a certain old man waiting for me in Beijing. I have to go."
That certain old man who spent every day dead drunk and causing nothing but trouble for Merchant Lord Eun Hwaran.
Even so, he was a master whose realm was impossible to gauge, and someone who remained wary of the cursed star lodged inside me.
Lately he'd seemed to acknowledge me a little—he'd even taught me the Dog Beating Staff Technique and allowed me longer trips out. Still, there was no need to test his patience by dragging my return out.
"What about you, Noona? Ending your runaway act and heading home now?"
I asked while carefully packing the gold reward pouch and the various gifts I'd received into my bundle.
"Hey, you… It's not running away, it's leaving home to cultivate, I told you."
"Yes, yes, of course it is."
I nodded as if to say I understood everything and would play along. Dang Yeohye's eyebrows twitched in mild irritation.
She clearly had some family trouble of her own. I decided not to pry.
"Mujin, once you get back you're opening some kind of office and going independent, right?"
Jo Harang, the fellow vagabond who'd taken the escort job with me from Beijing, poked her head out from beside Ilhong and asked.
"Yeah. I've made some money, so it's time to start my own business."
"Business… you mean that troubleshooter thing you talked about?"
Under a night sky thick with stars, we'd grumbled about the Vagabond Association's steep brokerage fees and ended up talking about stuff like that.
"Yeah, the one I mentioned back then."
"But will that even make money…?"
"Surprisingly, a lot of it."
Even back in Korea the profession had been unfamiliar at first, but later on it became the kind of service people couldn't find enough of.
People always needed specialists who would handle their dirty work for them.
"Hey. What exactly does this office of yours do?"
Instead of sneering that it was ridiculous, Dang Yeohye actually showed a flicker of interest in my work.
"Basically… everything."
I answered while recalling the jobs I used to take in my past life.
"…For real? You'll take care of anything if someone asks?"
"Yes. Even the jobs that make sword-for-hire vagabonds shake their heads—we take them all."
As long as they paid, of course.
It was a niche market. Shouldn't the people of the Central Plains get to enjoy a good capitalist service at least once?
"Weird. So that's how it is…"
Dang Yeohye mulled over my business plan with an odd expression.
Judging by the vibe, she had something she wanted to request later.
If things went well, I might meet her again someday as a client.
"Anyway, it's time to part ways. As you just heard, I've got a backlog of things to handle."
No matter how vast the Central Plains were, if fate had tied us together we'd meet again someday.
I offered my farewells to the group.
"What a chaotic Dragon-Phoenix Gathering that was. See you next time."
Dang Yeohye gave her nose a loud blow, said we'd meet again soon, and headed off with Neungsam in tow.
"I'm stopping by Mount Song on the way to see my master. You head to Beijing first."
Jo Harang, who'd come with me, said she needed to report reaching the Peak Realm to her sect and told me to go on ahead.
From the smile overflowing on her lips, she was already buzzing with excitement at the praise she'd get for her achievements.
"Oh, right. Mujin."
"What?"
As if something had just occurred to her, she pressed right up against my side and whispered into my ear in a voice smaller than an ant.
"The fact that I'm the Purple Micro Star… that's our secret. Just yours and mine, okay?"
"Of course."
My ear tickled.
It was a safe star that wouldn't make her a public enemy of the Murim even if exposed, yet she still wanted to keep her identity hidden.
"And one more thing."
She pulled me even closer and continued even more carefully.
"If you ever find someone who's gone mad with slaughter… or someone who reeks of the Heavenly Killing Star… you have to tell me."
"…And what would you do once you find them?"
"You already know, don't you?"
Jo Harang grinned brightly and mimed crushing a skull with her bare hands.
As the Heavenly Killing Star listening to that, I felt a slight chill run down my spine.
"…Aren't you two a little too close?"
Ilhong cut in with a faintly sulky look the moment the two of us stuck together like rice cakes whispering secrets.
"Hm? Were we? Sorry, sorry."
Thanks to her, at least we avoided looking like we were about to do something indecent.
Jo Harang laughed innocently and settled her greatsword back across her shoulders.
"Alright, I'm off too. See you in Beijing."
And just like that, another one left.
What had once been five people was now down to a modest two again.
"This is just right."
"Is it?"
I chuckled and prepared to leave the Murim Alliance Headquarters for Beijing.
But the moment we stepped through the city gate, someone came charging toward us, kicking up a storm of dust.
"Let's travel together! Vagabond Dan Mujin… no—Young Hero Dog-Beating Dragon!"
It was none other than Clan Leader Jo of the Jo family, a man eternally thirsty for connections with masters.
The distance was considerable, so how about riding comfortably in their carriage?
So that old man had somehow survived that whole mess after all.
"Young Hero, please come with us!"
His family members were looking at me with completely different eyes from before.
Faces sparkling with anticipation, waiting for me to join them.
"Well… sure."
On the way here I'd barely scored a single spot on a cargo cart and spent the trip rubbing my backside raw against the floorboards.
The contrast left me strangely moved.
Then Ilhong hopped up beside me, only to jab my shoulder when she spotted something suspicious.
"…Boss, there's a weird person following us."
A martial artist was trailing the slow tourist caravan with a soft, whispering movement technique.
"Ignore him."
Like any proper Beggar Sect disciple, his appearance was shabby, but his footwork was solid and practical.
Ilhong, being around the Second-class Realm herself, must have sensed the presence.
"But I already noticed him. How am I supposed to ignore that?"
"It's that kind of agreement."
"…?"
What comes around goes around.
They needed to keep tabs on at least the location of their leader, didn't they?
Even at the last Dragon-Phoenix Gathering meeting, the Dragon Head Sect Leader had been absent, so the Beggar Sect's words carried no weight at all.
"Coachman. Let's go home."
In this vast Central Plains, having a place worth returning to was still a stroke of luck.
I ignored Ma Jungcheon, who had latched on in secret like Gollum from a certain movie, and told the coachman to get the wheels rolling.
"Hiyah!"
When I left, I'd been a lowly mid-rank vagabond. When I returned, I was a hero of the righteous Murim who had stood against the Blood Cult.
The moment we entered the gates of the Eunseong Merchant Group, a young woman came rushing out with the most delighted face imaginable.
"Little brother, welcome back!"
A faint lotus fragrance tickled my nose.
I knew she was swamped with construction work trying to rebuild the merchant group, yet she'd come out to greet me in person.
I stretched out a hand toward my sworn older sister Eun Hwaran with a knowing look.
"So you've heard the rumors too, Noona. That this little brother of yours became the hero of the Dragon-Phoenix Blood Incident!"
That had to be why she'd come out herself to welcome the returning hero. And, of course, to brag a little about being sworn siblings with such a man.
But Eun Hwaran tilted her head to the side, looking thoroughly puzzled.
"Hm? Blood Incident? Did you… soil yourself with bloody diarrhea during the trip…?"
"…"
She looked genuinely worried that the long journey all the way to Shaanxi had somehow broken something in me.
"Y-you haven't heard the rumors from the Murim Alliance…?"
"What rumors? I just came out happily because I heard my little brother was back."
Had the news not reached Beijing yet?
Normally rumors outran my footsteps, so why did they have to be this slow only when it mattered?
"Ahem."
I scratched the side of my head with an awkward expression.
"Tsk tsk. Looks like you've come back stuffed full of hot air again."
And then an old man approached, clicking his tongue as if I were hopeless.
It was none other than Hwang Geolgae, the runaway Dragon Head of the Beggar Sect and master to both me and Ilhong—the Beggar King himself.
"What about you, old man? Been behaving yourself and not tormenting our Merchant Lord Noona while I was gone?"
Still the same shabby appearance and the nose-wrinkling stench of cheap booze. Yet from the gourd at his side drifted the rich aroma of expensive premium liquor.
"Heh. The moment you arrive you start running that mouth again. And you've gotten even more fearless."
After telling me to call him Master, he unfurled Whirlwind Steps and suddenly rose right in front of me like a sliding shadow.
Then he jabbed his finger straight into my Baihui point.
"You killed people while you were gone."
The old man's face, which had been loose and bleary like a drunkard's, turned ice-cold in an instant.
He must have instinctively sensed that the murderous aura my body carried had grown denser.
"Yes. I killed to live, and to let others live."
I hadn't gone around slaughtering them myself—I'd simply returned what they'd thrown. But cause always brought effect along with it.
"It was self-defense, Old Master Hwang. The Blood Cult bastards suddenly started scattering poison and bombs and massacring people without mercy."
While I kept my mouth shut and offered no excuses, Ilhong stepped in and carefully explained everything that had happened there in my place.
"That day the boss was a real hero. The number of Central Plains people he saved has to be over a hundred. He even rescued the Moyong Clan's family head and his son."
Hwang Geolgae listened quietly, then shot me a sidelong glance.
He casually pressed a hand near my lower dantian.
Drawing up the pure white radiance of the Seongun Simbeop, he confirmed the mass of something gathered there—and his eyes flew wide open.
"Hoh… what is this amount of good merit…!"
Clearly astonished, he spread his qi to keep any sound from leaking out, then demanded an explanation.
"Like you heard—I saved people."
"Even so, this is an unbelievably large amount of good karma…"
His eyes asked what on earth I had done out there.
"I threw myself in front of a great thunderbolt bomb to save the enemy who had tried to kill me."
"…Hah. Even monks who have spent long years accumulating virtue would find that hard to do."
It hadn't been just any grudge. The man had tried to murder his own son—an utter betrayal of natural human bonds—and had persecuted Moyong Cheongjin for years.
It had been the moment a living Buddha descended upon the Murim Alliance Headquarters.
If Moyong Cheonghye hadn't begged me, I might have simply left him to die.
"So… am I allowed to live?"
"I never planned on killing you in the first place, you brat. The fact that you stayed sane even after killing that much is proof your mind is solid."
"Then why the hell did you scare me the second I got back?"
At my bristling question, Hwang Geolgae took a long swig from his gourd and grinned.
"Heh heh. Because it's fun."
What kind of human being was this?
"Aigoo, this damn old man…"
Someone who seemed born for the sole purpose of pissing people off.
Come to think of it, as a runaway sect leader he was already driving tens of thousands of Beggar Sect disciples into despair.
Thwack!
"Ack!"
I collapsed on the spot from the splitting pain in my crown.
"Heh heh. Call me Master, I said."
Having to serve this old man as my master for the rest of my life… that was not welcome news at all.
"Then please stop calling me 'this bastard' and 'that bastard' and call me Dog-Beating Dragon instead."
"Dragon? A brat who didn't even win the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering has a pretty arrogant nickname."
"Hey now. I'm a master who fought the Blood Cult."
Soon enough that was exactly how the rumors would spread through the world.
And once they did, it would be a huge help for the grand opening of my new office.
"A kid who hasn't even reached the Peak Realm calling himself a master."
"Shit, okay, fair point… but my defense is still fucking amazing, alright?"
Even without weapon qi, I layered internal energy over the dog-beating staff and whirled it through the air with a whoosh.
"Heh heh. A true master must be free in both offense and defense… Still, with that much good merit piled up, there might be a path for you yet."
"…Wait, for real?"
That was the best news I'd heard all day. I lit up at the idea that there was a way to break through the wall.
No matter how hard I'd strained and groaned on my own, I hadn't been able to solve it.
"Follow me, you brat."
"Yes, Master!"
Suddenly a thick wave of respect for my master began bubbling up inside me.