Didn't Leave Me Shortchanged
It was the hour when the stars of the night sky glittered with crystalline brilliance.
High atop a lofty mountain peak, Song Ryeong, master of the Jaha Sect, was circulating the Purple Star Divine Art. Under the technique's influence her hair had bled into violet, rising against nature itself and streaming skyward.
The middle-aged woman, lost in a trance of pure cultivation, sensed someone approaching and slowly opened her eyes.
"Harang, is that you?"
Song Ryeong called the name of her wayward disciple — the girl who had shown her face only long enough to announce she was going to see a friend she had made outside the sect, then vanished without a trace. But the expression on that disciple's face tonight was nothing like the buoyant one she had worn on her way down the mountain.
"You said you were going to see a friend as close as a brother. Did the two of you miss each other on the road?"
"……."
Jo Harang's shoulders sagged, more than merely dejected. At her master's question she only shook her head from side to side.
"……Master."
"Yes, Harang."
"You told me once, didn't you? That the Purple Micro Star is a lamp meant to light the world, and that I must never grow lazy in my martial training."
Beneath the cascading starlight, her violet eyes shone.
"Mm. I did say something like that."
A light to cut down the wicked and save the righteous. Only by honing herself could she cast that warmth upon the world — that was what Song Ryeong had taught her.
"You were right. From now on I'm going to pour everything into martial training alone."
"……?"
Song Ryeong's head tilted slightly. In the old days her disciple had been forever inventing excuses — for the sake of the sect, for experience in the Jianghu — anything to get down the mountain.
"I'm going to become a martial master……!"
Something must have happened out there. Her disciple looked as though she wanted to bury every stray thought under the weight of brutal training.
"You want to become a master, do you……."
She still had no idea what was going on, but her disciple's passion for cultivation had clearly reignited. Given the great insight Harang claimed to have received recently through the help of some mysterious benefactor, with careful polishing even the Transcendental Peak Realm was not out of reach.
"Very well, Harang. Let us make you a master."
Harsh winds only made a person straighter and harder. Whatever the reason, her disciple was overflowing with drive — and Song Ryeong found her own resolve rising to match it.
The road to Sichuan was long and far.
A big draft horse chewed dry hay with stubborn resolve as it hauled the cart along. Sitting on the edge of the cargo bed, I felt every rough jolt of the unpaved road through my backside while staring blankly up at the clear sky.
Tss-tss-tss—
A crimson aura bloomed and rose as if to celebrate my wedding journey. Whenever I did anything far removed from slaughter, the Heavenly Killing Star always showed itself like that, making its displeasure plain.
"Idiot."
And it would poke at me like that. That was all it could manage for now, after all.
Yeah? And you still can't do a damn thing, can you?
The creature was being crushed under the mountain of good karma I had stacked up and the power of the Seongun Simbeop. The only thing that worried me was those red fingers scrawling Central Plains characters in midair. Was it the aftereffect of detonating the thunderbolt bombs in the fight against the Blood Cult? It used to manage one or two words at most, but somewhere along the way it had stretched to about three.
It was still just fingers for now — but there was no telling how much further it might grow next time.
"Coward."
I snorted at its provocation. Did it really think that would send me out to commit a mass slaughter? If anything, I was desperate for more good deeds to stack up.
"Boss, try this."
A pretty boy's voice from beside me. I turned my head to find Ilhong holding out a mushroom she had scavenged from somewhere along the way.
"It's a precious shiitake. I found it earlier while we were walking."
She had carefully brushed off the dirt and torn the mushrooms into neat, bite-sized pieces. I brought my nose close and sniffed. A soft fragrance of the wild drifted up.
"Ah— open up. Ah."
"……."
She pinched up a piece as if she meant to feed me herself. That was not like her at all these days. Ju Wolay's coquettish meal-service must have left quite an impression.
"This isn't a poisonous mushroom, right?"
"You wouldn't die anyway, Boss."
What a way to kill an appetite. Ilhong insisted the shape was unmistakably shiitake and shoved the mushroom toward my mouth again.
"What? You ate just fine when that courtesan fed you. Suddenly you can't eat when it's from me?"
Ilhong pressed me, saying people shouldn't play favorites like that. Was she trying to take care of me, or was she picking a fight?
"Ah, right — you've got a wife now, so it's not allowed. Is that it?"
If I left her alone she would only get more annoying, so I took the mushroom into my mouth the way a chick takes feed from its mother. A rich, deep fragrance of nature filled my whole mouth, followed by a sharp, tingling aftertaste that coiled around my tongue.
"Hey. This is a poisonous mushroom……?"
I stared at Ilhong with my eyes wide open.
"Hmm. So it is. Good thing I didn't eat any. Guess I'll stick to jerky if I'm hungry……."
Muttering to herself, she pulled some jerky from her robes and chewed it as she drifted away from me.
This brat. What did she take her superior for?
"What are you two doing……? Two men, for heaven's sake, what on earth……?"
And there was Dang Yeohye, staring at the scene with a look of pure horror. The sight of one guy feeding another and the other guy accepting it had clearly been a shock.
"It's a misunderstanding."
"What misunderstanding? After doing something like that."
"I was just checking it for poison, okay?"
"No wonder the way that kid looks at you is weird sometimes."
Weird how? Dang Yeohye had just piled on yet another layer of strange misunderstanding.
This was getting unfair.
"Young miss! Sichuan City is in sight!"
At that moment Neungsam, her attendant, hopped down from the cart and pointed ahead. Sure enough, the prosperous provincial capital of Sichuan came into view.
"We're here. Once you can see that, it's not much farther."
A place where the upper Yangtze flowed and agriculture thrived — once the capital of Shu Han, founded by Liu Bei. Just as she said, once we passed through the city gates, finding the Sichuan Tang Family Manor was easy.
All you had to do was look for the biggest, most magnificent compound in the city.
"This is the Sichuan Tang Family Manor. My home."
"Whoa……."
"Damn, Boss."
Opulent mansions enclosed by towering walls. At a rough count there had to be more than fifty buildings. Inside were carefully tended gardens, a lake, everything you could want — and a long, towering main hall rising at the center. You could have called the whole place a village in its own right without stretching the truth.
And it wasn't even on the outskirts; it sat right in the middle of the provincial capital. That alone told you everything about the family's wealth and power.
"Shall we go in, my wife? To our new home."
Looking at all of that, Dang Yeohye suddenly stopped looking like a poison dog and started looking like a rich family's daughter. I had forgotten, because her personality was so rough — but that was what she was.
"What the hell are you talking about……. Have you lost your mind?"
She gave me a look of pure disbelief at the sudden change in my attitude. Bickering like that, we made our way toward the Sichuan Tang Family Manor.
High noon at the Sichuan Tang Family Manor, with the sun at its zenith.
Dang Ak, the young clan head who had entered his thirtieth year, frowned hard at the unsettling news that had arrived in broad daylight. His headstrong little sister — the one who had stormed out of the marriage the family had arranged for her — had returned, and she had a man at her side.
Dang Ak rubbed his throbbing temples. He immediately summoned the blood relatives and elders friendly to his cause and prepared a welcome for these unwelcome guests.
"Dog-Beating Dragon Dan Mujin? A vagabond from Beijing who made a name for himself at this year's Dragon-Phoenix Gathering?"
An elder of the Tang Family who had been stationed with the Murim Alliance recited the identity of the man his sister had brought home. Some odd vagabond she had crossed paths with through commissions, until somehow a friendship had formed. Word was he had recently reached the Peak Realm, and his rate of growth was alarming — careless handling could easily tip opinion within the family in the wrong direction.
"That cannot be allowed."
They were siblings, yes — but only half-siblings, of different mothers. As children they had been close in simple ignorance; as he grew older and the cold temperament born of poison training took root, his eyes had opened to the affairs of the family.
In the end, the world ran on the law of the strong devouring the weak, of survival of the fittest. To survive, you had to cut away everything that might threaten you.
Even if that something was half your own blood.
"It's been a while, Brother Dang Ak."
Her voice carried a complicated mix of affection and resentment. After acting for so long as if she were already married out of the family, Dang Yeohye was once again casting her presence over a crowd of watching relatives.
"What is your purpose?"
Dang Ak's brow twitched as he asked. He had already been pushing a marriage alliance with another house — and now she waltzed back with some outsider man on her arm, as if to flaunt it.
"This is simply absurd."
He fixed a steady gaze on the young man who had so fearlessly shoved his way into another family's affairs. The way the fellow's eyes kept sliding toward the broad lake and the expensive ornaments made him look exactly like the type — a rootless vagabond who would do anything if the pay was right. Talent without dignity.
When asked why he had come, the young man bowed his head without preamble and said:
"Please give me your daughter."
"……."
What a strange creature. Dang Ak was briefly speechless at a marriage request aimed at entirely the wrong person. With a look of pure astonishment he shot Dang Yeohye a glare that said, What the hell is this guy?
She quietly averted her eyes to the side.
"Yeohye is my younger sister."
"Then please give me your younger sister, big brother."
The fellow was utterly oblivious to the cold stares around him — and shameless enough to let Dang Ak's blatant killing intent roll off him without a flicker.
"Yeohye. Where did you pick up a…… thing like this?"
In front of the family, Dang Ak just barely swallowed the words "madman" and asked it that way instead. So he was a young martial genius of rare talent — did every one of these prodigies have some corner of their mind that had simply come unhinged? Just like a certain younger sister who had reached the Peak Realm at a tender age and threatened his position.
"You — Dan Mujin, was it?"
"Yes, big brother."
"Who is your big brother……. Never mind."
The more he talked with the man, the more he felt himself being drawn in and losing his reason. Somehow the sensation was even worse than dealing with Dang Yeohye herself.
He could not afford to lose face in front of everyone. He steadied his breathing and spoke.
"You seem to have a deep connection with Yeohye. Why don't we share a meal and talk properly, just the two of us?"
Unlike a certain headstrong sister who tried to solve everything with force, Dang Ak knew how to hide a blade inside a smile. Some people dismissed it as scheming and intrigue — but what kind of man rose to the seat of clan head without at least that much?
With a faint glint of poison in his heart, Dang Ak extended the evening invitation to the young man before him.
"Hey, Mujin. No matter how you look at it, that guy is trying to—"
"Trying to scheme, is he? Does this older brother of yours mean to steal your beloved from you?"
Dang Ak shrugged his shoulders at the sister blocking Dan Mujin's path. At the suggestion that she trusted her own lover so little, Dang Yeohye pressed her lips tight and glared at him. Something like unease seemed to flicker in her eyes.
"It is only a single meal. Surely this is not some vagabond you bought with money to wreck the marriage arrangements. Why are you so nervous?"
Dang Ak sneered that a pair of lovers ought to have more faith in each other. The people around them began to murmur among themselves at the sight of her.
As the whispering grew louder, Dan Mujin — who had been listening quietly — seemed to reach a decision and stepped forward.
"I am a bit hungry, actually. I look forward to sampling Sichuan's famous ma and la."
"Ah, yes. A flavor you will not regret."
People often say that a blow to the back of the head leaves you tingling and dizzy.
Sichuan's mala flavor tasted exactly like that.
Sichuan cuisine was built on Sichuan pepper, chili, and garlic — a strange, tingling, sharp character all its own. That foundation had produced a whole parade of blazing-red, aggressive dishes: mapo tofu, kung pao chicken, mala xiang guo, and more.
Among them, the one that stood out most was still the malalongxia — a ring of vivid red crayfish coiled together in a nest of spice.
Crunch. Crack.
A Sichuan dish that had become especially famous because of a certain movie. Like Zhang Tielin, I peeled the shells and lost myself savoring the white meat inside.
"So then."
After a long stretch of wordless eating, the man called Dang Ak finally opened the conversation. A cold mockery he could not quite hide lingered at the corners of his eyes.
"How much were you hired for?"
The possibility that I had come all this way purely out of love for Dang Yeohye did not seem to exist in his mind at all.
"I could have come as her lover, couldn't I? Why are you so certain otherwise?"
Dang Ak gave a short, dry laugh at that.
"A woman who throws fists before words, spews curses from her mouth, and spikes meals with poison at the drop of a hat? You expect me to believe that?"
Well. Family really did know each other best.
"……Hmm."
What do I do, Sister Yeohye.
This man has a point.