Did You Come from Zhongnan? (2)
"...Comer in...."
"Can't you speak properly?"
"...My lips... are split."
"Hm."
Chung Myung, who had been sitting with one leg crossed, fell into thought.
"So."
"Yes."
"The money Mount Hua borrowed from you went over a hundred thousand nyang?"
"...That's right."
"A hundred thousand nyang?"
"Yes."
"A hundred thousand?"
"...."
"One hundrreeeed thousaaaaand?"
Yu Jong-san wanted to cry.
'What the hell am I supposed to do about it, bastard!'
If you had a complaint, you were supposed to talk it out like a human being. Being beaten senseless out of nowhere was one thing, but why was he being tormented like this?
"Hey."
"Yes!"
"Even if I stripped you down to your underpants right now and sold them off, it doesn’t look like I’d get ten thousand nyang, much less a hundred thousand. And you lent that much to Mount Hua?"
"Ah, well, that is..."
Yu Jong-san, having finally grasped what Chung Myung was getting at, smiled brightly and answered.
"That’s how high-interest lending works. When you lend money at a steep rate, the interest keeps piling up unless the principal is repaid. Hehe. Once it keeps growing and growing, the interest becomes so huge that the principal itself is nothing by comparison. Then you just swallow the whole thing up..."
Thwack!
"Kghh!"
Yu Jong-san clutched his head and rolled across the ground.
"Showing off, huh, punk."
"Uuugh..."
Chung Myung let out a long sigh.
'Well, beating this guy up won't change anything, I guess?'
It seemed Mount Hua's debts had not been piled up in his own generation.
'Makes sense.'
Borrowing a huge sum now was hardly meaningful. The time when real money had been needed was when Mount Hua collapsed. Money had been necessary to buy a basket to block the sand leaking away.
"Still."
"Yes."
"You said you were the owner of Hwameum Cloth Shop, right?"
"That's right."
"When did you buy Hwameum Cloth Shop?"
"Huh? What do you mean? That cloth shop has belonged to our family for generations."
"...It belonged to you?"
"Yes. As far as I know, my great-grandfather founded Hwameum Cloth Shop."
Chung Myung gave a snort of laughter.
'No way in hell.'
It was the same again. Hwameum Cloth Shop had also been one of Mount Hua's businesses.
Hm?
Was he asking whether every thriving business in Hwaum County had belonged to Mount Hua?
'Of course.'
There was nothing strange about it. Before Mount Hua settled there, Hwaum had been nothing more than a village with a few fields.
Once Mount Hua had established itself and visitors began to pour in, the village had grown. Mount Hua had then injected money into the area, built businesses, and turned it into a large county town.
Any business in Hwaum that made a decent living was, by default, bound to have been Mount Hua's at some point.
And what? Hwameum Cloth Shop had been theirs since the great-grandfather's time?
Considering this man's age, his great-grandfather would probably have been around Chung Myung's age, or even younger. Chung Myung still remembered going there to buy cloth for the children’s uniforms, so the owner can go to hell.
'This stinks to high heaven.'
Let's see.
"I've got a few questions that need answers."
"...Ask as many as you like."
"Then who runs Hwasun Tea House?"
"Yu Luju."
"Naturally, that family's been there for generations too, right?"
"That's what I understand."
"The same goes for Oaksan Trading Company and Hwaum Guest House, I assume?"
"Yes. They're all old hands in Hwaum."
Chung Myung snorted. He didn't need to ask any further; he understood the gist of it well enough.
So when Mount Hua's upper generation died off and the sect fell into ruin, the business owners stepped in and swallowed everything whole?
"Well, damn."
He kept trying to hold back, but a bitter laugh kept escaping him.
There were two reasons Mount Hua had entrusted its businesses to agents rather than running them directly.
The first was that no matter how much Mount Hua might have been a sect with strong secular tendencies, it was still a Taoist sect in the end. Taoists running taverns and selling silk in cloth shops was hardly a sight that would look good to outsiders.
And the other reason was this.
"Chung Myung. What Mount Hua seeks is not the monopoly of wealth, but a life well shared. Even if the people of Hwaum do not belong to Mount Hua, are they not our neighbors? If we can all live well and all have full bellies, what could be better than that?"
Good things, my ass.
'This is humanity, Senior Brother.'
The reason the classics and the sages had emphasized countless times that people must know how to repay kindness was simple.
Because human beings were the sort of creatures who did not repay kindness.
No, failing to repay it would have been a blessing. If there was profit to be made, a person would stab their benefactor in the back whenever the opportunity arose.
After being generously helped so they could earn a living, they didn't even repay the kindness; instead, they seized the business the moment their benefactor fell into crisis and ran off with it.
And if they knew they were in the wrong, they should have lived quietly and humbly. Instead, they had used those businesses as the basis for lending money to Mount Hua at usurious rates?
"Damn it!"
Thud!
When Chung Myung kicked Yu Jong-san with all his strength, the man's massive body rolled away like a ball.
"Aaaaiigh!"
Chung Myung watched that mess, then let out a long sigh.
'What's the point of beating this guy?'
Yu Jong-san probably didn't even realize what he was doing was wrong. He genuinely believed Hwameum Cloth Shop was a business his own family had built.
'What am I supposed to do about this?'
Chung Myung couldn't help but sink into thought.
His temper wanted to smash these bastards to bits, kick them out of Hwaum, and swallow the businesses back up. But it wasn't that simple.
Mount Hua was a prestigious righteous sect.
That reputation had faded somewhat by now, but the Mount Hua Chung Myung wanted to rebuild still wouldn't stray far from the image of a respected orthodox sect.
If a so-called righteous sect forcibly used violence to bully unrelated businesses and swallow them up, then the name of Mount Hua would be ruined that very day.
"This is fucked up. Properly fucked up."
He could see how the whole thing had gone, but the solution was a nightmare. He needed a way to recover the businesses without using force, without losing legitimacy.
Easy to say! Easy!
"Uuugh."
Scratching the back of his head, Chung Myung turned sharply toward Yu Jong-san.
"Hey. So, then—"
That was when it happened.
"Stop right there!"
"Huh?"
At the voice from behind him, Chung Myung turned his head.
"Oh? You're up?"
One of Yu Jong-san's bodyguards, whom he had blown away a moment ago, had somehow regained consciousness and was now pointing a dao at him.
He'd thought he'd hit him pretty hard, but for him to wake up already, the man was stronger than Chung Myung had expected.
"You filthy bastard!"
The bodyguard ground his teeth.
"You launched a sneak attack like a coward!"
A sneak attack?
Me?
Chung Myung stared at him, dumbfounded.
"Hey. You started it first."
"You despicable bastard!"
"Yeah, fine. Let's just go with that."
He didn't feel like wrestling with some lunatic over it. Fine, whatever.
"Who are you?"
"Hm?"
"At your level, you can't be some nameless nobody. State your identity."
Now the absurdity only grew.
If I were going to state my identity, would I have worn a mask?
"And what if I don't tell you?"
"I need to know who died by my sword."
"...You do realize you just got knocked out by me a minute ago?"
Then he should have stayed down and pretended to be dead. Why get up just to beg for another beating? Did everyone get stupid while I was reincarnating?
"If I hadn't been careless, someone like you wouldn't have laid a hand on me. I only took on a bodyguard's job as a pastime, and now I suffer this humiliation. Do you know who I am?"
"...."
"This old man is Tiger-Slicing Saber, Jeong Bin. Even if you're ignorant, you've at least heard my name, haven't you?"
"Ah, sorry. I'm more ignorant than I thought."
"...."
Jeong Bin's eyes flew wide open.
True, he was only taking a bodyguard assignment temporarily to make some money, but his name was well known throughout Shaanxi. And this bastard had never even heard of it?
"Arrogant fool."
Jeong Bin gripped his dao and leveled it at Chung Myung.
"I'll at least give you the chance to speak your name before you die."
"Ha...."
Chung Myung let out another deep sigh.
Why were there so many lunatics in the world now?
"Hey, isn't that a little rich coming from a bodyguard? No matter how you look at it, I'm closer to the man you're supposed to be protecting than you are."
"The bodyguard business is irrelevant now."
Ah. Yes. Sorry.
You are a spirited one.
"Prepare yourself!"
Jeong Bin lunged at him, swinging his dao. Watching him, Chung Myung clicked his tongue.
The man's internal force was clearly stronger than Chung Myung's. His strength and speed were on an entirely different level too. By ordinary standards, Jeong Bin was the kind of expert comparing him to Chung Myung would itself have been rude.
Then was Chung Myung weaker?
Not a chance.
Internal force, strength, speed.
Those were not the measures of true strength. They might have counted among ordinary people, but not for Chung Myung.
He had the experience of a lifetime spent swinging a sword, and the memories of the Plum Blossom Sword Saint remained intact within him.
"Heave-ho."
Chung Myung's sword moved lazily. Compared to the power surging through Jeong Bin's vicious charge, it was such a feeble swing it seemed it could barely catch a fly.
Clack!
Yet that powerless-looking sword latched onto the blade of Jeong Bin's dao.
"What?"
At that instant, Jeong Bin's eyes went wide.
The moment Chung Myung's slow sword clung to the surface of the dao, an enormous reverse force suddenly surged through his arm.
"Aaaagh!"
His grip burst apart, and Jeong Bin's dao soared into the sky.
"Go learn some more."
Chung Myung's sword carved the air in a dazzling arc. It wasn't a clear plum blossom, but blurry buds bloomed in the void.
Thunk.
Jeong Bin's body crashed to the ground like rotten wood.
"Tsk."
Chung Myung clicked his tongue and withdrew his sword.
If I don't have strength, then I use the enemy's strength.
A greenhorn who couldn't even handle his own power was no match for Chung Myung, even if a hundred of them came at once.
"Know your pla—"
That was when it happened.
"W-wow, as expected!"
"Huh?"
Turning his head, Chung Myung saw Yu Jong-san staring at him with eyes full of surprise.
'Ah, crap!'
In that instant, Chung Myung realized his mistake.
At the end of the day, Yu Jong-san was someone who made his living in Hwaum. Even from that crude, half-formed blossom, he might be able to guess Chung Myung's background. Of course, if he had any brains at all, he had probably already formed some suspicion—but that was different from giving him obvious proof.
"As I thought, you were from a prestigious family, weren't you? I had suspected as much."
Chung Myung's face under the mask twisted.
'Should I just slice him open?'
Or maybe ensure he could never speak a word again, once and for all...
"That clean, dazzling swordsmanship! That lofty level of martial skill! And above all, that faint immortal aura I can feel from you!"
What? You can feel immortal aura?
That wasn't good.
For a moment, Chung Myung couldn't think of how to respond and hesitated, and in that gap, Yu Jong-san shouted with certainty,
"Even at such a young age, the only place nearby that could produce someone with such ability is none other than—"
"Ah, no—"
"The Great Southern Edge Sect!"
"...."
Chung Myung stared at Yu Jong-san, dumbfounded.
Southern Edge? Why the hell would Southern Edge be coming into this...
Huh?
"Did you come from Southern Edge Sect?"
"...Huh?"
The thought was brief, but the words came faster.
"Y-yes!"
"I knew it!"
Yu Jong-san dropped flat to the ground right then and there.
"Please forgive me. I'll answer anything you ask."
"...Thank you."
That I truly appreciate.
Ha. Ha ha ha.