Did You Come from Zhongnan? (3)
"Why is he this late?"
Jo Gul kept glancing outside, his nerves fraying by the second.
Dawn was already breaking far in the distance, but Chung Myung still hadn’t returned. If he didn’t make it back before morning, the senior members of the sect would realize he had slipped away.
Then all hell would break loose.
Just leaving Mount Hua without permission was already a serious offense. And if they found out that Chung Myung had returned late wearing that black night garb?
It’d be a nightmare.
He absolutely did not want to see that happen.
"Calm down."
"But, Sahyung..."
Yoon Jong shook his head.
"He’s not that stupid. He’ll be back before it gets too late. Unless something happened."
And however hard he thought about it, it didn’t seem likely that anything would happen to that monstrous bastard. At worst, he’d just be a little late.
"Still, you never know what can happen to a person."
"True."
As long as he was a person, yes.
The moment Jo Gul craned his neck out the window, the door flew open.
"Tsk."
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong both snapped their heads around.
"Saje!"
Chung Myung walked in through the open door.
He was carrying a mask in one hand, and the instant he shut the door behind him, he stripped off the night garb in one rough motion. Then he began changing into his daoist robe.
"Nothing happened, right?"
"That’s what we should be asking you. Nothing happen to you?"
"What would happen?"
Chung Myung snorted.
"I got treated well and even came back with spending money."
"F-From whom?"
"What was his name again? Yu... Anyway, that guy. The cloth shop owner."
"Huh?"
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong’s eyes went wide. Seeing their reactions, Chung Myung recalled what had happened a moment ago and let out a faint laugh.
This is ridiculous. Seriously.
Yu Jong-san had assumed, on his own, that Chung Myung was someone from Zhongnan who had come out to deal with Mount Hua, and so he had cheerfully spilled everything Chung Myung didn’t even need to know.
All the while, he had worked so hard to burn his own name into Chung Myung’s memory.
Well, then.
It was nice that things had gone so smoothly, but at the same time, Chung Myung couldn’t help feeling a little bitter.
In the list of prestigious sects in Yu Jong-san’s head, Mount Hua was clearly missing. Even after seeing the sword stance Chung Myung used with his own eyes, he hadn’t once thought of Mount Hua.
The Plum Blossom Sword Art had long since been lost, so it no longer served as Mount Hua’s defining symbol, but if Yu Jong-san had lived his whole life in Hwameum, shouldn’t he at least have known that Mount Hua once made its name with the Plum Blossom Sword Art?
Considering Mount Hua’s current strength, he might have thought it impossible for anyone so young to possess that kind of skill, but that didn’t make the sting any less bitter.
Well, bitterness is bitterness. On the bright side, it does make things easier.
He had gone in prepared to reveal at least some of his identity, but if he’d ended up completely hidden instead, wasn’t that a good thing?
"So how did it go?"
"...Tsk."
At Jo Gul’s question, Chung Myung waved a hand dismissively.
"Kids can’t do anything on their own. Forget it."
"...You’re still a kid yourself."
"Enough. Get everyone together. We need to train."
"Today too?"
Chung Myung glared.
"Listen carefully, Sahyung."
"Huh?"
"Rain or snow, wind or shine. Starting today, there’s not a single day without training! Even if a blizzard comes and a cold wave hits! Even if Mount Hua itself collapses, there won’t be any days off!"
Jo Gul nodded with a stiff face.
I’m prepared for that!
Wasn’t this exactly why he had resolved to follow and help Chung Myung? If training made him stronger, he’d do anything. Training without rest was, in fact, exactly what he wanted.
"I’ll line them up right away. Then you—"
"Ah. I’m not going."
"Huh?"
Chung Myung turned a bored face and looked at Yoon Jong.
"You know how to train, right?"
"...I do."
"Then make them do the same."
"And what about you?"
"I’ve got something else to do."
When Chung Myung waved him off, Yoon Jong let out a quiet sigh.
"Fine. We’ll train without you today. But this is the only time."
Yoon Jong’s expression grew more serious.
"Don’t forget that this training is only possible because you’re there. If you don’t intend to just half-ass it and stop there, then you have to show up."
"I know."
The reason the third-generation disciples in Baekmae Hall were able to endure such brutal training without complaint was because Chung Myung stood over them with eyes like a butcher’s cleaver. No matter how much Yoon Jong was the eldest disciple, there were limits to how well he could replace Chung Myung.
"Then."
After Jo Gul and Yoon Jong left the room, Chung Myung flopped onto the bed.
"Now what do I do?"
His head hurt.
That damn justification.
If he could just sweep everyone away without worrying about appearances, it wouldn’t be difficult, but as long as the name of Mount Hua was on the line, he couldn’t simply ignore other people’s eyes.
If the things Chung Myung did only added to Chung Myung’s own infamy, there was nothing to hesitate over. But that wasn’t possible now. No one would believe he had acted entirely on his own.
It was impossible, from a common-sense standpoint, for someone his age to pull off something like this alone.
Everyone would point fingers and say Mount Hua was using Chung Myung as its front, hiding behind a child.
That was not what Chung Myung wanted. He needed some kind of justification, no matter what.
"Justification. Justification, huh... Grrr."
Chung Myung tore at his own hair.
"Does that even make sense? Damn it!"
Those businesses were Mount Hua’s in the first place. And yet he had to pay money to the bastards who had swallowed them up? His stomach twisted in knots, and a fire seemed to rage through his chest.
If he could only prove that those businesses had originally belonged to Mount Hua, and that those bastards had manipulated the ledgers to seize them while Mount Hua’s previous leaders were gone, then that would be enough. Once that was done, what was ten thousand nyang? They could just pay it back.
No, they didn’t even need to pay it back. That money had been Mount Hua’s to begin with. Since the owner was taking his own money back, what the hell was this nonsense about interest?
So all he had to do was prove that those businesses had originally belonged to Mount Hua. Then everything would be solved...
"If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be sitting here like this."
If there had been ledgers, Mount Hua wouldn’t have just sat there and taken it. Back when he was still around, the children entering the sect had been sharp as knives.
If there had been evidence, there was no reason they couldn’t have taken everything back.
From the looks of it, when the Demonic Sect invaded, the ledgers and everything else had been wiped out...
"Is this my fault too?"
His stomach hurt. His stomach hurt so much.
Chung Myung rolled around on the bed.
"No! If you’re the sect leader, shouldn’t you keep important things somewhere safe? Safely!"
There was so much money tied up in those things! And he had just stashed them in his quarters like that...
"Huh?"
Chung Myung shot upright.
Like that?
Like that?
No way.
What kind of man was the sect leader? There was no way he would just casually keep ledgers like that.
Let’s think.
Chung Myung had never cared about that sort of thing. He knew a sect needed money to function, but he also believed that a true martial artist, a true Daoist, should not cling to worldly possessions.
Looking at the way the kids in Mount Hua now were living off watery gruel made him want to go back and smash his own mouth in for how he used to think, but at the time, that had been Chung Myung’s mindset.
Because of that, the sect leader had never shown Chung Myung the ledgers. Even while organizing them, he would often quietly push them aside whenever Chung Myung came in.
"...Pushed them aside?"
He tried to revive the vague memory.
The ledgers in the sect leader’s room had never been more than three volumes at most. But the ledgers needed to run Mount Hua would have been at least several dozen volumes. So where had they been kept?
There was somewhere else!
There was nowhere in the sect leader’s room to keep such things.
Even if he was the leader of the great Mount Hua Sect, he was still a Daoist. The sect leader’s room was plain to the point of austerity. If he tried to fill the chest in that room with ledgers, there wouldn’t be space for anything else.
Besides, he had seen that chest opened a few times, and there were no ledgers inside. Then where were they?
"So that rumor was true?"
He had once heard that Mount Hua had a secret storage chamber accessible only to the sect leader. It was little better than a rumor, but it was a fairly famous one.
Back then, Chung Myung could have checked whether it was true, but since he had no real interest in it, he never bothered.
Wait. Now that I think about it...
A few things came to mind.
Since Mount Hua was a prestigious sect representing Shaanxi, strange items had sometimes made their way in. Things like demonic manuals no human should ever practice, or the secret techniques of masters from previous generations. Now and then, legendary swords or priceless treasures had also been acquired.
Where had all of them gone?
Not to the treasury pavilion. If they had been there, Chung Myung would have noticed them.
Nor had they been sold off. There were a few items there that, if released, would have caused a stir throughout the martial world. If the sect leader had sold them, Chung Myung would have heard about it.
Then?
There!
There was a storage chamber where the ledgers and treasures were kept.
And it was somewhere not far from here.
He couldn’t very well leave Mount Hua empty just to come and go from the storage chamber, so it had to be somewhere within Mount Hua itself. A place no one else could know about.
But was that possible?
In Mount Hua, where martial experts swarmed like mosquitoes, could someone really build a storage chamber in a place no one knew about and never get caught?
Chung Myung kicked the door open.
There was only one place that could be possible.
For one thing, the entrance had to be inside the sect leader’s quarters. If the entrance were outside, hiding it would be impossible.
The only place in Mount Hua no one could enter without the sect leader’s permission was the sect leader’s quarters.
The sect leader’s quarters haven’t changed since then.
Which meant?
Chung Myung, who had rushed outside, widened his eyes.
Behind the building housing the sect leader’s quarters was a gentle ridge of mountain.
If they built a storage chamber there, it would be impossible to hide it from sight.
But there was one way to build a storage chamber and still avoid everyone’s eyes.
They could build it underground.
If they had dug beneath the quarters and built it there, sensitive experts would have noticed. But what if they had made a passage and built the chamber under that mountain instead?
"Unless you’re a ghost, nobody’d know."
Chung Myung smiled darkly.
There. It’s there.
Now that he thought about it, it was strange.
Normally, the building where a sect leader lived sat at the heart of the sect. That way, he could oversee everything.
Wasn’t it odd for an emperor to live in some far-off corner of the palace?
But the Mount Hua sect leader’s quarters were tucked into the deepest part of Mount Hua. And behind it, there was nothing.
Only that!
Looking at the small hill behind the sect leader’s quarters, Chung Myung grinned.
"Looks like I’m about to go treasure hunting for no reason at all."
Up in the heavens, he could almost hear the sect leader grinding his teeth and foaming at the mouth.
"Please understand, Sect Leader. We need to save Mount Hua first, don’t we? I’ll hand everything back to you if I can do it without touching a thing."
If I can.
After I take what I need.
If you’re unhappy about it, come back to life and say something.
"Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Chung Myung laughed with shameless delight.