What the Hell Is Going On? (5)
Jingle?
Chung Myung slowly lifted his head. Something glinted in front of his eyes.
Huh?
At the same time, he heard people clicking their tongues.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. He still looks young. How did he end up a beggar?"
Jingle.
Jingle.
Coins began to fly toward him.
"He looks like he got beaten up somewhere. At this rate, he might die."
"The world’s gone to hell. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Poor thing."
Huh?
What was this situation…?
Ah.
I’m a beggar, right? I’d forgotten for a second.
To everyone else, Chung Myung would look like a beggar. No, even to himself, he was basically just a beggar. A little beggar who hadn’t even become an adult yet. Worse, a poor little beggar who had been beaten so badly his eye sockets were black and the dried blood was still crusted on his face…
That beggar was sprawled face-down in the market street.
"Haa. I just can’t walk by without helping."
"If you’re a person, you can’t just keep going. You can’t."
A child beggar with limbs not yet fully grown, dressed in rags and smeared head to toe with dirt, was dying. Not just saying he was dying—he was really dying.
Was there a more perfect way to beg than this?
Maybe that was why coins kept clinking down around him.
"Tsk."
"Never seen that beggar before. How’d he end up here?"
The world still seemed to have some kindness left in it.
People heading toward the open market clicked their tongues and tossed him coins. Watching them fly in, clear tears spilled from Chung Myung’s eyes.
"He’s crying. Look, he’s crying. How pitiful."
"Use it to buy some noodles or something."
Warmth was pouring over him. But the reason Chung Myung was crying wasn’t because he was moved by the situation.
I, a disciple of the Great Mount Hua Sect, am being given alms.
How had things come to this?
Just a few days ago, he had been the greatest swordsman in the world, going to fight the Heavenly Demon with the fate of the entire world on his shoulders. Before that, he had been a graceful swordsman who had roamed the realm and spoken for the world.
And now he was reduced to a beggar taking handouts. Even a sea can turn to mulberry fields, but this was ridiculous!
A man has his pride!
If he took this money, he’d truly become a beggar. Him, a noble swordsman of the Great Mount Hua Sect, a beggar? Begging? Unacceptable. Absolutely not.
A martial artist may have a blade at his throat, but he does not abandon his pride!
Chung Myung snapped his head up and gritted his teeth before shouting, "Thank you! May you be blessed, sir!"
Pride can freeze to death.
First you survive.
* * *
"Uuuuuurk—!"
Chung Myung slapped his bulging stomach. On his embarrassingly skinny body, the belly stuck out so far he looked like a frog tadpole.
"Pride~ won’t~ fill my belly~. A living beggar~ is better than a dead martial artist~."
Having a smaller body was efficient, at least.
Three buns bought from the open market were enough to make him feel ready to burst. Even after that, there were still three coins left jingling in his sleeve.
In the past, he wouldn’t even have picked up a coin lying in the street. Now it felt like the greatest treasure in the world.
So money is this important.
He remembered his senior brother clutching his head whenever the monthly settlement day came around, and how Chung Myung had once sneered that a Daoist should never cling to wealth. If he could, he’d go back to that moment and smack his mouth until it shut.
What was I, stuffed full?
What kind of idiot struts around saying a few swings of the sword make him some great man, while he can’t even earn a living? Thinking of the sect master senior brother, who must have bent his back supporting all those utterly useless, half-idle parasites, made his eyes sting with tears.
Anyway.
"I’m alive, at least."
Chung Myung scratched his head hard.
He’d set off without a plan, but he had no idea how to get to Shaanxi.
I took two thousand li too lightly.
All of Chung Myung’s thinking still ran on the standards of the past. Even knowing his body had changed and the situation had changed, adjusting to new realities overnight was not something that happened so easily.
If he had been his old self, he could have gone from Wuhan to Shaanxi in half a day and still had time to stop at a tavern below Mount Hua for a nice cool drink. But in this body, going to Mount Hua on foot was a matter of staking his life on it.
Mountain bandits and wild beasts could be dealt with somehow, but hunger had no answer.
What had seemed like a simple journey had turned into a long and dangerous one that required his life as the price, and that made his head ache.
But I can’t just wander along begging all the way to Shaanxi, either.
Chung Myung scratched his head furiously.
"I need to find a way, but I can’t figure out a way if I don’t know anything!"
If this had been the past, maybe. But a hundred years had passed. It was no exaggeration to say he knew nothing about how the world had been turning. So what way could he possibly find?
"Hey!"
It took more than two months for an ordinary person to reach Shaanxi. At this rate, getting to Mount Hua would take half a year, and that wouldn’t be strange at all.
"Hey!"
For Chung Myung, who needed to see with his own eyes what had happened to Mount Hua right this instant, it was unbearably frustrating. He had to find some way, but at present, nothing came to mind…
"Hey, you bastard! You deaf?"
"Huh?"
Chung Myung turned his head.
What?
He’d heard some noise, but he hadn’t imagined it was someone calling him. No one would bother speaking to a beggar.
Three nasty-looking beggars were glaring at him.
Well, isn’t this lovely. Absolutely beggarly.
His second life seemed to involve a lot of entanglement with beggars.
"Me?"
"You? What, not me but you? You crazy little beggar bastard."
The most vicious-looking beggar in front spat onto the ground.
"Don’t know where you crawled in from, but who gave you permission to beg here?"
Did begging require permission?
"You look young, so I’ll let you keep your life. Take everything in your hands and your sleeves and get lost."
The things in his sleeves must have meant the remaining coins, and the thing in his hands…
Chung Myung looked down at his own hand. He was holding a half-finished, already-cold bun.
…These people really have no conscience. You beggar bastards.
They were trying to steal this? This? You couldn’t squeeze out even the liver of a flea!
"You beggar bastard!"
The worst insult a beggar could hurl at another beggar was "beggar bastard." Which made the whole thing absurdly beggarly, like insulting someone while spitting in your own face. Ah, enough with the beggar already!
"Hold on."
Chung Myung gently set the bun down beside him.
Then he stood up, stretched both arms forward a couple of times, took a step forward, then a step back, repeating the motion several times.
The beggars watching him glared harder.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Ah. Hold on. I’ll be done in a sec."
After a few more stretches of his arms and legs, Chung Myung nodded and turned around.
"It’s not perfect yet, but this should do, more or less."
He’d gotten used to the distance now. He’d mostly adapted to having short arms and legs.
So!
"You lot are probably going to feel very wronged, but I happen to have a really bad opinion of beggars."
"…What?"
"What’re you gonna do? That’s just how the world is. Don’t feel wronged—take it like good medicine."
"What the hell is this bastard saying?"
Chung Myung cracked his neck a couple of times.
"Ah, for the record, this body’s weak, so I can’t hit very hard. So you’re gonna have to get hit quite a lot."
"This little mad—"
At that instant, Chung Myung shot forward like a bird of prey and smashed the face of the beggar standing in front.
PAAAAAAK!
The proper stepping foot. The force generated by his fully twisted waist spun smoothly through his body and poured perfectly into the end of his fist. It was the fist of a child striking a man’s face, yet it sounded like a well-hardened wooden club cracking against flesh.
Thud.
The beggar, struck with an attack he couldn’t possibly withstand, collapsed without even a sound.
Seeing that, Chung Myung trembled all over.
"I—!"
Thwack!
A kick sweeping sideways smashed into another beggar.
"I am the Plum Blossom Sword Saint of the Great Mount Hua Sect, you beggar bastards!"
It was the moment the grievances he had piled up since reincarnating finally exploded.
* * *
"…Sir."
"Who calls a beggar sir?"
"Great beggar…?"
"You wanna die?"
The beggars, each with their heads pressed to the ground, let out groans of pain.
What kind of monster is this?
This hurts like hell.
It had taken Chung Myung only as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea to subdue the beggars. If a child had knocked down three sturdy adults in the span of one breath, that would have been astonishing—but by Chung Myung’s standards, even that was a miserable result.
At this rate, I’m going to get a stress disease.
Suppressing trash like this didn’t even require internal energy. In his old body, he could have turned them into pancakes with a single finger, no energy needed at all.
But in this body, he had to run, kick, and roll just to deal with men like these. One hit wasn’t enough, because they kept getting back up, so after punching one in the eye socket about thirty-eight times, they were now moaning like they’d lost their souls.
I should’ve beaten that Jongpal bastard like this.
Just thinking of him made his teeth grind.
If only he’d known beforehand that his limbs were so short! If only he’d had enough stamina to keep taking hits, he could have beaten that bastard like a dog on the hottest day of summer!
He’d left in a hurry for Mount Hua and hadn’t exacted his revenge yet, but one day he would catch that beggar rat and squeeze him until he squealed.
"Get up."
"Yes!"
The three beggars leapt to their feet. Sweat dribbled down their filthy faces. All three kept sneaking glances at Chung Myung.
He looks like a half-starved little beggar no matter how you look at him.
This makes no sense.
It was utterly impossible to understand.
Small, weak, and thin.
At a glance, he looked like he’d drop dead if he simply fell over while walking. But once they actually fought him, he was a ghost. Their fists hadn’t even managed to brush the hem of that little beggar’s clothes.
He didn’t seem especially fast, and he didn’t even seem particularly strong, so why the result had turned out like this was beyond them.
"Hey."
"Yes!"
"Give orders, sir! Great sir! No, Great beggar! Ah, no…"
What did understanding or not understanding matter? Thoughts were far away, but fists were close. What mattered was that the little beggar’s punches hurt right down to the bone.
Chung Myung swept his gaze over them and said, "Just in case, I’m asking—do you know any fast way to get to Shaanxi?"
The beggars exchanged looks, then smiled brightly. Seeing that confident grin, Chung Myung felt a flicker of hope.
"Hahaha. You’re asking the obvious."
"Oh? You know?"
"If we knew something like that, do you think we’d be living as beggars? You should ask someone who actually knows."
"…"
Looking at the beggars with a sour expression, Chung Myung let out a long sigh.
These bastards weren’t the problem. The problem was that he was the one desperate enough to ask beggars for a solution.
"Forget it. Get out of here."
"Thank you!"
"May you live ten thousand years!"
The beggars bowed so deeply their backs nearly snapped and fled in a panic. Or rather, they tried to flee.
"Hold it."
At that moment, Chung Myung’s voice caught them.
"Yes?"
"Leaving’s fine, but you need to take out what’s in your hands and pockets before you go."
"…"
"If I have to search you and find it, one coin buys one punch. No—ten punches. One punch probably won’t even hurt."
Realizing he meant every word, the beggars gave up and fished the coins from their pockets to hand over to Chung Myung.
"Hey. You."
"Yes?"
"Take out what’s in your underwear before I strip it off myself."
"…"
It was a truly appalling scene: beggars being robbed by a robber, a miserable spectacle too cruel to behold.