Life Is Pain, After All (1)
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
“Oh, heavens… oh, you Daoist gentlemen saved our lives!”
“I don’t know how we can ever repay this kindness……”
Yoon Jong hurriedly shook his head.
“Kindness? Not at all. We only did what we ought to have done.”
“We’re truly so grateful. We’ll have to repay you somehow!”
“Really, there’s no need…….”
“Hah! Repay us? Now that’s what I’m talking about! Who said repay? Repay!”
Chung Myung shoved Yoon Jong aside and seized the old man’s hand in front of him.
“You said repay, right?”
“Huh? Ah… yes…….”
Yoon Jong’s face twisted in exasperation.
“You already stripped the water bandits clean. Why drag the victims into this too……!”
“Then once you get back out there, make sure everyone knows Mount Hua Sect crushed the water bandits and saved you.”
“……Pardon?”
“Spread the word! Tell them we were the ones who saved you! And that we smashed not one but two forts while we were at it! Just tell it exactly like it happened. That would be a huge repayment, you know?”
“Th-that’s enough?”
“Of course it is. That’s a real repayment. But you’ve got to be enthusiastic about it, okay? Got it?”
“If it truly helps, then I’ll do my very best to speak of it wherever I go.”
“Hah. Now that’s a man who knows how to talk.”
Yoon Jong, who had been about to chide Chung Myung, fell silent like someone with his mouth stuffed full of honey.
It wasn’t even something that counted as repayment.
“Then what about us?”
“First, we’ll check whether there’s anyone whose strength has been badly depleted. As for those who are fine, we’ll send you straight back to shore.”
“To-to shore……?”
“Ah, don’t worry. We’ll drop you off at the nearest port. Or would you rather be sent to wherever you were originally headed?”
“We can’t trouble you that far.”
“Hey, don’t mention it. It’s not like I’m the one rowing the boat.”
“Pardon?”
“Hehe. Just kidding.”
Chung Myung snickered.
The old man stared at him in bewilderment, still with his hand caught in Chung Myung’s grip.
“We’ve sent all the commoners away on the boats.”
At Yoon Jong’s words, Jo Gul asked with an uneasy expression, “Will they be okay? Those boats are being run by water bandits, aren’t they?”
“I sent the bandits from the Green Forest along with them, so it should be fine.”
“……So it’s fine because you sent bandits with the water bandits.”
Something was wrong.
It was hard to put a finger on exactly what was wrong, but something was definitely wrong.
“We found two Ghost Sect members among the prisoners. Adding the one we found earlier, it looks like everyone has been recovered except one person.”
“Then that one person is?”
“Most likely…….”
As Yoon Jong trailed off with a heavy expression, Baek Cheon let out a sigh.
With so much chaos having taken place, it was hardly easy to find and rescue everyone, but that didn’t make the weight in his chest any lighter.
“Baek Sang.”
“Yes, Sahyung.”
“What did you find from the interrogation?”
“……Nothing particularly useful. Most of them were either runaways from other forts, ignorant riffraff, or wandering martial artists hired for money.”
“Wandering martial artists?”
“Yes. Apparently there are quite a lot of them around the Yangtze. They don’t belong to any faction and are hired through word of mouth, so it’s hard to know about them in advance.”
“Hmm.”
Baek Cheon’s expression hardened as he thought.
Wandering martial artists.
Wandering martial artists helping build a water bandit fort……?
Eventually, he turned his gaze to Jang Seung.
“Is it common to hire wandering martial artists when first building a water fort?”
“……I’ve never heard of such a thing. If they had money to spend, why would they become bandits in the first place?”
“That’s true enough.”
Something about the whole situation felt odd.
No, well. It’s not really that important.
In any case, they had wiped them all out. Whatever those people had been trying to do, it no longer mattered. What mattered was that they had punished the ones who’d laid hands on Mount Hua’s friends, and that would serve as a clear warning to every other water bandit on the Yangtze.
“We just need to tidy up and head back.”
With a somewhat refreshed look, Baek Cheon gazed out over the vast Yangtze River.
It had been a journey full of trouble, but it had also been one from which they had learned a great deal.
“I never want to see water again, Sahyung.”
“When I get back to Mount Hua, I’m not washing my face for a while.”
“Jo Gul Sahyung already doesn’t wash that often.”
“What are you talking about? I wash all the time!”
“And yet you still stink of sweat every day.”
“That’s because I wash and then go straight back to training! Man, that’s seriously unfair!”
The disciples of Mount Hua had also begun to regain some of their energy.
They all had things to reflect on, but that didn’t mean they could remain down in the dumps forever.
If you’ve fallen, then get back up and start running again.
Baek Cheon gathered himself and spoke.
“Then let’s finish u—… wait, where did that idiot Chung Myung go?”
“Huh? Wasn’t he here just now?”
“……Where the hell did that bastard go? If I can’t see him, I get nervous.”
The disciples of Mount Hua craned their necks and hurriedly looked left and right. This was open flatland, so there was nowhere in particular to hide. Soon enough, they spotted Chung Myung standing by the water and rushed toward him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Sasuk.”
Standing at the far end of the long island and staring across to the mainland, Chung Myung spoke without even turning his head.
“How far is it from here to there?”
“Huh?”
Though taken aback by the sudden question, Baek Cheon answered first.
“About… one hundred jang? No, maybe around three hundred jang?”
It really drove home just how wide the Yangtze was.
A river was usually called a river if it was only three jang across, but this one was a full three hundred jang wide.
And that was just the distance from the island in the middle. Didn’t that mean the actual width of the river was at least twice that?
“Close, right?”
“Huh?”
Close?
“I think I get why the water bandits left this place alone for so long. It’s too close to land. You can get here by crossing just three hundred jang.”
“I think your sense of measurement is a little weird?”
Three hundred jang was not something you called “just.” Especially not on a river.
“It sticks out way too much, and if someone attacks from land, all they have to do is cross three hundred jang. The surrounding rapids make it a bit easier to hold out, but if you think about it coldly, this place is way too vulnerable to attacks from land.”
“Now that you mention it…….”
Baek Cheon looked around after hearing Chung Myung’s words, then twisted his face.
“Wait, so if they’d moved overland along the river and then taken boats, they could have crossed just three hundred jang to attack. Then why did they come by boat in the first place? All that seasickness from those damn boats……!”
“Ah, that’s not the important part.”
Chung Myung’s mouth curled upward.
“What do you think?”
“Huh?”
“Not bad, right? Close to land, but awkward for boats to attack.”
“What are you saying is good about it?”
“If we just take this place, wouldn’t it become harder for those water bandit bastards to get close?”
“……What?”
Wait. What did this bastard just say?
Take?
“……Chung Myung?”
“The more I look at it, the better it seems. Those water bandits were stupid to settle here, but for us, it’s not a bad place at all.”
“……W-what are you planning?”
“Let’s take this place for ourselves!”
“…….”
Baek Cheon stared blankly at Chung Myung, then turned around. Sure enough, his fellow disciples were standing there with the exact same expression on their faces.
Right? I’m not the crazy one here, am I?
Feeling validated, Baek Cheon shouted, “You lunatic! Why the hell would we take this place? This isn’t Shaanxi, it’s the Yangtze!”
“Is there some rule that says you can’t take the Yangtze? Those water bandit bastards occupied it and set up a fort, didn’t they?”
“……I guess there isn’t.”
“Don’t agree so easily, Sasuk!”
“Don’t get dragged into this!”
“Th-that’s right!”
Baek Cheon, who had nodded reflexively, quickly came to his senses and asked again, “What the hell are we supposed to do if we occupy this place? Become water bandits ourselves?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Your head really doesn’t work, does it?”
“Huh?”
Chung Myung frowned in irritation.
“Why did we come here in the first place?”
“Well… because the special couriers from Eunha Express were attacked.”
“And what guarantee do we have that won’t happen again?”
“…….”
Chung Myung pointed at Jang Seung.
“Once is hard. Twice is easy. Look—once the rumor spread that the special couriers were attacked, all the riffraff came swarming in, didn’t they? Thanks to that, Sasuk ended up working his ass off for nothing.”
“……Daegyeong Fort was a bigger fort than this one. ‘Riffraff’ is a bit…….”
“They were water bandits, weren’t they?”
“…….”
Jang Seung, who had tried to protest in mild indignation, was instantly sunk and shut his mouth.
“If something like this happens again, are we supposed to come running all the way to the Yangtze and fight them every time? At that rate, we’ll be sprinting back and forth until we’ve wiped out every water fort on the river and never get a moment’s rest.”
“……He’s not wrong.”
As long as water bandits existed and there were still trips across the Yangtze, the danger was unavoidable. And because special couriers carried expensive goods by definition, they were always delicious prey waiting to be snatched up.
On flat ground, they could avoid danger with speed, but what power did special couriers have on a boat?
“So we take this place?”
“If that’s how it’s going to be anyway, it’s better to just carry the people ourselves. Look here. This side and that side are close, right? Then all we need are two boats to go back and forth between land and island, and the problem’s solved.”
Baek Cheon looked to his disciples as if asking them to do something about this.
And reading that look, Jo Gul opened his mouth with a firm expression.
“Jiujiang’s location really isn’t bad!”
“You crazy bastard! Why are you agreeing with him?”
“N-no, but that’s not really wrong, is it?”
“You’re gonna do all this just to move one special courier?”
“Then we can move other merchants too. We can charge them for boat fare and crossing fees.”
That bastard really was a merchant family’s youngest son through and through. Why was he so sharp only when it came to this sort of thing?
“Absolutely not, absolutely not! You said it yourself—this place is too easy to attack. What are we supposed to do when the water bandits come swarming?”
“What are they gonna do from a boat? They’d have to land first.”
“Huh?”
“If the water bandits land, they’re just third-rate, aren’t they? As long as they don’t fight on the water, it’s fine.”
“…….”
Baek Cheon was slowly, uncomfortably, beginning to be convinced.
“And there’s something else good about it too.”
“Something good?”
“The White Thunder Cannon.”
“…….”
“Those guys used it for plundering, so they kept it on their boats. But we don’t need to go out on boats, do we? We can set the White Thunder Cannon around the edge of the island and fire at the water bandits whenever they come. They wouldn’t even be able to approach.”
“N-no…….”
Baek Cheon squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m finished.
That absurd nonsense was starting to sound plausible.
“No, fundamentally speaking! We can’t just stay here and do this.”
“Sasuk, are you stupid?”
“Huh?”
“Why do we have to do it ourselves? There are plenty of people here. Let the bandits from the Green Forest expand into the Yangtze while we’re at it. We just split the boat fare in half.”
“…….”
Good heavens…… By this point, it almost sounded as if Chung Myung had come here with the whole thing planned out in advance.
With no way to attack that rotten logic, Baek Cheon grew increasingly flustered and started chewing on his fingernails.
“I’m a little uneasy.”
“Huh?”
At least one normal person was speaking now—Yu I-seol voiced her opposition.
“White Thunder Cannon’s range. The width of the river. If boats occupy the middle, we’re isolated. Still too far.”
“Th-that’s right! Even so, it’s three hundred jang! That’s impossible!”
“Then just make it two hundred jang.”
“Huh? How?”
“Build a bridge.”
“……Over water?”
“Yes.”
“Across that distance?”
“Yes.”
Chung Myung nodded brightly with a grin.
“You crazy bastard. Even the state couldn’t do that! Say something that makes sense! I’ve never once in my life heard anyone say there was a bridge on the Yangtze.”
“Hey, you don’t need to build one all the way across. And it doesn’t need to be fixed in place either. We’ve got boats coming out of our ears right now, and we don’t need to go out on the water ourselves.”
“Huh?”
“Anchor boats on the water, then lay a bridge over them. Link the boats together like a bridge, place the White Thunder Cannon on top, and make it into something like a dock where the boats can moor.”
“…….”
“Then we can shoot arrows from the bridge, fire cannons from the bridge, and if there are enemies landing, we can fight them from there too! Hah. Even I think this is brilliant! If I remember right, this was a scheme some famous strategist came up with ages ago. So it must be right.”
The people on that linked-boat bridge were all burned to death by fire arrows, you lunatic! And the place wasn’t even that far from here! It was on this very river!
“Hehehehehe. The more I think about it, the better it gets. These water bandit bastards brought us everything we need to use, didn’t they? Then we’d better make good use of it and say thank you while we’re at it!”
“C-Chung Myung?”
“First, let’s start linking the boats together! Heeheehee! This is going to be fun! Right?”
“Chung Myung…….”
“Hey! Tuberculosis boy! Where are you?”
Leaving them behind as though he had no intention of hearing another word, Chung Myung took off at a dead run.
As Baek Cheon stood there in helpless disbelief, reaching out after him, someone placed a hand on his shoulder.
“……Monk?”
Hye Yeon smiled gently.
“Amitabha. Benefactor Baek Cheon. Do you know something?”
“……What?”
“Life is pain, after all.”
“…….”
Well then… thank you very much.
Yes.