Better to Die Than Fail to Obtain It (4)
Swish.
It was a night so dark that even the moon had hidden itself behind the clouds. A black shadow slowly made its way toward the Galaxy Merchant Guild’s warehouse.
After checking his surroundings, he slipped quietly into the shadows to avoid the eyes of anyone passing by.
His martial skill seemed to be of a very high order; even the merchant guild guards, who must have been trained to some degree, failed to notice his presence and walked past him with complete ease.
“……”
Waiting in the dark until the guard had fully passed, the man cautiously approached the warehouse. The large padlock hanging on the door made his eyes flash coldly.
Click, click.
He brought one finger gently to the keyhole of the lock. Holding that pose for a moment, he then withdrew his hand and took a thin wire from inside his clothes, bending it this way and that.
The shaped wire slid into the keyhole.
And a moment later.
Click.
The lock opened smoothly, without a hitch.
He carefully removed the opened lock, checked his surroundings once more, adjusted his mask, and then slipped soundlessly into the warehouse.
Rustle. Rustle.
The fabric laid on the floor to protect the goods from damage gave off a soft sound under his feet.
Having even managed to close the door quietly behind him, the man swept the warehouse with sharp eyes. It was crammed full of all sorts of valuable goods, yet he showed no sign of rummaging about blindly. It was obvious he was after something specific.
Eventually, he stood in the middle of the warehouse and closed his eyes. As if whatever he was searching for could not be distinguished with his sight alone.
And then……
Flash.
When he opened them again, a brilliant light burst from his eyes.
There.
He strode forward without hesitation and lightly tapped the box stored in the coldest spot at the back with the back of his hand.
Tunk. Tunk.
The corners of the man’s mouth, hidden beneath the mask, curled upward.
This is it.
His hands were careful as they loosened the cloth wrapped around the box. Once it was fully revealed, he gripped the firmly nailed lid and put all his strength into it.
Crack. Crack.
And then, just as the box lid was about to be torn off whole—
Bang!
The warehouse door, which had been closed, burst open violently, and a group of martial artists poured in all at once.
“Hold it right there!”
The one who had been opening the lid flinched and looked back. The eyes exposed through the mask twisted grotesquely.
“……Damn it.”
His hands moved before his brain did. The instant he realized something had gone wrong, the man shoved the contents of the box into his robes and kicked off the floor.
“Get him!”
A few who had drawn their swords shot forward like lightning, but the man leaped higher than they could follow. He meant to smash through the ceiling and escape.
But at that very moment, a streak of golden radiance surged up fast over the masked man’s head.
“Oooooooh!”
Hye Yeon, hurling himself into the air, drove a fist packed with vengeance straight at the masked man. The masked man, startled for an instant, twisted his body midair and tried to change direction. But in that same instant, Baek Cheon drew his sword and sent a stream of sword qi flashing toward him.
“Kgh!”
The masked man’s eyes twisted even further.
He could fight if he had to, but the longer this dragged on, the more people would come running. He didn’t need to take them all on one by one; he needed to get out—
It happened then.
Clatter-rattle-rattle!
From below came the sound of iron links tangling together, and a huge iron net flew up to cover him.
“Aagh!”
Pinned under the net, the masked man crashed straight down.
“Hold tight!”
“Don’t let him slip!”
“Got you, you bastard!”
Yoon Jong and Jo Gul grabbed the ends of the net tightly and pinned him to the floor. After a moment of frantic struggle, the man glared at the ones restraining him, his eyes full of murderous hatred.
“You…….”
The sound of grinding teeth leaked from the man’s mouth. Baek Cheon slowly approached him, and looking down with icy eyes, he said, “......Take this bastard’s mask off first.”
“Yes, Sasuk.”
Jo Gul shoved his hand into the net and pulled away the mask, revealing a very familiar face.
“Ka-a-a-a-ak!”
Once they saw who it was, everyone let out a collective sigh.
The masked man, or rather Chung Myung, glared at Hye Yeon with resentful eyes.
“You bald monk bastard! You were serious when you hit me?”
“……Amitabha. It was a misunderstanding, benefactor.”
“A misunderstanding? A misunderstaaaaanding? Ah, right? It’s a misunderstanding? Are you trying to kill someone if you misunderstand them twice? A misunderstanding?”
“Ahem.”
Perhaps embarrassed, Hye Yeon awkwardly turned his head away. The one who rescued him from the embarrassment was Baek Cheon.
“No matter how much……”
His face was twisted in utter disbelief.
“No matter how badly you want a drink, does that mean you have to rob the warehouse of a merchant guild? Huh? You crazy bastard!”
Just then, a pure-white liquor bottle rolled out of Chung Myung’s robes.
Yoon Jong quickly snatched it up, and Chung Myung’s eyes flew wide as he shouted in panic, “I haven’t even had a taste yet!”
Baek Cheon shook his head hard. Then he turned and praised Dang Soso.
“……As you said, the net really was effective.”
“You have to use a net to catch an animal. It wouldn’t matter much if it had a sword in its hand, though.”
“No matter how out of his mind he is, he wouldn’t just whip out a blade and swing it at his own martial siblings.”
“He did swing it, though?”
“……Let’s just say he’s a little more out of his mind than expected.”
Baek Cheon, looking thoroughly mortified, glanced around behind him before crouching down in front of Chung Myung.
“Please, just act like a human being, will you? Hm? Do you know where you are…….”
“Then give me money, damn it!”
“…….”
“I don’t have a single coin! I can’t even go outside! You won’t even let me drink! What am I supposed to do, sit around and meditate or something?”
“……You’re a Daoist, Chung Myung.”
And Daoists were people who practiced the Dao!
Just as Baek Cheon’s head drooped as though he had no more strength left to scold him, a crisp sound rang out.
Pop!
Yoon Jong, absentmindedly, had popped the stopper off the liquor bottle.
In that instant, the fresh, fragrant aroma of alcohol spread through the warehouse.
Gulp.
Baek Cheon’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard. He swallowed before he knew it, then jerked his head around in shock—only to see Chung Myung with red-rimmed eyes, already drooling shamelessly.
“……Th-tha……”
Even the others could not tear their eyes away from the bottle.
Sensing that he had made a huge mistake, Yoon Jong hurriedly stuffed the stopper back into the bottle.
“……”
“……”
An awkward silence passed between them.
Breaking that silence, the first to speak was, of course, Jo Gul—the bravest of all Mount Hua disciples.
“W-well, Chung Myung did contribute in his own way, so…… one bottle of liquor should be fine, right?”
Of course, the reality was that Chung Myung had done nothing but stand around watching this whole fight, but no one pointed that out.
“R-right. Honestly, given Senior Brother’s personality, if he’s held out this long, that’s impressive enough. If you tie up a tiger and only feed it grass instead of meat, it’d be weird if it didn’t go insane, right?” Dang Soso chimed in quickly to support Jo Gul.
“Hmm. But we still haven’t even properly honored the victim’s spirit……”
“Isn’t drinking at a funeral the normal thing to do?”
Yoon Jong, who had tried to object politely, was shot a glare by Jo Gul, who cut in without warning. But even he looked momentarily stumped by that logic.
“Of course we shouldn’t overdo it. Overdrinking is bad. But one bottle…… couldn’t we just keep watch on him?”
At Jo Gul’s words, Baek Cheon was just about to cut it off as nonsense when—
“……We might end up taking a sip while watching.”
“S-Sago?”
Baek Cheon turned to Yu I-seol with the expression of a man who had just been struck on the back of the head. But she simply turned her gaze away and cleanly ignored him.
“Sasuk!”
“Yeah?”
Jo Gul said with the resolute face of a man standing before a mortal enemy.
“……Make a decision!”
“A wise decision!”
“……”
Baek Cheon’s trembling eyes fixed on the bottle in Yoon Jong’s hands.
To be perfectly honest, the one who was truly thirsty for liquor wasn’t Chung Myung—it was the rest of them. That brat had clearly found ways to sneak drinks whenever Hwang Jong-ui brought some during training breaks.
Once they left Mount Hua and went into the mountains, Chung Myung would have had a hard time doing that too, but in any case, the ones who had gone the longest without drinking were them.
No, but still…….
Baek Cheon shook his head, trying to summon the superhuman restraint and reason of a future sect leader, but the eyes of the Five Swords all stabbed into him like arrows of fire.
Those bastard faces.
Decision, my ass. They’d already made up their minds in their heads.
“Ahem.”
With a face full of anguish, Baek Cheon cleared his throat and wiped the corner of his mouth. There was a faint trace of moisture on his sleeve.
“Then just one bottle…….”
At that small sound from the front, everyone raised their heads.
“……Monk?”
Standing there, Hye Yeon had somehow lifted the box Chung Myung had pried open in its entirety.
“O-one bottle…….”
“Huh?”
Hye Yeon blinked with those huge, bright eyes of his and asked again.
“……Nothing.”
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong stepped closer to Baek Cheon and whispered softly.
“Let’s sneak out first.”
“If possible, we should drink it outside the merchant guild. We might get caught on the way back.”
“We need to wipe away every trace. Thoroughly.”
“Ahem.”
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong discussed it, Yu I-seol chimed in with a subtle assist, and Baek Cheon coughed as though he had done nothing wrong at all.
Watching the lot of them in a daze, Chung Myung let out a weary voice.
“……You people are really something.”
Clean up the net, you idiots!
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Baek Cheon, Yu I-seol, Yoon Jong, Jo Gul, Chung Myung, Dang Soso, and Hye Yeon.
If the people of the martial world saw all of these figures seated together at one table, they would all gasp in admiration.
Beyond the generation of promising youths, there was Chung Myung—the Mount Hua’s Number One Sword, acknowledged even by Jang Il-so himself—and Baek Cheon, the Mount Hua Righteous Sword, who was drawing the world’s attention as Mount Hua’s likely future sect leader. Then there were the Mount Hua Five Swords, whose comparison to the promising youths of other sects was unthinkable, and even Hye Yeon, Shaolin’s greatest prodigy.
Truly, they were all talents fit to lead the martial world of the future. Of course it would be impressive to see them all gathered together.
Impressive, certainly. Very impressive…….
“Ka-a-a-a!”
“Wow! This goes down so smoothly!”
“Is it because it’s expensive liquor? Or because I haven’t had a drink in so long?”
“Another cup.”
“Sister! Let me pour for you! I will!”
Watching Dang Soso enthusiastically fill Yu I-seol’s cup, Baek Cheon felt a feeling he couldn’t quite put into words.
Is this really okay?
Even so, stealing liquor from someone else’s warehouse……
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
“……”
Still, before long, he broke into a pleased smile.
The moment he realized the one raising the bottle and drinking greedily over there was Hye Yeon, not Chung Myung, all such worries became meaningless.
Let’s not think about it.
But then……
“Krrr!”
Damn. This liquor’s good. It really sticks to the mouth.
Baek Cheon, having given up on thinking, tossed back a cup of liquor with relish and turned toward Chung Myung with a loosened expression.
Glug-glug-glug-glug.
He drank well. Far too well.
Chung Myung was downing liquor as if he were a man who had wandered the desert for days and finally found a village and water.
“Krrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
When he finally pulled the empty bottle from his mouth with a pop and revealed his face, it made Baek Cheon think, in some vague way, that perhaps happiness in life wasn’t such a complicated thing after all.
“Agh. I really thought I was going to die.”
“……No one has ever died from not drinking.”
“I almost became the first one.”
“……I just said it won’t happen.”
Better not even talk.
“More importantly…….”
With a rather serious face, Baek Cheon looked at Chung Myung and spoke.
“What do you think will happen now?”
“Hm? Why are you suddenly asking that? We were drinking fine.”
“The Four Hegemons Alliance.”
Thinking of them, a shadow naturally fell over Baek Cheon’s face.
“From what I hear, their side doesn’t seem to be in easy shape either. Do you think they can clean up this situation?”
Chung Myung ran a hand over his chin, where a line of liquor had dripped.
“Hmm.”
Then he set the bottle down beside him. The eyes he lifted were slightly narrowed.