Cheongyeoljeon
The boy had grown up hearing the same useless remark over and over from the people around him: “You’re awfully lucky.” It rang in his ears so often it might as well have been hammered in.
Of course, it wasn’t the kind of luck that won lotteries or changed a man’s life overnight. It was only the little things. The kind of luck that made you pick up a dropped coin by chance while walking down the street, or the kind that let you cram the night before an exam and somehow still end up with a report card that had no business being that decent.
Luck, but only just. The sort that came up a little short.
“Where the hell is this place?”
So when the man died in a traffic accident and woke up in another world, it was obvious what had happened.
His luck had kicked in. Hard.
* * *
There had once been a game called Cheongyeoljeon. A wuxia RPG that had been wildly popular for a time among the more obsessive fans.
It had everything: a wide range of martial arts, a high degree of freedom, branching storylines depending on your choices, and a combat system that mixed turn-based and real-time action in a way that was oddly addictive.
Which was exactly why I had once thrown away my assignments and my grades alike and spent the night completely absorbed in it.
Beijing.
The capital of the Ming Dynasty, the center of the Zhongyuan Wulin, and, above all, the place where Cheongyeoljeon held its final battle.
“Huh.”
I’d never once imagined I’d come to Beijing after death, much less in another man’s body.
And not even to some futuristic city of soaring towers, but to a place lined with elegant tiled roofs and old wooden buildings.
Paeng Yeohun.
Self-proclaimed number one scoundrel in the world, eldest son of the Hebei Paeng Clan, and a brat who had lived off the clan’s power while running wild.
In other words, the owner of the body I had possessed.
“Of all the characters in the world, it had to be this bastard….”
Unburnable trash. Trash that couldn’t even be recycled. That sort of thing.
Those were the nicknames attached to Paeng Yeohun, the single worst extra in Cheongyeoljeon.
He’d been fooled by the empty promise that he might someday be made clan head of the Hebei Paeng Clan, and then went and committed an absurdly stupid act.
He barred his father’s office, demanded a private audience, and then threatened him into handing over the position of clan head.
It was a ridiculous plan built on the baseless confidence that his father, who doted on him, would surely go along with it.
Needless to say, it failed.
He had defied the master of the clan and even threatened him.
The price should have been paid with his head, but in the end the clan head’s mercy as his own father spared his life. Instead of death, Yeohun was crippled—his dantian destroyed—and exiled from the clan.
And even then, he showed no gratitude. Ignoring the favor shown to him, he tried to take revenge on the Paeng Clan with the help of the Demonic Cult.
He drove the Hebei Paeng Clan to the brink of destruction, only for his revenge to fail at the protagonist’s hands, and in the end he met his end by his younger sister’s sword.
In short, every last move he made in the game was soaked in filth. That was Paeng Yeohun.
He was so grotesque that the developers later even came up with a half-baked excuse: “Paeng Yeohun was being controlled by the Demonic Cult’s evil art, Gu Poison~”
Back when I was just a player, he’d been nothing more than a walking punch line. But the moment that character became me, the story changed.
“So I died and came back, only to end up on a timer anyway.”
The moment I’d possessed this body was the very moment Paeng Yeohun had been thrown out of the clan. In other words, the moment his dantian had been destroyed.
Which meant the Gu Poison planted in his brain by the Demonic Cult was still there in my head.
In practical terms, the Demonic Cult had my life by the throat.
“Status window.”
The instant I muttered the useless command, a translucent window appeared in front of me as if it had been waiting.
Paeng Yeohun’s status window was pathetic.
Level 1. Just one.
When even ordinary people in Cheongyeoljeon were around level 3 or 4, this was really beyond saving.
“Does this bastard, being one of the Five Great Clans, not even have basic external training?”
How was a martial artist only at Strength 8 and Health 12? It was grim.
Still, there was some comfort in the fact that he had two traits, which was rare enough for a level 1 character.
Granted, one of those traits was utterly useless for actually surviving, but that was a minor issue.
“At least the goal is clear.”
The Demonic Cult’s uprising was about a year from now.
Until then, I had to find some way to get this idiot to remove the Gu Poison he’d had planted in his own head without even understanding what it was.
* * *
Clink.
“Your pay for today.”
A few copper coins landed with a jingle on my open palm.
“That’s it?”
I narrowed my eyes at the faded coins resting in my hand.
It was hard to believe that all the sweat I’d poured out over the last several hours was worth only this much.
“That’s more than fair. If you don’t like it, give it back. Next!”
The man glared at me harshly.
“No, but this is a little—”
“Next!”
“Quit wasting time and move!”
“You’re the only one in a hurry? I’m busy too!”
As the argument dragged on, complaints began rippling through the line behind us.
“Ugh.”
With the whole burden of their irritation turning on me at once, I had no choice but to step back.
I opened my palm again. The faded coins glimmered pitifully.
Ten nyang.
Ten nyang was about enough to cover a room with a bed that was little more than a wooden frame stuffed with straw, and in Beijing’s murderous price climate—where a bowl of knife-cut noodles made with mystery meat broth cost five nyang—it was nowhere near enough to live like a human being.
“Looks like I’m not sleeping in a real bed tonight, either.”
I clenched the coins and shoved them roughly into my pocket.
It had been a month since I entered Cheongyeoljeon. Not exactly a short span of time.
And in all that time, I hadn’t exactly accomplished much in Beijing.
Not that I’d made no progress. It just amounted to very little.
Right now, I was nothing more than a low-life surviving one day at a time.
“Maybe I should just eat.”
With ten nyang, I couldn’t afford a decent place to sleep, but I could at least eat a solid dinner.
It was a matter of choosing what mattered. If I gave up a comfortable bed, I got a filling meal in return.
After a brief moment of thought, I settled my decision for the day and headed without hesitation toward the inn I always used.
Gurim Inn. The kind of place you could find anywhere in the Zhongyuan Wulin. It was old and worn in places, but by these standards it was actually fairly clean.
“Welcome!”
When I pushed open the shabby door and stepped inside, the familiar voice of the serving boy greeted me.
I didn’t need to raise my voice or bother shouting my order across the room.
I just took a seat, set five copper coins on the table, and waited a moment.
“Your food’s here!”
Before long, the serving boy came over, scooped up the coins with uncanny speed, and set down the food.
On the table sat buns filled with some unidentified meat and a jug of bamboo-leaf green liquor.
Neither tasted all that great, but for just five nyang, the quantity alone made it a feast.
“Do you have a room?”
I took a bite of a bun and casually broached the subject with the serving boy.
“There’s the room you always use, young master.”
“I’ll take it.”
“That’ll be five nyang.”
One of the good things about Gurim Inn was not only that you could get a decent meal for five nyang, but also that you could get a fairly decent room for the same price.
Of course, “room” mostly meant a partition thrown up inside the stable, but at this point it might as well have been heaven for someone like me.
“By the way, did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
The moment I shoved the last bun into my mouth, a tense voice that didn’t quite fit the lively inn atmosphere caught my ear.
That was another reason I liked Gurim Inn. If you sat quietly and ate, stories from the surrounding tables—what was going on in the world—would reach your ears whether you wanted them to or not. And sometimes there were stories so interesting you forgot whatever you were doing.
“They say Chuhongeom escaped.”
“Chuhongeom? You mean the same Chuhongeom who single-handedly wiped out the Baekak Sect?”
“Yeah.”
“The man they caught by the Martial Alliance escaped? Nonsense.”
“Then you’re calling me a liar?”
“No, but the Martial Alliance is the Martial Alliance. How would a prisoner get away from them?”
“I’m telling you, I heard something.”
The two men’s voices grew louder and louder.
They’d had a few drinks without realizing it, and the alcohol was giving their voices more and more force.
Chuhongeom.
I was sure I’d heard that name before.
In Cheongyeoljeon, where all kinds of records existed, the protagonist could access most of them.
Chuhongeom.
After single-handedly crushing an entire sect, he was arrested by the Martial Alliance and imprisoned in the dungeon.
Then he disappeared.
That was all there was in the records about him.
“Hmm. Isn’t that just a rumor?”
“Has this guy lived his whole life getting tricked?”
“No, but it doesn’t make sense. No matter how strong Chuhongeom is, he got away from the Martial Alliance’s grasp?”
“If you don’t want to believe it, then don’t!”
Like the other man said, rumors in the marketplace always grew meatier and more exaggerated as they spread.
It wasn’t easy to swallow a rumor whole.
Especially if you knew this was the world of Cheongyeoljeon. Then it was even less plausible.
As I’d said before, if I went by the original history I knew, Chuhongeom escaping from the Martial Alliance’s custody was impossible.
Just a rumor, then.
Or maybe the historian who wrote the record had been lazy.
Either way, it wasn’t something I needed to care about.
That was the secret to surviving a long time.
Don’t waste attention on useless rumors.
There was no need to rush in and snuff out a candle just because it looked like it might burn out on its own.
So my interest in the rumor that some mad expert was wandering around Beijing should have ended there.
“Well, that may be true, but if it’s a lie, do you really think that proud little Martial Alliance would lower its tail and put a bounty on Chuhongeom’s head?”
“Really? They put out a bounty?”
“That’s right. I heard they’re offering gold to anyone who kills or captures Chuhongeom.”
Clink!
Using the man’s words as a side dish, I drained the rest of the bamboo-leaf green liquor in one go.
The story had been interesting enough that the drink really went down easily.
I might actually sleep well tonight.
Good conversation, good food, hard labor.
I’d probably sleep soundly tonight.
“Hey, can we talk for a bit?”
Just as I was shutting off my interest in the rumor and preparing to get up.
Someone suddenly rested a hand on my shoulder and forced me back into my seat.
“...You’re a face I don’t know.”
I tilted my head, looking at the man pressing down on my shoulder.
He was a stranger. Of course, I didn’t exactly know many people in the first place.
“Well, you can get to know me now, can’t you? You look to be in fine shape.”
The stranger smiled faintly.
“Ah.”
Realizing what he wanted, I answered with a bitter smile instead.
Strangely enough, every stranger who approached me when I looked like this had the same purpose, and none of them even bothered trying to hide it.
“You’ve got the wrong—”
Just as I opened my mouth to wave him off.
[“Well, you can get to know me now, can’t you? You look to be in fine shape.”]
[Challenge: Get lost.]
[Let it slide (10): You’ve got the wrong person.]
[Ignore it (15): ……]
A translucent window popped up before my eyes.
Son of a bitch.
That was the only thing I could say about the translucent window in front of me.