Chapter 46
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: [Side Story] How Those Men Reached the Peak (2)
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Unhak felt ashamed.
He was ashamed of his pettiness, unable to sincerely congratulate his friend's achievement from the depths of his heart.
Ultimately, he was ashamed of the frustration of reaching the Peak realm later than all his other friends—or perhaps never reaching it at all.
He was ashamed of his arrogance, believing he had trained harder and more diligently than anyone else.
But the shame was fleeting.
More powerfully than that.
Petty jealousy, frustration, and humiliation overwhelmed Unhak's heart.
He had believed that effort never betrayed you.
When others rested, spent time enjoying women, or idled away their days gambling, he trained.
Of course, lately, he'd been a bit neglectful while hanging out with his friends.
No, no.
We hung out together!
Why did only you guys reach the Peak!
I want to reach the Peak too!
His honest feelings stabbed at his chest like thorns.
The clouds where the crane frolicked grew thick with moisture, as if rain would pour down at any moment.
Unhak holed up in the training hall all day.
He wasn't hungry.
How could he blame starvation?
Maybe his effort had been lacking.
Maybe he'd missed something others saw.
He just stared at the wall.
Only when he was so famished he felt like he might collapse did he finally swallow a single rice ball dry, without water.
Guilt surged up his spine instead of fullness.
When the itch became unbearable, he grabbed his staff and swung it countless times at the wooden dummies in the training hall.
A hundred times, a thousand, and beyond counting.
Blisters formed on his hands, burst open, healed just enough, then tore again, blood pouring freely—but he paid it no mind.
But.
No enlightenment came.
Day after day, two days passed.
His body showed no change.
The clothes he wore began to reek.
Suddenly, Unhak wrinkled his nose at the stench piercing his senses, filling the entire training hall.
The stink was bothersome.
The stink.
The stink was bothersome.
The stink was starting to bother him.
"Ah──"
He finally realized it.
What he had been missing.
How could someone born a mere beggar.
Think the stink bothered him?
Was he truly a beggar?
Did he even qualify to call himself a Beggars' Sect disciple?
What meaning did this knot hanging on his body hold? Was it a symbol of a righteous sect? Not a beggar?
Unhak left the training hall as if entranced.
"Are you alright──"
"Geum-hyung, my mind has never been clearer than it is now."
A friend he'd met at the Hundred Flowers Academy.
They hadn't spent that much time together.
But he was a friend with whom he could bare his soul, now looking at him with genuine worry.
That feeling filled him with joy.
Judging by his appearance, he'd even waited out front until Unhak emerged.
Unhak just smiled, clapped his shoulder, and walked on.
Yes.
How could he harbor even a speck of jealousy toward such a friend?
Did someone else taking a step ahead prove his own inadequacy?
Everyone starts from different lines.
And innate talents differ.
Each person's gifts vary too.
For a mere beggar.
What did the height of realms matter? Or whether the academy's meals tasted good or not?
He shrugged off the long robe embroidered with the Beggars' Sect symbol.
It had once been pristine, but now it was soaked in sweat and sour-smelling. Still, he'd relied on that one garment to slip out of the academy.
The Beggars' Sect disciples in Shaanxi were mostly from the Pure Garment Division.
They wore clean clothes and lived more like martial artists bound by the name "Beggars' Sect" than actual beggars.
Thus, their haunts weren't beggar slums but places like taverns and gambling dens tied to various interests.
Unhak had belonged to the Pure Garment Division too.
Until now, he'd been a Beggars' Sect disciple, not a beggar.
But.
At this moment.
He wanted to become a beggar, not a Beggars' Sect disciple.
He went to the dampest, most foul-aired corner of the slums that people ignored—the place where beggars not even affiliated with the sect lived—and lay down on the ground without a word.
"Tsk tsk, how did a young fellow end up drifting here in such a state?"
"Haha... Life hasn't been easy."
Having discarded the cord binding his hair and even the shoes wrapping his feet, Unhak looked every bit the beggar.
Though his soles were swollen and bleeding profusely, he roughly wrapped them in filthy rags he wouldn't have glanced at before.
At the very bottom, he found his place.
And melted into it naturally, as if he'd always been a local there.
The one who looked after Unhak particularly well was an uncle surnamed Jang whose name he didn't know.
"I'm heading to Park's inn to beg for a dumpling or two—want to come along?"
"Hehe, let's go."
He followed Uncle Jang to begging spots, flashing sleazy grins and bowing his head.
"These dumplings are the finest in the world!"
He bit into one stuffed with nothing but cheap sugar, savoring a sliver of happiness from the sweet seep.
"Argh, bad luck!"
Splash!
"Whew, shaking off the filth again."
"Haha, you rascal Unhak. You sure know how to live."
Even as filth splashed over him from the haphazard toss, he kept his bright smile.
Then he followed Uncle Jang to a stream that could hardly be called clean, roughly washed himself, wrung out his clothes, dried them in the shade.
Wearing only underclothes and a straw mat, he lounged in a sunny clearing, lazily scratching at lice crawling over his skin before dozing off.
Unhak let go of himself.
A day passed.
Two days.
Suddenly, he remembered why he was there.
It was attachment.
If desire alone led to it, how could it be true enlightenment?
Sometimes, things only appear when you let go.
The moment Unhak's mind emptied completely.
He sat in the lotus position without realizing it.
"Huh? Unhak, what's up?"
"Hey, you idiot! Back off! Our Unhak's been extraordinary from the start—he's ascending!"
"Ascending? Can even beggars become immortals?"
"Shut your trap and scram! You're disturbing him!"
The beggar friends he'd shared joys and sorrows with knew nothing of martial arts, illiterate as they were.
But they weren't cold-hearted enough to ignore the sudden change in Unhak.
No, they were warm people.
As the surrounding beggars gripped crude clubs unfit even to be called staffs, glaring into the empty space where no one approached.
Unhak finally filled the spotless vessel of his mind with something new.
At the very bottom settled the essence.
He didn't know about the cycle of reincarnation, but as a human birth, his first cry.
The final wail shouted alone after his mother departed this world at the end of labor, with no one to hear.
- Heh heh, this newborn's got a voice that's the best under heaven.
Whether chance or fate, he was picked up, nursed, and raised.
The lowliest beggar who couldn't even write, but he was his lifesaver and father.
Not understanding its meaning, just picking the coolest-sounding name he'd heard in rumors—"Unhak"—that was his father too.
But unfortunately, the martial world was harsh for an old beggar without a speck of qi to survive, and soon after weaning, he was left alone.
Thanks to his mother's grace in birthing him, or his father's in saving him.
With excellent meridians and sharp wits, he soon caught the Beggars' Sect's eye.
From then on, no more eating rats raw from hunger.
No dunking his head in mud from thirst.
No skin chafing bloody in ragged clothes.
His boyhood felt like a dream now.
His youth and young adulthood had been clean, noble, and mature.
Not wrong, but.
It had stripped him of his deprivations.
So Unhak let go.
Status, honor.
He shed all the shackles defining him and returned to being just a beggar.
Not as noble as a crane soaring above the clouds.
But enlightenment gained at the lowest depths, where fortune turns and learning ends.
"...So you gave all your saved money as alms to the other slum beggars and now you're asking to borrow living expenses?"
Geum Sihyeon stared in disbelief at his friend, who—like all the others returning every few days with some enlightenment—spouted nonsense.
Ignoring him, Unhak murmured with an enlightened expression.
"What comes freely goes freely. Give, and greater blessings return── Gah! Ack!"
"Get out, you beggar bastard. Dig it up from the ground? Living off begging made the world seem easy? Do you know how much our family invests in relief efforts!"
Despite Geum Sihyeon's blows, Unhak screamed but smiled like a lofty crane.
Looking back from the end of enlightenment, his friend's eyes held only worry for him.
"Geum-hyung, getting that angry might let the darkness consume you."
Geum Sihyeon sighed.
"Whatever. Write down how much you need for yourself and to feed your beggar friends. I can manage that much."
At the warmth hidden in the gruff words, Unhak burst into laughter without realizing it.
That feeling filled him with joy.