They Really Came
“Geontaek!”
Yongpyeong, who had been watching the whole thing, shouted sharply toward him. But it was already too late.
“Gyaaah!”
Geontaek’s scream rang out like an echo off the mountainside. In an instant he went flying backward. The broken shovel shot into the air and split cleanly in two mid-flight.
What—what the hell?!
Yongpyeong could only stare, eyes wide. Nothing in his understanding of the world could make sense of what he had just seen. He had no idea what kind of force had even been at work.
All he had witnessed was Geontaek charging forward—and then flinging himself backward as if of his own accord.
Yoo Eunhyeon simply stood there, unmoving. Honestly, from Yongpyeong’s point of view, it looked for all the world as if Geontaek had thrown the shovel himself and launched himself through the air.
“F-Foreman?”
The laborers standing behind him were no different. They called out to the dazed Yongpyeong in bewildered voices. Only then did he snap back to himself and look at Yoo Eunhyeon.
“A m-martial artist…”
Slow on the uptake, maybe—but his judgment was exact.
Yongpyeong and the rest were ordinary men hired by the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance simply to search for a gold vein. Under normal circumstances they would never have crossed paths with the martial world. That did not mean they were ignorant of how terrifying martial artists could be.
Yongpyeong’s face turned fearful as if the bluster of a moment ago had never existed, and he bowed his head toward Yoo Eunhyeon.
“Y-Young master. This business today was never my true intent…”
It was a pitiful excuse, and he knew it—but it was the only thing he could say.
“Take all of that and go back.”
Yoo Eunhyeon jerked his chin toward the scattered gear with the same unhurried manner as before. He already understood that Yongpyeong was nothing more than a hired hand.
Doing anything further to these men would not resolve the situation, so he decided to simply let them leave.
“I am grateful for your consideration.”
The moment Eunhyeon told them to go, Yongpyeong exhaled in relief and began harrying the laborers into loading the ruined tools that still lay outside. Roughly half the cargo was already on the cart. Eunhyeon wondered briefly whether they would manage to fit it all—but they were professionals at this sort of work, and somehow every last piece made it aboard.
With Geontaek dumped on top for good measure, Yongpyeong fled as fast as the cart would carry him.
“Wow. They’re fast.”
“More impressive is that they got all of that loaded.”
“So that’s settled, then? The dumplings are going to be ice-cold.”
“Isn’t that a little small to call ‘settled’?”
“Well. They say starting is half the battle, right? In that sense, maybe we’ve already gone past settled.”
“Sometimes I genuinely can’t tell whether you’re smart or not.”
Yoo Eunhyeon shook his head and headed back inside.
“They’ll come again, won’t they?”
“Without a doubt. And next time it won’t be the likes of those guys.”
At Eunhyeon’s question, Ju Yu-ryeon stuffed the remaining dumplings into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, wiped her fingers lightly, and nodded.
Eunhyeon finished the half-dumpling still in his hand as well. Unlike Yu-ryeon, he wiped his hands cleanly before he spoke.
“So the ones who come next will be martial artists?”
“Yeah. Disciples of the Tiger-Chasing Sect, or people from the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance. Most likely both together.”
Eunhyeon thought the same. Now that they had touched the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance, this was not going to end quietly.
He traced back through the sequence of events and let out a small sigh, as if his head already ached.
“The ones who ran will have told them we’re martial artists. That’s what worries me. I can always claim I’m just a farmer—but the fact that you and Mother are from the Uiseon Suga will come out the moment anyone looks.”
“Well, yeah. Auntie is the family head’s daughter, and my mother is pretty well-known in the martial world herself. But it’s not like we had another option at the time. We couldn’t just stand there and take it when they came at us like that.”
Yu-ryeon gave a careless little shrug. There was not a trace of worry on her face.
“I’m worried about trouble landing on my mother’s family.”
By now Eunhyeon himself had come to accept that calling himself an ordinary farmer no longer quite fit.
He had no intention of leaning on his maternal relatives’ power—but if he was not going to accept their help, the least he could do was avoid causing them trouble. That was only proper.
And even if trouble did reach the Uiseon Suga, Su Hwa-seon would try to shoulder all of it herself for his sake.
That was the one thing he could not allow. Seeing the deep concern on his face, Yu-ryeon pushed the dumpling plate far aside and said,
“What’s there to worry about? The Uiseon Suga is one of the foremost great families in the martial world.”
“…”
“And even if Mom can be a little high-handed, she’s not lacking in skill. The Tiger-Chasing Sect isn’t about to pick a fight with the Uiseon Suga.”
“What about the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance? You said they’re tied to the Demonic Cult. You think they’ll just sit on their hands?”
“That depends on what the problem actually is. Still, they won’t blow it up too big. If they make too much noise, they’ll have to watch the Heavenly Martial Alliance’s reaction—never mind us. That’s the advantage of being a neutral power, I guess.”
Eunhyeon nodded as if he understood. It was true—this was exactly how the neutral factions survived.
“So you’re saying something like this won’t actually harm my mother’s family?”
“I can’t swear to it, but probably? Your family has genuinely lived here for a long time, and from the look of Auntie, there ought to be plenty of people in the village willing to speak for you.”
They had traded half-joking barbs earlier, but if anyone actually went looking for proof that the Yoo family had lived here for years, it would not be hard to find. As Yu-ryeon said, there were the people of Doryeon County—and there was also Chu Seo-gong, the merchant who bought their harvested vegetables.
“So nothing to lose sleep over, then?”
“Yeah. Based on everything we know so far, that’s about right. Of course it never hurts to be careful. They might have some other purpose.”
“Other purpose?”
“The gold vein could be a smokescreen.”
“A smokescreen? Meaning they’re actually looking for something else?”
“For a martial artist, there are things more precious than a thousand pieces of gold. Secret manuals. Rare elixirs. That sort of thing.”
“Hmm…”
“I’m just saying. Start suspecting everything one by one and there’s no end to it. Understand the possibility and stay careful—that’s enough.”
Yu-ryeon shrugged as she spoke. Eunhyeon understood her meaning well enough and nodded.
“Farming’s always been like that. The whole year’s plan is laid out solid, and you work through it while dealing with whatever variables crop up along the way. So the fewer variables, the better. It’s just habit with me.”
“Worrying isn’t a bad thing.”
“I know. Obsessing over something that hasn’t even happened yet is the real foolishness. Once you’ve chosen, you focus.”
Eunhyeon smiled quietly to himself, remembering the words he had once spoken to Sa Unsik and So Biwon.
Looking back, so many things had shifted from that single remark. From the fateful meetings with Sa Unsik and So Biwon, all the way to finally possessing true inner energy as a martial artist.
Turning those changes over in his mind, Eunhyeon realized anew just how far he had come from anything that could still be called an ordinary farmer.
Not long after, Su Hwa-seon returned. When she heard what had happened, her expression hardened.
“So that’s how it was. I thought it was strange that everything outside had been cleared away. No one was hurt?”
“There wasn’t even a chance to get hurt. Though that’s not really the problem.”
“Yes, I suppose not. This won’t end here.”
“How did things go in the village?”
“Nothing much to speak of. It’s hard to dig anything up yourself, and asking around doesn’t help—the villagers know next to nothing about the martial world. If anything, their opinion of the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance is quite good. They say the Alliance made the village prosper.”
“Tch. If their reputation’s so great, why are they only causing trouble at our house?”
After grumbling for a moment, Eunhyeon went on to tell Su Hwa-seon everything else about the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance. When she heard that information about this place was being reported to the Alliance’s upper ranks every single day, her eyes widened slightly.
“Is that so? Hmm… I’ll have to look into that.”
They talked of this and that through the evening meal, but there was nothing new worth bringing up. Only the heavy premonition remained—that because of what had happened that afternoon, something would not be long in coming.
A farmer’s morning begins early.
Perhaps the body simply senses the energy of dawn before anyone needs to wake it. Around the time the sun had only just begun to climb and drive back the dark, Yoo Eunhyeon rose from his bed. Leaving Su Hwa-seon and Ju Yu-ryeon still asleep behind him, he threw on his clothes and stepped outside.
The reason a farmer moves before first light is simple enough: working in the cool hours without the sun is easier than laboring under it.
Now that he had learned martial arts, such things no longer truly mattered to him—but habit was habit, and the work still went better at this hour.
“Maybe I’m fretting over nothing, but…”
The real reason Eunhyeon had come out so early was to prepare for the possibility of a dawn raid.
Just as a farmer’s day begins before sunrise, people who live by trade move quickly as well. Especially when information and money are involved. He had not bothered mentioning it to Su Hwa-seon or Ju Yu-ryeon, but if the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance was the one driving things, he could not rule out the chance that the board would be set far faster than expected.
“And if not, fine. Being careful never hurt anyone.”
He muttered to himself as he walked a path so wet it felt less like dew than last night’s rain. If nothing came of it, he would simply do his work and go home.
Descending toward the foot of the mountain—to the entrance of the path that climbed up to the house—Eunhyeon settled himself roughly against the base of a tree by the roadside.
It was the same stump where So Biwon had been sitting a year ago, the day they first met. Remembering that encounter, Eunhyeon rose again, gently circulating his inner energy, and began to practice the Dance of the Silent Illusion.
About a quarter of an hour passed. As the forms of Mudong Hwanmu seemed to sweep the morning mist clean away and the air slowly turned transparent, Eunhyeon stopped moving and gazed down the mountain path.
“They actually came?”
He murmured as he watched the figures approaching from below. The people coming up had already noticed him as well; without any particular surprise, they continued climbing straight toward where he stood.