The Nine Rings and the Flow of Gold
After everyone had left the Family Head Hall.
Namgung Cheon's gaze turned toward Namgung Mugang, seated on the Grand Elder's seat, and Jegal Hwa standing at his side.
"If there is anything you wish to question me about, I will answer with an open ear."
At those words, Namgung Mugang slowly descended from his seat and stood before his son.
His unreadable eyes swept over Namgung Cheon from head to toe.
Before long, a flicker of something new entered Namgung Mugang's gaze.
There was nothing that needed asking.
What had happened in Hunan, what kind of battles had been fought—and how much blood the blade in that scabbard had drunk.
The changed energy alone told him everything.
As the two men held each other's gaze, Namgung Cheon drew two objects from his robe and held them out to Namgung Mugang.
"These came from the Ghost Mask Pact Master's secret cache."
A single book and a wooden tablet.
Namgung Mugang's eyebrows stirred at the sight.
Namgung Cheon did not miss that shift, and gestured toward the book.
"This martial art is a sinister technique that devours the user's innate qi."
Then he pointed to the wooden tablet.
"This crest, however... it is something I have never seen before. And so, I ask."
Namgung Cheon's eyes remained fixed on the tablet as he continued.
"This symbol of nine overlapping circles. What exactly is it?"
Namgung Mugang's gaze lingered on the crest carved into the wooden tablet.
His eyes wavered.
But only for a moment.
Soon he had erased every trace of emotion, his face returning to its usual indifference.
"Forget it."
A single sentence weighted with a gravity that brooked no defiance.
"The time has not yet come for you to know."
...So that is how it is.
Namgung Cheon's eyes turned cold.
He had been commanded to silence. Which meant there was only one reason.
This secret was either vast enough to shake the entire Namgung Clan to its foundations, or his father had judged it too early—too much for him to bear.
Even so, Namgung Cheon did not back down.
The whole reason he had brought out the tablet instead of hiding it was to ask this very question.
"Could it, perhaps, be related to the long absences you have taken from the clan, Father?"
At that question, Namgung Mugang's gaze finally lifted from the tablet to his son.
A long silence passed.
The air within the Family Head Hall sank cold as ice.
At last—
"...It is not unrelated."
That was Namgung Mugang's answer.
"I understand."
It was enough.
To press further would be overstepping. Namgung Cheon knew exactly where the line lay that he must not cross.
As the mood grew heavy, Jegal Hwa gently interposed herself.
"Let us leave the talk there. You have been through a long and hard journey—rest well."
Namgung Cheon rose without another word and bowed with proper courtesy.
Then he turned to leave the hall—but just before the threshold, his steps came to a sudden halt.
"Ah."
Namgung Cheon turned his head toward Jegal Hwa.
"What is it?"
"I met Grandmother in Longzhong."
"Yes, I know."
Namgung Cheon fell silent for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully, then spoke.
"Grandmother told me a great deal about you, Mother. About how, as a child, you tore apart the flowerbed where the Blood Heart Flowers bloomed..."
...!
The eyes of Jegal Hwa—always so tranquil—wavered violently for an instant.
But Namgung Cheon did not stop.
"I also heard that you turned the entire clan upside down over a marriage negotiation."
A faint blush crept across Jegal Hwa's cheeks.
It was an exceedingly rare sight indeed—the Marchioness of No Misdeeds, flustered enough to color.
Namgung Cheon added quietly.
"And yet..."
"Speak."
Namgung Cheon's gaze settled on her.
"Even as she spoke of it, Grandmother's expression looked delighted—yet at the same time, somehow lonely."
...Jegal Hwa's hands tightened.
Her mother's face, long forgotten, seemed to rise before her eyes, carried on her son's calm voice.
She lowered her gaze for a moment, then forced her mouth into an easy smile.
"...Mother said far more than she needed to."
Her tone was one of gentle reproach.
But the corners of her eyes, as she said it, glistened faintly.
Namgung Cheon bowed his head deeply once more.
"Then I will take my leave."
Namgung Cheon departed, and the doors of the Family Head Hall closed firmly behind him.
A strange stillness settled over the hall.
After gazing at the shut doors for a long while, Namgung Mugang spoke in a low voice.
"I had no idea she suffered so much to be betrothed."
Jegal Hwa's face flushed yet again.
Namgung Mugang gave a short laugh, then looked at the spot where Namgung Cheon had stood.
"He has changed greatly. Nothing holds him back anymore—and I see he can even throw in a jab or two."
At those words, Jegal Hwa's expression grew serious once more.
He had certainly changed.
Frighteningly so.
And that was what worried her.
That this new temperament of his might dig into that dangerous secret—the very one his father sought to bury.
"You warned him, but..."
Jegal Hwa let out a quiet sigh.
"Judging by the path he has walked until now, I doubt he can be stopped."
"I know."
Namgung Mugang spoke.
A bitter smile hung at the corner of his mouth.
"I am the one who made him that way."
Jegal Hwa grasped the meaning behind those words at once.
The regret and guilt over the past—over not trusting his son and leaving him adrift for so long.
Every one of those emotions was dissolved in her husband's bitter smile.
But unlike her husband's bitterness, a smile spread across Jegal Hwa's lips instead.
She remembered the Namgung Mugang of her youth.
The lonely wolf who had cast off the shackles of heir to the World's Greatest Sword Family and wandered the world with a single blade.
The Namgung Cheon of today looked exactly like that man.
You were the same way, my love. That very look...
Swallowing the words she could not bring herself to say, she quietly laid a hand on her husband's shoulder.
The courtyard before Namgung Cheon's residence, wreathed in the blue breath of dawn.
The sound of cleaving air sliced through the stillness, cutting the chill from the morning air.
Clang—!
Two blades met in midair and parted.
Mujin's sword was fast and sharp.
Its stealthy yet lethal trajectory was the hallmark of the Absolute Extinction Sword.
"Hah!"
With a short battle cry, Mujin retracted his blade and thrust in once more.
The sword tip trembled minutely, birthing dozens of phantom images.
A dazzling display of sword-light, real and false hopelessly entangled.
Yet Namgung Cheon found the true blade with perfect precision amid that dizzying storm of steel.
Then he raised his own sword.
Very slowly. Very softly.
Wuuuung.
The air around Changcheon's blade grew heavy and dense, pressing down like a settling mountain.
Mujin's onrushing sword slowed abruptly, as though caught in a bog.
Namgung Cheon did not let the opening slip.
The gently rotating blade stopped for an instant—then shot out in a perfectly straight line.
Flash.
A blue streak of light grazed past Mujin's throat.
Thud.
Mujin leapt backward, heaving for breath.
A chill lingered at the nape of his neck—the fine hairs there had been shorn away.
"...Hoo. I truly can't keep up with you anymore, young master."
Mujin sheathed his sword and clicked his tongue.
While he stood drenched in sweat, Namgung Cheon's breathing remained perfectly calm, without the slightest disturbance.
"You change by the day, young master."
Even in the face of Mujin's admiration, Namgung Cheon coolly slid Changcheon back into its scabbard.
"You are no different yourself."
Namgung Cheon's eyes turned to Mujin's sword.
"Your blade has grown lighter."
"...You can feel that?"
Mujin gave a wry smile as he looked down at his own weapon.
"When I emptied my mind, the sword filled itself. I think I finally understand a little of what my master meant by the meaning of Extinction."
Wiping away his sweat, Mujin laughed heartily.
Namgung Cheon watched him in silence for a moment.
A sword that fills itself of its own accord, once everything else has been emptied out.
For a martial artist, there could be no finer achievement.
Through this journey into the Jianghu, both men had raised their martial arts another step higher.
But martial strength alone could never overturn the world.
Namgung Cheon's gaze left Mujin and drifted toward the gap in the door of his quarters.
Through the crack, a large wooden chest sitting on a table caught his eye.
Here was a problem of a thoroughly practical nature that demanded solving at once, power or no power.
His brow furrowed.
Force was not the only power that moved the world.
If anything, today's Jianghu was a place where invisible chains of gold were woven far more tightly than in the old days.
Which meant money carried a very great deal of weight.
I'll need to give this some real thought.
Having finished his sparring with Mujin, Namgung Cheon washed away the sweat and entered his room, sitting down before the table to open the chest.
Flash.
Golden light spilled across the entire room.
Gold ingots and treasures brought back from the Ghost Mask Pact.
It was a fortune that would easily amount to tens of thousands of nyang by even a conservative estimate.
Enough money for an ordinary man to live in idle luxury for generations.
But to Namgung Cheon's eyes, it was nothing more than cold lumps of metal.
He picked up a single gold ingot.
The heft that pressed into his palm, the cold touch of metal seeping into his skin.
In my past life, all transactions were conducted with this gold.
Gold had been currency in itself—universally accepted.
An absolute value with no room for doubt and no need of proof.
But now things were different.
In the decades that had passed, the way the Jianghu counted its coin had changed completely from what he remembered.
Namgung Cheon recalled leafing through the ledgers of the Baekcheon Merchant Guild.
They didn't settle accounts in raw gold or silver notes.
Even in transactions involving tens of thousands of nyang, physical gold and silver almost never changed hands.
What filled their place were promissory notes.
Scraps of paper, carted away by the wagonload, standing in for mountains of gold.
The way money moves has changed.
Namgung Cheon turned the ingot over in his hands, lost in thought.
If he carried this gold out and tried to buy something, what would happen?
Would a merchant at the marketplace joyfully hand over his goods at the sight of it?
No.
Nine times out of ten, the man would wave him off before anything else.
An ingot whose weight could not be assayed, whose origin could not be proven.
Accept such a thing carelessly, and the consequences would be more than any merchant could bear.
Money he could not freely spend, however much he wished to.
That was not money at all—only a heavy stone.
But letting all of this sit and rot would be the greater folly.
Money is power.
But money that stands still is no power at all.
And so—
The money must be made to flow.
He had to transform this vast fortune into another kind of sword—one he could wield at will, whenever and wherever he pleased.
Namgung Cheon pushed the ingot back into the chest.
Thud.
A dull sound echoed through the room.
I might as well admit it.
He did not yet fully understand how money was handled in this era—the intricate channels through which it flowed.
For pretending to know what one does not know is the greatest foolishness of all.
Which meant he needed someone who could give him the answer to this problem.
And as it happens, there is exactly such a man.
A faint smile played at the corner of Namgung Cheon's mouth.
Baek Du-gwang.
Yes—if it were him, he would know.
How to channel these lumps of gold into the world as efficiently and as quietly as possible.
And how money must be handled in the world of today.
The Heavenly Demon of Namgung
Author | Baek Rihaeng
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dream Books
Address | 7th Floor, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
ISBN | 979-11-7306-734-1
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