I've Been Assigned a Mission (2)
The sovereign of all under heaven.
The meaning of that phrase shifts a little with the era and the circumstances, but usually it refers to the Emperor.
Unless King Gyeong was some tyrannical, unfilial lunatic about to declare "All your base are belong to me," there was only one thing those words could mean.
The Crown Princess.
Not merely a child of the Emperor, but the heir formally designated as the next sovereign.
And that seat, currently vacant, was precisely what King Gyeong had her eye on.
"...Right. Well. Good luck with that."
"What a lukewarm reaction. I went out of my way to share this with you, you know. The Commander-in-Chief beside you has her jaw hanging so low it might drop clean off."
"Her jaw doesn't drop. Not even at that."
I'd never tested it, but I figured you could pry it open with an actual blade and she'd stay perfectly composed.
That was her body, anyway. Her mind, though, had clearly taken some real damage.
Hm.
Sharp ears, that one.
Of course I knew how sensitive a subject this was. All the more so for the Imperial Guard, whose absolute obedience to the Emperor was doctrine.
But whether King Gyeong chased her Crown Princess dream or not, honestly, if we were being blunt about it... that wasn't my problem, was it?
"Everyone who serves the imperial household must keep their senses razor-sharp on this matter, even the humblest servant. It's the first time I've met someone who talks about it the way you do."
"Someone has to take that seat eventually, no? And it's His Majesty who decides who. Why on earth would I weigh in on it?"
"You will weigh in. We are already bound to a shared fate, you and I."
With that, King Gyeong waved the imperial edict in her hand.
We, she'd said.
Since when were King Gyeong and I on a "we" basis?
At this point, calling it guanxi wouldn't be an exaggeration, would it?
Not happy about it one bit. Damn it all.
"One mission and we're already a community of shared destiny? Isn't that a bit dramatic?"
"Do you truly think so? If things go wrong, this King will dump every ounce of responsibility onto your head. In other words, if we sink, we sink together."
"...Your Highness. Are you threatening a member of the Imperial Guard to my face?"
Ye Seon, having finally recovered her senses, cut in sharply, but King Gyeong only gave a careless little shrug in reply.
"I wouldn't exactly deny it. As you know, this King has staked her life on this matter. I simply couldn't stand by and watch the one carrying out the mission treat it like someone else's errand."
"That's exactly what puzzles me. A job this small can't possibly be enough to make you Crown Princess, Your Highness."
"I think so too. But... hmm, no. I'll hold my tongue from here on."
King Gyeong let the sentence dangle, deliberately, meaningfully.
It was the speech pattern of every ranker-torturing MMO questgiver in existence.
No, seriously, if you're going to talk, talk all the way to the end.
Why cut off mid-sentence and leave people grinding their teeth?
I've staked my life on this, she says, sounding all grand about it, but at the end of the day it just meant she'd be using me for her own self-preservation. Frankly, all it left me with was irritation and resentment.
Not that there was anything I could actually do about it.
Thinking that way just made my neck throb harder. Son of a bitch.
"Bear this in mind. Succeed, and a great reward will follow. Fail, and this King will find whatever means necessary to have you dishonorably discharged."
"I'll do my very best."
Now that I looked again, she wasn't a son of a bitch at all — she was a savior. A hero.
Suddenly I could see a halo glowing behind King Gyeong's back.
Oh absolutely, I'll give it my very best.
My very best at getting discharged, that is.
At your service, Your Highness. At your service.
Maybe "staked her life on it" hadn't been an empty boast, because with King Gyeong's full backing, the travel preparations moved along at breakneck speed.
We departed in the quiet of dawn.
Not that I was fleeing some crime, but sneaking off on an infiltration mission out the front gate in broad daylight would have felt... off, somehow.
"Did you forget to pack anything? Did you double-check the rations? Is the gold-cliff elixir pouch full? You hid emergency money in your shoe sole properly, right? And don't take off the mask no matter what, and—"
"That's enough. Are you his mother or something?"
"Wei Jilian, how can you be so heartless! Your comrade is heading off somewhere far, sick, and you can't even spare a shred of concern!"
"Where am I sick?"
"The young master's head always hurts."
"Mun Gyeong, do you want to die?"
"Look at this and tell me you're not worried! Do you even have a heart?!"
"Of course I'm worried. For all the poor bastards who'll run into this lunatic out there."
I'd planned to slip away alone, but somehow they'd found out, and Ye Lin and Wei Jilian had come to see me off. Wei Jilian had clearly been dragged here by Ye Lin, but Ye Lin...
"...Wait, weren't you in seclusion? How did you even know to come?"
"I snuck out, obviously!"
Heavens and earth and all the gods.
Does this woman not know what seclusion means?
Or has murim gone so MZ these days that even closed-door cultivation comes with scheduled breaks?
No way. Impossible.
"You're in deep trouble when you get back."
"The problem is my seclusion?! You were about to leave on a journey that long all by yourself!"
"Am I invisible here, may I ask?"
"Mun Gyeong is, if we're being technical, basically a default option."
"Ah, forget it. I'm too worried. I've decided. I'm coming with—"
"Are you insane? Desertion's a serious crime, you water buffallo boy."
Wei Jilian reined in the rampaging Ye Lin.
Never in my life did I think I'd witness Wei Jilian holding somebody's leash.
Well, we'd enlisted together and never once been apart since, so it wasn't exactly incomprehensible.
Besides, this assignment was a long haul — over a year, wasn't it?
Assuming the mission went smoothly, that is.
The fact was, I'd be back before Ye Lin's seclusion even ended.
"Hic, Borae... you take good care of your master, you hear me?"
Snort.
As Ye Lin clung and blubbered, the horse standing beside me gave an irritated toss of its head, ears flicking like it couldn't be bothered.
A frame one and a half times the size of an ordinary steed.
One glance at that faintly blue-tinted coat told anyone with eyes this was a famed steed.
A military horse my maternal family had sent as an enlistment gift — and a famed one at that.
I'd named it Seborai (世寶來) after a beloved steed from my previous life, but the sound of it was so clunky I just called it Borae.
And the horse itself — or the horse themself? — seemed to prefer it that way too.
"Still, technically I'm the escort here."
"Which means you're less reliable than a beast of burden."
Or, alternatively, that Borae was just that dependable.
Come to think of it, Borae's market value probably exceeded Mun Gyeong's labor costs.
Special meals at every feeding. The stall cleaned spotless, without fail. Grooming and coat care and...
Looking at it this way, the beast had an absolutely royal existence. The upkeep alone was no joke. Maybe I should have named it Lamborghini (嵐步鏤騏泥) after all, instead of Seborai.
"Anyway, I'm off. See you around."
I couldn't quite bring myself to say "see you next year."
Because I fully intended to be back before then. Or to be discharged so fast there wouldn't be time to come back. That option didn't sound bad either.
I swung up into Borae's saddle and took the reins.
"You be careful out there! I'll send carrier pigeons, so you write back regularly, you hear?!"
"Don't bother. Too much hassle."
"Bring me spring books when you come back. I saw a shop called something like Baekyeon Bookshop — they had plenty of stuff in my taste."
"I'll buy them, then burn them right in front of your eyes."
"You son of a bitch."
Ten years after my reincarnation.
For the first time, I set foot into the murim proper.
What was the most inconvenient thing about being reborn in the gender-reversed murim?
The food? The plumbing?
None of the above.
"This horseback riding is disgustingly slow, for real."
Travel. That was it.
Each city was big enough to swallow the entire Korean Peninsula whole, yet the only modes of transport were horses and your own two feet.
Rations, night watches, weather — rain, snow, all of it.
In this backward murim with neither airplanes nor even cars, moving city to city was — setting aside anyone's martial skill level — an epic ordeal pure and simple, enough to make your skin crawl.
If I hadn't had Borae, I'd have seriously contemplated deserting.
Not that having Borae made the journey comfortable.
The saddle was hard as a rock, the ride quality was trash, and above all — your crotch hurts after hours in the saddle. I seriously considered strapping a cushion onto the thing. Murim saddles just have way too little padding.
"Must be nice. I don't even have that problem."
"If you're so jealous, you should've bought your own ride."
"You son of a— you're the one who dragged me out here..."
Leaving Mun Gyeong's grumbling behind me, I gazed at the city gate visible in the distance.
"Yunnan, at last."
The journey alone had taken about a month. And that was with us pushing the pace the whole way.
Wait. I'd have to make the exact same trip coming back, wouldn't I?
Somebody build me an airplane already. Seriously.
"By the way, why are we going to Yunnan? I thought the Heavenly Martial Academy was in Jiangxi Province."
"Mun Gyeong. Use that head of yours. If you were the Heavenly Martial Academy, would you just admit every punk who strolls up saying 'Let me enroll~'? 'Oh, he's the son of the Mo family next door, a friend of Gang's family, his classmate too.' They'd want the bare minimum of identity verification before letting anyone through, no?"
"And how do you verify that?"
"You need a letter of recommendation from a sect or a clan registered with the Martial Alliance."
The Heavenly Martial Academy had supposedly been founded only a few years ago, yet it was far more meticulous and systematized than most established organizations.
Well, it was an academy heavily backed by the various powers of the Orthodox Faction — the Zhuge Clan above all — so maybe that much was only natural.
"Where are we supposed to get our hands on something like that? Shouldn't we go find the Wudang Sect or something?"
"Why would you go looking for the Wudang Sect in Hubei from here? Don't you know what Yunnan's famous for?"
"Of course. Monsters."
"..."
"...Marble? Rice noodles? The Sadoryeon?"
"It's Diancang Sect, you absolute Diancang doofus."
How does this idiot not know common knowledge that even I know?
More importantly, why does Yunnan have so many famous products? It's not exactly a tiny speck of — fine, it kind of is — but this backwater province sure has a lot going on.
"The Diancang Sect? One of the Nine Great Sects?"
"Then why couldn't you answer a second ago, if you knew that?"
"But the Diancang Sect is... well, a bit less famous, isn't it?"
"That's true."
The Huashan Sect with their dazzling plum blossom sword arts. The Shaolin, where all study begins. The Wudang Sect, masters of soft controlling hardness. The Kunlun Sect, renowned for movement arts. The Beggars' Sect, all patched rags and beggar's bowls.
It wasn't that the Diancang Sect was inferior — there were just too many famous names crowding the stage, so in the public eye they got treated as second-tier. That was the reality of it.
But a Nine Great Sect was still a Nine Great Sect.
With a recommendation letter in hand, we could deflect practically any suspicion — that was King Gyeong's judgment.
"If you can get one, sure. How exactly do you plan to get it?"
"There are ways for everything."
I've said it before, haven't I? In the end, the world runs on school ties, hometown ties, and blood ties.
I reached into my breast pocket and drew out a letter from Ye Seon.
"Apparently one of the Diancang Sect's elders is a distant relative on her mother's side."
"...The Diancang Sect. Turns out it was more formidable than I thought."
"Right? Who knew."
A sect connected by blood to a Senior 2nd Rank Commander-in-Chief. It wasn't public knowledge for a number of reasons, but the moment it came to light, the Diancang Sect's standing in the murim would be turned completely on its head.
Its reputation would drop clean past rock bottom and into the basement, sure.
I recalled the reassuring advice Ye Seon had given me before I left.
"Connections really are king."
In the imperial court or the murim alike.
A well-placed guanxi making life easy — that was an eternal, unchanging truth of this world.