A Deal with the Young Guild Master
He had made certain to miss the vitals when he drove the blade in.
Paeng Mugang's beastlike instinct had slapped the sword aside and thrown the line of the cut a little off true, but Hwa Baek corrected the path at once, and so he managed not to leave a grave wound.
The judge seemed to know the man as well. He quietly pronounced nothing but the end of the match, and the moment they were off the stage, physicians swarmed Paeng Mugang and set to treating him.
"......"
He did not spare a thought for whether he had gone too far.
Hwa Baek meant to end most of his matches the same way he had ended this one. It was so the "renown" and the "epithet" he intended to build would burn all the brighter, and so that he might manufacture even one more trivial difference between himself and the White-Faced Sword Ghost.
And it would not become any great problem. A tournament hosted by the Sichuan Tang Clan and the Daechon Merchant Guild would have physicians as solid as they came, and he had avoided every important vessel and vital point when he struck.
He was turning to step down from the stage with that thought when—
"...A fine match."
Paeng Mugang, his shirt off and a bandage wound about his abdomen, answered with effort. Whether he felt no resentment at a duel that had ended in a flash, his eyes were still full of burning heat.
"......"
Hwa Baek, who unlike Paeng Mugang had felt nothing that called for an answer to that fervor, came down from the stage.
Just then, from directly across the way, a young swordsman was approaching.
Namgung Bi.
Watching that young swordsman, whose eyes were somehow brimming with resolve, Hwa Baek thought that today, of all days, the martial world seemed thick with men overflowing with romance.
Paeng Mugang and Namgung Bi.
In the original, they were figures whose names only flickered past now and then—men who never truly appeared, their reasons for staying off the page and their circumstances merely explained. Their parts were so small that he did not know what kind of people they were. From rumors drifting on the wind, and from information no one had bothered to hide, they were known as ordinary sons of renowned houses.
There was little beyond that. Still, if he stitched the original's brief notes together with the talk of the world, it came to this.
Within a year or two Paeng Mugang would become the young clan head, and so he could not show himself often. Even on the rare occasions he appeared, his nature was good to the bone, and he offered nothing but goodwill to everyone he met.
Namgung Bi was rarer still in the record, rarer even than Paeng Mugang, because the Blood Heaven Cult kills him before the protagonist ever finishes his training. All that could be known of him was his birth house, the Namgung Clan Estate, and his elder sister, Namgung Sohee.
Namgung Bi still being alive means the Namgung Clan has not yet been driven to fury.
In the original.
False word spreads that Namgung Bi's death is tied to the Black Lotus Alliance, and the enraged Namgung Clan roots out every subordinate sect of that alliance near Anhui. The Black Lotus Alliance and the orthodox martial world race to the brink of war, and the one who puts an end to it is the protagonist, Baek Haseong. It is in that episode that Baek Haseong meets Namgung Sohee. It is in that episode, too, that she is revealed to be the daughter of the Wudang Sword Immortal.
...If I keep Namgung Bi alive, I could steer the story down an entirely different road.
But the variables would multiply just as much. Whether to save him or not—whether to protect him or not—was a decision he would have to make only after thinking it through with care.
Deep in thought as he was, Hwa Baek still watched Namgung Bi's match. He had fought so early that the crowd was still packed near the entrance.
Namgung Bi's opponent bore the epithet Tiger-Slaying Saber Wanderer. A massive man whose body spoke of every hardship, he drove the boy without pause with his saber art.
Namgung Bi, by contrast, offered nothing but a passive, defensive stance. Something in him seemed shaken.
"Hm......"
Well. Even if the boy lost, he would not die here, so Hwa Baek took his eyes off him. His gaze went looking for Wi Garyeon.
Hair that gold was impossible to miss, and just as he had expected, she already had her sword at her opponent's throat, victory all but certain.
"...She really is everything I thought."
If his reading was right, Wi Garyeon was all but the only master of the Transcendent Peak Realm among the martial artists entered in the Sichuan Martial Tournament. Aside from her there would be five such masters at the very most, and even counting them, she would remain one of the tournament's strongest favorites to win.
Had he himself not been here, it would not have been strange if she took the championship outright.
Even as he thought it, something felt wrong.
...Now that I think of it, that's odd.
The original held no record of Wi Garyeon winning the Sichuan Martial Tournament. There was no record of her entering any martial tournament at all, so of course there was no way he could have known. It might be nothing more than a detail the author had simply never written. If not, then it meant someone in this tournament was stronger than she was.
It nagged at him that only two masters had shattered every wooden board, but a Transcendent Peak expert could moderate the force easily enough and break only what they chose.
If a master of the Transcendent Peak Realm stronger than Wi Garyeon truly existed, Hwa Baek found himself wanting to know who it was, and how strong.
...I'll learn as the tournament runs its course.
He had been about to leave after seeing only her victory, but he set his feet against the ground. He did not know whether he could find them all today, yet if he kept watching every match like this, he would have them within three days at the latest.
The main rounds of the tournament's first day came to an end around the hour when evening drew in.
Of every match he had watched, the Transcendent Peak masters he had found came to two in all. There were bouts he had failed to check, having made up his mind too late, so he could not yet claim he had found them all.
And there's no promise my eyes are even right.
Hwa Baek could not sense qi. He could cut it, and he could shatter it, but because he could not feel it, he could neither wield it nor send his voice through it.
The measure by which he judged a Transcendent Peak master went no further than martial skill. He had reasoned that men whose skill so far outstripped the other fighters would not still be lingering at the Peak Realm—and so the ones he had named Transcendent Peak might, in truth, still be stalled at that Peak Realm.
While he was thinking, Wi Garyeon spoke to him.
"You've seemed deep in thought for a while."
Hwa Baek asked the woman walking along after him.
"Nothing of the sort. I was only staring off. And where are you headed, young lady?"
"Following you. To our house."
"...On whose say-so?"
"Mine."
"......"
Shameless.
He had let her stay only once, just yesterday, and already, in Wi Garyeon's heart, Yeon Ihwa's house was no different from her own. The Hwa Baek of any other day would simply have allowed it, but his mind was already set. As a man who would soon commit a grave sin against her, he would offer no useless kindness meant only to make use of her. That was the least he could keep toward her, as someone who was still human.
"No. Take a room at an inn, or sleep in the open. From here on, see to yourself."
"Come on~ There are plenty of rooms, so why be so strict about it~ Just let me impose a few more times!"
"It is not my house either, so I cannot casually lodge a martial artist I barely know. Let us say our tie ends here."
Hwa Baek finished like a man driving a wedge home.
The hard edge in his voice froze Wi Garyeon's face for a moment, but she soon let the look go and answered, easy as anything.
"Tsk! Then there's nothing for it. I'll have to look around for a decent inn nearby."
She turned and stepped away into the crowd, where buildings and taverns stood shoulder to shoulder.
Hwa Baek, ignoring her without so much as a glance, walked on without wavering, straight into the sunset that lay before his house.
When he returned from the tournament, Juhong was there before the house to meet him.
"Deputy Master. The Young Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild has arrived."
It felt less like a greeting than like she had been standing watch, but in any case she pressed on in a tone that was, for her, rarely urgent.
"I showed her to the guest annex for the time being. Even so, I believe that this time you must receive her yourself."
"...I have to be the one to receive her?"
Naturally, Hwa Baek found it strange. There was not yet any incident that ought to have tied him to the Daechon Merchant Guild. And frankly, he had gone about his business without laying a hand on anything that might connect him to the guild. The assassination of Ha Uyeol, Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild, mattered less for the process of killing the man than for the result that would follow his death.
And so, to the Hwa Baek who could not make sense of it, Juhong began to explain.
"In truth, not long ago, so that the treasures you brought might be turned into coin, the Master sent a letter to the Young Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild to open a trade. After the Master entered seclusion, I took that trade upon myself in her stead. Today the Young Guild Master came in person to see it concluded... and yet she did not ask for me. She asked for you, Deputy Master."
"...I see."
Having the shape of the matter, Hwa Baek nodded. He had never expected it, but since things had come to this, he would have to meet her for now.
"Show me the way. I'll hear her out."
"Yes."
· · ·
The Young Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild, Ha Seon-ah.
Someday she would inherit all that the Daechon Merchant Guild was and become master of the greatest merchant guild beneath heaven, and in the talent for commerce she possessed a gift that surpassed even her own father. She knew how wealth was made to grow, she knew how to read the human heart, and the judgments she rendered from those things were proven in profit multiplied dozens of times over.
Why was such a woman looking for him? Hwa Baek felt, by instinct, that he could find the reason.
With a rattle, the door of the guest annex slid open, and a woman appeared in profile.
To the eye, the clothes were of a plain cut. Yet the cloth that made those plain clothes boasted, at a glance, a quality beyond the very finest. She was drinking the ordinary tea set out in the annex, taking her ease in the last of the day. Had one not known who she was, it would not have been strange to take her for an ordinary guest come to enjoy a journey.
Except.
If there was one strange thing, it was this. She was not looking this way.
Human nature being what it is, if someone opens a door right beside you, you cannot help but turn. The woman showed no reaction at all, as if she had been expecting it.
"I greet the Young Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild."
Wondering whether she wanted the first greeting to come from his side, he inclined his head slightly as he spoke.
The guess seemed right. Only then did the woman turn her head and open her mouth.
"You... would be the swordsman called Hwa Baek?"
The Young Guild Master of the Daechon Merchant Guild.
Ha Seon-ah already knew my name.