The Shadow Behind Every Honor
The Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures counted among the most prized treasures the Beggars' Gang possessed. It was the sweat and blood of beggars who pried information out of every corner of the jianghu, and of the head-branch beggars who gathered it all and compiled it, page by page, into a single volume — in truth, the very essence of the Beggars' Gang distilled into a book.
Because it was the work of every beggar in the gang combined, the Thousand Roster was open to all of them — so long as they had earned three knots or more. A sect's treasure, shared freely with every last member. One could only call that exactly what you would expect of the Beggars' Gang.
Naturally, not just anyone was entered into the Roster. Only those who truly mattered in the jianghu and murim survived its rigorous selection process. Common sense held that a person's importance in the jianghu was measured, first and foremost, by the height of their martial arts — and so the vast majority of names in the Thousand Roster belonged to masters of formidable skill.
But the murim was also a place where importance was never decided by martial prowess alone. A person's influence, reputation, background, and wealth all served as yardsticks in their own right. Thanks to that, Namgung Tan — the man currently smirking at me from across the room — had earned his place in the Roster despite being nothing more than a Peak Realm fighter.
The reason needed no explaining. He was the eldest son of the Namgung Clan, one of the Five Great Clans that held the murim in their grip. Quite the honor, for the likes of him.
But one would do well to remember that every honor drags a shadow behind it. Behind the glory of a name recorded in the Thousand Roster lay the shadow of the Beggars' Gang having picked his secrets apart, bone by bone.
For the record: in my days as Myeong-gae, I had memorized the entire contents of the Thousand Roster, vast as it was.
That's right. I knew every one of Namgung Tan's secrets. Not only the ones he kept now — the ones he had yet to acquire, as well.
You should never have touched me.
"Young Master Myeong of the Dancheon Clan is looking remarkably dashing today. This humble girl's eyes have been opened," said the woman who had asked to share my table, smiling.
It was the sort of pleasantry passed back and forth as greeting in the jianghu, and yet praise for my looks still felt unfamiliar. I had the Vermilion Fruit to thank for that.
"You are beautiful yourself, my lady."
"Hohoho, thank you."
I returned the same courtesy. The woman was truly beautiful, so my words carried genuine feeling.
A perfectly warm and cordial atmosphere, all things considered — right up until Namgung Tan decided to stick his nose in.
"Well, well. You've grown quite glossy since I last saw you. The Dancheon Clan must treat its bastards well. Very different from our Namgung."
If he had ended his speech there, I might have granted him some small measure of leniency.
"Ah, is it because your clan lacks proper roots?" The remark he added with a snort crossed the line, plain and clear.
Why, this little bastard?
Namgung Tan, the fool, was strutting about without the faintest idea that this place was the maw of a tiger. If he didn't know, then he would simply have to learn by taking his lumps — such was the law of the murim. And so a sense of duty was born in me: today, I would grant him a true education.
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
Namgung Tan glared at me with unprovoked hostility, his eyes flicking briefly toward the woman seated at his side. I could guess why he was so aggressive toward a man he barely knew beyond a passing acquaintance. Jealousy, most likely.
"Young Master Myeong, I'm sorry. He isn't usually like this..."
The woman who had asked to share my table apologized to me with perfect courtesy. Then she fixed Namgung Tan with a stern look and scolded him.
"Young Master Tan. Apologize to him."
Whether he took her attitude as proof of her fondness for me, Namgung Tan's face flushed red and he flew into a rage.
"You want me to apologize to that bastard? Not even for you, Se-hwa!"
At his answer, the woman's face drained pale.
Now I knew who she was. The woman Namgung Tan addressed with such familiarity was Yeon Se-hwa — eldest daughter of the Yeon Clan, who shared with Yang Su-rin the fame of being one of the Five Flowers of Anhui. She was also the woman who, in the not-so-distant future, would become engaged to Namgung Tan.
Her entanglement with a wastrel like Namgung Tan kept her name constantly in people's mouths, and she had been mentioned more than once in the Beggars' Gang's reports — which was why she stuck in my memory.
"The fault is mine. I earnestly beg the young hero to let his anger rest."
"Se-hwa! How could you?"
I would have liked to watch the fool carry on a little longer, but for the sake of the woman who had shown me courtesy, I decided to step in at this point.
"Brother Namgung."
"Who said I was your brother, you bastard!"
That word again. Bastard. Bastard. At this rate, I would end up hearing it from that fool's mouth more often than I ever had back at the clan. And knowing his secret as I did, I could only conclude that the old sages had it right: the one who dealt the fart is always the first to rage.
"Since you keep saying 'bastard,' Brother Namgung, I take it you must be rather fond of them."
"What did you say?"
Namgung Tan stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
"Is that why you went and made one of your own, Brother Namgung?"
As my words veered off in that strange direction, the oily smile vanished from Namgung Tan's face in an instant.
"...What are you talking about?"
You fool. It's already too late.
"The child's name, let's see... Ah, yes. It was Baek Jang-sam, wasn't it?"
Namgung Tan could not close his gaping mouth.
"Tsk. Still, you might at least have given the boy the Namgung surname. The Dancheon Clan never even granted me the name Dancheon, after all."
I was simply returning what I had received.
"Ah, is it because your clan lacks proper roots?" The fresh, radiant smile the Vermilion Fruit had blessed me with was a bonus.
Back in his hot-blooded youth, when he was exactly my age, Namgung Tan had committed the one sin a direct descendant of a great clan must never commit. Wielding the authority of the family's eldest son, he had gotten a maidservant of the Namgung Clan with child. Fearing a stain on the heir's reputation, the clan had buried the matter without a trace. But where in this world does a perfect secret exist? Every word of it was recorded in the Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures.
An heir and a maidservant catching each other's eye was not as rare a thing as one might think — one of those truths about the world you come to know living as a beggar. That hardly made it an absolution, however. Least of all for Yeon Se-hwa, the woman promised in marriage to Namgung Tan.
Yeon Se-hwa's eyes narrowed into a sharp glare.
"Young Master Tan. Would you care to explain what he means?"
Rather than face her interrogation head-on, Namgung Tan pivoted — toward attacking me instead.
Shring! "You! Do you have proof?!" The tip of his sword swung toward me.
"Slander me without proof, and that head of yours won't stay on your shoulders!"
He spoke as though delivering some grand pronouncement. It was laughable, truly.
"And do you have proof that I'm a bastard, Brother Namgung?" I asked him in return. For a long moment, Namgung Tan was struck dumb.
The truth, my friend, has little need of evidence.
Whatever words might have followed, I was confident I would win them — but the conversation never got the chance.
"Hraah!" Unable to contain his fury, Namgung Tan struck at me.
"Kyaaaah!" A few of the women who had been stealing glances at us, sensing the murderous air, screamed.
Unlike the screams around me, I sat calmly and simply watched his sword shoot toward me. Partly it was because, having attained blade immunity, I did not fear a sword that carried not even a wisp of sword qi.
Clang! But mostly, it was because I had noticed there was someone there to block it for me.
"That will be quite enough," said the man who had turned Namgung Tan's blade aside, with perfect courtesy.
He had closed the distance before anyone realized it and stopped the sword cold — anyone could see his martial arts were far from ordinary.
"And who the hell are you?!" Perhaps he sensed the man was no ordinary fighter, for Namgung Tan did not rashly strike a second time.
"Just a vagabond passing by."
That a man introducing himself as a mere vagabond should carry the poise of a renowned master — the ways of the world were truly unpredictable.
My eyes went to the man's face. I knew exactly who he was. Perhaps because I had passed through Dengfeng County, where the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly was to be held, seeing with my own eyes the men who would one day shake the murim with their names stirred a strange feeling in me.
"Brother Namgung." I wanted to scold Namgung Tan a little more, but I had decided to wrap things up. Something far more important than brawling with that fool had just appeared.
"Crossing blades with the rising star of another clan on the road to the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly — I'm sure your honored father will be delighted."
"Ugh." Namgung Tan flinched.
That he feared the head of the Namgung Clan to a serious degree was also information I already possessed. The clan head was so fair-minded and strict that I could not begin to understand how he had ended up with a degenerate for a son.
Grrk. Namgung Tan's teeth ground together.
"You... just you wait. I will never forget what happened today."
Tossing out a line worthy of some dark-path street boss, he stormed out of the tavern in a huff.
Yeon Se-hwa, who had been watching nervously, glanced at me and rose from her seat. I caught her.
"A moment."
I already knew that her married life would be utterly miserable. For the sake of the woman who had been kind to me, I offered one last courtesy, whispering just loud enough for her alone to hear.
"End it before it's too late. That man hasn't it in him to make you happy."
Yeon Se-hwa studied me with an inscrutable look, gave the barest hint of a nod, and hurried after Namgung Tan. I did not hold her any longer and returned to my seat. Forging a connection with the man who had blocked Namgung Tan's sword mattered far more.
"Thank you." I greeted the man, who had remained at his post.
"Think nothing of it."
His guileless, honest nature, too, was something I already knew. His face overlapped with the one I had glimpsed, ever so briefly, in my days as a member of the Secret Pavilion.
"There's rather a lot of food here. Will you join me?"
"I won't refuse."
We shared the table, and for the better part of a quarter hour we ate in silence, focused on nothing but the food.
"Ahh." "Mm." Nor did we forget to share the Sword South Spring. Good things, after all, taste twice as good when shared.
I took his measure.
"I am Dancheon Myeong, second son of the Dancheon Clan."
"Yi Chun-baek. As I said, just a vagabond passing through."
Yi Chun-baek, the Vagabond Swordsman. A supreme master who would one day be called the King of Vagabonds. That a man of vagabond stock had earned an epithet bearing the word 'King' said everything about how extraordinary his swordsmanship was.
I remembered how, in the Great War of Righteousness and Evil, he had swept across the battlefield like an unstoppable storm. That much was what the world knew — but I knew a little more. The identity hidden behind the curtain.
Yi Chun-baek, the King of Vagabonds. His true identity was the sole inheritor of the Mysterious Sect, a secret lineage passed down to one disciple in each generation. If I could form a bond with him, it would benefit me in countless ways.
For the record, Yi Chun-baek — the 'sole inheritor of the Mysterious Sect,' counted among the very pinnacle of all fortuitous encounters — had been one of the prime targets of my buy-low strategy. Even dog dung has its uses in medicine, as they say. I supposed I owed Namgung Tan a word of thanks.
"Why did you step in? You'd have gained nothing by making an enemy of the Namgung Clan." I asked Yi Chun-baek.
I knew the jianghu was full of chivalrous men and righteous souls. Yi Chun-baek the vagabond had made his name as a hero in his younger days, so his character was no mystery to me. But what had just happened was no case of the dark path or the heterodox sects tormenting innocent commoners — truthfully, it was a murky situation for an outsider to meddle in. Yet Yi Chun-baek had stepped in without a moment's hesitation, and my curiosity was stirred.
"I happened to overhear a bit of your conversation. Not that I meant to. My apologies."
"No need."
It was not anything he needed to apologize for. Our voices had simply been too loud.
After a brief pause, Yi Chun-baek spoke.
"...I'm a bastard too. That was all there was to it. I didn't like the way the Namgung boy behaved."
I stared at him in surprise. Even Myeong-gae had never uncovered the fact that he was of illegitimate birth.
"Shall we have a drink?"
"Gladly."
I poured him a cup of Sword South Spring. I had thought, before, that I needed to build a relationship with him for the sake of my plans. But sitting across from him in person, my thinking had changed considerably.
Clink. "Ahh." "Mm." Exclaiming over the taste of the wine, we looked at each other and laughed.
Somehow, I had the feeling that this man and I would become true friends. That was the sense I carried with me.