The Beggar's Repayment
An old beggar, seven knots tied in a haphazard jumble at his waist, lay sprawled before the main gate of the Beggars' Gang headquarters.
"Haaam—" His mouth stretched wide in a yawn... "Nng." He scratched at his head, perhaps because it itched... "Sniff, sniff." He took a sniff of the air... "Ulp." And then he gagged.
Thus was it proven that even a beggar with the sturdiest of stomachs finds it hard to endure the smell of his own crown.
In any case... in conduct as in bearing, the old man was unmistakably the very picture of a beggar. A beggar sprawled on the roadside was as natural as the workings of nature itself, yet this was no ordinary scene to behold.
As noted, it was because the knots tied at the old man's waist numbered seven. The Seventh-Knot Elder of the Beggars' Gang, Chwipung-gae — he was the man in question.
Seven knots. In the Beggars' Gang, the only ones permitted to tie as many as seven were the elders.
Even the elder of some middling sect could live out his days proudly, shoulders squared and wanting for nothing — but an elder of the Beggars' Gang, one of the Nine Great Sects and One Gang, was in name and in fact a figure of renown standing at the very summit of the Jianghu murim. To compare him with just any beggar was simply not to be allowed.
It was also why no one could stop the old beggar from lying sprawled shamelessly right in front of the Gang's headquarters.
"Haaam—"
Chwipung-gae — now that imposing personage, an elder of the Beggars' Gang — had of late been feeling bored.
The reason was simply that he had achieved the wish of a lifetime.
Chwipung-gae was a man with little innate greed for material things.
He had thrown himself into the Beggars' Gang for the sake of revenge, but his temperament had surely played its part in how well he took to the life of a beggar.
Well adapted or not aside, Chwipung-gae belonged to the ranks of those promoted through the Gang at breakneck speed.
The reasons could be found in any number of places.
First, there was the sheer depth of his martial attainment; a Harmony Realm master was a fighting force treated with the utmost importance even among the Nine Great Sects and One Gang.
It might also have been that his temperament and conduct were genuinely beggarly. By the Gang's own rules, only a beggar's beggar could rise past three knots, was that not so?
When one recalled the many masters who had flung themselves into the Gang coveting an elder's seat, only to leave without ever passing three knots, Chwipung-gae's disposition was plainly a tremendous advantage.
For a more worldly reason: back when Musan-gae — now the Dragon Head Sect Leader — was still a novice beggar, Chwipung-gae had saved his life, and that incident may well have counted for much.
But the greatest reason, rightly, was that Chwipung-gae had lived the beggar's life more diligently than anyone.
Such was the sort of organization the Beggars' Gang was. In a body made up solely of men who had become beggars of their own will, how could favor-peddling or corruption ever take root? The beggar who toiled and devoted himself rose — and the beggar who was truly a beggar rose.
"Hmm. What should I do with myself..."
Looking back, it had all been for revenge.
Even weathered by the years, that fierce emotion — seared into his heart like a brand — had been the engine that drove Chwipung-gae.
But Elder Chwipung-gae had at last achieved his revenge. Strictly speaking, he had risen to elder only after achieving it, but that detail hardly mattered.
CRUNCH!
"S-spare... spare me..."
CRUNCH!
"P-please..."
The Blood-Drinking Demon God, Golu Gwang.
The feel of the fists that had shattered that villain's skull — the foe he had yearned after all his life — was vivid still. And so was his own voice, left behind over the corpse as though in mockery: "You were, even for a human being, a contemptible wretch."
It was the moment Chwipung-gae, who had lived his whole life for revenge, at last fulfilled his heart's desire.
Chwipung-gae had always held fast to the headquarters' entrance, that he might lay hands on word of the Blood-Drinking Demon God faster than anyone.
That he still guarded the headquarters' entrance now, with revenge achieved, had no reason behind it but sheer inertia.
"This won't do."
And just this moment, Chwipung-gae had realized that his inertia was a flawed thing.
He knew full well that the proposition "beggars are lazy" was a textbook specimen of false information, and so it was no hard task to recognize the flaw in his own conduct.
Chwipung-gae, who had been sprawled there helpless, sat himself up straight.
There was, indeed, such a thing as the bearing of a supreme master; the mere act of sitting upright made the man look an entirely different creature.
"Hmm."
Scratching his matted hair once more, Chwipung-gae set his mind to serious thought.
With the Blood-Drinking Demon God dead, his revenge was finished. In other words, the force that had kept Chwipung-gae striving without cease was gone.
There was none of what the world says — that revenge ends in hollowness, that only regret remains. Not a shred of it.
Yet there was a fact he had to admit: with his burning goal gone, Chwipung-gae's life had lost its engine and gone slack.
"What should I do?"
He had no intention of squandering the life left to him in squalor merely because his revenge was done.
If he did, how could he ever face his wife and child, who had gone to heaven before him?
In keeping with the spirit of the Beggars' Gang, Chwipung-gae meant to practice chivalry without cease, and to return to heaven only when his appointed hour arrived.
And so Chwipung-gae needed a new engine for his life.
Chwipung-gae was a shrewd man, and the conclusion came to him without difficulty.
"Repaying kindness. What else is there?"
If his life until now had been filled edge to edge with revenge, then the life remaining to him must be lived in repayment.
The kindness he had received was so immense that even a lifetime might not repay it in full — there was no time to lose.
"Right then!" With nimble movements, Chwipung-gae brought himself up from the ground.
Shuffle, shuffle. With a truly beggarly, splayfooted gait, he made for the headquarters' Medical Hall.
"Uisaeng-gae."
Chwipung-gae had come looking for Uisaeng-gae, master of the Medical Hall.
"Get lost."
The beggar Uisaeng-gae, who had always worn the face of a kindly scholar, was not there. In his place sat a beggar with a rough, haggard look, bloodshot-eyed, as though he had not slept in seven days and nights.
So altered was he that, without Chwipung-gae's keen eye, the fact that this beggar was Uisaeng-gae might have gone entirely unnoticed.
"But—"
"I said get lost."
Uisaeng-gae's demeanor was that of a fierce tiger growling low.
"Right. Keep at it, then."
Chwipung-gae was no beggar blind to the mood of a room; he swiftly turned himself about.
"S-so, when will the Chwigu-hwan be finished?"
He had not, of course, forgotten the purpose of his visit to the Medical Hall.
"GRAAAH—"
The moment Uisaeng-gae began to convulse, Chwipung-gae hurried out of the headquarters on his lightfoot skill. The ghost-wailing shriek that faintly pursued him from behind, he resolved not to hear.
"Chwipung-gae— you beggar of a bastard—!"
That insult to his elder, too, he would do well to pretend not to have heard today.
Besides, it was dubious whether "beggar of a bastard" could even function as an insult within the Beggars' Gang in the first place.
He had been pecking at the man nearly every other day, asking when the Chwigu-hwan would be done; one might as well call it karma.
"Still..." He had pecked once more today, so the Chwigu-hwan's completion would surely come a day the sooner. This, too, was repayment for his benefactor.
The Beggars' Gang — by its own claim and the world's acknowledgment alike, the finest intelligence sect in the murim. And the man who strutted through it, shoulders squared, was none other than Chwipung-gae.
Meaning that whatever information he wanted, he could generally have on the spot.
News of the whereabouts of the honorary Five-Knot hall master, too, could not slip past Chwipung-gae's ears.
"What? Jilin?"
"Yes, sir."
At Chwipung-gae's repeated question, the master of the headquarters' Rumor Hall answered in a sulky voice.
His mood stemmed from the outrage of the headquarters' Five-Knot hall master being put to work as a mere information courier, but Chwipung-gae paid it no mind.
A Seventh-Knot Elder outranked a Five-Knot hall master, after all. If the fellow was sore about it, he could hurry up and become a Seventh-Knot Elder himself.
"Why did he go there?"
"Because Young Master Yi Chun-baek, who travels with him, has his master there, I believe."
Whether he knew that or not, the Rumor Hall master answered dutifully, his sulky expression nowhere softened.
"There was a sect in Jilin?"
"The Mystic Sect, sir."
"Oh ho. So that fellow is an heir of the Mystic Sect?"
"That is classified."
In Chwipung-gae's mind, Yi Chun-baek's elusive, flickering swordplay replayed itself of its own accord.
For a vagabond, the man had been far from ordinary; if he was a disciple of the Mystic Sect, it all made sense now.
"I see. Much obliged for the information."
Indeed, summoning the Rumor Hall master had been worth the trouble. Those short-knot beggars surely wouldn't know the secrets of the Jianghu murim in such detail.
"May I go now?"
At Chwipung-gae's dismissive wave, the Rumor Hall master vanished as swiftly as he had come.
A Five-Knot hall master, gone without so much as a bow to a Seventh-Knot Elder — that, sure enough, was the rank-less beggarliness of the Gang.
"Shall I head for Jilin, then."
The Gang's headquarters in Kaifeng stood in Tianjin, Hebei Province, so Jilin Province was hardly a distant journey.
In his young beggar days, Chwipung-gae had come and gone frequently as far as Kunlun in Qinghai.
It was a road to aid his benefactor; he might as well reckon the journey short.
Chwipung-gae set out for Jilin with a light step.
It was a road to see the benefactor he had, for reasons he couldn't name, grown fond of — and his steps were truly light.
But Chwipung-gae was not alone.
"Aigoo..."
When an elder made his progress to Jilin, the Gang's beggars naturally attached themselves in droves.
"You rascals! I told you not to follow me!"
"Yes, yes. We hear you."
Chwipung-gae had barked his orders not to follow, but the Beggars' Gang was, at heart, a band of rank-less, ill-mannered rascals.
The beggars who had agreed only with their mouths kept slyly tracking Chwipung-gae's trail.
As if by inevitability, the Beggars' Gang's host began to move toward Jilin Province.
"You rascal — an information broker must always be able to hide his own expression. That is the law of the trade."
Chwipung-gae's voice had surfaced in my memory unbidden. It was not that I had suddenly missed him — it was that I had just, for the first time in an age, forgotten the iron rule he had taught me and acted against it. In other words: caught off guard by a truly unforeseen situation, I had failed to manage my expression.
"Hm." I smoothed my face over at once, but it may already have been too late.
"You seem to know who I am."
Brother Chun-baek's master — in other words, the Mystic Sect's successor of this generation — asked me that. For a master of his caliber, missing the change in my countenance, which I had betrayed in plain sight, would be next to impossible.
"I believe I do. Perhaps."
Hiding it now would not be right. I knew too well that an unnecessary secret becomes the seed of distrust. Had I never given myself away, that would be one thing — but with the water already spilled, the right course was not to pretend it had never happened, but to set it properly to rights.
I let my gaze settle once more on Brother Chun-baek's master's face. It was, indeed, the face I knew.
I had said "perhaps," but I was certain — for I was no ordinary greenhorn of the Jianghu, but Myeong-gae, a seasoned information broker.
"And who am I?"
The master's expression as he asked was thoroughly familiar. Chun-baek's impish streak, I'd wager, took after him.
"Might you be the Wind Cloud Sword Immortal...?"
I spoke the epithet that none who ranged the Jianghu murim could fail to know. An epithet every bit as famous as the Sovereign of Destruction Yeom Gi-ha's — I was confident that most in the murim would know the name even without ever having seen his face.
"Heh heh. Sword Immortal, my foot — they call me the Sword Ghost. You have a keen eye, young friend."
Brother Chun-baek's master laughed, looking glad to do it.
The Wind Cloud Sword Ghost. The epithet of an absolute master who, even before the Sovereign of Destruction Yeom Gi-ha, had completed the Infinite Sparring Tour and made his existence known to all the world.
He was also a mysterious master who had earned the right to contend for the name of Number One Under Heaven, only to vanish without a trace.
In other words — a living legend of the Jianghu murim.
He was Brother Chun-baek's master.