A Favor Between Friends
"Since I was the one to hand over information first, this time it's your turn to hand yours over."
Yeo Wol drew a single sheet of paper from her sleeve.
"Here you are."
"Much obliged."
Without so much as glancing at the contents, I tucked the paper away into my sleeve. That, too, I would call a wordless declaration of the trust I placed in Yeo Wol and Ma Sok.
"That one took some doing to track down."
"I don't doubt it."
I had known from the start that it would be no easy find. But I had also believed that if anyone could manage it, it would be Haomun—and that belief had proven correct. A grateful thing, that.
"Why are you looking for this person, anyway?"
"That's a secret."
It was information I had paid a fair price to obtain; there was no need to tell her more than necessary.
There was one fact that everyone present knew full well: which of the two carried the far heftier worth—the information Yeo Wol had handed me, or the information I had handed Haomun.
"As for the payment……"
"Let this information's fee be counted as settled with what I've already given," I cut in, waving my sleeve and stealing the march on her before she could even finish the question.
"Really?"
"More than sufficient."
It wasn't out of any benefactor's generosity on my part. I did it because, even settling it that way, I stood to lose nothing.
For the greatest gain I could reap from Yeo Wol and Ma Sok at this point was their trust and their goodwill.
"With business concluded, I'll take my leave."
"Just a moment."
Yeo Wol stayed me as I moved to rise.
"Something left to say?"
Perhaps she found the words hard to bring out; Yeo Wol fiddled with the hair at her ear before she finally spoke.
"The ten thousand nyang due to you this year—might you grant us a little more time on it?"
Come to think of it, the date for receiving the remaining ten thousand nyang from the sale of the Empty Blue Stone Milk was drawing near.
Only, in that first year I had lent Yang Su-rin ten thousand nyang, and the remaining ten thousand—plus the ten thousand received last year—made a full twenty thousand that had sat untouched and unspent, so I had simply never given the matter much thought.
Receiving the money late posed no problem in itself.
What did nag at me, though……
"Has something gone wrong?"
That, I figured, would be it.
"The great undertaking has not gone as smoothly as we hoped, and there has been a slight hitch in raising funds," Ma Sok answered on Yeo Wol's behalf.
"A hitch, is it."
I sorted through my thoughts.
Yeo Wol had claimed the seat of Haomun Matriarch around five years into Myeong-gae's days of begging his meals. Even then, everyone had been astonished that it was Yeo Wol, and not Geom Bigak, who rose above that seat—for Geom Bigak's faction had held the clearer lead.
Mighty as the Empty Blue Stone Milk was, at this stage it surely had not been enough to overturn the gap between Yeo Wol and Geom Bigak.
"It's no trouble if the money comes late."
"Thank you."
Yeo Wol's face brightened. If any people treat credit as worth its weight in gold, it is merchants—and are information merchants any different? She must have set down a weighty worry of her own.
And amid it all, a thought came to me unbidden: might I not help her a little further?
For one piece of information had surfaced—worthless to me, yet of real service to her.
"Do you have ties in Sichuan Province?"
"Pardon? What's this, all of a sudden?"
By the reckoning of the Central Plains murim, Anhui lay far to the east, and Sichuan far to the west.
In the Central Plains folk's eyes, Qinghai, Xizang, and Xinjiang were lands beyond the pale, so Sichuan Province might as well have been the western rim of the Central Plains itself. Simply put: it was terribly, terribly far.
"Well? Do you, or don't you?"
"They say there is no place in the Central Plains our Haomun's hands cannot reach."
Well, that worked out nicely.
For a fateful opportunity I had long since abandoned—having no reason ever to walk so far—lay dormant in Sichuan Province.
"On the border between Sichuan Province and Xizang sits a small city called Baekok—White Jade."
At my words, Yeo Wol and Ma Sok gave me their full attention. They had learned by now that nothing I passed along was ever ordinary.
"From the heart of Baekok, head north some two hundred li, and you will come to a place called Mount Hasu."
The mountain took its name from the heshouwu root—famed as an elixir herb—said to grow there in abundance since time immemorial.
"Search that mountain from top to bottom."
That was as much as I could tell them.
"What's up there?"
"A colony of century-old heshouwu, if I'm not mistaken. It should serve you well."
The reason I could give away this information without a flicker of regret was that I also knew the colony would be discovered within the month by merchants plying the route between Xizang and the Central Plains.
A heshouwu colony. By my count, some hundred roots in all.
A hundred century-old heshouwu roots could never be bought with money in any short span of time. In the Central Plains murim, the very chance to purchase an elixir with coin was itself an opportunity—and Yeo Wol was hardly the only one lying in wait for such chances.
Secure a handful of near-century heshouwu, and there was nothing better for raising mid-tier masters and swelling one's strength in short order.
Yeo Wol already possessed a peerless master in Ma Sok; what she needed, I judged, were mid-tier experts to anchor the ranks behind him. That was why I had told her.
And sure enough, my read proved right: color bloomed across Yeo Wol's face.
"How in the world do you come by information like this?"
This time it was less a sly probe than a question laced with genuine wonder.
That I held information even Haomun had failed to secure was, I supposed, the thing about me she never stopped wondering at.
"Haha."
But I offered no answer—only a laugh.
The murim of the rivers and lakes was, after all, a realm thick with mysteries and stranger-than-strange tales; in the end, she would have no choice but to build me up within her own imagination.
Gaps in information are, by their nature, filled in with conjecture and inference. And I knew her imagination would work to my benefit.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again—keep everything concerning me in the strictest confidence."
"Of course. You can trust me."
Leaking word of me would win her nothing at all. If anything, she was closer to an ally who actively buried every trace of me on my behalf.
"And the payment?"
"Consider it a friend's goodwill. No payment is needed."
I knew that every so often, a favor given without expectation of return wove a richer bond than any transaction could.
Yeo Wol would become the Matriarch of Haomun.
And I would become the Leader of the Murim Alliance.
To hold back the surge of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil, the righteous sects would need to be bound tightly together—and one day, she would be a great asset to my path.
An investment toward that day. Call it profit.
In the world of rivers and lakes, there are places where fights break out with remarkable frequency.
First place went to the roadside tavern. Second, to the upscale wine house. Third, to the mountain passes where Green Forest bandits sat fat and unmovable.
An unchanging truth of all ages, proven by the hard-won rules of long experience.
The one thing those three places had in common was simple enough: they were where travelers stopped to rest.
"How much?"
"One nyang of silver for a night's stay. Meals are extra."
"Here you are."
Yi Chun-baek, the vagabond swordsman, drifting without destination.
A man of many talents, he had never known great want for money, and so it was almost inevitable that whenever he needed to lay his body down, he would seek out an upscale wine house.
Whether he lodged at a roadside tavern, a fine wine house, or simply camped along the road—
—fights broke out in all of them regardless. So wasn't the wine house, where a man could actually rest in comfort, the most rational choice of all?
Years of vagabond life had left him none too particular about his bedding, but the upscale wine house did have its distinct advantages.
A skilled cook turning out every manner of dish, and Geomnamchun kept in stock at all times. The raw brew of the roadside taverns had never once suited Yi Chun-baek's palate.
"Hm."
The moment Yi Chun-baek settled into his seat, the patrons who had been stealing glances at him hurriedly turned away.
In truth, Yi Chun-baek had no memory of ever once being picked into a fight. The murim was a world where the strong devoured the weak.
Be underestimated, and provocation found you; be drawn into a brawl, and you were fleeced to the bone—such was the murim. But seen from the other side, the murim was also a place where no one laid a hand on you, so long as you were never underestimated.
Yi Chun-baek wore the look of a vagabond with a sword forever at his hip, and his face was none too welcoming besides. No one went out of their way to trouble him.
Even so, there had been exactly one occasion on which Yi Chun-baek was swept into a brawl at an upscale wine house. Though that was a table he had leapt into of his own accord.
Myeong, you rascal. I wonder if you're doing well.
In so short an acquaintance, that rascal had been the only friend to whom he had ever given his heart.
Crash!
"You son of a bitch!"
Today, as ever, shouts erupted within the peaceful wine house. Just an ordinary day, you might say.
"Mok Gaga! Please, stop this!"
"Yu-mae, step back for a moment!"
This affair, it seemed, was a lovers' quarrel—the most fixed of fixtures among the disputes of upscale wine houses.
"Look here. I believe there's been a misunderstanding. I have never once looked at that woman."
The man beneath the low-brimmed bamboo hat replied.
Aigoo.
Now he could see why trouble had found the man.
From the lower half of his face alone, visible beneath the hat's brim, one could tell he was handsome. But he also looked rather easy pickings. In a murim where the strong ate the weak, wasn't a man with a scholar's air the finest prey of all?
"What did you say?! Are you telling me our Yu-mae has no charm?!"
The hatted man heaved a deep sigh, and then—
"That woman is not to my taste. So set your mind at ease."
—so he answered.
"What?!"
The exchange was getting interesting.
A romance drama dropped into the middle of a tedious routine—Yi Chun-baek's interest was piqued, and he kept watching.
"You wretch! Do you have any idea who I am?!"
The man called Mok Gaga produced his trump card.
"I am Mok Il-hun, of the collateral line of the Sinchang Mok Clan!"
A surefire technique that sent most wastrels yelping off with their tails between their legs.
But——
"Oh. Is that so."
The hatted man responded with perfect indifference.
"Hyaah!"
Clang!
Perhaps he felt himself insulted—the collateral-branch rascal tore his sword from its sheath.
Given that wine-house brawls ordinarily began with fisticuffs, this lovers' quarrel was remarkable chiefly for the radical turn of its escalation.
On the streets, a warrior who drew his blade and then sheathed it again without cutting down so much as a radish would wear that as his own shame—was that not simply how the world worked?
"Die!"
The collateral rascal swung his sword.
Oh, no.
Whether it was because that old friend had surfaced in his mind after so long, or because the hatted man's voice resembled his, Yi Chun-baek could not rightly say.
Yi Chun-baek shot forward, form blurring. It would be the second act of meddling in his life.
Yi Chun-baek's movement carried him to within a hand's breadth of the blade, ready to stop it—
Flick.
—and the hatted man's palm rose to fill Yi Chun-baek's view.
Damn it all.
A trap?
Yi Chun-baek, already reaching for his sword on reflex, checked himself. The man's hand had merely barred his path—not a whisper of hostile intent came off it.
Only then, composure regained, did Yi Chun-baek's gaze take in the room.
"…!"
And he startled a second time.
For he saw the hatted man catch Mok Il-hun's blade between the index and middle fingers of his opposite hand.
This man was a master.
Indifferent to Yi Chun-baek's appraisal, the hatted man spoke on.
"Mok Il-hun. Collateral line of the Sinchang Mok Clan."
He pronounced the name with grave formality, and then——
Kra-ack!
With nothing but the strength of his fingers, he shattered Mok Il-hun's sword.
"Devote yourself to your training. Do I make myself clear?"
"Y-yes. Understood."
Shrunk into himself, Mok Il-hun gathered up the woman called Yu-mae and fled the wine house in haste.
The man removed his bamboo hat. His gaze came to rest on Yi Chun-baek.
"Brother Chun-baek. It has been a while."
The years had worked their changes on him somewhat, but it was a face no one could fail to recognize.
"It is. Good to see you."
A face he had missed. Dancheon Myeong.
"Brother Chun-baek, have you eaten?"
"Not yet."
"Neither have I. Let's get some food in us first."
The food arrived.
For the length of a meal, he and I spoke hardly a word, devoting ourselves entirely to the food.
Two years since we had last met, and yet it felt as though we had been sitting just like this only yesterday.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
When the meal was done, I passed him a cup of Geomnamchun.
"Ahh—"
"Kuh—"
Unchanged, the both of us. We looked at each other and laughed.
"This is no coincidence, I take it."
Yi Chun-baek opened the conversation.
I nodded. One does not deal in falsehoods with a trusted friend.
"I borrowed a little of Haomun's reach."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to see you."
"Puhaha."
As ever, Yi Chun-baek's threshold for laughter was low. Back in my Myeong-gae days, when I had known him only through intelligence, this side of him had never once shown.
It was true that I had come because I missed Yi Chun-baek.
"Brother Chun-baek."
I passed him another cup of Geomnamchun.
"Will you take on a job with me?"
I needed someone I could trust to plan a venture with, and beyond Yi Chun-baek, no one in particular came to mind.
Yi Chun-baek nodded.
"Gladly."
He agreed without so much as asking what the work was.
"If it's a request from you, I'll grant it as many times over as you like."
A childlike smile spread across Yi Chun-baek's face. My eye for people had not failed me after all.