Byeokrando (1)
Dawn was just breaking as I led Hanmuk, Seonwu, and Ran'i out of the clan estate.
The Wang Clan compound sat in a mountain hollow atop Baekundae, which meant that unless we started our descent in the early morning, we'd be spending the whole day camping out in the wilderness.
Setting out beyond the family gates for the first time ever, I felt a flutter of nerves mixed with anticipation — genuinely exciting, it was.
That is, if these idiots hadn't started spouting nonsense first thing in the morning.
"My lord! There may be traps on the road, so allow me to inspect the path ahead first!"
"Traps? On what? So every poor soul who walked that road before I got here — they're all dead, then?"
"Kugh! I shall go offer prayers for their souls at once!"
"You madman."
I had sworn as the Young Lord to conduct myself with proper dignity, and here I was being driven to curse out loud. Was that a talent, I wondered, or just a curse?
That one was completely out of his mind, honestly sitting there praying for the dead. I shook my head, left Hanmuk to it, and set off. I wasn't crazy enough to humor lunacy.
Then it was Seonwu's turn to be a problem.
Tremble, tremble.
The boy's hands were shaking like aspen leaves. When I'd first invited him along, he'd declared, 'Yes, sir! I will give it my all!' — and now that we were actually out the gate, this was the result.
I didn't even know what "giving his all" was supposed to mean in the first place. Fearing he'd start gnawing his nails off if I left him be, I approached Seonwu.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
And here we go already.
"What's wrong with you now?"
"Y-young... Young Lord. Do you think there might be monsters out here? Once we go down Baekundae, and, well. Arrows won't come flying at us, will they?"
"Calm down first of all. There's no such thing as monsters in this world. And who in their right mind would trespass on a mountain owned by the Wang Clan?"
"Then there are no traps laid out like Hanmuk said, right? Aah, wait — no monsters means wild beasts, though. I'm already dead."
Maybe I should just beat them all down and go alone.
These two were most definitely testing the limits of my patience. I was weighing my options when a good idea came to me.
"Seonwu. That anxious, huh?"
"I'm sorry.... I'm so anxious I could go mad."
I could go mad too. From rage.
"But what if I told you something?"
"Yes?"
I spoke with a deliberately grave expression.
"Everything you mentioned could happen. Even at very low odds, it's possible."
"Gaah!"
At my words, Seonwu nearly stopped breathing altogether. But I didn't stop there. With this method, he was about to become the least anxious man in the world.
It's all for Seonwu's sake, after all.
"But there is a threat with a far, far higher probability standing right before your eyes."
I raised my fist.
"You don't need to worry about those threats you listed anymore. You've got something much more worrying to deal with now."
Seonwu's mouth flapped open and shut, trying to form words. But no voice made it out.
WHAM!
"Guweh."
My fist caught him square on the philtrum, and Seonwu crumpled where he stood. One down.
Ran'i, who had been chasing butterflies as faithfully as ever, came over and jabbed at the fallen Seonwu with a tree branch.
"Wow! He's dead but he's alive!"
I scanned our surroundings for my next prey. Hanmuk, who had been diligently offering prayers for the dead, snapped to attention as if nothing had ever happened.
"My lord. Let us hurry. I fear we'll end up camping out at this rate."
"Yeah. Good. You're back with us, I see."
"Seems a spot of madness got into me for a moment."
Feeling a flicker of disappointment, I wet my lips with my tongue. Hanmuk shuddered at the sight.
By now I figured things were more or less settled, so at last I turned to set off for real.
"Piggyback me, Young Lord! Carry me!"
"Kehk!"
The moment I turned, Ran'i was on my back. Then she immediately wrapped her legs around my body. Apparently she'd learned from being shaken off numerous times before.
As I tried to pry her loose, thinking of Nari and Seolha, Ran'i grew mischievous and squeezed even tighter.
"Uuurgh!"
What is with this strength!
Reborn or not, I'd been born with a fairly powerful body — not quite the Heavenly Martial Sovereign Physique, but close. Not once in my life had anyone my age overpowered me.
And yet Ran'i's strength exceeded mine. Shouldn't we just be calling this thing the Heavenly Martial Sovereign Physique?
"Fine, fine! I'll carry you!"
"I knew Young Lord would carry me!"
The smile Ran'i wore as she said this wasn't cute in the slightest — it was outright chilling. Unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I just came out and asked.
"Ran'i. What exactly are you?"
"Me? Mommy and Daddy's daughter!"
Right, and that answers everything. Be ever so convenient if guards everywhere worked that way.
'Who goes there! This is a restricted area!'
'Me? Mommy and Daddy's daughter!'
'Ah, of course! Go right in!'
I'm losing it.
My brain must have finally broken because of these people. What kind of nonsense am I even thinking.
As I sank into self-loathing, adjusting Ran'i on my back and cupping her thighs to keep her comfortable, Hanmuk spoke up.
"Young Lady Ran is the daughter of the Master of the White Tiger Pavilion."
"What? The White Tiger Pavilion?"
Why is the White Tiger Pavilion coming up now of all times?
When I demanded to know why I was hearing this only now, Hanmuk broke into a cold sweat and scrambled to explain.
"I naturally assumed you already knew. And why wouldn't I? You kept Young Lady Ran at the far end of the field during the team matches, after all."
What does that have to do with any of this?
When I just blinked in bewilderment, Hanmuk added:
"I thought you were keeping her out of the fight because if Young Lady Ran goes berserk, the wounded start piling up."
"What is she, some kind of beast?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say she isn't."
At that, Ran'i started thrashing around on my back.
"I am NOT a beast! You... you jerk!"
"Whoa whoa whoa! You're gonna drop me!"
"But he insulted me! Punish him!"
I let out a long sigh, released one of the arms supporting Ran'i, and beckoned to Hanmuk.
Hanmuk sighed in turn and, as if resigned to accepting his punishment, reluctantly drew near.
"Make it quick. We truly must hurry down the mountain."
"Fine."
Hanmuk, showing me the crown of his head, leaned in as if to say get it over with.
I studied the sight for a moment, then channeled my inner power into my fist. And I let it fly.
CRACK!
With a satisfying pop, Hanmuk went flying. Aaah. That felt good.
Thank goodness I could take out on him what I'd missed earlier. Otherwise I'd have been tossing and turning all night.
I grabbed the clothes of the unconscious Hanmuk and Seonwu and dragged them both down the slopes of Baekundae.
Every so often I heard the thud of their heads hitting rocks along the way. They'll be fine, surely.
***
Descending Baekundae and crossing through Gaegyeong, there was so much to see.
Merchants passing by, nobles and scholars riding in palanquins. Nobody looked particularly joyful or full of life, but you could still call this peaceful.
In my past life, it had been easier to dig up a rare mountain ginseng than to find a single person smiling.
But as with any city street, beggars and visibly destitute commoners were everywhere.
From what I'd heard, Choe Chunghon had conscripted the people en masse for his grandiose construction projects. I'd wager that was why they'd missed the farming season.
Every time I passed people like that, I loosened my coin purse. In my past life, I'd been in that wretched state plenty of times myself. Turning my back on them now that I'd made good simply wasn't what a decent human being did.
Three pairs of eyes watched me with something like wonder. Feeling strangely embarrassed, I cleared my throat.
"Ahem. Hmm."
"Young Lord is so kind."
Ran'i patted my head as she said it. The gesture reminded me oddly of Seolha. As I basked quietly in the warmth of it, Seonwu remarked:
"Why are you giving away money, my lord? You could make yourself a target doing that."
I raised my fist at Seonwu, anxious all over again. The medicine clearly hadn't fully worn off yet.
He scrambled backward just in time, but Hanmuk apparently had grievances of his own, because he chimed in.
"My lord. However strong we may be, we are still young."
At Hanmuk's earnest counsel, I lowered my hand. Fair point.
The world harbors dangers that raw strength alone cannot solve. Being relatively young, we'd struggle to handle ourselves in such situations.
I might be an adult with decades of experience inside, but the kids would want every potential threat eliminated as much as possible.
Was I being too self-absorbed?
Reflecting inwardly, I tucked the coin purse away. Hanmuk and Seonwu both breathed sighs of relief.
That reaction kind of hurt, you know? I can take advice too, for your information.
So we went on our way, sightseeing through Gaegyeong, and before I knew it, the gates leading to Byeokrando came into view.
So that's Byeokrando.
Goryeo's greatest trading port — that's what everyone believed, but the truth was different. It had to be called Goryeo's greatest city, full stop.
Merchants crossed over not only from Song, Dongyeong, and Gyoji, but from countries whose very names sounded foreign to me. On occasion, traders even came all the way from the Western Regions to shop here. If anywhere on earth deserved to be called the center of the world, it was this place.
And the ones who ruled and managed that center of the world were none other than the Wang Clan.
Feeling the clan's power firsthand for the first time, I shuddered. I was the Young Lord of that very family. Suddenly I understood why people like Wang Yeomsu treated me with such exacting courtesy.
Up close, the gates were even more colossal than I'd imagined. With a fortress wall built in a great semicircle around the harbor, the whole place felt like a fortress blessed by heaven itself.
I was about to join the queue stretching toward the main gate when Ran'i, still riding my back, pointed at a spot with her finger.
"If we go over there, we can get in right away."
"You've been here before?"
"Uh-huh. With Daddy."
The kids and I headed toward where Ran'i pointed, and there we found a small side gate set into the fortress wall.
As we drew near, a single warrior in the battle dress of the Black Tortoise Pavilion, stationed at the gate, spoke to us with an expression of pure annoyance.
"I don't know whose household brat you are, but go stand in line over there. This entrance is restricted."
I promptly showed him my travel pass and mission orders. The warrior took the papers from me and read through them slowly.
"Now what's this? Let's see.... Escort mission for the Young Lord of Byeokrando's— Gah!"
Whereupon he dropped to his knees, confessed to crimes deserving death, and begged me to at least spare his wife and children, until I hauled him back to his feet and went through the side gate.
Even as we passed, his voice echoed behind us — please, just spare my life this once! In the end I spent a good long while reassuring him that nothing of the sort was going to happen, so he really shouldn't worry, before we could finally enter Byeokrando.
Once inside, I spotted Hanmuk and Seonwu — who had gone in ahead of us — standing around in a daze. Wondering what on earth was the matter, I moved further in, and only then did I understand.
"Come one, come all! Goods fresh from Song today! Take your time and have a look, everyone!"
"Good heavens, why is this so expensive?"
"Oh come now, madam, is this your first time here? That's just how this business goes."
"Even so, the difference in price from what I saw elsewhere is—"
"Tsk! Then don't buy it and move along. How dare you compare such wares to some beggar's trash? Everything here is of the absolute finest quality and nothing less."
Hanmuk, Seonwu, and I stood there with our mouths hanging open. There was simply too much of everything. People, goods, buildings, food. Nothing was missing — it was all there, in staggering abundance.
Stranger still were the people walking past in clothing and with faces I had never once seen before. And those very people were hawking their wares in halting Goryean.
Even more striking: the nobles coming through here, rare as it was, couldn't lord their status over the merchants at all.
Did a place like this even exist in my past life? You could have scoured the entire world and found nothing like it.
Then, for a moment, Byeokrando and the village I once ruled overlapped in my mind. Humble beyond comparison to this port, yes — but that village too had been a place full of people who smiled, just like this.
Imagining those days, I found myself smiling despite myself. We traded banter and jokes endlessly, back then.
But I failed to protect that place.
Byeokrando and the village — burning, collapsing — overlapped in my vision. And the thought crystallized: this place, at least, must never be allowed to become that.
To feel here what I'd felt in my conversation with Seolha. The monks used to say that life itself is the greatest teacher, didn't they? I agree with every word.
I closed the mouths of the two who were still gawping and walked on. That was that, and this was this.
"What are you doing? Aren't we here to have fun?"
I wanted to enjoy this moment, right now.
"Y-yes, my lord."
"Ye-ye-yes, sir!!"
This idiot got tense again.
"Young Lord! Look, over there — jeonbyeong! I want some of those rice pancakes!"
"Alright, let's go. But aren't you about ready to get down any—"
CRUNCH.
"Kehk."
"Hurry up!"
"Yes, sir...."
Diabolical.
The moment Mujin's party started moving, someone tailed close behind them.
