An Awl in a Bag
The young man had grasped the situation long before it came to a head.
The sheer joy of that first day—leaving the place where he had trained, escaping the depths of Manjang Cliff, and stepping back into the world—was something else entirely. A thousand things he wanted to do came flooding into his mind. After surviving on nothing but grass for so long, he craved meat. More than that, he hungered for people. He had always been the quiet sort, so solitude had not bothered him at first. But once the years piled up, it became a problem.
So when he spotted a group in black robes moving through the area, following them had been the natural choice. Even without the present circumstances, their suspicious and unusual air would have piqued his curiosity. And if anything went wrong, he figured he could at least keep himself intact.
He watched the two groups argue, then clash. He gauged their rough level of strength and decided intervention would not be a problem. The main reason was practical experience, of course, but there were a few others as well. That was how he ended up face-to-face with Ma Dong-geuk.
The one regret was that he had not been able to read the man’s martial prowess with perfect accuracy. Well, that too was something experience would fix soon enough.
“You bastard—do you even know where you are…!”
“You’ve got a set of lungs on you. I only hope your skill matches that volume. A man needs a proper warm-up, after all.”
Ma Dong-geuk ground his teeth and threw a punch. The young man leaned back and slipped it without difficulty. Follow-up attacks came in a relentless stream. The force behind them was stronger than expected—but force meant nothing if it never landed. It was not quite yawn-inducing, yet with a little focus the blows were easy enough to dodge. He did not consider the man a particularly hard opponent.
If I had to pick a problem, it would be the heat.
Ma Dong-geuk’s fighting style mixed fist techniques with flame arts. The martial arts he had learned did not seem especially profound; his movements were monotonous in the extreme. That was why the young man could slip the attacks so casually. But once internal energy entered the equation, everything changed. Even after dodging, the trailing heat left his skin feeling lightly scorched, enough to make him frown. Still, it was within the range he had anticipated for both internal and external strength.
“You rat bastard…! If you’re a martial artist, stop running and fight me head-on!”
“Hmm? I wouldn’t say I’ve been doing nothing but running.”
He could not be certain, but the timing should have been about right. Outwardly there was still no sign, so it was hard to tell. This was his first real fight; he had no prior memory of how these things usually went. Should he keep dodging a little longer?
The thought was still forming when it happened.
“Guh—! My insides…!”
“Looks like it’s finally started circulating.”
In the middle of that agony, the young man unleashed a palm strike laced with poison. It landed cleanly. Ma Dong-geuk tumbled across the ground. Already reeling from successive hits, he could not gather his wits; if this had still been a proper fight, he would have been leaving fatal openings by the dozen. Yet after that first strike the young man simply stood still and watched.
Once the poisoning began, victory was already decided.
Ma Dong-geuk’s face twisted with pain, yet his eyes still held pure incomprehension.
“This is my first time using poison arts in a real fight. How does it feel?”
“You… you used a vile trick…!”
“A vile trick? Hard to take that from a bandit. Are you as self-righteous as those stiff-necked Orthodox types?”
“Cough—when did you poison me?”
“Who knows? When I first appeared? While we were talking? In the middle of the fight? Go ahead and guess.”
“You damn bastard—cough!”
“The answer is all three. Even now, my toxic energy is saturating the air around us.”
That was the terrifying part of poison arts—and the reason they were so reviled. To a martial artist, skill was everything. They sought out fights because real combat helped them grow more than anything else. They would charge in without hesitation even when their lives were on the line. But that did not mean they treated their own lives lightly. If anything, they treasured them more than most. Reaching a lofty realm took decades at the very least, and even then success was rare. Poison, however, often struck at life itself, and there were cases where a lifetime of effort was reduced to nothing in an instant. Small wonder most people looked on it with hostility. In extreme cases they would try to eliminate the threat first.
Uproot the grass and cut the roots. If something might become dangerous, remove it before the danger arrives. It was a common enough practice in the murim. Gu Mang-gyeol himself had endured it, yet he had overcome it and spread the poison arts anyway—a feat that made one reassess just how formidable he had been.
The young man finished the brief reflection with a dry chuckle.
“Thanks to you, I’ve got a rough sense of where I stand. Below the Ihap Realm, I doubt I’ll lose often.”
“Cough—so this was your first time out?”
“You could say that. Any last words?”
“The murim is a place full of the unexpected. Cough—to die in a hole like this…”
His face was still contorted with pain. The young man did not drag it out. He struck Ma Dong-geuk square in the face and ended him, releasing the man at last from the endless torment of the poison. A small mercy. Then his gaze shifted.
The bandits are being pushed back. Their numbers look a lot thinner than when this started.
It was inevitable. Their strongest fighter had been tied down, and the young man had already thinned their ranks the moment he appeared. That was probably the decisive factor.
Objectively speaking, helping the side getting slaughtered makes more sense than helping the bandits. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do next, but putting a faction in my debt can’t hurt. Whatever I end up doing, it might come in handy. And if it doesn’t, no loss.
Time passed, and the matter resolved itself without much difficulty. Most of the bandits died where they stood; a few were captured, a few fled. No one bothered chasing the runaways. Wiping them out had never been the point, and the people from Haesang Bang were exhausted besides. They had not exactly won this on their own strength.
Woo Geum-moran rubbed her throat as she approached.
“First, allow me to thank you. If you had not helped us, Young Hero, we would all have been killed—or turned into playthings.”
“Think nothing of it. But which group do you belong to?”
“Ah, I should have introduced us sooner. We are from Haesang Bang. We were crossing the mountain range on business.”
“Haesang Bang. One of the merchant companies under the Merchant Alliance?”
“Not all of us—only a few of the higher-ups.”
The name “Merchant Alliance” did not mean some grand, organically linked network of every trading house under heaven. The term itself was only an abbreviation. There had once been an attempt to form a true confederation of that sort, but it had collapsed under pressure from other powers. From the perspective of the great sects and clans, separate merchant houses were far preferable to a unified bloc; several of those who had pushed the idea were made examples of. Some houses were wiped out entirely; others shrank dramatically. Yet the merchants did not give up. If anything, the crackdown drove them closer together. Small regional coalitions sprang up like mushrooms after rain. They were just modest enough that no one could easily stop them, and once the discussions began they were completed almost overnight. The Yeonghae Alliance—commonly shortened to the Merchant Alliance—was one of those. Most of its member companies operated along the western sea or the lands near it, and even the great sects and noble houses could not afford to ignore its standing. In the surrounding regions it was said that whether a trading house belonged to the Alliance or not determined its very scale.
Woo Geum-moran drew an object from her robes and held it out.
“This is…?”
“My father’s command token. I would like to express proper gratitude for your help, but we still have business to attend to. Take this to our main house and you will be treated as an honored guest. We have a certain amount of influence.”
“I hadn’t expected anything of this level, but I’ll accept it gratefully. I’ll put it to good use later.”
“And one more thing. This time it’s a proposal.”
“A proposal?”
“We will measure out a fair reward. Would you escort us? As you can see, we won—but many of us are wounded or dead.”
“Reinforcements, then. You judge the road ahead too dangerous as things stand. I’m afraid I must decline.”
He intended to head for the nearest town. After years alone, he needed to catch up on recent events.
“I see. I won’t press the matter.”
“I wouldn’t call it a substitute, but take these pills. I made them experimentally myself, so I won’t charge you.”
The young man rummaged in his robes and produced three pills—items he had prepared before leaving Manjang Cliff.
“Pills. Don’t tell me you’re an alchemist as well? Unusual martial arts, and you look young besides.”
“Well, still at the fumbling stage.”
She had thought she was merely dealing with a new martial artist. If he could refine pills as well, that changed everything. Woo Geum-moran decided this was an opportunity. A young man with potential—not yet a master, but clearly headed that way—already held great value. An alchemist on top of that was as good as a guarantee. A guarantee that he could become someone important. Knowing that, she could invest at a bargain price by current standards. If it paid off, her standing in Haesang Bang—and further up in the Merchant Alliance—would rise in no time. Direct approaches were for amateurs. Chance had already created a connection; the next step should look like chance as well.
She accepted one of the pills and continued.
“I’ll put it to good use. Can you tell me where you plan to go next, Young Hero?”
“I intend to head for Pyeonrim City.”
“Pyeonrim City… Pyeonrim City…”
“Hmm? Is there some problem with that place?”
“No, nothing. I simply hope we meet again. We have a long road ahead, so we’ll take our leave.”
She was aware the conversation had ended rather abruptly. But if she kept talking she feared her thoughts would show on her face, so Woo Geum-moran hurried away with her people.
The young man watched them go for a moment, then set off in the same general direction. The battle that had erupted in the mountains ended there. The first day after leaving Manjang Cliff faded into evening just the same.