“There was nothing?”
“......No. Only traces that something had been there.”
“Was it certainly a Green Forest cave?”
“I am certain. It matched the vault of a lower Green Forest keep exactly.”
Before leaving the Ink Tiger Keep, Bang Si-jeong had gone out saying he would collect the important materials in advance.
But he had not expected matters to turn out this way.
‘There is no way the Boss emptied it beforehand.’
Green Forest caves exist in various forms, but they are generally used to store goods related to the Green Forest as a whole rather than to the individual keep.
Naturally, the only one who knew the way in was the Boss. Of course, since there is no vault to match it, quite a few Bosses use them personally as well.
It varies by disposition, but often they store precious stock medicines, spiritual medicines, or money...... this was the first time he had seen one so utterly empty.
At the very least there should have been some trifling letter sent down from an upper Green Forest keep.
‘Between this and the Boss, there will be much to look into separately.’
Just then he saw Jeong I-shin walking toward them alongside Sir Deok-myeong.
“Where in the world have you been? Hm? And why are your eyes so bright?”
SQUEAK—
At the sight of him conversing with the flying squirrel clinging to his collar, Bang Si-jeong's eyes suddenly narrowed.
Perhaps because he had come up empty in the Green Forest cave. The sight of Jeong I-shin communing with a cute animal made him irrationally peevish.
‘This unfair world.’
He was displeased enough to forget the exchange between intellectuals they had shared the night before.
‘An intellectual rare in the murim of the Central Plains today, and if only he were a little less handsome, he would have made a fine friend.’
Judging by the learning and cultivation that oddly seeped into his speech, the man was certainly properly educated, and yet he had to be good-looking.
“Tsk.”
Yeom Tak-gang tossed a bundle at him as he clicked his tongue.
“Ugly one. Set aside your fixation on what you do not have and do what you are good at, I told you.”
“Ugly one? Do you mean me?”
“Yes.”
“I am, in my own way, decently handsome! I will have you know that when I go out to the Wuhan marketplace......!”
“Enough. Have the people been called?”
He said it while pointing at those gathering one by one around Jeong I-shin.
People who, for various reasons, had been forced to remain at the Ink Tiger Keep.
“Master, I will never forget the kindness of saving my life, not for the rest of it.”
“Just forget it, it is hardly a good memory. Forget everything about this place and live. Here, take this as well.”
“I-I cannot take this money, Master!”
“Then throw it away.”
“......Thank you truly.”
“Master Jeong! This Hwang Gong-mang will never forget......!”
“You do as you please.”
The world holds countless stories, and it remains a world where merely keeping oneself alive is hard.
Even so, lending an ear to those stories and reaching out a hand is...... the orthodox path.
And the Beggar's Gang is a great sect of the orthodox path.
“I sent word to the Wuhan main branch.”
“Kuhuhu. Yes, the face may be ugly but the work is not badly handled. Your own direct line, naturally?”
“Goodness, what a dangerous thing to say. Where would a mere member of the Beggar's Gang get a direct line? They are simply friends of like mind.”
“Yes, yes. I shall have to weed them out together with the Boss at this opportunity.”
Yeom Tak-gang sauntered over and stood beside Jeong I-shin.
He announced the end of the Ink Tiger Keep to everyone.
‘And I do all the work.’
Swallowing his bitter complaint, he left the mountain keep.
Bang Si-jeong had decided to accompany Jeong I-shin as far as the Azure Cloud Escort Agency in Dawu County. He had things to ask the people who had been attacked.
A mountain path with two more in the party.
Bang Si-jeong, as always, calmly ordered his thoughts.
He had been extraordinarily bright from a very young age.
He thought so himself.
That was why Yeom Tak-gang had snatched up a child not yet five.
The world as it appeared to his eyes was dreadfully unreasonable and at the same time full of things that could be understood.
Understanding the world was easy, but changing it was hard.
He had quickly realized that a good head alone made him only half a thing.
And unfortunately his body did not match his head.
The inquisitiveness that had since remained in him like an illness was, in his own estimation, the flailing of a half-thing.
Even so, he could not stop.
‘Jeong I-shin.’
He glared at this latest object of inquiry.
Truly, truly a strange fellow.
They had spent a whole day together and not one question had been resolved.
This would not do. That man was an object of observation worthy of at least first grade.
So he had to find out something, anything.
‘One, the Beggar's Gang.’
At first it had been ten parts out of ten, an unmistakable beggar's state.
But once he had washed and come out, he was entirely different.
Changed clothes, a hairpin in his hair, and he was every bit the child of a king or a noble.
His bearing was closer to a prestigious clan.
Though even the Bright Moon Young Master of the Namgung, whom he had once glimpsed in passing, had not been quite at this level.
‘Two, the Eight Clans.’
Nineteen, he had said.
He had defeated the Ink Tiger Keep's Boss before reaching twenty. Hard to believe, but one had to assume he had already passed the peak.
However much the level of the younger generation had risen thanks to the Heavenly Martial Academy, that applied only to those who entered the academy.
Taking that into account, he had to be among the very highest of the younger generation.
In an ordinary martial house he would be a genius born once a century, and even in a prestigious house on the order of the Eight Clans he would be a level rarely seen.
And yet, however hard he thought, no such fellow came to mind.
Even rummaging through the hundreds and thousands of descriptive portraits stuffed into his head, there was no one like that.
‘Three, the Nine Sects.’
They no longer regarded martial artists of the Nine Sects as immortals descended into the human world as in the past.
Still, there remained something of how the world painted them as lofty beings.
The true qi the man had shown Sir Deok-myeong last night.
He had been startled by the faint lingering trace of it alone as it brushed his nose.
A purity and cleanness he had never experienced.
It was of a level that would make the Wudang Taoists he occasionally saw into mere common men.
Then was he a talent of the Nine Sects?
Unlike the clans, the Nine Sects are closed, so little information is exposed.
But the three swords at his waist deny it.
A wooden sword, a broken sword, and an utterly ordinary iron sword.
And all of them dangling without so much as a scabbard.
‘There is no way that is a swordsman of the Nine Sects.’
It was a headache.
The shell is the Eight Great Clans and the inside is the Nine Sects.
But it seemed to be neither.
‘Damn it, I have no idea.’
In the end he arrived at the Azure Cloud Escort Agency having learned nothing.
At Jeong I-shin's word, the gatekeeper ran into the building.
Soon a middle-aged man of generous build and a man of fairly sharp bearing came rushing out.
“Oh, oh! You came to us, Master Jeong! This Shin Jong-ik has waited for you day and night!”
“I greet the rising star of the Beggar's Gang, whose righteous spirit is said to reach the heavens!”
The two men, approaching with every kind of fuss.
Bowed their heads before Bang Si-jeong.
“......?”
“Uh-huh?”
Beyond the two of them he could see Jeong I-shin with a foolish expression.
The questions to be resolved had increased by one.
***
“You told me to come within three days, so I stopped by.”
At that voice the two men who had bowed to Bang Si-jeong turned around.
When Jeong I-shin tapped his waist, Shin Jong-ik's eyes flew wide.
“Three swords in utter disarray! A-Are you Master Jeong?”
“Yes, that's me.”
That composed voice was familiar.
He was indeed the young man who had ambled among the Green Forest bandits.
Perhaps because he had shed the beggar's look, he had not recognized him at a glance.
Shin Jong-ik, wetting his parched lips, abruptly turned his head.
“Th-Then...... who is this?”
Shin Jong-ik held up both hands and cautiously indicated Bang Si-jeong.
And the moment Jeong I-shin opened his mouth.
“I shall explain. The business here is on this side.”
Yeom Tak-gang led the way into the escort agency as though it were his own house.
In that brief instant, Shin Jong-ik's eyes swept over Yeom Tak-gang's waist and his mouth fell open.
‘S-Seven knots!’
The branch head heard him draw a sharp breath as well.
Naturally, the branch head's back did not straighten until they were seated in the reception room.
“Spirit soaring to the heavens indeed! That moment when you cut through the Green Forest bandits and saved the Azure Cloud Escort Agency! This Shin still cannot forget it!”
“It was only yesterday.”
“You saved the escort agency's good faith from falling to the ground! As branch head of Dawu County I offer my thanks once again. Truly, of the Beggar's Gang...... heh heh!”
“Yes...... well.”
Shin Jong-ik shouting with the veins standing out on his neck, and the branch head waggling his eyebrows with a knowing look.
What in the world had these two misunderstood?
He felt as though he were listening to an epic of a Central Plains hero he did not know.
Jeong I-shin, the party in question, was embarrassed enough that his face grew hot.
In truth he had wanted to clamp shut the mouths of Shin Jong-ik and the branch head from the start, but.
“Oho! Is that so?”
“Yes, Sir! Though my eyes were open, I could not follow Master Jeong's movements. Aah, never before have I lamented my own martial prowess so bitterly.”
“Ha ha. Our Benefactor Jeong must be a master of footwork arts as well.”
Deok-myeong, stroking Jeong I-shin's back over and over with a benevolent smile.
......That was why Jeong I-shin could not open his mouth.
However, at this table there was a mouth freer still.
THUD!
Yeom Tak-gang struck the table.
A marvelous blow that did not raise a single ripple in the tea.
At that control of strength, near an art in itself, Deok-myeong quietly closed his mouth.
“Let us talk about the escorted goods.”
“P-Please ask anything at all.”
The branch head could hardly take his eyes off Yeom Tak-gang's waist.
Trembling, he answered his questions.
“May I see a detailed manifest of the goods?”
But contrary to having said to ask anything, he did not give an answer to every question.
“That I cannot tell you.”
“Hmm.”
“My apologies.”
He heard again the words he had heard once before, that an escort agency that loses trust is finished.
Just as the generous branch head began to look a little different, Bang Si-jeong stepped in.
“Is it certain that they are bound for Xinyang, for the Heavenly Martial Academy?”
“Yes, that much I can state clearly.”
“Hmm......”
“In truth...... there is a rumor that attacks on escort runs bound for Xinyang have been frequent of late.”
“Is that true?”
“It is a story circulating quietly among the escort agencies.”
“Mm! Thank you for telling me.”
After exchanging a few more words, Bang Si-jeong nodded as though satisfied.
With that, the Beggar's Gang's business was finished.
Since they were the only ones with business here to begin with, the party left the escort agency at once.
“Please do visit the Azure Cloud Escort Agency again someday!”
“Master Jeong! Next time, please grant this Shin the chance to host you properly......!”
The branch head and Shin Jong-ik saw them off with faces steeped in regret.
The gazes of the two men toward Jeong I-shin in particular were deeply plaintive.
Because he had firmly refused even the promissory note they offered so they might repay him for saving them from the Ink Tiger Keep, they had no means whatsoever of expressing their hearts.
Though it was clearly no small sum, Jeong I-shin had paid it no attention at all.
It was the moment when hearts that had wished to forge a tie with a rising star of the jianghu were truly moved by the young man Jeong I-shin.
“Yes, well...... if the chance comes.”
The instant he waved the two men of the Azure Cloud Escort Agency back inside.
SQUEEEAK—!
Along with a sharp cry, a flash sparked atop the Azure Cloud Escort Agency's wall. A golden streak of light stretched long.
THUMP!
The flying squirrel, which stuck to Jeong I-shin's chest at the end of its short flight, had a snake in its mouth.
SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
At that oddly pleased look, Jeong I-shin took the snake and gently stroked the creature's head.
“You go out a lot these days, hm? Are you off playing with your friend?”
SQUEAK!
“Wandering around is fine, but you mustn't go picking up just anything to eat.”
......SQUEAK!
The flying squirrel, staring blankly at the snake, answered a beat late.
“And don't bully your friend.”
“I have no friends.”
“......?”
Along with the abrupt answer, a shadow fell over him.
Tucking the flying squirrel into his robes and raising his head, he saw Nam Tae-gang standing before him.
The man extended a hand with an utterly earnest face.
“I have no friends, but I do have a younger brother. Brother Jeong.”
“You still haven't given up? We're the same age to begin with, so what younger brother?”
Shaking his head, Jeong I-shin clasped Nam Tae-gang's hand.
“Next time we meet, call me a friend.”
“A friend......!”
Though of course there would be no next time.
“Go well.”
Jeong I-shin, equally friendless, turned quickly around.
“Ha ha. Master Nam is going to Wuhan together as well?”
“He was our party from the start......”
“Benefactor Bang will have a hard time of it.”
It seemed Deok-myeong and Bang Si-jeong's farewells had finished just in time as well.
Standing beside Deok-myeong, Jeong I-shin exchanged a light greeting with Bang Si-jeong.
Last of all, Yeom Tak-gang abruptly held out a hand.
“See you next time, Flash. Somehow I feel I will be seeing you again.”
“......Flash?”
“Yes, light flashes off your face. Turn it off when you sleep at night. Now then, Deok-myeong. We shall be off. Take care.”
With a farewell that left a strange impression on Jeong I-shin.
The ties that had come like a storm departed.
“Now then, let us also make our way diligently toward Mount Song.”