Follow the great current of the Min River down from Fujian and cross over the pass, and you come to Byeokgye County.
It was the town where, in my last life, I had first made contact with the Murim Alliance.
Clatter, clatter.
In my last life, I had trudged this road on foot over two days.
This time, though, I had the good fortune of a carriage.
All thanks to the name tablet the Fujian Branch Head had pressed into my hand before I set out.
A token marking me as an honored guest of the Pitch-Black League's Fujian Branch.
Sitting quietly and looking at how different today was, I suddenly remembered the same time in my last life.
......As I recall, I had worn a pretty gloomy mug back then.
After surviving Ghost Spirit Island by the skin of my teeth, I had learned firsthand how merciless the martial world was. So you could say I had taken my first step into the underworld seething with bitterness.
Seeing my face, which looked like it had tasted every bitterness in the world, what was the first thing Moyong Wi, that bastard, had said to me?
—Aren't you getting a little too into your role? You've already become a real man of the underworld.
"Heh heh."
Byeong-ho tilted his head at the twisted laugh that slipped out of me.
"What happy thoughts are you having over there?"
"Do I look happy?"
"Yeah, you looked all excited. Is it someone you're that glad to see?"
I had told Byeong-ho I was going to see an old acquaintance, so he seemed to think my expression came from looking forward to it. Well, he wasn't entirely wrong.
"Glad, all right. Very glad."
Given how badly I wanted to see him, maybe love and hate come from the same place inside us.
I was itching to see that bastard's face as soon as possible. Moyong Wi of days gone by, still green and young.
Clatter, clatter.
Silence settled for a while.
Every time the carriage swayed, Byeong-ho's expression swayed along with it.
Normally the guy would have been grumbling long since about whether there was anything to snack on, but today his mouth was clamped shut. Instead of snacks, he looked like he was chewing on something.
After a long while, he finally couldn't hold it in and opened his mouth.
"Brother, am I weak?"
Silence fell inside the carriage. He had been unusually serious the whole way, and it seemed a riddle had been thrown at him to wrestle with.
This was Byeong-ho, who had been knocked out cold by Old Tyrant Roar's sound arts on Ghost Spirit Island without being able to do a thing.
In front of the Blood Night Gang Leader, he hadn't been able to lift a finger against that whip-like sword energy. That helplessness had followed him all the way here.
It was a wall every martial artist runs into at least once.
Telling him it was all right. That he had done well, that he only needed to get stronger from here. I could have comforted him that way, but that wasn't my way.
"You're weak."
"......How weak?"
"If you croaked out of nowhere someday, nobody would even be surprised. They'd just go, That guy was so weak he was ripe for dying—and leave it at that."
At my heartless words, Byeong-ho's face darkened.
"Hurts your pride?"
"......It does. Back in the village where I was born and raised, they called me Zhang Fei reborn...... and now I'm so ashamed of how pathetically weak I am, I want to crawl into a mouse hole and hide."
He was an honest one. That was exactly why I liked him.
"Byeong-ho, let me ask you one thing."
"Yeah."
"In this world, does the strong one always win?"
Byeong-ho thought for a moment, then answered.
"......Not always, I guess."
"Right."
I looked straight at Byeong-ho, who had shrunk into himself.
"This world doesn't work that way anyway. The strong are strong from birth, and most of the time the weak can try their whole lives and still never get out from under the feet of the strong."
Byeong-ho's eyebrows shot up.
"That's unfair."
"That's right. It's unfair."
Thinking back over the years gone by, I added.
"But in this world, even the strongest can catch a stray blade on a bad day and die a dog's death in some nameless field. That's also because the world is unfair. So being strong or weak doesn't matter nearly as much as you think."
The guy asked, looking sullen.
"Then what does matter?"
"Not breaking."
Byeong-ho's Adam's apple bobbed.
"Even if you run away like a dog today, the will to cling on and survive, get a hand's width stronger tomorrow, and make that bastard kneel before you next time. In a world where nothing is guaranteed, the one thing that can stay the same is a heart of your own that won't break."
His mouth shut tight. From his half-closed eyes, he was lost deep in thought.
It had to be a crucial moment for Byeong-ho, so I left him to it. Long after, when his gaze had settled, I asked him.
"Do you understand what I mean?"
"No idea."
Silence fell again. This time it was on my side. His answer was so brazen that it left me speechless for a moment.
"Why? Didn't your eyes just change like you'd figured something out?"
"Well......"
Byeong-ho furrowed his brow and said.
"When I'm hearing it, I get it, but the more I think about it, the less I understand what you mean. The harder I think, the farther away it feels."
His face showed no qualms at all. It was steadfast. Not a hint of enlightenment, not a hint of embarrassment. Just a face that said, perfectly and cleanly, that he had no idea.
"......Right. When has anything ever been solved with words?"
"I think I'm a bit stupid."
"That, you've realized."
"......"
Byeong-ho scratched his head and turned his gaze out the window.
I had tried to cram in words that were too hard. This was the realm of enlightenment, so even if I talked for a lifetime, it wouldn't get into this guy's thick skull.
I changed my mind.
That was fine. If words wouldn't do it, there was only one way.
I would pound it into his body myself.
I didn't know when, but the chance would come. In some desperate place where this guy would have no hole to slip out of.
Then this man would learn how different it is to know something in your head because someone told you, and to realize it with your own body.
Maybe it was a riddle Byeong-ho had handed me.
"......Brother, why are you smiling?"
Byeong-ho asked, peering at my face.
"Me?"
"You smiled. The kind of smile that doesn't mean good things."
"You'll forget it in a minute anyway, with that head of yours. Don't worry about it."
"You know, you hold a grudge more than you let on."
Instead of answering, I looked out the window.
Clattering, the carriage crossed over the hill, carrying each of us and our riddles.
Before sunset, we reached Byeokgye County.
Through the main gate and onto the high street, we saw an old tavern in the middle of town.
The Drunken Immortal Pavilion. We pulled the carriage up there and went inside.
"We'll rest here tonight."
Once we had unpacked and taken a window seat on the third floor, a server wearing his business smile hurried over to take our order.
"Welcome, welcome! What can I get you?"
Wetting my throat with water, I told the server.
"A jar of yellow wine. For the side dish, grilled partridge, seared on the outside only. And what porridge do you have today?"
"We've got some fine lily bulb porridge."
"Good. Bring that."
"Yes, yes, coming right up!"
When the server withdrew, Byeong-ho, who had been glancing around, asked.
"When are you supposed to meet this person?"
"Don't know."
"Huh?"
"When the time comes, they'll find us on their own."
"How would they know you're here?"
"Because they just found out."
Through that server.
A partridge is a migratory bird. A bird that stays in different places depending on the season.
It means me.
That was the first element of the Murim Alliance code, and 'seared on the outside only—' meant half-hidden, the second element, signaling my situation as a spy.
And the porridge.
Asking what porridge they had was to hear the other side's answer.
The lily, whose name means a hundred things joined together, meant it was safe to make contact.
Had he said red bean porridge, it would have meant not for now, and pumpkin porridge was a signal to be careful because I was being watched.
Leaving the bewildered Byeong-ho be, I looked out the window. If I waited quietly, contact would come one way or another.
"You gentlemen aren't from around here?"
When the wine had gone around a couple of times, a pair who had been fiddling with dominoes across the room struck up a conversation. Tilting my cup, I sized the bastards up.
A young man with a pretty face and fine clothes, and behind him a hulking brute who looked like he had been rolled in every kind of dirt the world has.
A dandy young master and a street thug.
To eyes that had knocked around this world, they made the most natural pair there could be.
Because the son of a local bigwig carousing with the underworld type who ruled the streets was as natural as water flowing downhill.
Except for one thing.
'He's playing the noble young master.'
The usual combination was an underworld type who humored some spoiled young master while running the town from behind the scenes, but surprisingly, the young master was the real boss. That was how it looked to me.
Their scheme was even more obvious. A well-dressed mark who had rolled in from out of town. In other words, me.
"The air of a Great Hero just radiates from you. Must be dull in a quiet town with nothing to see...... How about a round of dominoes?"
The young master grinned and spread the dominoes out on the table.
"Did I say you could sit?"
When I stared at them without a trace of a smile, silence fell. The brute's face hardened into a glare, so I flashed a bright smile as if nothing had happened.
"Just joking. Let's play! My hands were getting bored anyway."
A sneer flickered at the corners of their eyes. I must have looked like a half-baked fool who threw his weight around a little and then shrank from the big guy.
Dominoes is simple.
You shuffle the tiles, each take one, and whoever has the higher points sweeps the pot.
The only small difference was that these dominoes had marks worked into them.
Naturally. It was a rigged game.
I knew it and played along anyway. No, I fully intended to let them take me.
"Whoa! It's mine?"
Byeong-ho took the first round. Grinning from ear to ear, he scooped up the coins with his toad-like hands. Then I won one, and after that the young master.
We would win two or so rounds, then they would take one. It looked like we were quietly coming out ahead, but the stakes crept up bit by bit, like a fire being fed under a pot.
"Great Hero. Today must be your lucky day. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have taken you on. Haha."
"You think so? When luck comes knocking, a man doesn't turn it away. Hurry up and deal."
Eventually the coins gave way to silver. Five taels a head. When half a month of an ordinary man's wages was riding on a single round, I declared with a flourish.
"Can't let the streak slip away. I'll bet ten taels. And I'll make a declaration. From now on, every time I lose, I'll double the stakes."
The brute chuckled, as if a feast had just fallen into his lap.
"You've got some nerve."
"A man shouldn't shrivel up just because he loses a little money."
There was a reason I raised the stakes. To land a big fish, you need a big bait first.
The bastards' smiles changed when I casually put forty taels of silver on the table. For the first time, a strange look came into the young master's eyes.
Rigged or not, a game where the pot keeps doubling is a different story.
One slip of the hand and you have to cough up everything you've raked in so far, so even the winner starts to break a cold sweat down his back.
Byeong-ho and the brute had dropped out long before, leaving only me and the young master.
"At this point, I'm curious myself. About when I'm finally going to win. Here, eighty taels."
When I poured the silver out onto the table, the young master's eyes narrowed.
"......Eighty in silver. Can you handle that?"
"Didn't you say it was my lucky day? I'll take your word for it."
Of course, I lost again. Because from here on, it wasn't a game where they would go easy on me.
"Lost again."
At my calm words, the bastards quietly gathered up the money and made to leave.
"I don't recall saying you could get up yet?"
THUNK, THUNK!
I set two gold ingots on the table.
"I don't have change, so let's just call these two pieces two hundred taels. Oh, and you only need to put up a hundred and sixty."
The air in the tavern turned cold. Onlookers gathered one by one. Pulling out now would make them shameless hit-and-run winners, so the bastards sat back down.
It was a gambling table turned upside down, where the loser was relaxed and the winner's face was going stiff.
"......No backing out later."
The young master put everything on the table, all his winnings and his own money too.
The tiles went around amid suffocating tension—and the result was picture-perfect.
Me, eight. Him, nine.
Off by a single point. Not an ounce of imagination in that result.
"......"
The strange thing was that the bastards couldn't smile even after winning. Their eyes were nailed to the pot on the table.
Two gold ingots.
Two hundred taels of silver.
Two years of an ordinary man's pay, gone in a single round of dominoes.
As I sat silent and still, they couldn't bring themselves to sweep up the money and could only watch me closely. A strange, hair-trigger tension hung in the air.
"Well, well. Looks like my luck runs out here today. I'm all out of money."
I was the first to shrug, signaling the end of the game. Only then did the young master force the corners of his mouth up.
"......That's a shame. I never meant to take this much."
"What can you do? That's my luck."
The young master slowly swept up the gold ingots. He pretended to be composed, but out of the corner of his eye he watched my fingertips the whole time.
He may have meant to fleece me, but the game had gone far beyond what he could handle, so even winning must have left a bad taste. I showed him my open hands and smiled, as if to say he could relax.
When they finally slipped out of the tavern......
"......Brother. Have you lost your mind?"
Byeong-ho raised his voice, looking like he couldn't believe it.
"You lose two hundred taels on one bet? Money wanderers like us couldn't touch if we risked our lives for a lifetime—!"
"You're hurting my ears. Keep it down. It's money I scraped out of the Blood Night Gang Leader's vault anyway."
"And you just throw it all away like that?"
"I decided to live large this time around."
"There's a limit to living large!"
"Don't be so petty. That's why you're weak. And besides, I haven't lost it yet."
"......What?"
Treated like an idiot, Byeong-ho glared at me.
"Quiet, and follow me. Let's get some night air. Oh, and bring your iron staff."
"......What does night air have to do with an iron staff?"
Ignoring Byeong-ho, I went out the door.
I stretched and shook off the sticky air of the gambling table. Beyond the night breeze, the moon hung bright and high in the sky.
"Where are you going?"
"What's there to ask? I'm going to get my money."
Surely I wasn't the only one who had lost money tonight? I had counted that money as left in their keeping for a while, and now I was going to collect it.
"So we're going after the money we lost right now, that it?"
"Tut! I told you I haven't lost it yet."
I shut up the grumbling Byeong-ho and looked up at the moon. I drank in a mouthful of the night's charm and set off.
"Because tonight's going to be a lucky night."
To wherever the ones who had just won my money would crawl back to. To the gambling den's headquarters, tucked away somewhere in this town.