Uh, there… (3)
It was certainly something that could be called an achievement.
To have finished, in a mere three days, an investigation into an incident from twenty years ago that had nothing to do with Gangho.
It was the result of sending messenger pigeons to the main headquarters more than a dozen times a day, weeping, pleading, clinging, and threatening until they finally got it done. Perhaps it was not something one could proudly boast of, but was it not at least something one could boast of with a touch of embarrassment?
But the achievement Hong Daekwang truly considered his own was not something as trivial as finishing this investigation in three days. No, it was preserving the branch for those three days from the clutches of that raving madman right there.
“Magnificent, wasn’t it…”
“…”
“If I’d known in advance that my property was this precious, I wouldn’t have lived as a beggar.”
“What are you even talking about? You keep saying strange things.”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Just having a thought like that made him feel somehow guilty towards the Beggars Sect. As though there were something so wrong about living as a beggar.
“Three days, huh. Still, for a bunch of lazy beggars, you got it done fairly fast in your own way.”
“…”
“I thought you’d drag your feet for at least seven days and nights.”
“No matter how much we’re beggars, we’re still the Beggars Sect, so saying seven days is a bit…”
“It’s because you’re the Beggars Sect that I even gave you seven days and nights.”
“No. Just how little regard do you have for the Beggars Sect?”
“It’s not the Beggars Sect I look down on, it’s beggars. No matter that it’s the Beggars Sect, does it make any sense to say beggars could get something done in seven days? If people like that could do it, why would they live as beggars? If they put that effort into actual work, do you know how much money they could make?”
“Uh……?”
Hong Daekwang’s head tilted to the side on its own.
“That’s true. If we work this hard, we’re supposed to get paid for it, so why are we the ones handing over tribute while doing the work? From what point did things start going wrong…”
“You can reflect on your life later. So what was the result?”
“The results, right, about those results.”
Hong Daekwang let out a hollow chuckle.
“It was completely ruined, apparently.”
“…”
“Completely, utterly ruined… Ah, no. Put the fist down!”
“I’m supposed to let a beggar bastard live, who spent three whole days investigating only to spout the exact same thing as before? Wouldn’t it be better if I just sent this beggar bastard to the underworld right now? Then at least the dogs around here would get a little fatter. There’d be one less competitor.”
“Y-Your inner thoughts are coming out. Anyway, it’s not the same result, so calm down first.”
“…It’s not the same result?”
“Yeah. It’s the same, but different…”
Dragging out the end of his words to catch Chung Myung’s attention, Hong Daekwang spoke with an awkward smile.
“It turns out they were even more thoroughly ruined than we thought.”
“…”
“No, even before I started looking into it, I didn’t think it would be to this extent. You know the saying. Three years? Three generations?”
“If you talk to a beggar, you’ll have bad luck for three generations?”
“Even if a rich family falls, it lasts three generations, you idiot!”
Shouting angrily, Hong Daekwang tapped the documents laid before him with the back of his hand.
“That Shandong Yu Family, even if it wasn’t all that large in scale, wasn’t it still a place with a name known in the world?”
“That’s right.”
Though the fact that its scale was not all that large was something he had only just learned.
“So I thought at the very least there’d be something left. No matter how ruined they were, it wasn’t as if the whole family had been annihilated for treason.”
“And then?”
“And then, honestly, the ones guilty of treason might have ended up less ruined.”
“….Huh?”
Hong Daekwang shrugged.
“Traitors sometimes get pardoned and restored to their position, don’t they?”
“That’s…. true, I guess?”
The exact answer that rose in Chung Myung’s mind was, ‘Is that so?’, but he couldn’t afford to sound ignorant here.
“In other words, even a family that’s been exterminated to the ninth generation would still have one or two descendants left who could be pardoned, wouldn’t it?”
“I… suppose so?”
“But this so-called Shandong Yu Family – what kind of household was it? They didn’t even commit treason, yet there’s not a single descendant left to speak of.”
“…”
“This can’t be explained by just saying the foundation was uprooted. You’d have to cut down the foundation pillars, set fire to the exposed cornerstone, and grill meat over it before it could end up like this.”
“…”
“Seriously. I’m curious just how grave the sins of their ancestors must have been for the family to fall into such utter ruin. It’s so thoroughly destroyed that even I feel refreshed just looking at it… Agh! Why are you hitting me!”
“Ah. Don’t mind it, just keep going.”
“How am I supposed not to mind it when you’re beating me… Agh! Aagh! No, why are you hitting me?!”
“This is not something I can control, so nothing can be done about it. Just accept it and continue.”
“Aaagh!”
“I said continue.”
After quite a commotion, the situation finally calmed down, and Hong Daekwang, wearing a thoroughly fed-up expression as he looked at Chung Myung, continued speaking.
“Anyway, so I tracked down the descendants of that completely ru… Ahem. That slightly ruined family, and for the most part they had either died alone on the road, or changed their names and vanished without a trace.”
“So what that means is…”
“Yeah.”
Hong Daekwang nodded.
“The lineage is no more.”
“…”
“Well, it’s just a family that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Ugh…”
Chung Myung clutched the back of his neck.
Not only had the family completely collapsed, but its entire bloodline had been wiped out?
So that meant he himself had died by the sword, his sect had been shattered to pieces, and his family line had died out. Could something like this really be possible unless he had sold out a nation in his previous life?
“Strange, isn’t it.”
Hong Daekwang scratched at his chin.
“Normally, things can’t end up this bad.”
Hong Daekwang muttered a few more things after that, but none of them reached Chung Myung’s ears.
In truth, Chung Myung had no interest in how that Shandong Yu Family had ended up ruined. What mattered was that the place called the Shandong Yu Family no longer existed.
‘This poor man.’
Chung Myung shook his head. Perhaps it was better that he had died and been spared from witnessing this sight. If not he, but Chung Mun had returned alive to witness this, Chung Myung could not even imagine what he would have felt.
“Hey, Hwasan Shinryong. Are you listening?”
“………Alright. For now, I understand.”
With an inexplicable, unpleasant unease sitting within him, Chung Myung rose from his seat.
“I’ll get going.”
“Huh? Yeah? Then you’re just going to ignore this?”
“Ignore? What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t hear a word, did you? I told you.”
“What?”
Hong Daekwang’s face twisted. After all that effort he put into explaining…
“There isn’t a single person left with the surname Yu, but there are people presumed to be descendants… Ghk!”
Chung Myung suddenly lunged, grabbed Hong Daekwang by the collar, and shook him violently.
“You frustrating old beggar! Then you should have said that first!”
“I-I did say it! You’re the one who wasn’t listening!”
“If you’d said it properly, I would have heard it.”
“Please…. Please, couldn’t you just get struck by lightning somewhere and die? I’m begging you. Please..”
⠀
“Thirteen?”
“So it seems.”
“Name?”
“Seok Hanbin [석한빈(石寒貧)].”
“What kind of name is that?”
“Obviously an alias.”
“Hmm.”
Chung Myung scratched his cheek. What mattered right now was not what name he was using.
“And why is he suspected?”
“They say he once slipped up and recited his father’s name, and that name was Lee-Gwang [이광(理曠)].”
Hong Daekwang rummaged through the documents and pulled something out.
“The last person recorded in the family register of the Yu Family of Shandong is a man named Yu Lee-Gwang.”
Chung Myung frowned.
“That’s all?”
“What do you mean, that’s all? Do you know how important this kind of solid record is?”
“No, but still…”
“A thirteen-year-old kid suddenly shows up out of nowhere, with no kin to speak of, living on his own? Then of course there’s a story behind him. And then the timing and the name match?”
Hong Daekwang shrugged.
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“…”
“What? What’s with that look? We’re the experts here. You don’t trust the Beggars Sect? The Beggars Sect?”
“Ugh.”
Chung Myung scratched his head roughly. He wanted to argue with this somehow, but it was hard to come up with a rebuttal.
“Then check just one more thing for me.”
“Hm? What?”
“Among the people of that Yu Family of Shandong, was there, a long time ago, someone named Yu Jagyeong [유자경]?”
“Yu Jagyeong? Just a moment.”
Hong Daekwang rummaged through the pile of papers in front of him yet again and pulled out several sheets of paper. They looked to be a brief genealogy of the Yu Family.
“Yu Jagyeong, Yu Jagyeong… Hmm, there is one.”
“…”
“But he’s from a really long time ago. Well over a hundred years…”
“Got it.”
Chung Myung rose from his seat.
“Huh? Hwasan Shinryong? You’re just leaving like this? You punk. Hey, you punk! At least pay the investigation fee! Hwasan Shinryong!”
Coming out of the hut, Chung Myung shrugged.
“Well, anyway, it means the bloodline didn’t die out.”
Of course, there was no way to know for certain right now whether that kid Seok Hanbin was really a descendant of the Yu Family. But there was no real need to confirm something like that. No, perhaps it was better not to confirm it.
“It’s not like any of this was my fault in the first place.”
If this had been something that happened because he, like with Hwasan, had done something wrong, he would have felt too uneasy to stay idle. But what influence could he possibly have had over something that happened far away in Shandong?
If it collapsed, it must have had reason to collapse, and if it was bound to be shattered to pieces, then shattered to pieces it was.
“Ah, that’s refreshing.”
With everything neatly settled, Chung Myung broke into a bright smile.
“So that’s how it is. Don’t go expecting anything from me for no reason. This really isn’t my fault. Got it? If it were only, say, my Sahyeong’s son, I might have paid some attention, but expecting me to care about some distant descendant from ages ago is just unreasonable.”
Chung Myung pointed accusingly at the empty sky.
It was a perfectly clear sky.
❀ ❀ ❀
“Ugh. Today was hard too.”
“Training is supposed to be hard if it’s training.”
“Soso. Do you happen to know why people who always tell the truth die young?”
“Even if I die young, I think I’ll still live longer than you, Sahyeong.”
“…Actually, I think so too.”
Chatting idly, the disciples stepped into the dining hall. Since training had not ended easily today either, it was quite a late dinner, as usual.
“I’m starving.”
“At this point, I think I could chew through iron.”
But unfortunately, the ones who entered the dining hall late could not eat right away.
“Hm?”
“What is it?”
What caught their eyes was a scene where around a dozen disciples of Hwasan, without distinction between the Chung and Baek generations, were gathered in one place, whispering about something.
Baek Cheon’s face naturally formed a frown. Somehow, that scene felt extremely ominous and unsettling.
“If you came to the dining hall, you should be eating. What kind of nonsense are you all up to?”
“S-Sasuk, you’re here?”
The disciples who spotted Baek Cheon turned pale and ran over to him.
“Oh, Sahyeong. You came at just the right time.”
“Hm? What do you mean, the right time…?”
“F-First, over here. Please come here and look at that.”
“Look at what?”
“I mean, over there.”
“Hm? It’s Chung Myung. What’s so… Huh?”
Baek Cheon, who had casually spoken upon seeing Chung Myung sitting in a corner of the dining hall and eating, froze on the spot.
“Th-That bastard.”
With a trembling hand, Baek Cheon pointed at Chung Myung.
“Why? Why is he stuffing food up his nose?”
“He’s been like that for a while now.”
Baek Cheon, wearing a blank expression, checked Chung Myung again. The spoon, with half the soup already spilled onto the floor, drifted towards somewhere around his mouth, only to end up lodged in his nose.
“No. Why is he holding the spoon to his nose but chewing with his mouth?”
“…Even if you ask us that…”
Baek Cheon covered his face with both hands.
‘Please, just….’
It wasn’t as if that guy going mad was something new, but…
“Even if he has gone mad, couldn’t he at least do it a little more gracefully? Why does he have to be this creatively insane?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Shouldn’t we at least call a physician..”
“That won’t help with this, Sasuk.”
“…Right. If you’re the one saying it, Soso, then it must be true.”
Baek Cheon sighed and looked at Chung Myung. In the meantime, Chung Myung had scooped up a fresh spoonful of soup, and once again the spoon ended up stuck in his nose.
If he had at least looked dazed, it might have been a little easier to watch, but his face was instead insisting: ‘I am perfectly fine right now and very calm;’ which made it far more bizarre.
“What do you think he’s thinking about?”
“Who knows?”
“At this point, this is severe.”
“But doesn’t it make you uneasy?”
“Hm? What do you mean by that?”
Yoon Jong answered with a face full of worry.
“…Whenever that bastard gets like this, he always ends up causing some huge disaster.”
“…”
Baek Cheon shuddered.
‘This is ominous.’
Something was definitely happening, and it was no ordinary matter.
________
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Return of the Mount Hua 
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