Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 1 - Wudang Sect (1)

Chapter 1 – Wudang Sect (1)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Great Merchant. If martial artists have realms called second-rate and first-rate, then for a merchant, the title Great Merchant would be the equivalent of reaching the peak of perfection.

What more is there to say. Me, of course. I, Muk Hui-yeong, am that Great Merchant. I never once called myself that, yet before I knew it, that was what I had become.

I slept less, ate less, wore less, and through bone-grinding effort became the richest man in the Central Plains.

And yet…

“Hey, look here, this is Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron!”

“What kind of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron is this big?”

“Quiet down, all of you. We did not come here to look for mere Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.”

The one who looked like their leader spoke in a solemn tone. Seeing the bastard put on airs while holding that weighty thing made my insides twist, and the words flew out on their own.

“A petty thief acting all grand!”

My vision flashed white. I had no idea how I had been hit.

Blood dripped from my mouth as I sprawled on the ground. Along with the blood came a savage pain gnawing at my jaw.

“What we came to take is property of our cult. You people of the Central Plains are the ones who stole it.”

“You stuffed a Cat’s Eye Stone into your robe earlier too. Does that belong to you people as well?”

“…That belongs to my wife. I am collecting it as interest.”

“It does not belong to your wife. It belongs to the Radiant Crystal Merchant Company, you damned little thief!”

As I shouted at the top of my lungs, something swung again. A dull pain engraved itself into my jaw along with the sound of the air being split.

When I looked back, there was blood on the scabbard, and it looked like mine. So he had struck me with the sheath. They say there are men who will beat even a dead monk’s backside… Then again, martial artists have probably never opened a sutra in their lives.

“Captain! We found it! There is a casket here!”

At that moment, someone’s shout rang out from a corner of the company warehouse.

“Oh.”

The eyes of the captain who had been glaring at me curved upward.

Before long, a jade casket was dropped in front of me, my arms and legs still tied. I looked at it and gave a short laugh.

“You brag about your martial arts, but you cannot open it, can you? Of course not. That jewel box is made from Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron. Do you have any idea how much it cost to make?”

“I have no interest in vulgar games of money.”

My insides churned. Vulgar games of money. Martial artists had always treated commerce that way. In their world, merchants were nothing but lowly money-grubbers.

But I wanted to ask every martial artist in the world this very moment. Is it vulgar to oppress commoners and rob them by force like this, or is it vulgar to build up wealth?

“Your mother must have raised you with money too.”

This time the scabbard did not fly at me. Instead, a rough hand seized me under the chin and lifted my face.

“Where is the key?”

“You think I’d tell you?”

“Of course not. Look at me.”

The moment he said look at me, his black pupils expanded. The eerie sight of the black overtaking the white made it impossible for me to close my eyes or even turn away. It felt as though his eyes themselves had a pulling force.

It felt as though my brain was being stirred up. Like riding in a cheap cart for ten shijin straight.

“Answer me. Where is the key?”

Unbearable nausea and a splitting headache swallowed my body whole. Instinct told me there was only one way to escape this agony: tell the truth. Even so, I decided to resist at least once.

“Ah… I won’t tell you, you bastard!”

“Once the Illusory Soul-Seizing Art reaches a higher level, you will only suffer more.”

The man in black kept bringing his face closer. I still could not avoid his eyes, and now the pain inside my skull became so intense it felt as though a porcupine were rolling around in it.

“Kh, aaaargh!”

“Talk quickly. We do not have much time.”

“T-the master’s chair! Under the chair!”

Only then did the man’s black pupils shrink again, and I was released.

The instant it ended, the crushing sense of defeat came over me. I had spoken in the end. Guilt toward the Martial Alliance Leader who had entrusted this to me and fury at the same time surged through me.

“Huff, huff…”

“It was always going to end like this, and yet you invited pain upon yourself. Still, for someone who is not a martial artist, you are the first to endure this long.”

Soon his subordinates found the key and presented it to him. The man wore a satisfied expression as he put the key in the lock and turned it, but the casket did not open.

“Wouldn’t your wife be better off with another man than that Cat’s Eye Stone?”

I mocked him desperately. The man grabbed me by the hair and hauled me up again.

“What is this? Is this not the key?”

“It is. You just cannot do it.”

“There is no way you lied after I used the Illusory Soul-Seizing Art…”

The man struggled with the key and the casket for a while and finally threw them back at me when he failed.

At the same moment the casket clattered across the floor, a sword came to rest against my neck.

“Open it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“The Illusory Soul-Seizing Art can compel actions as well.”

Meaning if I did not want to suffer that pain again, I should quietly open it. But I was no fool. The moment I opened it would be the moment I died.

Then again, if I did not open it, they would force me to do so with that soul art or whatever it was.

“Fine.”

“That is more like it.”

The blade cut the ropes binding my arms. I rolled my shoulders and stretched my arms once each. They were stiff from being bound too long.

I looked at the casket before me. That damned Martial Alliance Leader bastard. It was not enough for him to extort money from me all the time, now he meant to take this merchant’s life as well.

It had always been this way. Martial artists took what was mine. More than twenty wagons had once been looted by a band of mountain brigands. An estate I built had once been wrecked by a single man.

Martial artists snatch away the labor of a commoner’s entire life in an instant.

“Why are you martial artists all so arrogant? Other than killing people, is there anything you can even do? Useless creatures with no productivity who cannot even make a single brush with your own hands.”

“Shut up and open it.”

I closed my eyes. I had trampled over all of that and climbed this far. But it seemed this was as far as I would go.

“…What a weariness.”

Before I knew it, my true feelings had slipped out.

I inserted the key into the slot. Then I guided the tiny scrap of qi I had cultivated with the Three Calamities Heart Method into the key.

The reason the man could not open the casket was simple. Only the Martial Alliance Leader and I knew that the casket was a kind of mechanism. Only by spreading qi precisely through the grooves and turning it accordingly would it open. The key was merely a conduit for qi.

Click.

With the sound of the casket opening, the lid sprang open as if it would fly off.

A small black pellet, shining with a dark luster, lay carefully enshrined inside.

“Ohh. So this is the Divine Demon Pill…”

The man’s voice trembled with emotion above me.

“Hey.”

“What is it? I can hear one last dying wish.”

So now he was openly saying he would kill me. Not that I had expected otherwise.

“Do you know the merchant’s code I followed in order to become a Great Merchant?”

“I am not very interested.”

“Everything is repaid. Whether it is kindness or enmity.”

I smiled. Then I buried my face straight into the pill.

I did not know what kind of pill this was, but I knew one thing. The Martial Alliance Leader had warned me over and over.

If you so much as touch it with your tongue, do not expect to live. It was only half-refined. It will melt away at once.

Apparently these people did not know that. That was why they were still acting so leisurely.

The tip of my tongue touched the pill at once. A bitter taste spread as the pill wrapped around my tongue.

“You madman!”

Realizing too late what I was trying to do, the man slashed at my neck with his sword. The instant my tongue touched the pill and the instant my head left my body were practically the same. It showed just how exalted the man’s martial skill was.

But what could he do. I had already consumed the pill. It had turned into a handful of water and was coursing through my body… Even if he split me apart, even if he chopped me into five pieces, he would never recover the pill once it had been absorbed…

I wanted to mock him to the fullest, but I could no longer speak. My head and neck had been severed. Twisting my lips by sheer force, by utter force, was the best I could manage.

And with that, my consciousness flew away.

The lanterns of memory appeared. Countless things I had done in my life rushed past like the waters of a narrow gorge.

…

My consciousness kept flying backward into the past, until at last it landed on a certain moment.

“Huh!”

I sprang upright.

I turned my head from side to side. Even then I could not believe it, so I grabbed my head. Astonishingly, it was attached.

“Get up!”

At that same moment I heard a shout like a hammer striking my chest and the sound of a grass flute.

I knew that sound.

The shout and grass-flute signal that announced waking time for the Wudang Sect’s lay disciples. And the thudding sensation in my chest came from the fact that the shout was not ordinary yelling, but a Six-Harmony Voice Projection infused with internal energy.

The children beside me began waking one by one with groans.

But since I had woken first, I had time to think.

‘I left Wudang before I had even stayed a month, though?’

I remembered it. Because my father had donated to the Wudang Sect again and again, I had entered as a lay disciple, but I had absolutely no talent for martial arts. So I had been kicked out before even a month had passed. The others in my cohort mocked me so badly that even now my face burned when I thought of it.

I had been around the age of twenty then.

“How can those who have entered the Dao Gate be this lazy!”

The door banged open, and a Daoist with a black beard hanging all the way to his navel barked in anger.

“Immortal Cheong-hyeon?”

I muttered blankly, and the Daoist glared at me.

“What? Am I your friend? This brat is still half-asleep and talking nonsense.”

Cheong-hyeon struck my head with a long bamboo sword he seemed to have produced from nowhere. Naturally, there was no way I could dodge a martial artist’s bamboo sword.

“Aagh!”

Stars burst before my eyes. Only then did I remember. Though he was a martial artist, Cheong-hyeon was a merciless Daoist who mixed internal energy even into blows aimed at lay disciples who were little different from commoners.

“Have you come to your senses now?”

Cheong-hyeon spoke to me, but I could not answer.

[ Recommending talents to the user. ]

[ Nimble Movement – Ninth Grade ]

[ Price: three copper coins (beginner discount!) ]

Because absurd words were floating before my eyes.

And beneath them was an even more absurd list.

[ Martial Physique – Seventh Grade ]

[ Price: three hundred silver taels ]

[ Sword Talent (Lowest Grade) – Eighth Grade ]

[ Price: ten silver taels ]

…

[ Heavenly Eye – Second Grade ]

[ Price: unavailable ]

[ Martial King’s Body – Third Grade ]

[ Price: unavailable ]

Since they had price tags, it seemed I could buy them. From the perspective of a merchant like me, however, the prices were absurd.

Ten silver taels? Three hundred taels? They sound simple enough when spoken, but one silver tael buys two seom of rice, and ten silver taels can buy about thirty pyeong of land.

The names of the items were beyond absurd. They had not merely run away from home, they had fled beyond the frontier. Martial Physique and Sword Talent were one thing, but Martial King’s Body was the heaven-bestowed martial frame said to appear once every thousand years, and Heavenly Eye was one of the Buddha’s Six Divine Powers.

‘I have gone mad.’

I shook my head. The most reasonable thought was that I had died and was now drifting through the Nine Heavens. My obsession with life must have turned me into a wandering ghost.

Even so, now that it had come to this, I wanted to test it out. A Great Merchant cannot pass over an item he has never seen before. To become a Great Merchant, one must handle every kind of good.

“Immortal. May I ask one thing?”

“Hoh. You were hit on the head and now even your manner of speaking has changed. Fine then. What is it you wish to ask?”

“Could you lend me just three copper coins?”

The moment I asked politely, the bamboo sword came flying down toward my head once more.