Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 149 - Central Plains Merchant Union Council (4)

Chapter 149 – Central Plains Merchant Union Council (4)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“Brother.”

“What?”

“Thank you, always.”

“Why do you always say that every time you get drunk? Have you got nothing else?”

I tossed a strip of dried fish into my mouth and chewed.

Na Hyeon-wi chuckled. There were only three years between us, so in my previous life he too had already been nearing forty, yet there had still been something boyish about him.

“When I first inherited the All-Under-Heaven Merchant Company, I had a hard time, did I not? If not for you, Brother, I probably would have been driven out.”

“I told you. I did it for my own sake.”

“Ah, there you go again.”

“It is not that I am doing it again. I say it because it is the truth.”

Na Hyeon-wi picked up some dried fish and put it into his mouth as well. Unlike me, who had one leg propped on the chair and tossed the dried fish into my mouth, his posture was extremely neat.

As expected of those people from great families. That was what I thought to myself.

“Even so, what does it matter? In this untrustworthy world of commerce, you are my one and only companion.”

“Does that not sound embarrassingly sentimental for a pair of old men who have already lived long enough?”

“The older you get, the more you have to hold on to the words, memories, and feelings of your youth. Otherwise, before you know it, you become one of those old men in the back room.”

“Yes. That part is true. The moment you fall behind, you die. It is not for nothing that martial artists are always throwing around the saying, ‘The latter waves of the Yangtze drive on the former waves.'”

“Exactly. Ah, after drinking, I suddenly miss Miss Gwan as well.”

“Get lost. What Miss? The woman is already past forty. That is disgusting.”

“Why? When I saw her at the Merchant Union Council last time, she still looked beautiful.”

“If we burn you and pound you in a mortar, you will look pretty too.”

“Whenever Miss Gwan comes up, Brother always changes the subject like that. I told you before. You will regret it later.” At that, I set my cup down on the table with a thump and stood up.

“I am leaving. So that was why you called me over.”

“Brother, Brother! I am sorry. I will not bring up Miss Gwan again.”

That was when I sat back down, pretending to relent.

“Then shall we talk about your wife now?”

“Ugh, no thank you.”

I did not say it out loud because it was too embarrassing, but Na Hyeon-wi was indeed someone I could call a companion in this untrustworthy world of commerce.

And the younger version of that man was now right in front of me.

* * *

A place where I would meet ties from my previous life.

Naturally, not all ties from a previous life were good ones. There were evil ties as well. Ties I would have liked to kill.

Of course, the Na Hyeon-wi sprawled out here was someone with whom I had not had a bad connection. Unlike his father, who was perfect at everything, he had a few loose parts. But there were times when he knew how to use those gaps as feints and throw out a tremendous success.

At first, everyone had dismissed him, saying the successor to the All-Under-Heaven Merchant Company had turned out to be an idiot, but I was the first one to recognize his true worth.

“Na Hyeon-wi.”

“I told you it is not me.”

“It is you.”

But I could not act as though I knew too much about Na Hyeon-wi. After all, the Na Hyeon-wi I knew was the man who appeared after Na Han-geol retired and he himself became the branch master of the All-Under-Heaven Merchant Company.

Even so, Na Hyeon-wi felt familiar, because despite the years between them, he was not all that different from the one I knew.

“Why do you keep saying I am when I am telling you I am not!”

“Is Na Han-geol really that impressive, or is he all puff and wind?”

“What did you say? You damned bastard!”

Na Hyeon-wi, who had suddenly grabbed me by the collar, immediately changed his expression as if realizing something. I removed his hand from my collar and dusted off my lapels.

“Enough with the denial. If you deny it any longer, I will take it as you denying the name your father gave you.” “…All right.”

Na Hyeon-wi answered in a dispirited voice. Na Han-geol was, objectively speaking, an extraordinary man, and Na Hyeon-wi naturally respected a father like that. If you knew that point, handling Na Hyeon-wi was no difficult task at all.

“Then how did you know it was me? That I was Na Hyeon-wi?”

“I obtained wanted-style descriptions of everyone likely to come to the Merchant Union Council.”

“To be that thorough…”

At my lie, Na Hyeon-wi dropped to his knees and planted both hands on the ground. It was the appearance of a man harshly rebuking himself for his own shortcomings.

That was one reason Na Hyeon-wi would do well later. His willingness to reflect on failure and learn from it. At first glance, someone might think that was only natural, but in truth there were many people who could not do even that. Tragically, there were many who went to their deaths without ever learning how.

“Now then, let me ask. Why did you ambush me?”

“Well…”

Na Hyeon-wi trailed off. I barked at him.

“Answer me quickly!”

“Ah, well. Actually, I planned for those fake Green Forest men to threaten Branch Master Muk, and then I would step in and rescue you. That was the kind of scene I wanted to create. But those idiots suddenly went completely off script. Ah, of course it is my fault for hiring people like that, and I know this whole plan must sound ridiculous…”

The words spilled quickly out of Na Hyeon-wi’s mouth. I shook my head. Was that not the kind of trick only old men used when trying to court women?

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to become friends with you!”

The situation was becoming more absurd by the moment. Apparently, my expression was not even registering, because Na Hyeon-wi kept talking.

“I truly wanted to become friendly with you, but I could not think of any way to do it. So in the end, I had no choice but to resort to a plan like this. If I offended you, I truly apologize.”

Na Hyeon-wi bent his waist deeply to me. The Na Hyeon-wi I knew in my previous life had also been an unbelievable fellow, but this was on a different level. Young Na Hyeon-wi was twice as much trouble as older Na Hyeon-wi.

“If you wanted to become friends, could you not have just approached me normally and suggested we travel together?”

“Then you might have become suspicious. I wanted to stage something dramatic. Heh heh.”

“So because of one idea in your head, you frightened us?”

“…When you put it that way, yes. My apologies again.” A hopeless idiot. I grabbed Na Hyeon-wi by the ear and hauled him back to where we had come from. By then, the hired men disguised as Green Forest bandits had already vanished cleanly.

“Aaaah! It hurts!”

“It is meant to hurt.”

When I dragged Na Hyeon-wi back by the ear, Yu Cha-ryeon and Jo Chung-heon could only blink their eyes. No matter how quick-witted they were, it could not have been easy to guess what had happened.

“Was he the one who ordered them to kill us?”

“He says he did not order them to kill us, only to threaten us. Then he was going to step in and rescue us according to the script.”

“What? What kind of idiotic script is that?”

At Yu Cha-ryeon’s merciless words, Na Hyeon-wi’s face flushed red. Apparently, it was humiliating for him to have a plan he had put so much effort into immediately dismissed as idiotic.

I let go of his ear.

With tears welling in his eyes, Na Hyeon-wi looked at me and then naturally began apologizing to Jo Chung-heon and Yu Cha-ryeon as well. At least because he had been raised in a great family, he possessed the minimum level of tact and manners.

Jo Chung-heon and Yu Cha-ryeon both found it as ridiculous as I did, but because Na Hyeon-wi apologized so politely and because we had not actually suffered any harm, they seemed willing to let it pass.

“But why did you want to get close to the Branch Master?”

Yu Cha-ryeon asked.

Now that I thought about it, I had not asked him that. That was because, to me, being on friendly terms with Na Hyeon-wi had once been too natural a thing. But now that I thought about it, that really was the first thing I should have asked.

Before answering, Na Hyeon-wi scratched the back of his head with some embarrassment.

“Well, actually Father thinks very highly of Branch Master Muk.”

“Hm?”

That was news to me. Na Han-geol was a legend as a merchant and a legend as a martial artist. The idea that a man like that even knew who I was felt surprising in itself.

“So he wants to maintain some kind of good relationship, and I wanted to be of help with that.”

In the end, he was saying he had devised that scheme in order to help his father. The purpose was touching enough, but the method itself was so clumsy that Na Hyeon-wi remained very much Na Hyeon-wi.

Still, the fact that the Golden Sword Na Han-geol was interested in me was enough on its own to improve my mood.

Na Han-geol had been someone who truly retired and cleanly let go of the merchant company. He was unlike the old men who claimed to retire while still lording over everything as grand branch masters. Which meant that our primes were clearly different, and there had never been any chance for us to overlap.

In that sense, he felt somewhat similar to Merchant King Yeo Bul-jin. I had not had much connection with Yeo Bul-jin in my previous life either, yet in this life I did. But there was also a difference. In my previous life, I had at least seen the older Yeo Bul-jin, so meeting him directly did not feel especially shocking. Na Han-geol, on the other hand, was someone I had truly never seen even once, so my curiosity rose naturally.

“Fine. Then you are also heading to Beijing, right?”

I spoke first for the sake of Na Hyeon-wi, who was watching my face. Na Hyeon-wi nodded rapidly.

“Then come with us. You did not pull any more dogshit stunts on other mountains too, did you?”

“Actually, I had no idea Branch Master would be such a highly skilled martial artist. So I thought everything would end right here.”

Na Hyeon-wi said that.

Then again, whenever I had used martial arts outside the sect, it had always been in situations where the news could not spread.

The first time had been at the salt-merchant after-party. Though I had used the rules to do it, I still remembered beating Namgung Hwi somehow.

But there was no way for that to leak outside. The Huizhou merchants all maintained close relations with the Namgung Clan, and there was no way the direct line of the Namgung family would go around loudly proclaiming that he had lost to the young master of a newly established merchant company.

The second time was when I fought Two Exalts in the black market of Shaanxi. I think I vaguely revealed who I was at the time.

But it had happened in the black market, and who would hear that I had fought Two Exalts on equal footing and simply believe it? In the martial world, I was still an unknown nobody.

So in the end, there was some basis after all for Na Hyeon-wi’s slapdash plan.

“Still, the fact that you are truly a Taiji Sword Guardian is astonishing. I knew your ties to the Wudang Sect were close, roughly speaking, but for the Wudang Sect to grant you the position of Taiji Sword Guardian. Is that not a place reserved only for the exceptionally talented among even the main-sect disciples?”

Now aware of his own position, Na Hyeon-wi immediately resorted to flattery. But what he said was not entirely wrong, so I felt neither especially pleased nor displeased.

“Well, perhaps so.”

“Even if I know little of the martial world, if a Taiji Sword Guardian born from the ranks of lay disciples had appeared, the Nine Great Sects would be turned upside down. If I had to compare it to the world of commerce, would it not be like an illegitimate son defeating the direct line and taking over the merchant company?”

Na Hyeon-wi looked at me with shining eyes. If eyes had such a thing as qi, then his gaze would have looked as though starlight were pouring down on me. That was how burdensome Na Hyeon-wi’s gaze felt.

“To be honest, at first I only wanted to build a bridge because of Father’s words, but now I truly want to become friends with you.”

“Your first impression was too terrible for that.”

“Brother, I truly apologize.”

“How old do you think I am, calling me Brother?”

“Ah, from your youthful face, I thought you seemed younger than me.”

“Too late.” Even while looking crestfallen, Na Hyeon-wi followed after us.

After that, nobody caused us any trouble. As expected, I had not been wrong. Even as we continued crossing the mountains, not a single Green Forest bandit appeared, which meant the road I had known really had been the correct one.

Thanks to that, we shortened our schedule and reached Beijing quickly.

“We have finally arrived. Beijing.”

I spread my arms wide and breathed in the air of Beijing.

Splendid walls and a boisterous atmosphere. This was the imperial capital, where the emperor resided. This was Beijing.

“Let us go. To the Merchant Union Council.”

As the others busied themselves taking in Beijing, I clapped my hands to bring them back to their senses. I then cut straight through alley after alley toward the Merchant Union Council.

“It seems you have been to the Merchant Union Council before.”

Jo Chung-heon said that, but I shook my head.

“No.”

“Then how are you finding your way so well?”

The Merchant Union Council valued tradition, and as such it had occupied the same place from long ago until now. It would remain the same even in the future. That was why I could know exactly where it was.

Soon, we arrived at the Merchant Union Council.

And in front of the Merchant Union Council, I came face to face with another connection from my previous life.

“Oh? Young Master Jin!”

Na Hyeon-wi greeted him warmly. A man with drooping eyes and a gentle-looking face looked back at Na Hyeon-wi and returned the greeting cheerfully.

“Young Master Na, you have come as well.”

“Ah, greet him, Brother. This here is…”

“I know.”

Na Hyeon-wi was about to introduce this Young Master Jin, but I already knew him.

“Jin Su-gwan. Correct?” Unlike Na Hyeon-wi, this was a clearly malignant tie.