Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 154 - Beijing's Heavyweights (4)

Chapter 154 – Beijing’s Heavyweights (4)

I didn’t know exactly what Na Han-geol had been aiming at when he set Na Hyeon-wi against me. There were probably complicated calculations behind it, but I had neither the desire nor the need to dig that deeply into it.

“Hahaha! You can drink well too, I see. You’re not secretly driving out the drunkenness with internal energy, are you? If you are, hot qi will rise through your baihui acupoint, so I’d know!”

That was because, right now, Na Han-geol was treating me with remarkable warmth. Na Han-geol’s active favor may have overshadowed it a little, but the goodwill of the others had clearly strengthened as well.

“To think you were one of Wudang’s Taiji Sword Guardians. I knew Branch Master Muk had close ties with the Wudang Sect, but I never imagined it was to that extent.”

“Come now, man! What do you mean by saying it as if he only got that seat because of close ties? Anyone can see he got it because he has the skill.” “Well, yes, but I’d never heard of them giving it to a lay disciple…”

“Apologize at once!”

“…My apologies.” Even while all that was going on, Na Han-geol kept grinning and pushing me forward enthusiastically.

Even simply having him standing beside me while I greeted the others meant I was basking in the reflected light of Na Han-geol’s prestige. Of course, being a Taiji Sword Guardian was in itself something that naturally made others look more favorably on me.

Even so, if Na Han-geol had not backed me this aggressively, it would have been difficult for the other merchants to approach me so freely.

“I guarantee it. Branch Master Muk, like me, will soon become a martial artist whose name shakes the jianghu. It would be wise for everyone here to get acquainted with him in advance.” There was no one here who was not a heavyweight in the world of commerce, but Na Han-geol alone carried authority not just in commerce, but in the martial world as well.

Once Na Han-geol evaluated me that way as a martial artist, the others had no choice but to move closer.

“Because of Branch Master Na’s fuss, I feel like I ought to greet you again. Good to see you.” “The pleasure is mine.”

Perhaps because of that, a rather comical scene occurred where I wound up greeting again the same people who had already greeted me once.

The people who had first introduced themselves to me also became more proactive. We spoke of things like how they might keep in regular contact with the Radiant Crystal Merchant Company, and where exactly our main branch was located.

“Shouldn’t Brother Gwan greet him again too?”

“Heh heh. If Branch Master Na says I should, then I suppose I must.” And so at last I exchanged greetings with the person I had most wanted to see here.

The master of the Yunchang Merchant Company. Gwan Yeong-sang.

Of course, the merchant I most respected really was Na Han-geol.

It would be difficult to say I respected Gwan Yeong-sang in quite the same way. Then had the old me been close to Gwan Yeong-sang?

Not that either.

Gwan Yeong-sang belonged to roughly the same generation as Na Han-geol, so he was not even a merchant of my own age. Even so, the reason I had wanted to see him was of course because of his daughter.

If there had been a merchant friend in my previous life with whom I had truly shared my heart, then it had been Gwan Yeong-sang’s daughter, Gwan Seo-ye.

Of course, Na Hyeon-wi would probably be hurt if he heard that, but the Na Hyeon-wi who would be hurt existed in a future I could never reach, so there was no reason for me to care. “You seem strangely awkward, Branch Master Muk. Is greeting the same person twice in one day that uncomfortable?”

Gwan Yeong-sang laughed heartily.

Only then did I realize I had been standing there with an awkward, foolish expression. In front of one person, I had committed the discourtesy of thinking about someone else.

“Ah, no. Not at all. It’s a pleasure to greet a descendant of the famous Lord Guan as many times as needed.” “Hahaha! You do know how to handle a member of the Gwan Clan.”

People of the Gwan Clan had the peculiar habit of liking it more when one praised Guan Yu than when one praised them directly.

You could infer as much easily enough from the fact that the very name of their merchant company came from Guan Yu’s style name. Gwan Yeong-sang was a middle-aged man whose wrinkles carried their own appeal.

For the master of the Yunchang Merchant Company, he surely had plenty of money, yet he wore not even a single common ornament and dressed only in neat clothes just dignified enough that no one would look down on him.

The last time I had seen Gwan Yeong-sang had been in the portrait placed in lieu of a spirit tablet at his funeral. He looked exactly the same as he had there.

“Um, perhaps…”

I glanced around me. Gwan Yeong-sang immediately noticed that there was something I wanted to say.

Then again, with the way I was twisting my whole body and giving it away, it would have been hard not to notice.

“Is there something you wanted to say to me?” “No. Well, it’s nothing much. I heard you have a daughter.”

“Kuhaha! So that was what you wanted to ask. Yes, yes. You’re a man of that age too, so naturally you’d be curious about my daughter!” Gwan Yeong-sang laughed loudly.

The two things I had mentioned one after the other were likely what he took the greatest pride in, so he seemed to be in high spirits.

“When Seo-ye was born, my late father said this: that the greatest beauty in the entire Gwan Clan had appeared.” “Can you tell that when they’re a baby? Aren’t they all wrinkly?”

“Tsk, tsk. This man has no sense for sympathy at all. It’s just a way of speaking.”

“Ah. Right.” For a moment, I hadn’t been myself.

Ordinarily I would have simply praised her more and made him happier, but the moment Gwan Seo-ye came up, I had started nitpicking instead.

Then again, Gwan Seo-ye did insist passionately that around this age she had been called the greatest beauty in Shanxi. When I met her, she had already been over thirty, and at that point, chased by heavy work and stolen naps, she had not looked the part, so it had been difficult to believe.

Later, however, I learned it had actually been true.

“In any case, there were a great many marriage offers from early on. But she’s a troublesome daughter who stubbornly insists she won’t marry unless the man is someone she approves of.” Gwan Seo-ye was the same age as I was.

That meant she should be around twenty-three now. Compared to Yu Cha-ryeon, who was my age and already had a daughter around five years old, that was late.

“I thought the young lady who came with you might be your wife, but I suppose she isn’t.”

Na Han-geol cut in casually. Even Yu Cha-ryeon, normally so self-assured, had turned into little more than a tied-up sack of barley in front of these middle-aged merchant leaders.

She probably didn’t have much to say in a room like this.

“No. She’s just an employee of our merchant company.” “Ah, I see. She was so strikingly beautiful that I wondered. Though then again, a place like the Beijing Restaurant isn’t somewhere one brings such personal ties.”

As Na Han-geol nodded, he studied Yu Cha-ryeon more closely.

Then he tilted his head and turned toward Gwan Yeong-sang. “Brother Gwan, now that I think of it, doesn’t this young lady look familiar somehow?”

“Hm?”

Both Gwan Yeong-sang and Na Han-geol looked at Yu Cha-ryeon. Yu Cha-ryeon had the look of someone who’d just been caught.

In a weary tone, she gave a polite greeting. “Yu Cha-ryeon of the Yu Family Estate in Jinzhong. We met when I was young.”

“Ahhh! The Yu Family Estate! No wonder!”

Come to think of it, Yu Cha-ryeon’s Yu Family Estate was indeed in Jinzhong, Shanxi. Merchants and officials naturally had fairly close ties, so it wasn’t strange for them to have known one another.

“The Yu Family Estate in Jinzhong?”

At that moment, the one who sprang to his feet was Jin Deuk-myeong of the Qin-Jin Merchant Company, who had been looking at us sourly. “What is this? Why would the esteemed young lady of the Yu Family Estate be here?”

“Why? Am I not allowed to be?”

Yu Cha-ryeon answered coldly. I was a little startled.

I hadn’t expected her to respond that sharply. But even if someone as young as Yu Cha-ryeon answered him so curtly, Jin Deuk-myeong had no grounds to complain.

Even among prominent houses, there were differences depending on whether a family was rooted in commerce or in high officialdom.

And in Shanxi, there was no house that surpassed the Yu Family Estate. “N-no, of course. Ahem. In any case, it’s good to see you. I saw you long ago.”

Jin Deuk-myeong ended his words clumsily and sat back down.

Yu Cha-ryeon glanced at me. Only then did I realize that her coldness had been because of me.

Since Jin Deuk-myeong had looked down on me, she had paid him back as a member of the Radiant Crystal Merchant Company.

I hadn’t thought much of bringing Yu Cha-ryeon along, but it had ended up being a stroke of genius. “You’ve grown a great deal. When was the last time I saw you? A few years ago, I think. Is Lord Yu doing well?”

“Yes. I trust you’ve both been well too.”

By contrast, Yu Cha-ryeon’s tone became gentle with Na Han-geol and Gwan Yeong-sang. That was because they had been among the people who had first greeted me.

“Come to think of it, I heard you got married?” Gwan Yeong-sang asked.

For a moment, Yu Cha-ryeon’s lips closed.

I was about to help smooth over the awkwardness, but Yu Cha-ryeon dealt with it herself. “I got divorced.”

“…Mm, ah, really? Well, yes. That can happen.”

Gwan Yeong-sang quickly ended the subject with a meaningless sound of acknowledgment. Yu Cha-ryeon truly was something else.

In the Central Plains, where Confucian virtue still breathed and moved, it was not easy for a young woman to openly declare that she had divorced.

Yet she said it without hesitation. “Ahem. I see.”

Even Na Han-geol seemed a little taken aback by that blunt statement, and fell quieter.

After that, Yu Cha-ryeon exchanged a little nostalgic conversation with the Shanxi merchants. Perhaps because it was still pleasant to meet people from one’s own region in a distant place, Yu Cha-ryeon smiled for the first time in a while.

I also introduced Jo Chung-heon as the acting head steward of our merchant company. Meeting these giants of the trade, Jo Chung-heon grew visibly excited and introduced himself with great fervor.

Usually, merchant companies only made a man acting head steward once he had passed fifty and gained long experience, but Jo Chung-heon was only just over thirty, which made him an extremely young acting head steward.

Because of that, Na Han-geol once again praised the Radiant Crystal Merchant Company as a merchant company full of young blood. “In any case, you said you were curious about my daughter? Then how about it? Would you like to meet her once?”

Gwan Yeong-sang returned to the earlier topic.

Na Han-geol clicked his tongue. “Heh heh. Brother Gwan truly has good fortune. If I had a daughter, I’d have told her to meet Branch Master Muk too.”

“Your son seems to be close enough with him already. Friendship between men isn’t so bad either.”

That was what Gwan Yeong-sang said, but even he seemed to be holding some expectation. But that wasn’t the sort of reason I wanted to meet her at all.

Still, it didn’t matter how he understood it.

“Is she in Shanxi right now?” “Ah, no. She came with me to Beijing. But I can’t bring her into the Beijing Restaurant.”

“If Miss Gwan is going to inherit the merchant company, shouldn’t she come to the Beijing Restaurant and greet the other branch masters too?” The fact that Gwan Seo-ye would inherit the merchant company was hardly a secret.

That was because, unusually enough, she was the Gwan Clan’s only child, with no brothers.

It was strange in itself that a great family like the Gwan Clan had no son to carry on the line. “That’s true enough. But I still don’t think she’s old enough to talk with branch masters yet.”

“I’m here too, though.”

“My daughter isn’t yet a complete merchant like you.” Gwan Yeong-sang laughed.

In other words, he was saying Gwan Seo-ye was still lacking.

Then again, it was only natural for someone that age to be lacking as a merchant. It wasn’t as though she had gone out on trading runs herself or taken on a central role within the merchant company yet.

“Then while the iron’s hot, why not let us meet today?”

“What?” Even I was a little startled by Gwan Yeong-sang’s bold suggestion.

And I was even more startled by the fact that I had been startled at all. Gwan Seo-ye was an old friend.

I should have been pleased, not flustered.

Yet somehow, I myself didn’t understand why I was reacting that way. “Exactly. Of all the days remaining in your life, today is the youngest of them, is it not? One should meet a match while one is still young.”

“It’s not like that.”

I answered Na Han-geol rather stiffly. After that, I scarcely remember what I said while passing time in the Beijing Restaurant.

Nor did I think about what I would say when I met Gwan Seo-ye.

For someone who was usually me, my mind had gone completely blank. Eventually, the gathering at the Beijing Restaurant came to an end.

Since not everyone who would attend the Merchant Union Council had arrived yet, no full discussion of the agenda took place.

Still, simply establishing connections with these people had made the visit worthwhile. And then I found myself sitting inside a tea house.

There were no other customers at all. I truly had not intended to meet Gwan Seo-ye for that sort of reason, but Gwan Yeong-sang had gone and reserved the entire tea house.

I picked at the hangnails on my fingers as I tried to calm my nerves.

When I met Na Hyeon-wi, I had felt nothing but pleasure, so there had been no reason to be nervous. I told myself this was only because Gwan Yeong-sang had set the stage so much.

As I sat there waiting, the door opened.

And without realizing it, I rose straight to my feet. The woman in green martial attire, with her braided hair hanging over the front of her chest, was astonishingly beautiful.

“Are you the one who wished to see me?”

Her voice, too, sounded like jade beads rolling. I only stared at her blankly.

Gwan Seo-ye. Even though my old friend was standing right in front of me, I stood there like a fool, unable to say a single word.