Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 25 - Mandate of Heaven (2)
Chapter 25 – Mandate of Heaven (2)
===================
Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
With every step Cheong-hwa took toward me, the feeling of pressure crushing my body grew worse.
The blue qi gathered in his hand looked as though it might shatter my dantian at any moment.
“Wait, wait just a moment.”
“Do you have something to say?”
“Y-Yes. So, first of all, could you please move that murderous hand away?”
“Surely you haven’t come this far only to say that you’ll become a main-sect disciple after all. If so, I would be rather disappointed.”
“No. That’s not what I mean. So please stop for a second.”
At my earnest plea, Cheong-hwa halted.
But his eyes remained fixed on my dantian.
It felt as though his gaze alone might already break it.
“First of all, there is another way for me to earn recognition. My plan was to prove both my martial talent and my merchant talent.”
I spoke as quickly as possible before Cheong-hwa could change his mind.
Speaking rapidly and clearly was something at which those seasoned by the market excelled.
“A Registered lay disciple is a person of Wudang, but can do things that a main-sect disciple cannot. I can fill that role. That is merchant talent. If I prove that ability, I think the elders will see me differently.”
“There are plenty of merchants who would like to attach themselves to Wudang. That alone is not enough.”
“My merchant talent is not the same as those useless people who simply want to latch onto Wudang. It isn’t me reaching out to take hold of Wudang’s hand. It’s me allowing Wudang to take hold of mine. I want to be clear on that point.”
“Very well. Merchant talent is outside my domain anyway. But if you have no martial talent, then there is no reason at all to make you a registered lay disciple.”
“I had intended to prove my martial talent in the evaluation match, but in a way, perhaps it’s fortunate that I didn’t. In my current state, I don’t think I could beat Myeong-il.”
Cheong-hwa’s eyes sank deep and dark.
“You mean to say that a future you could beat him?”
“So you do read between the lines. That’s right.”
I answered with confidence.
Of course, this was hardly a situation that justified confidence.
Myeong-il’s martial arts had clearly been on a different level.
But I had just found a clue to how I might beat him.
“And how do you think you could beat Myeong-il? This is not to disparage your talent, but Myeong-il possesses talent equal to yours, if not greater. And on top of that, he is younger. No matter how much you struggle, you cannot defeat Myeong-il. Not for at least ten years. Even at the absolute minimum, ten years.”
“I can beat him. And I will persuade the elders.”
The reason Cheong-hwa had been about to cripple my dantian was because he had judged that I would never win the elders’ acknowledgment.
Since it was impossible anyway, he had simply decided to give me a hundred nyang of silver and send me down the mountain.
But what if it was possible?
Then Cheong-hwa could not help but change his mind.
“I hear that a registered lay disciple can still serve a master in much the same way as a main-sect disciple. I think that makes me more than worthy enough as a disciple. If I shake the world through merchant talent or martial talent, your name will rise along with mine, Immortal.”
Cheong-hwa’s pupils wavered.
Merchants understood the desires of people well.
To sell goods, one had to understand the desires of one’s customers.
From what I had observed, the universal desires of ordinary people in the Central Plains were money and stability.
Martial artists, however, were different.
After all, hadn’t Cheong-hwa just done something that I could never have imagined, handing over his entire fortune?
Did that mean they were people without desires?
I did not believe so.
If they had no greed for money, then their greed must be vast in some other direction.
That direction was reputation.
“A-Ahem. Your confidence truly is impressive. Don’t forget that there are many people who are desperate to take me as their master.”
“And yet they failed to catch your eye, so you rejected them, didn’t you? I did catch your eye, which is why I’m being pressed so hard to become a main-sect disciple.”
At my words, Cheong-hwa’s mouth shut tightly.
Since he really had wanted me, he had nothing to say.
In a battle of words, the deciding factor is never who bluffs better or whose voice is louder.
It is who possesses the facts that place him at the greater advantage.
And eloquence is nothing more than the ability to use those facts at exactly the right moment.
“We don’t even need to look that far ahead. In practice, I’m already perceived as your disciple, aren’t I? The moment I defeat Myeong-il, the number of people in Wudang who look up to you will increase.”
“…If you cannot defeat Myeong-il, then all of this is nothing but meaningless talk.”
“Then all I have to do is defeat him.”
“And how do you intend to do that? I heard that Senior Brother Sect Leader gave you a grace period of three months. Two months have already passed since then, which means you have only one month left.”
“That’s enough.”
I shrugged as though perfectly relaxed, then drove the final nail in.
“All you have to do is wait one month, Immortal. If I fail to beat Myeong-il, then you may do exactly what you were about to do just now. Cripple my dantian and cast me out. You lose nothing by waiting.”
“Let’s hear this plan of yours.”
“The plan is just one thing.”
“What thing?”
“Talent.”
At my answer, Cheong-hwa’s face crumpled.
But I wasn’t lying.
After all, right before my eyes floated talents that could be bought with one hundred nyang of silver.
***
I had to set my strategy carefully.
One hundred nyang of silver was no small amount.
And I, too, wanted to prevent my dantian from being crippled.
As one traveled the jianghu, one occasionally saw martial artists whose dantians had been destroyed.
Most of them had mental issues, or else found even ordinary life physically exhausting.
A defect in one place was simply that sort of thing.
Strength might not be vital to a merchant, but stamina certainly was.
When it became necessary to pass through roads infested with bandits, there were times one had to walk for several days and nights without sleep, and times one could not eat at all.
Trade was the kind of work that battered your body with hardship.
After leaving home for long stretches of life in other regions and then returning, it was common for people not to recognize you.
Naturally so.
The spirited young merchant was gone, and only an old man with illness written all over his face remained.
‘Should I buy a Grade 7? Or several Grade 8s and Grade 9s?’
Just because something was of the highest grade did not necessarily make it the best.
More precisely, it did not necessarily make it best for me.
Usually, for the same weight, meat was more expensive than rice.
But to someone just rising from a long illness, rice porridge mattered more than meat.
It was that sort of situation.
[ Poison Resistance – Grade 7 ]
[ Price: one hundred nyang of silver ]
In a case like Poison Resistance, it would surely be a necessary ability if I were some famous jianghu figure.
But who would try to poison me right now?
If I were facing a martial artist, he could simply crush my skull with a branch.
Poison Resistance certainly wouldn’t let me defeat Myeong-il, so this was useless to me.
‘I wonder if there are any useful things among Grade 8 or Grade 9.’
Come to think of it, Nimble Movement had shown incredible performance for its price.
Looking more closely, there really were other similar things.
[ Robust Body – Grade 9 ]
[ Price: fifty copper nyang ]
This looked like a lower version of Sturdy Body.
There were also a fair number of abilities that supported the body in different ways, like delicate handwork, leg strength, grip strength, and so on.
Right now I had one hundred nyang of silver.
Since one thousand copper coins made one nyang of silver, that meant I was holding a hundred thousand copper coins’ worth.
At first I intended to buy every talent in Grade 9.
After all, I assumed they wouldn’t cost much.
‘If I buy in bulk, do they give me a discount?’
Just as I was having that trivial thought, the letters of the Martial Talent Shop suddenly shook from side to side and sounded an alarm.
[ You are exceeding the number of talents that can be equipped. Do you still wish to purchase? ]
For a moment it felt as though my vision blurred.
I had not considered this.
Had I been thinking too lightly of life?
There was a limit to the number of talents one could equip.
‘Damn it. If that was the case, they should’ve told me earlier.’
I cursed inwardly.
Still, it was a perfectly understandable restriction.
Otherwise there would have been no reason for upper and lower versions of talents to exist.
Buying both Robust Body and Sturdy Body did not seem likely to let their effects stack.
Which meant talents could probably be swapped in and out.
No, they had to be swappable.
For now, though, since I didn’t yet know how many talents I could possess at once, I put off buying everything.
‘In that case, I should buy the highest-grade ones possible.’
If there was a limit to how many talents I could carry, then naturally I should buy the best ones I could.
If Grade 8 talents ranged from three nyang of silver to twenty, then Grade 7 talents ranged from fifty nyang to three hundred.
In other words, there were many Grade 7 talents I couldn’t buy even with one hundred nyang of silver.
‘Who set these prices? Those bastards don’t have a shred of conscience.’
Then again, since this was the only shop in the world, they really could charge whatever they pleased.
The one selling the rarest goods was always the one with all the power.
I examined the Grade 7 talents.
Among them too were talents that could enhance the body.
[ Swift Movement – Grade 7 ]
[ Price: one hundred nyang of silver ]
The price matched exactly.
One hundred nyang of silver.
It almost felt like fate.
But I shook my head.
“Never fall in love with the goods.”
It was one of the iron rules of merchants.
Only by looking at merchandise with reason and a cold eye could one properly judge its value.
To think it dared try to enchant this great merchant Muk Hui-yeong.
It was a hundred years too early.
‘Something like that won’t be enough anyway.’
Myeong-il was born with incredible talent.
If one translated it into the grades in the shop, I suspected he wouldn’t rank below Grade 3.
After all, he was someone spoken of as one of the foremost late-generation talents even within the Nine Great Sects.
What I needed to buy was a talent that could overturn the entire situation in a single stroke.
Not a generally useful talent, but a strange talent that would make even Myeong-il panic.
“This is difficult.”
I looked through the Grade 7 list.
For the moment, I decided to postpone any talents that simply enhanced the body.
Those could be supplemented by other lower-grade talents, and in any case, talents like that would never let me defeat Myeong-il.
Even so, there wasn’t much I could buy that fit the situation.
From the beginning, there had been no such comfortable thing as an instant-kill trump card.
“Damn it.”
What I needed to create was a single instant of opening.
How could I create that?
At that moment, a brilliant thought flashed through my mind.
There was one.
One method that could make Myeong-il panic.
***
After Cheong-hwa spread stories about Muk Hui-yeong among the elders, now even the third-generation disciples knew the tale of the registered lay disciple.
In a closed organization like Wudang, a single day and night was enough for a story to spread.
The elders told their nephews and the first-generation disciples, and the first-generation disciples told the second- and third-generation disciples in boastful tones, calling it a secret.
“A Daoist’s mouth shouldn’t be that light.”
“My thoughts were too shallow.”
At Cheong-hwa’s dispirited voice, Cheong-su clicked his tongue.
Normally Cheong-hwa wasn’t this sort of person, but whenever Muk Hui-yeong was involved, he became strange.
“In any case, it did have to be made known. What would be the point if he beat Myeong-il and no one knew about it? The elders had to be paying attention if they were going to recognize Muk Hui-yeong or reject him.”
Cheong-su tried to comfort him.
Cheong-hwa sat with his chin on his hand, not even drinking the tea he liked.
“Now not only Wudang but even the people of Jun County know about it. That there’s a fellow sharpening his sword to beat Myeong-il so he can become a registered lay disciple.”
“…Myeong-il must have heard too, then?”
“He’ll probably think it’s absurd.”
If Cheong-hwa himself had been in that position, he probably would have thought it absurd too.
After all, he would’ve heard from other people’s mouths that some unheard-of lay disciple was making a fuss about defeating him.
“But in the middle of all that, Hui-yeong isn’t even training his martial arts and is instead playing his grass flute. I truly have no idea what he’s thinking.”
“Maybe the pressure got to him and drove him mad.”
Cheong-su had meant it as a joke, but Cheong-hwa’s face darkened with worry again.
He seemed to think that Muk Hui-yeong had gone mad because of his own mistake.
But Cheong-su thought otherwise.
The one he had seen in Yichang had been bolder and deeper-thinking than anyone.
‘What are you thinking, Muk Hui-yeong?’
The question Cheong-su held remained unanswered, and time continued to flow away without mercy.