Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 72 - Cleanup (3)

Chapter 72 – Cleanup (3)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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For some reason, I was kneeling before Cheong-hwa and my senior brothers in the posture of someone being scolded. My senior brothers, lined up on either side of Cheong-hwa, stood there with their arms folded in high spirits. In the midst of them, it seemed Senior Brother Myeong-jin had come too, because I could just barely glimpse him in the back.

“It seems you’ve put on a little weight over the past few months. Have you not been training much?”

“Training…”

I rolled my eyes upward and thought about it. To be honest, I hadn’t really trained at all. But I had grown stronger naturally enough. I’d even experienced life-and-death battles, which were better experience than training.

“Even so, I think I have gotten stronger.”

“Huh. You seem confident.”

“Of course.”

“Indeed. You were always this kind of brat.”

Cheong-hwa nodded. Just as it seemed the situation might pass along smoothly, Myeong-gyeong suddenly let out a shriek.

“Master. Shouldn’t you be scolding Junior Brother even more? He didn’t return to the main mountain for months without even sending word.”

“Isn’t that simply what lay disciples are like?”

“Th, that’s true, but still! It’s outrageous!”

When I looked at him, Myeong-gyeong jerked his face away. The feeling was rather like looking at a younger cousin during the holidays.

“Junior Brother, don’t be too harsh. Hui-yeong must’ve had his own circumstances.”

“No, even you too, Senior Brother…!”

When even Myeong-seong tried to protect me, Myeong-gyeong’s eyes practically flipped over. He immediately grabbed the shoulder of Myeong-jin, who had been quietly erasing his own presence in the back, and shook him.

“Junior Brother. Am I the one in the wrong here? Am I the only one annoyed by this situation?”

“…It seems so.”

“Aagh!”

Myeong-gyeong trembled as he looked at me. I was even getting a rather aggrieved gaze from him, as though to ask how dare I act like this toward him.

“Even so, it’s outrageous. You were out in the world, and yet you didn’t even send letters asking after your senior brothers.”

“Ah, so that’s what wounded your feelings.”

“N, not at all? I merely pointed out what a junior brother ought to have done.”

Cheong-hwa, who had struck the heart of it, smiled faintly. Only then did I understand why Myeong-gyeong was yelling like this. Still, since I truly hadn’t had the time to spare to write letters, there was nothing for it.

I roughly rubbed my palms together and soothed Myeong-gyeong.

“Senior Brother, let’s go eat something delicious a little later. You too, Master. I’ll pay.”

“I heard roughly. Apparently you’ve made quite a bit of money.”

“You weren’t spying on me, were you?”

“Is Wudang that sort of place? If news of you reached all the way to Wudang, it only means you made so much noise that it couldn’t be helped.”

As he said that, Cheong-hwa began to reel off rumor after rumor about me. The story of taking control of Wuhan’s black path underworld, the story of defeating the Wuhan Merchant Association, and even the story that I possessed some wondrous power that had made the Chief Director of the Eastern Depot disappear.

“I don’t know about the rest, but you shouldn’t believe that last one. How can a Daoist believe in monstrous spirits and uncanny powers?”

“If it’s you, then that would be entirely possible.”

“Even you too, Master…”

“In any case, we didn’t come just to eat something tasty. Wudang has been turned upside down because of you.”

I frowned. What was that supposed to mean now? So Cheong-hwa and my senior brothers hadn’t come down simply because they wanted to see me.

“Why?”

“The Zhuge Clan demanded that you be expelled from the sect.”

“Pardon?”

Even I, ignorant as I was about the martial world, couldn’t help but tilt my head at that.

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“They say you’ve been spreading bad rumors about them and tarnishing Wudang’s face, so as fellow righteous sects they were offering candid advice.”

“Good grief.”

A dry laugh escaped me. I hadn’t expected the so-called renowned Zhuge Clan, one of the Five Great Families no less, to stoop to something so childish.

By now it had become tiresome to even bring up the fact that the Zhuge Clan stood behind the Wuhan Merchant Association.

This time, as Radiant Crystal Merchant Company firmly survived in Wuhan, the standing of East Lake Merchant Association, to which it belonged, had also risen greatly. By contrast, Wuhan Merchant Union had been repeating one blunder and self-destruction after another.

Most of all, reducing the range of goods they handled and staking their all on the Green Forest Twelve Forms had been the worst blunder imaginable.

The Green Forest Twelve Forms was a book, not a consumable, so demand was bound to decrease eventually, while supply was bound to explode since printers all across the Central Plains had latched onto it.

In the end, every copy of the Green Forest Twelve Forms piled high in Wuhan Merchant Union’s warehouses at inflated prices had become dead stock. During that same time, the market share of the other goods they had previously handled had also been overtaken by East Lake Merchant Company.

On top of that, even the people of Wuhan knew that the relationship between Radiant Crystal Merchant Company and Hubei’s Provincial Administration Commission was good. So naturally public preference could only shift toward Radiant Crystal Merchant Company and East Lake Merchant Company, and East Lake Merchant Company ended up seizing total market share at a rapid pace.

“How absurd. So you came to investigate whether that accusation was true, then.”

“No? What investigation?”

“Pardon?”

I was bewildered. Hadn’t they come to verify the facts behind the smear?

“Senior Brother Sect Leader flew into a rage. How dare they say they would expel our disciple or not. It was an extremely unpleasant experience for me as well.”

“Oh.”

That was a little moving, actually. I could see why martial artists thought of their sect as home.

“So the Zhuge Clan people collected all the formation arrays they had installed for us, and cut off every internal and external cooperation that had existed.”

“…Pardon?”

What sort of abrupt statement was that? In the meantime, Myeong-gyeong was even nodding as though that were only proper.

“Those bookworms who can do nothing but wave fans, how dare they.”

“That’s right. Apparently they took us for the sort of people who would hear another’s story and abandon our disciple. It was an enormous insult.”

Myeong-seong chimed in as well. It seemed Myeong-jin had said something too, though I couldn’t hear it well.

They all looked relaxed, but I was the only one becoming anxious.

“No, no, no. That’s a different matter entirely, isn’t it? Why should Wudang’s relationship with the Zhuge Clan deteriorate just because of me?”

“You are different from the other lay disciples. Since you’ve even caught the Sect Leader’s eye, you’re essentially no different from a main-sect disciple. And yet for them to secretly tell us to cast such a person out, what a cowardly and petty thing that is. If that’s the sort they are, then it’s right for us to cut them off. I had thought them fairly dignified people, but I didn’t expect that of them.”

“Ah, even so, haa…”

For no reason, my heart felt heavy. Since I had once belonged to the Hall of Preserved Wholeness, I knew roughly how things stood between Wudang and the Zhuge Clan. As two great pillars of Hubei’s righteous path, their relationship had been close.

Wudang, being a Daoist sect, was not bright about practical affairs, and so the Zhuge Clan had been compensating for that. Wudang, in turn, compensated for the Zhuge Clan’s comparatively lacking martial strength. Of course, in such a peaceful age as the present, that sort of thing wasn’t obvious.

In other words, from Wudang’s perspective, that sweet relationship in which it could receive one-sided assistance had come to an end. And it had ended because of me.

Of course, it was also strange to say it was because of me, since it wasn’t something I had intended. I had more or less expected the Zhuge Clan to smear me through schemes behind the scenes, but not even I had expected Wudang to become enraged and sever the relationship altogether.

The cleanup I had thought nearly finished had suddenly begun swelling like a snowball. But Cheong-hwa was merely laughing away with easy chuckles. These martial artists really knew nothing.

“It’s fine. What major thing could possibly happen?”

“I think a great many things are likely to happen.”

I let out a deep sigh. First I sent word to Jo Chung-heon to cancel every engagement I had scheduled for that day.

“For now, what’s the use of getting tangled up in complicated thoughts when nothing has happened right this moment? Then you came here just because you wanted to?”

“I came to see just how busy you were that you’d keep postponing your time to return to the main mountain. But you don’t seem especially busy.”

“I’m incredibly busy, you know? My schedule was packed even today, and I just canceled all of it.”

“Why?”

“Because you and my senior brothers came.”

Grumbling, I headed outside. A brief circulation through the Small Cosmos had already cleared away yesterday’s drunkenness.

“Let’s go out and eat first. I need to sober my stomach too.”

“Let’s.”

Seeing Cheong-hwa and my senior brothers follow along as though it were nothing made a hollow laugh rise in me. Was it because they were Daoists? Even in this emergency, all of them moved with lazy ease.

***

“How can this possibly be happening!”

Zhuge Yan screamed. The sheet of paper she hurled slapped across the faces of the men standing there with their hands behind their backs.

“Association Master. Explain yourself.”

Cheon Yeong-in, Union Head of the Wuhan Merchant Union, lowered his head and trembled. Being pressured like this by Zhuge Yan, who was young enough to be his daughter, was humiliating enough, but more humiliating still was the fact that he himself had made an elementary mistake.

“It was my mistake.”

“Of course it was! If it wasn’t, then this result makes no sense!”

The paper Zhuge Yan had thrown fluttered down to the floor. On it were laid out, in practical terms, all the reasons Wuhan Merchant Union would have to be dissolved.

Loss of market share. Debt that could no longer be repaid because of the money spent bringing in the Green Forest Twelve Forms. Dead stock. Loss of market trust. At this rate, the union would probably last a few more years, but only by slowly drying to death. There was no reason whatsoever for the Zhuge Clan to support such a union.

“From now on, the Zhuge Clan will withdraw its hand from Wuhan Merchant Union.”

“M, my lady!”

Cheon Yeong-in dropped to his knees. For the union to be dissolved in his own generation would be an immense stain on his career.

That was why Cheon Yeong-in had hoped to save Wuhan Merchant Association somehow and then withdraw after taking responsibility. But Zhuge Yan wasn’t even giving him that much time.

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re thinking of transferring to somewhere else from here?”

“Th, that’s not…”

Cheon Yeong-in stammered because she had struck the heart of it, but Zhuge Yan only lashed out harder.

“Don’t talk nonsense. Do we look like a joke to you? From now on, you won’t be able to work anywhere. Go look for a job hauling bricks or something.”

“My lady, my lady!”

Cheon Yeong-in cried out, but Zhuge Yan signaled with her eyes to the martial artists outside. The Zhuge Clan martial artists seized Cheon Yeong-in by both arms and dragged him out while he shouted.

The remaining Outer Court people trembled. That was because they had no idea how far Zhuge Yan’s viciousness would go.

“What are you all doing?”

“…Pardon?”

“Go work! Work! Do you think fighting Wudang is a joke!”

Startled out of their wits, the people all bowed quickly and hurried outside.

There was one thing people misunderstood about Zhuge Yan. She was getting angry in her own way because she was trying to raise the organization’s efficiency. It wasn’t simply that she had a bad temper.

Now wasn’t the time to vent pointless anger and kill people’s motivation. Being in conflict with Wudang was an immense burden even for the Zhuge Clan’s Outer Court.

Hadn’t even the Martial Alliance said that since the Zhuge Clan and Wudang were in conflict, it would recommend an apology and send people to mediate?

But when a family and a sect existed close together, they were bound to clash from time to time like this. Just looking at Mount Hua and Zhongnan in Shaanxi, they were enemies like cats and dogs.

Naturally, the Martial Alliance wanted to mediate when people of the righteous path fought among themselves, but there is no mountain that can hold two tigers.

“Hoo.”

Zhuge Yan slapped her own cheek hard. Her white cheek flushed red and stung. She herself needed to regain her senses as well.

Of course, the Zhuge Clan was already preparing for a fight with Wudang. That was why they had even sent that express message demanding Muk Hui-yeong be expelled.

“Those long-nosed bastards who can do nothing on their own.”

Zhuge Yan’s eyes flashed. She intended to show those Daoists, who ignored and despised reality, exactly how cold reality could be.

The very next day, every merchant company that had done business with Wudang began cutting ties while offering one excuse after another.

It was the moment when the battle between the Zhuge Clan and Wudang truly began in earnest.