Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 73 - All for One, One for All (1)

Chapter 73 – All for One, One for All (1)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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One by one, people with exhausted expressions emerged from the formation array wreathed in dense mist. Zhuge Gyeom, head of the Zhuge Clan, wore a satisfied expression as he added strokes to the paper with his brush one by one.

“Yi-han. You truly are my son.”

Zhuge Yi-han dropped to his knees and braced himself on the ground. Thick saliva dripped down, bridging his chin and the earth.

After him, people came rushing out one after another. Everyone who emerged from the formation array displayed fear and pain with their whole bodies. Zhuge Gyeom swept his gaze over the crowd with an expression of pride.

“Daughter.”

“Yes.”

Zhuge Gyeom turned his head to the side. Beside him stood Zhuge Yan, writing something down by hand.

“Are you recording it properly?”

“Yes.”

“What did I say this formation array was called?”

“You said it was the Heavenly Pivot Kongming Illusion Formation.”

“That’s right. It’s the formation that will raise our Zhuge Clan to the summit.”

With a tense expression, Zhuge Yan looked toward the branch-family martial artists who had staggered out. She had no great attainment in martial arts, but even she knew that growing stronger so quickly in such a short period of time was abnormal. What in the world was happening inside that formation array for them to be showing such a rate of growth?

“You’re curious, aren’t you?”

“Pardon?”

“Someone of the Outer Court, who meets many people, must be skilled at hiding expressions. In that regard, you are still much lacking. You’re showing your curiosity far too clearly.”

“I, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Daughter. Who in this world is perfect from the beginning? Isn’t it the duty of adults to guide immature children?”

Zhuge Gyeom laughed heartily as he waved his white feather fan. Though summer was gradually deepening and the weather was growing hotter, cold air flowed out from the fan. He was waving it while filling it with yin qi.

“But do not try to know.”

“…Yes.”

“You have your work in the Outer Court, and they have their work. Even if one focuses only on what one must do, time is still insufficient.”

“I will keep it in mind.”

People still crawled out one by one with half-lost eyes. All of them looked so badly off that they ought to have been helped along, but Zhuge Yan could not go over to support them. The only task permitted to her was recording.

“Have you severed all the links with Wudang?”

“Yes. We pressured the merchant companies as much as possible using the Zhuge Clan’s name and blocked their movements.”

“Well done.”

Zhuge Yan glanced sidelong at Zhuge Gyeom’s expression. Though it was work she herself had taken charge of, she still felt uneasy. After all, they were provoking Wudang, one of the seats among the Nine Great Sects.

Shaolin at least gathered an enormous amount of wealth under the names of merit and alms, so they had no financial problems. But Wudang was Daoist at its root, a school that preached non-action.

Naturally, they were people who drifted along freely with only the bare minimum of ties to the world. That was why so many people had been surprised when Wudang stepped forward and began a warehouse rental business.

“Ah, but Clan Head.”

“This isn’t a formal audience, is it? Call me Father.”

“…Yes. Father. The Martial Alliance says it is sending people to mediate.”

“An obvious development. Isn’t that all they ever do?”

Zhuge Gyeom snorted. But Zhuge Yan still looked uneasy.

Zhuge Gyeom spoke as though the Martial Alliance were nothing much, but it was still the collective body of the righteous martial world. Its influence could not lightly be ignored in the Central Plains.

“When do they say they’ll arrive?”

“They departed from Beijing yesterday, so it should take around half a month.”

“The proposal they’ll bring is obvious enough.”

“When giant sects fight, the method of settling it has always been the same.”

Zhuge Yan nodded. They had stirred up this incident in part because they had already anticipated the Martial Alliance’s mediation.

“This matter will make us the hegemon of Hubei.”

“Of course it must. Do you know how much we’ve prepared?”

Even Zhuge Yan, who had spent all her time in the Outer Court, knew how much the martial artists of the Inner Court had suffered. In reality, the Zhuge Clan’s Outer Court had practically swept the Central Plains clean over the past few years of physicians, apothecaries, wound medicines, and elixirs.

“From now on, no one will merely call us descendants of Kongming. We must thoroughly impress upon them that the Zhuge Clan is a martial house. Beyond that, we must even set our sights on the seat of the greatest martial house under heaven.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“I can already imagine how those Daoists who act so lofty will react.”

Zhuge Gyeom burst into loud laughter. Meanwhile, the branch-family martial artists were still writhing under the aftereffects of the formation array.

***

I tapped the desk with my finger. Master and my senior brothers had gone right back. The only thing Master had really done while he was here was tell me to unfold my Flowing Cloud Sword Art once, and after that he merely nodded a few times without saying much of anything. That probably meant there was nothing he could pick on. I decided to think of it that way.

“So you truly were a disciple of Wudang.”

“Pardon?”

My finger stopped when Jo Chung-heon suddenly said something strange.

“Because you’re such an exceptional merchant, I keep forgetting that you’re a disciple of Wudang.”

“More merchant than Wudang disciple.”

“Even so, I’ve never heard of people actually coming down from Wudang Mountain like that just to see an ordinary lay disciple.”

That’s because, unlike the other lay disciples, I was a registered lay disciple. But at this point, what real difference was there between me and a main-sect disciple? Not if one of the Five Great Families, the Zhuge Clan, was willing to sour relations with Wudang because of me.

“Though I thought you would go back with them to Wudang.”

“Right now? Absolutely not. I’m right in the middle of being busy.”

“That’s true, but last time you went, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t especially busy then. Back then all I had to do was pile up the Green Forest Twelve Forms in storage.”

Then and now were entirely different. Back then I had nothing to do as Company Lord. Now I had far too much to do as Company Lord.

Most of all, right now it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to seize the market share Wuhan Merchant Union had been holding. By now, the commercial world was already buzzing with the fact that Wuhan Merchant Union was in such poor shape that it couldn’t even pay the interest on the money it had borrowed from the money houses.

My chest throbbed intermittently. It felt as though a sharp thorn had lodged itself, pointing toward my heart.

“Chief Foreman.”

“Yes.”

“Can we obtain some information on the current situation between Wudang and the Zhuge Clan?”

“That can be done. But…”

“But?”

“Information on the Nine Great Sects and the Five Great Families is traded at a fairly steep price. We’ll probably have to cut at least three of the people we were planning to hire.”

“Hm.”

They were pieces of information I could obtain for free if I went back to Wudang Mountain, but going back and forth between Wuhan and Jun County alone would take at least ten days. In the end, if I wanted to understand the current situation right now, it meant buying information.

My finger tapped the desk. The merchant company is mine. But Wudang isn’t mine. Rationally speaking, the right choice was obviously to pretend not to know.

It wasn’t as though I had asked them to fight on my behalf, and if it was Wudang, wouldn’t they naturally deal with things just fine on their own?

“Company Lord?”

“Look into it for me.”

The answer slipped out of me before I even realized it. Jo Chung-heon widened his eyes slightly. It seemed he hadn’t expected that response. That was understandable. Neither had I.

At that moment, the throbbing in my heart stopped. My chest felt clear, as though the thorn had been pulled out.

“He’s making me worry for no reason.”

I grumbled as though for Jo Chung-heon to hear. It was childish, but that too had come out before I thought about it. Jo Chung-heon smiled faintly.

“Then I’ll go find out.”

“Yes.”

“You like Wudang, Company Lord.”

Saying that, Jo Chung-heon slipped right out. He probably hadn’t meant anything by it, but to me it was the sort of statement that threw down a topic.

“I like Wudang…”

Again I tapped the desk with my finger. I had always treated any sense of belonging to a sect as something useless. This seemed like a matter worth thinking over.

For the time being, I handled the work that had piled up while I was spending time entertaining Master and my senior brothers. I had to meet distributors, the bureau chief of the escort bureau, and the master of a money house as well.

In the old days, I would already be tired if I handled two rounds of business in a day, but now that I had at least learned some martial arts, my physical condition was perfectly fine.

When I returned to the merchant company at dawn after finishing the day’s schedule, there were papers lying on the desk that looked as though Jo Chung-heon had arranged them for me.

I sat down at once and began flipping through them. As expected, they were the very pieces of information I’d asked for that morning. The dispute and current situation between Wudang and the Zhuge Clan.

I turned the papers over one by one. Even here, the reason Wudang and the Zhuge Clan were fighting didn’t appear. Then again, who would believe that two great forces were fighting over a single lay disciple?

“So something really has already happened.”

I remembered Cheong-hwa casually asking what major thing could happen. But the Zhuge Clan’s decision had been swift. They had immediately cut off Wudang’s arms and legs.

No matter how one looked at it, Wudang was far removed from worldly groups like merchant companies and escort bureaus. So it couldn’t be helped that those groups took the Zhuge Clan’s side. No, perhaps the Zhuge Clan had forced them to do so. Thinking about it, if it had been me, I probably would’ve done the same. After all, merchants would naturally be more wary of the Zhuge Clan’s displeasure.

As far as I knew, Wudang wasn’t the kind of place that built up reserve funds, and as a group it was notably weak at spending and storing money.

If its relationships with the merchant companies it had dealt with were cut, then it would have no choice but to buy goods at retail through legwork. Most merchants wouldn’t sell goods to Wudang people in the first place, so they’d probably have to pay premiums too. Then Wudang’s already meager finances would soon hit the bottom.

And since it seemed this situation had already continued for quite a while, I suspected Wudang might already be in real hardship.

“I shouldn’t have looked.”

I truly shouldn’t have looked. Contrary to my hopes, Wudang wasn’t dealing with it at all.

Then again, if someone used means this realistic, there was nothing Wudang could do. The only thing Wudang boasted was force. But how could it stake lives and start swinging swords against the Zhuge Clan, who were at least fellow members of the righteous path?

Of course, there was also something about the Zhuge Clan that I couldn’t quite understand. No matter what, to pull something like this against a group with greater martial strength than theirs made me wonder whether they had some hidden support they were relying on.

After finishing the information, I was about to put the papers away in the drawer, but there was a small line written in one corner of the paper.

You may go. I will set things in order properly.

“Huh.”

It was familiar handwriting. Since I signed off on documents from him every time, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize it. Naturally, it was Jo Chung-heon’s hand.

It even felt as though I could see Jo Chung-heon’s smile in the writing itself. It felt as though the Jo Chung-heon currently sleeping quietly at home had seen straight through my heart.

“Disqualified as a merchant.”

This wouldn’t help the merchant company. It wouldn’t bring me any profit. I had no real justification to insert myself. It was a perfect trinity of inefficiency.

Even so, my crafty head found a justification in the midst of all that.

“I have to repay it.”

Thinking about it, there were the martial arts I had received from Wudang. The special privilege of being a registered lay disciple. I hadn’t repaid any of those things.

How had I failed to think of it before? That what Wudang gave me wasn’t something natural or owed.

Of course, it wasn’t because I wanted to stay in Wudang. At first I had wanted to run so badly that I even tried to flee under cover of night. Even so, Wudang gave me martial arts, and gave me a master and senior brothers.

And the most important thing of all. As a merchant, I was the sort of person who repaid this kind of thing no matter what.

Heart.

No one in the jianghu would have praised Wudang for shielding me. After all, I was only one insignificant lay disciple.

And yet Wudang had endured a dispute with the Zhuge Clan in order to protect me. Once the thought arose, the reasons I should protect Wudang only piled up like a mountain. So much so that it felt strange I hadn’t realized it until now.

“Good.”

Even without digging into the empty space that Wuhan Merchant Union had left behind, I could still succeed. I had that much confidence in myself.