Chapter 123: Dragon Scale Squad (1)
When I handed down the Sixteen Stances to the family members of the Bright Fate Escort Agency, I had said that this would establish their foundation.
To compare it to building a house, it was like laying the groundwork.
However, what I had to do was indeed a foundation, but it had to go further than a mere foundation.
It was about creating flesh and nerves on the skeleton, erecting pillars to support the building, and paving roads to smooth the flow within the city.
It meant it was a harder and more complex task.
Although I was buried in the shocking count of ten thousand times a day, I had to not only fill the number but also raise the quality.
‘I am crazy, seriously.’
Needless to say, I fumbled quite a bit at first.
This was because my body was not fully recovered, which was quite a burden, and my proficiency in the Three Talents Unified Qi Art was at rock bottom.
For the first few days, I really had to reduce my sleep to meet the target quantity.
But from a certain day, it gradually began to gain momentum.
I wondered if my body had gone crazy.
I was curious about what on earth the masters had done to this body of mine, which initially had no talent to speak of.
[It works?]
“…What is this? This horrible sense of déjà vu?”
At Master Zhang Sanfeng’s words, memories of bleeding, getting sore muscles, and grinding my teeth while on Mount Wudang suddenly came back vividly.
However, there were things different from back then.
“Hup!”
“Hah!”
Unlike then, I was not alone.
There were guys sweating profusely together around me.
Just as Master Bodhidharma said, seeing me digest ten thousand times of training a day, everyone was stimulated, and they were participating in the training even more enthusiastically.
So, for instance.
“Aaaah! There are still one thousand eight hundred sixteen times left!”
“Damn it!”
…Things like this.
The atmosphere turned cold at the shout of Oh-seong, who showed with his whole body that even if he wasn’t the youngest, he would turn out exactly like that if you put a playful temperament on the youngest’s personality.
There is something tabooed when doing very boring or very hard work.
It is checking the time or count repeatedly.
Time is a very strange thing, so the more you check it, the longer it stretches.
[That cannot be tolerated.]
[Ahem!]
Looking at the masters’ reactions, it seemed to be close to a taboo even in heaven.
Yi-gung, the practical eldest brother of the Five Duck Brothers, also had a hardened face.
He must have recalled the count of executions he performed after hearing Oh-seong’s words.
The problem is that once you recognize it, it continues to repeat.
It is similar to how if you become conscious of breathing while breathing, you have to keep breathing consciously for a while.
“Bury that bastard.”
“Understood!”
“One-two! One-two!”
Following that, the four Duck brothers began to beat up Oh-seong using the Sixteen Stances taught for training.
“Ack! Ah, seriously!”
“Shut your mouth, kid.”
“Shut up and face down.”
“Face down!”
Not only the four Duck brothers, but even Ju So-ran and Myeong Il-seo who were training together joined in.
An efficient scene combining training and beating up a colleague who ran his mouth incorrectly, which brought practical benefits, unfolded.
I also wanted to slip in and hit him once, but I held back.
“Good.”
This was because Senior Jang Mun-gyeong, who had been joining the training of the Sixteen Stances recently, was next to me.
True to his self-assessment of having no shame before martial arts, he showed great interest in the Sixteen Stances as well.
“Did you really make this?”
“Yes, well…”
I could not say that Master Zhang Sanfeng and Master Bodhidharma put their heads together to make it. In the end, I had no choice but to say I made it.
“Marvelous.”
At my affirmation, Senior Jang Mun-gyeong did not hide his surprise.
“Having done it myself, I see it. It is a training where form naturally reveals itself if repeated ten thousand times, and posture establishes itself on its own if repeated one hundred thousand times. At the same time, it is martial arts in itself. It is comparable to Shaolin’s Five Fist Forms. Even if one’s talent is shallow, just repeating this will allow them to reach a considerable realm in the distant future. Reaching the realm through steady effort and repeated training… It can truly be called a martial art of the orthodox path.”
“Ahahaha…”
It was to the point of embarrassment now.
Feeling my face turning hot, I rubbed my cheeks.
“…It is annoying.”
“Indeed.”
Although the atmosphere suddenly changed, I did not panic.
It was not because he meant he would step on a talented rising star because he was an eyesore, but because there was truly something annoying.
I looked at the place Senior Jang Mun-gyeong was watching.
There was something poking its head out from over the wall.
“It was since yesterday, right?”
“You caught it accurately.”
Someone was watching the Bright Fate Escort Agency.
It would be understandable if it was just the level of the neighborhood taking interest since the escort agency, which had been ruined after the disaster suffered from the Hongmu Sect, suddenly gained vitality.
If not that, it would also be acceptable if the attention was drawn because Senior Jang Mun-gyeong, a famous figure of Martial World, was here.
However, what I saw just now belonged to neither.
The figure looking this way as if spying, although only his eyes peeked out and the outline of his entire face was not visible, the hat he was wearing was clearly seen.
“…A constable from the government office is spying here?”
Spying means secretly examining and investigating others’ situations. It is an action that cannot be done openly.
‘Although it is normal for the government to find the existence of Martial World bothersome, the story should be different for an escort agency, right?’
Since I had seen the existence of the Baek Family Escort in Samyang County, there was something I naturally came to know.
How good a town with a healthy escort agency is.
People gather where money is, and merchants move along with such money and people.
Naturally, the distribution of logistics is necessary.
The problem is that in a harsh world, trustworthy guides and protectors to guard the logistics are essential.
In other words, merchants have no choice but to visit the place where a good escort agency is situated.
From the perspective of an official who needs a high performance rating for promotion, it was something to be welcomed with open arms.
Even if Senior Jang Mun-gyeong was the cause, it was equally strange.
If they wanted to build a friendship with Senior Jang Mun-gyeong, the party themselves should visit. No matter how much the government and Martial World do not interfere with each other, when it comes to someone like Senior Jang Mun-gyeong, the story changes. He possesses power and fame that ordinary prominent figures cannot even compare to.
Unless they were drawing a line saying they would not interfere at all, sending a subordinate to spy so obviously (?) was something they had no excuse for even if it was misunderstood as picking a fight.
‘What if they are guardedly wary because they have a guilty conscience?’
Then, a person suddenly came to mind.
Jong In-geol.
The greedy old man who used the Bright Fate Escort Agency and eventually made it collapse.
As he was someone who had continued his official career only in Hubei, the network that old man had in this vicinity would be considerable.
‘Although I thought he would not just sit still, is he planning to plot some tricks using the government?’
Recalling the face of the old man who put on a good face pretending to be a great man but had eyes full of insidiousness deep inside, my expression naturally crumpled.
I thought his power would have been bent quite a bit by Lord Seo Yun-geon’s check, but I wondered if it had loosened up a bit lately as some time had passed.
While my head became complicated with various assumptions, Senior Jang Mun-gyeong quietly gave advice.
“If you have a problem with the government, it will be quite annoying. They calculate differently than we do.”
“Yes.”
Problems of Martial World can just be solved with force.
However, the government moves by state law.
Even if it is unjust, when touching the government, one must find a way through the law.
‘Or use hands secretly so it doesn’t show.’
The method that comes to mind right away is either to ask my grandfather for help or to make a request to Lord Seo Yun-geon, but I cannot move based on circumstances alone.
‘I must find out first.’
“Yi Hwa.”
“Yes.”
Hearing my call, Yi Hwa approached my side in an instant and answered demurely.
“Find out where he lives.”
“Yes.”
The figure of Yi Hwa, who finished with a short answer, slipped away and disappeared at that moment.
Just looking at it, she was moving with a technique that was not martial arts, and her appearance was nothing short of mysterious.
‘Is it because she is around me?’
She is using spells naturally.
She once said her power stabilized when she was around me, so I wonder if it is related to that.
I know from having used it, but indeed, the divine power of fire is tricky to control.
Senior Jang Mun-gyeong also found it fascinating and moved his eyes to follow Yi Hwa’s figure for a moment.
‘It is not a sword art, so mind your own business.’
It was a bit concerning that Yi Hwa, the Divine Maiden of the Demonic Cult, caught Senior Jang Mun-gyeong’s attention, but anyway, that side is the domain of magic.
Even if a problem arises, now that I have grasped Senior Jang Mun-gyeong’s temperament, I can easily take the reins by getting help from the masters.
‘For now, the urgent matter is this side.’
Although it was nothing more than a vague assumption, I had conviction.
‘I must cut it off.’
As long as I formed a connection with the Bright Fate Escort Agency, Jong In-geol was like a bothersome reef.
Instead of dragging it out, I should clean it up completely this time.
***
The time when the sun set and the darkness deepened.
At the time when people were sleeping soundly, a mask that looked suspicious at a glance was worn on my face as I went out onto the night streets.
I was on my way to touch someone belonging to the government. Naturally, there was no benefit in my face being revealed.
My face, covered by the mask like that, was heavily stiffened.
It was not that I was nervous about touching a government official.
“I thought I could skip it… Keh!”
[Uh-huh!]
[Postponing today’s work until tomorrow is not a good habit.]
It was because I couldn’t skip today’s training.
I tried to compromise moderately by pointing out that I had to move in the middle of the night, but the reply that came back from Master Zhang Sanfeng was a sight to behold.
[Do you know what compound interest is?]
An instruction fell to add the skipped amount to the next day.
And that with interest added!
‘Are you a loan shark?’
That was the word that popped into my head as soon as I heard it, but I wasn’t stupid enough to speak it aloud either.
I was just disappointed.
“My sleep time…”
In the end, what suffered a loss as much as the time I moved tonight was my sleep time.
I also contemplated just leaving everything to Yi Hwa and resting comfortably, but it was quickly dismissed.
This was because if by any chance Yi Hwa made a mistake, it would be impossible to clean up.
I will definitely vent this resentment on the masterminds of this matter.
The price of my sleep time is absolutely not cheap.
Yi Hwa, who was leading the way, stopped in front of a private house.
“Hmm?”
However, the atmosphere of the destination, the private house, was suspicious.
It was not a sign to be felt in the middle of the night. It was far from simply tossing and turning because one couldn’t sleep at night.
“There is an earlier guest?”
Feeling something strange, I approached the door.
Peeik! Pipipik!
Hidden weapons piercing through the door flew in, accurately aiming at my vital points.
Tadadadang!
Since poison might be applied to them, I deflected the hidden weapons with Master Heavenly Demon’s gauntlet.
“Right off the bat?!”
Kwagak!
At that moment, a shadow breaking through the door and leaping out fiercely assailed me.
Master Zhang Sanfeng’s listening force and Master Heavenly Demon’s synesthesia clearly grasped the sneak attack assailing me.
“Wow! Damn it!”
It was a sight that set off alarm bells throughout my body’s senses.
Do they say that a snake in the jungle throws itself from a high place to rush at its prey?
The sight before my eyes now was exactly like that.
Dozens of venomous snakes (hidden weapons) rushed in at once, drawing different trajectories.
The one at the center. The person holding two swords full of killing intent cut through the dark night and extended the largest and thickest venomous fang.