Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time - Chapter 155

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ Surviving as a Genius on Borrowed Time ◈

Episode 155: Knight-Errant (2)

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Though they were traveling with the Little Sword Empress’s group, only four members of the party were from Desolate Fortress.

Jeong Yeon-shin led the way. The Languid Flame Dragon, whose martial arts were overwhelmingly forceful, rode on his right, while Hyeon Won-chang, serving as his adviser on conduct, rode on his left.

Namgung Hwa-shin brought up the rear. His naturally calm disposition and steady swordsmanship made him well suited to the position.

“Every day with you is eye-opening. Desolate Fortress must value good looks and martial talent equally.”

That was what Chwi So-ok, the Little Sword Empress, had said when they set out. No one replied.

Even Jeomchang Dancing Sword and Heavenly One Sword ignored their senior sister.

Things were still awkward between them and Jeong Yeon-shin’s group. They were fellow travelers, not companions.

‘They said another Black Uniform would follow us. I wonder if it’ll be Senior Ak.’

The Martial Alliance was a tiger’s den. Even with the extraordinary martial prowess of the three aside from Hyeon Won-chang, it was not a place to be taken lightly.

In sheer size, the alliance likely surpassed Desolate Fortress.

As this was a diplomatic mission, they could not mobilize the numbers of a full martial squad. Still, the Chief Steward's Office of Desolate Fortress would never leave a promising new Squad Leader entirely without support.

He had heard that reinforcements would follow at a distance.

It would not be Demon Wings. There were few seniors whose bodies had fully recovered.

Cheong Myeong, who had recovered considerably, had only recently been appointed acting Leader of Demon Wings. The conversation they had shared before departure still rang in Yeon-shin’s ears.

“It feels like only yesterday that I lent you my long robe. In any case, Demon Wings need reorganizing. This mission is diplomatic, so only a few of you are going, but when you return, you’ll probably have to pull personnel from other squads.”

Cheong Myeong’s voice carried a trace of laughter.

It was private advice, and Yeon-shin took it to heart.

“The Seom-ye Martial Lineage is spread throughout every martial squad. You’re respected enough already, so next comes renown. How well known a Squad Leader is in the martial world matters more than you’d think. What do people who live by the sword have besides martial arts and reputation? The name Seom-ye needs to grow bigger before the other Squad Leaders will accept it.”

The elven swordfighter, one of Yeon-shin’s closest friends since entering Desolate Fortress, was innocent yet somewhat cynical.

In other words, Cheong Myeong never spared anyone with words.

“You’ll be competing with people who’ve wielded swords as Black Uniforms for over a decade, if not several decades. Even the Swift Heaven Wing Squad Leader is called the Monster of Ma Ridge River Grand Gorge. Every one of them built a reputation over long years by displaying Black Uniform-level martial prowess. Trust and time have accumulated behind their names.”

The Swift Heaven Wing Squad Leader clearly distinguished public matters from private ones.

They fully acknowledged Yeon-shin’s achievements and strength. Yet they remained stubborn about Namgung Hwa-shin’s transfer.

That was likely why Cheong Myeong had brought up reputation.

“Have you ever seen anyone in the martial world who didn’t know our former Squad Leader? Desolate Fortress Squad Leaders hold enormous standing in the martial world. They’ve involved themselves in countless incidents and built up countless achievements.”

Those words described the world Yeon-shin had to survive in.

“Normally, it would be difficult to catch up. But this mission may narrow the gap considerably. That depends on what you make of it.”

The Martial Alliance’s grand founding ceremony was said to be a great opportunity.

‘It’s an alliance of every orthodox sect. One accomplishment there should be worth twice as much as usual...’

Whoosh.

An autumn wind suddenly swept over his face.

The thought carried by that clear gust went no further. Yeon-shin gripped the reins and urged his fine horse onward.

The group rode without pause.

There was a relay station in Hanzhong, their destination, but no relay route connected Xiangyang, where Desolate Fortress’s main fortress stood, to Hanzhong.

The roads beneath their horses’ hooves could not run straight.

Three days, four days, five days... They had no choice but to take a long detour.

They passed through ruined villages again and again.

“This place is beyond saving too.”

“So many people need help...”

“White Uniform senior, if you keep handing out silver, you won’t have any monthly pay left. Shaking off those who cling to us is work too.”

It truly was a chaotic age. Famine bred plunder, and food was scarce.

It was something Yeon-shin had never felt strongly while growing up. Whatever its family customs, Jeong Family Manor had been the home of wealthy landowners.

Even after entering Desolate Fortress, he had never worried about food. The effects of poor harvests had not yet reached the greatest martial faction under heaven.

For now, food could still be bought with money. It was simply expensive.

Furthermore, there were few places where Desolate Fortress martial artists stopped during missions.

Other than respectable inns and government offices, there were only desolate fields and forests.

Yeon-shin had been no different. Camping outdoors, high-class inns, Desolate Fortress’s Qizhou Branch, the Sichuan Tang Clan...

The places he had passed through before his promotion to Black Uniform had not shown the effects of crop failure so clearly. Sichuan, isolated by its basin, was one such place.

It was among the most fertile lands under heaven. In Qizhou alone, countless spectators had watched Yeon-shin fight.

Yet the western regions he had returned to after so long seemed different.

Rumors said bandits were everywhere while factions across the land acted like warlords. The sights Yeon-shin encountered from horseback bore that out.

People without even a single copper coin, or those unable to survive through hunting, had taken to plundering.

He could see with his own eyes that the effects of famine had spread throughout the world.

‘It’s especially bad here.’

Yeon-shin suddenly pulled the reins and brought his horse to a halt. The others lined up behind the young leader of their group.

The western edge of Yunyang Prefecture in Huguang.

Thick smoke rose throughout a small village beside a lake. Crying could be heard here and there.

It was more devastated than any place they had passed so far. Hanzhong, where the Martial Alliance stood, was close at hand.

A suffocating silence hung in the air. It was the aftermath of a raid.

“...”

Clop, clop.

Yeon-shin urged his horse forward again, guiding it slowly toward the village entrance.

“I wonder what the Wudang Sect has been doing. It should be the closest of the Nine Sects to this place.”

The Little Sword Empress spoke, but Hyeon Won-chang answered at the same time.

“It is a problem to seek out martial factions first when speaking of public safety. What are the authorities doing?”

Hyeon Won-chang’s tone showed displeasure with both sides.

Come to think of it, Hyeon Won-chang had always held a peculiar dislike for major factions.

Yeon-shin hoped that someday he would hear the story of this older friend’s life. Before he died.

For a while, only hoofbeats echoed, until they reached the shattered wooden palisade.

No one spoke when the Languid Flame Dragon pointed to one side.

“That’s a trace of a force wave, isn’t it? That gouged-out spot over there. Martial artists did this.”

His tone was slightly playful, perhaps trying to lighten the mood.

As the wayward Young Family Head of the Huangbo Family, he had roamed all sorts of places. Experiences like this seemed familiar to him.

Yeon-shin did not answer. These were bandits who had run wild in a village not far from the Martial Alliance and the Wudang Sect.

It was not something people with ordinary martial arts or nerve could have done.

The moment they crossed the collapsed fence, a boy came running toward them. He looked about Yeon-shin’s age.

The boy sprinted toward them with the half-ruined village behind him. Despite his ragged appearance, his eyes were resolute.

“Great Hero! You are a warrior of Desolate Fortress, aren’t you?!”

In the midst of all this, Yeon-shin felt a small sense of fulfillment. The rough character for Desolate on his shoulder seemed to be doing its job.

People could recognize him face-to-face now.

Unless he had reason to change into Ma Jin’s clothes, Hyeon Won-chang would have no more need to intervene.

Hearing someone smack their lips behind him, Yeon-shin felt a faint sense of satisfaction as well.

Those were his clothes, after all.

“What happened?”

Yeon-shin pushed aside his brief thoughts and asked cautiously. His manner was entirely different from when he faced people of the martial world.

The Jeomchang disciples and the Languid Flame Dragon drew sharper breaths. They seemed mildly surprised.

“...His martial arts and temperament are both unusual.”

The Languid Flame Dragon muttered playfully.

“If this young lord had been born one of the common people, I would have received the young Squad Leader’s care. With a short life and an entire family slaughtered, how pitiful is that?”

His tone was faintly teasing.

It was almost self-mockery, yet there was a certain elegance to it.

Yeon-shin paid no particular attention and looked down at the boy.

The village boy stared at the youth in black on horseback, his face filled with anger and sorrow.

Yeon-shin did not need to ask further. The boy had lost both property and kin.

“Tell me about the people responsible.”

Yeon-shin spoke.

They were nearly at Hanzhong. Since they had time to spare, should he not listen to a commoner’s grievance as a Desolate Fortress Squad Leader?

It was obvious that people of the martial world had attacked this village. He could not simply leave it alone.

* * *

The Mount Hua Sect’s disciple of the sect leader thought of a curse said to be used by the Namsadang troupe of Haedong.

‘I’ve been royally screwed.’

After careful thought, Yu Hyeon, the Mount Hua Hidden Dragon, reached that conclusion. He had heard the phrase meant someone had been obstructed.

Taken literally, he had been royally screwed.

He had arrived early at the headquarters of the Martial Alliance Assembly.

Staying in the assigned quarters had become unbearably dull.

None of the younger talents he had seen at the Martial Alliance caught his eye.

Those who were somewhat older had their attention fixed on the blind beauty called Miss Ye.

As though they had been bewitched by a nine-tailed fox from the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

‘The family scions are disgusting, and the practitioners from the Nine Sects are so slow they haven’t even arrived.’

Yu Hyeon had considered slipping away.

It seemed better to roam freely with the Body Movement Scripture.

To practice Hidden Fragrance Drift, a secret art of Mount Hua, Yu Hyeon had gone for a walk with martial nephews older than he was. That was how they reached the Shaanxi border.

There, they saw a half-ruined village.

It began with the plea of the village boy left alone there. They listened to his tearful grievance.

A faction settled on an island in the lake had plundered the village.

“It wasn’t a sect of the Primordial Heavenly Venerable or Buddha. They built a manor on the island and came to plunder us regularly. When pigs, calves, and crops were nearly mature, those bastards came and took everything. If anyone resisted, they beat them to death...”

“What?”

The righteous disciples of Mount Hua were furious. Knightly spirit surged within them.

“Not long ago, they swept away all the food we had left. They said it was to entertain martial artists whose horses wore iron armor...”

“How did you know they were martial artists? They might have been soldiers.”

One of Yu Hyeon’s martial nephews asked. The village boy answered at once.

“They called themselves ‘heroes of the Heart Martial Union.’ Isn’t the Heart Martial Union one of the Thirteen Heavens?”

“...It is a major faction based in Henan. Why would it be at the edge of Huguang?”

From then on, the Mount Hua disciples discussed it among themselves.

“Their bordering edges are close, so the distance is not that great.”

“Even so, it is suspicious. What nerve do they have? The Martial Alliance, which held its grand founding ceremony, is not far from here.”

Unease aside, Yu Hyeon’s group crossed to the island by the lake. The village’s devastation was too terrible to ignore.

A knight-errant of the martial world was someone who avenged the wronged. As disciples of one of the Nine Sects, they could not pretend not to see it.

The Heart Martial Union, which had appeared in step with the Martial Alliance’s founding, was also a problem.

It seemed to foreshadow an unusual incident. They needed a lead.

‘I overestimated our martial ability.’

Yu Hyeon looked back on it with his hands tied behind his back.

He sat back-to-back with three martial nephews in the Training Hall of a well-built manor.

More than twenty people stood around them, looking down with mocking expressions. Among them, a woman in dark blue official robes and a man carrying a large saber stood out.

They were married.

‘How are we supposed to win when a fairly strong martial faction joins hands with the Prefect and threatens us with hostages? Power and martial strength have both become corrupt.’

Yu Hyeon had not known that the Prefect of Yunyang Prefecture was involved. This had become deeply troublesome.

They were not opponents to face carelessly, but every one of them had been captured. Their enemies had threatened them with the villagers as hostages.

“This is quite a dilemma.”

The woman in an official headdress parted her lips. She held the greatest authority in Yunyang.

She was the Prefect.

Once someone began cultivating martial arts, they started to escape the limits of the body. The differences people were born with because of gender were no exception.

Female masters of the Demonic Sect who could easily slaughter a hundred grown men were not rare. Aptitude for internal energy arts did not discriminate by gender.

More than half of the lords of the Thirteen Heavens were women, and the sect leader of the Ami Sect, a Buddhist nun, discussed affairs under heaven.

It was an era in which the elven race was revered as a lineage of immortals.

The customs of the Song Dynasty had collapsed. Elven women entered government service.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the Grand Empress Dowager from two generations before, an elf who had directly influenced imperial politics, had overturned the world’s perceptions.

Women were permitted to sit the civil service examinations.

The existence of elves and martial arts had driven this change. The world had changed dramatically.

Young ladies throughout the land passed provincial examinations and became provincial graduates. They then proceeded through the metropolitan examinations to the palace examination, where their results determined their ranks.

The current Grand Secretary of the Hanlin Academy was the sister of the Zhuge Family Head.

There was nothing unusual about a woman being a Prefect. The issue was that this couple consisted of an unorthodox scoundrel and a corrupt official.

“Your words are correct, my wife. It truly is a dilemma. If we hand them over to the Heart Martial Union masters who have gone back, our capture of Mount Hua experts will be exposed... Yet letting them go as they are makes no sense.”

The man beside her spoke. He was the master of the island and the leader of the Zhongyang Association.

He was also the culprit who had directed all the plundering.

“We should wipe them all out. Even if someone comes investigating, my wife can simply deny it. Who would doubt a Prefect’s word?”

“You’ve said the same thing for days.”

Yu Hyeon answered indifferently. The arrogance of someone whose talent made everything seem beneath notice showed through.

“Isn’t it burdensome for both sides to cut off heads? Frankly, if your wife were not such a powerful official, would you still be alive after meeting me? If she had only been a county magistrate, your head would already be steeped in plum fragrance. Have you ever heard of sword fragrance?”

“You bastard, you do not even understand your position...!”

“Mount Hua disciple, be silent. We have spared you because we have prior acquaintance. Your reckless conduct has gone too far.”

The Prefect spoke, restraining her enraged husband. Yu Hyeon gave a short laugh and lowered his head. It was the conduct of someone who scorned a corrupt official.

It was the strongest resistance Yu Hyeon could offer now, but it did not seem to reach a woman who had survived the harsh world of politics to become a Prefect.

“Famine does not distinguish between high and low status. Yet only when officials and swords fulfill their duties can common people live properly. It is not that I fail to understand your knightly spirit, but the vessel required of one who governs a nation is greater. Do not measure it by your shallow standards.”

The Prefect spoke.

The couple looked down completely on the common people. Yu Hyeon did not answer.

Another day passed.

With his qi scattered by qi-dispersing poison, his stomach seemed to cave inward.

Even the Mount Hua Sect’s daoist robes had lost their dignity. The shriveled plum blossom emblem revealed Yu Hyeon’s situation.

Then, at some point...

Step.

Black leather shoes entered his lowered field of vision.

“You’re developing a bad habit. You were getting beaten up by the Languid Flame Dragon too.”

A young voice rang out.

“...?”

“Traveling around without the elders of your sect has become a habit. At this rate, you’ll die away from home.”