The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything - Chapter 499

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈

Chapter 499: The Beginning of Night (4)

──────

Juchangseo was born and raised in Xihe, Gansu, and made his living as a horse handler despite having no notable talents.

After traveling between Shaanxi Province and Sichuan alongside peddlers, he heard there was a Sword Tomb on Great Snow Mountain in Gansu and took the first gamble of his life.

‘There must be plenty of martial artists who haven’t prepared for Gansu’s brutal weather!’

He spent his entire fortune on cotton and cloaks, then sold them at outrageous prices to people traveling from Lanzhou to Great Snow Mountain.

He suddenly made a fortune, but the good times did not last.

Merchant groups soon began supplying goods in bulk, and cotton prices plummeted. Juchangseo promptly withdrew and searched for his next opportunity.

‘Sword Tomb... Investigating the Sword Tomb won’t be finished in a day or two, will it?’

Whenever a tomb had been discovered in the past, had it not taken at least half a year to explore it?

Juchangseo once again spent all the money he had earned, buying jerky and food supplies. Then he hired fellow horse handlers and headed for Great Snow Mountain.

His prediction was exactly right.

Martial artists, who preferred light clothing and few possessions, had traveled without bothering to buy equipment for entering the Sword Tomb. At the entrance to Great Snow Mountain, they readily paid no matter how much he raised his prices.

With every passing day, the money pouch in his robes grew heavier. He worked day and night without even noticing his exhaustion.

“Hey, Mister Ju. Isn’t this a little strange?”

Juchangseo, who had been counting silver taels, hurriedly hid his money pouch in his robes and answered as though nothing had happened.

“What is?”

“The Sword Tomb. Plenty of people are going in, but why isn’t anyone coming out?”

“...”

Come to think of it, the other horse handler was right. Countless people had gone inside, but few had returned.

“You’re right...”

Juchangseo had originally planned to do business with those who came out after exploring the Sword Tomb.

Most people who bought jerky and dry provisions from them had purchased enough for only seven days, or at most half a month.

“Do they have food inside?”

There could not be anything edible in a cave beyond groundwater and moss.

It was hard to imagine those proud martial artists tearing at moss as they explored.

“Well, if they get hungry, won’t they come out soon enough?”

Thinking of the enormous profit he could make once they returned, Juchangseo quickly put the matter aside.

The carts carrying food supplies from Lanzhou would soon arrive in Jiuquan. If he wanted to bring those goods back up Great Snow Mountain, he did not have a moment to spare.

Just as he finished sorting the goods and was about to leave the Sword Tomb entrance...

“M-Mister Ju! Th-That! Look at that!”

“Hm? What is it?”

A figure was staggering out of the cave.

The moment the figure emerged from the darkness into the moonlight, Juchangseo and the other horse handlers all stopped breathing.

The man had lost an arm and was battered all over, yet he staggered toward them as though he might die at any moment.

“...W-Water...”

The wounded man collapsed before Juchangseo and cried out in a thin voice. Juchangseo hurried over with a waterskin.

“A-Are you all right?”

“Gulp, gulp, gulp. Cough!”

As he drank, he vomited up a basinful of blood along with the water.

The wounded man grabbed Juchangseo by the collar as Juchangseo searched his robes for medicine.

“W-Why are you doing this?”

“P-Pass it on. Th-The Sword Tomb is... hell... Don’t... come in...”

The man began trembling as though he were having a seizure, then suddenly went limp like waterlogged cotton.

“Is he... dead?”

“...”

What had the man wanted to say?

He had clearly wanted to tell them that the Sword Tomb was a nightmarish place.

Could it be that the Sword Tomb was somewhere people should never enter?

That thought made Juchangseo remember the carts heading for Jiuquan.

They were loaded with goods he had once again gambled his life on.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

“Help me for a moment.”

“W-What with?”

Without answering, Juchangseo grabbed the corpse’s arm and pointed to its feet.

“W-What are you doing?”

“He’s already dead. We need to move him so others can come and go easily. Or are you going to carry this corpse down the mountain?”

“...?!”

Juchangseo’s companion could not hide their shock.

“Help me quickly. I’ll give you another ten silver taels.”

At those words, the horse handler stepped toward the corpse one step at a time.

In the end, the corpse, its arm already severed, tumbled over the cliff and vanished into the abyss below.

“A-Are you all right?”

The other horse handler’s hands still trembled after what they had done, but Juchangseo somehow felt completely fine.

“Come on. We have a lot to do.”

Though it had been his first killing, Juchangseo felt nothing at all.

The newly established Yuseong Hall, most of whose members were temporary, left the Martial Alliance and headed to an escort agency.

“Benefactor Jin, aren’t we traveling on horseback?”

Horses were faster, of course, but considering everyone’s horsemanship, another method would be quicker.

“We need the fastest carriage heading for Gansu.”

“It’ll be thirty silver taels per person, and departure will be in three days.”

“We’ll leave immediately, and I’ll pay five hundred silver taels.”

“Pardon?”

“I want to keep moving without stopping, except to replace the horses and carriages. Can you manage that?”

The clerk, who had been standing there blankly, hurried inside and returned with a middle-aged man.

“I’m Deputy Chief Geum. You’re heading to Gansu?”

“Yes. Is it possible?”

“For six people, it’ll be three thousand silver taels. Isn’t that... rather expensive?”

The deputy chief seemed more curious about whether I could actually pay.

I held out a blank banknote issued by the Martial Alliance.

After seeing the seal impression of the Mantong Office’s Chief Strategist, the deputy chief looked back and forth between the banknote and my face.

“If it isn’t possible, could you tell me quickly? I’ll have to find another escort agency.”

“N-No. We can leave immediately. We’ll prepare the carriage at once.”

The escort agency was thrown into an uproar, and carriages and horses were quickly brought out.

Geumpyo clutched their head when they saw nets hanging inside the spare carriage to serve as beds.

“To think we’d be doing this again.”

“Benefactor Geumpyo, what are you talking about?”

“Ah, you don’t know. This... Well, this means we’re fu... No, it means we’re in serious trouble.”

“We’re in serious trouble?”

Ilgak still could not imagine what that meant and merely tilted his head. Geumpyo spoke as though it were nothing.

“Well, you’ll understand once you experience it.”

And so Yuseong Hall’s journey to Gansu began.

“By the way, when are we stopping for the night?”

Though night had deepened, the carriage showed no sign of stopping, so Ilgak asked. Geumpyo answered him.

“Probably never.”

“What?”

“I’m sure we’ll travel all night.”

“No, that makes no sense...”

Geumpyo placed a hand on Ilgak’s shoulder and smiled brightly.

“It does.”

“Pardon?”

“It does.”

Just as Geumpyo said, the carriage did not stop.

Whenever they passed through a village, they changed horses and repaired the carriages, but aside from that, they did not rest for even a moment.

By the third day, Ilgak was nearing his limit.

He spent all day cooped up inside the carriage, only coming out during brief breaks to hurriedly eat and practice qi-regulating breathing.

The qi-regulating breathing at least made it bearable, but he was far from all right.

Then...

“Ah, starting today, let’s practice the White Tiger Sword Formation during every break.”

That precious, brief time was taken from him.

“Benefactor Jin, the White Tiger Sword Formation?”

“We don’t know what’ll happen once we enter the Sword Tomb. We need to coordinate as much as possible before we get there. Or are you confident even without it?”

It was not wrong, but using qi-regulating breathing during the little time they had to recover...

“Get up. We don’t have time.”

His eyelids felt heavier than a thousand pounds, and his whole body sagged as though soaked in water.

Nam Hwaseong and Yayul Geuk were in no better condition than Ilgak.

Only Geumpyo, who was far less affected than the others, somehow did not look much different from usual.

“Assume many people are attacking you at once, and treat this like a real fight.”

The moment the words ended, Jin Sowoon’s sword filled the space with countless sword forms.

Everyone had improved greatly since their time at the Martial Arts Academy, and the number of sword forms they could handle had clearly increased.

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!

Sword forms, sword qi, and fist qi collided with sharp impacts as they destroyed the sword forms rushing at their vital acupoints.

Their bodies were not moving as smoothly as usual, but just as they thought they had held out well enough...

“It’s not over yet. Who told you to let your guard down?”

Fist-sized stones flew fiercely from between the sword forms, concealed by their shadows.

‘Dang Seohui!’

They had focused so completely on the sword forms that they did not notice the stones striking their bodies.

Thud, thud-thud, thud-thud.

The sword formation fell apart in an instant.

“Haa... Pathetic. After all the care I took picking you, this is what I get. Tsk. We’ll do this during every break from now on, so get yourselves together!”

“Fuck...”

If only they had slept a little longer, if only they had been in slightly better condition, they could have handled it. They tried to swallow their frustration, but the blow to their pride was not easily healed.

“Monk Ilgak.”

At that moment, Geumpyo carefully approached him.

Geumpyo was the only person who had not been struck by the concealed weapons even as the sword formation collapsed.

“You asked what those nets were for, right?”

“...”

Ilgak wondered why Geumpyo was bringing up something from days ago, only for Geumpyo to lead him to the carriage with the nets and show him how to lie down in one.

“If you secure your arms and legs like this, you won’t fall out no matter how much the carriage shakes.”

Geumpyo continued as though showing off something remarkable.

“Then, if you tap the sleep acupoint like this, you can sleep.”

“...???”

It was beyond common sense. Why was Geumpyo speaking so casually about such an abnormal act?

“You look too exhausted. Eldest Martial Brother won’t stop the carriage midway, no matter what.”

“...”

Ilgak’s heart sank with a thud, as though he had been handed a death sentence telling him to abandon all vain hope.

Still, as a direct disciple of Shaolin Temple, it was not easy to accept twisting himself into a net like a silkworm cocoon just to sleep because he could not overcome his instincts.

Would it not be better to endure until he could not take it any longer, then catch up on sleep if the carriage broke down?

“If the carriage breaks down, he’ll probably get a new one and keep going. Don’t you think so?”

Geumpyo spoke as though every one of Ilgak’s thoughts was already known.

“...”

Just as Geumpyo said, Ilgak could picture Jin Sowoon sticking out a tongue longer than usual, grinning with a mouth split to his ears, and laughing as he spoke.

[Don’t worry! Carriages are consumables! Just throw them away and buy new ones! Kahaha!]

He could not tell whether he had imagined it or whether Jin Sowoon had actually said it.

“We’ve all done this before, Monk.”

Ilgak’s shoulders sagged.

“People say that when the current is rough, you should let yourself be carried by it.”

Ilgak stared blankly at Geumpyo.

It was his final question, asking whether this was really all right and whether he had to give up his human dignity.

Geumpyo slowly nodded.

“Whoever gets more sleep before the next break wins.”

“...!!!”

Following Geumpyo’s guidance, Ilgak climbed onto the net.

Then, as Geumpyo instructed, he secured his hands and feet to it and wrapped himself up like a cocoon.