Ten Paths of the Master - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 2. The Hundred Year Plan of Hao Mun
Chang An City.
Jang Ga Village beyond An Hwa Gate.
Early afternoon, around one o’clock.
Two figures entered a faded, ramshackle old house.
Dan Bulwi and a child of four years.
The boy clutched a Tang Gwa in one hand and kept his eyes on the ground as he walked.
Before a padlocked storage shed, Dan Bulwi glanced furtively to the side.
By now the child should have been weeping and wailing for his parents, yet oddly he made no sound at all.
Just then a man with a bristling beard, Jang Yeok, came hurrying over breathlessly.
“Oh my! Munju Dan! My apologies for keeping you waiting. I had to answer a call of nature and stepped away to the privy for a moment.”
“You’re here now. Open the door.”
“Yes, yes.”
Jang Yeok unlocked the fist-sized padlock and cracked the storage door open.
A musty, acrid reek of sweat poured out from the darkened interior.
Even the child, who had been stone-faced until then, startled and seized the hem of Dan Bulwi’s robe.
Dan Bulwi wrenched his garment free from the small hand and spoke.
“Now, now. I’m not your father. Your friends are inside there. Play with them, and soon enough I’ll take you somewhere fine. Keep yourself quiet until then. If you make a noise in here, that man will scold you. Understand?”
The child, taken aback by Dan Bulwi’s sudden change in manner, answered with a frightened face.
“Yes…….”
“Go on in.”
With that, Dan Bulwi gave the four-year-old’s back a gentle push.
As the boy stepped into the storage, Jang Yeok fastened the padlock shut again.
Five children stared fixedly at the newcomer.
One of them, appearing to be about six or seven, spoke up.
“Did they sell you too?”
“……I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? If your parents got paid, you were sold. If not, you were taken. Did you see them get money?”
“No.”
“Then you were taken. Your parents will be looking for you.”
The four-year-old said nothing and crouched in the corner.
The thought that they would search for him made his heart lurch with dread.
‘That can’t happen…….’
The next day.
Dan Bulwi ventured out to the market again to economize.
And in late afternoon he returned with a boy of five or six, clutching another Tang Gwa.
When Dan Bulwi’s eyes met Jang Yeok’s before the shed, he began to chat idly.
“Goodness, children these days are so fond of Song’s Tang Gwa. Listen—when you grow up and have children of your own, teach them this: never follow anyone, no matter who offers them sweets.”
“Quite right. It’s human nature to be drawn to what’s free, which is why so many ruin themselves. I’ll teach my own children that those who love freebies end up ruined and disgraced.”
“You clever thing—had some book learning as a boy, didn’t you? Words just pour out of your mouth.”
Jang Yeok chuckled and drew the key from his pocket.
When the storage door swung open a moment later, Dan Bulwi gave the boy’s back a light push.
But what was this?
Unlike yesterday’s four-year-old, the boy planted his feet and resisted.
“Please, sir! I’m sorry! Save me!”
The child, who had been silent until now, suddenly seized by panic, began to shriek and wail.
But Dan Bulwi, for whom human trafficking was his trade, didn’t so much as blink.
“Save you from what? Who said anything about harm? I’m taking you somewhere better. I’m not lying. Ask the friends inside. No one here will hurt you.”
As the hesitant boy faltered, Jang Yeok swiftly scooped him up and whisked him into the shed.
The startled child gasped and sobbed in the stranger’s arms as if his breath might fail.
“Waaaahhh!”
Crying is contagious.
The children inside the shed, quiet until now, began to wail in chorus.
In that instant of frustration, Jang Yeok hurled the boy he was holding to the ground.
Thud!
The impact shocked the crying child into sudden silence.
The other children, who had joined in the weeping, now held their breath with small, strangled sounds.
Jang Yeok fixed them with a predatory glare and spoke.
“Listen to me, all of you. From now on, you do exactly as I say. You’ve all been sold. Do you understand? Your parents sold you to us. Do you think your families will be happy to see you if you go back? They won’t. They’ll owe us several times the price they received. Do you think your parents want you running back here? No. They’ll come looking for us and beg us to take you, because if you escape, they’ll have to repay us many times over. And if they can’t? They’ll go hungry. Every last one of them will starve. Same thing if you run anywhere else—we will hunt down your parents and squeeze them for every coin until they have nothing. So stop your sniveling and listen to what I say. That’s how you honor your family. Do you understand?”
“Sniff, y-yes…….”
The children held back their tears as they answered.
Some of them, looking no older than four, had been abducted, yet not a single child contradicted Jang Yeok’s words.
Some didn’t yet understand the difference between being sold and being kidnapped, but they were cowed by the sheer brutality before them.
Soon after, Jang Yeok stepped outside and locked the warehouse door behind him.
The atmosphere inside was one of utter despair.
The child who had been thrown down sat with a vacant stare, while the others, gripped by fear, barely dared to breathe.
Yet the youngest child in the warehouse—the four-year-old—was somehow different.
Though her head remained bowed, her expression was oddly calm.
As if such commotion meant nothing at all.
—Mother.
—How dare you call me that? You’re wicked and corrupt seed! You’ll grow up to be just like that monster, won’t you? You should never have been born! If only you’d never been born, then I—! I—! Aaaahhh! Die! You deserve to die!
Her mother, who choked her several times a day, would occasionally hold her and weep with sorrow.
—Ugh… ugh… I’m sorry, baby. What did you ever do wrong? I’m the mad one. I should have died instead…
To the four-year-old who had lived alone with such a mother in that annex, Jang Yeok’s threats were nothing.
Rather, the child had come to find the warehouse life tolerable.
It was dark and foul-smelling, true, but at least her terrifying mother—the one who cursed and beat her whenever their eyes met—was gone.
Here, she could finally rest without worry.
Above all, she no longer had to suffer the pain of waking to hands around her throat.
Dozing in the darkness, the four-year-old had mumbled “Mother” in her sleep, then jolted awake with a start.
Realizing belatedly that she was in the warehouse, she exhaled with relief and closed her eyes again.
To the young child, her mother was both something she longed for in fleeting moments and yet a figure of terror that made her knees buckle.
***
The next day.
A mountain path outside Guan Nei Dao—the region that would later be known as Shanxi Province.
Dan Bulwi, fanning his face with his hand beside Ma Bu, suddenly spoke up.
“Blast it all! It’s sweltering. How much farther?”
“Just two more hours, sir.”
“Speed it up. This heat is going to kill those brats. It cost two hundred cash to gather them.”
At the man’s boast, Ma Bu glanced back.
Seven children meant he was claiming to have spent nearly thirty cash per child—a transparent lie.
‘As if he paid full price for any of them.’
Everyone knew that most children handled by the Amun were kidnapped, not purchased.
Though Ma Bu recognized the falsehood, he held his tongue—Dan Bulwi was a Munju, after all.
He simply flicked the whip lightly.
“Giddyup! Giddyup!”
As the horse quickened its pace and the cart lurched, soft whimpers came from behind.
They were all mere children of five or six, so their whimpers were understandable, but that was all.
Young though they were, they had already adapted to this merciless world.
Yet Dan Bulwi had no patience even for these small sounds.
“Shut up, you little bastards!”
At his roar, the cart fell silent as a tomb.
Ma Bu, witnessing this, felt deeply uneasy.
Unlike the Amun, which was a criminal organization, the Chamun—composed of coachmen—had always conducted itself with honor.
Had this not been an initiative of the entire Hao Mun, Ma Bu would never have involved himself with the Amun.
Dan Bulwi, gazing absently at the distant mountains, grumbled to himself.
“Good grief! Why would they want us to gather children in this heat, just to put on some performance? Our Guan Nei Dao Munjs certainly have lofty dreams. But you can’t turn a worm into a dragon just by wishing it, now can you? Don’t you agree?”
Though Dan Bulwi was a Munju himself, he spoke to Ma Bu as an equal.
This was because Ma Bu was a Mundom member of the Chamun.
Dan Bulwi had asked politely enough for agreement, but the answer that came was not what he expected.
“Still, I think it’s worth attempting. Who knows? If we of Guan Nei Dao unify the Hao Mun across all ten provinces, we might become like the Gae Bang itself.”
The Hao Mun was not a single sect.
The term “Hao Mun” was an umbrella designation for six occupational organizations: Chamun for coachmen, Seonmun for boatmen, Jeommun for shop servants, Gakmun for porters, Gimun for courtesans, and Amun for human traffickers.
Because each organization had separate roots, there were six Munjs in all.
Today the realm was divided into Ten Provinces, and each province had six Hao Mun organizations.
The Munjs of the Ten Provinces alone numbered sixty.
That was enough martial force to rival all but the greatest sects.
Yet despite this, the Hao Mun remained dismissed and scorned throughout the martial world.
Too many heads and no unified direction—that was the problem.
As the saying goes, too many boatmen and the boat drifts up a mountain.
Weary of the contempt from the jianghu sects, Gi Mun Munju made a bold decision.
He had convinced the five Sect Leaders of Guan Nei Dao to create the “Hundred Year Plan.”
Summarized, its contents were as follows.
—Gather children from Guan Nei Dao and raise them as the pillars of Hao Mun, then use them to unify Hao Mun across the Ten Provinces.
Dan Bulwi snorted at Ma Bu’s unexpected objection.
“Bah! Who says unifying Hao Mun would make it like Gae Bang? Do you think drawing a line on a pumpkin turns it into a watermelon? Gae Bang’s martial knowledge differs in quality altogether. You think O Ak Geom Pa or Nok Rim would take notice if we unified Hao Mun? They’d just be thrilled it’s become easier to use us.”
“The six Sect Leaders of Guan Nei Dao have gathered all manner of martial secret texts in Munssan. Who can say whether a supreme master who will command the realm might emerge from among those children?”
“Ambitious dreams indeed. Children trained on martial manuals peddled in the marketplace won’t rise above mediocrity. Do you think uprooting a radish and burying it in the mountains turns it into ginseng? Not a chance. I’m living proof of that.”
……
Ma Bu could not counter his self-deprecating words.
In truth, the fundamental reason Hao Mun was scorned lay in its inferior martial arts.
In Chang An City itself, a Jeommun Sect Leader had been beaten in broad daylight by a Gae Bang disciple—that said everything.
As the two Hao Mun members fell silent, only the grinding sound of the wheels echoed loudly.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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