The Reincarnated Hunter Sweeps Up All Fortunes - Chapter 11

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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 11
11
The guard shifts at Wolhyangru rotated in teams of three, eight hours per rotation.
The work itself was hardly demanding.
You strapped a blade to your waist, stood at the front gate, and looked impressive. That was the entire job.
Hard to believe, but it was true.
Why else would the Ronins be so eager to take commissions at Wolhyangru?
It wasn’t simply for the pleasure of the view.
It was a cushy assignment.
“Ahem. I’ll just pop over to the privy for a moment. Keep watch while I’m gone, won’t you?”
“Yes, understood.”
The senior guard disappeared roughly an hour into his shift.
Baek Cheon’s brow creased, but he flinched when Im Gang jabbed him in the ribs.
“What are you—”
“Your face.”
……
“You knew this might happen when we came. He’s next to useless anyway. Mencius taught that one does not chase those who leave, nor block those who arrive.”
Baek Cheon’s expression turned peculiar.
“Do you realize that’s not what that saying means?”
“All roads lead to the same destination.”
“The same destination? What’s that?”
“A good place. A paradise where all the world’s happiness gathers.”
“Ah, paradise! I should like to visit such a place someday.”
Im Gang’s conscience pricked him inwardly.
It wasn’t a place where only happiness existed, and besides, you couldn’t go even if you wanted to.
As a guard, he kept his eyes forward.
Certainly not to avoid Baek Cheon’s bright, eager gaze. And soon enough, thanks to the steady stream of Wolhyangru guests, he forgot all about his conscience.
“Ahem! A gentleman of my standing arrives—where is my escort?”
“Hehehehe. Lord Cho, we’ve been waiting for you.”
“Our Seol Hwa has been waiting for her dear patron!”
A man with the oily complexion of someone who ate butter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner laughed with equal oiliness, wrapped his arm around a courtesan’s waist, and disappeared inside.
……He was envious.
Not of the courtesan—of the man’s obvious wealth.
The butter-man’s robes were of such fine quality that Im Gang couldn’t have purchased them with his entire fortune of two silver pieces.
‘How many silver or gold taels would it take to acquire something like that?’
Had he been one of the inner-circle fighters at Wolhyangru, he might’ve coveted those robes enough to steal them while drunk.
Only in thought, though. He’d never actually do it.
If a Ronin were caught carrying off clothes like that, the first thing that happened was a report to the authorities.
Why?
Because he’d obviously stolen them.
Im Gang, a man who still possessed some remnant of conscience, had no qualms endorsing that logic.
And besides.
Even Ronins, who seemed to have nothing to lose, were surprisingly selective about their targets.
They never touched items that would obviously be missed—ledgers, fine garments, anything conspicuous.
The exception was Martial Secret Manuals.
‘What am I going to do about the manual back home……?’
Im Gang wrestled with the problem, then wrestled with it again.
He suspected this worry would linger for quite some time.
Whoooosh—!
“Ah……”
If only his house hadn’t been burning when he returned after his shift.
He’d gone over because he thought it was someone else’s place on fire.
But when he got there, it turned out to be his own home.
He wept the moment he saw it.
“Ha……”
That was exactly how Im Gang felt. Whoever had set fire to his house, he’d execute them together with the bastard who’d stolen his money—torn limb from limb.
Or whatever that punishment was called.
Well, the meaning was clear enough either way, so it didn’t really matter.
He sifted through what remained of the house.
Everything inside had burned.
It was synonymous with saying his martial secret manuals had been stripped away entirely.
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you were after. But I will find you—I swear I will. And when I do, I’ll collect every last bit of compensation: for my rage, my resentment, my material losses, and my psychological suffering.”
He wouldn’t kill them.
There were fates worse and more agonizing than death.
Im Gang swallowed the fury churning in his chest, holding it down for that moment to come.
“…No. This won’t do.”
He rummaged through his belongings one last time to see if anything remained, then gave up and rose to his feet.
Trying to suppress the rage felt like it would burst him open.
Swallowing this would fester into sickness.
It wasn’t a matter of suffering makes one young—suffering makes one sick.
‘A sickness of the heart is still a sickness.’
In Medieval Martial Arts Land, such a heart demon was what they called it.
So he retrieved it.
The great master had said it wasn’t a lethal technique, but in a dire situation it might buy him one more life—a technique of last resort.
Even so, the master had recommended he avoid using it when possible.
“…I’ll verify its authenticity.”
The elderly shopkeeper with age spots, proprietor of the Black Market Shop, gazed down at the black chopstick etched with the character “Superior” and began to examine it carefully.
Though Im Gang couldn’t quite tell what made it special, it had clearly undergone some form of unique treatment.
Light kindled in the old man’s eyes; he rose and pressed his palms together respectfully.
“Please, come this way.”
He guided Im Gang down into the Black Market Shop’s basement.
* * *
Haomun.
It was a sect founded when the lowest occupational classes of Medieval Martial Arts Land, unable to bear further oppression, joined hands to protect themselves.
Originally it was called the Lower Five Sects because it was formed from five groups: cart drivers, boatmen, innkeepers, porters, and human traffickers.
But later, finding the arrangement distasteful, they purged the human traffickers and recruited courtesans and pickpockets instead.
After that, they kept adding other despised lower-class professions—black market operators, cheaters, and the like—until they changed the name entirely to Haomun, the Filthy Lower.
Ronin are in the lowest tier too, aren’t they?
Surprising as it may seem, no.
‘Ronin exist somewhere between the lowest and lower tiers.’
Im Gang griped constantly about how dark the ronin world was, how you could die at any moment, but he wasn’t quite fallen enough to be counted among Haomun.
Those Haomun folk, they die for sport.
Take innkeepers, for instance.
Martial World fighters brawl in inns whenever they’re bored, and the innkeepers get caught in it and die.
They get stabbed to death because their tone of voice rubbed someone wrong.
They get beaten to death because the food came out slow, and so on.
It’s no accident that innkeepers rank second in Martial World fatality statistics.
To such an extent that some inns have had to shut down because they couldn’t replace their innkeepers fast enough.
Unable to stand it anymore, local officials threatened Martial World fighters with punishment if they killed an innkeeper during a brawl.
The problem was that such punishment was lenient—if you claimed it was an accident or a mistake during a fight, you could pay a heavy fine and walk away.
Still, cases where innkeepers lost their heads over something as trivial as late food or cold alcohol did decrease somewhat.
After all, how many Martial World fighters actually had the wealth to pay such fines?
Some said that before official intervention, innkeepers weren’t second in death rates—they were first.
In any case.
Among the establishments affiliated with Haomun, some had underground passages built into them.
This was because, as mentioned, workers in Filthy Lower professions had high mortality rates, and these were directly operated branches of headquarters.
And in such places, Im Gang had heard, you could buy information—Haomun’s exclusive monopoly.
It was knowledge the great master had forcibly drilled into him, saying it would become his bones and flesh.
‘The basement is quite extensive.’
Im Gang thought as he followed the old man with age spots.
For a clandestine information exchange, they’d been walking a long time.
How much ground had they covered?
A door appeared, and when he stepped through it, he arrived in a room thick with the smell of ink.
A woman with her face veiled in fine silk was waiting there, sitting as though she’d been expecting him.
“Thank you for taking the trouble to come.”
“Not at all.”
The old man bowed deeply at the waist.
The woman clearly outranked him.
She gestured to Im Gang to sit.
“You may withdraw now, Jak.”
“I understand.”
Im Gang kept his eyes on the woman while his fingers absently traced the hilt of his sword.
The old man with the scarred face, Jak No-ya, had passed by to the side, but the real threat wasn’t him—it was the woman.
‘Damn. She’s from the Martial World.’
Now that he’d mastered Energy Perception, he could distinguish whether someone had cultivated Internal Energy and belonged to the Martial World.
The woman’s level was becoming gradually clearer to him.
At minimum, Second-Class or higher.
And around her, there were others he could barely detect even with Energy Perception.
Their levels were completely beyond his estimation.
‘If that woman is barely hanging on to First-Class…’
Then those hidden must be even higher.
Im Gang felt cold sweat trickling down his spine.
“Please, sit.”
“Yes.”
“It’s been a long time since someone brought me an upper-grade Black Chopstick, so I came out myself.”
“I see.”
The woman studied Im Gang’s expression through the veil that covered her face.
The Black Chopstick was one of Haomun’s tokens, and if compared to martial sects and prestigious families, it was equivalent to a Debt Token.
If you held one, it meant someone had done you a favor, and you were obligated to repay them accordingly.
That was essentially what the token signified.
And.
Black Chopsticks inscribed with the upper grade were rare enough to count on one hand.
Since Haomun was built by the lowborn gathering together, they wouldn’t issue a Black Chopstick without receiving extraordinary favor in return.
“Might I ask what your alias is, esteemed guest?”
“My alias… Well… Recently, I’ve been called the Marvelous Sword Blade.”
“So you’re the Marvelous Sword Blade who distinguished herself so brilliantly in the war between the Red-class Sect and the Black Blade Gang.”
“Ah… Yes…”
As Im Gang continued to glance nervously around, the woman tapped her own hand lightly with her index finger.
This was truly an unexpected person.
Or rather.
She was somewhat surprising, but still within the realm of what could be anticipated.
She was the young ronin that the owner of the upper-grade Black Chopstick had taken as a final disciple.
“Has your master perhaps told you anything about the Black Chopstick?”
“Yes.”
Im Gang nearly stumbled over his words in sudden confusion.
Who was this ronin she spoke of?
His master—no, his master’s alias was the Ronin? He’d had no idea until now.
Well, he’d only ever heard the old man called a lunatic or madman or things like that, so it wasn’t strange he hadn’t known.
‘The Ronin? A two-character alias is uncommon…’
“I understand. Then please tell me what your request is.”
“Ah. A few days ago, someone set fire to my home, and I need you to investigate that person…”
“Pardon?”
The woman couldn’t hide her bewilderment as she repeated the question.
He said he’d heard about the Black Chopstick? Yet he was only asking her to identify an arsonist?
It had to be one of two things.
Either he didn’t understand the true value of the Black Chopstick, or the arsonist’s identity was far more significant than anyone could imagine.
“…Would you give me a moment, please?”
“Yes… Yes…”
Judging by his ability to sense the presence of the hidden Haomun masters lurking nearby, it should have been the latter.
But the woman could only assume it was the former.
—Please bring me the records on the arson in the slum where ronins gather.
Haomun had already investigated the matter.
Since they made their living from information, failing to investigate incidents occurring in their territory—Hangzhou—would mean forfeiting their very right to exist as Haomun.

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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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