The Reincarnated Hunter Sweeps Up All Fortunes - Chapter 17

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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 17
Episode 17
The employer was Da Mum Mun.
A sect positioned Between Orthodox and Evil—neither orthodox nor evil, occupying an awkward middle ground.
Yet that awkwardness did not make them weak or dismissible.
Quite the opposite.
In Hangzhou, caught between the few powerful orthodox sects and the swarms of evil sects like ants crawling over the earth, they had survived by serving as intermediaries.
They received goods from both sides and brokered transactions with orthodox or evil sects in other regions.
That they survived in Hangzhou—where contempt for the weak was the default setting—while keeping an eye on both orthodox and evil factions was proof enough of their competence.
‘The masters of survival craft. Remarkable at it.’
Im Gang arrived at Da Mum Mun and presented his letter of introduction.
One of their martial artists verified it and guided him inside.
In the waiting room, three or four ronin were seated.
Some he recognized, others were strangers. Hangzhou had no shortage of work for ronin, so the sudden appearance of newcomers was no surprise.
“Everyone, pay attention.”
Shortly after, the man overseeing this commission appeared and gave a brief explanation.
Da Mum Mun had discovered the cave while traveling to conduct business with a sect in Anhui Province.
As the sun was setting, they were searching for a place to spend the night.
At first, they thought it was the den of some wild beast.
But while preparing their bedding, they found suspicious traces.
‘Well, that’s certainly possible.’
Im Gang nodded.
It seemed odd on the surface, but such things happened often enough in the martial world.
Sometimes a recluse master’s hideaway would be buried by earthquake or torrential rain and then uncovered again. There were thieves’ caches of plundered goods, military granaries hidden during war.
Even old abandoned mines could transform into natural-looking caverns.
In most cases, natural disaster sealed the entrance and natural disaster opened it again.
If you didn’t pass through that area, you’d never find it.
Another example: the Jang Bo Do.
A map depicting where treasure was hidden.
Blood had been spilled over such maps countless times.
There was the incident where a certain merchant house in Zhejiang Province happened to acquire a Jang Bo Do and was completely annihilated by the next dawn.
Or the Three Sects Treasure Conflict that erupted in Jiangsu Province ten years ago.
One orthodox sect and two evil sects fought for three years over a single Jang Bo Do, only to learn in the end that the treasure had already been plundered more than a hundred years before—a conclusion as hollow as it was futile.
‘Well, this commission probably isn’t about anything like a Jang Bo Do.’
Im Gang surmised that Da Mum Mun, suspecting the cave might hold treasure or lost martial arts manuals, had hired ronin for the job.
They wanted disposable cannon fodder in case traps were set inside.
Im Gang and the other ronin knew this perfectly well.
Why did they accept anyway?
‘The pay is good.’
For a ronin, that answer alone sufficed.
Truth be told, it might just be an ordinary cave where someone had hidden out briefly long ago.
In that case, easy money.
Most of the other ronin were calculating along those lines.
‘I’m a bit different.’
He caught the clear scent of treasure.
A treasure hunter’s instinct was twitching eagerly.
* * *
The next morning.
Around sunset, they arrived at the base of the mountain where the cave lay.
Nothing notable had happened during the journey.
Da Mum Mun’s martial artists stood guard at the front and rear while the ronin moved casually in the middle, keeping watch left and right.
Under normal circumstances, the ronin would have been more vigilant.
‘They’ll worry about that later.’
No one knew yet what was inside the cave.
If treasure was confirmed, danger would increase then.
Until then, there was no need to worry prematurely.
“Im, you’ve arrived.”
“Yes. And you all?”
“We only just got here ourselves.”
Around the cave entrance, Da Mum Mun’s advance party had already assembled. Not just their martial artists, but what appeared to be ronin as well.
Among them were ronin that Im Gang knew. They gestured hello.
“Hey there, Ki Jeol Myobi. Haven’t seen you in ages—thought you’d kicked the bucket.”
“Of course not. There’s an order for arrivals, but none for departures, as they say. I’m far too fresh and green to go just yet.”
“Ha. That foul mouth of yours never changes. Still, it’s good to see a familiar face.”
“Likewise. But that partner you used to run with—where’s he?”
“No order for departures, remember? He went first. Below us.”
Im Gang observed a moment of silence as the ronin’s finger pointed to the earth below.
After exchanging brief greetings, they pitched the makeshift tent that Da Mum Mun had provided.
Calling it a makeshift tent was generous—it was little more than a scrap of cloth that barely blocked the wind.
With no windproofing whatsoever, it was marginally better than nothing at all.
“Either sleep through the wind or get moving fast!”
In the mountains, nightfall came quickly. The ronin huddled together to sleep.
Since they couldn’t trust each other with their backs, each lay turned to one side.
Before dawn, Da Mum Mun woke the ronin and ordered them to search the cave.
Without even rubbing the sleep from their eyes, the ronin grumbled their way inside.
“Damn it. No food and this is what we get?”
“They feed the dogs they keep at home!”
“Honor in the martial world has crumbled to dust!”
The cave was spacious enough for roughly ten people to stand side by side, and even holding a torch high, the far end disappeared into darkness so complete that the depth seemed fathomless.
The ronin had never explored the cave before, so they accepted it as natural.
But the Da Mum Mun martial artists reacted differently.
“Something’s off. When we came before, it wasn’t this large.”
“I remember too. The entrance was barely wide enough for three people to squeeze through.”
“Right. It was.”
Im Gang’s ears perked up.
He wasn’t the only one listening; the Da Mum Mun martial artists spoke loud enough, and in the quiet of the cave, it would have been strange not to hear them.
‘Not this large before?’
Their reaction was too unsettling to brush off as mere misremembering.
His instincts screamed that something here was amiss.
Then this place really was…?
Ding!
[You have entered the Dungeon ‘Hunmyeong Midojin’.]
‘Ah.’
Im Gang kept his expression under tight control.
It was a dungeon after all.
The name alone told him nothing about what kind of dungeon it was. What did hunmyeong mean? What was midojin? The characters made rough sense if you broke them apart, but—
Unfortunately, this medieval martial world spoke in riddles and abstractions.
You couldn’t trust what you saw at face value.
“Everyone, move carefully,” Im Gang warned the ronin around him, his voice grave.
One of the ronin tilted his head. “Why? What is it?”

“My instincts aren’t good right now.”
The ronin exchanged stiffened glances. Ronin Code Rule 3 held that one must never doubt intuition, and Rule 4 that one must never blindly trust it.
So if anyone said their instincts were off, there was no bypassing it.
Short of blind faith, raising one’s guard was the universal law among ronin.
As the men rested their hands on their sword hilts and scanned their surroundings, a sound cut through the silence.
Click.
It came from beneath the feet of a ronin who had ventured ahead of Im Gang.
All eyes turned toward that spot.
The ronin who had stepped on something went pale.
“Danger—!”
Whoosh!
“Gaah!”
From the darkness, an arrow flew and buried itself in the leading ronin’s side.
It wasn’t just one arrow.
A second followed in quick succession, but Im Gang’s blade caught it and knocked it away.
In the panic that seized everyone, no one noticed what he had done.
“Damn it. Why is the trap at the cave entrance? Hey, Da Mum Mun! You never said there were traps at the entrance! What in hell is going on?!”

“B-but last time there were no traps!”
One of the Ronin was so flustered he actually shouted at the Da Mum Mun martial artist.
Since no one acknowledged that Im Gang had deflected the arrow with his blade, he approached the fallen Ronin with a dejected expression.
He kept his distance and watched.
The Ronin’s mouth foamed like a seizure patient as his entire body trembled violently.
Soon his limbs went rigid as a log, then froze solid.
‘Paralysis poison?’
Observing the progression, it didn’t seem to be a lethal toxin.
Just to be safe, he pulled out a cloth, wrapped it around his hand, and searched the Ronin’s belongings.
There were only a few coins and a Bi Dao.
Naturally, there was no Antidote.
‘Lucky break.’
If he’d found expensive items like Gold Wound Medicine or an Antidote, the man would’ve simply rested and been sent back in.
Since he’d been forcibly eliminated without dying, luck was indeed on his side.
Im Gang dragged the paralyzed Ronin away.
He crossed between the squabbling Ronin and the Da Mum Mun martial artists.
“Listen. Everyone seems far too worked up. You might want to calm down.”
“Worked up? The client hid information from us!”
“We were deceived! There was nothing like this when we came last time!”
Ronin typically didn’t raise their voices when speaking to clients.
Naturally—they were a source of income, and disputes could harm a Ronin’s reputation and jeopardize future contracts.
For this reason, unless they were taking illegal work, they usually just grumbled behind closed doors….
‘But they’re really, truly worked up.’
Im Gang casually tossed the body—the Ronin—to one side and watched.
At this rate, drawn blades wouldn’t be out of place.
A squabble over money…. perfect.
Among all entertainments, a good money fight was peak entertainment.
But then.
“What’s going on here?”
The Da Mum Mun leader, Im Gang, appeared.
His expression hardened as he sensed the tense atmosphere.
The Ronin fell silent.
Da Mum Mun, however uncertain its standing, was a faction that had survived and earned recognition in Hangzhou.
They wouldn’t have assigned a martial artist weaker than the hired Ronin as their leader.
In fact, the leader was a second-rate master.
The Ronin’s excitement was forcibly suppressed under the second-rate master’s presence.
‘Good control of emotions, as expected.’
Im Gang nodded to himself.
It was typical of Ronin to grow helpless before the strong.
“What happened?”
The leader listened to the full account and resolved the situation.
He acknowledged that when they’d come before, there truly had been no traps.
That if they’d known this fact beforehand, the contract terms would have been different.
Conceding both points, he stepped back.
“I’ll pay an additional ten percent of the advance.”
“…Sixty percent would be better.”
“Thirty percent.”
“Fifty percent.”
“Fine. We’ll settle on an additional forty percent.”
Forty percent of the advance came to barely two coins. Yet the Ronin nodded with satisfied expressions.
Im Gang regretted missing out on the entertaining money squabble.

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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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