“Is there any more meat?”
“P-please wait just a moment, Great Hero! I will bring it right away.”
“Bring more stir-fried bok choy too. This is good. Kid. Your arms are dropping. Aren’t you going to hold them up properly?”
“Ooooh...... yes.......”
When I pointed it out while waving my chopsticks, the little boy put on a pitiful act and lifted both arms above his head.
It was a frail, miserable face that stirred up sympathy. That made it all the more irritating.
How many people did he trick with that face?
Using someone else’s goodwill to harm people meant he needed a proper scolding.
......Whew, forget it. What crime has the child committed? The adults are the ones at fault.
Clicking my tongue, I turned my gaze back to the table. Seeing the food laid out so heavily that the table legs might break made my heart grow generous on its own.
Every dish the bandits had brought out while trembling tasted good.
At first, Yeon Ryang had been wary in case they had put something in the food too, but once I confirmed nothing was wrong, he slowly picked up his chopsticks.
“Brother. You don’t trust me? I told you, I trained with Grandfather to distinguish the taste of poisonous herbs. It’s clean. There’s nothing in it.”
“Considering your bizarre sense of taste, I don’t know whether you can really tell.”
“I’m telling you, it’s fine. If you get poisoned, I’ll make you an antidote pill.”
“......Hearing you say that makes me trust it even less.”
Even so, perhaps because he still felt uneasy, he ate with Cane wrapped around his neck.
Of course, for someone who felt uneasy, he ate a lot.
“Brother. Aren’t you full?”
“I can eat for another hour.”
“......Right. Okay.”
He ate quite a lot.
He ate like a bear preparing for hibernation, enough that even the bandits whispered behind our backs with appalled faces.
“Just how many days did he starve......?”
They must have lowered their voices thinking we would not hear, but they could not fool a martial artist’s ears.
Yeon Ryang, who had been chewing with both cheeks full, answered casually.
“About four days?”
“Four days? He starved for four days and he looks that fine....... Eek! I-I see, Great Hero. You must have been very hungry. Is there anything else you need?”
“Didn’t someone go to bring more {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} meat? That’s enough.”
Yeon Ryang shrugged and stuffed a mouthful of heavily boiled, seasoned vegetables into his mouth.
Just as I, feeling awkward for no reason, tried to quietly set down my chopsticks, a boiling meat soup was brought out.
After taking a spoonful of the new dish and checking it, I frowned.
“Mm. It’s poison.”
“What? Is it lethal poison?”
“Not quite lethal poison, but you can’t eat it, Brother. Cane. Do you want it?”
“Kii!”
Excited, Cane hopped in place. While I set the meat soup in front of Cane, Yeon Ryang rose with a scowl.
“What kind of hospitality is this? Are you trying to start something?”
At the suddenly vicious atmosphere, the bandit who had brought the food knelt and trembled.
“P-poison? There must be a misunderstanding! We merely boiled it with medicinal ingredients good for relieving fatigue......!”
“Oh, yes, I know. Wild jujube seeds and lotus seeds do pair well together. But aconite and wild aconite are in here too, aren’t they? Why? These are ingredients that cause paralysis and hallucinations. Were you trying to feed us well and put us to sleep?”
“H-how did you......!”
“And this. You deliberately grew mold on the seeds to strengthen the toxicity, didn’t you? From the look of it, they’re not only one or two years old, but you handled them well enough that they don’t smell. You must have someone who knows how to work with medicinal ingredients.”
I learned things from Grandfather too. As if I wouldn’t know this.
When I pointed it out with a sulky face, the bandits carrying food all knelt at once.
“P-please spare us!”
“W-we were wrong.”
“I’m not going to kill you. Who said anything about killing you? Just make the meal again and bring it out. While you’re at it, bring all the money you have too. Silver, obviously.”
“Yes, yes! We apologize, Great Hero!”
As I watched the bandits turn tail with a sullen look, Yeon Ryang sighed and patted my shoulder.
“......Sohae. Do not talk like such an evil fiend.”
“Who talked like an evil fiend? I only gave them back what they said to us.”
“That does not mean you should act exactly like a bandit. Just what does your family.......”
“Brother. Don’t insult my grandfather.”
“......I had not even brought up your grandfather.”
“I didn’t learn anything from the clan. I learned everything from Grandfather. So insulting me means insulting Grandfather.”
“I did not insult you either.”
Yeon Ryang answered reluctantly, then muttered,
“Is it because she’s suffered too much? The child is getting rougher and rougher. Is it because of me......?”
With an uneasy expression, he moved away from the table. Hearing that the food contained poison seemed to have completely killed his appetite.
After toying with the hilt of his sword and swallowing a sigh, Yeon Ryang soon raised his eyes sharply.
“Don’t bring any more food. We are done eating.”
“U-understood, Great Hero! H-hurry and tell them to stop making food!”
As he watched the bandits descend into a flustered mess, Yeon Ryang asked,
“Where is the nearest village from here?”
“There are no villages around here.”
“There are no villages?”
“Yes, Great Hero. Only brothers like us who came into the mountains live here. If you want to find a nearby village, you will have to travel five days and nights.”
“Why? This does not seem like a bad area for people to live.”
“There used to be quite a few villages, but the government’s exploitation was too severe, so people either fled into the mountains or left far away. The places where the villages stood have long since become ruins.”
“Hmm...... I see.”
No wonder their martial ability was miserable for bandits. It seemed they were a group who had fled from the tyranny of the authorities.
Of course, that did not mean I had any intention of taking pity on them.
“Then you should be responsible for our food.”
“Pardon?”
“We were planning to buy food in a village. But if there are no villages, this is the only place to get food, isn’t it?”
“Are you saying.......”
“Bring rations.”
“......Yes, Great Hero. Samsik, go and bring the rations too.......”
The bandit leader sniffled and sent off another bandit.
However, the rations and pouch of silver the bandits brought out a little later were far too light.
“Isn’t this too little?”
“I know. Why is this all there is? Are you telling us to search the place ourselves and take what we find?”
“No, Great Hero! How would we dare do that?”
When Yeon Ryang brought his hand to his scabbard, the bandit leader’s eyes filled with tears as he pleaded.
“This really is all we have. A little while ago, some fake monk stripped the stockade bare.”
“You tried to rob a monk too? You claim you ran away from exploitation, so why would you touch a monk? Are you trying to be struck by heavenly punishment? Stop being bandits. You cannot even tell whether the other party is a master, but you pick a fight first, and that is why you ended up like this. If you run into the wrong person, you will die.”
As Yeon Ryang frowned and lectured them, he suddenly stopped as if something had occurred to him.
“......Wait. Fake monk? A monk stripped the stockade bare?”
“Yes! That is right. A monk who did not seem like a monk at all barged in, turned the whole stockade upside down, and left. He even emptied every hidden jar of liquor, so we could not offer you a single cup, Great Hero.”
“Did that bastard have his hair tied up? A little tail about this long. Nine precept scars and orange monastic robes, right?”
“That is correct!”
“When did that bastard come and go? No, where did he go?”
“Pardon?”
“I asked where he went. Answer quickly.”
Yeon Ryang’s voice rose. The frightened bandit leader trembled like an aspen and opened his mouth.
*****
“It has not been long. Was it ten days ago......? I do not know his destination, but he went down southeast.”
After hearing the bandit leader’s eyewitness account, Yeon Ryang immediately turned southeast.
“Does the monk who stripped the stockade sound like your friend, Brother?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. There is no monk other than that bastard who would even take a bandit’s liquor. Shaolin monks are too full of themselves to put cheap strong liquor anywhere near their mouths.”
“......Do other monks drink too? Even though they’re monks?”
“They say they hide and drink in secret, even if they do not do it openly like Beopgong.”
Didn’t the Wudang Taoists eat meat and drink alcohol before too? Why does no one keep the precepts?
“But how do you know where he went southeast? Isn’t that too vague?”
At my question, Yeon Ryang also fell into thought and rubbed his chin.
“If it is southeast from here...... I think he went to Anqing.”
“Anqing?”
“There is an Apostate Alliance-affiliated sect there called Ghost-Spirit Valley. That bastard sometimes goes around cleaning up unorthodox faction forces. He says the Shaolin abbot scolds him less that way.”
“He goes around beating up unorthodox factions, but he’s friends with you? He really is strange.”
It was a little surprising that he found getting scolded by the Shaolin abbot scarier than crossing blades. The Shaolin abbot must be a terrifying person.
“That is why he is a fake monk. Let’s go to Anqing for now. If it was ten days ago, he cannot have gone far. He will be drinking his way along the road.”
Yeon Ryang spoke with certainty.
His guess was right.
Only a few days later, in a village that appeared along the way, we discovered the plunderer the bandits had described.
The sleazy-looking man was in the courtyard of a shabby inn, sitting with his legs propped on a table and drinking straight from a bottle.
Empty liquor bottles were piled high on the table.
He looked like any common drunkard, except for one thing......
“Is he a monk?”
“No. What monk drinks alcohol? He must have found those clothes somewhere.”
“Well, that is strange. He drinks like a fish.”
The clothes the man wore were monastic robes.
Even as passersby whispered, the man did not so much as blink and simply sipped his drink.
“Khaaah. One more bottle of rice wine here!”
Once the alcohol ran out, he even shook the empty bottle and asked for more.
Yeon Ryang gave a soft laugh at the sight and called out loudly.
“Hey! Fake monk.”
“Huh? You.......”
The man who saw Yeon Ryang widened his eyes and sprang to his feet.
“Yeon Ryang? You were alive?”
At the same time, golden prayer beads scattered through the air.
Each bead spun at terrifying speed as it flew toward us.
KAKANG! KANG!
Yeon Ryang lightly struck aside the prayer beads infused with internal energy and smiled, licking his lower lip.
“Long time no see, Beopgong.”
