“With Brother Kim here to handle the food, that problem is solved. But there’s one more thing I’m worried about.”
“Worried?”
Kim Oheung tilted his head. He had ended up working as the cook at a tavern—a job that had never been part of his plans—but he wasn’t particularly dissatisfied.
Most taverns served little more than rice soup boiled in a huge cauldron, so there wasn’t all that much for him to do.
“Yes. Worried.”
“What are you worried about?”
“People need to come here. Do you think they will?”
“Hmm....”
A problem he hadn’t considered suddenly popped up, and Kim Oheung folded his arms with a thump. But he knew there was an even more urgent problem to solve first.
“More importantly, shouldn’t we store those books somewhere?”
Kim Oheung and Jang Obok had decided to serve Jo Won as their Big Brother. They had told Jo Won to speak casually to them, but Jo Won said he needed a little time.
And understandably so. How could he trust Kim Oheung and Jang Obok, whom he had only met yesterday, and immediately treat them like younger brothers? Since they understood Jo Won, Kim Oheung and Jang Obok decided to wait until he was ready.
“Hmm.”
“Books are extremely valuable in Hanyang, Big Brother. If you leave them sitting in that cart, flies will keep swarming around them just like yesterday.”
“So that was why.”
“You really didn’t know?”
Kim Oheung opened his eyes wide and stared at Jo Won. Jo Won nodded awkwardly. He hadn’t understood why he had become prey for the Geomgye and street gangs.
“Even one hand-copied book from a bookshop costs at least one nyang. With one nyang, you could buy more than ten doe of rice and still have money left over.”
“I did find it strange that people who couldn’t even read were so eager to get their hands on the books.”
Jo Won had a habit of showing unexpected carelessness in the strangest places. Kim Oheung decided that his new Big Brother was impossible to figure out and rolled up his sleeves.
“Why don’t we move them inside for now?”
“Hmm.... I already have somewhere else in mind to store them.”
Jo Won agreed with Kim Oheung that leaving the books as they were would sow the seeds of trouble. When Jo Won dusted off his backside and stood up, Kim Oheung tilted his head. Jo Won led him to a small hill connected to the tavern’s backyard.
“Here.”
“What? You’re planning to leave the cart here?”
Kim Oheung had never looked at a book for more than a moment in his entire life, but even a three-year-old knew that books were vulnerable to moisture.
So when Jo Won led him to an empty backyard and said he would store the books there, Kim Oheung’s bewildered question was only natural.
“No. I said I would serve you as my Big Brother, so watch carefully.”
Jo Won rolled up both sleeves to his elbows. Kim Oheung stared at him, puzzled.
Feeling Kim Oheung’s gaze, Jo Won walked to a suitable spot in the backyard connected to the small hill and assumed a horse stance.
At the same time, he slowly raised his hands, turning his palms toward the sky, then lifted them above his head.
Vrrrrr....
With his palms, Jo Won embraced the sky; with the soles of his feet, he received the earth.
Heaven, Earth, Man.
The instant the three formed a trinity, an oceanic mass of internal energy began to rise from Jo Won’s entire body. What happened next made Kim Oheung, watching from behind, doubt his own eyes.
Slice—!
There was a sharp cutting sound as the ground beneath Jo Won’s feet was carved into a square. Then a mass of earth far larger than a person rose smoothly from the ground, maintaining a perfect cube.
Kim Oheung’s jaw dropped as he watched a section of earth nearly the size of the tavern be cleanly cut away, leaving a vast underground space.
Rumble!
Even more astonishing was the fact that this strange phenomenon had occurred without Jo Won moving so much as a finger. Watching him, Kim Oheung muttered without realizing it,
“A-a spirit?”
Kim Oheung thought only a mountain spirit could perform such a miracle. He was serving a mountain spirit as his Big Brother! He couldn’t tell whether he was dreaming or awake.
Whether Kim Oheung understood or not, Jo Won continued cutting away the earth, lifting the excavated soil with Void Manipulation, and stacking it in orderly piles in the backyard.
In an instant, a broad path opened up from the backyard to the hill.
“Big Brother, what in the world is this...?”
“I’m not finished yet.”
Jo Won hushed Kim Oheung with a finger to his lips. By then, a mound of earth taller than Kim Oheung had been created in the backyard. Jo Won entered the underground passage he had made and shook his head from side to side.
“Step back for a moment.”
“Yes, Big Brother.”
Kim Oheung immediately took a step backward. Jo Won looked at the mound and summoned his internal energy. A section of the mound broke off with a snap, then began flattening in midair as though kneaded by invisible hands.
Jo Won’s Void Manipulation displayed an almost perfect level of skill. Not even a single crumb of dirt fell.
Even after searching through the entire history of the martial world, there were probably only a handful of martial artists capable of using Void Manipulation to this degree. But this was Joseon, not the martial world, so Kim Oheung could only stare blankly and call him a mountain spirit.
Crack-crack-crack!
The dirt floating in the air began to clump together with a grinding sound, followed by the roar of crushing earth. Soon, intense heat began to radiate from the mass of dirt, startling Kim Oheung.
Void Manipulation, followed by Samadhi Flame.
Without so much as a speck of dirt landing on his hands, Jo Won calmly began firing the soil at an incredible temperature.
“And here....”
Jo Won extended his other hand and began digging to the side. Before long, smooth-cut rock appeared among the excavated soil.
Slice! Slice!
Whenever Jo Won moved his arm, the dirt shifted as if in a mirage, and the rocks separated. Jo Won used the separated stones to build supports for the walls and ceiling, then covered them with earthen slabs fired until they resembled pottery.
“Wait here.”
“Yes. Yes, Big Brother.”
Kim Oheung stammered without realizing it. As soon as Jo Won slipped into the underground passage he had created, Kim Oheung’s shoulders began to tremble.
Jo Won no longer looked like a human being like him.
A short while later, Jo Won emerged, driving away a cloud of dust. Looking at Kim Oheung, he said,
“Could you help me carry the books?”
“Y-you mean into here?”
“Yes.”
Jo Won nodded. Kim Oheung pulled the cart as Jo Won had instructed and followed behind him. It had not even been half an hour since Jo Won had stood in the backyard and said he would build shelves to store the books.
Yet not a single grain of dirt could be found in the underground passage he had created in an instant. Instead, the floor and walls had been carved from smooth stone, and a gentle warmth radiated from the earthen slabs covering the ceiling.
“Don’t tell me—you dug this out from inside the hill?”
“Books are best stored somewhere cool. Though the moisture inside will need to be managed.”
Jo Won muttered to himself that a few applications of Samadhi Flame would make managing the moisture easy enough. Naturally, Kim Oheung didn’t hear him.
“You can leave them here. Thank you.”
Jo Won gave Kim Oheung a slight bow. Kim Oheung stared at the enormous bookshelves that had appeared inside the hill, then looked at Jo Won as though he couldn’t believe it.
“Big Brother. Please just speak casually to me already. Are you truly not a mountain spirit?”
“Not yet.”
Jo Won smiled and shook his head. But his words carried a profound implication. Saying he wasn’t one yet meant that he might become an immortal someday.
Kim Oheung failed to catch that meaning.
“You really are incredible.”
“We’ll gradually become more casual with one another, so please don’t feel uncomfortable. And once we go back up, shouldn’t you get started?”
“Get started on what...?”
Kim Oheung let his voice trail off. He remembered the enormous mound of earth piled outside. Sensing the unease creeping over Kim Oheung, Jo Won smiled and drove the point home.
“The foundation of all martial arts begins with building physical strength. I’ll teach you a simple breathing method. Follow it as you use the mound of earth in the backyard to build a wall.”
“Uh....”
“It only needs to enclose the backyard and this hill well enough to keep outsiders from entering. Jang will join you after he leaves the magistrate’s office, so start without him.”
“You mean... all that earth?”
“Yes.”
Jo Won nodded without blinking. Kim Oheung thought the amount looked a little excessive, but he didn’t complain from the outset.
After all, asking Jo Won to teach him martial arts so he could take the military examination had been Kim Oheung’s own choice.
And after seeing Jo Won display abilities no different from those of an immortal, every doubt he might have had about Jo Won’s instructions vanished completely.
“Yes, Big Brother!”
While Kim Oheung boiled soup in the cauldron and used the basic training to build a wall from the earth piled in the backyard, Jo Won thoroughly cleaned the inside of the tavern.
Rattle-rattle!
Swish!
Crackle!
When he snapped open the straw mats laid across the communal sleeping room where guests stayed, lice and fleas came tumbling out.
Of course, before the insects could even land on the floor, Jo Won’s internal energy burned them cleanly and made them vanish without a trace.
“This is filthy.”
Jo Won had been profoundly shocked when he first saw a Joseon tavern. A tavern served much the same function as an inn in the Central Plains, but there was one crucial difference.
The communal sleeping room.
At a Joseon tavern, no one thought it strange for however many people wanted to spend the night to sleep shoulder to shoulder together in the same room.
In the Central Plains, on the other hand, an inn’s arrangements varied according to its cost and size, but as a rule, two people shared one room, or one person had a room to themselves.
The trade-off was that inns were expensive, while at a Joseon tavern, lodging was practically free aside from the cost of food.
“So the wealthy yangban must go to pleasure houses or gisaeng houses.”
That meant taverns had to cater to peddlers and people without much money. In any case, Jo Won clicked his tongue and thoroughly cleaned the two communal sleeping rooms where guests stayed.
One was for commoners, while the other was for seoeol and anyone staying on behalf of a yangban family. There was no real difference between them, except that the room reserved for the yangban had slightly fewer people in it.
Creak!
But Jo Won began tearing the whole arrangement apart. After so many people had slept there, the interiors were beyond unsanitary.
They weren’t worth repairing. They were better off being rebuilt from scratch.
“This brings back memories.”
Jo Won gave a small laugh as he stripped both communal sleeping rooms down to their frames. After retiring from the martial world through Golden Basin Retirement, he had built the manor where he lived with his partner and retainers from the ground up, together with those retainers.
“There are more things we need than I can count.”
Clink!
Fortunately, he still had plenty of the money he had brought with him. Realizing there was a long list of things to buy, Jo Won went to the backyard and called for Kim Oheung.
“Brother Kim. Bring out a back-carrier. There are things we need to buy.”
Kim Oheung wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead, then slung the back-carrier over his shoulders with an eager grin.
“Let’s go, Big Brother! Heh heh heh!”