The Porter Who Didn't Hide His Strength
Back when I was fully focused on preparing for employment, I wrote this on my résumé:
"My strength is that I can quickly adapt to any work environment."
I had squeezed that line out in desperation, but I don't think it was entirely wrong.
I genuinely believed I was fairly adaptable, and if they would just hire me, I was willing to go wherever they sent me.
A branch office on Mara Island would've been fine. Even a correspondent post in Afghanistan would've been fine.
But Murim? That was crossing the line.
"Die!"
—Whoosh!
"Holy—!"
I rolled my entire body across the ground to dodge Bandit A's hand axe.
Seriously, I almost died for real.
"You bastard!"
I immediately swept the bandit's front leg with a low underworld sweep.
By your third year scraping by in Murim, techniques like Underworld Sweep and Minor Wind Step are things you can use as basic skills.
The bandit who'd tried to split my skull screamed and collapsed, and I stomped down hard on his head.
—Crunch!
It felt like smashing a watermelon, something juice-like splattering onto my foot. I saw something like a rock candy bounce off into the distance—probably his eyeball. Ugh, disgusting.
I'd seen human eyeballs more than once by now, but thanks to my modern sensibilities, I just couldn't get used to it. So I gave the twitching head a soccer kick, and soon the writhing stopped.
After dealing with one of them, I looked around. Everyone was locked in a bloody melee.
I carefully observed the situation, ready to bolt if things went south, but overall the tide of battle was flowing in favor of the escorts.
"Die!"
"Graaagh!!!"
Nearby, one escort sliced off a bandit's head with dazzling swordplay. Cutting off someone's neck with a blade is absolutely not an easy thing to do.
As I stood there admiring it, the severed head rolled right up to my feet. I gave it a solid kick.
Wow, that really flies well.
The sight of the bandit's head soaring through the air, scattering blood, was quite the spectacle.
In martial arts novels, escorts are often portrayed as lower than even beggars of the Beggars' Sect—at the very bottom of Murim's food chain. But the escorts I'd actually encountered were nothing like that.
If anything, for small fry like me, it's one of the most enviable jobs out there. Maybe not full government benefits, but the welfare's solid enough. And they actually get paid on time.
Compared to porters—guys like me who haul cargo—we're not even in the same league.
They're damn good with a blade, too.
By the time you're an escort, your martial skills are no joke. At minimum, you could sit down and clean up a dozen neighborhood thugs without breaking a sweat.
Honestly, if you dropped an average escort into the modern world, they could probably claim a whole metropolitan city the size of Ulsan as their territory without much trouble.
Anyway, they're not just glorified delivery drivers like in typical wuxia depictions. If anything, they're at least on the level of luxury car transport drivers.
So I'll leave the battle to the "drivers," and as for a porter like me, it's about time I found somewhere to hide—
"You bastard!!"
"What now?!"
I was just catching my breath when one of the bandits spotted me and charged over. You've got to be kidding me.
The bandits actually outnumbered us, which is part of why they were being pushed back. Porters are the type you can ignore and they'll either crouch quietly somewhere or run off on their own. But they keep targeting the porters.
They could use that time to take down another escort instead.
Then again, I'm easier to kill. And if they search my pockets, they might find a few coins I've scraped together.
"Heh heh, you brat! Stop right there!"
A particularly large, well-built bandit kept chasing me. If it weren't for the single-edged saber dangling in his hand, I might've tried fighting him head-on—but that thing makes the odds look terrible.
I pulled out the dagger I'd hidden in my clothes and shouted,
"Come any closer and I'll throw it!"
"Oh ho, how cute."
The bandit grinned and casually swung his saber. Its wide flat side was perfectly shaped to deflect something like a thrown dagger.
"Go on, throw it. Heh heh heh."
He curled a finger at me in mock provocation.
To him, I probably looked like some greenhorn struggling desperately with a knife better suited for slicing tofu.
Plenty of people who thought that way ended up crossing the River of No Return.
Without hesitation, I threw the dagger.
The dagger flew toward his head along a precise trajectory—though not all that fast.
As if he had expected it, he leisurely raised his saber and blocked it—
Clang!!
With the sharp ring of steel striking steel—
"Guhk!!"
He let out a strangled cry as another dagger buried itself in his stomach.
It probably felt like a red-hot poker being thrust into his gut.
I'd been stabbed before. That's exactly what it feels like.
His eyes were filled with confusion—how had the dagger he'd clearly deflected ended up plunging into his abdomen? He looked as if he'd been struck by sorcery.
In truth, the trick was nothing special.
I simply threw two daggers in succession.
The first one was slow enough to be blocked comfortably, thrown in such an honest, visible arc that anyone could track it.
While he was busy deflecting that one,
I drew the second from my sleeve and hurled it faster than the wind.
This was a technique I'd picked up after scraping by in the jianghu for three years—Twin Swallows in Flight.
Unable to hide his panic, he tried to pull the dagger out of his stomach—but blades don't come out that easily.
The moment you even touch it, a searing agony floods you, like your entrails are being scorched by fire. Unless you've got inhuman willpower, you can't even bring yourself to grip it.
And with one hand?
Impossible. You can't put any strength into it at all.
I know. I've experienced it myself. It just doesn't work.
Realizing that, he dropped his saber and grabbed the dagger with both hands, trying to wrench it free—
"Idiot."
As if I'd just stand there and watch.
I dashed in and drove a jab straight into his jaw.
Yellow kernels burst from his mouth like popcorn. I seized his neck in a clinch and began slamming knee strikes into his stomach over and over.
"Ghk, gghk, hhk!"
"Go quietly, you bastard."
After about thirty knee strikes, my breath reached my throat in ragged gasps—and I felt the body locked in my arms stop struggling.
He was dead.
Like every other unlucky bastard before him.
Catching my breath, I slowly picked up the saber he'd dropped and retrieved my dagger. Then I searched his clothes and slipped a few copper coins into my pocket.
You could call it extra income, but it didn't feel good. It left a bitter taste—like drinking terrible coffee.
And that was all.
A world where killing someone only leaves you with the bitterness of bad coffee.
That was the world I had fallen into.
Murim.
The jianghu.