Eight Directions Armory
***
Datong General Headquarters.
Right now, reports about Ear Ghost were being delivered here.
"Collected seventy-two ears during the Dong Cheng expedition. Collected eighty-eight ears at Baotou. This time..."
"Enough. Who said they wanted to hear every single one of those in detail? Summarize it."
Lee Ja-song cut off his adjutant's words with irritation. He was already in a bad mood after being driven off to this harsh backwater as if chased away, and listening to the trivial career history of some mere candidate for mercenary captain, item by item, did nothing to improve his mood.
Still, he couldn't not listen. If this Guisui expedition failed, there would be no next time. There would be no room left to fail again. A failure that ended with one's head being cut off, as always, would be the last failure.
To prevent that, he had emptied out his private funds to hire these mercenaries.
Formally, he would assign them to one of his adjutants, but mercenaries were not the sort who followed orders well. So he had to choose a real captain from among the mercenaries themselves. Lee Ja-song had once led mercenaries on a southern expedition before, so he knew their nature to some extent. Of course, his situation back then and now were worlds apart.
"Four. Understood!"
The adjutant answered energetically and began adding up the numbers written in the expedition register. But as was typical of military officers, he was hopeless at arithmetic.
After waiting for quite a while, Lee Ja-song finally lost patience, snatched the register from the adjutant's hands, and examined Kang Dal-hee's record himself.
Originally from a civil official background, Lee Ja-song understood the figures in the register far more easily than the adjutant.
It didn't take long before something caught his eye.
"Thirty-one expeditions in one year? Is this real?"
At Lee Ja-song's question, the adjutant hesitated, then suddenly stretched out his fingers and fidgeted with them, awkwardly like a child counting stones with fingers and toes.
"What are you doing now? Didn't I ask if this was real?"
"S-sorry, sir! I don't know exactly either!"
At the adjutant's overly booming answer, Lee Ja-song was left speechless. Well, how could an idiot who couldn't even add a few numbers know something like this without checking?
Lee Ja-song clicked his tongue in annoyance.
Then the adjutant shouted again.
"I don't know if it's exactly thirty-one times, but I know that Ear Ghost never once missed hunting in a whole year!"
Tsk, tsk, tsk. He could have just answered like that from the start.
Still, he seems more impressive than I thought.
'This Kang Dal-hee fellow…'
Lee Ja-song knew very well how extraordinary it was to never miss an expedition for an entire year. It wasn't just about being good at martial arts to survive long on the battlefield.
Mercenaries always fought on the very front lines. Among the barbarians—especially the northern barbarians—there were often experts. If you ran into one of those, dozens of regular soldiers could be cut down in an instant. Mercenaries weren't much different. If he fought nonstop for a year, he must have met several such enemies. The fact that he survived meant he had overcome all that danger. And on top of that, the battlefield was always full of unpredictable threats. It meant he had avoided all of those too.
'Survived as a mercenary in the north for a year.'
Lee Ja-song leaned back once, then lifted his head and smacked his lips. It was a habit he had whenever something piqued his interest.
"The amount of ears collected is…"
"… I, I don't know, sir!"
"Tsk. I wasn't asking you. I'm the one holding this. How would you know?"
The adjutant, unable to tell whether it was a question or not, answered anyway, but Lee Ja-song only gave him a light rebuke. His eyes never left the register.
"Hmm. Excluding the ears he sold directly, the total number of ears handed over to Yibo is two thousand eight hundred sixteen. Impressive. You said this man is called Ear Ghost around here?"
"Yes, General."
"Indeed, he deserves the name. To cut down this many enemies in just one year."
Two thousand eight hundred sixteen. That number would include the ears of women, children, and old people from occupied territories. Or the ears of other mercenaries who died in battle. Even so, the number of ears Ear Ghost collected in one year was enormous.
That was what made it so peculiar to Lee Ja-song.
One ear was worth two silver coins. Five ears made one tael of silver. Two thousand eight hundred sixteen ears meant five hundred sixty-three taels of silver and one silver coin left over.
That was a fortune exceeding 22kg of silver. It was enough for an ordinary person to live in comfort for generations. And yet, Kang Dal-hee, who had already built a career worthy of being classified as special-grade—why?
'Why is he still working as a mercenary?'
Because of money?
If he cut about a hundred ears every time he went out, the profit would be better than most escort missions taken by upper-grade Wanderers. But it didn't feel right to dismiss it as just that.
Lee Ja-song gently stroked the hilt of his sword, then stopped thinking.
"Bring him."
"Pardon?"
"Kang Dal-hee. Bring that one called Ear Ghost before me. I need to see for myself whether he's worth entrusting as a mercenary captain."
Only then did the adjutant understand and answer while striking his left chest with his right fist. Bang! The sound was quite loud. He looked as loyal as he was stupid.
"At once!"
The adjutant left the general's office.
Left alone, Lee Ja-song leaned back and kept smacking his lips, as if lost in thought.
***
At that time, Dong Bong-su had left the wooden prison and was walking through Datong's bustling district.
"Come on, come on. Let's have some fun. The goods are great today."
"There, blindfolded young master~! Just play a little and go~ Show me your eyes just a bit. I'll lick them pretty for you~"
"Ahak—!"
"Handsome young man. Have a drink and go. The finest liquor from Nanjing came in today!"
Should one say it lived up to its reputation as a decadent city?
The afternoon in central Datong was clearly different from that of other cities.
Courtesans from brothels were openly soliciting customers in broad daylight, and the taverns were already full of Wanderers drunk out of their minds.
The courtesans and tavern touts competed to lure Dong Bong-su. Perhaps because most of them were much older faded courtesans, Dong Bong-su showed no interest and simply passed them by.
He heard things like eunuch and castrated bastard from behind, but Dong Bong-su ignored them and went his way.
After passing the taverns, he reached a commercial area packed with cloth shops, weapon shops, and leather workshops. As befitting a city of Wanderers, most of the goods were weapons or armor. Even the cloth shops were cloth shops in name only—most of what they sold were auxiliary gear like armor paper, cotton armor, and war hats, not made of iron or leather.
Dong Bong-su didn't even glance elsewhere and entered a weapon shop with an old signboard that read Eight Directions Armory.
As old as the signboard was, the interior was also worn down, but the weapons displayed inside were sharply honed and looked excellent. On one wall hung swords and spears, and on the other were displays of iron and bronze armor.
And directly opposite the entrance Dong Bong-su had come through, there was another doorway just like it, from which loud hammering sounds were coming—likely the owner's workshop.
Clang! Clang!
The sound of hammering metal was loud.
Without hesitation, Dong Bong-su entered the forge.
The smith, who looked like the owner, didn't even notice a customer and kept hammering away. Dong Bong-su didn't disturb him and quietly stood behind him.
It must have been for a long time and with great effort—the smith's whole body was flushed red, and sweat was pouring down like rain.
His hair was long and shaggy, to the point that you couldn't tell when it had last been cut, and his beard was also grown out messily. It wasn't just dirty—it was unsightly from not being trimmed. And because of his reddened skin you couldn't see clearly, but his body was blotchy too, as if he hadn't washed in a very long time. Naturally, the stench coming from him was severe.
Still, Dong Bong-su didn't mind and continued to watch his hammering quietly.
Clang! Clang!
What on earth was he making to hammer so fervently?
At a glance, it actually looked like his work was already finished. In front of the smith stood an iron statue almost the same height as Dong Bong-su—no, exactly the same. It was so finely made that if you ran into it on the road at night, anyone would think it was a person.
Then why was the smith placing a chisel against the finished iron statue and continuing to hammer it?
Clang! Clang!
If the inside of the statue was hollow, a hollow metallic echo rang endlessly through the workshop. Veins bulged on the smith's red arms. The hammer, filled with that strength, was transmitted to the statue through the chisel. But not a single scratch appeared on the iron statue.
One hour had passed since Dong Bong-su arrived here.
In that time, there had been thousands of hammer strikes, but the statue remained the same.
Two hours later.
Two chisels had broken, but the statue was still unchanged.
Three hours had passed since Dong Bong-su arrived here.
The smith's hammering was still rhythmic, but the statue remained as it had been in the afternoon, and only the day grew darker.
Dong Bong-su also remained exactly as he had been when he arrived in the afternoon. Only the sun had set and his shadow had grown faint.
"I will come again next time."
When the moon rose gently and began to spread its light, Dong Bong-su spoke for the first time since coming here.
Clang! Clang!
The smith's answer was still only the sound of hammering.
Dong Bong-su turned around and left the Eight Directions Armory. His steady footsteps mixed with the equally steady hammering.
The smith's hands still did not stop.
Perhaps next time he came, that beard and hair would be much longer and dirtier. Maybe the iron statue's height would also have become smaller…
Dong Bong-su slowly retraced his steps. Only then did the warning sound in his spiritual vision, which had been making noise in his head, finally stop. At that time, the distance between him and the Eight Directions Armory was exactly twenty meters. No, more precisely, that was the distance between him and the smith.
21, 22, 23…
The distance between Dong Bong-su and the Eight Directions Armory kept increasing, and just like the spiritual vision had stopped, Dong Bong-su also disappeared from that range.
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