Money is truly remarkable.
Just by possessing it, everyone becomes kind and courteous to me.
Having left the inn, Ogyo patted her full belly contentedly.
While living with Yohwa, everything had been good, but if she had one small complaint, it was the food.
Yohwa preferred vegetarian fare, so meat rarely appeared on the table.
Still, she sometimes prepared delicious food for Ogyo, but the amount was far too meager to satisfy this wild dog.
As soon as she descended the mountain and ate her fill of meat at the inn, a hum naturally escaped her.
But Ogyo soon shook her head fiercely, forcing herself to cast aside her joy.
‘It hasn’t even been a few days since Yohwa died, and here I am, whistling away!’
Strictly speaking, this was still a mourning period.
You shameless mutt.
Ogyo seemed displeased with her own conduct even in her own eyes, so she slapped her own cheeks sharply.
“Hm?”
Then, suddenly lifting her head, she felt a strange atmosphere.
No sooner had the alley emptied of people than a large man appeared up ahead, blocking the path.
Footsteps sounded from behind as well, and turning around, she saw two more men blocking the opposite entrance.
One had a club, one had a crescent blade of impressive size, and the last scrawny one held something like a chained exotic weapon, but… why bother distinguishing them?
In any case, those three seemed to share the same purpose.
To brandish weapons openly inside a town—they certainly had vigor to spare.
Even now, government soldiers were patrolling in rows out on the main road.
Realizing they were after her, Ogyo smirked.
“What do you lot want?”
“…Little one, stay still. What good will making a commotion do?”
“Don’t want to, idiot. Would you stay still if you were me?”
A wild dog who had fled from the Miaogang Wudu Cult to the Central Plains had experienced such situations frequently.
In these jianghu, for some reason, there were many who would try to fight at the slightest brush of sleeves.
They must all be impatient to show off their martial arts.
Since long ago, Ogyo had adhered to the principle of never avoiding a fight that came her way.
This small but ferocious girl did not delve deeply into grudges, but neither did she know the meaning of mercy, so one must never provoke her lightly.
“Well then, might as well aid my digestion…”
Ogyo reached into her sleeve to draw a throwing dagger but paused for a moment.
The men blocking the path numbered three.
Their faces were rough, but their attire was too respectable for mere bandits.
Though three grown men surrounded a young girl, they neither swaggered nor grew arrogant, sharply on guard and showing no openings.
They did not seem to be common rabble.
So what. She was not a wild dog to be intimidated simply because there were three opponents.
However, what nagged at her were Yohwa’s words that suddenly surfaced in her mind.
“—First is the bestowal of a gentle countenance, and second is the bestowal of kind words.”
“What’s that?”
“It means dealing with others with a gentle smile and comforting them with kind words. These are two of the Seven Alms Without Wealth taught by the Buddha.”
“Why do I have to do that?”
“It is charity. Bestowing compassion upon others.”
“Hmph, I hate it.”
“If you practice charity, merit accumulates, the six senses are purified, and good desires spring forth in your mind.”
“I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know!”
As Ogyo pulled a pillow over her head as if unwilling to listen, Yohwa giggled.
“Ogyo, become a kind person. Have a compassionate heart for my sake.”
“How is that for your sake?”
“…Because I want you to pity me.”
At the time, she could not understand those words.
Even now, the same was true.
But now that Yohwa was gone, her lonely voice and gaze pierced her heart like thorns, leaving a disquieting feeling.
‘…Should I not kill them?’
Compassion? She still hated hearing such nonsense, let alone following it.
But because they were Yohwa’s words.
…If it was just for show.
Ogyo set down the throwing dagger coated with lethal poison that she had been gripping in her left sleeve, and instead drew another dagger from the opposite sleeve.
This sinister wild dog hid concealed weapons all over her body, each coated with a different poison.
The dagger she had just drawn was one used for hunting, its blade smeared with paralytic poison.
“Hmph.”
When Ogyo pressed the handle of the throwing dagger against the armguard on her left forearm, a clicking sound rang out as the latch caught.
Pulling the dagger again, a thread came out from its end.
Hidden within the armguard was a thread reel, and the ring on her left middle finger was a device that controlled the thread’s length.
All these tools had been made by Yohwa.
They were rather tricky weapons to handle, but this wild dog had unexpectedly mastered them in no time.
Though her head could not understand the principles, her body had always figured out how to wield them first.
Ogyo immediately assumed a stance and tried to execute the first form of Yeonyeon Hyeollak, but suddenly one of the men stretched out his hand to stop her.
“Wait. There’s something we need to check before fighting.”
Though the men had initiated the confrontation, when Ogyo showed no hesitation and immediately drew her weapons to respond, they instead seemed somewhat flustered.
The man who spoke took out a sheet of paper from inside his robe and unfolded it.
“Your name is Ogyo, correct?”
“…”
The smile and composure vanished from Ogyo’s face.
How did they know her name? Could the notoriety she had earned in the Central Plains have spread even to such a remote region?
That had been years ago.
“We can take that silence as a yes? The scars on the bridge of your nose and cheek match this portrait as well. So it seems you are indeed the one.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“Are you saying you don’t know you’re wanted?”
The man flipped the paper toward her.
Drawn on it was a fierce-looking girl with black hair.
Her features were depicted quite well, and down to the crimson pupils and the location of her distinctive scars, it was identical to Ogyo, just as the man said.
It was unmistakably a portrait of herself.
“Wanted…?”
Did that mean the authorities were hunting her?
Ogyo frowned before letting out a short “Ah.”
Three years ago, she had been abandoned by the eunuch Zhao Weixian whom she had served as her master and targeted for purge.
Experts of the Jinyiwei had spread an airtight encirclement and ruthlessly hunted the wild dog, and though Ogyo had resisted as best she could, she could not overcome the numerical disadvantage.
Critically wounded and on the verge of collapse, Ogyo desperately drew out her inner energy and scattered poison, causing even those many experts to hesitate to approach and momentarily back away.
Since Ogyo had suffered fatal injuries and no longer possessed the strength to flee, they had temporarily withdrawn.
They likely intended to return later to recover the corpse, but right then Yohwa had appeared and saved Ogyo.
However, the Jinyiwei experts certainly had not gone far, remaining nearby to watch Ogyo’s final moments; by what means had Yohwa evaded their eyes and safely extracted Ogyo from that place?
That too was a question, but what mattered was that she was a purged traitor.
Naturally, those who had hunted her later came to recover the corpse and discovered an empty pit.
How frustrated they must have been to have their hard-won prey disappear.
‘So that’s why they put a bounty on me. That snake-like old eunuch, to go this far…’
For the past three years, Ogyo had lived with Yohwa on Mount Gilyeon, completely forgetting the affairs of the mundane world.
She had believed she would never return to the world and thus made no preparations whatsoever, never imagining such a thing would happen immediately.
“Your luck has run out, little one. To think you fled all the way to this remote frontier to survive, only to fall right into the hands of us Three Villains of Hexi.”
“…Huh? Hmm…”
“Brother, this little squirt is completely ignoring us.”
Indeed, lost in thought, Ogyo had momentarily forgotten the existence of these three.
The man called “brother,” who held the crescent blade, reddened.
“You brat, are you not afraid after hearing the name of our three brothers in the jianghu! If you judge us as third-rate just because of our appearances, you’ll be in big trouble!”
No one had mentioned their appearances, yet the man shouted loudly as if he himself were conscious of them.
Ogyo was already troubled enough, and the noisy chattering around her was thoroughly irritating.
“Shut up, pigs.”
Ogyo lightly threw a dagger toward the man with the crescent blade.
“Hmph, trivial!”
Immediately the man spread the broad blade of his crescent blade to defend.
Even though she had thrown it openly in a wide space, he had blocked the swiftly flying dagger quite nimbly.
They did not seem to be mere braggarts after all.
But in unfathomable depth, they could not match this tiny girl.
The dagger, deflected by the crescent blade, lost force and floated upward.
As Ogyo pulled the thread with her left hand with all her strength, the dagger changed direction and flew fiercely back toward her.
Ogyo immediately lowered her stance to dodge the dagger, and the blade flew toward the man holding the club behind her, embedding itself deep in his shoulder.
“Argh!”
The man cried out in surprise and clutched the wounded area, but the dagger had already left its spot.
“You little—!”
The man holding the chain stepped forward, swinging his arm wildly.
A meteor hammer? To think he would swing it around in such a narrow place.
He threw the weighted chain toward Ogyo’s legs, but it only struck the bare ground and kicked up dust.
Thud, thud—the sounds of fiercely kicking off walls rang out as a black shadow danced amid the dust.
“Here!”
The man swung his crescent blade at the air, but there was no sensation of cutting.
The moment he tried to raise his crescent blade again, the dagger flew once more from within the dust.
But it did not fly in a normal straight trajectory; the blade swooped in from the side as if drawing a circle.
The two brothers in front could not react in time.
The blade could have cut the throats of the defenseless two, but it did not touch them.
The dagger brushed past the gap between the man and his crescent blade, then began spinning around the blade in circles.
Realizing the thread was wrapping around the blade, a shadow sprang up and mounted the man’s back.
The dagger, which had danced about, was now in the girl’s hand, and the girl stood atop the man’s shoulders and head as if performing an acrobatic feat.
As the girl pulled both ends of the thread with crossed arms, the blade of the crescent blade was aimed at the man’s neck.
Naturally, the man struggled with all his might to resist, but the blade bound by the thread did not budge.
Could this truly be the grip strength of such a young girl?
“You, drop your weapon. Otherwise, I’ll kill this one.”
Ogyo commanded the man standing to the side with the chain.
The youngest of the three brothers looked back and forth in confusion between his elder brother and the girl perched on his brother’s head.
Glancing to the side, he finally saw through the settling dust the second brother collapsed at the far end of the alley.
He had fallen to the first blow. Though merely stabbed in the shoulder, such a large man had collapsed; the blade must have been poisoned.
“I-I dropped it. Please don’t kill my brother.”
“…Hmph.”
Without releasing the thread binding the crescent blade, Ogyo drew up her inner energy.
As she sent poison flowing through the thread, a surprising thing happened.
As if the thread was slowly burrowing into the blade, the thick blade was split in two.
The men watched in astonishment as the blade fell to the ground with a clatter.
Ogyo gently descended to the ground.
She considered striking their pressure points, but since they no longer seemed inclined to resist, she stopped.
“Give me that paper.”
“H-here.”
Perhaps because the breaking of the crescent blade had been quite a shock, the man’s tone had become quite polite.
Ogyo unfolded the wanted poster she received, but could not easily read the writing beneath her portrait.
Over the past three years, Yohwa had tried her utmost to teach her letters, but even that bodhisattva-like fairy had struggled to make this wild dog sit still at a desk.
“…I can’t read. What does it say?”
“Which part do you mean?”
“Here, jip…”
“It says ‘jepo’—wanted.”
“Wanted, the criminal Ogyo is, of the jianghu…”
“‘Of the jianghu’—that is, a great criminal of the jianghu.”
“…”
As unreadable characters continued to appear one after another, Ogyo puffed out her cheeks in annoyance.
Quickly sensing this young asura’s mood, the man threw his broken sword to the ground and approached.
“The criminal Ogyo, as a great villain of the jianghu, committed evil deeds around Beijing and infiltrated the imperial city of Shuntian Prefecture under cover of night, killing the Left Censor-in-chief of the Censorate, Guo Yunsheng…”
Also, she killed numerous martial officials and constables of the Jinyiwei who pursued her, and is currently on the run.
Whoever discovers this person must report to the authorities immediately.
A large reward will be given to whoever captures this person.
Whoever hides or protects this person will be severely punished.
Dead or alive.
Shuntian Prefecture.
The thirty-sixth year of Wanli.