Chapter 1004: Journey to Nanjing (4)

On a big pleasure boat rented from the Seol Family Trading House—off to Nanjing!

“Jayeo, it’s a boat. A big boat. It’s our boat, right?”

“Ooh!”

“Jayeo, look—fish just went by.”

“Ooh!”

“Jayeo, look over there. Mm. That’s a person.”

“......Ooh?”

“Yeah, mm. And there’s another person.”

“......Oh.”

“Look—someone’s passing by pulling a cart.”

“.......”

“Look, another person.”

“.......”

Yeah. A trip by boat was bound to be pretty boring.

Why?

When does a person feel bored?

First off: when there’s nothing fun to do, nothing to play with, nothing to see.

Well, obviously.

But not having entertainment doesn’t automatically mean you’ll feel bored, so step one is that your body has to be comfortable.

If you’re constantly moving, that alone stimulates interest—so even just going for a walk, you at least won’t be bored.

And even if your body is comfortable, if your safety isn’t guaranteed, you won’t be bored.

Because there are very few people who would feel bored while passing through a forest where some cannibal tribe hangs human skulls like decorations, or a mountain trail where bears roam.

And by “very few,” I don’t mean people with nerves of steel—because in the Central Plains, there are martial masters who don’t even consider cannibal tribes or bears a threat.

Mm. Bears. They really weren’t that cute in real life...

Qing was thinking pointless things like this because she was bored.

Still... this bed? It was insanely nice.

A pleasure boat meant to serve a supreme being was always kept on standby by the Seol Family Trading House—and they even had them prepared in different sizes in a way that didn’t look weird.

So how could that bed be ordinary?

Even when the boat rocked, it stayed comfortable—an upper-grade item among upper-grade items, so plush it was almost ridiculous.

While Qing was sprawled out, her sleeve got tugged, and when she turned her head with dull eyes—

“Jayeo is bored.”

“Jayeo is bored?”

“Yeah. Bored.”

“Come here. No, not ‘come here’—Jayeo, come here, come on, Jayeo nose, Jayeo. There, there. If you sleep and wake up... mm, you should sleep a lot.”

Off to the side, Seol Iri—who’d been sitting there like a decorative object while diligently circulating her energy and building it up—shot over a slightly irreverent look, meaning: a pathetic look of disbelief.

Jayeo shook her head.

“Not sleepy.”

“Our Jayeo isn’t sleepy....”

“Jayeo is bored.”

Jayeo clung to Qing’s sleeve and kept yanking with little grunts. So was it the same in the Central Plains and in her hometown—that kid trait of whining at a dad lying down, demanding to be played with?

“Then go out and play... There are crew members, too...”

“Hot....”

Yeah, it was getting pretty hot now.

Late May. Spring was ending, and the sun was blazing—hot enough to feel like it was trying to roast everything.

And yet Qing, with her Ice-Jade Divine Art, always had a cool breeze flowing around her.

Still... when it came to Ice-Jade Divine Art, wasn’t there an original?

“Then go ask your cold mom to play with you.”

At that, Seol Iri shot Qing a sharp glare.

Even so, she opened the eyes she’d had closed while circulating her energy and looked steadily at Jayeo—like she was giving a signal that she’d play, in her own way.

“Cold mom is no fun....”

THUD.

Seol Iri made a shocked face, then dropped her head.

Well, yeah. If you train all the time and always leave the kid alone, that’s what you get.

Right now, in Jayeo’s Mom Favorability Rankings, the number one spot was—shockingly—Tiny Mom, Jin Jangmyeong.

Kids just had a way of clicking with each other, didn’t they? The tiny one dragged the tiny one around every evening, skittering all over the place.

Now and then, the best person in a kid’s eyes was the one who played with them well.

Thanks to that, even when Jayeo was playing with Heema—who ranked as “Aunt,” or... wait, shouldn’t it be “paternal aunt”? Why was it “aunt”? Whatever—anyway, even when she was playing with the number-two-ranked Heema, as soon as the Priestess Order Temple’s workday was about to end, Jayeo would go to the first-generation disciples’ training ground to meet Jangmyeong.

Of course, it probably helped that the Priestess Order Temple’s first-generation disciples—age-wise, basically a bunch of aunties—would see Jayeo and go absolutely berserk, screaming and fawning over her.

Qing had gone along once, and it was real. They screamed “Kyaaaah! So cute!” and charged in, and right in the middle of it, Jayeo looked ridiculously pleased with herself.

But me?

I’m sleepy.

It made her feel like she finally understood why, on their day off, dads sank deep into a plush reclining chair and went, I’m not sleeping, whenever their kids tried to change the channel.

“Ahem. Dad isn’t some object you can yank on and make something fun come out.”

“Jayeo is boooored...”

“Hey. You little punk.”

Qing sprang up, scooped Jayeo into her arms, and started tickling her.

“KIIYAAAH! KIIYAAAACK!”

A shrill, scream-like laugh instantly filled the room—

...But when a kid laughs, isn’t it supposed to be something clear and bright, like giggling, like a dolphin sound in a good way?

This was... something between a seagull and a water deer.

“Mm. But what should we play?”

“Dunno.”

“Something, mm, uhh, mm... But on a boat there’s not much to do... mm... Looking at the river isn’t much, and the river—oh! Right. Fishing. Should we try fishing? Jayeo, have you ever fished?”

“Fishing?”

“Perfect. Fishing. Let’s do it right now.”

Why had she only thought of it now?

Wasn’t fishing part of a dad’s basic qualifications?

On a dad’s day off, there were only two correct options.

Either he lay in a reclining chair, stared blankly at a screen, dozed off, and then cast I’M NOT SLEEPING at his kids when they tried to change it—

Or he went fishing and wasn’t home.

Anyway, fishing!

To be fair, Qing wasn’t a complete amateur at fishing. She’d gone along a few times, more as a social obligation than anything.

It was annoying—dragging all the gear out, walking back and forth to an uncomfortable spot, setting up again, threading bait...

But if someone handled all that for her—more specifically, if someone would just put the bait on for her—she could find it pretty fun.

In other words, she wouldn’t go fish if she had to endure the annoying parts herself... but still.

So there Qing was, sitting at the stern with Jayeo in her arms, Jayeo gripping the fishing rod like her life depended on it.

Cold Mom Is No Fun had apparently hit Seol Iri hard; she’d followed along without protest, slipped a hand behind Jayeo’s clothes, and was blowing a cool breeze into her back.

The sun was hot, but Qing was already in a state where heat couldn’t touch her. And even so, watching the Yangtze flow endlessly under countless ripples didn’t feel bad.

On both sides of the Yangtze, broad floodplains covered in late-spring rice seedlings, still bright green.

Green paddies stretching out—straight to the farthest visible point, all the way to the wide horizon.

How peaceful was this? Wasn’t this what people called pastoral?

But.

Only Qing was fine.

Back in Qing’s hometown, fishing gear involved surprising technology—precision manufacturing, too.

But fishing rods in the Central Plains?

A very long bamboo pole. A fairly thick line made by twisting horsehair. And of course there was no reel.

Luckily, they did have the concept of a float—something that sat on the surface—so you could stare at it and see if it dipped, then yank.

Which meant: if nothing bit, you just stared at a float the whole time.

“Nothing’s biting...”

“Mm. Fishing’s like that...”

“Nothing’s biiiting...”

And it was right as Jayeo’s interest in fishing was getting driven straight down into the abyss—

The float suddenly plunged straight down!

“Gasp.”

“Jayeo, pull! Pull—hard!”

Jayeo wasn’t an ordinary kid.

Sure—those hollow eyes with heavy shadows under them, that dead-fish stare, that laugh that was creepy beyond belief... and yet somehow still cute.

But beyond any of that, Jayeo was a kid who’d learned martial arts.

Especially with the child method of Muscle-Tendon Transformation and Marrow Cleansing Classic, Jayeo’s raw strength had long since surpassed a child’s level.

Whatever had bitten was big—the bamboo rod bent and bounced, sending that lively, flapping “hand feel” straight up the line.

“O, ooh!”

On her first fishing trip ever, Jayeo had hooked a big one—and the violent tugging had her spitting out excited exclamations nonstop.

So much so that actual starlight seemed to glitter in those dull, lusterless eyes.

No one knew it, but maybe this was because she carried a quasi–Thousand-Kill Ancient Star aura.

Maybe she felt deep satisfaction in the savagery embedded in fishing—the cruelty of driving a hook into a living thing’s lips and yanking, the desperate thrashing of a fish fighting to live.

Or maybe she was just overthinking it.

Because once you hook a fish, and you’re in that moment of feeling the tug and wrestling with it—anyone would find fishing fun.

But still.

...Now what?

Central Plains fishing rods didn’t have reels.

So what, you grabbed the line and pulled.

Luckily, the horsehair line was thick—thicker than the yarn back in Qing’s world—so wrapping it around your hands and pulling wasn’t too dangerous.

“Jayeo, pull. I’ll hold the rod. Iri, hold Jayeo.”

“Yes.”

“Ooh!”

Jayeo heaved with spirited “hup-hup” effort, pulling the line.

After some time...

Pulling it up out of the water was a little too much for Jayeo, so Qing went, “Hup!” and gave a final hard yank to finish it.

Water sprayed in every direction.

A fish flew up, tracing a high arc through the air—

A big, black, solid-looking catfish went sailing—

Huh. A catfish?

Qing tilted her head.

Did you even catch catfish with float fishing?

With float fishing, the hook was suspended in the water... but catfish lived stuck to the riverbed, didn’t they?

But Qing wasn’t exactly a fishing expert.

Well. Maybe Central Plains catfish came up for it.

The catfish—dragged up against its will—flopped hard along the gunwale, full of energy.

“Ooh! Miss! You’ve caught a huge one!”

“My goodness, that one must be five years old!”

“Amaziiiing!!”

“You’re truly a fishing sage reborn!”

For some reason, Seol Family Trading House crewmen came running as if they’d been waiting for this, clapping, cheering, and congratulating her.

In the middle of it, Jayeo puffed up with pride.

“Khehehe....”

Well, whatever. Good was good.

Back in her hometown, she would’ve held it up and taken a photo.

But here... didn’t they have some kind of “big catch” commemoration?

They did.

“A fish print! Make a fish print!”

“We should hang it in the cabin!”

A fish print meant smearing ink on the fish and stamping it onto paper as a keepsake—and the crewmen, as if they’d prepared in advance, produced a big sheet and freshly ground ink.

And on the opposite side of the pleasure boat—

A single head rose quietly above the surface and looked up at the railing.

It was a secret approach.

The Heaven-Beyond-Heaven’s Thousand-Kill Ancient Star—former top-class assassin of one of the Central Plains’ five major assassination groups, Ak Jeongwi (early Transformation Realm)—was infiltrating.

He sent a covert Voice Transmission to a crewman above the gunwale.

—Is the young miss pleased? But isn’t a catfish a little too much?

—Come now, what are you saying? It has to be at least a catfish for there to be any real hand feel. She was thrilled.

—Good!

—Next, here—eel.

—Eel? Isn’t that really too much?

—Shouldn’t the young miss catch a variety to enjoy herself?

—That’s true. Hand it here.

And then the crewman carefully tossed a net full of eels down to Ak Jeongwi.

A vivid scene of rigged fishing.

The absolute extreme of “hospitality fishing.”

How in the world a Transformation Realm expert was secretly diving to spear fish onto a hook—nobody could say.

For the record, this wasn’t an assignment forced on him by someone else. Everyone had wanted to do it, and Ak Jeongwi had used his realm to crush his comrades and monopolize this glorious operation for himself.

There was no gushing like this gushing.

It truly stabbed straight into the sky......