Chapter 989: Live a Good Life (2)

Hyung Taejak didn’t know Yeom Hwiyoung.

Of course he wouldn’t, but for that very reason Hyung Taejak put on a look like it was ridiculous and changed the subject.

“Still, it warms the heart to see a young man doing good work. So. You’re the money backer for Sasa’s senior medical academy? Looks like you struck it rich, kid.”

This time, something briny and contemptuous surfaced on Yeom Hwiyoung’s face.

“Is there really any other way to make big money in the Central Plains? Make a good friend in Beijing, and that’s business.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie—just that the “friend” wasn’t his. His mother had a few friends in Beijing, that was all.

Yeom Hwiyoung’s speech had stepped down one rung from mutual formal address toward something closer to level talk, but Hyung Taejak’s expression flinched and recoiled instead.

Because what had he just said? That he’d made “a good friend” in Beijing. Meaning he had backing in Beijing. People said the officials and the martial world stayed out of each other’s way, but you didn’t go picking fights with anyone tangled up with Beijing.

“Ah—of course. I knew it. The young master looked broad-shouldered and destined for greatness.”

Bullying the weak and bowing to the strong—that was the dark world’s nature, and Qing’s, too.

At the instantly changed attitude, Yeom Hwiyoung let out a crooked little grin.

“Well. That’s enough small talk. So—your Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition intends to take over the medical academy? But I’m not running the academy for my own profit. This is a charity project, done only because I want peace and safety for all under heaven.”

“Exactly! That’s our Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition’s intention. We’re trying to do some good in the world, and our Sasa’s senior went and grabbed the initiative first—so we figured we’d give him a hard push and back him up. That’s how it turned into this.”

“Hoh. The way Sasa’s teacher tells it, you intend to raise a new hall as high as a towering pavilion—and what else was it—you’ll stay here in person, guard the academy, and grow it into something big.”

“Of course. Once a man draws his blade, he has to see it through to the end. Even charity has to be the best in the world! That is the spirit—and the destiny—of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition!”

“Hoh. So what you’re saying is, the Evil Path Alliance will take over Sasa Medical Academy’s charity work.”

“Right. Exactly.”

At that, Yeom Hwiyoung put on a serious face.

“But it isn’t that easy, and it isn’t that convenient. Do you think operating expenses are nothing? Medicine costs alone are no small thing, but you have to feed and keep everyone alive—Therapists, the medical apprentices learning under them, the nurses, even the general laborers. Doing good is my business; they’ll leave if their monthly pay is thin. I pay generously, so it runs about five strings of gold a month. Are you truly sincere?”

One string of gold was ten gold pieces.

Fifty gold pieces—six hundred in silver—and if you counted it in coins, a staggering sixty thousand cash: enough to eat sixty thousand plain dumplings at an inn, plus twenty thousand bowls of soup!

If you lived on nothing but plain dumplings three meals a day, it’d last over fifty-four years—enough to eat for a lifetime.

It would be an inhuman diet on a human level, but hey—meals were meals.

“...It costs that much?”

“If it were cheap, they’d be opening charity clinics everywhere. But where are the charity clinics? The famous Tang Clan of Sichuan, maybe. In other words, unless you’re at least the Tang Clan of Sichuan, running a charity clinic is truly difficult. That’s how much gold melts away.”

“Even so—five strings of gold every month.”

“Well, you might not have known. If you want to pretend this never happened, it can’t be helped. Only a power as great as the Tang Clan of Sichuan can do it easily. And what’s shameful about falling short of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, in all under heaven?”

It was a special order from his mother.

Overcharge them. What if they say it’s too expensive? Then bring up the Tang Clan of Sichuan every other sentence—no one will dare say it.

And sure enough.

“Ahem. Well, that’s not even that much. For our Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition, that level of spending is nothing. Yeah.”

“Hoh. Even though gold melts away like this, you’d take over a charity project done for nothing but the peace of all under heaven—with no profit at all? I’ve heard many rumors about the Evil Path Alliance, but it seems most of them were absurd slander.”

“Hahahaha! Of course. Our Evil Path thugs get harassed by pointless bad reputation all the time. But we are the true chivalrous heroes—take away loyalty, and we’re just corpses.”

If Qing had been here, she might have grasped the secret of Skyward Laugh Kill’s crazed laughter in an instant.

Because it was hilarious nonsense.

Even Yeom Hwiyoung seemed to struggle to hold it in—little snorts kept leaking out—and beside him, Bo-yeol dropped his head completely, shoulders trembling in thin little shakes, whether from shame or something else.

Still. If that was what he believed—wasn’t thought supposed to be free?

“Fine. In that case, it’s not as if I can’t hand it over. But.”

“But?”

“I must confirm the minimum will. That you truly intend to operate the medical academy properly.”

“Confirm how?”

“At the very least, I need to see one year’s operating costs with my own eyes. Let’s see—one year is sixty strings of gold. And you said you’d expand the clinic and raise higher halls? That project cost will be at least twenty strings of gold. Bring eighty strings of gold. I’ll hand it over immediately, without a word.”

“What—eighty strings of gold isn’t a dog’s name! And you call this charity? This is pure profiteering!”

Hyung Taejak roared, but Yeom Hwiyoung only shook his head with ease.

“Profiteering? Who asked you to give me the gold? I’m only checking whether you truly intend to operate the medical academy. It’s money you’ll spend while operating it anyway. If you can’t even prepare a single year’s budget, what, exactly, am I supposed to trust enough to hand you the project?”

“But eighty strings!”

Then Yeom Hwiyoung softened his tone further, coaxing Hyung Taejak as if soothing a child.

He was only trying to confirm whether they could truly cover the operating costs.

Either way, it was money they would spend on running the medical academy. They could keep it there and execute the budget over time. And when you ran a project, unforeseen expenses always arose—so you needed reserve funds on top of a year’s budget for the work to run properly.

And why keep such a large sum in one place—wasn’t it dangerous?

They said the Golden Hawk Unit would stay at the medical academy and oversee the project. Who in the world had the nerve to covet the Golden Hawk Unit’s assets?

And then he even muttered, very softly.

“Hah... trembling over a mere eighty strings, and you want to run a big project. You can’t even be man enough to say you’ll add twenty more and make it one hundred. I heard the Tang Clan of Sichuan’s charity clinic spends one hundred strings on operating costs alone, even without construction...”

This wasn’t the kind of “muttering” Qing did on purpose so people would hear it. You truly wouldn’t catch it unless you leaned in and listened.

Of course, Hyung Taejak—an expert in the Transformation Realm—couldn’t possibly fail to hear it, and his face flushed red at once.

A weak little bastard, insolent enough to mutter in front of him. If he followed his nature, he would have smashed that mouth.

But if what this bastard said was true, it meant he’d been burning five strings of gold every month to run a charity project—and a man who could throw around that much gold had “friends” in Beijing?

Anyone who threw a punch on temper even with someone like that in front of them was, from the start, someone with a rotten head...

It was an ugly rationalization for bullying the weak and bowing to the strong.

Anyway.

“Ahem. I’d love to show you the gold immediately, but the decision will be made by our Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition’s Grand Leader, Paejon. I’ll send one of my men to ask him. Until then, don’t hand it over to anyone else. Keep it safe.”

*****

Treasurer-General Gwan Chiseong of the Evil Path Alliance’s gold-and-silver accounts frowned hard and asked again.

“Eighty strings of gold, you say?”

“Yeah—eighty strings. Not eighty gold pieces. Eighty strings. They say if we don’t show the physical gold, they can’t hand over the medical academy. So—Treasurer-General. How much money do we have?”

The tone was like asking for pocket money to buy a snack.

Gwan Chiseong made a face like they were about to cry.

“Grand Leader—eighty strings of gold? Where in the world would that much physical gold come from?”

“We’ve got that much.”

“Oh, Grand Leader. This year’s reserve fund from the alliance budget is forty strings of gold.”

“What—why is it only that? What’s the yearly budget, and the reserve is just that? Treasurer-General Gwan, this is a little weird, isn’t it? I knew you were skimming, but at least skim with moderation.”

At the same time, a terrifying pressure crashed down on Gwan Chiseong!

Gold and silver might have been their domain, but martial arts were not—so the Treasurer-General trembled, sweat pouring off them in seconds.

The Treasurer-General screamed it out like a shriek.

“Grand Leader! It means we have fifty strings we can mobilize immediately, not that that’s all the money we have! If we retrieve the reserve funds from each execution hall and combat unit, we can easily prepare eighty strings!”

“Reserve funds? Can we just retrieve those?”

“Reserve funds are reserve funds in the truest sense! They’re separate from the budget—amounts reclaimed year after year as unexecuted funds, last year and the year before and the year before that!”

“Ah, yeah? I wondered what it was.”

At that, on the Grand Leader’s right, Chief Strategist Officer Sun Ung voiced concern.

“Grand Leader? Reserve funds are reserve funds. They exist to prepare for unexpected situations. If we retrieve them, we may get pinned down when we need emergency cash.”

Bu Anpyeong rubbed his rough chin.

“Chief Strategist—you said taking over the medical academy was a good plan too, didn’t you? You said it was the perfect place to plant a stake.”

“It is the road to the Yangtze and a position that cuts off Sichuan, so five strings a month is absolutely worth spending. But even so, I’m concerned about spending all the cash we have on hand. The Blood Cult bastards are about to stir things up—who knows what will happen next, and you want to empty our assets?”

“Isn’t that exactly why we need the medical academy? If the Blood Cult bastards start making a mess, we need to go on a proper rampage too. And what—Yeom Hwiyoung? That Beijing noble is saying he’ll stand guarantee. Then our Great Matron senior can’t do anything but suck her fingers, right? You said eating the medical academy is far more profitable than killing Sasa.”

It was far more profitable.

It was also revenge for the humiliation dealt by the Heavenly Flower Sword and the Great Matron—but would anyone burn gold pieces on a charity project for that alone?

A living Sasa was obviously more useful than a dead one.

Later, when they rebuilt the Greenwood Bandits and swallowed Tianzi Mountain, they could connect that mountain route straight down to the Jagwi County ferry on the Yangtze—completing a supply mobility line.

“Besides, sending eighty strings doesn’t mean the money disappears instantly. We can treat it as storage there, and if we need emergency cash, we can take it back out, can’t we?”

“It’s too convenient, which makes me suspicious. To run charity on that scale, they would have built relationships not only with the officials but, naturally, with the Priestess Order as well. And now they’re switching sides? Also, among Beijing’s noble houses—I’ve never even heard of a family name Yeom.”

“Hm. You mean it could be a Priestess Order scheme? That we could lose nothing but gold, is that it? I get that your job is worrying, Chief Strategist, but this time you know you’re going too far, right? The Priestess Order aren’t dark-world bastards always plotting to screw someone over from behind. And those women who only cultivate Dao in the mountains—they don’t even collect ‘protection fees,’ do they?”

“Even so, isn’t it my job to worry? And I’m especially uneasy about draining even the reserve funds.”

Bu Anpyeong snorted.

“See? This is why I like you, Chief Strategist. Still—this time, I think it’s better to do it. If we miss this chance, I feel like we’ll regret it for a long time. Haven’t you heard that saying? If you’re stuck between doing it and not doing it—do it. Otherwise you keep regretting it.”

Bu Anpyeong had decided. That was that.

But Sun Ung kept grumbling without backing down.

“Personally, I think if you’re stuck between doing it and not doing it, that means you shouldn’t do it. The very fact you hesitate means you already feel uneasy—and you’re just searching for reasons that it’s okay...”

Chief Strategist Officer Sun Ung of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition—One Seat Under Heaven—was what the Evil Path people called, supposedly, the Evil Path’s No.1 Brain.

Meanwhile, the Treasurer-General was the one sweating coldly in streams.

Retrieve the reserve funds right now?

This is really going to blow up, they thought.