Chapter 990: Live a Good Life (3)

What is a reserve fund?

“Reserve” as in set aside in advance, “reserve,” and “funds to spend”—it meant exactly what it sounded like: money kept separately to prepare for unexpected situations.

Sudden operations you had to respond to, compensation for losses, emergency restoration costs, rushing supplies that suddenly needed to be procured, medical fees when someone got injured or sick, and so on...

In other words, an emergency stash.

And the reserve funds assigned to the Evil Path Alliance’s large and small groups were, strictly speaking, not part of those groups’ budgets.

Use it first if you’re in a bind, and later refill it out of your own budget.

In the way Qing’s hometown would put it, it was like an overdraft account—an overdraft account you didn’t have to pay interest on.

But.

An overdraft account with no interest?

Back in Qing’s hometown, there were plenty of people who treated their overdraft limit like it was basically their cash, even while paying interest.

And if you didn’t even pay interest?

Then isn’t it just my money?

Of course, the staff of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition’s Gold-and-Silver Accounting General Affairs Office—shortened to the General Affairs Office—would scream like this.

Why the hell is that your money, you bastard?!

But the martial world had been peaceful for quite a long time, so the Evil Path Alliance’s combat units and administrative offices weren’t suddenly getting thrown into danger.

Meaning: there hadn’t been any reason to spend the reserve funds.

So what happened to that money nobody was looking at?

The leaders of each group thought:

Money is money only when it goes out into the world and rolls around. That way, everyone under heaven profits.

Just locking money in a warehouse?

Isn’t that the same as committing a sin against all under heaven?

No true Evil Path thug could do such a thing!

So the “wise” leaders rolled the money.

They ran loan-sharking with the reserve funds, or bought businesses like brothels, and so on.

And then—how amazing.

The reserve fund stayed the same, but money kept appearing!

Money was getting copied!

Then what about the leaders who weren’t “wise”?

If you take the kids out for a team dinner, you have to order expensive food for face, expensive liquor too—and on the road when heroic men of the Evil Path arrive, how can women be missing? You have to bring in courtesans.

That isn’t a coin or two. And the local dark-world scum supposedly just storm in and eat for free, but the inns and brothels in Taehwa County are all tied up with Evil Path Alliance officers, so you can’t even stiff them.

Showing dignity as a group leader is nice and all, but how much more monthly pay do you even get—(actually, a ridiculous amount more)—so, well, it’s a burden. Maybe I’ll pull a little from the reserve fund.

Later, I’ll refill half from my personal cash, and half from the monthly budget I receive. That’ll do.

It boosts unit morale anyway.

Right. Team dinners are work!

Honestly, this wasn’t something that happened only in the Evil Path Alliance.

It was more like a Central Plains trait. The Martial Alliance wasn’t really any different.

Anyway.

That was why the Evil Path Alliance’s administrative offices—and its combat units—couldn’t help but flip their tables.

What? Hand over the reserve funds?

No—how can you demand it all of a sudden?!

At least give us a heads-up first!

The leaders who had been “rolling” the money already had the reserve funds tied up in personal ventures for ages.

And for the leaders who’d been nibbling it away, it was a lightning bolt from a clear sky. If you were going to do this, why give reserve funds at all? You should’ve never given them in the first place!

“The Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition’s Grand Leader has issued the decision. If any problem occurs, I will report it to the Grand Leader.”

What could anyone say in front of the General Affairs Office cashiers, who cowardly brought up the Grand Leader like that?

So—somehow—they had to fill the hole.

All right. Our Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition is facing a huge crisis. As Evil Path thugs, shouldn’t we pool our strength, gather what we can, and overcome it together?

We just got paid, so let’s collect exactly half for now—what? Hey. You think I’d steal my own boys’ money? When next month’s budget comes in, I’ll pay it all back. Come on. What choice do we have?

And so the blood, sweat, and tears of the Evil Path thugs gathered into one place and forged a golden glow.

It was the coalition’s “latent strength,” squeezed out by wringing every last coin out of whatever existed.

In other words, you could say they pulled together every last bit of free cash the Evil Path Alliance had—dragging in even the soul of its free cash.

Truly, it was the miracle of eighty strings of gold.

*****

One string of gold weighed a little over six geun.

The weight of eighty strings of gold came out to roughly five hundred geun.

For someone from Qing’s hometown, it was easier to understand if you said fifteen sacks of rice—because for some reason, everyone had experience lifting a rice sack at least once.

That was why, when transporting a large sum, people often moved physical gold rather than bank drafts.

Why?

First, even if you transported a draft safely, you could still have problems.

They could refuse to cash it due to issues of trust with the money house.

Even if it was a famous money house, they could refuse because the branch was too far away and there was no way to receive payment.

And if the amount was around eighty strings, the money house itself might not have the liquidity to hand it over in one go—impossible.

And drafts were surprisingly hard to guard.

A draft was just a single sheet of paper.

Easy to lose, easy to steal.

If you mishandled it, it could even get damaged.

And the one carrying it was also a Central Plains person.

If someone carried a draft worth eighty strings of gold and then ran off with it—what would you do?

The money houses, these primitive ancient banks, still hadn’t discovered even the bare minimum civilization of electronic commerce. In practice, there was no way to cancel a draft once issued.

But if you transported physical gold?

You were free of those problems.

Five hundred geun was a problem just to carry in the first place—hard labor. The transport team suffered, but anyone trying to steal it suffered even more.

And if you were transporting gold, you prepared properly and attached a large escort.

Aside from the fact that far more people worked far harder—aside from transport costs being higher—transporting gold as physical bullion was safer than a draft.

So the Golden Hawk Unit, having returned to headquarters saying they’d bring the gold and to wait, headed for Jagwi County again—bold and proud.

In truth, if the transporter was the Evil Path Alliance, the route was even safer.

Because who would dare touch an Evil Path Alliance gold convoy?

Of course, if terrifying experts—experts at the Transformation Realm or above—gathered, they could rob it.

But an expert at the Transformation Realm had no reason to pile up grudges just to steal gold. At that level, money usually wasn’t a problem.

Otherwise, you’d need a whole swarm of desperate nobodies to gather and attempt it—but compared to the risk, eighty strings was... awkward. Hard to split cleanly.

So, for those reasons, no one even considered danger in the transport itself.

At most, people muttered, “Those Golden Hawk bastards might skim off a few chunks,” and since you’d need at least one treasurer to run the medical academy anyway, they attached a single General Affairs Office cashier.

So even a gold transport—if you were the Evil Path Alliance—wasn’t some enormous ordeal.

Wasn’t the hardest part of transporting gold always the moths chasing a one-shot life reversal?

But if you were confident those bugs wouldn’t latch on, you didn’t need to stare bloodshot at the gold the whole way.

Normally you’d need advance prep—secret routes, disguises, and so on.

But this was an undertaking of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition.

Of course, that didn’t mean they went around saying, “We’re carrying our gold, eighty strings are loaded on this wagon,” to the whole neighborhood.

They just planted the Evil Path Alliance flag and the Golden Hawk Unit flag where they’d be seen, and had the Golden Hawk Unit surround the wagons with weapons on their hips—who in the world would dare touch it?

They didn’t even need to travel secretly down deserted roads. They could cut straight across on the main road with their chests out.

For lodging, they could just stay at an Evil Path sect in each city.

If anything, the hardest part of this gold transport was resisting the over-the-top hospitality of the Evil Path sects and not getting wasted in a riot.

So the gold convoy traveled the main road, stamping through major cities.

Leaving Taehwa County, passing Nanchang, reaching Wuhan.

But Wuhan was Zhuge Family territory, so they tensed up hard, spent one shrunken day there, then left in a hurry—west, and west again.

Past Jingzhou, and two days later—Yichang.

From Yichang to Jagwi County was only a half-day by wagon, so by now everyone’s heart finally let go.

Sleep one night, eat breakfast, leave slowly, and you’d still arrive before dinner.

Because no one even imagined—truly, not even once—that someone would attempt to steal the gold.

At least not until they’d eaten a generous breakfast, set out, and then—right in the middle of the main boulevard splitting Yichang east and west—found a group blocking the road dead ahead.

A man they’d never seen before—this bastard.

And by “never seen,” it meant a stranger so unfamiliar they’d never even encountered him in rumors.

An old man with crossed eyes, his focus pulled to either side. A crumbling, worn sword hung at his hip.

A hunched man with rope wrapped around his hands—probably a fist-arts user.

And two fat slabs of men with layers of neck fat, the kind that made you smell sweat just by looking. Each held a heavy, rusted iron mace, but it seemed so heavy the heads kept drooping lower and lower.

From their clothes to their weapons, they were shabby and careless.

But the three—no, four of them, if you counted everyone except the cross-eyed old man—had their gazes aimed precisely at Hyung Taejak.

It was too deliberate to be an accident.

As if they smelled an incident coming, people already started taking positions at a distance while the two sides faced off.

In the middle of it, Hyung Taejak raised his voice.

“Who dares block an undertaking of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition! Reveal yourselves!”

Then the fat man in front answered.

“We are the true heroes who inherited Greenwood’s orthodox line. The elders of the New Greenwood! For short, we are New Greenwood! And for reference—Old Greenwood, the fallen Greenwood, we’ve decided to call that Old Greenwood!”

New Greenwood.

He’d truly never heard it once in his life.

“What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that! Inherited Greenwood’s orthodox line? Greenwood’s orthodox line belongs to Wang Daeyang—no, to that young mas—”

“GRAAAAL!!”

A horrible, exploding shriek cut Hyung Taejak off.

It was a savage scream that scraped the throat raw.

“The Grand Stockade Lord of Old Greenwood died because he was incompetent, so there’s nothing to praise! And that brat dares claim orthodoxy? And more than anything, he doesn’t even do bandit work! What right does some green pup shoved inside the Evil Path Alliance have to call himself Greenwood!”

“......”

Hyung Taejak clamped his mouth shut.

Because he thought so too.

After the Heavenly Flower Sword’s public statement, this was exactly how the Evil Path Alliance evaluated Wang Daeyang.

“If he inherited Greenwood’s spirit, he should prove it through bandit work! How does someone who isn’t even a bandit dare claim Greenwood’s orthodox line!”

“Mm.”

It was obvious bullshit, but somehow it also sounded... weirdly plausible.

If you’re a bandit, shouldn’t you prove it by doing bandit work? Since when did banditry start caring about bloodlines?

“So our elders of the New Greenwood intend to proudly proclaim right here, through bandit work, that we have inherited Greenwood’s orthodox line—descendants of the ancient line of bandit bastards that runs from Mount Liang!”

Hyung Taejak’s expression turned strange.

Blocking a road in the middle of a city, suddenly proclaiming, “We’re the New Greenwood, true descendants!”

So what? What do you want?

“I understand that much, but why do you dare block an undertaking of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition?”

“I told you! Right here, right now—we’re going to proclaim that New Greenwood is the true orthodox bandits!”

“No, so why block the road—and if you need recognition from the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition, shouldn’t you first go to the central headquarters and pay your respects to the Grand Leader—”

“You idiot! Why can’t you understand! We’re orthodox bandits!”

“What is this—are you all missing pieces? Hah. If it weren’t for the mission. Fine. I get it! You’re orthodox bandits!”

“Hmph. Finally you understand words. Yes—we are orthodox bandits!”

Then the fat man grunted, barely hauling his heavy iron mace forward, and shouted.

“Hand over everything you’ve got! This is the territory of the orthodox bandits—New Greenwood!”

New Greenwood—shouting “bandits” in the middle of a city.