Chapter 882: The Plague Wretch Is Hiding Its Strength (1)

Geonpyeong County—strictly speaking—is not a county.

According to national law, a “county” refers to an administrative district where an administrative seat is established for a county magistrate dispatched from the center, and that magistrate takes charge of governing the whole area.

But Geonpyeong has no administrative seat.

It’s simply a region where the jurisdictions of Yeongwon County to the south and Pyeongcheon County to the west overlap.

That was also why the place ended up being called Geonpyeong—since two jurisdictions overlapped, they said they’d take one character from each regional name and make a new one.

At the time, Yeongwon County’s name had been Geonchang, so the name Geonpyeong came from taking the first characters of Geonchang and Pyeongcheon.

Usually, at the very edges of jurisdictions like that, it’s rare for a city to form.

An administrative seat was typically installed in the most strategic location of a region—and also the most important in terms of production—so a place hanging off the outer edges of two counties would normally just have small villages and hamlets, at most.

But Geonpyeong was a proper small city.

Because the land was absurdly good.

In fengshui terms, it boasted what people called the best possible arrangement: Six Mountains, One Water, Three Fields—a golden ratio where, by total land area, mountains made up six parts, there was one major river, and flatlands made up three parts.

Of course, this Six Mountains, One Water, Three Fields talk was something people only cared about back when the Central Plains had been chopped up and constantly at war.

Mountain land surrounding a region basically meant abundant timber, wild greens, fruit, medicinal herbs, beasts, and other goods—and it also made enemy invasion difficult.

The importance of water didn’t even need explaining.

And flatlands meant farming, so of course they mattered.

In this era, mountains weren’t particularly important anymore, so it had all become an old saying.

Still—based on the abundant goods produced by this heaven-blessed terrain, Geonpyeong had grown into a proper city.

But then why was land that sweet—sweet enough to swell in population into a city—left abandoned on the fringe of a border zone between two counties, without even an administrative seat?

Even though population meant taxes?

Because the north was too wide open.

Geonpyeong County was blocked by mountains to the east, west, and south—and to the north, it bordered the land of the Mongol barbarians!

Given the nature of those Mongol bastards who raided on horseback, they couldn’t be bothered to cross mountains.

Even if Geonpyeong got looted, that was that.

They couldn’t invade deeper into the Central Plains.

If barbarians invaded?

After they looted Geonpyeong, they’d go home on their own anyway, right?

Hey—barbarians have lives too, lives!

They have to eat and survive!

But if you installed an administrative seat in Geonpyeong?

Naturally you’d have to raise walls for defense, and you’d end up clashing directly with the barbarians, so you’d have to station soldiers too.

And if the barbarians got vicious and decided to commit, they might even cross the mountains.

It wasn’t like you could connect the Great Wall through the mountains.

So just leave it as it is.

It was infuriating that those Geonpyeong bastards dodged taxes, but it was far more economical to not install an administrative seat and simply leave them to live on their own.

That was the brutal principle of governance!

In reality, the people of Geonpyeong were periodically plundered by the Mongol barbarians.

When Mongol cavalry rolled into the city hauling carts, the Geonpyeong people would rise up like a volunteer militia, and, in righteous fury, charge those wicked savage barbarians—carrying sacks of grain.

From the barbarians’ perspective, there was no reason to violently mess with Geonpyeong people who obediently handed over food.

If they messed with them for no reason, it might bring in government troops, or it might make the commoners move away—so they took a reasonable cut and withdrew.

It was a very peaceful scene of plunder.

You might say that wasn’t plunder, it was just paying tribute to barbarians?

Shh! Hey—watch what you say.

It’s plunder, plunder, always plunder.

You think we’re happy to hand it over or something?

And so, now.

In a time when the valor of the Mongol barbarians who once ruled the world had been forgotten,

when the authorities and the military had buried it outside their concern,

when no one pointed any of it out,

when “plunder” had become a deal everyone tacitly agreed to—

A beggar was walking along the mountain path.

*****

The beggar’s appearance was bizarre beyond belief.

First of all, she was a beggar.

From her outfit alone, she looked like a beggar.

She looked like a total beggar.

In fact, if her outfit had been decent, no one would’ve called her a beggar—they would’ve called her a woman.

The very word “beggar” carried the implication that you were wearing beggar-like clothes!

What was especially bizarre was her hair.

She’d let long strands hang in a wild mess, hiding her face—an eerie sight you’d expect from a ghost, the kind of strange look you’d be afraid to see in a dream.

Her hair, so glossy with greasy shine you couldn’t tell when she’d last washed it, had tangled together, and even in the knife-like winter wind screaming through, it barely moved.

Just what in the world was the identity of this bizarre beggar—this very beggar-like beggar?

The identity of this beggar-like beggar?

It was none other than the rising star of the Orthodox martial world, the youngest person to achieve the Transformation Realm, a once-in-a-generation prodigy!

The Heavenly Flower Young Hero, the most influential star of the Central Plains, the one all women under heaven wanted to resemble!

The lone blossom of the Hanlin Academy, a shining female intellect!

Sometimes, a medical woman who saved lives.

Sometimes, a carpenter—the apostle of good influence who preached that people build houses, and houses raise people.

And at other times, the greatest mystery of the martial world, the Divine Thief—the great thief bitch of the world, a top-tier thief bitch!

Sometimes the pinnacle of Central Plains mechanism arrays and formations, sometimes a gourmet who hunted meat with fanatic obsession—

So mercurial, so ever-changing, so impossible to guess—her true identity was—

The Heavenly Flower Sword Seomun Cheong, Seomun Cheonhwa!

And today, Qing had returned to her origin and foundation—back to that first mindset.

Today’s Qing was Geonpyeong’s plague-ridden beggar bitch.

The Plague Wretch.

Of course, if you observed the Plague Wretch closely right now, you might notice all kinds of suspicious signs.

She wore multiple layers of filthy rags stained with grime, but the fact that there was no stench at all would tell you that the “stains” were just grime that wouldn’t come out—while the clothes themselves had actually been washed clean and worn on purpose.

And the greasy shine in her hair—if you shoved your nose into those clumped strands, you’d only then catch a faint nutty richness, enough to realize she’d intentionally applied oil.

But who would pay that kind of attention to a beggar?

Especially when her face was hidden, and between the drooping, clumped strands of greasy hair, you could glimpse—here and there—blisters rising, the skin of a filthy sick person.

From a tree halfway up the mountain, Qing looked down over the wide basin spread below.

Fields stretching broad around the city, and the city itself standing tall amid the white snowfield, as though a heavy fall had come—

It was a snow kingdom. A neat, beautiful spectacle.

Of course, she wasn’t about to be dazzled by snow and forget the ugliness of that ugly city, and the ugly hearts inside it.

But still—she’d come back.

So what should she do for word to spread that she’d really come back properly?

Should she go to Geonpyeong Tower and wreck the place?

You fuckers—my enemy of food trash, my grudge over the stolen scraps—I will never forgive you?

Or should she take the head of the beggar kingpin bastard and hang it in the middle of the market?

Mm. Somehow that didn’t sit quite right.

Even if she made a flashy entrance, that would be all.

If a vanished beggar came back as a super-strong beggar with martial arts, wouldn’t everyone just slam their heads down and apologize then?

Sure, it’d be fun to watch them like that.

No. No.

Right now, she hides her power.

It was a test Qing was giving.

She intended to slip in quietly and see whether those hearts were still vicious, and how they’d treat the Plague Wretch.

If the people of Geonpyeong, after losing the Plague Wretch, had finally regretted their stinginess and become new people?

Then, well, she’d have no choice but to treat them like a proper lady.

Anyone could make mistakes, but the fact that you could correct them was what made you human, wasn’t it.

...My ass!

CRUNCH-SPLAT!

A snowball slammed into Qing’s head and shattered in a spray.

Of course, to crack Qing’s head, a snowball was nowhere near enough.

Qing’s body had already reached a level beyond humanity, and the hardness of her skull was beyond humanity too—throwing a little packed snow wouldn’t inflict even the slightest damage.

Then—

THUNK!

A clear vein rose on Qing’s forehead.

Damn it. Which bastard packed a rock into the snow.

Of course, even a rock was far too fragile a material to crack Qing’s head.

It might leave a scratch on her skin, but a pebble without any internal energy in it wasn’t even close to tearing her hide.

But it still pissed her off.

Seriously. These bastards haven’t changed at all.

In fact, it was late February right now.

And “late February” meant people were bored out of their minds.

Sure, in this primitive age with no entertainment, people were always bored and thirsty for fun—

But especially in winter, when there was nothing to do, it meant they were writhing with boredom.

And in the middle of that, an exciting rumor hit Geonpyeong like a hammer.

“Did you hear? They say the Plague Wretch came back.”

“The Plague Wretch? That ghost-looking bitch from before, the one whose tits were the only thing worth looking at? Wasn’t she dead?”

Who was the Plague Wretch.

Whether it was five years ago or longer, she’d appeared one day, been seen for about half a year, and then vanished at some point, disappearing from sight.

Sure, you could say beggars appeared in cities and vanished without a trace all the time.

But the Plague Wretch had been special.

For one thing, her appearance—her face had been covered in blistered swellings, then burst and scabbed-over scars, too grotesque to look at with open eyes.

And yet her body was indecently obscene, so she’d let her hair down to hide her face and walked around, making her—how should you put it—quite the spectacle.

Especially when you threw rocks or showed a club, she’d get scared and run, and when she ran, the wobbling flesh was a sight to behold.

Of course, no matter how “worth looking at” a body was, there was no idiot in the world who wanted to mess around with a diseased beggar.

“Beggars hang on like iron sinew. Looks like she went somewhere else and got chased out.”

“Where? Perfect. I’m bored. Let’s go right now.”

The man sprang up from his seat.

Usually, bullying a beggar wasn’t common.

Someone with nothing to lose was more frightening than someone who had things to lose.

A beggar—if they snapped, they could stab you, smash you with a rock, kill you, and run. That was that.

But there were exceptions.

A sick beggar, a crippled beggar, a child beggar—those were exceptions.

How cruel the world was to weak beggars you could torment without fearing consequences.

This wasn’t because Central Plains people were uniquely evil.

People bullied things weaker than themselves to restore their own self-esteem, and through that, they indulged in the low pleasure of feeling superior.

Because humans were animals who lived with that evil desire in their hearts.

In other words—this thing called a power trip was exactly the discharge of that low desire.

These past few days.

The Geonpyeong Qing had infiltrated had changed drastically—and at the same time, not changed at all.

The part that had changed drastically was the disappearance of beggars.

Huh. There are no beggars in this city?

Where the hell did these bastards all go?

It wasn’t that there were none, but the beggars she did see were beggars she’d never seen before—when their eyes met, the only emotion reflected was wariness, like competitors from the same line of work seeing a rival for the first time.

Even to Qing, they were unfamiliar faces.

The beggars who’d been there before weren’t anywhere to be seen, and neither was the beggar gang that every city always had.

The comfortable underpass, ruin, and earthen burrow where the kingpins used to stay—same story.

Those spots were still occupied by unfamiliar beggars because they were good places for beggars to live, but to Qing they were newbie beggars she didn’t know.

What the hell?

Where did all those beggars go?

The answer was that they’d all been rounded up and were now convict laborers doing forced labor in the mines up north in Shanxi Province.

Qing didn’t know it, but the beggars who had originally been in Geonpyeong had, without realizing it, incurred the wrath of a very, very lofty person—and had been sentenced to lifelong penal labor.

It was a remarkably lenient measure.

Originally, instead of a New Year fireworks show, there had been a plan for a New Year artillery-shell festival.

But if you did that, then what?

If Geonpyeong disappeared, the barbarians would starve.

If the barbarians starved, they’d come looting even across the mountains.

Looting was something that happened somewhere every day anyway, so that part didn’t matter much—but if, in the process, the Mongol barbarians carved out mountain routes?

That could become a serious problem.

So with that chain of reasoning, the ministers rose up desperately and Geonpyeong survived.

Of course, it also helped that when a Western Depot figure came through to investigate and collected testimony from Geonpyeong commoners, the parts about the city people bullying the Plague Wretch were very naturally minimized.

It wasn’t exactly something you’d brag about—who would tell an outsider that they’d bullied beggars?

Of course, Qing didn’t know any of this.

The people of Geonpyeong treated the Plague Wretch as some animal in a human shape that couldn’t speak—so it wasn’t like she could understand them and pick anything up.

She only thought:

So these Geonpyeong bastards finally went and rounded up beggars.

Or did those Geonpyeong Tower bastards finally go and poison the scraps?

Well, whatever. It’s not my problem.

Meanwhile—

The part that hadn’t changed was Geonpyeong’s average level of human decency.

Throwing snowballs was basically cute.

The bastard who threw a rock—Qing made sure she saw that face.

But the bastard who splashed water—wasn’t that crossing a line?

Spraying water on a person in this cold—

Fine, if someone brought a waterskin and squeezed it so it sprayed out in a thin stream, you could call that a prank.

But the bastard who crept up carefully with a whole dipper-full because it was heavy—

Is that even a human being?

In the end, the dipper bastard suddenly slipped and dumped the whole thing over himself.

And apparently he fell the wrong way and snapped his ankle clean—so it turned into a truly unfortunate sight.

Anyway.

Besides that, there were people throwing inedible things.

Sure, back then she’d made a specialty out of showing the trick of “I’ll eat anything,” but still—

The worst of them all was bitterwood.

Bitterwood was so violently bitter that the moment you put it in your mouth, regardless of your stomach, gagging would surge up on its own.

And since there was no real use for bitterwood bark, why would someone go all the way into the mountains, peel bark off a bitterwood tree, and throw it at her?

Because they wanted to see that gagging, losing-your-mind eating show.

Then there were the little kids bringing sharp sticks and poking at her, jab-jab.

Well.

When the adults behaved like this, how could the kids not learn by watching?

Mm. You absolute bastard-fucks.

This is Geonpyeong’s average?

Truly—how could she be more grateful.

Thanks to that, no matter what she did to these bastards, she wouldn’t feel sorry.

Heh. Heh-heh...

The Plague Wretch was laughing.

It was a thoroughly ominous laugh.

But the people of Geonpyeong didn’t know the Plague Wretch.

“What is it, big brother? This bitch is laughing.”

“Leave her. Looks like she’s finally lost her mind.”

They only sneered.

And so—what would become of their future?