Chapter 897: Shenyang Trip (5)

Yeah, having a horse is definitely convenient.

First off, you don’t have to walk on your own feet.

And you can load up a lot of baggage.

It’s even pretty fast.

Most of all, a horse is—an animal-intelligence ride with fully autonomous driving!

And even without much input, it follows the road on its own and just keeps going, plus it’s got a safety-driving feature where it avoids danger by itself!

Back in Qing’s hometown, they used to say: there are people who’ve never ridden their own car, but there’s no one who’s only ridden it once.

Still... the ride quality kinda sucks.

A horse is a living animal. And when it comes to animals, even if there’s some general commonality by breed, each one has its own personality.

Just like dogs of the same breed can be wildly different, horses are the same—starting with how they walk and run.

Some horses try to be considerate of their rider, giving the smoothest, steadiest comfort they can.

Others just get excited the second they’re outside and move with a springy, bouncy rhythm. It looks light and cheerful to onlookers, but the rider up top isn’t cheerful at all while getting bounced up and down.

Royal Rump was so lazy it practically refused to pick up speed on purpose.

Even if you nudged and nagged from the driver’s seat to hurry up, it’d pretend not to know and keep plodding along slowly.

And this bastard Lu Bu?

This bastard’s ride quality is filthy.

It’s not even “bouncy” anymore—at this point, with every breath, her pelvis was practically lifting an inch off the saddle.

When they were only crossing mountains, it was just, Yeah, he’s a bit rough.

But the moment they hit the flatland—one hundred li stretching out to Joyang County—and entered a basin inside the Tian Mountain range, the ride quality didn’t just get worse.

It got violently worse.

And if you didn’t keep tapping him to warn him, he’d sneakily raise the speed, like he was protesting on purpose because he wanted to bolt.

If Lu Bu knew, he would’ve gone, Damn, what a sensitive human, and failed to hide how startled he was.

Unlike Royal Rump, a pack-horse, Lu Bu was a warhorse and the leader of the herd—he’d been the beloved mount of a Mongol warrior who’d thundered across the steppe at full speed.

A warhorse wants to run.

So he really was bouncing on purpose to complain to his rider.

You could say Qing read her beast’s inner thoughts with uncanny accuracy.

But Lu Bu’s tragedy was that his protest didn’t work on Qing.

Riding demands a lot of stamina.

Especially powerful durability in the lower body, including the waist.

Basically, you have to clamp the saddle tight with your thighs. And since you’re constantly moving up and down, impact keeps stacking in the pelvis—so your waist muscles have to keep balancing nonstop.

So if a high-energy horse complains through ride quality, most riders can’t hold out.

Usually, if you let the horse sprint at full speed for a while and burn off its stamina, it quickly gets satisfied and smooths out.

But Qing’s body wasn’t fragile enough to get wrecked by the tantrum of a single warhorse.

Honestly, Qing’s horsemanship wasn’t something you could generously call “good.”

More accurately, it was bad.

So rather than “riding a horse,” she was at the level of being “set on a horse,” or “stuck to the horse.”

Horsemanship is, originally, a technique to reduce the huge stamina drain riding demands.

Put another way: if you can handle the huge stamina drain, you don’t really need to be skilled at riding.

If your body is strong, your brain doesn’t have to suffer.

If your body is strong, you don’t need finesse.

But Moyong Jun was still young, so he didn’t know this truth.

So Qing couldn’t help but look uncomfortable.

Because even while moving at nothing more than a fast walking pace, Qing’s head was bobbing up and down by almost half a head’s height.

Which meant the other heads hanging under Qing’s head were moving pretty violently too.

“Beggar Sister, I think Lu Bu wants to run.”

“Mmm. I knew it, right?”

“Beggar Sister, should we run?”

Mmm. Something about Beggar Sister hits the ear...

If he’d said, Sister, should we run? it would’ve felt like he was acting cute and flirty.

But Beggar Sister makes it feel like, We got caught stealing food—run.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother her even when he calls her “sister.”

Thinking that, Qing shook her head.

“Animals get spoiled if you coddle them, you know? This bastard—what a cheap trick. Looks like the barbarian chief was a sweet guy to his horse, huh?”

“You can’t treat a horse like that. Especially warhorses. They say they’re overflowing with energy, so if you don’t let it out, their temperament gets even dirtier.”

“...No, that—mm. That kind of makes sense?”

Come to think of it, they said dogs—especially big breeds and herding types—go crazy if you don’t walk them.

Mm. It’s like a dog.

“Then I’ll go for a quick run?”

“Huh? You’re not taking me with you?”

“We have to ride all day. You’ll get tired, Jun.”

The faster the horse goes, the more brutally the rider’s stamina gets drained.

And the lighter the rider, the harder it becomes—especially if you’re light, weak, and on top of that your legs are short because you’re a little kid.

“Uh, Beggar Sister? I’m Moyong Jun, you know? I’m Moyong.”

“Huh. Then Jun’s Moyong, what else would you be? Want to be something else? Standard Jun? Targeting Jun? Kite-falcon Jun? International Standard?”

“Is there really a family name called International Standard?”

“If you look hard enough, maybe? Barbarians have three-character and four-character family names.”

“Mmm... if we’re picking an alias, wouldn’t Jang Jun be better? Jang is common.”

“Kim-Lee-Park—no, in the Central Plains it’s Wang-Li-Jang. The most common would be Wang Jun.”

“Wang Jun feels kind of... off, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? Feels like a waiter name or something?”

If other people heard them, they’d lose their minds.

Like, what the hell is the context for this conversation?

Also, there was one more person here: the taciturn man, Green Guard.

But Green Guard already had the Qing-blinders on, so he was just watching this nonsense with a pleased smile.

The Heavenly Flower Sword is so kind to children. She has such a considerate personality. A woman who likes children is a guarantee of good character—she’d make a fine mother, wouldn’t she.

“Anyway. I’m Moyong Jun. The Moyong Family.”

“WOOOOW. I HAD NO IDEA. AMAZING.”

“Ugh, no, that’s not what I mean.

“Then what do you mean?”

“Do you really not know?”

“We already knew our secret friend was Moyong even before we became secret friends, right?”

“My family is famous for horsemanship.”

“Huh? Seriously?”

But Qing didn’t know.

She generally didn’t know much, but this time she could feel a little wronged.

The Moyong Family’s horsemanship was recognized by everyone as the best in the Central Plains, but it wasn’t something anyone spoke out loud casually.

Because praising the Moyong Family’s horsemanship meant talking about their origins.

The Moyong Family had originally been a great Jurchen clan—one of the barbarian tribes that used to hold Liaoning land.

And when you thought of infamous horse-riding barbarians, wasn’t it the Mongols and the Jurchens?

So even if you praised the Moyong Family’s horsemanship, it could come out as: So your family’s roots are those rootless barbarian bandit-raiders, huh.

In truth, if they weren’t an overwhelming power counted among the Central Plains’ Five Great Families, the Moyong Family would’ve been treated like dirt.

Even now, learned scholars and lofty central officials in Beijing tended to lump the Moyong Family in as “barbarian bastards.”

“So you’re confident in riding?”

Qing glanced at Green Guard.

Even if the Moyong Family rode well, whether Moyong Jun rode well was a separate issue.

Like how the world’s cutest JeGal Hyang-i wasn’t exactly “Jegal Family,” and how JeGal Ihyeon, the smartest of the smart, wasn’t exactly “Jegal Family” either.

Mm. I miss Hyang-i. I should’ve seen her before I left. I feel like I’m getting withdrawal symptoms because my Hyang supply is low. I should stop by on the way back.

But Green Guard’s reaction was this.

Nod.

Green Guard—taciturn as a man could be—was guaranteeing it not with words, but with action.

“Then should we run a bit? Lu Bu—”

NEEEIIIGH!

Lu Bu cut Qing off with a thunderous whinny, like he’d instantly recognized his name.

And without a kick, without a pull on the reins, he burst straight into a run.

Sprint start.

Sprint end.

Lu Bu really was a fine horse.

Moyong Jun and Green Guard’s horses were completely exhausted, snorting hard with strings of drool, and sweating buckets—

(horses sweat a lot, so it really does pour)

—so with the cold weather, steam was billowing off them like they were a dumpling shop’s steamer.

Only now did Lu Bu seem to have worked his temper off and calmed down. His sweat was only trickling, and he didn’t look that strained.

“Still, that’s surprising. I thought he’d just break away and shoot off alone. He doesn’t look that tired, but he suddenly got quiet.”

“Ah, that. It’s because he’s a lead stallion. Lead stallions have a personality like that—they like running while leading the other horses. They said lead stallions have a strong desire for power.”

“Mmm. Since when do horses crave power. Still, I could tell the moment he ran to me the instant his old owner died.”

Anyway.

One hundred eighty li east from Geonpyeong.

Way faster than expected—she thought they’d arrive around sunset, but they got there in half a day, huh?

A full day is all day, and half a day is half of that, so a quarter-day? No, wait—if a “full day” is half of the day, then what? Did I have it wrong?

The answer is: both.

Because “a full day” can mean either “all day,” or “one whole side of the day, morning or afternoon.”

Anyway.

Joyang County—arrived.

*****

When you got to an inn, of course you ate first.

To Qing, that was just normal life.

And in that normalcy, something like the arrival time didn’t count as an obstacle.

Even though it was an awkward in-between time around lunchtime thanks to Lu Bu’s sprint instinct, Qing ate first anyway.

After that, she boiled water during the meal, then soaked herself and scrubbed off all the grime packed in from beggar life—

Ahhh. This is paradise.

Do you know this pleasure—washing hair you haven’t washed in over ten days?

Wow. This is seriously the strongest. There’s no way to describe it. It’s insane.

After sweating it all out—

And especially because Qing was in that half-immune-to-cold, half-immune-to-heat state, where she was almost immune to chill and half-immune to warmth, she couldn’t even sweat unless she baked herself in truly hot water—so she couldn’t help but lose her mind over it.

And finally, freedom from the scratchy rags she’d been wearing nonstop.

Because if you put on good clothes before bathing, it feels gross.

Putting on silk again after so long, her hypersensitive skin—sharpened by Awakening Divine Art—was brushed softly, sending up a strange, crawling pleasure.

Yeah. This is why I do the beggar act.

So Qing, having “laundered” her identity from Beggar Venerable back into Heavenly Flower Sword, headed back to the table she’d reserved by the second-floor railing.

She already ate earlier, so now it was time for dessert.

Food is food. Dessert is dessert.

A woman’s bath is long.

Qing’s bath was long too.

Moyong Jun, who had come down first, looked at Qing with a strangely disappointed expression.

What? Why are you disappointed?

Qing tilted her head.

“Hm? Why? Ah—do you still not know my face? Because I’m wearing a face veil? You wanted to see my face?”

Come to think of it, that might be true.

At first she was a beggar, then a face veil, and this time a human-skin mask over a beggar, then she took off the human-skin mask and put the face veil back on.

She hadn’t been trying to hide it on purpose, but the timing never lined up.

But Moyong Jun shook his head.

“Not that. Anyway. Hup.”

Moyong Jun hurriedly covered his mouth.

Qing’s eyes glittered with mischief.

Anyway? Anyway what?

Don’t tell me he believes the ugly-flower-beggar theory. Has he never heard the Heavenly Flower Sword—Number One Beauty Under Heaven theory? Or does he not believe it?

“Ah—sorry about what I just said. That was mean, right?”

“Mmm. Still, you know it was mean now. I’m so proud I’m about to cry.”

“It’s because Beggar Sister isn’t beggar-like. I like it when Beggar Sister is beggar-like.”

What is this—trying to roast her? Right after she said she was proud?

Could you watch your spacing?

Qing nodded along.

“Mmm. Our secret friend likes beggar-like things, huh? Yeah, no way around it. What a beggar-like taste.”

“But... you’re a chivalrous hero...”

“What kind of thought process gets you to ‘chivalrous hero’ from there? What does a beggar have to do with a chivalrous hero? You only become a chivalrous hero by doing chivalrous hero things.”

“But still. You have to be beggar-like to be cool...”

“Mmm. Beggar... mm. Never mind.”

Qing could pour out beggar insults by the reservoir, not just a bucket.

But from the look of it, it wasn’t even one of the Old Sects he liked—

He liked the Beggars’ Union.

But why the Beggars’ Union? Aren’t they those guys where you can’t tell if they’re righteous or not?

Still, Qing held it in.

Insulting something the other person likes is rude.

And nothing is uglier than someone who goes, I hate it, so you have to hate it too.

“Whatever. Let’s eat pastries. Pastries. I don’t even know how many pastries they have here. Or should we ask if there’s a decent dessert teahouse?”

At that, Moyong Jun and Green Guard’s pupils started trembling.

But since Green Guard was a taciturn man, there was only one answer.

“You’re going to eat again? Even after all that?”