With Generous Interest

— Whish! Whirl! Whish!

I swung my spear in the courtyard, the same as any other day. The content of the training never changed.

Lan, Na, Zha. Strike aside, block, thrust.

I ran through the three simple movements over and over. Between my past life and this one they were motions I had gone through tens of thousands of times, and they still did not bore me in the least. I knew better than anyone what fruit the effort I was putting in now would bear.

Life and death are decided in an instant.

A few seconds, no more. That sliver of time looked like nothing at all, and yet it was what divided victory from defeat. To a martial artist, victory and defeat meant living or dying, so it could never be taken lightly. And with every round of training I felt the growth in my own body, little by little.

— Whirl! Whish!

I put strength into the hand gripping the shaft, and the spear tip wavered back and forth like the tail of a rattlesnake. The ever-shifting quality peculiar to the Yang Family Spear showed itself plainly.

But the art was not all flowing grace.

“Hoo—.”

I let the breath out and lowered my center of gravity. Drawing back the hand that held the spear, I twisted at the waist, and the broad muscles of my back pulled tight as the force loaded in clean. Every ounce of strength and every nerve poured into the spear, and I drove down the stomping step.

— THUD!

The recoil came climbing up through the sole of my foot. The force passed my calf, crossed my thigh, reached my waist and my shoulder.

It was a perfect moment.

“Hup!”

I snatched a short breath in, loaded all of that force into the spear, and drove it out.

— CRACK!

A bursting sound went up, like the snap of a whip. The spear stretched out in a straight line and pierced the empty air like an arrow off a bowstring drawn taut.

— Thrummmmm!

The shaft, driven out to its full reach, shivered and shook with the vibration. From the preparatory motion through the stomping step to the thrust, it was a clean strike with nothing wasted in it. A thrill ran up my spine, and a smile came before I knew it.

“Hoo—.”

I let out a long breath and drew the spear back. As I wiped the sweat beading on my forehead, a familiar voice came from inside my head.

Good.

Drilling the fundamentals day after day had not been the wrong choice, and the voice I had just heard was proof of it. When the effort came back to me as growth, even the training I repeated every day never turned tedious. If anything, grinding my body into the ground was close to a pleasure. The more pain I bore, the stronger I became.

— Grrrowl.

The sound out of my belly brought my head up, and the sun already stood high overhead.

I did not even notice the time going.

To have gotten so absorbed in training that I missed a meal. That would not do. If I meant to win my fights, eating mattered every bit as much as drilling.

I was setting the spear down to fill my empty stomach when the sound of weeping reached me from somewhere.

“Hah, hic, hk, khk…”

Doctor Yu’s daughter, Yu Yeohui, stood at the main gate of the Yang manor. Her hair was tangled into a wild mess and her face was a smear of tears.

It has happened, then.

I picked the spear back up and went to her. Up close she looked worse still: her clothes caked with dirt, her arms and legs covered in scrapes.

“Yeohui.”

She lifted her head from her sobbing, and the moment she found me she caught hold of my robe and cried harder.

“Wahhh! Benefactor, hk…”

The small hand gripping my robe trembled like an aspen leaf. She sobbed as though her breath would give out, and her lips were turning blue.

I lowered myself to meet her eyes.

“Calm down. Take a big breath in. And out.”
“Hkk! Hoo—.”

She repeated the deep breaths at my word, and the color came back into a face that had gone white. Her breathing steadied as well.

I wiped her tear-soaked face and asked.

“What has happened to Doctor Yu?”
“Father has collapsed. He is bleeding, and he cannot come to his senses. Benefactor, please save my father!”

The situation was serious.

“Elder Kang!”

Elder Kang appeared not long after my shout.

“You called, young master?”
“I will go on ahead, so bring the child and follow me to the inn.”
“Understood.”

The moment the answer came I kicked off the ground and ran for the inn where Doctor Yu was staying. I reached it and threw the door open, and there he was, lying collapsed and covered in blood.

“Doctor Yu!”
“…”

I shook him, but there was no sign of him waking. The first thing I did was strip his clothes off to check for external injuries.

No serious wounds.

That was a relief. The blood soaking him came from the many torn cuts all over his body; there were no deep stab or slash wounds from a weapon. From the look of them, he had been punched and kicked by several men. It was a wonder nothing had broken under a beating like that.

I looked around the room. On the table sat a medicinal pill and a small medicine bottle.

The healing pill and the wound salve.

A faint scent of mugwort came off them. He had succeeded in making the new batch, then.

I fed him the healing pill, then took out the salve and spread it over his wounds. As I worked I checked his condition again, and thankfully there was nothing noticeably wrong.

About the time I finished with the salve, Elder Kang came into the room with Yeohui.

“Father… hkk…”

The terrible state Doctor Yu was in set Yeohui crying all over again. I ought to have comforted her, but I was at a loss for what to say.

Should’ve learned how to soothe a crying kid.

On a battlefield a crying man was settled with one punch, and I could hardly do that to Doctor Yu’s daughter.

I turned over what to say and opened my mouth.

“It will be all right.”
“Waaaahh!”

Her crying got louder. She wept more bitterly than she had a moment before.

Damn it. That had been the wrong thing to say.

I was still casting about for a way to comfort her when Elder Kang stepped in and gathered Yeohui up in his arms, patting her back.

“There now, child, do not fret. Your father will be up before long. If he opens his eyes and finds you crying, think how it will grieve him. So let us stop, now. You will spoil that pretty face.”

At the kindly voice and the hand patting her back, Yeohui’s crying died down.

Elder Kang, as ever.

There was no dismissing the weight of years.

A little while later Doctor Yu groaned and opened his eyes.

“Nnh…”
“Father!”

Yeohui ran to him and threw herself into his arms. He raised a hand with difficulty and stroked her hair. Then he caught sight of me, and a look of shame came over his face as he spoke.

“I have caused you worry.”
“Not at all. I looked you over roughly and there was nothing badly injured. Just in case, I used the healing pill and the wound salve you made yourself.”
“I was in need of a subject to test the efficacy of the new medicine on, and it seems I have experienced it firsthand. Haha.”

That he could joke put me somewhat at ease.

“From the look of the injuries it seems you were beaten. How did it come about?”
“I was on my way back from buying medicinal herbs when I got into a quarrel with some men. They were working an angle to squeeze money out of me, and when I said a word about it they came at me in a pack. The gold you gave me was taken as well, Benefactor, every coin of it. I am sorry.”
“That is no matter. Do you happen to remember what they looked like?”
“They were men I had never seen before. And it happened so quickly that…”

Doctor Yu closed his eyes. Then he let out an “Ah!” and opened them again.

“One of the men who came at me had a very large mole on his forehead.”

At that my brows drew together. Qingzhou, in Shandong, had no shortage of men who lived off blackmail and intimidation. But among that lot, only one carried a large mole on his forehead.

Spot.

The vicious moneylender who had threatened and tormented me and my family in my past life. That one man.

I had meant to have nothing to do with him this time around and had left him alone, but now that he had laid a hand on one of my people, that was no longer possible. I should have cut the rotten sprout off before it grew. Regret came flooding in.

“Doctor Yu, rest and recover for a while. Elder Kang, stay and look after the two of them.”
“Understood, young master.”

As I rose from my seat, Yu Baegun asked,

“Benefactor, what is it you mean to do?”
“House Yang repays kindness and grudge alike, without fail. As much as we were given — no, more than that — has to be given back.”

I took up my spear and walked out of the inn. I did not have to go looking for them. More than ten years had passed, and still the place where the moneylenders gathered came back to me vividly. I went straight to their den and kicked the gate in.

— BANG!

The door panel flew off with a roar, and the men gambling inside started and turned to look at me. Among them was the one with the mole on his forehead. Spot.

“Ah, f—k! You scared me!”
“What the hell is that little bastard doing?”

The men looked me over and sneered. Three of them came my way.

“Hey, kid. You have to pay for that door you broke, don’t you? Come here a minute.”
“This one is pretty enough to be worth some money. Let’s sell him off.”
“Do that and that kid’s spear goes through your gut first.”
“Before that, I think I’d be going through the kid’s backside first.”
“Bwahahaha!”

The men cackled, spouting their filth.

“…”

I glared at them without a word. In their eyes I was nothing but a newborn with the blood not yet dry on his head.

All the better.

Nothing is so easy as putting down an enemy who has let his guard down.

I thrust the spear forward, lightly.

— Shk-shk-shk!

Three thrusts.

And then.

“Agh!”
“Grraaagh!”
“Kwuh-hk!”

Holes opened in the arms and legs of the three men who had been sniggering in front of me. All three went sprawling, screams pouring out of them where the laughter had been, and the blood running from their wounds stained the floor red.

“Fucking hell!”
“Has the brat lost his mind?!”
“You’re dead. Everyone, weapons out!”

The rest of them spat curses and got to their feet. I could feel the killing intent in the eyes above the drawn weapons.

Sixteen of them.

For me, not yet even second-rate, it was a daunting number. First, take away their advantage in numbers. I planted myself in front of the broken door and set my stance; in a narrow passage they could not all rush in at once, however many of them there were.

“Come on, then, trash.”
“Kill him!”
“Hraaah!”

My taunt worked them up, and they came at me one after another. The first to rush in brought his sword down over my head, and I named the counter to myself as I moved.

Lan.

I struck the shaft upward and knocked the sword away. The man could not withstand the blow, and the sword flew out of his hand.

There was no need to go hunting for an opening. Not one place on him was anything else. I drove the spear out and ran it through his thigh.

“Agh!”

Ignoring the man pitching forward with a scream, I drove the spear into the ones rushing in from left and right.

Zha.

The spear tip shot out like a bolt and bored precisely into the shoulders of the men holding weapons.

“Kkh—!”
“Aaagh!”

The two who had been coming at me from either side dropped their weapons. In the meantime I recovered the spear and set my stance again.

Do not let your guard down. Take them cleanly.

The tiger’s gaze, the ox’s stride.¹

They say a tiger gives its all even when it hunts a rabbit. The same goes for the Mad Dog of Blood Sand Plain. There is no carelessness in me.

My body had heated up with the violent movement, but my head must not heat up along with it. Body hot, head cold. I had to hold my own composure while shaking theirs.

“What are you doing? Not coming? All of you against one greenhorn and you are not ashamed?”

Stung by it, the men rushed in again. They were moths flying into the flame without knowing their own bodies were burning. I put them down one by one.

Perhaps the time it takes to drink a cup of tea had passed.

The fight was over.

Every man in the room was rolling on the floor and groaning, and the only one left standing whole was me.

I went over to Spot, who was shivering in the corner.

“Spare me, my lord! Please, my life at least—!”

He bowed his head in an abject cringe. I looked down at him and asked,

“Where is the money?”
“The iron chest! It is in that iron chest!”

He pointed a trembling hand at the iron chest in the corner.

“The key.”
“Here it is!”

He pulled a key from his waist. I took it and turned it in the lock of the chest.

— Click.

Inside lay the money pouch I had given Doctor Yu, several dozen taels of silver, and a heap of promissory notes, all piled up together. I gathered every one of them into my robes and went back over to Spot, then brought the spear tip up to the end of his nose.

“Now, then. Time to settle the account.”
“What? My lord! Spare me! Have I not given you everything you wanted? I beg you, please!”
“That is not enough.”

I raised the spear and stabbed his arms and legs in turn.

“Grraaagh!”

To think he could not endure even this much without screaming. Pitiful beyond words.

Spot caught hold of my foot with his one good arm.

“Please, my lord! Spare me! I will do anything you tell me, anything at all!”
“Will you?”
“I will! I beg you!”
“Do not worry. I am going to let you live.”
“Thank you! Thank you truly!”

He bobbed his head over and over, a wretched thing to watch. I raised the spear and stabbed his remaining arm.

“Aaagh! My lord! Did you not say you would spare me?!”
“I did. I am going to let you live.”
“Then why…”
“I said I would let you live. I never said I would not cripple you, did I?”

The instant the words were out, I swung the spear at his ankle.

— Shuk.

The spear blade sheared the tendon clean through.

“Grraaagh!”

Spot screamed and clutched at his ankle. Blood welled out between his fingers without stopping.

I crouched down in front of him and said in a low voice,

“I keep my promises. So you need not worry about dying.”

That was only one leg so far. He still had three good limbs left.

I lifted the corners of my mouth and raised the spear.

Kindness or grudge, either one.

Interest is a thing to be collected generously.