With Generous Interest

— Whish! Whirl! Whish!

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

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

I ran through the three simple movements over and over. Counting my past life and this one, I had gone through them tens of thousands of times, and still they did not bore me in the least, because no one knew better than I did 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 might look like nothing at all, yet it was what divided victory from defeat, and to a martial artist victory and defeat meant living or dying, so it could never be taken lightly. Better still, with every round of training I felt my body growing, little by little.

— Whirl! Whish!

When I tightened my grip on the shaft, the spear tip wavered back and forth like the tail of a rattlesnake. This was the ever-shifting quality peculiar to the Yang Family Spear, plain to see. But the art was not all flowing grace.

“Hoo—.”

I let the breath out and lowered my center of gravity. As I drew back the hand that held the spear and twisted at the waist, the broad muscles of my back pulled tight and the force loaded cleanly. Pouring every ounce of strength and every nerve into the spear, I brought my foot down in the stomping step.

— THUD!

The recoil climbed up through the sole of my foot, past my calf, across my thigh, and on into my waist and 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 as the spear shot out in a straight line, piercing the empty air like an arrow loosed from a taut bowstring.

— Thrummmmm!

The shaft, driven out to its full reach, shivered and shook with the vibration. Windup, stomping step, thrust: a clean strike with nothing wasted in it. A thrill ran up my spine, and I smiled without meaning to.

“Hoo—.”

I drew the spear back on a long exhale. As I wiped the sweat beading on my forehead, a familiar voice spoke from inside my head.

Good.

Steadily drilling the fundamentals had not been the wrong choice, and the voice I had just heard seemed to prove it. With the effort coming back to me as growth I could see, even training I repeated every day never turned tedious. If anything, grinding my body into the ground was something I enjoyed, since the more pain I endured, the stronger I became.

— Grrrowl.

At the sound from my belly I looked up at the sky. The sun already stood high overhead.

I did not even notice the time going.

To think I had 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 training.

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 a wild tangle and her face 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.”

Still sobbing, she lifted her head, 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 breathed deeply again and again as I told her, and the color came back into her white face as her breathing steadied. Wiping her tear-soaked face, I asked,

“What happened to Doctor Yu?”
“Father collapsed. He’s bleeding, and he won’t wake up. Benefactor, please save my father!”

This was serious.

“Elder Kang!”

It did not take Elder Kang long to appear.

“You called, young master?”
“I’ll go on ahead. Bring the child and follow me to the inn.”
“Understood.”

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

“Doctor Yu!”
“…”

I shook him, but he showed no sign of waking. Before anything else, I stripped off his clothes to check for external injuries.

No serious wounds.

That was a relief. The blood soaking him came from the many cuts all over his body, not from any deep stab or slash a weapon would leave. By the look of them, several men had punched and kicked him, and 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. The faint scent of mugwort coming off them told me he had succeeded in making the new batch.

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 sight of her father in such a terrible state set Yeohui crying all over again. I ought to comfort her, but I was at a loss for what to say.

Not like I’ve ever soothed a crying kid before.

On a battlefield, one punch shut a crying man up, but I could hardly do that to Doctor Yu’s daughter. I weighed my words and said,

“It’ll be all right.”
“Waaaahh!”

Her crying only got louder, more bitter than a moment before. Damn it. Apparently 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. That was Elder Kang for you. This was why the weight of years could never be dismissed.

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

“Nnh…”
“Father!”

Yeohui ran and threw herself into his arms. Raising a hand with difficulty, he stroked her hair. Then he caught sight of me, and he spoke with a look of shame on his face.

“I have caused you worry.”
“Not at all. I looked you over, roughly, and found no serious injury. Just to be safe, I used the healing pill and the wound salve you made yourself.”
“I was in need of a subject to test the new medicine on, and now it seems I have tested it on myself. Haha.”

Seeing him joke eased my mind a little.

“From the look of your injuries, it seems you were beaten. How did it happen?”
“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. They took the gold you gave me as well, Benefactor, every coin of it. I am sorry.”
“That does not 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.”

I frowned at that. Qingzhou, in Shandong, had no shortage of men who lived off blackmail and intimidation, but only one of that lot had 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 do you mean to do?”
“House Yang never fails to repay kindness and grudges alike. Whatever we were given has to be paid back in full — no, more than that.”

I took up my spear and walked out of the inn. I did not have to look for them. It had been more than ten years, but the place where the moneylenders gathered still came back to me vividly, and 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, because 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, and I felt the killing intent in the eyes of the men who had drawn their weapons.

Sixteen of them.

For me, not yet even second-rate, that many was daunting. First I had to take away the advantage their numbers gave them. I planted myself in front of the broken door and set my stance, since 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!”

Worked up by my taunt, 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 upward with the shaft and knocked the sword away. The blow was more than the man could withstand, and the sword flew out of his hand.

I had no need to hunt for an opening when he was nothing but openings. 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, and 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, and the same goes for the Mad Dog of Blood Sand Plain. There is no carelessness in me.

The violent movement had heated my body, but my head could not be allowed to heat up with it. Body hot, head cold. I had to keep my own composure while shaking theirs.

“What’s this? Not coming? All of you against one greenhorn, and you aren’t ashamed?”

Stung, the men rushed in again, 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, and 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 low, cringing abjectly. I looked down at him and asked,

“Where is the money?”
“The iron chest! It’s 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 from him and fitted it into the lock of the chest.

— Click.

When I opened the chest, the money pouch I had given Doctor Yu lay inside, piled up with several dozen taels of silver and a heap of promissory notes. 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! Haven’t I given you everything you wanted? I beg you, please!”
“That’s 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’ll do anything you tell me, anything at all!”
“Will you?”
“I will! I beg you!”
“Don’t worry. I’m 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! Didn’t you say you would spare me?!”
“I did. I’m going to let you live.”
“Then why…”
“I said I’d let you live. I never said I wouldn’t 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, and blood kept welling out between his fingers.

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

“I keep my promises. So you don’t need to 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.