Chapter 2

A bowl of jajangmyeon and the start of a new life in the Ji Ge clan. (2/605)

New Life.

They say nothing in this world goes as you wish, and I am now experiencing that firsthand.

Watching my inn, which is falling apart, from a distance.

I was not originally from this wretched martial arts world.

I was a 24-year-old man living in Seoul, South Korea, in 2022.

The reason my life became such a mess is all because of this wretched Chinese continent.

As soon as I turned 20, I decided to take over and further develop my father's Chinese restaurant business by studying Chinese cuisine in China, the birthplace of Chinese cooking.

Graduating from a famous cooking school in Beijing with excellent grades and working at a well-known hotel in the same city, I thought my decision to study abroad wasn't bad.

No, it was very good.

I planned to gain a few years of experience and then help my father.

But the dog-like guanxi culture in China.

More dog-like than blood ties, hometown ties, or school ties, this culture made me leave China before I even completed a year of work at the hotel, boarding a ship back to Korea.

As I boarded the ship to Incheon, I shouted at the Chinese continent.

"If I ever set foot on Chinese soil again, I'm a dog!"

I vowed that I would never return to that dog-like China, which had been so dog-like to be with and from which I had already learned everything I needed.

However, the ship I was on sank into the cold waters of the Yellow Sea for unknown reasons that night.

When I woke up, I was in this body.

At first, it was quite bleak.

This body was truly bleak.

I woke up on the shore of Dongting Lake, drenched.

My name is Liu Qingyun, the eldest son of the Liu family, a humble clan in a small village in Fujian Province. My mother passed away early, and my father remarried but also died soon after.

Ultimately, I was left as an orphan, and my stepmother kicked me out with a small amount of money.

With that money, I tried to cross Dongting Lake but encountered bandits and, to avoid losing my money, threw myself into the lake.

When my dead body floated to the shore, I either recalled my previous life or possessed this body.

Risking my life for a few dozen silver taels.

What a fool!

'But was that me?'

When I came to my senses, I was trembling, either from the cold or from the pitiful state of this body, and I checked this body's plans.

I was truly a hopeless person.

The reason I was crossing Dongting Lake.

At 18, I had taken all my money and was heading to a martial arts sect to learn martial arts.

This body was traveling from Fujian through Jiangxi to Hunan, where Dongting Lake is located, to find Wudang Sect in Hubei.

Yes, I was looking for Wudang Sect to learn martial arts.

It was a bit pitiful, but I could somewhat understand myself before I recalled my previous life.

Every Korean man has read a martial arts novel at least once, and anyone who has read a martial arts novel has a dream!

The dream of coming to the martial arts world, learning powerful martial arts, leading the three flowers of the martial arts world, and defeating villains.

Thinking about it, it wasn't bad.

Men are animals that live by their dreams.

I don't know if this is a parallel world, a future life, or a past life, but since I was born into the martial arts world, learning great martial arts wasn't bad.

So, I followed this body's original plan and, after much hardship, arrived at Wudang Sect.

But, as expected, the dog-like guanxi culture.

This world also had guanxi, and people without connections couldn't even enter the sect.

But could I give up here? When a man draws his sword, he must cut something, or at least his gums.

If Hubei has Wudang, what does Shaanxi have?

Huashan and Zhongnan.

After a long journey to Shaanxi, I found the two sects, but Zhongnan turned me away, and Huashan said I was too old.

There was one last option, but I couldn't do it.

Because I didn't want to go to Shaolin in Henan, even if they offered.

In this life, I wanted to get married.

Even if I didn't become one of the three flowers of the martial arts world, I wanted to have a beautiful wife.

No, in my previous life, I was a virgin, and in this life, I wanted to be a monk? That was out of the question.

Since my previous life ended so meaninglessly, I wanted to at least get married in this life.

So, I absolutely refused to become a monk.

How could I live without alcohol, meat, and women?

With that in mind, I recalled the ancient sage's words that silkworms must eat mulberry leaves and headed to Sichuan.

Since the only thing I knew how to do was steal, I had only one option to survive.

What is it? 'Cooking,' cooking.

I had the memory of cooking from China, so I thought about opening a restaurant or an inn.

I knew many dishes that didn't exist in this era.

If I could get good word-of-mouth, I could make a fortune.

What's the point of learning martial arts?

What else could you encounter on the road besides a knife?

Money is the truth in any world.

'What can't be done with money?'

So, I decided to aim to become a self-made rich man through cooking.

Dominate the Central Plains with cooking! My heart swelled with pride!

'I will name my restaurant Joseon-gwan!'

With my goal set, I moved without hesitation.

First, I needed to find a place for my business.

Although my money was tight, I traveled as frugally as possible, saving my silver.

My stepmother didn't know, but I had a gold tael left by my biological mother hidden in my waistband.

So, I started another journey to find my first business location.

I already had a destination in mind.

I knew the best place for business.

A teacher at the Chinese cooking school in China once joked about the best place to open a restaurant if we were to travel back in time.

"Beijing is the best now, but if you were to travel back in time, where would you open a restaurant?"

"Beijing? Or Sichuan?"

"No, Qingchuan."

At the northern end of Sichuan, where the imperial road and the river meet, connecting Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi.

A strategic location where martial arts sects from all directions must pass to interact.

Even without martial arts sects in my previous life, it was a good location, and with martial arts sects, it was even better.

No matter how I thought about it, it was a good location.

Since it wasn't far from Zhongnan, where I had been, I headed to Qingchuan as soon as I had a plan.

But, as expected, guanxi!

How could a nobody live in such a place without connections?

People without connections couldn't even see the buildings.

Those who occasionally showed me buildings asked for unimaginable prices.

In the end, I could only look for the cheapest restaurant or inn I could afford with my money, and I was lucky enough to barely buy a gambling addict's inn.

However, the location was a bit away from Qingchuan, in a small village called Xin You Xian, on the same imperial road.

This was the limit of what I could afford with my money.

It wasn't a tall building with several floors but a single-story restaurant with a few annexes, on a slightly larger plot of land.

I bought the gambling addict's inn cheaply, repaired it myself, and renovated the kitchen.

I worked hard for a few days, repairing and cleaning, and when I opened the new inn in the morning, I felt good.

But then I heard the sound of the inn's restaurant being destroyed.

"Damn, I really want a cigarette..."

-Kudangtang! Kwaang! Ujikken!

The guys were fighting as if they were going to pull out the roots of the pillars and leave nothing behind.

Intact chairs were thrown out of the door and shattered on the ground.

A fire broke out inside and then subsided.

"Kkeueok!"

-Kwadang

How long did they fight?

The guys, fighting enthusiastically with the sound of rain in the background, finally stopped with a pig-slaughtering sound.

Suddenly, it became quiet.

-Ssaaah

The drizzle turned into a heavy rain, as if it were my tears.

After a long silence, I cautiously headed to the dark inn with a lamp.

My inn had a separate building for the restaurant and guest rooms.

The restaurant and guest rooms were a bit apart, so the martial artists had only wreaked havoc in the building with the kitchen and restaurant.

Since all the lights in the restaurant were out, I took a lamp from the small house where I lived and walked through the rain to the restaurant building.

-Salbang salbang

In the middle of the night, only the sound of the rain and my footsteps echoed.

-Pigeduk

I carefully opened the back door and entered, and a wave of blood smell hit me.

This place was clearly not a butcher shop, but the air in the restaurant building, which was not circulating due to the rain, was filled with a stronger smell of blood than a butcher shop.

'Shit! Shit!'

I couldn't help but think, "There must be a body somewhere."

As I cautiously moved my steps, I lit the extinguished lamps and the lamps outside the door, and the scene came into view.

"Where did my inn go? What kind of abandoned house is this?"

Four out of ten tables were broken, and the door at the entrance was half off.

The chairs were used like in a high school drama, and there were hardly any intact chairs left.

"Ah..."

A sigh escaped me.

'The unwritten rules of martial artists are all good, but making a mess after I even put up a grand opening sign is crossing the line!'

I screamed in my heart and checked the other damage after the tables and chairs.

Looking at the mess in my newly opened inn, which had turned into a beggars' den, the most noticeable and serious damage was the walls.

As soon as I saw the walls, I couldn't help but grab my neck.

Did they not like the interior? The walls, painted red, were now covered in blood.

Seeing the walls, which they had personally painted with blood, I couldn't help but curse.

"Damn bastards!"

I clutched my face with both hands and sat down, then quickly got up to clean the walls with a wet rag. Blood is hard to clean once it dries.

I didn't have time to be sad.

I moved the usable broken chairs to one side.

After roughly cleaning up and clearing the broken tables, I saw something fall to the ground—it was a human arm.

"Haha..."

The scarred bastards who messed up my inn on the opening day even left a gift for me.