I Will Start Doing Business In Jungwon From Today [EN]: Chapter 2

When Jo Gwang-yun opened his eyes, he wasn’t even slightly confused about whether he was in this world or the next.

Having never experienced death, the familiar sensation in his body clearly told him that he was alive.

Hoping he didn’t have any severe injuries, he put strength into his hands and feet.

‘Huh?’

He was fine.

He clearly felt strength entering his fingertips and toes.

Mustering his courage, he abruptly raised his upper body, only then realizing that there were more than one or two strange things.

First of all, his body was light.

Too light, to the point where he felt a spring-like elasticity.

Also, this wasn’t inside an airplane.

If rescue workers had moved him, it should be a hospital, but it was hard to think of this place as a hospital.

It looked like an abandoned house, filled with the pungent smell of mold.

And the strangest thing was…

“Huh? What is this…? Ugh!”

When Jo Gwang-yun realized that the strange feeling coming from his back and buttocks was actually people, his body literally sprang up like a spring, and he ran straight outside where the sunlight was visible.

* * *

After calming his surprised heart outside the abandoned house and cautiously checking it again, Jo Gwang-yun couldn’t help but doubt his eyes.

More than ten bodies, all dead and spitting blood.

In particular, the corpse in the center of the abandoned house, which he had been lying on, was dried up like a mummy.

The corpses found in the abandoned house were horrifying enough, but he couldn’t just be shocked because of his confusing situation.

He searched around the abandoned house to find the crashed plane, but found no trace of it.

“Ah, my phone!”

Jo Gwang-yun rummaged through his suit pockets and remembered that he had put his phone in the airplane seat pocket. All he had was his passport and wallet, so requesting rescue was impossible.

In the end, all he could do for survival was trudge down the mountain.

However, going down a mountain without knowing where he was and with a rough path was not an easy task. Especially in a suit and dress shoes.

“Damn it, I survived the plane crash, but I’m going to die from being stranded…”

When these complaining words came out, Jo Gwang-yun stopped in his tracks.

He was half out of his mind, so he didn’t notice that his body was strange.

His pants kept slipping down, and he pulled them up several times, and his breathing was even as he came down the rough mountain.

Wasn’t he someone with terrible stamina who would pant after climbing just a few stairs?

The moment Jo Gwang-yun felt the change in his body, he checked his belt first.

It was loose.

The belly that had been bulging out like ET was gone.

When he lifted his shirt, he saw unfamiliar abs… a six-pack. It was the best he had ever looked, and he had never had abs even in his teens when he was healthiest.

The reason he hurriedly started taking off his clothes wasn’t just because of the six-pack. There was something like ink on his six-pack, and he instinctively knew it was a tattoo.

“What… what is this?”

It wasn’t because he thought there would be no one to see him in the deep mountains that he took off all his clothes. He would have stripped naked even if it was Gwanghwamun intersection [a major, busy intersection in Seoul]. That’s how shocking his changed body was.

He swore he had never had such a body. Even in his teens, when he was physically healthiest, he was flabby. Now, he saw the muscular body of a fighter he had only seen on TV, and a bizarre pattern of tattoos leading from his chest to his stomach.

In a flash, a thought struck him, and he touched his face.

However, he couldn’t tell the change in his face just by touching it. He only felt smooth, taut skin instead of the sagging cheeks he had since his mid-30s.

Jo Gwang-yun tightened his loose belt again and started running down the rough mountain path.

Even in his absurd situation, an irresistible smile formed on his lips. He felt a strong power in his legs running down the rough mountain, and he also felt the vitality constantly surging from his throbbing lungs and heart.

If it weren’t for being stranded in a deep mountain he didn’t know, it couldn’t have been better.

The reason he suddenly stopped running was because he heard the sound of water flowing.

Water that could be used as a mirror.

And the thought that following the stream would lead him to the bottom of the mountain.

Jo Gwang-yun started running again in the direction of the sound of water.

He found a trickling stream, but the flowing water couldn’t be a mirror. He ran again along the stream.

The water definitely collects somewhere.

His thought was right.

The collected water he found with difficulty was not as clear as a mirror, but it was enough to check what kind of face it was.

Jo Gwang-yun’s appearance, which he had completely forgotten, was floating in the water.

It wasn’t accurate, but it was his face when he was younger, or rather, when he was a child. The only difference was that there were no pimples that he hated so much.

After staring intently for a while, Jo Gwang-yun put his face in the water and raised his head when it was hard to bear because he was suffocating.

“Ptoo-!”

He spat out the water he had been holding in his mouth and stared blankly at the rippling surface for a long time.

As the surface calmed down again, Jo Gwang-yun shook his butt and stood up.

“Shit… Is this what a coma is…?”

Jo Gwang-yun was convinced that his body was lying in a hospital room with a tube inserted into his mouth and nose.

* * *

“That bastard, is he spacing out again?”

Old man Won, the owner of a noodle shop that was quite famous in the neighborhood, muttered to the young man who was staring blankly outside and shouted.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to clean up? How long has it been since the customers left? Why are you dawdling?”

Whether he didn’t hear the old man’s nagging or not, Jo Gwang-yun was still staring outside where the chilly wind was blowing.

Seeing the cold wind blowing again, it seemed that it had already been a year since he had been in this strange world that looked like ‘ancient China’.

And the past year was a time for Jo Gwang-yun to adapt to this strange world.

This place is not 21st century China, but past China called Yu (柳).

As Jo Gwang-yun, who only knew about the Qin Empire, the Three Kingdoms period, and the Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties when it came to Chinese history, there was no way of knowing when the era called Yu (柳) was.

However, judging from the fact that paper was common, he could only guess that it was after the Three Kingdoms period.

The reason he was convinced that his guess was correct was because he had seen bamboo strips woven together used instead of paper in movies and Chinese dramas related to the Three Kingdoms period.

In addition, Jo Gwang-yun realized several times over the past year that he had completely misunderstood the concept of a class society, which he only knew in his head.

In the class system of emperor, nobles, commoners, and slaves, the emperor and nobles were not much different.

However, he realized that the concepts of commoners and slaves were completely wrong.

He thought of commoners as ordinary citizens in modern society, but commoners in this era were not citizens but merely labor providers with no civil rights.

Perhaps commoners were closer to the slaves he had thought of.

Then what about slaves…?

They’re just livestock. Not human. Just convenient livestock that use human language.

Because they are livestock, they have no obligations that commoners bear. They don’t pay taxes and are not subject to conscription. But even if the owner beats them for no reason, they had to take it, and even if they were innocently killed, they had to accept it as a matter of course.

The price of six strong young male slaves is one horse, and a female slave who has reached the age to give birth must marry a male slave designated by the owner and give birth to children… no, produce them.

In such a world, it was a great fortune that he was not regarded as a slave. The reason why the people here didn’t think of him as a slave was because he could read and write, and because of his changed body.

Jo Gwang-yun’s white face, reflected in a well-polished copper mirror, though not as clear as a modern mirror, made it difficult to see him as a slave, and his sturdy body made him look like a well-fed and well-raised noble’s son.

Jo Gwang-yun himself was initially so unfamiliar with his changed body that he was embarrassed, but as he became accustomed to the changes, he even felt joy.

“If I go back with this body, how many Olympic gold medals could I win?”

It wasn’t just once or twice that he muttered to himself like this.

That’s because he could easily lift the iron pot for boiling noodles with one hand, and he felt that he had the heart of a marathon runner with tremendous endurance.

He could jump over most fences with one kick, and he also realized that he had dynamic visual acuity to the point where he could clearly see falling raindrops.

But there are no Olympics or professional teams here.

A strong body is nothing more or less than a son of a prestigious general’s family or a strong man.

Moreover, this was a place where humans who seemed to come out of martial arts novels actually existed. Jo Gwang-yun’s strong body was insignificant like a dried leaf in front of them.

It was about half a year ago that Jo Gwang-yun learned about the existence of beings called Jianghu people or Murim people [Wuxia martial artists].

Around the busy dinner time, the noodle shop suddenly became noisy, and all the customers who were swallowing noodles threw down their chopsticks and ran outside.

“What? Hey! You have to pay before you leave!”

When Jo Gwang-yun shouted and tried to grab the fleeing customers, he found old man Won running away with them.

Left alone in this absurd situation, Jo Gwang-yun checked that two people had not yet escaped and approached them.

In any era, in any place, there are always guys like this.

Males who pick fights over trivial things and try to confirm that they are superior.

But most of these males were subdued by Jo Gwang-yun’s terrifying power and wagged their tails.

“Are you the ones who caused this commotion…”

But this time, Jo Gwang-yun wagged his tail in front of the two. No, he froze completely.

Because the action scene from Stephen Chow’s movie Kung Fu Hustle unfolded before Jo Gwang-yun’s wide eyes.

End