His stomach broke the silence before he did.
It was a sharp, hollow cramp that folded him forward on the mat. He lay there for a moment, waiting for it to pass, then sat up. He knew that kind of hunger. It wasn't the dull, background starvation of the archive plates he'd refused to eat. It was the active, bright hunger of a young body that was currently burning itself to keep running.
He got up and went to the kitchen area.
He checked the jars. Empty. He checked the wooden box where the root vegetables used to be kept. Dust. He checked the shelf above the stove. A small pouch of salt and nothing else.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked at it.
He remembered this period of his life now — the first two years after his father vanished. Most of the memories from this time had been blurred by what came after, but the physical sensation brought it back into sharp focus. He had spent his tenth year basically starving. He had fished the river bank all day, every day, and caught barely enough to keep the bones inside his skin. He had begged for errands in the market alleys and been pushed aside because nobody wanted a ten-year-old with sticks for arms carrying their goods. He had chopped his father's remaining firewood and sold it to inns for copper pennies until he ran out of wood.
He had struggled.
Looking back on it from the other side of fifty-five, it didn't feel like much of a struggle. Surviving an uncaring town was simple arithmetic compared to surviving the Alliance archive. But arithmetic still required numbers, and right now his numbers were zero.
"First, food," he muttered into the empty room, his young voice sounding thin. "Then, coin."
He walked back to the main room and looked under the window. His father's fishing line was still there. Wound neatly around a notched piece of wood, the hook tucked safely into the cork float. Even in his first life, this simple piece of string had been the only thing standing between him and the end of his story. He had kept it in this exact spot long after he had bought a better one.
He picked it up, slipped it into his sleeve, and walked out the door.
Haryong City — River Dragon City — made its living off the water.
It was a loud, unbothered port town that acted as a vein for the larger sects and merchant guilds further inland. As he walked toward the river, he didn't look at the sky or the people. He looked at the ground, finding the specific alleys that cut the travel time in half. He moved with the quiet efficiency of someone used to walking without being noticed.
He knew exactly where he was going.
In his previous life, he hadn't found the spot until he was twenty-three. He had been thoroughly drunk, having spent his last coppers in a local river house, and had wandered off the main path into a dense, thorn-choked stretch of wasteland downriver. He had passed out, woken up with a splitting headache, and thrown his line in the water just to have an excuse not to move.
He had pulled up an absolute fortune in fish.
It was a natural alcove where the river split into three paths. The water in the alcove was slow and deep, shaded by overhanging trees — the exact conditions river fish sought out to rest and lay eggs. It was an untouched treasury.
He had made a good trade off it for two years. Then, when he was twenty-five, a merchant had noticed his consistent supply, tracked him, and bought the wasteland outright. Fenced it off. End of the treasury.
'Not this time.'
The thicket was exactly as he remembered it. A hostile tangle of thorns and coiled vines that looked completely impassable to a grown man. However, a grown man's obstacle was not a ten-year-old's obstacle.
He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled.
The thorns snagged his coarse clothes but couldn't reach his skin. He moved through the undergrowth smoothly, reading the gaps in the vines. Within five minutes, he pushed through the last layer of brush and stood up.
The alcove was beautiful. A small waterfall fed the split river, the sound blocking out the noise of the city completely. The water was dark green and very still.
He didn't waste time admiring it. He dug in the damp earth by the roots of a tree, found three thick earthworms, baited his father's hook, and threw it in.
The cork float sat on the surface for exactly two minutes.
Then it darted under.
Wol pulled. The weight on the line was heavy — heavier than his ten-year-old arms were ready for — but twenty-four years of martial arts theory wasn't entirely useless. He shifted his stance, lowered his center of gravity, and let his hips do the pulling instead of his shoulders.
A fish the size of his forearm breached the surface and landed flapping on the grass.
He looked at it.
A small smile broke his flat expression. He unhooked it cleanly, baited the line, and threw it back in.
By late afternoon, he had twenty-five fish.
It was an absurd haul. Any seasoned fisherman on the main docks would have called it a lie. He strung them through the gills with a strong vine. He kept five for himself. The other twenty he hauled towards the market district.
He didn't go to the main stalls. They would cheat a solitary child without a second thought. Instead, he went to the back doors of three mid-tier shops. He knew which ones served river fish specials, and he knew they preferred to buy off the books to avoid the merchant guild's taxes.
He sold ten for the standard market price. He sold the last ten to a high-end restaurant that needed them for an evening banquet, and didn't leave until they paid him a premium.
When he walked back to his house as the sun set, his stomach was still empty, but his sleeve was heavy.
One hundred bronze coins.
In the currency of Jianghu, a thousand bronze coins made a silver tael, and a hundred silver taels made a gold ingot. One hundred bronze was nothing to a martial artist. But to a ten-year-old orphan with nothing, it was capital.
He stopped at the market edge and bought a small sack of rice, some salt, and firewood.
When he finally sat in his kitchen, the fire crackling in the stove, he cooked the five remaining fish perfectly. He didn't rush. He watched the flesh turn white and flake away from the bone. He boiled the rice until it was soft.
He put a bowl of rice and a piece of salted fish in front of himself.
He picked up his chopsticks.
He took a bite.
The chopsticks stopped moving.
It was just salt, fish, and rice. The most basic meal a river town could produce. But twenty-four years in the archive meant his tongue had forgotten what real food tasted like. The warmth of it. The texture. The simple, unarguable fact of nourishment.
His vision blurred. A tear dropped cleanly from his chin and hit the wooden table.
He didn't make a sound. He didn't sob. He just sat there in the quiet kitchen, eating his fish and rice while the tears ran down his face, finishing the entire meal in ten minutes flat.
When he was done, he lay down on the floor mat in his room. He stared at the ceiling, feeling the heat of the food radiating from his stomach into his limbs. His body was exhausted. His mind was finally quiet.
He closed his eyes and slept.
A month passed.
Wol settled into a rhythm. Wake up. Fish the alcove. Sell to the back doors. Buy supplies. Come home.
He used the extra coin and his past-life experience to fix the house. He patched the leaky roof with tar and shingles. He fixed the broken window frame. He replaced the rusted door lock. He did it all himself, moving with the quiet competence of an old man living in a small body.
But as the weeks wore on, the market began to shift.
He noticed it during his sales. The tavern owners started haggling harder. The price of fish at the main stalls went up, sharply.
He knew exactly what was happening. Shin Daesok.
The local merchant lord had begun tightening his grip on the river trade, buying out independent boats and squeezing the supply. It was the same squeeze that would eventually lead Shin to discover Wol's secret alcove and buy the wasteland for himself. That land — currently considered useless swamp — was priced at roughly one gold ingot. One hundred silver taels. One hundred thousand bronze.
At his current rate, pulling in maybe a hundred bronze a day, it would take him nearly three years to save enough to buy the land. Shin Daesok would find it long before then.
'Fishing and selling alone is too slow,' Wol thought, sitting by the river one evening, watching the water flow. 'I need to move the product myself. A front.'
If he sold cooked dishes, the profit margin tripled. More importantly, it gave him cover. Selling large quantities of raw fish as a solitary child was drawing attention. But a struggling stall buying cheap from a kid? Nobody would look twice.
The next day, he skipped fishing.
He walked the streets of Haryong City, looking for a place. The prime spots in the center were ridiculously expensive. The cheap ones were in blind alleys where no foot traffic went.
He walked until his legs ached. Just as he was about to give up for the day, he passed a side street near the merchant district. It was a good location, catching the overflow from the main road, but the shop sitting there felt dead. The exterior was dull, the wood unpainted, the door curtain frayed.
He pushed the curtain aside and stepped in.
The inside was dim. Behind the counter stood a man in his thirties. His clothes were plain and slightly dusted with flour, his eyes heavy with the specific exhaustion of a man watching his livelihood bleed to death. Despite that, the way he stood and the way he held his chopping knife carried the distinct, undeniable posture of a proper chef.
Before Wol could say anything, something small and extremely fast barreled out from the back room and grabbed his sleeve.
"Sir! Welcome! What would you like to order today?"
It was a girl. Exactly his physical age. She had bright, shining eyes that completely ignored the fact that her customer was a ten-year-old boy in a patched robe.
"Sir!
Wol blinked. He was not used to being grabbed. "Ah. Anything will do."
The man in the kitchen put his knife down. "Kid," he said. His voice wasn't angry, just deeply tired. "I'm sorry to say this, but you probably don't have the silver for a meal here. We're barely holding on, and I won't take a child's coppers for what little we have left."
It was an honest warning. Wol appreciated it.
The girl, however, completely ignored her father. "Then one vegetable soup with noodles! Take a seat, sir, coming right up!"
She practically pushed Wol into a chair. Wol let out a slow, internal sigh. She was energetic in a way that he found both exhausting and faintly endearing.
The man in the kitchen sighed too, but he didn't stop her. He turned back to his stove and started cooking.
When the bowl was ready, the girl carefully carried it to the counter with both hands, rushing it to Wol's table. She set it down like she was presenting a prize.
"Enjoy your meal! Hope you like it!"
Wol nodded. "Thanks."
The man leaned against the counter, wiping his hands on a towel. "Sorry. Vegetable soup is the only dish we can offer these days."
Wol picked up his spoon and took a sip of the broth.
He stopped.
He took another sip. Then he picked up his chopsticks and ate a mouthful of the noodles. The texture was perfect. The broth, despite having no meat and only basic roots, was rich and complex.
"This is really good," Wol said, looking at the man. He wasn't flattering him. It was a statement of fact.
"Isn't it?" the girl beamed, puffing out her chest. "Didn't I tell you, Dad? It's delicious! We're not losing customers because of the food. There are just too many big restaurants on the main street."
Wol looked at the empty chairs. "What drove your customers away?"
The man, Cha Sung, rubbed the back of his neck. "A month ago, the price of fish shot up. Shin Daesok's guild locked down the contracts. All the large places get their fish directly from him now, while the market price skyrocketed for everyone else."
Wol knew the name well. The merchant lord.
"Our specialty was fish and vegetable noodle soup," Cha Sung continued, his voice dropping. "When the prices jumped, we tried dropping the fish to keep the cost low. But the flavor wasn't the same. Our regulars left for stalls that serve cheaper, fresher food bought through guild connections. We didn't have the silver to switch back to fish at the new market rate. Now we barely see a handful of faces a day. Business has dried up."
Wol ate the rest of his soup quietly.
Shin Daesok. The greedy bastard who controlled the market flow. The man who would soon buy Wol's wasteland. Dealing with him was going to be annoying, but Wol suddenly saw the angle.
He put his chopsticks down.
"If you had a steady supply of fish at a low price," Wol asked, "could you turn this place around?"
Cha Sung looked at the kid sitting at his table. "Fish? If I had fresh fish, I'm confident I can make the best soup in this district. But no merchant is selling cheap fish right now."
Wol reached into his sleeve. He placed two bronze coins on the table. It was double the cost of the vegetable soup.
The girl immediately swooped in and scooped them up with a gasp.
"No, wait," Cha Sung said, stepping forward. "It's only one bronze. I can't accept that much for a bowl of vegetable soup from a child, please—"
Wol stood up and walked toward the door. He didn't look back.
"Keep it," Wol said. "I'll be back tomorrow morning with fish. Treat me to food from now on, then."
He pushed through the curtain and disappeared into the street, leaving Cha Sung staring in disbelief, while his daughter happily waved at the empty doorway.
The next morning, Wol arrived at the stall carrying a wooden bucket that was nearly half his size.
It was filled to the brim with large, fat, freshly caught river fish, still twitching in the water.
Cha Nari, who was wiping down a table, dropped her rag. She ran over, looked into the bucket, and her eyes immediately filled with tears. "Thank... sniff... thank you, sir..."
Cha Sung came out of the kitchen. He stopped dead. He looked at the fish, then looked at the ten-year-old boy.
"This..." Cha Sung swallowed hard. "This amount of fish... it's too much. We couldn't possibly afford to buy this haul."
"I'm not selling it to you," Wol said, setting the heavy bucket down with a quiet exhale. "I'm investing it."
Cha Sung blinked. "Investing?"
"Let's see if you can back up what you said yesterday," Wol said, his voice entirely flat and businesslike. "Make the soup. Sell it. When you turn a profit, you pay me back. I'll take sixty percent of the market price for the fish. That will leave you enough margin to actually run this place."
Cha Sung was staring at him as if he were speaking a forgotten language. "Sixty percent? But... that's lower than the guild's contract rate. They take eighty percent. Why are you doing this? You could make good money selling this at the market."
"That's true," Wol admitted. "But let's say I'm looking for a long-term supplier. When your business grows, I make more coin without having to haggle in the market every day."
Cha Sung let out a breath he seemed to have been holding. A look of profound relief washed over his tired face. "Please. Trust me with this fish. I promise I won't let you down."
As he spoke, Cha Sung suddenly thought to himself: 'Wait. Why am I talking to a child as if he were an old man?'
Wol truly spoke like an elder. Cha Sung had a daughter the exact same age, making the contrast jarring. But he didn't question it aloud. When someone throws you a rope while you are drowning in the river, you don't ask for their age.
"What is your name?" Cha Sung asked respectfully.
"Wol. Wol Cheon Sang."
"Alright. I am Cha Sung. And this is my daughter, Cha Nari. I hope we can work well together."
Wol nodded. "Nice meeting you. I'll take my leave and let you work."
As Wol turned to go, Cha Sung quickly packed a small wooden box with leftover rice and pickled vegetables and pressed it into his hands. Nari waved enthusiastically from the door.
Wol walked home, ate, and rested.
The next morning, he repeated the routine. He fished, caught enough to fill the bucket, set aside a few to sell at the market so he wouldn't look suspicious, and brought the rest to the stall.
When he arrived, Cha Sung was already in the kitchen prep area, and Nari was organizing the chairs.
"Wol-ssi! Good morning!" Nari called out cheerfully.
Cha Sung nodded in greeting, but as Wol brought the fresh bucket inside, the chef's face fell.
"Wol," Cha Sung said quietly. "We... We didn't sell all the dishes yesterday. Only a handful of customers came. We still have fish remaining from your first batch."
Nari's face dropped. "Sorry. We disappointed you."
Wol looked at the two of them. A tired father and a sad child.
Without overthinking it, Wol reached out and placed his hand on Nari's head, patting it twice. The gesture was purely instinctive — the comforting touch of an elder. Nari looked up at him, surprised.
"It's fine," Wol said. "It was only the first day. We need to set this place up properly before people will come."
He looked around the dull, unpainted walls, the frayed curtain, the worn-out signs. "Look at the exterior. No new customer would walk in here seeing this. Customers need to be curious enough to walk in, so we have to make them curious."
Cha Sung looked ashamed. "We haven't been able to renovate the building in a long time. The fish prices fluctuated so heavily over the past years that we barely turned a profit."
"We'll fix it," Wol said. "I'll lend you the money for materials, and I'll help with the work."
Cha Sung immediately shook his head. "No. You've helped us far too much already. We can't take any more help from you."
Wol suppressed a sigh. Pride. He needed their shop just as much as they needed his fish, but the word 'help' felt like a heavy burden to a failing father.
Wol gave a faint, dry smile. "I'm not offering free coin. I'm lending you capital, and you will pay me back with interest. It's an investment. Don't misunderstand."
Cha Sung stopped. He looked at the boy, then at his own rundown shop. Finally, he bowed his head slightly.
"Thank you," Cha Sung said, his voice thick. "To receive this much help from a child the same age as my daughter... I never thought the heavens would allow it. But thank you. I promise I will pay you back with interest."
"Wol-ssi always acts like an old man," Nari added, her bright smile returning.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Wol said.
*
For the next week, the stall was closed for business.
Wol knew exactly how to renovate an old wooden structure. In his past life, he had spent years doing odd jobs just like this to avoid starving in the streets.
Together, the three of them worked. They painted the exterior walls fresh. They sanded and varnished the old tables and chairs until they looked pristine. They replaced the frayed door curtain with a clean, crisp one. They organized the kitchen tools to perfection.
Wol worked with the methodical, unhurried pace of a veteran.
After seven days of hard labor, they stood outside on the street, wiping sweat from their brows, and looked at the stall. It looked warm, clean, and inviting.
Above the entrance hung a freshly carved wooden signboard. It was completely blank.
"What should we name it?" Wol asked.
Nari didn't know. Cha Sung rubbed his chin, unable to come up with anything that carried the right spirit.
Wol sighed quietly. He looked at the chef, who had kept his dignity through failure, and the daughter, who had kept her brightness through poverty.
'A lotus,' he thought. 'Roots in the mud, but it blooms clean.'
Wol picked up a brush, dipped it in thick black ink, and climbed onto the stool. He hadn't written characters with this much care in decades, but twenty-four years in the archive sorting beautifully written scrolls had left a profound imprint on his mind.
His small hand moved with perfect, sweeping elegance.
When he stepped down, he pointed at the board. "There. This seems to fit."
Cha Sung stepped back and read the characters out loud, his voice full of wonder.
Yeonhwa-ru(Lotus Pavilion)
Nari looked up at the beautiful, flawlessly painted letters on the signboard, her eyes shining with stars.
The next morning, the signboard hung properly over the entrance.
Wol went back to his routine. Wake. Fish the alcove. Haul the catch to the back doors of the market. Then carry the remaining premium supply to Yeonhwa-ru.
Over the next few weeks, the shift in the market began to work in their favour.
By the end of the first week, Wol approached the side street after finishing his rounds. He stopped walking.
He could barely recognise the place.
The establishment was full. The interior was completely packed, and Cha Sung had dragged three extra wooden tables out onto the dirt street to accommodate the overflow. The air was thick with the rich smell of river fish broth and the loud, boisterous laughter of dock workers, merchants, and off-duty guards enjoying a proper meal.
Wol stood by the street corner and watched.
Through the window, he saw Cha Sung behind the stove. The man was covered in sweat, moving constantly between boiling pots and chopping boards. He looked physically exhausted, but the dead weight that had hung around his eyes a week ago was gone. His eyes were bright, focused, and alive with the fierce passion of a man who had finally been given room to breathe.
'He is a good man,' Wol thought quietly.
Before he could step inside, the door curtain flew open. The same small, fast shape from his first visit barrelled out and stopped right in front of him.
"Wol!"
Cha Nari stood there, her hands on her hips, her bright eyes narrowed in a mix of doubt and cheer. "Why do you never stay anymore? You only drop off the fish buckets at dawn and disappear before we open! Are you trying to leave us?"
Wol let out a slow sigh. Without thinking, his hand came up and patted the top of her head the way an elder pats a grandchild.
"I am not going anywhere," Wol said smoothly. "I simply had matters to attend to. Do not worry."
Nari's face instantly went red. She swatted his hand away. "Why do you always treat me like a kid?!"
"You are a kid."
"You are a kid too!" she shouted, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You always do this! I hate you!"
She spun on her heel and ran back inside the kitchen.
Wol stood there, a faint smile breaking his usually flat expression. 'Is she embarrassed?'
He stepped inside. Across the crowded room, he caught Cha Sung's eye. The chef wiped sweat from his brow and gave Wol a knowing, amused smile.
Wol felt a rare twist of awkwardness. He pushed his way through the crowd toward the kitchen counter.
"She was waiting for you," Cha Sung called over the noise of the boiling pots. "She has been keeping the ledger. She wanted to show you our sales all week."
Wol paused. "Sorry. I had other business that kept me tied up. I will speak with her when you close. Until then, pass me a tray. I will help run the orders."
Cha Sung did not argue. They were drowning in customers.
For the next two hours, Wol ran bowls of hot noodles to the tables, moving through the cramped spaces with the perfect, efficient footwork of a martial artist, never spilling a single drop.
When the last customer finally left and the sun dipped below the horizon, they locked the door.
The three of them sat around a corner table. Nari sat with a stack of ledger papers clutched in her hands. She was pointedly looking at the wall, refusing to make eye contact with Wol.
Wol let out a quiet sigh. Dealing with adults who wanted to kill you was simple. Dealing with a ten-year-old girl who was angry was complicated.
"I am sorry for making you wait," Wol said. "I will bring you sweets from the travelling merchants tomorrow."
Nari's ears twitched. She slowly turned her head, the corners of her mouth twitching upward despite her best efforts to scowl.
"I wasn't mad," she declared, sounding entirely like a kid. "I was just not feeling good because I did all the ledger work and a certain someone never showed up to look at it. And… do not forget the sweets."
Wol nodded obediently. "I will not forget. Now, let me see the situation."
She slid the papers across the table.
Wol read through the numbers. His eyes widened slightly. Cha Sung hadn't just recovered his old customers; he had drawn in new ones. The profit margin for the first week was staggering. After paying Wol's sixty percent cut for the fish and the overhead costs, they had made a clean fifty percent profit on the capital.
'This is impressive,' Wol thought. 'They were not joking.'
He set the papers down. "This is exceptional work. Well done, Nari. And you too, Uncle Sung."
Cha Sung cleared his throat awkwardly. "Ahem. Wol… please, call me Uncle. Or Uncle Sung. It feels incredibly strange to have a ten-year-old boy call me by my full name, even if you are my benefactor."
Wol blinked. He had forgotten his physical age again. To him, Cha Sung was a junior thirty years his minor.
"Right. Understood, Uncle Sung," Wol corrected himself. "Looking at this volume, you need to hire more hands. I can help once in a while, but coming every day will be difficult. I have other matters I need to prepare for."
Nari looked down, clearly disappointed.
Cha Sung, however, nodded understandingly. "It is alright. I am already looking for extra help. We should have someone hired within the week. You have helped us more than enough. Leave the floor to us."
"Thank you," Wol said. "I will stop by to check in. But the fish supply will remain steady. I will leave it by the back door every morning. And Nari—" Wol looked at the girl. "I will bring the sweets."
Her smile returned in full force. 'An innocent child,' Wol thought.
He stood up from the table. "I will take my leave, then. And… thank you for the food."
Every evening that Wol hadn't come by, a tightly wrapped wooden box of food had been left outside his house. The clumsy but colourful knots on the wrapping made it painfully obvious who had packed it.
Nari beamed proudly.
"It was the absolute least we could do," Cha Sung said with a warm smile.
Wol nodded, gave a small wave, and walked out into the cool night air.