Internal energy? This uncle’s been training too.

When I took Clara’s father’s hand, I picked up a faint internal energy inside it.

“Huh!”

Clara’s father let out a startled grunt of his own.

He must have realized I carried internal energy the same as he did.

Even so, he was nowhere near my level.

Twenty years’ worth of energy in the dantian, at the most.

Day by day my body was being tempered by the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art.

The effects were killer, and no wonder, coming from a Wudang Sect master’s training method.

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

Emmanuelle looked at her husband, alarmed.

“Ah, no… the young fellow has a strong grip!”

Startled as he was, Lee Zhangchang changed his expression in a flash.

Remarkable quickness on his feet.

“Clara’s abeonim is quite something himself.”

I played along with him.

I didn’t know what it was, but this uncle had a lot hidden away.

“Daniel brought the Moutai you love as a present, Dad~.”

“Haha. The young fellow has an eye. Come in, come in.”

“Thank you, abeonim.”

Korean manners—I called him abeonim every single time.

Clara treated my own dad and mom the same way.

“The roses are beautiful. But how many are there?”

“Forty-seven.”

“Oh my~ did you know my age?”

“What? No. I was just looking at the roses and a feeling came to me.”

Feeling, like hell.

That flower shop simply hadn’t had more than forty-seven roses.

But a white lie is the seasoning for a peaceful life.

“Daniel. They really are beautiful~.”

Madame Emmanuelle smiled broadly.

Delight in small things, it seems, has nothing to do with a woman’s age.

“This fellow is no ordinary one. Are you planning to steal the heart of my beloved Emmanuelle? Come in, come in.”

Lee Zhangchang took the lead with the bottle in his hand.

And so I got to see the inner rooms of a secretive Hong Kong tycoon’s mansion.

Whoaaaaa…

Luxury taken to its absolute limit.

The royal suite I was staying in didn’t even compare.

Downstairs, the living room floor was marble with a soft red glow running through it.

One look told you it was expensive.

Whoa… a sixty-five-inch TV already? And not PDP either, that’s LCD!

This was a time when they weren’t even sold to ordinary people.

It was the kind of big TV they took orders for from the rich, a few sets at a time, at tens of millions of won each. And there it sat at one side of the living room.

A magnificent chandelier on the ceiling, paintings and calligraphy full of dignity on the walls, a ten-seat leather sofa set in the middle.

This was the house of a tycoon who knew how to handle money, not of the newly rich.

“It’s a shabby place, but this is my house.”

Lee Zhangchang had his full share of the Chinese taste for empty ceremony and bluff.

He said shabby, but one look told you it was a boast.

“Dad. Next to Daniel’s old house, this place can’t even hold out a name card. How are you going to keep up with hundreds of years of architectural history~?”

Clara laid down covering fire for me.

That’s right! I have an old house with history and culture breathing in it.

And however rich Lee Zhangchang may be, he can’t keep up with the number of zeros in my bank account.

“A house is a place to live in, so isn’t it enough if you can stay in it comfortably, however modest it is?”

“!!!”

At the word modest, Lee Zhangchang’s eyes wavered.

A house worth a hundred billion won at the outside didn’t make me envious in the least.

It would do nicely as a Hong Kong holiday villa.

“Pwahahahahahahaha.”

Lee Zhangchang suddenly burst out laughing, slapping his hands together.

“Daniel—no, Jang Tae-san! I like you very much.”

He must have found it unusual that I wasn’t cowed in his house.

“You must be hungry. Let’s go to the dining room.”

Madame Emmanuelle read the mood and led us to the dining room.

“This landscape is fresh. The sea and the waves… they’re full of life. The painter must truly love the scenery here.”

On the way to the dining room a large landscape painting caught my eye.

The life in it was unusual.

That was one more effect I’d gained from running the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art.

Food, paintings and objects with energy in them jumped out at me.

I stopped in front of the painting for a moment.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes~ the style is close to my own mother’s. It’s the kind of painting that warms your chest while you look at it.”

The energy in it was beyond any of the other famous works, and looking at it settled me along with it.

“Daniel~ that piece is my mom’s work.”

“Is it? You’re wonderful.”

“Daniel, my skill is an embarrassment. Clara tells me your mother is a great painter—I’d love to meet her sometime.”

“Come and visit any time. You’d be more than welcome.”

“May I really?”

“Of course.”

“Mom, you have to go. The old house is absolutely fantastic.”

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to go to Korea.”

This was getting bigger and bigger.

From Emmanuelle’s face, this wasn’t a joke or a courtesy.

If they started coming and going like this, my father’s mouth was going to split clean open.

Madame Emmanuelle is a good-looking woman in her own right.

Dad would be proposing an in-law match on the spot.

“My love Emma~ I am hungry.”

“Oh dear. I’m sorry, Lee~.”

I hadn’t known there was a professional couples’ rub-it-in squad operating here too.

The honey of love was still dripping off the pair of them.

And so I stepped into the dining room beside the kitchen.

Whooooa…

Four people were plainly eating dinner tonight.

And yet, on the big revolving marble table, a round one that would seat about ten…

Dishes of the legendary Manchu-Han-feast class were laid out end to end. (TL Note: 만한전석 — the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast, a banquet of the Qing court that ran to a hundred-odd dishes over three days; the word is used for any spread that has gone far past sense.)

Even at a rough count there were more than a hundred plates.

Steamed, stewed, soups, pan-fried, grilled, seafood, meat and on and on.

A Korean hanjeongsik spread couldn’t hold out a name card against this. (TL Note: 한정식, hanjeongsik — the Korean full-course meal, where a dozen or more side dishes arrive together and cover the whole table.)

“I’ve had a little something put together. Sit down, sit down~.”

This time I let Uncle Lee Zhangchang’s line go without answering back.

A little something or not, the care aimed at me went past admirable and into overwhelming.

“It’s a feast of rare delicacies. Madame Emmanuelle, thank you.” (TL Note: 진수성찬 — rare flavors and a full spread; the four-character word for a table so loaded it counts as an event.)

“Ho ho ho~ help yourself without a second thought. The chefs did the work, I did nothing at all.”

She plainly said the chefs, not the chef.

Hope flared up in me too.

Chefs, plural, went on my life’s list of comforts.

“You can drink, I take it?”

“Nobody anywhere has ever told me I can’t hold my liquor.”

“Is that so? Let’s put that to the test.”

Testing it will only make things hard on you, uncle.

Since I started training the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art, drink held no fear for me.

The thing called internal energy comes with detoxifying and purifying built in.

It isn’t a bluff when the masters in martial arts novels drive poison out with internal energy.

And so I took my seat.

There really was so much food that I didn’t know what to eat or how.

“Daniel, try this one. It’s bird’s nest.”

A bird’s nest dish that looked like some kind of clear fritter landed on my plate.

“Have a glass.”

Once the dishes were ready, Lee Zhangchang opened the Moutai I’d brought as a gift.

“Let me pour for you first.”

“What are you saying. The guest has to receive first.”

At that I took the glass without another word.

Unreal! The deep fragrance was beyond comparing with the cheap Chinese liquor I used to drink at Chinese places before I was reborn.

The truth is, it was my first time drinking it too.

In Korea I’m still a high schooler, so I wouldn’t dare. (TL Note: 언감생심 — “how dare such a thought arise”; the four-character phrase for wanting something you have no standing to want.)

Here, though, I was being treated as a full adult in every way.

“I wish success to you, young man.”

“Thank you for the invitation. I wish continued peace and well-being to the two of you and to Clara.”

We didn’t knock the glasses together the way Koreans do.

We held the glasses up in the air and met each other’s eyes.

And I turned my face to the side, Korean style, to drink.

Kwahh!

This is the taste!

The taste that scrapes past your throat, harsh but electric and sweet!

This is the fragrant toast that only a famous liquor brews.

“Oh! You’re a bold one!”

Uncle Lee Zhangchang filled my glass again the moment I knocked it back.

“Have a glass yourself.”

I poured into his empty glass too.

“Hao!“

He took the glass, saying it was good.

And then another glass!

That one was really something.

“Hao! Hao!“

He and I kept drinking, picking at this and that from the dishes.

Before long the liquor I’d brought showed its bottom.

New bottles kept appearing.

Wuliangye, Shui Jing Fang, Fenjiu, Maotai, Jiannanchun and on and on.

Every kind of liquor came out as though showing itself off.

I emptied every one of them.

Thud!

And at some point Uncle Lee Zhangchang planted his head on the dining table.

“Ugh… I can’t live with this man.”

A French auntie’s griping was no different from a Korean auntie’s.

“Daniel, are you all right?”

“Me? Of course.”

“You’re really something! Nobody has ever beaten Dad at drinking, and Daniel is the first one to bring him down.”

Clara gave me a thumbs-up.

“Is that so? I haven’t even started yet~.”

“Daniel, you really are something.”

Madame Emmanuelle looked at me with respect in her eyes too.

A man who drinks without getting drunk is welcome anywhere.

“The atmosphere was so much like family that I think I’ve been rude.”

I kept my manners without a crack in them.

With Madame Emmanuelle, of course, I answered in French.

“Then think of us as family~ a son like Daniel is welcome any time.”

“Then I’ll take you at your word, shamelessly. You may speak to me plainly, eomeoni.”

And after that I enjoyed the dinner as comfortably as in my own house, talking with the two beautiful women, mother and daughter.

Having packed the master of the house off to the far country of the Liquor Lord, that is. (TL Note: The raw writes 주(酒)님, swapping the character for liquor into 주님, “the Lord”; so the man has gone off to the Lord’s country and to the bottle’s at once.)

“Nnnngh…”

“Are you all right?”

“What are you, exactly? In all my life I’ve never met a drinker like you.”

“It runs in the family.”

Morning came.

Last evening I’d stayed late at Clara’s house over liquor and food, an unhurried taste of summer vacation.

Morning came, and Lee Zhangchang and I took Chinese bean porridge for breakfast and hangover cure both.

Then we moved to the study to drink tea.

The sea was visible outside the window.

The view is the best in Hong Kong.

“Clara tells me you’re a VIP at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. Is that right?”

“I don’t know about VIP, but I did take out a loan.”

“The boys there are fussy, and you got one out of them handily.”

“If the collateral is solid, there’s no reason to refuse.”

“…An investor, are you? Or is it a Korean conglomerate’s slush fund?”

Lee Zhangchang came driving straight in.

Everyone I met took me for a third-generation Korean conglomerate heir, more or less.

That’s what the conglomerates’ image bought you overseas.

“I run a private equity fund.”

“A private equity fund? You do? How old are you?”

“What does age have to do with turning money over?”

I smiled and answered the startled Lee Zhangchang.

“Pwahahahahahaha! True, quite true. I was being foolish.”

Lee Zhangchang roared with laughter.

I’d felt it since yesterday, but he’s a big-hearted old boy.

“So what do you invest in? Stocks? Or futures? Or is it money lending?”

He seemed curious about me.

But I could feel that he still treated me as a child.

For a gentleman who’d be shaking if we compared bank books, he’d been putting on a lot of front since yesterday.

Still, I let him have it.

One look told you it’s no easy thing for a tycoon that size to deal with a boy like me this far.

“That’s a business secret.”

“Why be like that~ you call Emma eomeoni, I hear? Then you ought to call me abeoji too. And surely a father has the right to be curious about his child’s affairs?”

His smile was the smile of a veteran merchant.

A face that will seize enormous wealth.

Starting with that fleshy blessing of a nose, every feature in Lee Zhangchang’s face was concentrated on wealth.

A shame his hand was short, so it looked like Clara was the only child he saw. (TL Note: 손이 짧다 — to have a short hand; said of a man with few descendants, since 손 also means the line that comes after you.)

He isn’t a man who’d take a loss knowingly.

“Would you invest a little?”

“Invest? Go on, tell me. My son says he’s in business, so let me invest a little.”

He looked at me with the eyes of a grandfather watching a grandchild play.

“I’ll give you a one percent stake.”

“One percent?”

“And the investment is one billion US dollars, to start.”

“Wh-what did you say? One billion dollars!!!”

(End of Chapter 64)