Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Starting Luck, Is This Real?

- This is really hard.

The jar ghost, no, the Dragon King borrowed Hector’s body about once every few days to talk to In-ho.

The Dragon King’s contacts resembled some kind of intelligence operation.

“You can’t come in here!”

Because if Hector was caught infiltrating the baby room, he was always chased out.

Before the rendezvous, a few rats or birds first prowled around the cradle to check that no one else was nearby, and only after all checks were complete did he quickly possess Hector and approach stealthily like an agent. After the Dragon King finished his business in the baby room and left, Hector would get thoroughly scolded by the maids without knowing why.

It was only natural that In-ho, owner of a warm heart who couldn’t bear to watch this pitiful state, would step in.

“Guguu. Guu.”

‘Instead of using rats or birds as spies, can’t you just possess a rat and come?’

- With that tiny head, it can’t even handle three minutes.

“Dooda?”

‘Then instead of beasts, just possess me and do dual-core ghost British king, wouldn’t that work?’

- If that were possible, how nice would it be? Temporarily borrowing an animal or making a request falls within my authority, that is, the category of divine power, so there’s no particular problem, but possessing a person is something only a miscellaneous ghost with no other choice would do. Rather than falling to the level of a miscellaneous ghost, I’d rather become an imugi that at least has a chance to try again...

I didn’t know the details, but the world of ghosts seemed complicated too.

Besides the possessed Hector, the Dragon King could control other animals nearby. Just look at him using rats or birds like underlings. If he had been born a hundred years earlier, he could have used that ability in all sorts of vicious ways and skyrocketed. Nothing else needed, if he could perfectly control carrier pigeons, he would definitely have become the king of the London stock market.

But regrettably, now is the age of civilization and science. In the age of railroads and telegraphs, what can you do with the skill of handling carrier pigeons well?

In-ho thought for a moment. Becoming a circus director who remains forever in history, or leaving his name as an animal communicator... this might let me eat and live well by myself, but it didn’t seem like it would reach the domain of historical alteration.

But if I keep snatching Hector’s body and using it, won’t he not live long?

- He’ll become smarter and live longer, so don’t worry. For a mutt, it’s an extremely undeserved opportunity.

Since he said so, I had to believe him.

For In-ho who had nothing to do all day except eat, sleep, and shit, the appearance of a conversation partner with whom proper communication was possible and who even knew the future was truly like rain in a drought, so he didn’t particularly want to waste calories arguing with the Dragon King and decided to just go along with it.

Anyway, now it was time to properly plan for the future.

- You will live to 99 and then go.

“Byu...?!”

- Since I guaranteed it, that’s how it became. As long as it’s not death from external factors, your natural lifespan is 99, meaning you’ll reach white longevity.

‘If possible, can’t I live to 120 or 150?’

- The lifespan field was two spaces so I filled it in without thinking. I was just trying to practice, I wasn’t really trying to come!!

This is really half-assed.

Right now is 1832.

If I live healthily here until 99, the departure date is roughly... 1931? 32?

The professional web novel reader In-ho derived a very natural yet certain conclusion the moment he saw the year 1930.

I’ll grow old and then World War I will break out.

World War II is not my business. It’s someone else’s. The future where Hitler builds gas chambers and turns the world into hell is not my problem but the descendants’ problem.

Thinking this way, the mission difficulty was truly trivial beyond measure. Wouldn’t just shooting child Hitler clear the mission?

- That won’t be nearly enough. Do you think World War II won’t break out without Hitler?

If there isn’t a crazy person like Hitler, at least vicious things like ‘6 weeks’ or ‘gas chambers’ won’t happen, right?

- Is that a great historical alteration? Can you stake your soul on changing that?

When he said that, I wasn’t confident. What was taken as collateral was In-ho’s own soul, not Hector’s soul.

In any case, he wasn’t trying hard to live simply to avoid having the collateral seized.

Instead of the previous life where he worked like a dog and became a corpse, he received the absurdly enormous opportunity of a second life. Moreover, unlike others, he had even received the confirmed date of ‘99 years old’. With the second chance and the powerful cheat of future knowledge, if he couldn’t achieve a great undertaking, he should die with his nose stuck in dishwater.

Moreover, conversely speaking.

As long as he doesn’t get hit by guns or knives, survival until 99 is guaranteed, so if he has to live as a poor person without wealth and glory in this barbaric 19th century, just how terrible will the days awaiting him be?

Ordinary success won’t do.

Even if he becomes the chairman of a conglomerate group, how much can he change history? Honestly, he wasn’t confident.

A level where he succeeds big enough that a biography comes out and later generations praise him. At least he needs to become a legend on the level of Napoleon or Marx to be considered in the safe zone, but what on earth should he do.

“Byuu.”

I have to do politics.

This was the first conclusion for now.

- Politics. You mean British Prime Minister, right?

Yes. To change history, I need to at least go to a position where I hold the helm of the British Empire and turn the rudder.

But if asked ‘how’ to reach Prime Minister, nothing particularly sharp came to mind.

There is still plenty of time.

I can think more, right.

However, there was one point he had omitted from his considerations.

The fact that a child’s fate is generally determined by following the parents.

***

Time flowed.

1837.

“We have decided to go to Whampoa.”

“Yes?”

In this era.

Regardless of East or West, the patriarch’s decision generally becomes the family’s decision.

Although Henry Leigh belonged to the category of a kind husband, excellent gentleman, and cool father, he was not democratic enough to decide household affairs by consulting the children.

The children looked at their mother for a moment, but seeing the mother also quietly nod, they quickly grasped that no matter how much they complained, the decision could not be reversed.

“Daniel has to go to school anyway, and Violet too. We’ve already found places for you all, so you can rest assured.”

“Then what about the youngest?”

“The youngest...”

It was right then.

“I want to go with Mom and Dad!”

“You want to go to China?”

“Arthur. China is too far. And it’s hard to live there too.”

“Still, I want to go!”

What was inside Arthur was an uncle who had eaten enough years to eat, but what appeared on the outside was only an innocent and endlessly cute child.

Moreover, the modest expectations the Henry couple had held since Arthur was born had been fulfilled. No, more than that.

‘The youngest young master is extremely clever.’

‘I don’t know if he’s a genius or not, but what’s certain is that he cannot be compared to children his age.’

The wet nurse, and the tutor invited and brought as soon as he got a bit older, all said the exact same thing.

He started talking much earlier than others, took his first steps, and even from when he was tiny he started taking books out of the study and reading them, and quickly mastered the alphabet as well. Because Henry boasted about his youngest whenever he opened his mouth, even all the people at the club knew about it.

But to China?

“I want to see it.”

“Is it because you don’t want to be separated from Mom and Dad?”

“I’m curious about how people from other countries, people from the East, live.”

What child of that age could say something like that? Henry tightly held down the corners of his mouth that were trying to rise.

But Arthur was desperate.

‘China, let’s go!!’

By the standards of this time, India and China were truly lands of opportunity.

Moreover, what had been his first-life occupation? A trading company man. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and even Chinese characters were all possible.

Already because of that frivolous dad, rumors of being a genius or gifted were spreading, so just show the appearance of mastering Chinese or Japanese within a few months of arriving. It’s a pity there’s no TV, but being prominently reported as a genius in the newspapers would be nothing.

Moreover, in the British Empire, the country of pirates and colonies, succeeding by going outside the island is an extremely natural success tech tree. Even Henry himself is a case who made a fortune in India and returned.

But the India coin is gradually ending, so if he quickly enters the China coin that will soon skyrocket, how much milk and honey and opium will flow in the future.

He has to go to China.

To perfectly utilize both his first-life abilities and future knowledge, he has to go to China!

“Don’t abandon me and take me with youuu!”

“Anyway, there wasn’t a suitable place to leave him, right? Just taking him along might be fine too.”

“What are you saying. I’ve already told them everything. He can receive teachings from a very excellent person too-”

“I won’t complain. I’ll eat well and won’t doze off in church either!”

“Arthur! Who told you to throw a tantrum!”

“Take me with you eeeaaaah!!”

There’s no choice.

Wouldn’t it be strange for a toddler walking around here to proceed with a presentation saying ‘I will brief you on the reasons I need to go to China’? If he did that, he might end up going to a monastery instead of China.

After endless whining accompanied by negotiation, finally a lament burst from Henry’s mouth.

“Alright. Experiencing new things early on might be more helpful.”

“Hooray!!”

“Riding a ship is really hard, so you mustn’t complain on the ship, okay?”

“Yes!! Can I take Hector too?”

“That’s not allowed.”

There were various issues, but finally Arthur received permission from his parents to accompany them. Finally, the freeloading of the second-life genius’s life begins!

“Hyung. Noona. Don’t cry because I’m gone and be well.”

“Puhahaha!”

“Don’t cry when you go, okay?”

“I heard Chinese people catch and eat white babies if they get sick, so be careful not to get eaten?”

There were many things the Lee couple had to do, such as entrusting the London house to acquaintances, prepaying the boarding school fees for Daniel and Violet, entrusting stocks or land to trusts, packing luggage and preparing to move, but naturally there was nothing a young child had to prepare. Originally, children just watching quietly is already helping.

And finally.

As the Lee family boarded the ship bound for China, Act 1 Scene 1 of the biography of genius trader Arthur Lee rose...

***

Kurung!!

Kururung!!

The sea is capricious.

Humans roughly pieced together wooden planks, named them ‘ships’, and crossed the sea.

The moment that sea rages.

They keenly feel that they are nothing but mere creatures.

“Hurry! If you don’t want to die, move faster!!”

“Captain, water is pouring in!”

“We can’t hold out for long!”

“Oh God.”

Kwajijik-!

“The mast! The mast!”

“Everyone run awaaaay!!”

Along with a terrible sound, ropes were torn off one after another from the mast that had risen proudly in the middle of the ship. One or two unlucky sailors were hit by the ropes lashing down like whips and flew off into the sea.

“Has the boat been lowered?”

“If you look there-”

Inside a huge rain cloud where not a single point of sunlight was visible.

A small boat carrying a few sailors went down, but the sea god, as if it had been waiting, summoned a wave the size of a house and swept the boat away in one blow.

In the time it takes to blink once, the boat disappeared in an instant along with the people.

The fate of everyone on the ship was decided.

“I shouldn’t have brought the child.”

“I’m sorry. I just became weak-hearted...”

“The Lord is cruel too. Why even this child! Trying to take even this child!”

Henry shouted loudly toward the sky. Salt-laden rainwater poured into his eyes, nose, and mouth, but he didn’t care.

Following the sailors’ guidance, they had boarded the boat, but not even a speck of expectation that they could survive arose. If there had been no wife and child, he would have savored wine in his cabin and waited for the end.

“My son. I’m sorry. Mom is sorry.”

“It’s okay. I said I wanted to come along.”

“How composed. Yes. A gentleman... a gentleman must remain composed until the end. Yes indeed.”

“I’ll row! Don’t give up!”

Words that the sailors themselves wouldn’t believe.

Even so, they did their best.

No matter how fierce the storm was, they did not stop fighting the sea until the end.

However, finally.

The last moment approached.

Once more the wind swept.

A huge swell swept.

The ship, the boat, the people, the luggage.

Everything was driven down into the sea below.

***

The boat that was nothing more than a small craft slapped once and shattered into pieces in an instant as if hit by a truck, and the parents who had held onto me tightly until the end were also flung away by the impact when the boat broke and disappeared far into the sea.

The fiercely raging sea mercilessly swallows everyone who was on the boat.

Dying.

Dying like this.

Is the second life ending like this?

Ending with ‘died at sea after encountering a storm’ without having tried anything, not even one thing?

The 99-year lifespan guarantee originally meant not dying of natural causes.

I knew.

Accidental death or murder could happen anytime.

But I had never once thought it would end like this.

Is all of this actually a dream?

The jar ghost never existed, I never went to England, and I’m just lying in a hospital room continuously clicking the button that releases morphine from the pain of terminal pancreatic cancer, seeing the last hallucination right before death?

There was nothing to feel wronged about.

Even if only briefly, hadn’t I tasted hope and happiness.

That was enough. That was enough.

Accepting the second death was much easier.

Thinking that there had been no second chance from the beginning made my heart very comfortable-

- Hey! Hey you bastard!

It was then.

- Snap out of it! Hold on tight!

Hold on?

To what?

- I said hold onto me!!

I stretched out my hand.

Something hard touched the child’s fern-like hand.

- Going up to the surface! Hold tighter!

My body rose steadily upward, toward the surface where waves were rolling.

Splash!!!

“Keok, kek, keuek, kek!!”

- Damn it!! Damn it!! If you faint now you’ll die. I’ll somehow try to go, so absolutely don’t lose consciousness!

What I was holding onto was a sea turtle.

Precisely the jar ghost,

No, the sea turtle possessed by the Dragon King.

- You survived because you’re a little kid. If you were a bit bigger, this guy couldn’t have handled your weight! I’ll try to go to the coast for now, so endure!

“You said you’re the Dragon King, why can’t you handle a storm...?”

- This isn’t the world I originally was in. I’m a freeloading guest too. Just securing your one life is already, damn it. No. Pretend you didn’t hear that.

I kept my mouth tightly shut and put more strength into the hand holding the turtle.

The sea that had swallowed my parents and all the sailors was roaring even harder as if displeased that I was escaping.

Still.

I survived.

© 명원 #1jwz2