Chapter 17

Chapter 17. Galactic Martial God Chronicle - Reincarnation (8)

I couldn’t help but be shocked by Si-woo’s words.

The money printed in the account was one-fifth of my total assets?

Then my total assets were five times this?

Damn, just how much alimony did Grandmother wring out of him?!

Did a candidate for young family head of the Cheon Family really earn that much money?

Si-woo put photos of the real estate plots up on the screen.

“It’s all grassland?”

There were a few buildings, including the house I was living in now, but most of it was mountains and fields.

Mountains and fields were worth nearly four times the amount printed in the account?

Unable to understand, I looked at Si-woo. Si-woo smiled gently and said,

“They are not ordinary fields. They are Grade 1 black soil with excellent soil quality, and the largest dragon vein on that planet passes through them. They are fields where top-grade spiritual herbs used in spiritual medicine are grown. One pyeong of that land would be enough to purchase at least around one hundred hectares of ordinary spiritual herb fields.”

One hundred hectares was roughly three hundred thousand pyeong.

In other words, the land price differed by at least three hundred thousand times.

And even if they were only ordinary, land capable of growing spiritual herbs probably wasn’t cheap.

“Who farms there?”

“As far as I know, the Cheon Family’s Inner Hall leases the land and grows spiritual herbs there.”

“Then are all the spiritual medicines I’m eating right now from there?”

“Not all of them, but a considerable number probably are. By custom, samples of the agricultural products are sent to you, young master, as the landowner. Since you are currently taking the spiritual medicines given to direct descendants of the Cheon Family, we are only storing them for now.”

They said a person had a limit to how much spiritual medicine they could absorb depending on the condition of their body, their age, and their realm.

If one ate more than that limit, it would instead interfere with growth, and in the worst case, qi deviation could occur.

Because of that, spiritual medicine had to be weighed on an ultra-micro electronic scale with ruler-like precision and taken according to the proper dosage.

Spiritual medicine, huh. Would it work well if my main body or other clones took it too?

It might not be as effective as on this clone’s body, which was young and had constantly been taking spiritual medicine without my knowing, as a direct descendant of the family.

Since I could absorb the clone and then create clones from the strengthened main body, it might actually be better to concentrate investment on the reincarnation clone’s growth.

“As for the other investment assets, most of them were bonds issued by the Cheon Family and the interest income from them. There were also a small number of corporate stocks, but many were sold to pay inheritance tax.”

Bonds had better liquidity than real estate, but their liquidity was not as good as cash.

Looking at the investment return report, the Cheon Family, which issued the bonds, had a very high credit rating, so the price of the bonds themselves was high, but the interest income those bonds produced was lower than a fixed deposit.

When the family issued bonds, it adjusted the interest rate, and despite such a low interest rate, many people wanted to buy them, causing the price to jump high.

In other words, it was like a stock with a high stock price but almost no dividends.

Of course, bonds were debt, not shares in a company like stocks, but investment did not run on reason alone.

People bought the bonds because merely holding them made them feel as though they possessed some authority from the Cheon Family, and because if more people wanted to buy the bonds like stocks, the price would rise even higher.

“Nice. They bought near the knees and sold at the crown of the head.”

The bonds had been purchased when the previous Family Head’s illness was revealed and bond prices had fallen quite a bit, and they had been sold around twenty years after the current Family Head publicly announced that he had reached the Stellar Transcendence Realm and became one of the Ten Kings Within the Cosmos.

The Ten Kings Within the Cosmos referred to the ten strongest martial artists in the galaxy, excluding the Nine Heavens Beyond the Heavens, the galaxy’s absolute strongest.

In any era, people liked ranking things, and they went crazy over pitting people against each other to see who was stronger.

The Nine Heavens Beyond the Heavens were truly heavens beyond the heavens, so people removed them from rankings and ranked the strongest people in the galaxy.

Depending on the person, some ranked up to one hundred and called them the Galaxy’s Top Hundred Experts, while others ranked up to one thousand or ten thousand and called them the Top Thousand Experts or Top Ten Thousand Experts.

Most people ranked up to one hundred and picked the Top Hundred Experts.

After all, if you ranked experts all the way up to ten thousand, you would probably have to include the Profound Realm too. Probably.

Usually, when people said the Top Hundred Experts, the cutoff was roughly the Life and Death Realm, where they were blocked by the wall of the Nature Realm. There were too many Profound Realm experts.

In any case, the order in which people ranked them differed, and the people included in the rankings differed as well, but the Ten Kings Within the Cosmos were the strongest martial artists whom everyone living in the galaxy acknowledged as being within the top ten.

Since the Cheon Family’s Family Head had entered the ranks of such martial artists, the value of the bonds had soared to the point that it could not rise any further.

“Unless the Sword King were to surpass the Stellar Transcendence Realm and reach the Ecstasy Realm, I thought they had no reason to rise any further.”

The Sword King was the epithet of Cheon Ja-su, the Family Head.

For reference, the Nine Heavens Beyond the Heavens were divided into One God, Three Stars, and Five Venerables.

The One God was Martial God Cheon Yu of the Martial God Realm.

The Three Stars were the Buddha Star, the Demon Star, and the Spear Star of the Ascension Realm.

The Five Venerables were the Sword Venerable, the Fist Venerable, the Saber Venerable, the Shadow Venerable, and the Slaughter Venerable of the Ecstasy Realm.

And the Ten Kings Within the Cosmos were the Sword King, the Poison King, the Spear King, the Demon King, the Hegemon King, the Baleful King, the Thunder King, the Heavenly Buddha, the Sword Immortal, and the Fist Immortal.

I didn’t know why the Heavenly Buddha, the Sword Immortal, and the Fist Immortal were grouped together as the Ten Kings when their epithets were not kings.

Well, they were all current or retired sect leaders or Family Heads of great sects, so it was true that they were king-like existences.

“Our living expenses are limited to one hundred million nyang per quarter by your legal guardian, Cheon Gyeong-ho, and the asset manager. If more money is needed, the consent of Cheon Gyeong-ho and the asset manager is required.”

“If it’s one hundred million nyang per quarter, not per year, that’s plenty.”

“That is correct. The money used mainly comes from deposit interest and rental income.”

“Really?”

I nodded and looked at the deposit account details, then found that two million nyang was being deposited every month from the Cheon Family Veterans Affairs Office.

“Ah... that is the armed unit bereaved family pension. I understand that it is paid for twenty years from the date of death in battle.”

Ah, he did die in battle.

“Of the quarterly limit of one hundred million nyang, we’re using only around fifteen million? If it’s five million a month, couldn’t you spend a little more?”

Looking at the spending details, about seven million nyang went into expenses for me, and eight million went into house management and Si-woo’s maintenance.

If the spiritual medicines supported by the family and the like were included, the money spent on me alone would easily have hit one hundred million nyang.

“But this is your money, young master. Even if I have become your proxy, how could I use it wastefully?”

“Looking at the account details, it seems Si-woo’s maintenance alone used to cost at least thirty million nyang per quarter.”

“At that time, I was serving as your father’s sparring partner, young master, so the qi center charging costs and management costs were simply higher.”

At Si-woo’s words, I looked through the detailed breakdown.

“The regular maintenance interval has gotten longer too. Even quarterly maintenance has only happened exactly twice since I was born.”

“That, too, was because before that, I was serving as a sparring partner....”

“Even now, you serve as my training partner and perform Meridian-Acupoint Circulation for me. Increase the maintenance costs to thirty million nyang per quarter.”

“But...!”

“Tsk! That’s an order.”

At my firm words, Si-woo looked troubled.

“Even if you use that much, there’s still plenty of room before the quarterly limit.”

“Even so, as you grow, young master, there will be more places where money must be spent, and we do not know what might happen. Increasing maintenance costs every quarter is....”

“When that happens, we can ask the legal guardian and asset manager to raise the limit. If we say it’s absolutely necessary, surely they won’t refuse, right?”

You said they didn’t particularly intend to siphon off my assets, and that it was impossible anyway, didn’t you?

At my point, Si-woo lost her words.

“This is all an investment. Once my body grows, I’ll be sparring too, and it’ll be a loss if something goes wrong with your body.”

“...My realm is Transformation Realm.”

“They say martial artists can get injured if they’re careless no matter how high their realm is, don’t they? What are you going to do if I grow by leaps and bounds and you get hurt?”

At my stubbornness, Si-woo smiled faintly as if she had no choice.

“I will look forward to the day you grow that much.”

“Yeah. Look forward to it.”

After saying that, I added,

“So, about how much should my allowance be?”

“Allowance?”

Si-woo looked at me with narrowed eyes.

They were eyes asking whether the reason I had asked to check the assets and raised her maintenance costs had been to win her favor.

I discreetly averted my gaze.

Telling her not to spare money on maintenance costs was not meant to win her favor, but I had checked the assets in order to see how much of them could be turned into my allowance.

“Th-They say it’s important to instill a sense of economics through an allowance from a young age!”

“I was planning to consider that only after you entered elementary school at the earliest. I do not think this is something a preschooler should say.”

“Even so, I believe learning the value and importance of money is important...”

“The fact that you suddenly switched to polite speech makes me think you believe it is still too early as well, young master.”

I looked up at Si-woo with bright, sparkling eyes.

“No...?”

“Hmm... It is not impossible.”

Si-woo was wavering.

“What do you want to buy with an allowance? If you simply tell me, I will buy it for you within an appropriate range. Is an allowance truly necessary?”

At Si-woo’s question, I smiled and answered,

“It’s good to experience everything firsthand, isn’t it? People grow by buying things themselves, having good experiences, and also experiencing disappointment, don’t they? They say failure is the mother of success.”

At my answer, Si-woo let out a small sigh.

“I am beginning to wonder if giving you a computer was a mistake. Your sly vocabulary, which does not suit your age, concerns me.”

Sly? That’s harsh.

Si-woo seemed to think I had learned this and that while using the computer.

Well, of course. Si-woo was the one who had cared for me since I was a newborn, and since she had not yet taught me complex vocabulary and the like, the only places I could have learned it were documentaries or the internet.

“Very well. It feels somewhat early, but I will give you an allowance. However, there is a condition.”

“What is it?”

“You must keep an allowance ledger.”

“Sure! That much is easy!”

Now that I had received permission, I was delighted.

“So how much would you like to receive as an allowance?”

“Let me see. Three million nyang a month... is too much, right?”

When Si-woo’s gaze turned cold, I immediately tucked my tail.

“...Two million?”

“Two million nyang is the monthly salary of most adults. Would one hundred thousand nyang not be enough?”

“That’s too little! How about one million nine hundred thousand nyang?”

Si-woo and I bickered back and forth, and in the end, we agreed on a monthly allowance of five hundred thousand nyang.

It was my overwhelming defeat.

I thought we would settle at the middle point of around one million nyang.

Now that I was receiving an allowance, I immediately bought a portable camping toilet set and a tent-type shower stall set.

Naturally, the total weight exceeded one kilogram, so I sent them to my main body several times in their pre-assembly component state.

At last, I could win the battle over human dignity.

It was a moving victory.