Cheon Yeo-seol's Constitution

What is this?

The moment my spirit energy brushed past Yeo-seol’s meridians, my head swam. My first thought was that something had gone wrong with the spirit energy itself.

There are no meridians?

No human being alive was without meridians. In a newborn they ran so faint that they might as well not have been there, but they existed all the same. So I sent in more.

Eh? This is…

Now I could see why they had felt to me as though they did not exist.

Too wide. They are so wide that they felt as though they were not there at all. But is such a thing even possible?

They were on a scale where sending spirit energy in barely let me feel them at all. I turned over every record I held in my head, hunting for what meridians like these could possibly be, and out of the whole of it exactly one case fit.

“Good heavens. The Heavenly Immortal Divine Meridian?”

The Heavenly Immortal Divine Meridian was not the Severed Meridians, and it was not an illness of any kind. It belonged instead among the legendary constitutions handed down in Daoist teaching, a set of meridians said to be within reach only of one who had climbed, even among the immortals, to the rank of Heavenly Immortal. And now I had my hand on them, meridians that could not exist in a human being.

My own Heavenly Martial Sacred Body is a constitution that may not appear once in a hundred years — but the Heavenly Immortal Divine Meridian is one there is no telling will appear once in a thousand.

The hair rose on my arms. The constitution existed in theory and nowhere else; nature did not produce it in a human being. Undergo the bone-changing rebirth, undergo the return from age to youth, and you would still never arrive at it.

Could it be that Yeo-seol remembers nothing because there was never anything to remember in the first place?

I put it to myself as a supposition that Yeo-seol’s constitution had been made in her from a young age.

What organization made Yeo-seol? And if they have lost her, then by now there must be an uproar going on to find her.

If some evil faction had made Yeo-seol, there was every chance of her becoming a calamity to the murim.

If Yeo-seol learns martial arts she will become a master far surpassing anything human. The Heavenly Immortal Divine Meridian is a constitution in which the qi of nature turns into internal force of its own accord, without ever sitting to circulate the qi.

Which was to say, a constitution that produced internal force out of breathing alone. The constitution itself was certainly the Heavenly Immortal Divine Meridian; that Yeo-seol’s had been made in her artificially was, when all was said, no more than a supposition.

If I watch the people who come looking for Yeo-seol on North Road, I should be able to learn who they are.

I let go of the wrist I had been reading and spoke to Yeo-seol, who was gazing straight at me.

“Yeo-seol, listen to me carefully from now on.”

“Mm.”

“I’d like you to stay here for a while and not go outside. I’ll give you plenty of good things to eat, so eat a lot and sleep well and build your strength up. Look at you.”

Thin arms and legs and a pinched little face were hiding what Cheon Yeo-seol really looked like.

“All right. I’ll stay here and nowhere else for a while, just as Brother says.”

Yeo-seol was sweet, doing as I asked so readily, and I stroked her head.

“Hehe.”

She laughed and stuck her tongue out, and it was cute past all bearing. Up to now I had never once thought about having a little sister, but if this was how cute they came, it struck me that having one would be no bad thing.

“First things first, go and wash. Getting into warm water will feel good. Then have a proper sleep. Your Brother has somewhere to go for a little while.”

“I get a wash?”

And with that she set about pulling her clothes off then and there, in front of me.

“No. Not here — take them off in the bathhouse. And from now on you mustn’t take your clothes off just anywhere. Understood?”

“Mmh.”

Being stopped had evidently put her out of temper, and her cheeks puffed out. From the way she was behaving, Yeo-seol seemed to have a strong streak of the infant in her, as though her memory had stopped somewhere in infancy. Going off with a stranger because he said he would buy her something good to eat was of a piece with that; she had not been fully socialized yet.

She is going to need a great deal of teaching. I had better ask Eun-bi.

Once Yeo-seol had gone off to the bathhouse with Eun-bi, I made my way to the hall of the clan head. Common courtesy required me to give word that a younger cousin would be lodging in my quarters. I was a guest of the Namgung Clan, after all.

I went to the clan head’s hall and asked for an audience with Namgung Hak, and it was granted at once.

“Come in, Scholar Cheon.”

When I stepped into the hall, I found a guest already there. Normally that would have meant an appointment for another day; that the audience had been allowed at all meant this was a guest with something to do with me.

“I had meant to see you separately, but the guest here says he is a friend of Scholar Cheon’s, so I called you in.”

I looked at the man, who lifted the hand resting on the table and waved it. A hooked nose and sharp eyes made a strong impression, and not a likable one.

“I did not expect to see you here.”

I gave a wry smile.

The man had been a colleague of mine during my service in the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps, though we had shared nothing but a workplace; he was as good as an enemy. When I was fighting over Elder Gal’s corruption, he had taken Elder Gal’s side and made my life a misery. So although his name was Gu Jin-ha, inside the Corps they spoke of him as Gu Pyeon. Pyeon means bat, and the name had been stuck on him for the great many bat-like things he did.¹

“And what brings Scholar Gu here?”

I answered evenly.

“Ah — you would not know. I have been made Second Seat Inspector.”

That surprised me a little. Below the Corps Chief came the Deputy Corps Chief, and below the Deputy Corps Chief the First Seat and then the Second Seat: fourth in the Inspection Corps’ order of power, a rank no scholar of our few years’ service could climb to on merit alone, not without somebody pulling strings.

There was talk that he was a Murim Alliance Elder’s grandson — is that true, then?

Otherwise he could not have pinned on the rank of Second Seat Inspector in so short a time.

“You have risen in the world. My congratulations.”

I answered without meaning a word of it. For a man who had tried several times to shove me into a pit, I had no sincere congratulation left in me.

“Right. Thanks.”

He took the words up at once, and spoke down to me as he did it.

“I’m Scholar Cheon’s superior, so I may as well drop the formalities with you, no?”

I was still a scholar attached to the Inspection Corps, so there was no denying that Gu Jin-ha outranked me. But out here, away from the Alliance, I had no intention of letting a man like that speak down to me.

“I am sorry, but that will not do. Inside the Alliance it might be another matter, but to call yourself a man’s superior and speak down to him while he is on a rotating posting does not seem to me good manners.”

“Well, now! How is it that Scholar Cheon disregards the Alliance’s rules and the Inspection Corps’ discipline alike?”

Gu Jin-ha, who had always been measured against Scholar Cheon and always felt the smaller for it, saw the damned scholar standing stiff-necked in front of him even now, and the heat rose in him. Here at last was a chance to crush that smallness under the weight of his own power. Seeing that the damned scholar would not so much as grant him that chance, he let his grip on his reason slip a little.

“I have let it pass and let it pass, and you grow altogether arrogant. There is plainly an order of rank inside the Inspection Corps, and here you are saying you will not follow it.”

Gu Jin-ha smiled, waiting for the cowed look to come over the scholar’s face.

“Second Seat Inspector Gu Jin-ha.”

Low and resonant. Namgung Hak’s voice, with a quiet anger in it, rang through the room.

“In my presence, you rebuke Scholar Cheon, whom I invited here as an honored guest? I did not know your gall ran so large. Just how great is a Second Seat Inspector’s power, that a man should be so insolent before the head of the Namgung Clan — I shall put the question to the Leader of the Murim Alliance himself. Even the Alliance Leader does not raise his voice in my presence.”

Namgung Hak’s held-down anger filled the room. He had granted the private audience purely out of courtesy, an official of the Murim Alliance having come for once, and the sight of the man swaggering about as though the house were his own was a spectacle indeed.

Only then did Gu Jin-ha see his mistake, and he straightened his posture.

“My apologies, clan head. Let your anger go. I acted for a moment without knowing better.”

Namgung Hak let his displeasure show plainly.

“Scholar Cheon is an honored guest of this house, and a man whom even I hold in respect. He is not at present carrying out any duty of the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps; he serves as master of letters to my youngest son, at my own request. If Inspector Gu will not respect Scholar Cheon, then would that not be the same as slighting this seat?²”

Gu Jin-ha lowered himself further. His back bent, and his neck drew itself down into his shoulders like a turtle’s.

“I did not know the clan head held Scholar Cheon so dear. I have gone and done a thing contrary to propriety. I beg you will forgive me generously.”

Namgung Hak was about to scold him further, then frowned at the sight of Gu Jin-ha flattening himself on the floor as though he had no pride at all. To go on scolding a man who was rubbing his hands together and begging pardon would only make the clan head lose face himself.

Cheon Tae-san spoke in Namgung Hak’s stead.

“Scholar Gu, take more care next time. Putting your authority forward wherever you happen to be is not a very good habit.”

He handed the advice over calmly, and Gu Jin-ha’s cheek quivered. The man must have been furious indeed; his face went red enough to burst.

Cheon Tae-san enjoyed the reaction a moment, then asked.

“And what has brought you all the way here?”

Gu Jin-ha’s face changed at once, as though he had never been scolded at all. Then he spoke with emphasis, as though to say he was plainly a different order of man from you.

“I am engaged on an important mission at present.”

The matter was confidential and important, properly to be told to the Namgung clan head alone, but to show the difference in their standing he rattled it out anyway.

“There were reports that bands of the Blood Cult and the Demonic Cult were stirring in Anhui, and following them brought me as far as Hefei. It appears they are hatching some scheme of their own in Hefei, and the Namgung Clan ought to know of it, ought they not?”

“That sort of business is properly another body’s work. How does the Inspection Corps come to be handling it?”

Work of that kind belonged to the White Tiger Corps, the armed body that specialized in tracking, or else to the Murim Alliance’s Six Battle Corps, at least if one had in mind the chance of a clash with the Blood Cult or the Demonic Cult. Gu Jin-ha’s martial standing was second-rate; it did not come up to the level of a rank-and-file member of any armed body.

“Word came that several of Hefei’s martial houses have ties to the Blood Cult, so I have come with the White Tiger Corps to inspect them.”

As he spoke, Gu Jin-ha lifted his chin as though to say he was a man of that order.

Out of the whole speech, Cheon Tae-san fastened on the words Demonic Cult and Blood Cult.

“The Blood Cult and the Demonic Cult — you had better take care of yourself. Well, no doubt you will manage.”

At that offhand tone Gu Jin-ha’s face flared up.

“Minnows, the lot of them. The White Tiger Corps Chief himself has come, so taking the whole net of them is only a matter of time. As you know, the White Tiger Corps Chief is…”

There was so much boasting mixed in, all of it amounting to how he got to work alongside such great men, that listening to him was thoroughly uncomfortable.

Namgung Hak nodded absently, as though it wearied him to listen to matters of no consequence, then cut Gu Jin-ha off and turned his eyes to Cheon Tae-san.

“And what was it that brought Scholar Cheon to me?”

For an instant Gu Jin-ha’s feelings were hurt. But he had made a mistake of his own, so he kept his mouth shut.

In truth the shocking thing lay elsewhere. The look in Namgung Hak’s eyes when he dealt with him was purely businesslike, and his tone could not have been colder. But the gaze and the tone he turned on Scholar Cheon were warm and soft enough to drip honey.

He had become a Second Seat Inspector, a rank Scholar Cheon could never presume even to dream of, and still he had to feel the smaller man. His teeth ground at it.

Cheon Tae-san spoke quietly.

“It is nothing of consequence. I only looked in to pay my respects.”

In a place where Gu Jin-ha was sitting, Cheon Tae-san was not about to bring up the matter of Yeo-seol. There was no need to say anything that would give the man a handle to catch hold of.

“Quite so — it has been a while. I can hardly bid you come every day. Do let me see you a little more often, Scholar Cheon.”

The Namgung clan head was reputed to have rather more human warmth about him than most, but only ever within the compass of the Five Great Clans’ clan heads. One of the Three Swords Under Heaven was an idol to the swordsmen of the murim, a master from whom dignity came of itself even standing still.

Gu Jin-ha’s guts twisted. Even now he minded how he let his own breath out in front of Namgung Hak, and here the two of them were talking like friends of long standing. All the more so after the sound thundering he had just taken.

And so Gu Jin-ha blurted out a thing he had no need at all to say.

“Scholar Cheon settled cases remarkably well when he was at the Murim Alliance. One heard a great deal about how keen his insight was.”

At Gu Jin-ha’s sudden praise, Cheon Tae-san went on listening, wondering what he was after.

“In that spirit — might you lend a hand in finding the Demonic Cult and Blood Cult bands that have come into Hefei this time? It seems to me a man like Scholar Cheon could turn up their hiding place without much trouble.”

Cheon Tae-san saw what Gu Jin-ha was after at once.

“That lies outside my authority. For me to go putting myself into an important mission of the Alliance’s would not look well. I decline.”

At so flat a refusal Gu Jin-ha was thrown, as though he had never expected it.

Did you think I would let you use me?

Thinking that if he stayed any longer he would see something he would rather not, Cheon Tae-san made his farewell to Namgung Hak and slipped out of the hall.

Gu Jin-ha stared blankly after him, then presently turned his head and made a request of Namgung Hak.

“While I am staying in Hefei, might I lodge at the Namgung Clan?”

That such a request could come out of him after the thundering he had just taken showed that Gu Jin-ha was no ordinary man either.

“I am sorry. It being the Alliance’s affair, this house would wish to give what support it can, but as things stand we cannot take an outsider in.”

With Scholar Cheon gone, Namgung Hak swept away the respect he had shown Gu Jin-ha and changed to plain speech.

Refused outright, Gu Jin-ha was thrown, and to argue back he brought up Scholar Cheon.

“Does Scholar Cheon not reside inside the clan?”

“Hm. Inspector Gu appears to be under some misapprehension. Scholar Cheon is an honored guest of this house, and a man this seat invited in person. How could such a man be lodged outside it?”

He had nothing to argue with.

“Ah — forgive me.”

“There are inns enough outside this house; you will have no great difficulty lodging. And if it comes to it, has the Alliance not its own safe houses?”

It was the tone of a man saying he had no wish to take you in, so look elsewhere, and it came to Gu Jin-ha that he had earned Namgung Hak’s solid dislike.

And he had thought right: Namgung Hak did not like Gu Jin-ha. The man had shown him, raw and undisguised, the spectacle of a textbook small-minded creature envying and begrudging men of brilliance. Thinking that Scholar Cheon must have been harried by such a creature at the Murim Alliance brought the anger up in him.

And he means to lodge in this house? Not a chance of it.

Namgung Hak’s voice went beyond chilly; a cold air came off it.

“A pity I cannot be of help. And from now on do not come to me — speak to the chief steward. Now, I have business.”

Gu Jin-ha flinched at the look in Namgung Hak’s eyes, and at the order to leave he rose. Whatever complaint he had, he could not show it in front of the clan head.

Once Gu Jin-ha had gone, Namgung Hak muttered.

“Hardly worth a second look, that one. Looking at him after Scholar Cheon, I see now what the difference between a tiger and a dog is. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Sour at having seen something he would rather not have seen, Namgung Hak drained his tea, long since gone cold.

Gu Jin-ha came out of the hall and stood a while looking back at it.

“This humiliation I will repay without fail. Without fail. Whatever the manner of it.”

The evening sunlight struck Gu Jin-ha’s face and broke apart across it, but his expression stayed rancorous, giving off a chill in waves.