A Talent Bordering On Calamity

A talent there was no accounting for.

I had been born with the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body myself, and it gave me abilities beyond the reach of any ordinary man, but Cheon Yeo-seol’s talent went clean past the limit of what I had understood talent to be.

I interpret an oral formula, analyze it, and so come to grasp a martial learning — but Yeo-seol grasps it merely by looking.

I could say so with certainty.

A talent to shake heaven and earth. If anyone else learned of this, they would use any means there was to possess Cheon Yeo-seol.

The moment the thought landed, I became certain that the Demonic Cult and Blood Cult crowds appearing in Hefei had something to do with Cheon Yeo-seol.

Because they could perfect every last one of their martial arts within Cheon Yeo-seol’s single body. Ten years on, they could make of her an absolute power with no rival under heaven.

And it was not the two cults alone, I thought; the orthodox murim would have to be guarded against as well.

A talent like this, and the Nine Great Sects, the Five Great Clans, the Murim Alliance would none of them leave her be.

The worry came over me that what I had suddenly acquired was not a sweet little sister but a great lump of calamity gathered up in my arms.

Her talent was overwhelming enough that I found myself worrying in a way I never usually did. I caught myself glancing around, too. I was afraid someone might have seen. Luckily it was the hour for preparing the evening meal, and every worker about the estate had their hands full with their own tasks.

“Yeo-seol, let’s go inside.”

I took Yeo-seol with me into the room.

“Huhh? But I want to play with this stick more.”

She was swinging the stick, and the arc it traced was a move out of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. I took the stick off her, crouched down, and met her eyes.

“Yeo-seol, listen to me carefully. You do listen to Brother, don’t you.”

“Mm. I listen to Brother.”

“Good. From now on, don’t swing a stick where there are people. Except when Brother tells you to. Can you do that?”

“Hmmm…”

A whole heart’s worth of grievance went into her puffed-out cheeks.

“Do as I say and I’ll buy you noodles.”

“Hm. Then buy them every day.”

Yeo-seol had a healthy appetite, so I struck my bargain in food.

“Those smelly people tried to take you away before, didn’t they.”

“Mm. The shit-eating people. Their mouths smelled too.”

“That’s right, that’s right. If you don’t do as I say, the shit-eating people will come and take you away.”

“Really? Then I don’t want to.”

“You swing the stick only when I say you may. Understood?”

I gave her the snacks that were in the room, and she broke into a wide, silly grin.

“Okay.”

For now, by whatever means came to hand, I had to plant some wariness in her. And I wanted to make certain, one more time, that her talent was real.

“Yeo-seol, this time it’s Brother telling you to, so you may swing the stick. First watch me swing it, and when I say so, try copying it.”

“Okayy.”

Yeo-seol shoved a fistful of the snacks into her mouth and crunched away at them.

I unfolded the Twenty-Four Plum Blossoms Sword Technique, working strength and swiftness into it, and drove five moves through in the space of an instant.

Is this not it?

The plum blossoms I had expected were nowhere to be seen.

Either I am missing something, or the oral formula falls short.

I was still turning over why the plum blossoms had failed to bloom when the scent of flowers filled the room and I raised my head.

Has someone put a vase of flowers in the room?

I looked about me at the thought, and there was Yeo-seol, unfolding the Twenty-Four Plum Blossoms Sword Technique with her stick. A transparent spirit energy was pouring off the stick, and it was not an energy anyone could call sword qi.

It is an energy close to the qi of nature.

The qi of nature was being drawn in around her body, and that settled it. The one mercy was that this qi of nature was a kind of spirit force as well, so nobody but a man like me could see it. The scent of flowers was rising from the tip of her stick.

A thing to make a ghost wail. I see it with my own eyes and still cannot believe it.

Even within the Mount Hua Sect, few masters could unfold that art and raise plum blossoms or the scent of plum out of it. Only an Elder who stood high even among the Elders in the attainment of sword learning could reach that height, and Yeo-seol was doing it as though it were nothing at all.

If an evil crowd turned Cheon Yeo-seol to ill use, there would be no man in the murim able to stand against her. I understood that now.

“Haah.”

The understanding pulled a deep, long sigh out of me before I could stop it.

“Where on earth did you come from?”

I asked it without thinking, the way a man mutters to himself. Yeo-seol answered.

“Dunno. I opened my eyes and it was some cave. I was hungry so I came out of the cave.”

“…And?”

“Hm. Then I picked up clothes at a house made of wood in the mountains and put them on.”

“And?”

“I followed a tasty smell down off the mountain, didn’t I?”

“Yeo-seol, when you were in the cave, was there anything strange?”

Until now I had left her past alone, for fear of giving her a shock. But she had brought up her waking herself, so I asked what I was curious about as well.

“Hm. There was something white and cold in the cave. And it was stuck to my body too.”

This, I knew, was an enormous clue.

Something white and cold.

I mustered the whole of my knowledge and drew one inference out of it.

If it is as Yeo-seol describes it, the odds are strong that it was an ice crystal. And if an ice crystal was stuck to her body, she may well have come out of it.

I thought for a moment, and my body shook without my willing it.

Surely not.

I stared hard at Yeo-seol.

Yeo-seol — surely she is not that Ice Sacred Body of the North Sea Ice Palace?

Only then did I understand why a cool energy hung about Yeo-seol’s body.

Not so very many people in the world knew about the Ice Sacred Body. Likely nobody but the leadership of the Murim Alliance, or the Nine Great Sects and the highest councils of the Five Great Clans, had ever so much as heard of it.

While I was thinking, a weight settled on my thigh, and looking down I found that Cheon Yeo-seol had fallen asleep at some point with my thigh for a pillow. Crumbs of the snacks clung about her mouth. I wiped her mouth and laid her down on the bed. Perhaps because she had used the qi of nature to the point of raising the scent of plum, she slept dead to the world.

“Brother. Hehe. Tasty.”

Yeo-seol talked in her sleep, dreaming of eating, by the sound of it. I had no way to put the strange feeling into words, and for a while I only looked down at her, vacantly.

A little thing who turned up one day out of nowhere. She looked like a rabbit that would be eaten by the street cats if I left her where she was, so pity stirred in me and I brought her along for a while. And then it turns out she is a girl with a talent to shake heaven and earth. A girl with talent enough that the theory of martial learning may have to be laid down all over again.

I did not think for a moment that she would be able to live an ordinary life. One born with so overwhelming a talent pays a price to match it, and I knew it.

I stroked Yeo-seol’s head, and she burrowed it further into my belly.

“The trouble is, I don’t know whether I can protect you.”

Until now I had meant to complete the Seven Stars and Seven Primes to extend my own lifespan. It had never once occurred to me to do anything with the power it gained me. Because even if a transcendent power came to me, I meant to live as a scholar.

But I saw now that even without living a martial artist’s life, I would have to build up strength if I was to protect Cheon Yeo-seol.

If someone told me to hand her over, could I give her up without so much as resisting? When I knew perfectly well what they would use her for.

Then it is as good as decided. If only against the day Yeo-seol’s secret leaks out.

Born with the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body though I was, I had never thought to build up strength in earnest. Now I had to wake up to it myself. A time had come, I saw, when I needed strength without ever becoming a martial artist.

“Huh? Who’s this old man?”

“Ho ho. Child, who might you be? I have not seen you before.”

“Hm. Didn’t I ask the old man who he was first? You answer the person who asked first.”

At the bold girl’s words Namgung Hak stared a moment, dumbfounded, and then his face broke into a great laugh.

“Hahaha. Just so. That is quite right. This old man is the master of this house.”

“Oh, the landlord? Then have you come to ask my Brother for the rent?”

“The rent? Hahaha. And who is your Brother?”

“My Brother’s name is Cheon Tae-san.”

He smiled to learn that this girl, bold beyond all measure, was Scholar Cheon’s sister.

But did Scholar Cheon have a little sister as young as this?

Nothing of the kind had turned up when he looked into Cheon Tae-san. But she had come openly out of the room where the scholar lodged, and there was no disbelieving that.

“Child, what is your name?”

“My name is Cheon Yeo-seol. What’s the old man’s name?”

Namgung Hak let out a snort of a laugh. Perhaps because the words came from a girl who knew nothing whatever of the ways of the world, her headlong talking-down raised no anger in him at all; instead it brought a smile to his face.

“This old man’s name is Namgung Hak.”

“Hm. I heard at the market that the Namgung Clan is the strongest in the world, so does that mean the old man is the strongest in the world?”

“Ho ho ho. It is kind of you to say, but there are many stronger than I am.”

“I thought as much. You’re smaller than the man who sells noodles in the street, too. Hold on — what are you to the hellion who lives over there?”

“The hellion? Hahaha. I happen to be that hellion’s father.”

“Really? That hellion needs an education, I think. No manners at all, no sense of what’s proper, and he talks any way he likes.”

“Is that so? Then I shall have to teach him a sharp lesson.”

“Mm. The way I see it, his raising at home wasn’t finished.”

“Ho ho ho. The fault is largely mine, as his father.”

“That’s right. The old man should reflect on himself.”

I had come out from washing my face when I heard the two of them talking, and it appalled me.

“Clan Head, what brings you here? Have you come to see the young master?”

“I came to see Scholar Cheon for a moment.”

Cheon Yeo-seol looked at me and spoke.

“Brother, they say your knees hurt when you get old. Sit down to talk. The old man’s tired.”

There was nothing I could say to that. I let out a helpless laugh and bowed my head toward Namgung Hak.

“My apologies, Clan Head. Yeo-seol is my cousin. She met with an accident on her way to see me and lost her memory. And her character seems to have altered somewhat as well. She was a well-mannered child by nature, but it appears she has forgotten her manners along with the rest.”

“Is that so? I did think there was something odd about it. A child of Scholar Cheon’s house would surely have been properly educated. But looking at your sister put me in mind of the days when I was raising my own, and I was not displeased by it.”

“Yeo-seol, you go inside. There are dumplings in the room.”

Yeo-seol nodded, then set that dainty little mouth of hers working at Namgung Hak.

“Old man, don’t go bullying my Brother just because you’re the landlord. They say you can tell what the father is by looking at the son. I’ll be watching.”

I had to make excuses all over again.

“My sister lost her memory and wandered the streets all day, and it was after hearing the way they talk in the market that she began speaking like that. My apologies, Clan Head.”

Cheon Yeo-seol went so far as to show him a clenched fist, and Namgung Hak let out a great open laugh while I shook my head.

“Hahaha. Truly, there is no end to how darling this child is.”

It had been a long while since Namgung Hak had laughed so broadly. He muttered.

“In all my born days I have never met so adorable a creature.”

He might well have taken offense at a small girl speaking to him so carelessly. Instead he doted on Yeo-seol, and to a degree that left me flustered.

Lost memory or not, it struck me as dangerous for her to behave this rudely to all and sundry, and I resolved to begin her education that very day. The things she needed teaching were more than a few. Just warning her not to show her power carelessly and teaching her the basic courtesies of dealing with people looked likely to take a great deal of time.