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“Du-sik.”
Du-sik was hard at work loading refuse onto a cart. He saw me and greeted me in a loud voice.
“Scholar! Good day to you!”
The greeting came out so ramrod-stiff and formal that I snorted a laugh.
“Good. I hear you have been living hard at it lately?”
“There are a lot of mouths hanging on me. We have to do something to keep ourselves fed.”
I looked at shaggy-haired Du-sik standing there abashed, and nodded.
“Good. You look very well. Go on protecting the street like this, and this street is under Du-sik’s protection.”
A street thug who could not so much as collect a stall fee from the market traders had no business playing master of anything, but hearing it said aloud brightened Du-sik’s face all the same.
“And have you looked into whether any crowd has been going about after a young girl?”
“We have been keeping watch on the street the whole while, and we have not seen anyone like that on North Road. Only—”
Du-sik stepped a pace closer before he went on.
“I did hear talk that over on West Road they saw a crowd chasing some girl.”
“What?”
“They said there was a crowd chasing a girl of somewhere about ten. And women protecting the girl and fleeing with her, too.”
“When?”
“It has been a few days since I heard it.”
I tilted my head.
Not looking for a girl — chasing one?
Something took shape in my head.
So the North Sea Ice Palace, having lost the Ice Sacred Body, has made a substitute. But why? What is the reason for it? The women protecting the girl will be the North Sea Ice Palace’s women.
A question came to me.
Could the White Tiger Corps or the Inspection Corps fail to know of a thing on this scale? Unless—
While I was sunk in thought, one of Du-sik’s men lifting refuse went down.
“Oof!”
“What is the matter?”
“I have turned my ankle.”
Du-sik spoke to the man as he got to his feet, limping.
“Go to the Saintess. Treatment there is free.”
“Elder brother, the Saintess’s clinic has been shut for days now. It is as empty as if they had left. One of our lads went again today and came back with nothing.”
At those words a single hard bolt of lightning shot across my mind.
Women protecting a girl. A Saintess who came into Hefei a year ago. A clinic made up of nothing but women.
A few words drifted about in my head and settled into one answer.
What an idiot. I never thought it through. I could have known it if I had only doubted a little harder. Jong So-bin may be a person of the North Sea Ice Palace.
I revised the plan I had made to go to the man. I would stop at the clinic first and see whether my guess was right.
There is time enough to stop at the clinic, confirm it, and go on after.
I called over the big man who had sprained his ankle.
“Come here. I will set some needles for you.”
“I am all right.”
He drew back, as though being treated by me was more than he could bear.
“Leave it as it is and you could damage the ligament.”
I held firm, and the big man came forward. From inside my robes I took out the needle case I always carried, set needles into the ankle, and breathed spirit energy into it to loosen the startled muscle. When I drew the needles out a moment later, the big man was astonished.
“Scholar, my ankle does not hurt at all.”
“Walk on it.”
The big man walked without trouble, and Du-sik’s men, watching, bent at the waist all together.
“Thank you. Scholar.”
I called Du-sik over.
“Du-sik, this street’s stall fee, the one copper a head — you collect it and keep it.”
“Pardon? Is that not the Namgung Clan’s share?”
“It is all right. I have only to speak to the young master. But do not raise the stall fee any higher. Take only that.”
One copper a month was better than nothing. With North Road’s shops and stalls running to several hundred, it would come to a tidy sum.
“With the stall fee coming in, and clearing the street’s refuse and running errands besides, you will have no trouble keeping yourselves fed.”
“Thank you. Scholar.”
“And if men you cannot handle come coveting this street, tell me.”
“Understood. Scholar.”
“I will be off.”
“Go safely.”
Du-sik and his men stayed bent at the waist in salute until the Scholar had gone far enough to be out of sight.
“The Scholar is a master, and a Divine Doctor besides who can cure a sickness at a single go, and on top of that he has the heart to look after low sorts like us.”
Du-sik muttered it, overcome. The big man who had taken the needles in his ankle carried it on.
“Back when we held the street by fighting off other outfits it was one worry after another, but since the Scholar came there is not a soul who dares touch this North Road, and it is easy.”
Another of the men took it up.
“Naturally. Other lots came in a few times and got it hard from the Scholar.”
Du-sik spoke up boldly.
“The Scholar said it then. The master of this North Road is Du-sik. Do not touch it. That was when I settled on the Scholar as the lord of my own heart.”
“Do not bring that heart out where it can be seen. If the likes of us go loitering about the Scholar it does him harm rather than good.”
“Naturally.”
To Du-sik, and to every man under him, Scholar Cheon was an idol and a hero.
Going into the clinic Jong So-bin ran, I used the footwork I had trained all this while for all it was worth. I went up onto the clinic’s roof and dropped down into the back garden, and the footwork was so light it made not a single footfall.
A lightness art driven by internal force pushes the body along by venting internal qi through the Yongquan point in the sole of the foot1, so the weight can never be shed entirely, and some faint sound is always left behind. Unfold a lightness art with spirit energy, though, and it wraps the whole body, so the body’s weight can be controlled perfectly. That was why, in my time at the Murim Alliance, I paid no attention to the Nine Great Sects’ lightness techniques, though I could have learned any of them.
Because they did not suit me. But in the murim’s secret vault I came to see one lightness technique that did.
The Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork.2
The very name of it had been forgotten in the murim. The Ghost Immortal, who once had the murim shaking with terror, devised a footwork technique that ran on ghost qi, and it won an evil name for appearing like a god and vanishing like a ghost.
This Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork uses ghost qi, but it is worked on a system much like spirit energy’s, which makes it the footwork exactly suited to me.
I read the art’s oral formula and spent the days afterward in nothing but a shiver.
Because it was a lightness technique made for me. I looked for other martial learning of the Ghost Immortal who devised this footwork, but to my regret I could find no more.
Of late I had been debating whether I ought to teach the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork to Yeo-seol. Handing down the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, on the other hand, I had not debated much at all.
Because I am the Namgung Clan’s Protector of the Clan Head’s Person. Say she is my disciple and even the Namgung Clan’s people cannot take issue with it.
The footwork was another matter. A lightness art comes out of its own accord the moment the body is used, so there was every risk of its being seen.
If a young girl uses a higher lightness art she will draw eyes from that moment on, and there will be men wanting to dig up what Yeo-seol is.
I knew the murim’s habits far too well to make light of that. This too, if Yeo-seol set her mind to it, would take her a day or two at the most, so I meant to take my time and think it through at leisure.
Strange, that a clinic this large should have not a soul in it.
An ordinary physician, whatever private business he had, would not shut up his clinic like this.
My expectation was hardening by degrees into certainty. Once inside, I went from room to room searching out documents, but they were nothing but prescriptions for the most part, and I found no papers of any note.
Well, of course. No one would leave important papers in a place like this.
I was about to move to another room when I felt a presence come over the clinic’s wall. I was up on a roof beam at once, my own presence stilled. The Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork went far past anything like the Great Tortoise Breath Art; it hid every trace of me without a seam.
“This way.”
Two people came in toward where I was, each with someone on her back. The room they came into was where the medicinal herbs were kept.
“Lay her down here.”
Looking closer, I saw the proprietress of the Cheongsim Teahouse lay Jong So-bin down on the floor. Another woman laid a girl on a sickbed. The girl looked to be unconscious.
“Ye-won is all right?”
Hwa-yeong answered Jong So-bin’s question.
“Ye-won has only fainted a while, her strength spent. It is the Young Palace Lord’s wound that is the trouble now.”
The two women set hard to work treating Jong So-bin. There was a stab wound in her thigh, and the cut ran deep, so the blood would not stop.
“The blood will not stop even with the points sealed.”
“Seal the points over a wider area and press it down with bandages.”
Hwa-yeong spoke, her voice troubled.
“Young Palace Lord, I shall draw them off, and you take that opening and get out of Hefei with Ye-won. It is not only Elder Yu — the Blood Cult crowd are after us as well. Once the Demonic Cult crowd join them, you will not get out then however much you wish to.”
Hwa-yeong had settled on sacrificing herself to keep the Young Palace Lord alive.
“Third Protector, without the Solar Body’s energy I have not long to live anyway. Better to fight beside you and die than live on so shabbily.”
Hwa-yeong looked at the Young Palace Lord, and her heart tore.
“It is my responsibility to guard the Young Palace Lord.”
Jong So-bin looked at Hwa-yeong and gave a forlorn smile.
“Sister Hwa-yeong.”
Hwa-yeong bit her lip at being called by the name the Young Palace Lord had used for her as a child. That was the habit that came out whenever the Young Palace Lord meant to be stubborn.
“We said we would die together if we died and live together if we lived. If you die and only I live on, do you think I would live well? Do you think I could ever go back to the Ice Palace without you?”
Hwa-yeong squeezed her eyes shut. Whatever it cost, she wanted the Young Palace Lord to live, but the Young Palace Lord seemed already to have settled on dying in the fight.
“The rest of you take Ye-won and flee. Hwa-yeong and I will stay here.”
“Young Palace Lord.”
“Sister Hwa-yeong, Ye-won has to live if the true Ice Sacred Body is to stay hidden. If Ye-won dies here they will see at once that she was a fake who had only swallowed the ice crystal. However much she may be inside the Namgung Clan, it is only a matter of time before they find the true Ice Sacred Body.”
Listening to the women talk, I felt my questions come slowly undone.
So these were the North Sea Ice Palace’s people after all. And Yeo-seol is the true Ice Sacred Body. From the way they talk, they know as well that the true Ice Sacred Body is with me.
I did not have to think it through any further. To protect Yeo-seol, the false Ice Sacred Body had to be kept alive. These people knew that too, which was why they meant to flee with her.
But there was one question that would not go away.
Knowing the Ice Sacred Body is with me, why do they go on pretending not to? All this while I have not felt these people’s presence anywhere near me, let alone inside the Namgung Clan.
Somehow I had the feeling that these people too were trying to protect Yeo-seol. I thought I had better hear the reason for it.
When I came down from the roof beam, the people in the room started violently. Not one of them had felt my presence, and it threw them; they closed ranks around Jong So-bin.
“You are—?”
Hwa-yeong had seen me at the Cheongsim Teahouse a few times, and she at least was the calmer of them.
“I did not know Master Scholar Cheon was here.”
Jong So-bin looked at me and spoke.
“So the word is true. That you are the Murim Alliance’s secret weapon. In truth I heard the rumor and was half in doubt of it, but now I see. That the rumor is true.”
A man who could deceive even her own sense for qi had to be a master beyond the first rate.
“Did you hear what we said?”
I nodded.
“Then that is just as well. Take this child with you. It is the only way you can protect the child you are keeping.”
I answered.
“That is your work to do.”
“You said you heard. Trackers will be here after us before long. Even if you are the Murim Alliance’s secret weapon, you cannot take on every one of the Blood Cult’s men.”
I stayed where I was, and Jong So-bin spoke with an exasperated look.
“You truly are a wanting sort of man. Look here, Scholar. If you die, what becomes of the child you are keeping? If you cannot take this child with you, then get yourself out of here quickly, at the very least.”
“I shall deal with the ones coming for you.”
She snorted at that, as though the thing were beyond absurd.
“Haa. You really are an exasperating sort. Alone it is out of the question, I tell you. It is not one or two. It is more than ten Blood Cult masters. Every one of them a first-rate master. And several of them peak masters besides.”
I turned around.
“Are the ones coming now the Blood Cult’s men?”
Jong So-bin, seeming to feel no presence at all, looked at Hwa-yeong. Her sense for qi might have weakened with the wound. Hwa-yeong shook her head. She had not detected it either.
“There are not ten. There are five.”
Still the women could detect nothing and looked at each other. A moment later a band came leaping lightly over the clinic’s wall, and every one of them wore an official’s robes.
I smiled at them.
“Do Blood Cult men work as constables these days?”
That the White Tiger Corps and the Inspection Corps could not find them was, in a way, only natural. Disguised as head constables and constables, who would readily suspect them?
Five Blood Cult men in constables’ clothes came on toward Jong So-bin.
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