Staking A Life

Jong So-bin, hampered in her movement, threw thick needles as hidden weapons, while Hwa-yeong pressed Wan Bok with the Ice Palace’s supreme art, the Ice-White Asura Sword.¹ Wan Bok’s saber work was seasoned enough to break both attacks without trouble, and neither woman knew where the Eighteen Red Dragon Sabers were weak, so their strikes never went home. Every time it came to that, Cheon Tae-san had to dig into those weak points with the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique before the balance of the fight came even again.

So this is how fearsome a peak master is.

The martial artists he ran into now and then at the Murim Alliance were peak masters themselves, and it had never once come home to him what that meant. Fighting one, he thought he finally understood how great a thing the rank was. Even with the wheel-energies accelerated and his strength and agility drawn out to their utmost, he could barely press an attack on a man resolved to die and wringing out the last of his true force.

“Let us see you take this one as well.”

Wan Bok poured out every last scrap of internal force and drove the Eighteen Red Dragon Sabers faster. His insides were scorched dry. For all his full strength he had not disposed of so much as one of the three. He had stood in the peak rank a long time, and until today he had gone into every fight sure of himself; but these three were of no slight capacity, and they would not go down easily.

Then the Ice Palace’s Young Palace Lord staggered, and his eye caught it.

The Ice Palace’s Young Palace Lord is wounded. I’ll concentrate my attack on her and break out that way.

He had settled at last on falling back and returning with his men behind him. He unfolded the Eighteen Red Dragon Sabers’ killing move as the union of body and saber.

In truth, Jong So-bin could see no opening to attack Wan Bok through, so she had shown him a weakness of her own to draw the attack.

I must be resolved to die and stop that man. If he gets out alive and brings his men back, we cannot hold out any longer. In any case mine is a life that will not last long…

She had gathered as much of the ice-cold qi into her sword as it would hold and made ready to unfold her last killing move, and Wan Bok had walked into it at exactly that moment. A driving snow-wind broke out of her sword stroke and swept forward. Her internal force was already spent from the fight with the Blood Cult men and she was wounded besides, so the move came out weak, but she had staked her life on it and the force of it was overwhelming.

— Ka-roooom!

The ice-cold qi met Wan Bok’s internal force, and a peal of thunder rang out. The shock of it tore a gout of fresh blood out of Jong So-bin.

— Kaff!

Wan Bok came flying at her straight through the snow-wind, his union of body and saber not yet robbed of any of its force.

She had unfolded every capacity she had, and she had no regrets. Sensing the end, she screwed her eyes shut.

Cheon Tae-san saw Wan Bok coming at Jong So-bin with the union of body and saber and unfolded the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork to its utmost.

“Shifting form and changing place!”

The cry burst out of Hwa-yeong. In the space of an instant the scholar was standing in front of the Young Palace Lord. Her eyes were still shut when Cheon Tae-san spoke to her.

“Do not close your eyes. You must see that man’s end if you are to tell your dead men about it, must you not?”

The scholar had rattled off something so entirely beside the point that Jong So-bin snorted out a laugh.

To break Wan Bok’s union of body and saber, Cheon Tae-san understood, he would have to stake his own life as well.

Very well. I shall bring that union of body and saber of yours down myself.

He could feel that even at the utmost acceleration of strength and agility he fell short of that union of body and saber, so he turned the wheel-energies faster still, past their limit. The spirit energy drained out of him in long pulls.

Enough to shorten my span.

Turning the wheel-energies hard, driving his strength to its greatest, he felt his own lifespan being shaved away at speed.

So it is. To break a peak master’s union of body and saber I must stake my life. Thought through coldly, this is what my ability comes to. Two wheel-energies are not enough to handle a peak master.

The Dragon’s Breath Flooding the Sea.

The name meant a dragon’s breath raising a tidal wave, and by Cheon Tae-san’s reckoning it was the eighth move of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, the one best suited to standing against a union of body and saber. The killing move poured spirit energy into the sword and released it again, much as the Void Shattering Palm did.

Cheon Tae-san appeared out of nowhere and swung, and Wan Bok gave a slight start and brought his saber up to block. Down onto his head came the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique’s eighth move, the Dragon’s Breath Flooding the Sea.

— Kooong!

The sound of the impact and the shudder of it rang through the ground like a boulder the size of a house coming down. Wan Bok met the sword and went flying, saber and all, then planted both feet back on the earth. Perhaps from the shock of them touching down, his head swayed suddenly, left and right.

— Spliiit!

All at once the head split apart like a well-ripened watermelon. The spirit energy that had come out of Cheon Tae-san’s sword had cloven it.

In that same moment Jong So-bin’s mouth and Hwa-yeong’s split wide open too. Every opening in their faces gaped, unable to close again.

Hwa-yeong let out her breath and muttered.

“So it is true. The Murim Alliance’s secret joint successor.”

The Shaolin Temple’s palm technique, the Kunlun Sect’s fan technique, the Namgung Clan’s sword technique.

Nothing but a joint successor could account for one man unfolding the supreme arts of the Nine Great Sects, which none but a direct-line disciple could so much as lay eyes on.

Cheon Tae-san caught his breath a moment and came toward Jong So-bin, and she gave a start.

“…Why?”

“The bleeding is not stopping. It seems you have badly injured a blood vessel. Would you permit me to look at it?”

The wound sat on the inside of the thigh, a place that might well have shamed her. But Jong So-bin had practiced medicine herself, and she knew an act of treatment when she saw one, so she did not much mind.

Cheon Tae-san sealed the points about the thigh again and breathed spirit energy into it. Internal force could stroke the meridians, but it could not reach so far as to touch a blood vessel. Spirit energy projected even into the inside of a vessel, so it had the power to rejoin one that had been severed.

Damn it. I used up all my spirit energy in the fight and then went and used more, and now my head is swimming.

Only by turning both wheel-energies for all they were worth and forcing spirit energy out of them could he get the blood vessel to hold together at all. He was dizzy, and he barely held down the wish to lie flat on the ground. As the bleeding gradually stopped he set a splint to the thigh and wound a bandage close around it.

“Move this leg as little as you possibly can. If the vessel I have joined comes apart again, it cannot be joined a second time.”

Jong So-bin nodded, astonished at the scholar’s practiced handling. As a physician the words How did you rejoin a severed blood vessel? crawled up as far as her throat, but this was no time to be satisfying such curiosity, and she swallowed them back down.

“Thank you.”

Cheon Tae-san had caught something of it earlier as well, but pouring spirit energy into her body for the treatment let him grasp her constitution once again. He spoke.

“I know where the owner of a Solar Body is.”

At that one sentence Jong So-bin and Hwa-yeong were struck dumb with shock.

This man — what is he?

I knew about Jong So-bin’s Severed Meridians.

The Cold Spirit Three Yin Severed Meridians is a case of the Severed Meridians found in martial artists of the North Sea Ice Palace. And in the Palace Lord’s own direct line at that, who train the ice-cold qi until it reaches its uttermost.²

The Severed Meridians was famous for cutting a life short unless the energy of a Solar Body was absorbed.

Judging by the absence of any heat in Jong So-bin’s body, she has not absorbed a Solar Body’s energy.

Jong So-bin still had not recovered her composure. She drew her robe closed, as though everything about her had been laid bare.

“Where the owner of a Solar Body is, I shall tell you later. What is most urgent now is your safety. Is there anyone to protect you?”

She opened her mouth, her eyes gloomy.

“The people here now are all of us.”

I knew what a price these people had paid to protect Yeo-seol.

“Why did you make a false Ice Sacred Body?”

Jong So-bin ordered her men to clear away the traces of the corpses strewn about the clinic, and then spoke.

“To protect an Ice Sacred Body completed for the first time in several hundred years, the Palace Lord departed this life. I too, being the Young Palace Lord, protect her in keeping with the Palace Lord’s will. Because I believe the Ice Sacred Body will win the Ice Palace back for us.”

I had wondered whether there was some grander purpose in it, but what she meant was that they had protected her out of a kind of sense of mission.

“Since the Scholar knows it all, I need explain no further. I only hope that the Ice Sacred Body will come into her power in time, deliver the Ice Palace from outside force, and become its Palace Lord.”

She was steeped in a sense of defeat, so I threw her a scrap of hope.

“There are those who will protect you.”

“Us?”

Hwa-yeong, who had been sitting, rose to her feet.

“Who?”

“The Murim Alliance.”

“Ah!”

At words neither of them had so much as thought of, Hwa-yeong and Jong So-bin let out a cry.

“I cannot think why you did not ask the Murim Alliance for help. The Young Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace is someone the Alliance would protect in earnest.”

“The Murim Alliance might covet the Ice Sacred Body as well.”

“That may be so. But as things stand there is no body other than the Murim Alliance that can protect you from the Blood Cult or the Demonic Cult.”

“What if we asked the Namgung Clan?”

“The Namgung Clan is not a bad choice either. But a great many people come and go from the Namgung Clan even on ordinary days. In a place like that it is hard to secure anyone’s safety.”

Jong So-bin nodded.

“There is reason in that. A place set apart from the world, like the Mount Hua Sect or the Wudang Sect, would be better. But those are much too far from here.”

I took it up.

“If you have a mind to it, I shall ask the White Tiger Corps’ Corps Chief for protection. If the White Tiger Corps takes you under guard, you can avoid the Blood Cult and Demonic Cult men who have come into Hefei and reach the Murim Alliance safely.”

The two of them thought it over deeply, and I added a word.

“And after that, must you not gather the disciples scattered across every part of the country and take the Ice Palace back?”

I had seen what Jong So-bin had come to, living out in a strange place with the standing of a Young Palace Lord, and it told me plainly what situation she was in.

Having thought it over, the two of them seemed to have realized that this was the best way.

“We shall follow the Scholar’s will.”

Jong So-bin said it, and then looked me full in the face.

“Once I am safe, if I ask you to give me the Ice Sacred Body, will you give her to me?”

I had known this would come sooner or later.

“If the Ice Sacred Body were an object, I would have given her over. But if the Ice Sacred Body is a living thing that can think, must we not follow her own will? If the Ice Sacred Body wants Miss Jong, I shall send her to you.”

Jong So-bin said to me.

“You must keep those words without fail. Before the Ice Sacred Body is the Ice Palace’s treasure, she is its history.”

“It is not out of greed that I keep the Ice Sacred Body. You keep saying the Ice Sacred Body, but what I keep is one girl who has lost her memory. And that girl follows me as her Brother. How could anyone drive such a person out by force?”

Hwa-yeong and Jong So-bin nodded.

Had it been anyone else, they would never have left the Ice Sacred Body where she was. They would have kept her with them even with the Blood Cult or the Demonic Cult at their heels. But he was a scholar under the Namgung Clan’s protection who might well be the Murim Alliance’s secret weapon, and so they had judged that leaving her in his keeping was the safest thing of all. And it was the same now.

“Since you say you are the Ice Sacred Body’s Brother, I shall ask. Does she have a name?”

“Yes. I introduced her to those around me as my cousin, and gave her the name Cheon Yeo-seol.”

“That is a pretty name. Treat her preciously. She is one who must become the Ice Palace’s Palace Lord in time.”

“Khuk!”

Jong So-bin went suddenly blue in the middle of speaking, and shook.

“Oh no!”

Hwa-yeong, startled, looked her over.

“Scholar, forgive me, but could you tell us now where the Solar Body is? The Young Palace Lord has spent even her innate qi, and the balance of her body is broken. She needs a Solar Body’s energy at once.”

“Let us go to the Murim Alliance’s safe house first. It is not far from here. We can make ready there and then go. Can you hold out?”

She nodded, her lips trembling.

“About an hour, perhaps…”

I called to mind the Murim Alliance safe houses scattered through the region, which I had seen in the murim’s secret vault.

“Would it not be better to go to the Namgung Clan?”

At Hwa-yeong’s question Jong So-bin shook her head.

“We can’t go to the Namgung Clan, if only to protect the Ice Sacred Body. That’s likely why the Scholar is asking the Alliance to guard us, too.”

She had it exactly. For Cheon Yeo-seol’s safety, their going to the Namgung Clan was not a very good idea.

I took the false Ice Sacred Body and Jong So-bin’s men to the safe house. The agents there were startled at our appearance. I told them the whole of it from beginning to end and said that they were to get word to the White Tiger Corps’ Corps Chief and to protect these women. One of them went running off somewhere in haste.

Hwa-yeong spoke.

“We cannot go as we are, so find clothes for the Young Palace Lord and myself quickly, if you please.”

Her clothes and the Young Palace Lord’s were torn in places and stained with blood.

I shook my head.

“The martial robes here will serve well enough for now. And only Miss Jong goes.”

“What? I must go, to escort the Young Palace Lord. She is not even sound in her body.”

“When the White Tiger Corps’ Corps Chief comes, if the proprietress is not here either, who is going to think that girl there is the true Ice Sacred Body?”

“No — the Blood Cult and the Demonic Cult chase us because they know we have the Ice Sacred Body, but the Murim Alliance may not know the Ice Sacred Body exists at all. The White Tiger Corps will merely be after the Blood Cult and Demonic Cult crowds.”

Jong So-bin listened, and then spoke to Hwa-yeong.

“Third Protector, the Scholar is right. If anything happens here, you take Ye-won and run at once.”

I said it with a sigh.

“If that should happen, do not stop to weigh it up — make straight for the Namgung Clan.”

Thinking it over, I judged that at least one first-rate master ought to remain, if only to protect Ye-won.

“You really are the Murim Alliance’s secret weapon, or its joint successor, are you not?”

Hwa-yeong asked it of me, uneasy, it seemed, at sending the Young Palace Lord off alone.

I looked at her a long moment, and then shook my head.

“I am nothing but a plain scholar.”

Hwa-yeong was not disappointed at my words; she answered with a smile.

“That settles it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“To conceal your standing so thoroughly even in a crisis like this must mean you have had harsh training. Had you disclosed who you were, I should have trusted you less, if anything.”

“Haah.”

It stifled me, this situation in which the truth turned into a lie however I told it. But misunderstand though she might, this was no time to be undoing a misunderstanding.

“Come, let us go.”

When Jong So-bin only stood there blankly, I remembered the wound in her thigh.

“Haah. This really isn’t my kind of thing.”

I turned my back to her and crouched down, and she hesitated awkwardly. As a Young Palace Lord she would never once have been carried on a man’s back.

“You need only think of me as a patient. You must have met a great many male patients in your time.”

At that she let herself up onto my back. I slipped quickly out toward the edge of the city.

“Where are we going?”

“We need only go about a quarter of an hour. The owner of a Solar Body will be there.”

“Will be there? It is not certain, then?”

Her breath tickled my ear.

“Nine times out of ten they will be there. And there is a possibility of there being several of them, at that.”

Jong So-bin opened her mouth.

“This is a Solar Body we searched a whole year for and never once laid eyes on. Several people with a constitution like that?”

She sighed like one who still could not believe it, and her breath tickled the nape of my neck.