An Unexpected Gift

“Don’t talk. I like it better if I make you swallow the Demonic Surge Pill. I like it better when you suffer.”

I smiled and pushed my finger deeper into his mouth, and he shouted.

“I-I’ll talk. Take your finger out.”

I drew my finger out and let go of his jaw. His lips shook as though a spasm had run through them.

“I-I fed it to Yi Mak-seong in secret.”

The words were barely out before Yi Ung came at him, bellowing.

“Why! Why did you do such a thing to us! What wrong did we ever do you?”

They drew a sword and looked ready to kill Gu Jin-ha, and Wang Cheong caught them by the shoulder.

“Calm yourself. Kill the man here and we shall never learn the reason.”

Wang Cheong glared at Gu Jin-ha and went on.

“This is not a thing to be questioned out of him here. We must go back to the Alliance and get to the bottom of it thoroughly.”

Wang Cheong asked nothing further, because they could guess well enough what would come out of the man’s mouth. They had simply stopped it there because the Murim Alliance’s shame could not be laid bare in front of so many people.

The power struggle between the Murim Alliance’s Leader and its Elders.

And I knew something more. The Demonic Surge Pill had frightened Gu Jin-ha, true enough, but he had also blurted it out because he had something to fall back on.

He must be thinking the Elders’ Council will protect him.

But there was one thing Gu Jin-ha had overlooked. To them he was no more than a lizard’s tail, and he did not know it.

He has only ever tasted power’s sweetness, so of course he does not know its bitterness.

Watching all those power struggles at the Murim Alliance, I had come to understand something.

That for power to become just and righteous, it must be exercised upon oneself and not upon others.

A man who tries to lay even a small power on others like a whip, as Gu Jin-ha does, ends up being the one flogged.

But I had never once seen a man turn his power on himself.

Gu Jin-ha had begun bellowing again at the top of his voice, so Wang Cheong went over and pressed the mute point to silence him. After that the man only worked his mouth like a fish pulled out of the water, and when no voice came he thrashed about.

“I shall press the paralysis point and stop you moving at all.”

At those words the writhing stopped. He knew that to be conscious and unable to stir was no different from torture.

“We shall keep Scholar Gu bound and take him to the Alliance. And we shall report the Jeongryong Sect matter to the Alliance and see it put right.”

Wang Cheong left to move the White Tiger Corps to the other safe house.

Yi Ung seized my hand.

“Master Scholar Cheon, thank you for your help. One step wrong and we would have been driven into the ranks of the Demonic Cult and the house blown to pieces.”

Yi Ung took Scholar Cheon for a benefactor. They knew he had put himself in danger to help them.

“In any case, your son is the problem. I have put the demonic qi to sleep for a while, but there is no telling when it will run wild again.”

“Is there no way at all?”

They were clinging to a hope. Scholar Cheon had found out that the Demonic Surge Pill even existed, so perhaps he knew how to be rid of it as well.

“The Demonic Surge Pill’s demonic qi has the property of transferring the instant there is contact with the skin. So nobody will be able to treat your son. It would be better to choose instead to have your son absorb the demonic qi. Learning a demonic-path internal art and gathering it in the dantian is the only way.”

Yi Ung spoke out of desperation.

“If it comes to that, he will be taken for a Demonic Cult man in earnest.”

They went on.

“He is famous as a hellion as it is, and if he learns demonic-path martial learning on top of that, he will be stuck fast with no way out.”

“This business will bring your son to his senses. Even utter hellions come to their senses once something harsh has been done to them.”

It was a roundabout way of saying that I had absorbed Yi Mak-seong’s energy and he would play the hellion no longer.

“In times like these, where could a man come by a demonic-path internal art?”

That question I could not answer. It was a thing for Yi Ung to solve, not a thing I could do for them.

Yi Ung gazed at their son with gloomy eyes and muttered something. I had been concentrating without meaning to, and though I stood well away, their voice seeped into my ear.

“My son, whatever it takes, I will keep you alive. It is dangerous to bring that out, but to save you I will bear any danger there is.”

I heard it and thought.

There is something.

Yi Mak-seong was an only son. There were no other brothers, and if he died the succession was at an end.

Jong So-bin came over to me.

“Master Scholar Cheon, might I see you privately once before we go to the Murim Alliance? With your little sister.”

“…”

I did not answer, and Jong So-bin went on.

“I want to see her properly once before I leave. I will say nothing else — I only want to look at her face once.”

“I do not think that is a good idea.”

“It is because I have something to give your little sister. It is not a condition, but if you will do it I shall make over to you the premises we set up in Hefei. There is no time to settle the teahouse and the clinic before we go, so I would have you hold them, and give them to your little sister when she is grown. At that time I shall hand over the land deeds and the house deeds and all.”

“That is a good justification for seeing my little sister.”

Jong So-bin smiled at that.

“This is what I like about you, Master Scholar Cheon. That you are worldly in just the right measure. Had you been a man with no give in him, I would not have entrusted it to you.”

She was letting her honest feeling show.

“I shall call at the safe house tomorrow.”

“Please, without fail.”

With that Jong So-bin left for the second safe house with the White Tiger Corps.

Wang Cheong had come out to track the Demonic Cult and Blood Cult crowds, and since they could not withdraw with Jong So-bin alone, they decided to press on with the hunt for Demonic Cult men. They sent a man to the Namgung Clan to work alongside the Namgung Demon-Repelling Corps.

Only the Murim Alliance warriors who had been at the safe house from the first were left in it now, and the place turned bleak.

Yi Ung came over to me.

“Master Scholar Cheon, could you come with us as far as our house?”

They had been brought here with a whole band ringing them round like a cordon, and now that the business was over they were being flung aside. Yi Ung felt anger at that, and self-reproach besides. If they met a Demonic Cult or Blood Cult band on the road, carrying a son who had still not come round, they would be hard put to stand against it.

I felt for the two of them, and I could not refuse them out of hand. And in truth, should they run into a Demonic Cult or Blood Cult band, fighting while guarding an unconscious son was a perilous business.

Still, I did get a Seven Stars energy out of Yi Mak-seong. That much consideration I ought to show them.

Thinking of that, I could not refuse.

“Let us do that. I shall go with you as far as the Jeongryong Sect.”

“Thank you truly.”

Yi Ung borrowed a carriage from the safe house and set out for the Jeongryong Sect.

There was no trouble of any kind the whole way, so little that I felt foolish for having been on my guard for nothing. The Demonic Cult and Blood Cult crowds were absorbed in hunting the Ice Sacred Body, and would have had no interest in us at all.

Once we had arrived, Yi Ung thanked me over and over. It was courtesy laid on thicker than the case called for, but I understood how they felt and let it be.

“Is there no way to save my son? The truth is that I brought you all this way because I thought that if it were you, Master Scholar Cheon, you might know of one.”

The spirit of a man clutching at a straw, no doubt.

“As I told you, there is no way but to govern the demonic qi lodged in your son’s body with a demonic-path internal art.”

Yi Ung spoke with a grave face.

“Master Scholar Cheon, can you keep what I am about to say a secret?”

“I can.”

They had made as if to tell some great secret, and then could not go on for a while. It was a matter, evidently, that took that much resolve to speak of. Then that mouth, which had looked as though it would never open, opened.

“A long while ago I came by a piece of demonic-path martial learning by chance. But it is demonic-path martial learning in name only — when I looked into it, there was something strange about it.”

“Strange in what way?”

“There was a profound mystery to it, as in the higher martial arts, but when I looked at the oral formula I could make no sense of what it said. I put it to a famous scholar besides, and he was no wiser than I. So I left it lying and forgot about it. I took it for a martial art somebody had devised as a joke.”

Though Yi Ung had put out an order forbidding anyone to come near, they still glanced around.

“Now that my boy has come to this, that demonic-path martial-arts book came to mind. Might that demonic-path martial art be of any help?”

“Bring it out first. If I look at it, I shall know. And I shall hold my tongue about your son having learned a demonic-path internal art, so do not trouble yourself over that.”

Scholar Cheon’s understanding was a mercy, and Yi Ung was set at ease.

“Please wait a moment.”

Yi Ung unfolded a lightness skill and vanished off somewhere in haste.

Yi Ung is a first-rate master, and here is demonic-path martial learning even they cannot read. What could it be?

Before long they were back, in such haste that they had used a lightness skill even inside the sect’s own walls.

“This is it.”

I took the martial-arts book Yi Ung held out and turned the pages. At the sight of the name of the martial learning I went rigid.

This was here all along?

How I had ransacked the archives at the Murim Alliance after I learned the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork, hunting for the rest of the Ghost Immortal’s martial learning. The Alliance’s secret vault held that one art of theirs and nothing else, and even it had been kept so poorly that the book was rotting away to nothing.

The Nine Nether Dark Prison Internal Art, the Nine Nether Dead-Spirit Sword Technique, the Nine Nether Soul-Seizing Palm, the Nine Nether Spirit-Snatching Finger, the Nine Nether Life-Taking Claw.

One secret manual held the whole of the Ghost Immortal’s martial arts. There were the titles and nothing else to go by; not even the name of whoever devised them was mentioned. No wonder nobody had ever been able to tell whose martial learning it was.

Yi Ung, who had been watching my face, spoke carefully.

“The names look to come out of the demonic path, but from what I could find out, there seem to be no such names even in the Demonic Cult.”

They had evidently found something out of the ordinary in these arts too, and had gone poking about after them one way and another.

I steadied my startled heart and put on an unconcerned face.

“Let me run my eye over it. To see whether it holds an internal art that can save Young Master Yi.”

“I should be grateful if you would.”

Their son’s life was at stake, and that was reason enough. Yi Ung, head of a whole sect though they were, kept up a posture of deference toward me throughout.

I turned the pages quickly, and in less than a quarter of an hour I had the whole of the secret manual by heart.

“Can you make out what is in it, looking at it like that?”

Yi Ung asked it with a face that said I was being far too careless.

I mixed a lie into my answer so that they would take no interest in the secret manual.

“By the look of it this is martial learning left behind by a school that made a specialty of sorcery. As you said, it has no value as martial learning. Only, the internal art set down here seems to draw on demonic-path internal arts closely enough to guide a Demonic Surge Pill’s demonic qi into the dantian.”

“Is that true?”

“When I was with the Inspection Corps I once looked at a demonic-path internal art by way of study, and this is built on much the same structure.”

With that I granted them their absolution in advance.

“Later the Murim Alliance will come to investigate and ask how your son’s demonic qi was removed.”

With a Demonic Surge Pill involved, someone would come to investigate, whether from the Inspection Corps or from an Alliance branch office.

“When they do, say that I taught you a demonic-path internal art and that the demonic qi was removed with it. For now that is the best way.”

If they said the demonic qi had been drawn off with a secret manual of unclear origin, there would be no way out for them.

“May we really? If it goes wrong, could they not make trouble for you, Master Scholar Cheon?”

“I am so famous even at the Murim Alliance for doing exactly as I please that if it was done to save a man’s life, they will not find much fault with it.”

“I thank you, Master Scholar Cheon, for being willing to bear the dishonor to save my boy.”

“There is no other way to save your son now.”

In truth it was only a good deed done to cover the fact that I had got hold of the Ghost Immortal’s martial learning. But being treated so entirely as a benefactor left me uncomfortable.

Better to dispose of the thing in front of their eyes, I judged.

“And I think it would be best to burn this secret manual here and now.”

“Surely there is no need to… If you have use for it, Master Scholar Cheon, you are welcome to take it with you.”

“No. A thing like this is best disposed of at once, for both our sakes.”

At that Yi Ung nodded.

“Hearing you say it, Master Scholar Cheon, I think you are right.”

Yi Ung drew a fire starter from their robe and set the secret manual alight. The whole of it ran to some dozens of pages and I had every one by heart already, so burning it here was the way to leave no trouble behind.

“You have not left a copy anywhere, by any chance?”

“A copy? Why would I keep a dangerous thing like that?”

“This thing must be forgotten by me, and by you as well, Sect Leader. It could give someone a needless handle on us.”

“I know it.”

It satisfied me to have come by the Ghost Immortal’s martial learning in a place I had never expected.

Just as a man sometimes does a good deed in this life and has no goodwill come back to him for it, there are times when goodwill comes back from a thing that was never meant as a good deed at all.

This was one of those times.

Yes. It was about time some luck like this came my way.

Come to think of it, had it not been a life thin on fortune?

A little later, when Yi Mak-seong came round, I taught him how to guide true qi into the principal meridians of the Nine Nether Dark Prison Internal Art.

The truth was that Yi Ung had drawn Cheon Tae-san to the Jeongryong Sect because they knew all about Scholar Cheon Tae-san. They had heard from an acquaintance at the Murim Alliance that Scholar Cheon Tae-san possessed a genius’s power of interpretation, and so had meant from the first to ask him for help.

It is just as they say. To look at an oral formula once and read it straight out — the man is a genius. And this was a formula I could not understand after dozens of readings.

The Ghost Immortal’s martial learning did not guide internal force, so an ordinary martial artist could look at the formula a hundred times over and never understand a line of it.

As Yi Mak-seong circulated the qi and came steadily to rest, Yi Ung was so overcome they hardly knew what to do with themselves. He was the only child they had, and more precious to them than anything else in the world.

“It will not be a problem that the demonic qi has been gathered in his dantian, will it?”

“So long as he does not use a demonic art the demonic qi will not stir, so you need not worry.”

“From now on I shall keep a proper watch on the boy.”

Yi Ung said it with a grim face, as though swearing an oath to themselves.

When I rose to leave the Jeongryong Sect, one of the sect’s disciples came running up in haste.

“Sect Leader!”

“We have a guest with us. What is all this fuss about?”

“It is not that — the Namgung Demon-Repelling Corps and the Demonic Cult men are fighting at this moment.”

“Where?”

“A bloody battle has broken out at the Sanghyang Estate.”

I ground my teeth.

The Sanghyang Estate is the second Murim Alliance safe house in Hefei.