There's No Need To Go That Far

As the White Tiger Corps warriors fought the Demonic Cult’s masters and watched their comrades die, they felt their own morale falling away from them little by little. On top of that, their Corps Chief was trading blows with the Demonic Cult’s Pavilion Master with the sense of defeat already strong on them. The situation was hopeless.

Then they saw a scholar drive back, at a single stroke, the Pavilion Master even Corps Chief Wang could do nothing against, and they were astounded.

“Fourteenth Pavilion Master, Oh Ju-hyang.”

Her brows twitched. The scholar wretch had appeared out of nowhere and had her station exactly right.

“Who are you, wretch!”

“A scholar who works black arts.”

Cheon Tae-san answered Oh Ju-hyang’s question with a joke.

“A young pup, and playing word games with me!”

Ignoring the shout, Cheon Tae-san spoke to Wang Cheong.

“Corps Chief Wang, shall the two of us cook this old monster up a little?”

Wang Cheong rolled the right shoulder of their sword arm round and round.

“In truth she was more than I could manage alone, but if Master Scholar Cheon lends a hand I think she will make a fine dish.”

Then they asked.

“By the way — did you meet the First Squad Leader?”

“Of course. The One-Armed Ghost and the One-Eyed Ghost will be ghosts of the underworld by now, wandering the Nine Springs.”

“Just as I thought!”

Wang Cheong had guessed as much from the moment Cheon Tae-san arrived.

“Now I can set my mind at ease and have myself a proper exorcism.¹”

The Ice Palace people they had sent off had been weighing on them.

“Ought we not to eat the whole dish ourselves before the others come and share it out?”

The words came out as a joke, but Cheon Tae-san did want to test what he had attained and understood a little while ago, against Oh Ju-hyang. He snapped the fan he was holding wide open and unfolded the Cool Breeze Fan.

Oh Ju-hyang saw the single fan in the scholar’s hand and tilted her head.

That was the azure dragon of the Boundless Azure Sky, beyond any doubt. He put out an energy all but lost to the world, so I took him for a Namgung of the direct line — and he is some Kunlun Daoist?

There were not so very many martial arts unfolded with a fan, and of those the two most highly regarded as martial learning were the Kunlun Sect’s Cool Breeze Fan and the Jegal Clan’s Immeasurable Fan.

Surely not — is he telling me he manifested the azure dragon with a fan?

When the thought reached her, her wariness rose until every fine hair on her stood on end. But even so, she was a Pavilion Master of the Demonic Cult. One of the lower ranks, admittedly, but a station acknowledged anywhere.

“You bastards! To think you would dare set yourselves against this Oh Ju-hyang. Come at me! I shall teach you what a Pavilion Master of our Cult amounts to!”

It was then.

One of the Demonic Cult men went quickly to Oh Ju-hyang and passed word to her by voice transmission.²

— Pavilion Master, you must quit this place. The Namgung Clan’s Demon-Repelling Corps, who were fighting the Blood Cult, are on their way.

Oh Ju-hyang set her teeth. It galled her pride to leave these men and simply go.

She moved first, but Cheon Tae-san unfolded the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork to its utmost and got behind her back before she could.

“A young pup, and already you have learned nothing but the low tricks! Who are you to come at a man from behind!”

He answered while unfolding the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique with his fan.

“You do not know much, sir. My attack comes from the front and the rear and the left and the right. Is there some law that says a man may only attack from the front?”

At that she moved to take Cheon Tae-san’s back, but he was faster still, and stuck to her back without once losing it.

When she could not win the advantage over some scrap of a scholar in the footwork she prided herself on, the rage rose in her to the very top of her head. She drew her internal force up and made hooks of her fingernails, then spun and tore at the scholar wretch behind her.

— Whoom!

A void-shattering note came with it, raising the illusion of the empty air being cut clean away. Watching her claw technique, Cheon Tae-san called to mind the Nine Nether Life-Taking Claw, one of the Ghost Immortal’s martial arts.

He tucked the fan away at his waist and closed on her, and she raised both hands again and worked them at him as though raking.

To Wang Cheong it looked as though Scholar Cheon had walked into Oh Ju-hyang’s reach with no plan at all, and inwardly they were uneasy. But the exchange between the two of them was far too fast for them to follow. They had missed their moment to step in, and for now could only watch, though they kept the tension in them taut, ready to throw themself in the instant Scholar Cheon was in danger.

And then, was Scholar Cheon not raising his own hand to meet her claw technique?

Oh Ju-hyang’s claw technique is the Blood Jade Claw, counted one of the peerless arts even in the Demonic Cult.

And indeed the hooks of her nails were shining redder than they ever had.

By then I had stepped into a new world.

When I set three spirit energies turning, a world I had never seen until now came into my sight.

What are these flows?

Every flow around me stood out in fine detail, down to the flow of the bead of sweat hanging on Oh Ju-hyang’s nose. They say enlightenment comes upon a man all of a sudden, but for it to come in the middle of a fight like this was perilous.

I can feel the flow of the water around me.

Looking closely, I found it was not simply flow that I felt but the flow of water, and once I had grown a little used to it I caught the flow of the water running in Oh Ju-hyang’s body too. The flow of her blood, to put it exactly.

Is my second power the flow of water? No — more precisely, I could call it the flow of moisture.

I could feel the moisture in the plants as well, and its density differed visibly from one to the next.

Left.

Oh Ju-hyang was swinging both arms, but those were a kind of illusory move, and the real attack was coming at my left flank. I could see the blood running along her veins and feel it move. The volume of blood on the left had risen sharply.

I stepped aside to the right and unfolded Myriad Illusions in a Single Flash.

Finding it was her own flank that stood to be run through instead, Oh Ju-hyang brought out the move she had been keeping back. She shook her head, and the hair she wore in two plaits came loose and grew long. It wound about my wrist, while the hair on the other side came flying, curving like a whip, to close on my throat.

I did not avoid it. I burst my spirit energy out as I was, strengthened the Nine Nether Life-Taking Claw with it, and swept through the empty air. Her hair, as tough as heavenly silkworm thread, was cut strand by strand and blown out into the air.

I raked her throat with the Nine Nether Life-Taking Claw.

— Grrrrrk!

The Blood Jade Claw blocked my Life-Taking Claw, but it was sheared away as a sorghum stalk snaps. Oh Ju-hyang, her face gone bewildered, drew her body straight back up into the air.

“The next time we meet I shall peel the skin off your skull, wretch!”

She shouted it as she fled, unable to hide her bitterness.

“All of you break off and gather at the rallying point!”

At the word the Demonic Cult masters who had been fighting began springing off in every direction like fleas. Wang Cheong gave an order to those who made to chase them.

“Do not go after them. Join up with the First Squad Leader.”

The object now was not to hunt down and kill Demonic Cult men but to protect the Ice Palace’s martial artists first. And with the Blood Cult crowd about as well, this was no time for anyone to drop his guard.

Corps Chief Wang certainly does their work without letting feeling tip them one way or the other.

Another man would have chased the fleeing cultists, greedy for revenge and for the credit. Losses run higher in a pursuit precisely because the Demonic Cult digs traps even as it runs.

The blood flow of the people moving about me kept pressing itself on my senses, so I stopped the third spirit energy’s turning. At once the flow of water qi vanished from my sight. I knew it for an ability that transcended the human, but it fell short of what I had expected and left me faintly disappointed.

Ho ho. It seems I have become quite the martial artist. When I gained strength and agility I was so pleased with myself.

As it turned out, the flow of water qi had nowhere it could be put to use.

Except in a fight like this one.

Ah — digging a well. It will be useful for finding the flow of the groundwater, and there it ends.

A very important use, to be sure, but not enough to satisfy me.

To be able to know the flow of moisture is a great thing in itself. My greed has grown.

While my mind was elsewhere a moment, Wang Cheong came over.

“I owe my life to Master Scholar Cheon. I thought I would die at that old monster’s hands with no way out of it.”

“Not at all. Had Corps Chief Wang held out a little longer, Oh Ju-hyang would have fled just the same. Reinforcements were coming, after all.”

“I would have died before that. Truly, my thanks.”

Wang Cheong courteously made me a cupped-hands salute, and I received it with a cupped-hands salute of my own.

I went back with Wang Cheong to where Jong So-bin was.

The White Tiger Corps had clashed with the Demonic Cult’s masters and taken no small losses. The band had been no ordinary body of cultists but first-rate masters with a Pavilion Master at their head, so the blow was heavy.

The Namgung Clan’s Demon-Repelling Corps, who had clashed with the Blood Cult, came off far more lightly, since the Blood Cult crowd held no master at the peak rank or above. Their only casualties were the dead and wounded from the early clash with the One-Eyed Ghost and the One-Armed Ghost.

“Are you all right?”

I asked it of Jong So-bin, whose face was worn out.

“Yes. I am all right.”

I was turning to go and look at Namgung Mu-baek when Jong So-bin greeted me courteously.

“Thank you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Thanks to Master Scholar Cheon, Ye-won has come to a great enlightenment.”

At the mention of her own name Ye-won came trotting over and bent at the waist to me.

“Thank you for sharing your insight with me.”

“And when do you say I gave the Miss any insight?”

“One who is not human may be killed.”

“Ah.”

Words meant for Namgung Mu-baek had brought someone else to enlightenment, which was a curious thing in itself.

“If you won an insight from hearing me speak, you would have come to it one day even without me.”

“It was too great an awakening to be spoken of so simply. I had always felt that something was wanting in my sword technique, and it turns out that the something was the feeling of killing a man. My sword has taken on confidence from the fact that, for a martial artist, the will to kill is not a thing to feel guilt for.”

Jong So-bin added a word.

“I mean to take Ye-won as my disciple.”

“Ah! You have taken in a very fine disciple indeed.”

That meant Ye-won would become an important person. If the Ice Palace were taken back, Jong So-bin would become the Palace Lord and her disciple the Young Palace Lord, which is to say that Ye-won, standing here now, might well be the Young Palace Lord to come.

“That you won an insight from my words will be owing to the Miss’s own brightness. My congratulations.”

When I said it with a smile, Ye-won broke into a broad grin.

Jong So-bin turned her eyes away and spoke.

“More than that, Young Master Namgung’s advance was dazzling. After Master Scholar Cheon left, he looked for all the world to have climbed a whole level of attainment. It was he who finished the One-Eyed Ghost.”

When I looked at Namgung Mu-baek, he was standing ringed about by the Namgung Clan’s martial artists with a sheepish sort of look on him.

It was only to be expected. Until now not one of the Namgung Clan’s rising talents had brought out the azure dragon. A rising talent who had grasped the ultimate truth of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique hardly ever came along, so it was a thing worth making a fuss over.

Then my eyes met Namgung Mu-baek’s. He threw me an awkward smile, and there was nothing of the hellion in him. In the Namgung Mu-baek of before, such a sight would have been unimaginable.

A good thing to see.

Seeing him take pleasure in being acknowledged by others brought a smile to my face of its own accord.

Clan Head Namgung Hak will be delighted.

A little while later Namgung Mu-baek came over to me. And then, was he not making me a full bow to the ground?

It was so far from anything I had expected that my body went stiff.

“What is this about?”

“Words are not enough to carry the gratitude I feel, and so I make you this bow. Receive this Namgung Mu-baek’s thanks. Elder brother.”

“What? Elder brother?”

“Only now have I understood it. Had I never met you, elder brother, I should never have become a human being, still less won any insight. By rights I ought to honor you as my Master, but it is in my heart to be at your side my whole life, and so I have resolved to honor you as my sworn elder brother.”

“Ho ho ho.”

Namgung Mu-baek was in such deadly earnest that I could not even tell him to stop; I only stared blankly and let a limp laugh escape me.

“No — this is too much.”

“Paeng So-un may honor you as an elder brother, and I may not?”

With Paeng So-un dragged into it as well, refusing became awkward.

I had forgotten it for a moment, that a man whose energy I have taken comes to feel closeness toward me, and a sense of being bound to me.

I made an excuse to get out of it.

“Let us settle this matter once we are back.”

At my words Namgung Mu-baek got up and answered.

“As you say, elder brother. However you treat me, I shall treat you as my elder brother.”

“Ho ho. Well, now.”

And yet there was not one person there to talk him out of it; every one of them was watching with a pleased smile.

Jong So-bin too. Wang Cheong too.

So I put him off.

“If you would treat me as your elder brother, you will first have to get Yeo-seol’s leave for it.”

“Then the hardest problem in the world is what’s left. That brat really is a fortress nobody storms.”

Even so, he did not say he was giving up.

“Miss Jong has settled on staying at our house for a while as well. After that she will decide where to live.”

“That is well. Just now there is nowhere as safe as the Namgung Clan.”

Jong So-bin and I both knew that, for Yeo-seol’s sake, staying at the Namgung Clan was not so good a thing, and that as matters stood now there was no help for it.