Those Who Meet Are Bound To Part

Before I left the Namgung Clan there was one matter still nagging at me, and that was my mother. Then, as it happened, a letter came from her. She was under treatment and could not travel for the present, it said, but once her condition improved she would set out for the Namgung Clan.

My mother had refused every time I asked her to come, and here she was saying she would come after all. It set my mind at rest. Namgung Hak had been eager to have her brought as well, so there was no difficulty about the business either.

With that trouble lifted off my heart, the journey to the Hyeoncheon Sect stopped being a thing I simply dreaded. It is always the way, though: tasting a new world truly does set the heart beating hard.

Before leaving, I went to see Jong So-bin.

“There was word from the Alliance Leader that I should come to the Alliance, but I mean to remain at the Namgung Clan.”

I respected her decision.

“At the Namgung Clan you will be safe. It is a good decision.”

“And I shall raise Ye-won into a child who is nothing less than the Ice Sacred Body.”

There were several meanings in that. I nodded.

“I have heard that you are going to the Hyeoncheon Sect. It will be no easy journey at all, so I hope you will take care of yourself.”

“Will you not need to see Yeo-seol?”

Jong So-bin shook her head.

“I mean to make no point of contact with Yeo-seol at all. That is what is best for the child. I shall live thinking of Ye-won as the Ice Sacred Body. It was to say this that I asked to see you.”

“Has Elder Yu Yeok-rip’s whereabouts still not been traced?”

Since it fell to me to raise Yeo-seol, the Ice Palace’s elder weighed on me.

“No. I have made inquiries in every direction, but no trace of her has been found.”

“That there is no trace will not mean her interest has gone. You must always be careful. Have you anything planned for hereafter?”

“While I am at the Namgung Clan I shall gather the Ice Palace disciples scattered through the Central Plains. We must take the Ice Palace back.”

“There are Ice Palace disciples in the Central Plains?”

“There are masters the Palace Lord sent out in secret long ago. They are all the Palace Lord’s own loyal men, so between them and the Elder Faction it is dog and monkey.¹ They will help me.”

A light wavered in Jong So-bin’s eyes. She was too strong-willed a woman to simply sit still.

“If there is anything I can help with, I shall help.”

I said it out of respect for a woman who did not treat Yeo-seol as a possession of the Ice Palace.

“Thank you.”

Jong So-bin answered with a smile.

As I was leaving the annex I watched Namgung Mu-baek come in and fall into conversation with her. Nothing was left in him of the hellion he had been before; he had the look now of a proper chivalrous hero, the Namgung Azure Dragon Sword.

Renown, too, will make a human being of a man.

It pleased me, besides, to see how unreservedly Jong So-bin dealt with the man he had become.

“Spring is in the air.”

I felt good, as though I had come to a better ending than the one I had when I first came to the Namgung Clan.

Was that why?

Dozens of butterflies at the annex flower bed paired off and rose into the air.

I had not expected it. Namgung Cheol-ung had volunteered himself for the escort as far as the Hyeoncheon Sect.

“Young Hero, it will be no short journey by any means. How is it that you have come forward as an escort?”

A second-rate warrior of the Namgung Clan or thereabouts was quite enough to see me to the Hyeoncheon Sect, yet Namgung Cheol-ung was a martial artist of the clan’s own battle corps, a first-rate master besides. Putting such a man to an escort’s work made me feel apologetic.

“I am Namgung Hwa-jun.”

“I am Namgung Pyo.”

And two more warriors of the Yongmu Hall came running up.

“The truth is that these are friends of mine. A little while ago they saw the progress I had made, and when I spoke of it by way of boasting, they said they too wished to receive instruction from Master Scholar Cheon…”

What it came to was that they wished to ask for teaching on the road.

“If they are the Young Hero’s friends, their characters may be guessed at from that, so I may entrust the escort to them without misgiving.”

Namgung Cheol-ung threw in a joke.

“Of course, they are friends of poorer character than myself, but they are fellows with a fair amount of strength in them. You may work them like laborers, as roughly as you please.”

Perhaps it was Namgung Cheol-ung’s great build; beside him, Namgung Hwa-jun and Namgung Pyo looked like his younger brothers. They were handsome young men at that, so that Namgung Cheol-ung might well have been mistaken for their armed escort rather than the reverse. All three were of collateral-branch stock, and perhaps because they had lived leaning on one another, the affection between them ran deep.

The day I left the Namgung Clan, my going was held up by all the words of admonition and all the gifts pressed on me by Namgung Hak, Jeon I-an and Namgung Mu-baek.

“This is the Azure Sky Sword, which in our house is given only to those of Elder rank. It bears comparison with the Wudang Sect’s Pine-Pattern Sword.² It is a blade forged with a very fine dark iron mixed into it, so it takes sword qi well.”

He seemed to take me for a swordsman who could send out sword qi and draw it back at will.

“This is far too much. It is not a thing for an outsider to receive.”

Having come out of the Murim Alliance, I knew the value of the Namgung Clan’s Azure Sky Sword well.

“Come now. How is it that you still call yourself an outsider? The Protector of the Person?”

“But how am I to receive a sword that even the youngest young master has not yet received?”

“Hahaha. That fellow is a long way off it yet. One must grasp the ultimate truth of the peak before one can receive an Azure Sky Sword.”

Which was to say, he took me for a master of that order.

“And with this sword you will not be slighted wherever you go. The only ones who will see this sword and still come at you first will be idiots who know nothing of the ways of the world.”

It meant that with this one thing I could stride the murim at my ease, and my chest went tight.

What am I, to be worth it.

Contrary to what Cheon Tae-san supposed, Namgung Hak would gladly have given ten Azure Sky Swords, paltry things that they were, if one more of them would buy the scholar’s heart.

His one regret, now that the man was leaving the house, was that he had never managed to introduce his own daughter to him. He had dropped hints to her any number of times that she must be sure to call at the house before Scholar Cheon left for the Hyeoncheon Sect, and yet, whatever business it was that piled up so at the Murim Alliance, not one word came from her.

So he had taken to coaxing Yeo-seol instead, several times over, about staying behind at the house, and Yeo-seol snorted at him.

“Brother said that in all the affairs of men, those who meet are bound to part. Where there’s a meeting there’s bound to be a parting, he said. So don’t be sad.”

Now that she had learned her letters and read a book or two, it seemed she could reel off maxims.

“In that case you will know that those who go are bound to return, as well.”

“Of course. It means the one who has gone is sure to come back, doesn’t it.”

“Just so. Yeo-seol is a clever child.”

“Old gentleman landlord, you’re afraid we’ll go and not come back, aren’t you.”

Before anyone had noticed, Yeo-seol had reached a level of attainment at which she could predict what a person was feeling.

“Yes. That is what I am afraid of.”

“Don’t you worry. Brother and I both think of the Namgung Clan as our home.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. Where would we go and leave behind so kind an old gentleman landlord?”

At that Namgung Hak loosed a great laugh at the sky. Nobody in his life had ever called him kind before.

“Bwahahaha! Just so. Let anyone who has a landlord as kind as I am step forward and say so. Do I so much as take rent? Do I so much as grudge you a look over what you eat?”

Yeo-seol put up her thumb.

“So why would we not come back?”

Namgung Hak embraced her.

“Huh? This is crossing a line, old gentleman landlord. I was told not to go embracing men outside the family just anyhow.”

“Wahahaha!”

Namgung Hak laughed again at Yeo-seol’s fussing. And yet, underneath it, the thought that he would not see the adorable creature for some while left him downcast.

Jeon I-an told me that if ever I had goods to send or to receive, I was to use the Geumcheon Escort Agency without fail. She had already made my name known there, she said, so that if I gave nothing but the name Cheon Tae-san they would handle it as express business; and if I ever needed money, I had only to go to them, give my name and borrow. But I had a good many bank notes in hand already, so I was not pressed for money.

“If Cheol-ung is not enough, I can put a separate escort on you.”

Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun and Namgung Pyo had already been settled on as my escort, and still the clan head seemed to think it insufficient and tried to attach more masters to me. I refused outright. Three men were enough, I said. And then I gave him the reason.

“Clan Head. Young Hero Cheol-ung has an uncommon talent, it seems. I made him an escort with a mind to sharing insight on the way to the Hyeoncheon Sect. Young Hero Hwa-jun and Young Hero Pyo as well.”

“Ho ho ho. What good fortune can I have had, that Scholar Cheon should have come to me.”

I said to Namgung Hak.

“If they should come to have need of something beyond the Great Expansion Sword Technique, may I pass it on to them?”

“The Boundless Azure Sky?”

“That is so.”

By rights the best sword technique a man of the collateral branch could obtain was the Great Expansion Sword Technique.

Namgung Hak fell into thought for a moment, and I went on.

“In truth this may be a remark that oversteps my station. But while I was with the Inspection Corps I investigated and analyzed a great many clans, and I say it because I found a common element in the reason the clans that once surpassed the Five Great Clans disappeared.”

“And what is that?”

The Namgung Clan held the first seat among the Five Great Clans, so the matter was one its clan head might properly give his attention to.

“The clans divide their martial arts by station and birth when they pass them on. In truth the Namgung Clan at least passes the Great Expansion Sword Technique, sword learning of the highest order, to the collateral branch, but the other clans do not let the collateral branch so much as approach the higher martial arts.”

The clan head listened with a grave expression and nodded.

“And yet, as you know, where is there no man of talent merely because he is of the collateral branch? Because such talents never touch the higher martial arts, the number of masters dwindles little by little and the clan grows weak.”

Namgung Hak stroked his beard down. He had the look of a man partly persuaded, so I went on.

“If those who hold the vested right divide men by birth and are grudging in passing on the martial arts so as to consolidate their own power, then even if not at once, in time that power can only decline. For it is the law of the murim that the weak are winnowed out.”

Namgung Hak’s mouth opened.

“And what is the Protector of the Clan Head’s Person thinking?”

Which was to say: speak to me more candidly.

“I think the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique too should be permitted to the collateral branch. I think that is the road by which the Five Great Clans may surpass not only the other clans but the Nine Great Sects. The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique is a sword art surpassing the sword learning of the Wudang Sect or the Mount Hua Sect. If there were many masters who had mastered the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, would the Nine Great Sects be anything to fear?”

In fact the martial artists in the Namgung Clan who trained in the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique were no more than a few dozen, and most of them trained in it only because their standing entitled them to learn it; those who properly understood the art and trained in it were not even half that number. Which meant, in the end, that the masters could only grow fewer and fewer.

“Whoever has properly grasped the Great Expansion Sword Technique should be allowed to master the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. That is the road by which the Namgung Clan becomes the first under heaven as a matter of course.”

Namgung Hak gazed up at the sky, and when he spoke his voice was hollow.

“The disciples of this house who were lost fighting the Demonic Cult and the Blood Cult this time were every one of them disciples who had not mastered the Boundless Azure Sky. Seeing that, there was much I came to realize myself, and hearing Scholar Cheon speak, I think how narrow I have truly been.”

“I say all this because it is you, Clan Head. Had it been otherwise, I would not have raised the matter at all.”

“That Scholar Cheon should think so of me is a great pleasure. This matter I shall discuss with the Elders’ Council and see it carried through without fail. And to those three, if their talent runs to it, you may pass on the Boundless Azure Sky.”

“If it should come to that, the Namgung Clan will enjoy a flourishing beyond the Nine Great Sects.”

Namgung Hak looked at me steadily and spoke.

“Do you know what I have done best in all my time as clan head?”

When I looked back at him, he smiled faintly.

“It was dragging Scholar Cheon, who meant to go elsewhere, to this house by force. And appointing him Protector of the Clan Head’s Person.”

I made a cupped-hands salute and paid him my respects. Namgung Hak returned it in the martial artist’s manner and bent at the waist. From one of the Three Swords Under Heaven of the present murim, the salutation was courteous beyond all measure.

After Scholar Cheon had gone, Namgung Hak spoke into the empty air.

“Scholar Cheon says it is not needed, but it will not do for me. Have five men picked from the Emperor’s Escort Corps and told to follow him in secret. Tell them to see him into the Hyeoncheon Sect and then return.”

“By your command!”

An answer came out of the empty air.