A Talent That Reaches Heaven

“Scholar Cheon, this street — this Du-sik will keep watch over it until the Scholar comes back.”

“Right. Help anyone who’s struggling, look after anyone in difficulty, run off anyone who’s up to no good. And if men who use martial arts come in, don’t you step forward on any account — send word to the Namgung Clan. I’ve dropped a word ahead of time, so give my name and ask to see the chief steward.”

It had all been seen to for them in advance, and Du-sik felt his eyes grow hot. Who else would take such delicate care over them, over lowborn creatures like themselves?

“Ah, and from tomorrow the lot of you are to guard the Cheongsim Teahouse and the Saintess’s clinic. It’s been settled that they’ll take you on there. So don’t worry about putting food in your mouths.”

Du-sik and his gang bent lower still at the waist.

“Sniff!”

Overcome, they wept.

The party traveled in two carriages. Cheong Yo and Song-ran rode in one, with the two maidservants who would wait on them; Cheon Tae-san and Yeo-seol took the other, and by Namgung Hak’s consideration Eun-bi was to attend them. A coachman who had worked long years at the Namgung Clan drove the carriage.

Namgung Hwa-jun spoke as he rode along behind it.

“Still — is Master Scholar Cheon not a little too friendly with the lower sort?”

He had Du-sik’s gang in mind, from a while back. Namgung Pyo nodded as though he agreed; keeping company with street thugs was a thing the two of them could not so much as imagine.

But Namgung Cheol-ung murmured.

“Think it over properly. Do you suppose those street thugs and our collateral branch are any different?”

“Of course they are different. What are you talking about.”

Namgung Hwa-jun flared up.

“Different how? Because we eat warmer rice and wear better clothes? Or because we have trained in martial arts? We share nothing but the surname — we are discriminated against, I tell you. And yet Master Scholar Cheon treats even the thugs of the street as human beings. Did our martial-arts instructor ever give more teaching to the collateral branch than to the direct line?”

Namgung Cheol-ung went on.

“It is because Master Scholar Cheon is a man who takes in even street thugs that he shared his insight with someone like me. It means he looks at us with an eye that makes no distinction at all. It means he does not care whether we are collateral branch or direct line.”

It rang true, and the two of them reddened and nodded.

“I was mistaken. If anything, it was I who was making distinctions between men.”

“It is the same with me. I raged at the collateral branch being discriminated against, and I was discriminating against them myself. From now on I shall follow what you say, Cheol-ung, so I ask you to bear with me.”

“It is not me you should be following, but the Master Scholar. Only then will he tell us of even one of the places we fall short.”

The three of them drew a deep breath, their faces setting anew with resolve.

A man who had been gazing at the burial mound drove his saber into the ground beside the gravestone.

“Wan Bok. Rest easy.”

His long hair streamed in the wind. He tied it back rough with a cord, and his face came into view. There was an uprightness about the eyes, and a jaw close to square, and the whole of it gave the feel of a man nothing would move. A scar at one corner of his mouth pulled that side of his lip upward as though hooked on a fishing line, and the mouth twitched.

“This elder brother will take your revenge for you.”

Behind him, one of his men prostrated himself.

“Hall Master. The target has left the Namgung Clan.”

“How large an escort?”

“Three, and no more.”

“Three? Are they masters?”

“Warriors of the Yongmu Hall, first-rate swordsmen.”

“Three first-rate swordsmen, and that’s the whole of the escort?”

“That is so.”

“Which is to say he’s that confident.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It means that scholar fellow overrates his own skill. Then again, Wan Bok would hardly have been done in by some ordinary man. Anything further to report?”

“Two performing courtesans have joined them. They are said to have been invited to Mak Yeo-heun’s sixtieth-birthday feast.”

“He may be walking to his death with no notion of it, and still he takes every stray and straggler along with him. What of our lads?”

“Twenty are standing by, picked first-rate to a man.”

“Is that so?”

“Shall I call up more?”

“Too many and we catch the eye. That will do.”

“Where shall we set the point of attack?”

“Somewhere about the border of Anhui and Jiangxi will serve. When they cross the mountains we put on mountain-bandit dress and strike, I think. That way the anger of Mak Yeo-heun or of Namgung Hak is turned onto the bandits.”

“A brilliant plan.”

“They will reach the place in four days, so have the men there ahead of them and ready.”

“Yes, Hall Master.”

Mok Jin, the Hundred-Year Fire Crucian Sword, poured wine over Wan Bok’s gravestone.

“Wait a little longer. I shall set them on your memorial table.¹”

He was a Blood Cult master, and his byname stated the plain fact of him: he had eaten the inner elixir of a hundred-year-old crucian carp and risen on it to the peak. As it happened, his face was much like a crucian carp’s too. And since it was a crucian carp’s inner elixir that had made a master of him, the byname stayed on every gossip’s tongue.

By rights he should have gone at Jong So-bin alongside Wan Bok. Instead he had held off the Namgung Clan’s Demon-Repelling Corps while Wan Bok, the Red Dragon Demon of Diancang, went after her. The affection between them ran deep enough that they had sworn brotherhood inside the Blood Cult, and they had taken this mission on together and come out on it as a tour of the gangho besides. Then Wan Bok died, and Mok Jin did not go back to the Blood Cult. He stayed where he was and watched for a chance at revenge.

The moment we were clear of the Namgung Clan, no one was more delighted than Yeo-seol.

“Brother, can I do whatever I want now?”

I knew perfectly well what it was she wanted to do, and I gave a wry smile. Until now, to keep her identity hidden inside the Namgung Clan, I had cautioned her constantly and kept watch so that she never put her ability to use. Out here there was no need of that. Few eyes to see meant little cause for worry, and with Eun-bi there were only three of us inside the carriage, so I did not trouble myself much about it.

“Read the whole of this book.”

The carriage was full of books for her to read, so one more would give nobody cause to wonder. She had begun learning her letters from me only a little while back, and already she had raced through the Thousand Character Classic and gone on to the classics. Anyone else would put it down to her memory returning and a quick eye for characters; I knew the truth, and that capacity of hers to absorb appalled me.

Yeo-seol had an ability much like my own.

“I’ve memorized it all.”

Yeo-seol tossed the book back at me. On a single reading she had committed to memory the secret manual gathering the whole of the North Sea Ice Palace’s martial learning.

And in the space of a single day, at that.

Eun-bi had met with Yeo-seol’s genius often enough back at the Namgung Clan, so she was not much surprised.

“You’d think the two of you were trying to prove you’re of one household — you see a thing once and remember all of it? It seems genius runs in the blood as well.”

Eun-bi’s powers of concentration were such that she could keep at her embroidery even inside a swaying carriage.

“I can’t embroider the way Sister Eun-bi does. Sister’s a genius too.”

“Hohoho, thank you, my young lady Yeo-seol.”

I brought out the words I had not managed to say to Eun-bi.

“Eun-bi. It seems you’re put to all this hardship on our account for nothing. I’m sorry.”

Eun-bi had been looking straight at me, and she let out a snort of laughter.

“Scholar Cheon. What a hurtful thing to say. It is thanks to you, Scholar Cheon, that every one of my family has grown well. Thanks to the medicine and the prescriptions you made up for us, they have all been spared serious illness. My grandmother, my parents, my younger sibling as well.”

Then, as though something rose in her throat while she spoke, Eun-bi bit her lip and went on.

“And I know you sent money to my family behind my back so they could set up even a small shop. And I am always grateful for the spending money you give whenever the season comes round. For my part, Scholar Cheon — if you told me to come with you to hell, I could follow.”

Yeo-seol rummaged inside her robes.

“So Sister Eun-bi likes money. Here, this is a hundred-tael bank note. Brother gave it to me, and I’m giving it to you.”

“My young lady.”

“It’s fine. Take it.”

I spoke.

“Keep it. Once we get there you’ll have no shortage of things you need. Buy whatever you need.”

“Yes.”

Eun-bi took the bank note and put it away inside her robes.

When the sun went down we made for the first inn that caught our eye. Left to my own inclination I would have camped in the open and taught Yeo-seol martial arts, but I took an inn for the sake of Cheong Yo and Song-ran.

Tomorrow I shall camp out and start teaching her in earnest.

After the evening meal I took Yeo-seol and went out. Namgung Cheol-ung and the other two made to come after me, but I asked them to stay behind and guard Cheong Yo’s party at the inn, and went out without them.

“Yeo-seol. You’re going to take what was in the book I gave you yesterday and express it as a dance. Do you think you can?”

“That’s easy enough.”

“Good. Unfold the Snow-Wind Sword Technique.”

Yeo-seol took up the wooden sword she had brought along, sank into thought for a moment, and then began to move, slowly.

The martial learning of the North Sea Ice Palace ran so fine-grained and graceful that most of it might be called the province of women alone. Its essence was the Snow-Wind Sword Technique, keen as snow driven on the wind and yet seeking a form that was free. The strokes looked scattered and unruly, and a great many changes lay folded inside them.

She has the Snow-Wind Sword Technique exactly.

Sword intent takes a man some years of training to wake to. Yeo-seol had reached it by reading the secret manual once and thinking it over.

A genius past my own. I think I understand now why the Demonic Cult and the Blood Cult are so set on finding the Ice Sacred Body.

Above all she used the qi of nature to unfold the strokes, and nothing in it sat out of place. She sent out sword qi enough to shear away every bush around her, and not one breath of hers went out of order, which was proof that she was already at ease with the stage of sending internal qi out and drawing it back by way of the qi of nature.

“The Ice-White Asura Sword Technique.”

At my word Yeo-seol’s wooden sword moved again.

The Ice-White Asura Sword Technique was one of the few pieces of the Ice Palace’s martial learning to carry a masculine cast. The Palace had male disciples as well, and this was the martial learning meant for them, a considerably domineering sword art. The name said as much. Long ago sword learning had leaked out of the Old Demonic Cult, and this art was that learning fused with the Ice Palace’s own.

The Demonic Cult of the present day was the New Demonic Cult, and the murim divided them into the Old Demonic Cult and the New. The Old Demonic Cult were a body that pursued the martial way leading to the Demon God and the Demon Immortal. But among its votaries were men whose ideals ran otherwise, and out of them rose a faction that argued for dominion over the murim, until in the end the crowd that split away a hundred years ago founded the New Demonic Cult. Those whom the world now calls the Demonic Cult were the New Demonic Cult.

Her strength is still wanting and the domineering aura is weak, but she is unfolding the true meaning of the Ice-White Asura Sword.

She laid out the sword strokes so perfectly that there was nothing wanting for me to point out.

Even now, with an unripe dantian, she knows the qi of nature well enough to scatter sword qi about her; once that dantian is fully built, all under heaven will have to hand Yeo-seol the name of first under heaven.

Watching her, I fell to wondering whether there was any need to pass down to Yeo-seol the martial arts of the North Sea Ice Palace alone. She had the ability to absorb any martial art whatever, and not only the North Sea Ice Palace’s, so to train in one kind alone came close to a waste of talent.

When I said nothing, Yeo-seol went on of her own accord and unfolded the Thousand-Year Ice Sword, the North Sea Ice Palace’s sword learning of the highest order.

I watched the Thousand-Year Ice Sword through, and I grasped that the martial arts of the North Sea Ice Palace could never fill out her talent. An art that laid its weight on ice-cold qi was out of harmony whatever else it was, and an energy leaning so far to one side was no good for her. She took in the qi of nature so naturally that her whole body functioned as a single meridian, and to have a child like that train in martial learning that amplified one energy alone would be a foolish thing.

It is a sorry thing to do to Jong So-bin, but I have no intention of teaching Yeo-seol the North Sea Ice Palace’s martial arts and nothing else.

If she grew up and said she would become the Ice Palace’s Palace Lord, I had no thought of stopping her. Nor did I mean to force a martial artist’s life on her. I only meant to help her, so that the talent she had could be brought out to its uttermost.

A good while later, when I had finished looking over Yeo-seol’s martial arts, I came back to the inn. Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun and Namgung Pyo were watching for me as I went into my room, their eyes full of expectation. I knew what that expectation was, and I could not turn away from it.

“The three of you, come to my room.”

My words were barely out before they came in, quick as cats coming for their supper, and took their places.