The Fox Borrowing The Tiger's Might

“Don’t eat it. Just sit still.”

“Why?”

“There may be poison in it.”

At my words the whole table went silent.

“Miss Cheong, would you happen to be carrying a silver needle?”

Performing courtesans often sat at table with high officials and men of rank, and so they carried a silver needle in their robes at all times. With it they would test a dish for poison before anyone ate, and only then let it be served. Not one of them went about without a needle.

“Yes, I have one.”

“Let me have it for a moment.”

I took the needle and tried it in the other dishes. The color never changed. Then I slid it into the soup, and it went slowly black.

“Eh?”

“This cannot be!”

Namgung Cheol-ung and the two other escorts had refused to believe it when I said it. Now they sprang to their feet in shock.

“It seems the Blood Cult’s remnants have followed us.”

“No. It is not the Blood Cult.”

“Then who is it that would use poison to kill us?”

One afterimage went flickering through my mind.

That one?

A self-mocking sneer slipped out of me. I had come the whole way into Jiangxi without once sparing that one a thought.

In the murim, when men named the Three Great Poison Sects, the first two off the tongue were always the Dang Sect of Sichuan and the Poison Valley of Guizhou. The third they gave to the Gal Sect of Jiangxi. It was one of the few schools keeping the orthodox path’s line alive in the very seat of the unorthodox sects, and for that even the Murim Alliance had gone so far as to grant Gal U-heon an Elder’s post and preserve the sect’s pride.

However distracted I was, having no measure ready against Gal U-heon was a mistake of mine.

He had a sly, dark-minded temperament that nursed a grudge over the smallest thing, and it had cost him. Inside the Gal Sect itself he had been the chief disciple, next in line to succeed as sect leader; he yielded the seat to a junior brother and was pushed aside into an Elder’s post instead.

I spooned up a little of the broth and smelled it. A soup would dilute what went into it, but my sense of smell was several times keener than an ordinary man’s, and picking out the scent of a poison cost me no trouble at all.

Pomegranate scent mixed with mint — this is the Gal Sect’s famous Ten-Stage Bowel Poison.

The Ten-Stage Bowel Poison waited out a day, then set the bowels slowly rotting away.

Where the Dang Sect of Sichuan had pushed its craft toward deadly poison, the Gal Sect of Jiangxi was famous for subtle poison. Its men studied how to poison a person with the barest trace of the stuff. That was why great houses and men who held power preferred the Gal Sect’s poisons to the Dang Sect’s. They killed slowly, and they left no way of knowing whose hand had done it.

My thoughts grew crowded. Three or four days of road were still ahead of us, and with poison being used like this the odds were high that sooner or later somebody in the party would take it. Cheong Yo’s people above all had no internal force, and a poisoning would kill them outright. An attacker could simply be stopped, but with poison there was no knowing who would use it, or when, or where.

There is no help for it. Must we travel apart from one another now?

In the very instant I was thinking it, a great many blood flows registered outside the inn. Steady, with an immense aura coming off them. Martial artists.

Who are they? Attackers would not come on in good order like this.

Three or four of them stepped into the inn and called out.

“Is Master Scholar Cheon Tae-san here?”

The voice had internal force behind it, and it rang through the whole inn. I went to the railing on the second floor and spoke.

“I am Cheon Tae-san. And who might you be?”

The middle-aged warrior wore black martial robes with a red cloak thrown over them. A white hero’s headband was bound round his brow, and set at its center was a piece of red jade carved in the shape of an asura. The jade marked him for the Hyeoncheon Sect’s armed body, the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps.

“I am Gwanryong Jin, Corps Chief of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps of the Hyeoncheon Sect.”

I gave him a cupped-hands salute.

“I greet Great Hero Gwanryong, the Soul-Severing Golden Saber, whose renown rings far and wide.”

Gwanryong Jin looked faintly taken aback.

Anyone well informed could pick the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps’ martial dress out at a glance. Producing the byname off nothing but a name, and knowing that the family name was not Gwan but the compound surname Gwanryong, took a man who had every person of consequence in the Hyeoncheon Sect at his fingertips.

And I did in fact know most of the people of consequence among the unorthodox sects. The Hyeoncheon Sect above all, seat of the Unorthodox Supreme, I knew down to the provenance of the guards on its gate. The Murim Alliance’s spies had drawn up more than a dozen volumes on it, and I had committed the whole of that to memory. Every warrior in the sect was, in effect, inside my head.

“May I ask what brings you looking for me?”

I asked, though I had already guessed.

“Our Corps has come to escort Master Scholar Cheon from here onward.”

They meant it as ceremony, a display of the Hyeoncheon Sect’s prestige and aura before as many people as possible. Inwardly I welcomed it.

“Come up, Corps Chief Gwanryong.”

Gwanryong Jin came up to the second floor with two of his men in attendance. He looked at the table laden with food and spoke.

“It seems I have come in the middle of your meal and put you out.”

“Not at all. You have put us out of nothing. We cannot eat it in any case.”

“How do you mean?”

“There is poison in the food, and so we are unable to eat.”

“Poison, you say? Who would dare, to a guest the Unorthodox Supreme has invited…”

Real fury sat on Gwanryong Jin’s face as he turned to his men.

“You two, take the cooks in hand this instant, and see that nobody here goes out.”

At the word his two men moved like lightning. A moment later I felt the Asura Corps warriors who had been waiting outside close in around the inn. I said to him.

“Corps Chief Gwanryong. The ones who used the poison will already have left. And after your own coming they will certainly have put themselves out of sight.”

“All the same, there may be somebody behind it, so it must be looked into.”

The sect’s warriors dragged the cooks in and questioned them, and as I had expected, not one of them had used the poison. I read their blood flow and found nothing there either. Had the real culprit been standing among them, his blood would have been leaping about all out of order.

The inn’s guests turned up nobody worth suspecting either. Gwanryong Jin put internal force into his voice and spoke.

“If poison is used on the Supreme’s guest and harm comes of it, our sect will follow you to the ends of hell and see you wiped out.”

One sentence of that kind, and even Gal U-heon would think twice about using poison again. He knew as well as anyone that if a poison were ever proven to be the Gal Sect’s, nothing would stop Mak Yeo-heun’s fury.

Now I can travel with a somewhat easier mind.

I said to Gwanryong Jin.

“Thanks to you, Great Hero Gwanryong, we shall be a little freer of poison. I am grateful for the trouble you have taken.”

He stared at me blankly, as though he had been thanked for something that went without saying. He had the look of a man hearing thanks of that kind for the first time in his life.

“It is nothing to thank me for.”

Watching him go sheepish, I took him for a thoroughly transparent man.

“Everything but the soup is safe to eat, so let us eat.”

Nobody would put a hand to the food even so, still squeamish about it, so I tore off a duck’s leg and started eating first. Yeo-seol followed me and took some of the fried vegetables. Perhaps it galled the three escorts to be outdone in nerve by her; they reached for the food all at once and fell to. The sight was comical enough that the women covered their mouths and laughed. A poisoned dish had come up to the table, and the meal ended in smiles all the same.

As the meal was drawing to a close, Yeo-seol asked me.

“Brother, do you know what they call a thing like this?”

“What do they call it?”

“The fox borrowing the tiger’s might, that’s what.”

The fox borrowing the tiger’s might is what they call a man who throws his weight about on power borrowed from somebody else.

“Whoa. The young lady Yeo-seol is clever, isn’t she?”

Yeo-seol gave a shrug at Namgung Cheol-ung’s praise.

“That’s because I have a good teacher.”

The three men smiled at that. They had the look of men who agreed.

Ever since the Blood Cult attack, nothing had held my attention like the change in Yeo-seol. Training she had once gone through carelessly she now bent her whole mind to, and she was up and moving before I could so much as nag her.

Has this fight woken some instinct in her to protect people?

Whatever the motive, it did me good to see her throwing herself into it. She trained chiefly on the Ice Palace’s martial learning and the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, and perhaps because I had told her to use the Boundless Azure Sky rather than the Ice Palace’s arts wherever she went, most of her effort went there.

She has a complete grasp of it as far as the twelfth move now. Is it only the drilling that is left?

Measured by understanding of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique as things stood, Yeo-seol might well be ahead of Namgung Mu-baek. That was how far it went. She had been born with a power of understanding on a level with my own.

What in the world is this genius of hers, that stands comparison with the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body? Is that too because she is the Ice Sacred Body?

A good many questions came with that, but at the least I thought I could see now why so many organizations coveted the Ice Sacred Body.

Two days later, Scholar Cheon’s party put up at an inn a day short of the Hyeoncheon Sect. The Hyeoncheon Asura Corps pitched their lines around it as though laying a siege.

At about the third watch¹, with everyone asleep, a black figure moved like a cat along one of the inn’s roof beams. It went quietly back and forth a while, then crawled toward the room at the far end.

In that instant Cheon Tae-san, asleep until then, opened his eyes. Of late he had been keeping the spirit energy turning even in his sleep, by way of a trial, so that the flow of water qi would still register. That was how a huge movement of blood flow up in the beams had reached him.

Someone has slipped in.

Woken by what his sense for qi had caught, Cheon Tae-san saw that the blood flow was making for the room Yeo-seol was in. She was sharing it with Eun-bi. Some nights she roomed with him, and on others, for the sake of her training perhaps, with Eun-bi. He minded it not at all and arranged the rooms however she wished.

He took up the Azure Sky Sword and made for her room. A concealment art of that order meant a top-grade hired killer, nothing less. Just as he reached to open the door before anything could come of it, the black figure came smashing out through it.

The mask hid the man’s expression, but alarm showed plain in his eyes.

“You rotten bastard.”

A curse that had no business in Yeo-seol’s mouth came flying out.

The assassin’s sword was stained blue, sword qi on the point of pouring off the blade. To throw sword qi at all put him past the level of a first-rate master.

This is dangerous.

In the instant Cheon Tae-san moved to step in and take the sword qi himself, he looked into Yeo-seol’s eyes. Cold, remote eyes, brimming over with killing intent.

And then the azure dragon came leaping out.

“Mm?”

But in a breath the azure dragon turned white, blocked the sword qi the assassin had thrown, and drove on forward. It looked for all the world as though the dragon were eating the sword qi up. No, not an azure dragon. Sword qi shining like an ice dragon.

Looked at closely, it was not sword qi at all but an ice dragon made out of sword thread. Sword thread was sword qi driven out fine and thin as a strand, and only when it unwound like thread off a skein could the azure dragon be manifested.

But an azure dragon, white?

They called it an azure dragon because azure meant a color with a cast of blue in it.

“Kuh-huk!”

Struck square by the ice dragon, the assassin shuddered all over. Frost clung to his clothes, as though fine white sleet had come down over his whole body.

As Yeo-seol raised her sword, Cheon Tae-san spoke.

“Don’t kill him. We have to find out who sent him.”

Feeling blood flow crowding toward them, Cheon Tae-san said to Eun-bi.

“Eun-bi, take Yeo-seol to my room. Yeo-seol, stay put in the room. Until Brother comes. Understood?”

Yeo-seol nodded, her face untroubled. Eun-bi, startled out of her sleep with no warning, gave her a dazed look, then nodded at Cheon Tae-san’s bark and took her into his room.

“What has happened?”

The three escorts reached him first. Gwanryong Jin came bursting in behind them with his men. Cheong Yo and Song-ran started out of their room, and Namgung Cheol-ung sent them back into it.

“A hired killer came in after me, and he has been dealt with.”

Gwanryong Jin’s face twisted, and he spoke to his men.

“And after I gave that warning. You — find out where this one belongs.”

“He is already dead.”

Cheon Tae-san said it, having found no blood moving in the assassin any longer.

“The damned creatures…”

Gwanryong Jin ground it out as though he were chewing the words and spitting them out.

“The failure is mine. That such creatures should get as far as Master Scholar Cheon’s own quarters.”

Cheon Tae-san shook his head.

“Not at all. These men were most likely lodged here before ever we arrived. There was no trace of anyone coming in from outside.”

He had no wish to see the man called to account over this for nothing. Gwanryong Jin had in truth done his utmost in escorting them.

“This is nothing for you to answer for, Great Hero Gwanryong. When a man comes ahead and lies waiting, by what means would you find him out?”

“But how did these wretches know that Master Scholar Cheon would be lodging here?”

“Seeing that there was only the one assassin, they will have placed a single assassin at every inn. They cannot have known where we would stay. Had they known, it would not have been one man but a great many lying ready.”

Gwanryong Jin looked at Cheon Tae-san and bowed his head, plainly grateful for the consideration.

The inn was in an uproar for a while after that; the Corps Chief had sent his men inside as well and set them on guard.

He turned to the dead assassin, then to the sword marks left in the corridor wall, and asked.

“Forgive me if this is out of turn, but the wounds on the assassin are the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, and yet the energy in them is ice-cold qi. Does the Namgung Clan hold a martial art of that sort?”

Cheon Tae-san was a little startled by the man’s eye. Gwanryong Jin had picked out the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique and the Ice-White Asura Sword mixed together in the sword Yeo-seol had unfolded.

Not a man to be taken lightly.

Cheon Tae-san quietly opened his mouth to speak.