Song-ran Steps Forward

Up on the hill, a white-haired old man watched the lantern hanging at the inn’s main gate and muttered.

“I did not look for the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps to get in the way.”

“My apologies. I mixed it into the food to be certain the poison took, and I never thought he would catch it.”

“No. No. It is not your fault.”

Elder Gal was not a man given to consideration for anybody. A cold sweat ran down his follower’s spine; this was more frightening by far than a savage tongue-lashing.

“You lot simply did not know Scholar Cheon. How sharp that fellow is, and how uncanny. Had you known, you would not have used the poison so slackly.”

The greater fault was his own, for ordering poison used and never explaining its finer points.

“It feels a little late to reach for poison a second time now. The Hyeoncheon Sect has stepped in.”

“Chief Elder. Shall we make ready poison men instead?”

“You are saying we should use poison openly, then?”

Half sneer, half reprimand, with an ugly light in his eyes to match. His follower knew a misstep might get their neck wrung, and opened their mouth all the same.

“Chief Elder. Even if it does become known, is it any loss to us? It is also a chance to kill two birds with one stone.”

Gal U-heon thought for a moment, then stroked his follower’s head.

“For once you say something that goes straight to this old man’s liking. Only, if we use poison men we cannot get near them ourselves either, and that is the trouble.”

A poison man had the wits of a seven-year-old child, which meant it had to be controlled from somewhere close by. So when one appeared, the usual answer was to comb the surroundings first, find whoever was working it, and kill them.

“I have trained them so that a word alone will bring them back to us. Three years it took to school them into understanding what is said to them. It was truly hard going, all that while. So the poison men will come back to us of their own accord, and we need only keep well clear and take the report of the result.”

Hoping for a word of praise from Gal U-heon, his follower had worked their own labors of those years into the telling.

“And so? You want a reward for it?”

At the sight of those sparse, yellowed teeth, his follower bowed their head lower still.

“N-no. Not at all.”

Gal U-heon toyed with his follower’s hair, and his voice came out cold.

“Who does he think he is, daring to set foot in Jiangxi? Scholar Cheon — I knew your gall was large, but whether you know you have walked into your own grave, that I could not say.”

His follower knew the words were not meant for them and still could not lift their head. Now and then the sounds leaked through the gaps where teeth were missing, and that chilled them further.

“Prepare the poison men.”

Only then did his follower raise their head and leave.

With a hundred-odd men of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps guarding us on every side, it felt like a prince’s procession. A faction of the orthodox murim would have put together an escort of a dozen men or so and weighed the practicality of it, but among the unorthodox sects showing off is a virtue, and so half the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps had turned out to walk us in.

Namgung Cheol-ung, plainly finding none of it to his taste, grumbled.

“Say what you will, you have to hand it to the unorthodox lot for their ridiculous bluster.”

But neither Namgung Hwa-jun nor Namgung Pyo answered him. Bluster or not, it made a fine enough show.

Gwanryong Jin said to me.

“By this evening we should be able to reach our sect.”

Pressing on to arrive by evening meant taking our midday meal in a wood beside the road. The Hyeoncheon Asura Corps posted themselves here and there around us, ranged as though on guard. They ate dry rations and were done with the meal in short order. We made do ourselves with dumplings bought from the inn when we set out that morning. The horses needed rest as well, so we passed a while in idle talk.

I set the three spirit energies turning and read the flow of water qi around us. There was no blood flow to be sensed apart from the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps.

“Mm?”

Then, a moment later, a strange blood flow slid into my sense for qi.

“What is that?”

The flow was an uncanny thing, running so faintly that I could not tell whether it belonged to a person or an animal. And the instant I felt the current coming off their bodies, gooseflesh rose all over me. That current was much like what I had sensed in the soup not long before.

“None of you go near them!”

Four men in black were coming toward us, and the warriors of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps had already started forward to meet them. My shout brought every one of them around to look our way.

“I can feel poison on them.”

At that, Gwanryong Jin asked.

“Is that so, truly?”

He settled on a countermeasure at once.

“Hold them off with spears!”

The four simply walked toward us, step after steady step.

Toward where I stood, to be exact.

When the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps warriors had fetched their spears, Gwanryong Jin shouted.

“Throw!”

— Shwiiik!

Dozens of spears flew and came down in a rain on the four men in black.

— Knock! Clack! Crack!

Astonishingly, they swayed clear of some of the flying spears and batted the rest away with their bare hands, and none of it seemed to cost them much. Those spears carried internal power behind them, and the four took not a single wound for it.

“Ready the bows!”

Spears having failed, they went to bows.

— Whirrrip!

Dozens of arrows flew and drove down at the men in black, but no more than three or four found their bodies. Even those lodged in a thigh or a flank and seemed to have given them no shock at all. Neither the pace nor the carriage of their walking changed.

Gwanryong Jin turned to me.

“Let us use a carriage. Let us see whether those creatures are still sound after a carriage has run them down.”

I nodded. Gwanryong Jin had one of the carriages emptied of everything inside it and sent it charging at the four men in black. As it neared them he sprang up through the air and dropped away behind it, and the horses drove straight on.

— Hi-hi-hi-hiiing!

But the moment they came within about a hundred feet, both horses foamed at the mouth and pitched over where they stood. With them down, the plan to ram the four came to nothing.

Poison qi that could kill a horse at that distance belonged to only one thing.

“Are those not the Dang Sect of Sichuan’s poison men?”

Gwanryong Jin said it with his eyes on me.

Nothing but a poison man of the Dang Sect of Sichuan could show that much power. The blood flow in them had fallen to about an animal’s, and the poison qi pouring off them came near to an absolute poison. If such a thing existed at all, it was theirs and nothing else. Even the grass around them was dying off black.

However great a master a man was, there was no winning a fight with a poison man. It knew the rudiments of martial arts and could feel no pain, and above all its awareness ran no higher than a seven-year-old child’s, so the thing was a puppet that followed nothing but the orders of whoever worked it. To face one with sword qi you had to come within ten or twenty feet at the very least, and closing that distance on something that threw poison qi out to near a hundred feet was no easy matter.

There is nothing for it. Must I use the Flying Dantian? But if poison gets on the Flying Dantian, I do not know whether I could ever swallow it again.

It might be that I would never be able to use the Flying Dantian again. The poison such a thing threw off came close to a deadly poison, and it was famous for having no cure.

And how is a poison man of the Dang Sect of Sichuan here at all? Has the Dang Sect of Sichuan had a hand in this?

Gwanryong Jin, who must have heard something of poison men, gave an order soon after.

“Comb every foot of a thousand feet around this place, and if there is anybody there, bring them in!”

He gave it believing whoever directed the poison men was somewhere close by, and I hoped as much myself. But the corps members who came back a quarter of an hour later reported not so much as an ant anywhere around.

There is no help for it now. I shall have to use the Flying Dantian.

I brought a hand to my mouth, meaning to bring the Flying Dantian out.

That was when Song-ran turned her head toward me.

— Master Scholar Cheon.

A voice that shook the inside of my skull. I knew at once it was a voice transmission. I had perfected the art back when I was at the Murim Alliance and had never once used it on anybody, because the moment you do, you have as good as confirmed that you have been learning martial arts.

— Yes. Miss Song.

Song-ran showed not the least sign of surprise that I had answered by voice transmission. As if she had known I would.

— I have a way to subdue them.

— I beg your pardon?

I said the first thing that came into my head.

— Do you happen to know how to handle poison?

Poison was the only thing that dealt with a poison man.

— No. It is not poison.

— Then by what means?

Song-ran gave a forlorn smile, and her voice transmission came again.

— And yet you are not startled, even at my saying I shall take on the poison men. So you do know something after all?

A laugh escaped me in spite of myself as I answered.

— We shall speak of that later. Just now those poison men have to be stopped. If they run wild, it will not be only us — the people living hereabouts will suffer for it too.

There were houses from the edge of this wood onward, and if the poison qi spread it was as plain as looking into a fire that a great many common people would suffer for it.

— Very well. Please tell them all to close their eyes. That on no account are they to open them.

No easy thing to ask. At so dangerous a moment, with poison men walking toward them, an order to keep their eyes shut was not one anybody would readily understand.

— It is a strange thing to ask, but very well.

I passed word to Gwanryong Jin that at my signal he was to have every member of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps close their eyes. He knitted his brows, as though it did not readily make sense to him, but he agreed soon enough.

That much certainly set them apart from the orthodox murim. A martial artist of that world would not have granted a request he did not understand.

As the poison men came steadily closer to me, Song-ran gave me a nod.

I said to Gwanryong Jin.

“Everyone, close your eyes.”

Gwanryong Jin and his corps members all looked at me once, taking it, no doubt, that I was about to use some art of my own, and then closed their eyes.

I said it to Yeo-seol and Cheong Yo as well.

“All of you close your eyes too.”

If the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps warriors, masters as they were, had to close their eyes, these could hardly be an exception. Yeo-seol looked at me without closing hers, and only when I frowned did she shut them, unwillingly.

Cheong Yo closed her eyes, then opened them a crack.

It looks as though Ran is doing something with Scholar Cheon to stop them.

She had felt that Song-ran and Scholar Cheon were passing something between them, and she kept her eyes fixed on the two of them. From the moment the poison men appeared she had been watching Song-ran closely for any change, to protect a girl who could not see, and in doing so she had caught the faint alteration in her.

“Ran. Come here.”

Song-ran could not go to her just now.

“Sister Cheong Yo, one moment. Wait just a little. I’ll tell you about it later. Don’t open your eyes — keep them shut tight.”

Cheong Yo caught her hand and pulled at it, and Song-ran drew it free all the same and put distance between them.

Sister Cheong Yo has surely thought of me all this while as a blind girl who knows nothing of the world. She may well be shaken by what happens now.

If it went badly, she might grow distant from Cheong Yo. But if she stepped forward now, the thing could be settled without anybody dying. Knowing that, she could not pretend she did not know it.

Song-ran’s voice transmission came flowing into my head.

So she does know martial arts after all. Song-ran’s feeling my Flying Dantian was no accident.

— Master Scholar Cheon, strike the points I name now, with one part and a half of your force.

I nodded.

— Dazhui, Shenzhu, Lingtai, Jinsuo, Zhongshu, Mingmen.

I struck the points Song-ran had named. They ran down the Governing Vessel, formed along the spine, and no person could ever strike them by their own strength.

— Now strike the Taiyang points on both sides, with three parts of your force.

I flinched. Three parts sounds modest, like barely a tap, but what it really means is being asked to strike hard enough to raise a bruise.

— Quickly. They are coming.

I did as Song-ran said, and from behind her I struck the Taiyang points with the index fingers of both hands¹.

— Whack!

At that her blood flow changed abruptly. What had a moment before been an ordinary human’s now gave off the sense of everything rushing at once into her two eyes. That meant internal force was gathering there.

What is this?

I felt an unknown power radiating out of her eyes.

In that time the four poison men had come to just short of a hundred feet.