I'll Give Back As Much As I Got

I was about to step back before the poison qi could reach me when Song-ran’s voice transmission came.

— Please stay still.

I did as she said and stood exactly where I was. A few steps more from them and I would be caught in the poison.

But at that moment the poison men stopped walking. Then I saw something strange. A current pouring out of Song-ran’s body was communing with the four poison men.

— Forgive me a moment.

Song-ran took my hand, and at the same moment I felt the energy of my own body flowing into her. She seemed to be mixing my energy into hers and working through it to commune with the four poison men. Her current came through clear and sharp to my sense for qi.

— Try telling the poison men to fall back.

“Fall back.”

I said it almost under my breath, and the poison men faltered and gave ground.

“Haa.”

— I have bound them by their souls. I bound them with Master Scholar Cheon’s energy mixed into my own, so from now on those poison men will listen to no words but mine and Master Scholar Cheon’s. Now, would you strike the points I named a moment ago, in the reverse order?

I struck the points again, as she wished.

So that was a sealing of the points, to lock the power away.

Song-ran turned to face me, her eyes still closed.

— Now do as you please, Master Scholar Cheon.

She moved away from me. Watching the martial learning she had unfolded on the poison men, I dragged something like it up out of a corner of my memory.

That school actually exists?

Now and then, in the Murim Alliance’s secret vault, I had come across old secret records describing schools and martial arts handed down like legends. I had taken them for some scholar’s amusement, nothing more than martial arts and schools he had invented out of his own head and set down on paper. It had never once occurred to me that I would meet one in the flesh.

I put the thought aside and dealt with what stood in front of me first.

“Dispel the poison qi.”

I felt the poison men draw their poison qi back into themselves, and in an instant it was gone from their bodies.

— What will you do?

At Song-ran’s voice transmission, I sent one of my own.

— What else is there to do? The ones who meant to kill me must answer for it the same way. Do the poison men follow my orders now?
— Yes. When I reached them through the soul-seizing and communed with them in mind, I found they understood what was said to them. That made them easier to control.
— Can those men take control of the poison men again?
— Once they are caught by my Soul-Seizing Divine Eye they will hear nothing but our words. The Soul-Seizing Divine Eye’s command is stamped into the mind and the consciousness itself.

Even through a voice transmission, I could feel her pride.

I said to the poison men.

“Go back and kill every one of those who sent you. Then, at the third watch tonight, wait three thousand feet outside the Hyeoncheon Sect.”

The poison men had the awareness of a child of six or seven, so they took my meaning well enough. They turned and started back the way they had come.

“You may all open your eyes now.”

Gwanryong Jin opened his eyes at my word, watched the poison men move off, and spoke.

“Shall we go after them?”

“Leave them be. Trying to stop those poison men would only cost us more.”

“Even so…”

“I will take responsibility, so leave it to me.”

“If Master Scholar Cheon says so.”

He accepted it at once, without a word of argument.

In this sort of thing, the unorthodox lot are easy to deal with.

Gwanryong Jin looked curious about how I had turned the poison men back, but he let it lie.

“Those were beyond doubt the Dang Sect of Sichuan’s poison men.”

I nodded.

“The Dang Sect of Sichuan’s poison men they may be, but surely the question is who was working them?”

“Do you mean to say the ones working them were not the Dang Sect of Sichuan?”

“Would the Dang Sect of Sichuan be mad enough to attack us this openly with poison men? When I was with the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps, I once had a report that poison men still being raised in the Dang Sect of Sichuan had been stolen. Most likely those are the ones taken then.”

“What manner of men would… This is a grave matter, so when I return to our sect I shall report it to the Supreme. The Supreme will then put questions to Master Scholar Cheon to confirm the facts.”

“When that time comes I will name the man I believe is behind it. And how I turned them back, as well.”

Gwanryong Jin took the matter no further.

Cheong Yo was staring hard at Song-ran, as though she had worked out that Song-ran was the one who had dealt with the poison men.

“Sister Cheong Yo, there is something I must say inside the carriage. Master Scholar Cheon, please come in as well.”

Only Cheong Yo, Song-ran and I rode inside the carriage. Yeo-seol we sent to another, along with Eun-bi and Cheong Yo’s waiting maids. Yeo-seol dug in her heels, wanting to hear what we would say, but one frown from me and she pushed out her lower lip and trudged off.

“The poison men are coming back.”

Gal U-heon’s follower said it in an excited voice. Having sent the poison men off, Gal U-heon had been waiting five thousand feet away. The scouting party that had gone to confirm how the fight ended was not back yet, so he passed no hasty judgment; still, the poison men had returned unharmed, and that alone told him things had gone better than he expected.

“We will have dealt them a mortal blow.”

Gal U-heon had never supposed poison men could kill Scholar Cheon. Strong as a poison man was, it moved sluggishly, and a man could keep clear of one. So long as they had done what he aimed at, that was enough for him.

Gal U-heon looked at the arrows lodged in a poison man’s body and asked.

“Damaged like this, will it still serve?”

“They feel no pain, and this much is no hindrance to their moving. Their wounds heal quickly besides.”

“A monster and nothing else.”

“They are things the Dang Sect of Sichuan ground souls up to make.”

“Now that poison men have shown themselves, the Dang Sect of Sichuan and the Hyeoncheon Sect will both be like a kicked hornets’ nest. The only house in Jiangxi that handles poison is the Gal Sect of Jiangxi, so the Dang Sect will come down on our sect.”

Gal U-heon suddenly threw his head back and burst into a wild laugh at the sky.

“Bwahahahaha! The sect leader will sweat for this. Dared to strip me of the Chief Elder’s seat, did he? Who does he think made him sect leader? Does that nobody imagine he would ever have become sect leader without me? All those years I sat as an Elder at the Murim Alliance, working to bring our sect every benefit I could — and he tears that work down. I cannot forgive it. Not even from my own junior brother.”

His follower flinched and shivered at a vengefulness that came close to obsession. That this Scholar Cheon had dug up Elder Gal’s corruption and driven him out of his Elder’s post at the Murim Alliance was grudge enough and to spare. But he had been told to give up the Chief Elder’s seat, and his answer to it was to set about pulling down the sect leader of his own school. Nobody could call that turn of mind normal.

Elder Gal was a man wanting in character, and still his follower could not get free of him. Three years ago they had stolen the Dang Sect of Sichuan’s poison men at his order, and from that moment the two of them had shared one fate.

“The Hyeoncheon Asura Corps may follow the poison men here. Clear this place fast and we move.”

Gal U-heon shouted.

“Has the scouting party that went to watch the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps’ movements not come back yet?”

His follower answered at once.

“Not yet. It will take time if they are to confirm the route those men are taking as well.”

Turning to the men hurrying about the site, his follower shouted.

“Before anything else, get the poison men into their coffins!”

Elder Gal’s men broke off from clearing the ground and gathered to put the poison men into the coffins.

“Kuh-huk!”

“Aaargh!”

The men on their way to the poison men suddenly staggered.

“Poison!”

Gal U-heon turned his head and saw the man who had shouted it drop dead. Sure enough, poison qi was pouring out of all four poison men. Then the four of them scattered and walked away, one to each of the four quarters.

“D-don’t come near!”

The men already caught in the poison qi could not get clear, and they died vomiting blood.

“What has happened? Why are the poison men pouring out poison qi?”

Gal U-heon roared it, and his follower came up.

“S-something is wrong.”

His follower held the flute that worked the poison men.

“The Soul-Reaving Flute is not taking.”

Blown, the Soul-Reaving Flute drew the poison men after its sound, and by the rhythm and the pitch of the notes one could direct them into all manner of actions. But now the follower could blow it as they liked, and nothing took at all.

“How has this happened?”

His follower turned the flute over and over in their hands, muttering.

“Is there no way to control them but the Soul-Reaving Flute?”

At a loss, his follower shook their head.

“Simple things they take by word alone, ordinarily. If a word does not reach them, then one blows the Soul-Reaving Flute. But now they will not hear a word, and the Soul-Reaving Flute is no use either.”

“Why has it come to this?”

Gal U-heon shouted it, but there was no way his follower could know the answer.

“Uwaaagh!”

Gal U-heon’s men had been standing close to the poison men when the poison qi caught them, and they could not even run. As more and more of them died bleeding from all seven orifices, Gal U-heon ground his teeth.

“This will be that uncanny wretch’s doing, beyond a doubt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Cheon Tae-san, I mean!”

“Surely not. How would that man know anything of poison men, and how would he work them?”

“It is not once or twice I have been taken in by that pallid face of his. He plays the pale-faced bookworm who knows nothing, and then at the moment that matters he puts a knife in your back.”

To his follower’s eye, Gal U-heon looked like a man whose rage had taken a little of his reason.

“There is nothing he does not know and nothing he cannot do. He will have known about poison men, and he will have known how to deal with them too. If it were not him, poison men that obeyed so well would never behave like that!”

Just then the men who had been watching Scholar Cheon’s party from a distance came back, and the carnage in front of them brought them up short. Gal U-heon beckoned, and the two of them came to him.

“What became of Scholar Cheon and the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps?”

The two men kept half an eye on a poison man walking slowly toward where they stood, and spoke quickly.

“The poison men went at them, pouring out poison qi.”

“And?”

“They threw spears and loosed arrows and ran a carriage at them, and when none of it served they were thrown into confusion. Then all at once that scholar fellow stepped forward and said something, and the poison men turned round and came back.”

“You did not hear what he said?”

“We were two thousand feet off, so we could not hear.”

“And you do not know what he did, either?”

“Forgive us. Our eyes could not make out exactly what he did. All we saw was the poison men squared off against the scholar and then turning back.”

“So it was that wretch’s doing after all.”

Gal U-heon burst out in fury. The poison men had already poisoned a good twenty of his men to death, and now they were coming for him.

“We leave the poison men behind.”

His follower’s hands shook, as though the injustice of it galled them. Three years of working like a dog had gone into making the poison men an extension of their own hands, and they could not give that up so easily.

“Chief Elder, there must be some way. Whatever it takes, I will try to bring the poison men under control.”

“You said yourself the Soul-Reaving Flute does not take. By what way, then? A poison man out of control is a calamity. They are already out of our hands.”

Gal U-heon spoke with a look of pity on his face.

“They may even follow the poison men here. That uncanny wretch is more than capable of it.”

He had come off worst against Cheon Tae-san more times than he cared to count, and his mind now ran to nothing but the worst.

“This bitterness this old man will pay back without fail. It is a pity, but let us go.”

“All that toil to steal them… all those years spent breaking them in.”

His follower muttered it, unable to shake off the regret.

“We still have plenty of venomous creatures. With those we can make new poison men. This old man and you together could have them made in short order. Do not lose heart over it.”

Gal U-heon had never once given them recognition or comfort before. And still, somehow, there was nothing in their heart but emptiness.

Gal U-heon was quick to give a thing up.

His follower looked at the poison men a moment with sad eyes, then set off after him.

Gal U-heon unfolded his lightness skill, and unable to hide his bitterness, clenched his fists hard. His nails bit into his palms, and all the way as he ran, blood scattered from them in specks.