Meeting The Supreme Of The Unorthodox Sects

The murim had no end of chivalrous heroes who might as well have belonged to the unorthodox sects, or of orthodox-murim martial artists who might as well have been Demonic Cult men. The reverse held just as often. There were men of the unorthodox sects who were chivalrous heroes to the life, and men of the demonic path who would have passed anywhere for men of the orthodox murim. Not many martial artists believed that orthodox, unorthodox and demonic sorted themselves out according to the kind of martial art a man trained in.

Mak Yeo-heun, the Unorthodox King, True Lord, was no exception to any of it. The Hyeoncheon Sect was the same. A man hears the name and takes it for a school of the orthodox murim’s Daoist line; who would ever take it for the name of an unorthodox martial house? Talent never ran dry around Mak Yeo-heun, and the reason for it lay in the fair and upright nature of the man himself, which the orthodox faction would not bring itself to admit. Admitting it would have meant sitting down to think about what the orthodox murim actually was.

A man of clear convictions, and strong ones. A man like a sunflower, who loved one woman his whole life long.

That was Mak Yeo-heun.

Come to think of it, it is because he is that sort of man that he can ask even me, out of the Murim Alliance, to take his son’s discipline in hand.

Turning it all over, I followed the steward and came to a hushed, quiet place. The pavilion standing in it had neither pond nor flower garden, which left it looking rather bleak.

“Please go in. This is where the Supreme is.”

I could feel the blood flows from outside the pavilion. To feel them and yet catch no sign at all of a living presence meant, beyond doubt, that they were masters specialized in the concealment art.

I set foot inside. From the door onward, maidservants opened the doors ahead of me and showed me the way, and at a glance every one of them was a beauty. I looked at their blood flows, and not one of them belonged to someone who had trained in a martial art.

A master guides his internal force differently according to the art he has trained in, so there are places in the meridians where the flow quickens and places where it slows. In someone who has trained in no martial art the blood simply runs on, with none of those changes in it.

One of the maids spoke.

“The guest has come.”

“Come in.”

The voice sounded languid, and still it rang deep.

I opened the door, stepped in, and found a man seated on a jade throne.

Mak Yeo-heun is of an age to be holding his sixtieth-birthday feast, and yet he looks young — far from fifty; like a man who has only just come to forty.

I knew that for the mark of martial artists who carried great internal power.

So it seems to be true, what they say — that he stands at the level of the Transformation Realm, reached at a hundred and twenty years’ worth of internal force.

He held one of the three seats among the Three Kings Under Heaven. Above them stood only the masters of the former generation, the Three Supremes Under Heaven, and the Three Supremes had withdrawn from the world long ago, so calling the Three Kings the strongest men of the murim as it stood was no exaggeration.

The world had a funny sense of humor.

In all my years of service in the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps, the Alliance Leader, Jo Myeong the Martial King, had never been more to me than a figure glimpsed a few times from a long way off; we had never once stood face to face. Even through the dispute with Elder Gal I made my reports to the Strategist for the most part, so I never saw the Martial King at all. And now, of all things, the first of the Three Kings I met face to face was the Unorthodox Supreme, which I had never expected.

“Welcome. I hear it was a hard road. Gnats swarming you the whole way, they tell me — but you look to have come through safe, and I am glad of it.”

Namgung Hak, at our first meeting, had spoken to me with formal courtesy, as a mark of respect; Mak Yeo-heun used plain speech. I did not mind it.

“I greet Great Hero Mak, the supreme of the unorthodox sects. My name is Cheon Tae-san.”

Had I been a martial artist I would have laid on a few flourishes about the honor of three lifetimes and so forth, but I was greeting him as a scholar, so I kept it plain.

Mak Yeo-heun looked steadily down at me and broke into a slight smile.

“Just so. Plain, and with some nerve in you besides, as befits the scholar they say has reformed hellion after hellion. Even a transcendent-peak master does not easily keep his composure in front of me.”

He was not loosing his aura to press down on me, and even so a master at the level of the Transformation Realm gave off a pressure that neither brush nor tongue could describe. I felt it too at first and sat uncomfortably under it, until I set the spirit energy turning and the pressure went away.

“This is promising. How is it that a scholar with not even internal force to be felt in him should be so remarkable?”

Seeing my composure hold, he let out a sound of admiration.

Before coming to meet Mak Yeo-heun I had deliberately drawn the Flying Dantian out of myself and left it behind. Carrying even that small internal power was, if anything, the surest way to catch his eye.

“If this seat has come to the far end of the martial way, then you have surely come to the far end of some world I know nothing of. Extremes have always met, after all. Have you reached the end you wanted? Do you know where it is you have come to?”

His tone had a question in it. Most likely he took it that I had reached some summit of the spirit, and wanted to know what stood at the top of it.

I shook my head.

“I do not know where it is that I have come to. I know neither the name of the place nor its master, so I have settled on simply calling it nature.”

“So the place you have come to is called nature? Put that way, it sounds well enough. And how do you wish to live in that nature of yours?”

Nobody at the Murim Alliance had ever put such a question to me, nor anyone at the Namgung Clan. It was abstruse enough to put me in mind of a conversation I once had with an Elder of the Wudang Sect.

“I have no thought of leading any grand life. I wish only to be one life belonging to that nature. And so I have come to think that if I live as a good man toward nature, I am living as a good man toward myself.”

I threw him the sort of thing he was likely to enjoy. Men who have come as far as absolute master take pleasure in abstruse thinking, and I knew it.

“Oho! Nature and I are one. Should a man call that the union of body and nature?¹”

He was speaking by analogy with the union of body and sword, a term out of martial principle.

“If we must have it as the Supreme says, then union with nature would be the right form, since nature is the word that takes in all the ten thousand things of heaven and earth.”

“Union with nature. Good. It has the feel of an absolute master’s insight.”

For the first time, the corner of his mouth drew into a smile.

“But see here. To be a good man to others, a man cannot be a good man to himself. He must hold his own feelings down, give up his own gain, and never see his own will through. Is being a good man to oneself not nearer the values of the unorthodox sects?”

Mak Yeo-heun, still at his Zen riddles. He seemed curious what I was thinking, when I did not shrink in the least in front of him, a master who had reached the Transformation Realm.

“To say one will be a good man to oneself is to say one will throw away hypocrisy.”

He spoke as though reciting it to himself.

“A scholar who has thrown away hypocrisy. Somehow that gives me expectations. Those who lodge themselves in the orthodox faction never do get clear of it.”

Mak Yeo-heun rose from the jade throne. His presence was so large that a tall man of six feet looked nine.

“Shall we come to the main business, then? My son is no ordinary hellion. How do you mean to discipline him?”

He had brought out the main business, so I took it up.

“That will depend on what level the Supreme wants of the Young Sect Leader.”

“Meaning you can bring him up to whatever level I want?”

“I make the effort, so far as it can be done.”

“Just so — the scholar who handles nothing but hellions, they call you.”

He stroked his beard down once.

“I would like him at least at the level of knowing the principles of the world. And beyond that, of being able to take those principles apart with reason rather than with feeling. A man who is to lead the Hyeoncheon Sect and cannot manage even that much has to be discarded.”

Here was a man saying that even a son, if he did not measure up, could be discarded. I spoke without hesitation.

“If that is the level you want, then I must at least have the authority to strike the Young Sect Leader.”

“Bwahahaha!”

The solemn face he had held until then came apart in an instant.

“Strike that hellion, you say? Does the scholar know how many scholars that boy has beaten to death?”

“I do not.”

“More than ten. Starting with his own master of letters, and he did not pick and choose — any scholar or Confucian student who spoke a straight word to him.”

He added in a low voice.

“Ah — I hear you met poison men on the road and drove them off by laying a soul-seizing art on them. Is it the soul-seizing art you are counting on, by any chance?”

“No.”

“No, no. Soul-seizing art or anything else — lay it on him if you must; if you can draw the hellion out of him I shall be grateful.”

“…”

When I kept my silence, he spoke.

“To put it again: whether you strike the boy or remake his nature with a soul-seizing art, I shall not concern myself with it in the least.”

“If the Supreme says so, then it must be said to the people around him as well. It would be awkward for me if those nearby saw me striking the Young Sect Leader and set about killing me for it.”

“Wahahaha!”

Perhaps because the laugh had once broken loose, he let out a great laugh at the smallest excuse.

“Now I see it — you are no scholar but a comic storyteller. There is nobody who makes me laugh like this.”

At those words, a number of ways to reform Mak Ji-mong came to me instead.

Once the Flying Dantian has robbed a man of his internal force, he feels a liking for me, who hold the Flying Dantian. I had better make aggressive use of the Flying Dantian on this one.

I had worked out what the Flying Dantian could do from watching Namgung Cheol-ung give me more loyalty and more kindness than any of the others did. It worked much the same way with a man robbed of his Seven Stars wheel-energy, who came to feel a liking for me, the one who took it.

“In that case, so that I may gain strength enough to strike the Young Sect Leader — will you bestow the Dragon Blood Pill on me?”

“Kuhahahaha! Was it not a gift already promised? Of course you must have it. To beat that son of mine into shape.”

Mak Yeo-heun called someone outside and gave the order to bring the Dragon Blood Pill.

“The Dragon Blood Pill is a treasure of our sect. A spirit medicine that need not bow its head anywhere you set it down. Used well, you will see good come of it.”

The Dragon Blood Pill came in, and he sent a small silver case my way. It rose slowly into the air and came across to me.

So this is the Empty-Air Grasp I had only ever heard spoken of. But my Flying Dantian floats about in the air as well. By that reckoning, I know how to use the Empty-Air Grasp myself.

I kept the idle thought to myself and bent from the waist.

“Thank you, Supreme.”

“When you take the medicine, if you need someone to stand guard, say so to this seat. This seat will stand it for you.”

I did not demur in the slightest.

“To be a scholar who has had the Unorthodox Supreme of all the world stand guard over him — that would be a thing to boast of for generations to come.”

“Kuh heh heh heh!”

He snorted a laugh at my idle joke, then spoke.

“Is there anything else you want?”

“There is.”

“Oh. Yes, yes. Let me hear it.”

“The Young Sect Leader’s education has not succeeded yet, but the land you said you would give me on success — might I have it first?”

My words caught his interest.

“May I ask the reason?”

“First, to build a house on that land for myself to stay in; and second, so that others may come onto that land and live there.”

When I went on to say that I meant to give farmland to the slash-and-burn farmers I had met on the road, he looked at me with half-lidded eyes.

“Just so — a truly rare scholar. Good nerve, outstanding learning, and the heart of compassion on top of it.”

“It is not so much as to deserve that praise. I cannot even look after my own affairs, and still I cannot turn my face away — it is only meddling where I have no business.”

“Very well. I shall give you the land. Where do you want it?”

“Can you give me anywhere I want?”

“Naturally. There is no land in this Jiangxi that I cannot have if I want it.”

“How should I presume to pick and choose the land I am given? If the Supreme gives me a suitable place, I shall take it.”

“Haa. And you know how to step back at the right moment, too. I cannot make out how a man like you came to be driven out of the Murim Alliance. You — why not work with me instead? This seat has a Strategist already, but I would give you a post to match his.”

The offer came out of nowhere, and I looked at him.

“I am grateful for the words, but as I said a moment ago, I am only a timid scholar who wants no great life.”

“Yes. Pushed at you all at once, it would sit heavily. I shall settle the land myself, put the deeds and everything else in order, and send them to you.”

At first he had used the distant, ceremonious form of address; now he had moved to the familiar one. Winning his liking at a first meeting was good fortune, but it came to me that I must not let myself get too close.

“Since it has come to this — will you have a look at that hellion son of mine?”

I wanted a look myself at the worst hellion of them all, of whom I had only ever heard.

“Let us do that. If I am to find out what level of hellion he is, it would be as well to see him now.”

Mak Yeo-heun sat back down on the jade throne and broke into a slight smile.

“I like you, truly. There was a reason Namgung Hak prizes you so.”

Muttering it, he raised his voice toward the outside.

“Tell that hellion to come running to the great hall this instant.”

“By your command!”