Face To Face With The Hellion Of The Unorthodox Sects

A little while later a clear, ringing voice came from outside.

“Father. I have come.”

“Come in!”

A young man opened the door and came in. I knew him to be three or four years my senior. He took after Mak Yeo-heun in being tall, and there the likeness stopped; his build and the impression he made were another thing entirely.

Mak Ji-mong had exactly the face people mean when they call a man a pretty-boy, and the air he gave off was closer to a scholar’s than a martial artist’s. His father was a weighty man, handsome in a rugged, masculine way; the two made so sharp a contrast that a man might have doubted they were father and son.

“Father, you called for me?”

“I did. What have you been at?”

The smell of drink came off his breath, faint but deep-set; he had been settling into it for a good while.

“A friend came by for once, so we were sharing a few cups.”

“A friend? What friends have you got?”

Mak Yeo-heun did not sound as though he cared to know. It came across as something he said out of habit.

“It is Hwang Gok.”

The moment he heard the name, Mak Yeo-heun answered without interest.

“Hwang Gok must have brought Hwang So-ye along. If you are sitting over cups with Hwang Gok, that will be it.”

Hearing the two names, I smiled wryly to myself.

Hwang Gok was the Young Sect Leader of the Geumak Sect, an unorthodox school that had put down roots in Jiangxi. Geumak was a name chosen for the sense of wealth heaped up high enough to raise a mountain out of gold, and before they turned to being a martial house they had been a famous money house in Jiangnan. Some decades on they had established themselves as a martial house, but money had done the establishing, and so the sect was working to marry their daughter to Mak Ji-mong and stand as a martial house beyond question.

Hwang So-ye’s looks were fine enough to number her among the three great beauties of Jiangnan, and she was outstanding in the art of music besides. The saying went that if Anhui had Cheong Yo, then Jiangxi had So-ye.

The trouble was that Mak Ji-mong was a flower-plucking ravisher of the loudest ill repute. In the orthodox murim that counted as a grave crime; among the unorthodox sects it passed for a virtue a man ought properly to have.

The demonic path and the unorthodox sects have no character below the navel.

They were free enough of any sense of guilt for such a saying to go about at all. And as the Unorthodox Supreme’s heir he was more unbridled still. Set beside Mak Yeo-heun, who had loved one woman only and had no child but Mak Ji-mong, all of it showed the worse. In looks and in character alike, the son was marked down against the father.

How bad must it be, that he would put the discipline of his hellion son into my hands?

Had he been merely the Unorthodox Supreme it would have been one thing, but he was a power who carried the byname the Unorthodox King, True Lord. Seen a certain way he was a master of the unorthodox sects, more the chivalrous hero than the chivalrous heroes themselves, and his son carrying on in this fashion must have sat badly with him.

“Would it not be a good thing to get on close terms with the Geumak Sect? If we need money we could borrow it, and so on.”

“Do you know how much our sect takes in off Poyang Lake, that you talk such rot? Borrowing money is not a thing you can do the way you borrow a broom from next door.”

A faint anger had come into Mak Yeo-heun’s voice.

“If you lay a hand on Hwang So-ye, I will break your back for it outright. You had best bear that in mind.”

This time Mak Ji-mong did not talk nonsense. He seemed to know that his father was a man who made good on whatever he said. And Hwang So-ye’s father, Hwang Yeong, happened to be an old friend of Mak Yeo-heun’s, which was plainly why Mak Ji-mong had not been able to take her even now.

“And a month ago you raised hell at a martial hall and had it shut down, and I laid a confinement order on you for it — so how is it you are trying to set foot outside the gate?”

“I only stepped out a little while to see how things stand outside our house. A bit of a wander, nothing more.”

“There is a month of the confinement order left yet, so put the thought of going out of the gate away. If you go out again I will break your legs.”

Knowing his father’s temper, Mak Ji-mong bowed his head this time too and made a show of contrition. Then he turned toward me, where I had been standing all the while.

“But this is someone I haven’t seen before. Who might he be?”

With nothing but rebukes coming from his father, he had looked to me to change the subject.

“From today the scholar here is your master of letters. Make your greeting.”

“Hm. Father has brought in another useless scholar. It only means one more corpse.”

I paid his murderous words no mind and made my greeting.

“I am Cheon Tae-san. I hope we shall get on well.”

“Well, you’ve come, so I won’t say any more about it. But if you mean to teach me you’d better be ready for it. Ah — have you heard how many scholars have died by my hand? You’ll want to take good care of that thin little neck.”

Mak Yeo-heun cut in.

“The scholar must reform even a boy of this sort. Can you undertake it?”

“Yes. I shall begin his education three days from now. Only, the education must be left wholly to me.”

“Is there need to hurry so? It will not be too late to begin after this seat’s sixtieth-birthday feast is done with. Until then you would do well to learn the lay of our sect.”

“Let us do that.”

It suited me well enough that Mak Yeo-heun was in no hurry. I made my greeting to the two of them and went out of the great hall.

Once the scholar had gone out, Mak Ji-mong grumbled.

“Father, they say you spent a fair sum of money to bring that fellow here. Had you given it to me instead, you would have had a good son out of it.”

With nobody else left in the great hall, he went at it very nearly like a child whining for something.

“Be quiet. I have brought a rare sort of scholar here, so learn much from him.”

“One scholar is much like another. What is there in him to look at? Father, why not a woman scholar instead? Then I might even set about studying hard.”

Mak Yeo-heun watched his brazen son and snorted a laugh.

“Just as I thought — you need a beating.”

“What? Me? Surely Father does not mean to strike me?”

“There is such a thing in the world. Whether you turn out a human being or a beast rests in the scholar’s hands.”

“Bah, where would you find a son as fine as I am?”

“Enough. Get out of my sight.”

“Tch!”

When Mak Ji-mong had left the room, Mak Yeo-heun put on a look of interest.

“Having seen Scholar Cheon, I am not sure I am doing the right thing. A decent scholar may come to some foul harm at that hellion’s hands.”

He had taken it for talk to himself, but an answer came out of the empty air.

“It seems my lord has taken to him. And you, who scarcely say ‘let us work together’ even when you see a fine talent.”

“He is the one I have liked best in ten years. Had Scholar Cheon been a martial artist, I fancy he would have become a formidable master. What do you say?”

“This subordinate thinks the same.”

“Hm. Should I take him as a disciple instead?”

At the sight of their lord turning it over in earnest, a laugh burst out of the empty air.

“Kuh heh heh heh. Forgive me, my lord. It is only that I am seeing something I have never seen before.”

“No matter. I felt the same myself.”

“To this subordinate’s thinking, there is something strange about that scholar. An ordinary scholar would not have stood up under the Supreme’s aura, or the Young Sect Leader’s. Yet seeing him bear it without turning a hair, it seems to me there is something else to him.”

“That you should not know — now that is a strange thing.”

“My lord, I do not know all the world’s business either.”

“Is that so? Truly a strange thing.”

“Shall I set a watch on him?”

“No. Leave him be. Setting a watch on a scholar is a thing my pride will not allow.”

“As you say.”

“I find myself curious how he means to educate that hellion. It has been a long while since I looked forward to tomorrow like this.”

Mak Yeo-heun propped his chin on his hand and snorted a laugh.

The journey must have been hard on my companions; after their baths every one of them dropped off fast asleep. I saw that Yeo-seol was sleeping soundly and came out, then looked over the blood flows round about and found nothing that might be a problem. No particular watch had been set on the Guest Pavilion where we were lodged, either.

Mak Yeo-heun is bold, no question. It is a mercy that he agrees with most of what I have on him.

A gap between what one knows and what is actually there only breeds confusion.

I went out of the Hyeoncheon Sect and scanned the surroundings. Perhaps it was Song-ran’s Soul-Seizing Divine Eye at work, but I could feel the poison men even from far off, and I ran on my lightness skill toward the place where they were waiting. Fortunately, nobody was following me.

Just as I had instructed, the two of them stood stock-still like a pair of tall pines in an out-of-the-way spot with no one about. I looked around for somewhere to hide them. There was an abandoned house close by, so I put them inside and gave them their orders.

“Wait here. If by any chance a person comes in, do not attack. Wait quietly.”

Whether it meant they had understood me or not, they blinked.

I came back to the Hyeoncheon Sect, and on my way into the Guest Pavilion I met the steward. Since I had them there, I asked what I had been curious about.

“With the Supreme’s sixtieth-birthday feast, guests will keep on arriving — can it all be managed with the Guest Pavilion’s lodgings alone?”

I asked it with an eye to being lodged somewhere other than the Guest Pavilion.

“As it happens, from today we have begun putting up temporary lodges outside the sect. The Guest Pavilion is meant in the main for the sect leaders and clan heads of the great schools.”

“Does this sixtieth-birthday feast take guests from the whole murim?”

“No. The Supreme does not care to do things on a grand scale. Invitations were sent only to the unorthodox sects within Jiangxi.”

For Mak Yeo-heun’s sixtieth-birthday feast, an invitation to the sect leaders and clan heads of the Nine Great Sects or the Five Great Clans would not have been out of place, but he seemed to want the banquet held in a plain fashion.

The steward, turning to go, spoke.

“Ah, and I do not know whether you have been told, but this time we are holding a sparring tournament for the sixtieth-birthday feast, with the unorthodox sects’ rising talents for its field. A good number of unorthodox masters and rising talents will therefore be gathering outside the sect. I am concerned the Scholar may fall into some needless quarrel with them.”

I smiled. The steward was worrying over me in their own way.

“I shall keep from going in and out until the feast is over.”

“No, no. There is no need to go so far as that. The feast’s sparring tournament runs four days together, so you can hardly stay inside the sect the whole while. If you have need to go out, an escort can be put with you.”

“Ah, I see. If I have need of an escort I shall ask it of you.”

“Yes. And if there is anything else you require, you have only to come to me at any time.”

A hollow laugh burst out of me at the notion of a sixtieth-birthday feast that ran a sparring tournament instead of a banquet.

With a passion for martial learning like this, no wonder he reached the Transformation Realm. Mak Yeo-heun was the unorthodox sects’ first master of the Transformation Realm, was he not?

Nobody could fail to see that hanging a sparring tournament on the back of the feast was itself a way of cementing the standing of the Hyeoncheon Sect and Mak Yeo-heun. What mattered was that he had not stopped at the thought of it but had the force to carry it into action.

“Hold on. Is this, by any chance, meant to pick out in advance the entrants for the Dragon Martial Grand Tournament six months from now?”

The steward’s face lit up.

“Just as I thought — you see it at once. That is right. The aim is to sift out the unorthodox rising talents who will take part in the Dragon Martial Grand Tournament of the orthodox, unorthodox, demonic and underworld paths.”

The Dragon Martial Grand Tournament sifted out the strongest of the rising talents through sparring, and it drew them from all four powers: the orthodox murim, the unorthodox sects, the demonic path and the underworld. Held once in five years, it was the object of the martial artists’ greatest interest, and those who placed in it kept that honor undiminished until the next contest came round. Orthodox, unorthodox, demonic or underworld alike, the rising talents held a placing at the Dragon Martial Grand Tournament to be the highest honor there was.

Hold on — is this not a windfall? I might even find someone among them carrying a Seven Stars wheel-energy.

At a gathering of the unorthodox sects’ masters and rising talents, might I not lay eyes on one of them at least? I found myself quietly hopeful.

“Excuse me.”

A maidservant came up to me.

“What is it?”

“Would you be Master Scholar Cheon?”

“I am.”

The maidservant spoke up respectfully.

“I have had instruction from the Young Sect Leader to bring the Scholar to him.”

“Me? I understood he was sitting over cups with a friend just now.”

“He said you were to come and have a cup.”

“Hm.”

I laughed to think of Mak Ji-mong already stretching his claws out toward me.

Would you look at this one. Straight to the real business, is it?

There was no reason to refuse. Just in case, I had tucked the Flying Dantian away in my pouch, meaning to feed it to him in secret later, take his internal power, and warm him toward me.

“Very well. I shall go and see.”

Without thinking about it any further, I followed the maidservant out.

The steward gazed off in the direction the scholar had gone with worry in their eyes.

“Are we in for an uproar today? Ought I to stop it?”

Their brows drew together of their own accord at the thought of what the Young Sect Leader might get up to, calling the scholar to a drinking party.

Surely he would not kill the scholar on the very first day?

The steward shook their head quickly and turned back toward the Guest Pavilion.