Saving A Life

Five men had ringed themselves protectively around a single scholar, and the masked attackers were trading blows fiercely with all five. The fighting could not have been going long, since only one of the warriors guarding the scholar had gone down.

A good thing I came the moment I heard the sound.

There is a saying in the murim. A man who has masked himself is not necessarily a bad man, and a man under attack is not necessarily a good one; the reverse could always prove true, and that was the nature of the murim. And yet the five guards ringed about the scholar were every one of them wounded, while the masked men had not a scratch on them.

Those masked men are the better masters.

The masked men numbered nine in all, and only five of them were in the fight. Even so they were overwhelming the warriors guarding the scholar. Given time, his escort warriors would all be killed to the last man.

I got down from the horse, sent it off some distance away, and edged closer little by little. In woods this thick, once I had hidden myself with the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork, there were not many masters who could feel my presence. I drew nearer still to see how matters stood.

The energy reached me at once, and I knew the masked men were all first-rate masters. A man gives off a particular sensation once he becomes one, an energy like a thorn-weed, its barbs clinging to the hand the instant it is touched. If anything, the higher a man’s attainment went the more refined that energy grew, until the sense of threat went out of it altogether.

The warriors protecting the scholar gave off no first-rate energy at all. Small wonder the fight was going all one way.

“You dare mean to kill an official of the state!”

The scholar bellowed it. For a man who might be dead at any moment, his spirit was formidable.

One of the masked men answered him. As a rule, the one who does the talking among such men is the leader.

“An ordinary official would have lived. Blame yourself for being no ordinary official.”

“Do you not know that to kill me is an act of treason!”

“Bwahahaha!”

The leader loosed a great laugh at the sky.

“I have killed three or four Investigating Censors¹ up to now, and no particular trouble came of it.”

“You wretch! By your own words, then, every Investigating Censor dispatched to this place was killed by you.”

“That is right. I killed them all. And still they send you out with martial artists as shoddy as these for an escort. I cannot decide whether to call it sheer folly, or to say the government service simply has no masters.”

I had heard it said now and again that an Investigating Censor’s life is a short one. The saying came of magistrates and bribe-taking officials having the Investigating Censor assassinated, and this looked to be a case of exactly that. Fall on the Investigating Censor along some lonely forest path, kill him, and write it off as the work of brigands. That was all it took.

Investigating Censors coming into this region had met with harm so often, it seemed, that they had been given a great many escort warriors; but as the men were not even first-rate, they could not hold their own.

Having looked the situation over, I could tell which side was the wicked one. In which case there was no need to watch any longer.

An inner elixir flicked away from my finger.

— Ping!

— Whack!

As one masked man’s skull was pierced through from behind, the others put up a guard all around them.

“Who is there!”

— Crack!

Again, the sound of breaking bone. At my will the inner elixir attacked a masked man out of the empty air.

“Dodge it!”

— Crunch!

Dodging would not get a man away from an inner elixir. Not many men could evade one flying about faster than a lightning flash.

— Fwing!

Each time an inner elixir spat out the sound of splitting air, the sound of breaking bone burst out after it.

— Whoosh!

This time the inner elixir drove down at the leader.

— Thock!

The leader had moved in time, but instead of his head the inner elixir went clean through his chest.

“Kaff!”

His lungs must have been hurt; he went on spitting blood.

“What eminent master is this!”

I showed myself from behind a tree not thirty feet from them, and the three surviving masked men flinched and shuddered. A man wielding hidden weapons had come that close without their feeling so much as a presence, and they had marked me down as a master they dared not stand against.

“Might I ask your honored name?”

A snort came out of me before I could stop it.

“You are an amusing lot. Men who came at an Investigating Censor meaning to kill him, and here you are cringing before a stranger.”

The masked leader’s conduct was laughable, but thanks to it I could tell where he came from.

Those men are of the murim.

More than that, the martial arts they had used against the Investigating Censor’s escort warriors beggared belief.

How is it that Demonic Cult men are attacking an Investigating Censor?

I had no intention of letting a single one of them leave alive. Not because they were Demonic Cult men, but because if they got out of here alive, then not only the Investigating Censor but I myself would become their mark. A Demonic Cult man is not the sort ever to forget a grudge.

“If we withdraw as we are, will you spare us? I have heard that martial artists of the orthodox faction do not touch a man who has surrendered or who can no longer fight.”

It was so absurd that I laughed.

“None of your dog’s tricks. And besides, I am not an orthodox-faction man, so I cannot let you go alive.”

“Then — are you of the unorthodox sects?”

He asked it quickly, as though he had taken some hope.

“No. I am a scholar.”

“What nonsense is this. Who would look at you and call you a scholar?”

“Never mind that — why are you trying to kill an Investigating Censor? And Demonic Cult men, at that.”

“We are not of the Demonic Cult.”

“Amusing. And you using the Soul-Rending Spirit-Snatching Sword, the Demonic Cult’s own art.”

“…”

He threw me a look that said he had not expected me to know the Soul-Rending Spirit-Snatching Sword, and shut his mouth.

“Tell me why Demonic Cult men wanted an Investigating Censor dead, and I will let you live.”

“I cannot say.”

“No, I daresay not. Die, then.”

At my word the three masked men bolted all at once, each to a different quarter. I made one simple gesture with my hand at the empty air.

— Thock-thock-thock!

The three of them did not get far before their heads burst and they died. For a moment I wondered whether my hand had been cruel, then shook my head.

The Demonic Cult and the Blood Cult I held to be vermin gnawing away at the world. I never once thought of them as human like myself, deserving to go on living alongside me. It was because I had read report after countless report of how many innocent common people had died and been maimed by their outrages. In my time at the Inspection Corps, when a report of some outrage of theirs came in, even in those days when I had no power I could not hold back my anger.

It was then that I grasped what the saying really meant. Remove a single evil, and ten goods grow up in its place.

Hoe out one evil, and ten goods grow.

That phrase became my scale of values. I willingly set my mind to removing one evil in order to keep ten goods. Remove ten evils and a hundred goods can be kept, and in that there was meaning enough.

“Th-thank you. Young Hero.”

The Investigating Censor spoke to me while I stood there, fallen a moment into my own thoughts. He was a man who looked to be about thirty.

“Had it not been for you, Young Hero, I should have fallen into those Demonic Cult men’s clutches and died a violent death. Lawless wretches. To set upon an Investigating Censor and try to kill him…”

I searched inside the masked men’s robes. Men who had gone so far as to mask themselves would carry nothing to prove who they were.

“Just as I thought. Nothing at all.”

The less badly wounded escort warriors searched the other dead masked men, but nothing whatever turned up on them.

“If these are Demonic Cult men, it will not end here. One way or another they will find some trace and come hunting.”

“Where were you on your way to inspect, Investigating Censor?”

“Poyang County.”

Of the counties around Poyang Lake, Poyang County was the largest and the one with the most developed commerce.

“But this is woodland; there is not even a road. Why did you come this way?”

“Investigating Censors who went to Poyang County have gone missing several times over, and I felt the danger of it. So I have been travelling for the most part by out-of-the-way forest paths rather than the official road.”

I looked at the Investigating Censor and his escort warriors, and sighed. The wounds were past ignoring, and the Investigating Censor himself, having just had one foot in the grave and pulled it back, stood with his legs trembling.

“The wounds must be treated first of all. They have opened, and it looks as though they will have to be stitched.”

The Investigating Censor nodded.

“That aside, we do not know the country here at all… Though it would seem likely enough that there is a clinic in one of the villages hereabouts.”

I thought a moment, then spoke.

“The villages hereabouts are nothing but abandoned houses, and there is no clinic. I am by rights a scholar attached to the Murim Alliance, but for reasons of a certain kind I am lodging a while at the Hyeoncheon Sect.”

“Oh — a scholar of the Murim Alliance, were you. But the Hyeoncheon Sect, that would be…”

The Investigating Censor would hardly have come without studying the state of affairs in Jiangxi.

“The Hyeoncheon Sect where the Unorthodox Supreme sits.”

“Hmm. How does a scholar such as yourself come to be at the Hyeoncheon Sect.”

“There are circumstances. It seems to me you had best be treated at the Hyeoncheon Sect first and move on after. As you are, you will not be able to carry out your mission. Your escort warriors are hurt.”

The Investigating Censor nodded.

“I understand it to be the stronghold of the unorthodox sects. Is it all right for people such as us to go there?”

“It is all right. The unorthodox sects are not the demonic path; they are a place that keeps the law of the murim.”

“In that case I shall be in your debt.”

The escort warriors were not so gravely hurt that they could not move, so we dressed only the urgent wounds and set off for the Hyeoncheon Sect.

As we came into the Guest Pavilion, a great many people were bustling about, on account of the sixtieth-birthday feast, no doubt. I met the steward and told them the whole of it from beginning to end. The steward sent the escort warriors straight to the Hyeoncheon Sect’s infirmary, reported the matter to Mak Yeo-heun, and came back.

“Master Scholar Cheon is to deal with this as he sees fit, he says. The Investigating Censor may stay here, he says. And he has ordered that the Demonic Cult men’s bodies in the woods be gathered up by our sect.”

The Investigating Censor stepped forward.

“My thanks. And one of the warriors who was guarding me is dead. I should like him seen to as well.”

“That we shall.”

The business was settled so cleanly that the steward struck me as very able indeed.

“Why are there so many people at the Hyeoncheon Sect?”

Unorthodox-sect martial artists were to be seen in numbers both outside the Hyeoncheon Sect and within it, and the Investigating Censor asked it.

“The Hyeoncheon Sect’s sect leader has his sixtieth-birthday feast shortly, and a sparring tournament is being held for it. That is why martial artists are gathering like this.”

“Haa. A sparring tournament at a sixtieth-birthday feast. There is simply no understanding how martial artists think.”

The Investigating Censor looked at me, then spoke.

“That aside — I have not so much as asked my benefactor’s name. This official is called Myeong U-jong.”

“I am a scholar of the Murim Alliance. Cheon Tae-san.”

“Scholar Cheon, then. You have saved this man’s life, and the lives of my escort warriors besides. This official will send up a report of your merit to the Censorate.”

“No. There is no need of that. If there is merit in it, it is all Censor Myeong’s.”

Myeong U-jong, struck with admiration at the way I turned the whole of the merit aside, let out a sigh.

“It is men like Master Scholar Cheon who ought to be made Investigating Censors.”

“Why do you say so?”

“Of late there are no officials willing to serve as Investigating Censors. It is no different from an age of chaos. Investigating Censors sent out go missing so often that every man of them shrinks from it. Six or seven in ten are written down as missing.”

“As bad as that?”

“It seems they league with men of the murim, as they did this time, and dispose of the Investigating Censor. Had it not been for Master Scholar Cheon, I too should have been buried in some hill or field with nobody the wiser and written down as missing.”

“If men of the murim are involved, then the escort warriors have to be strong. Nothing short of first-rate masters will keep you safe.”

“Where in the government service would you find a master? Any man who reaches first-rate goes to the imperial palace. Even these six escort warriors I was given this time were men the Censorate had trouble finding. By rights two guards are attached; it was because censors kept going missing in the Jiangxi region that they raised it to six. A first-rate master for an escort is not to be dreamt of.”

Had I passed the civil examinations and entered service, nine times out of ten I too would have been serving as an Investigating Censor. A graduate with no backing was assigned to the Censorate, the hardest posting there was, and there too I should have been handed the Investigating Censor’s work, which even in that office was reckoned the roughest of it. It might well be that by now I should be lying buried in some nameless hill or field.

“Master Scholar Cheon.”

Myeong U-jong called to me in an earnest tone.