If You Think Of Her As Family

“Yes. Censor Myeong.”

“This time I am determined to carry out my inspection in Poyang County. A friend of mine who was sent there has gone missing. I want to know why Investigating Censors go missing. Might you be able to help me?”

“Would it not do to call on the government service for support?”

I refused him politely.

“I say it because the Jiangxi government service cannot be trusted either. A report came up that help had been asked of the Jiangxi government service, and when the office was asked about it, all they would say was that no Investigating Censor had requested any help. And that this official took this road was known to the government service alone. Yet they found the very road I had come by and set upon me. This official does not think that a coincidence.”

If things had reached the point where even the government service could not be trusted, Myeong U-jong would have a hard time surviving with escort warriors who were not so much as first-rate masters.

“But as for helping you, Censor Myeong, I too have a great deal to attend to.”

Myeong U-jong took my hand.

“It is not that I grudge losing this one life of mine. Reports of an uncommon kind keep coming up out of Poyang County and the counties round about it. Word has it that the common people dying under the officials’ extortion and tyranny are not one or two. And yet when you listen to the officials who went there to investigate, they say nothing whatever is wrong, and so Investigating Censors are sent.”

I did not take this for a simple matter. The Demonic Cult had a hand in it, and the murim was tangled up in it besides. Investigating Censors alone would never settle a thing like that, I felt. Nothing short of an army going in would do it, and to call out an army you had to have a justification. Even some small scrap of evidence would have served, and not even that much was turning up.

“For now your escort warriors must recuperate as well, so let us say you set out once the sixtieth-birthday feast is over. I shall think it over until then myself.”

Myeong U-jong gazed a long while after the scholar’s retreating back. Being attacked had taught him that his own strength would not settle this, and he reproached himself for the complacency of supposing six escorts enough.

Scholar Cheon is strong enough to kill Demonic Cult masters with no more than a gesture of his hand. With his help alone I can bring this mission off.

With Scholar Cheon beside him there seemed nothing left to fear. He was a man of the government service rather than the murim, but he knew this much: martial artists of Scholar Cheon’s level were not many.

My escort warrior said as much. That no scholar could hold martial standing of that order. That he must surely be of some special standing in the Murim Alliance. In that case I might borrow the strength of the Murim Alliance as well.

Turning one thought over after another, Myeong U-jong settled on drawing Scholar Cheon in.

Yes. This will do it.

He called for the escort warrior in the soundest condition, handed over a letter, then put his mouth close to the warrior’s ear and gave his instructions quietly.

“I receive your command.”

“Good. You are to obtain it without fail. Tell them how the matter stands, and if they will not listen even so, show them this.”

What Myeong U-jong handed over was not his Investigating Censor’s plaque but one with a golden sheen to it, a name-plaque struck with the seal of the Censorate’s Censor-in-Chief. A name-plaque from the head of the Censorate carried a force equal to the Emperor’s own command.

“I understand.”

“The matter is urgent; you had best move quickly.”

The escort warrior slipped out of the Hyeoncheon Sect.

Cheon Tae-san turned Myeong U-jong’s words over in his mind and then shook his head. Getting mixed up in the affairs of the government service did not strike him as a good idea.

Just as he was about to go into the Guest Pavilion, he heard someone standing before it and murmuring to themselves.

It was Song-ran.

Leaving while the Guest Pavilion was in a bustle would be better, Song-ran thought, and so she meant to go tonight.

For the sake of the person who loved her most. For the sake of the person she loved most.

If she stayed here any longer, the ones searching for her would come bursting in.

The moment I used the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye, they will have sensed that I exist.

Those who have the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye can feel one another’s presence.

Song-ran told Cheong Yo she would take the night air a moment, and came out of the room.

“Sister Cheong Yo, forgive me for going like this. It is because you treated me as family and held me dear that I cannot stay at your side any longer. Because you would be put in danger too. I do not want to go either. But I want you in danger even less.”

Song-ran made a deep bow toward the room where Cheong Yo was.

“Please keep well and stay in good health.”

The tears ran down Song-ran’s face. At the thought that she would never see her again, everything inside her caved in. Cheong Yo was the first person in her life who had treated her as family, the one who had taught her what human affection was.

Song-ran half-opened her eyes and set out. By day she kept her eyes shut for fear of meeting someone’s gaze. At night she could risk it: even if eyes met, the dark meant the other person could not actually see hers, so nobody was caught in the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye outright. Since she had to keep them closed through the daylight hours, she took up her staff. With a small bundle and the staff she stole out of the Hyeoncheon Sect, and with unorthodox-sect people milling about until late on account of the sixtieth-birthday feast, nobody was watching her go.

She had just left the sect behind and was walking along the road.

“Leaving will settle nothing.”

Song-ran stopped dead. She murmured quietly toward the voice.

“My leaving is what is best.”

“Miss Cheong regards Miss Song as family. If one day her family were suddenly gone, do you imagine Miss Cheong could go on living in her right mind?”

“But…”

“Leaving is not for Miss Cheong’s sake but for Miss Song’s. Because that is what will set Miss Song’s mind at ease.”

“And what would you know about it? From the moment I opened my eyes to deal with the poison men, they will have been tracking me. To find me, those people would think nothing of killing everyone I love.”

“Even so, you must stay. If you think of her as family.”

“Easy to say. You speak of it much too lightly, as though it were somebody else’s business.”

“If Miss Song goes, Miss Cheong will live on reproaching herself for failing to protect her little sister, and it will be no living at all. And then what difference would there be between Miss Cheong and a poison man?”

“…”

A long silence followed. Cheon Tae-san spoke to Song-ran, whose shoulders were heaving, in a tone so composed it came near to being cold.

“This is all I have to say to you. From here on, if Miss Song goes, I shall not stop her. But tomorrow I should like to see Miss Cheong’s face with a smile on it.”

Song-ran held back her weeping, and still her shoulders would not stop trembling.

Cheon Tae-san left her one last word.

“Living together while you live, and dying together when you die: that is real family.”

From morning on the noise was past bearing. The sixtieth-birthday feast’s sparring tournament had got under way, and on four platforms the unorthodox sects’ rising talents climbed up one after another as their names were called, and the matches began. The sheer savagery of them left me dumbfounded. Even to me, who had watched no small number of sparring tournaments at the Murim Alliance, it came as a shock.

Men were even dying, one after another, and yet not one person raised an objection over it. The unwritten rule of this tournament was that you did not complain even if you died, which meant that now and then a man took a sparring match in order to settle a grudge.

Nobody policed it the way the Murim Alliance policed such things; at bottom, the unorthodox sects were a long way from regulating anything. Not that they would tolerate anyone making a shambles of it, of course. The tournament was strictly an extension of the sixtieth-birthday feast, and nobody was going to do anything that might rub Mak Yeo-heun the wrong way.

I turned the three spirit energies a moment and read the blood flow and the energy of the warriors around the platforms.

Well, nothing out of the ordinary.

I had looked on the chance that someone there carried a wheel-energy of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes, and there was none. Anyone carrying one was very likely to have a madness in them at close to a hellion’s level, so they were easy to pick out. More than that, I had three spirit energies in me now, and the spirit creatures’ energy I had absorbed let me feel the Seven Stars and Seven Primes’ spirit energy by my sense for qi, the way I felt blood flow, without needing to take a pulse at all.

Had I not had this power, I should have had to set up a clinic as Jong So-bin did and check people one by one by taking their pulses.

Rather than do that, I would sooner just die.

Thinking of it now, it was a truly brainless method. Once I had thought it only natural; now it was a thing I could not bring myself even to contemplate.

Calling Jong So-bin to mind, I found myself wondering whether she was living well and absorbing the Solar Body’s energy properly.

I taught her the method for absorbing the Solar Body’s energy back in the jail, so she will manage it on her own.

As I came up toward the Guest Pavilion, Yeo-seol called out to me.

“Brother.”

“Mm?”

Yeo-seol had done well at following my instructions, keeping faithfully to what I had told her: that she was not to leave the Guest Pavilion quarters until we left the Hyeoncheon Sect. With so many unorthodox-sect martial artists about, somebody might look at her and catch what was special about her.

Mak Yeo-heun, mercifully, did not come to my quarters the way Namgung Hak used to. Namgung Hak did not know what was special about Yeo-seol, but Mak Yeo-heun stood at the level of the Transformation Realm, and he might well be able to make it out.

“You’re being called to come eat with us.”

“By who?”

“Sister Ran. Seems Sister Ran did the cooking today. I’ve no idea how she managed it with eyes that can’t see, but she says to come eat together.”

I smiled. It was a good thing, I thought, not to have to look at somebody’s sorrowing face.

“All right.”

In good spirits, I let myself be led off toward the meal Song-ran had cooked. Yeo-seol took my hand tight in hers and spoke.

“Brother, Sister Song-ran said something earlier. She said my Brother is a really good person.”

“Did she now?”

“So I told her. Not to set her eye on my Brother. I said I’d be the one to find Brother his woman.”

“Bwahahaha! Yeo-seol is going to find my woman for me?”

“Of course. A woman prettier than me, and kinder, and cleverer, and stronger at martial arts too.”

“I doubt there’s such a woman in the world.”

“There probably is, though?”

Giggling, Yeo-seol all but hung off my arm as she pulled me along.

For once in a long while we were all gathered together: Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun, Namgung Pyo, Cheong Yo, Song-ran, Eun-bi, and Yeo-seol besides.

The three Namgung Clan escorts had been living all day long on the Guest Pavilion’s honored-guest training ground. Since going outside only meant running into unorthodox-sect people anyway, they had settled on treating it as closed-door training outright and thrown themselves into their practice. They made a good sight, absorbed like that, and I pointed out a few things to them before coming away.

I no longer had to say as much as before, and they no longer needed much time to take it in, which meant their range had broadened enough to hold what I told them.

Before long they will have a fair mastery of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique too.

There was not time enough yet to reach the ultimate truth; some years more of hard training would be needed before they got there. But what a thing that was, all the same. It meant becoming true elites of the Namgung Clan, and true members of it.

As I was stepping outside, Song-ran spoke as though in passing.

“I have made up my mind to live together with her. I will not run.”

I spoke to her back.

“You have thought well. There is no paradise in the place you run to, because you come to realize that you left the most precious thing behind in the place you departed from.”

“Thank you for your kind words.”

At that moment Cheong Yo came over, holding Yeo-seol’s hand.

“The two of you having such a very private conversation. It seems you have grown quite close with Ran.”

“Sister Cheong. I told Sister Song. Not to set her eye on my Brother.”

Song-ran laughed brightly at that.

“Hohoho, Yeo-seol. Sorry, but I can’t see, so I can’t set my eye on anybody. So you can rest easy.”

“Huh? Sister, you’re just saying that to put my mind at ease, aren’t you?”

“Ahaha, no.”

I listened to the bright sound of Song-ran’s laughter and went outside.

Just then an escort guard of the Geumcheon Escort Agency came looking for me.

“Master Scholar Cheon, the commission has been completed. We are bringing the slash-and-burn farmers to the Hyeoncheon Sect now.”

“Ah, you have done well. First bring the whole of them to Hwaryeong Village.”

“There is something of a problem, though.”

“What is it?”

“The number of slash-and-burn farmers has swollen well past what you told us. You said there were some fifty of them; it has come to close on two hundred.”

“How has that come about?”

“Word that Master Scholar Cheon is parceling out farmland to slash-and-burn farmers seems to have drawn them in from other parts as well. We have brought them along for now, but what would you have us do?”

“It is quite all right. That whole neighborhood is my land, so I need only parcel that land out.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The escort guard stared at me, startled.

“Do not trouble yourself; bring every one of them to Hwaryeong Village.”

The escort guard turned away, unable to wipe the dazed look off their face.