An Unexpected Traveling Companion

At last Mak Jin-yul screamed.

“You— I’m telling my father everything. And then I’ll have your limbs cut off and thrown into a pigsty!”

“You’ve learned nothing but wickedness somewhere along the way.”

— Smack!

“That father of yours — his own daughter, his golden branch and jade leaf, is being beaten, and why hasn’t he come out all this while? Because he’s left your education to me.”

“He told you to educate me — who told you to hit me!”

“I’m not hitting you. You’re hitting yourself with your own hand.”

— Smack!

“Look at this, will you! This is not my hand.”

— Smack!

He shook her wrist and struck her cheek with it, and the rage boiled up in Mak Jin-yul until she thought she would go out of her mind.

“Only one side getting hit — that hurts, doesn’t it? I’ll do the other side for you.”

— Smack!

“Yaaagh! You madman!”

Never in her life had Mak Jin-yul been struck across the face. And struck by her own hand at that. Nobody had ever laid a finger on that cheek, and the tears came.

“Sob! Sob!”

— Smack!

Tears were no use. That scholar fellow went on beating her cheeks without mercy.

— Smack!

“Both cheeks have swollen up too much to go on hitting them. Better to hit them after the swelling goes down. When it does, come at me.”

Cheon Tae-san let go of her wrist.

Mak Jin-yul swallowed the crying down, full of hatred and the sense of being wronged, and promised herself she would pay him for it the moment a chance came.

You bastard. I will kill you, and that is a promise.

Mak Ji-mong watched his little sister and grew deeply worried.

“Whoa. That scholar fellow really is out of his mind. There are limits, even so. To hit a woman.”

“When did I ever hit her?”

Cheon Tae-san put the question in answer to Mak Ji-mong’s remark.

“Mm?”

“It was Miss Mak’s own hand that hit Miss Mak, so I fail to see how it is I who hit her.”

That was the Divine Art of Sheer Nerve, the art the unorthodox sects mostly go in for. Mak Ji-mong smiled bitterly at the display.

“I think I see why Scholar Cheon is called the wicked scholar.”

With the face of somebody who had just found what she wanted, Mak Jin-yul jabbed a finger at a man watching her from a distance.

“Hey! You! Come here!”

The others turned their eyes away, taking it that Mak Jin-yul, being no match for the scholar, was picking a quarrel with some innocent bystander. The man who came over, grinning, was the last person any of them would have expected.

“Seong, you! What are you laughing at? Am I funny?”

“Yes. It was fun watching the young lady get hit.”

“Why, you— I think you need a hiding from me.”

“When have you ever not hit me?”

“Why, you— now even you’re squaring up to me!”

The two of them went at each other without the least reserve, for all the world like old acquaintances.

— Whack!

Mak Jin-yul let fly a fist. The man took it full in the face and never lost the smile.

Seeing it for the first time, Cheon Tae-san and Myeong U-jong’s party thought it a strange sight; Gwanryong Jin and the warriors of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps made nothing of it, like men who had watched the scene often enough.

Were Mak Jin-yul and Yu Seong acquainted, then?

It fell outside the compass of what Cheon Tae-san already knew.

— Whack!

Yu Seong took a fist to the belly and answered it with a grin rather than with pain. Ill-bred as she was, Mak Jin-yul did not go so far as to draw up her internal force.

“That idiot bastard! Beaten by Jin-yul since he was a boy, and now he smiles when he’s hit. Honestly, it’s pathetic. And him the heir of the Noeryong Sect.”

Mak Ji-mong clicked his tongue.

So they have known each other since childhood. That must be why Mak Jin-yul lets him near her so easily.

Mak Jin-yul had picked Yu Seong to work off the fury Cheon Tae-san had put into her.

“Seong, you. Come with me.”

“I beg your pardon? That I cannot do. I am taking part in the sparring tournament. To go to the Dragon Martial Grand Tournament I have to place in the top ten here.”

“Hey! I’ll tell my father afterward to put you in the winning ten, so stop nagging and come.”

“And who would allow that?”

“Hey. Is the Dragon Martial Grand Tournament what matters, or am I what matters?”

“Well, that…”

Yu Seong turned his head and met Cheon Tae-san’s eyes. Then he smiled, bright and clear.

“The young lady Jin-yul matters, of course.”

“What’s this ‘young lady’ just because we haven’t seen each other a while? It’s creepy! Call me Senior Sister the way you used to.”

“Yes. Senior Sister.”

As children, Yu Seong and Mak Jin-yul had studied together under the same school at the Hyeoncheon Sect.

Watching the two of them, Cheon Tae-san could not shake the impression that Yu Seong was enjoying Mak Jin-yul’s bullying. There was no energy of dislike or of suffering in him.

Has the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy turned Yu Seong masochistic?

Think it over as he might, it was not easy to see how Yu Seong, a bearer of the Heavenly Slaughter Star and a man satisfied by nothing but cruelty, should have become its object instead.

Perhaps it is Mak Jin-yul who woke to the pleasure of cruelty by tormenting Yu Seong.

In the murim, where rank is generally settled by strength, relations between people took shape in just this way often enough.

Yu Seong came over to Cheon Tae-san.

“Master Scholar Cheon. Senior Sister says I am to go with her — would it be all right for me to join you?”

Mak Jin-yul shrieked at that, shrill and sharp.

“Hey! Junior Brother Yu. Are you mad? Why are you getting permission from that scholar fellow! It’s for me to decide.”

Cheon Tae-san glared at Mak Jin-yul and spoke low.

“Be quiet.”

Mak Jin-yul was on the point of pouring out a torrent, and clenched her hands instead.

That scholar fellow must not refuse Yu Seong on my account. Just now I need at least one thing to take my temper out on, or I won’t survive.

Cheon Tae-san fell to thinking a moment, weighing it, and Yu Seong spoke to him by voice transmission.

— Extremes have always met, have they not?

Cheon Tae-san was dumbfounded.

What extreme has Yu Seong seen in me?

The look Yu Seong gave him carried an unwelcome intimacy, and that made his skin crawl all the more.

Cheon Tae-san could hardly stay glued to Mak Jin-yul’s side and go on managing her himself. It struck him that with Yu Seong there, her fits might be offset to some degree. And the man was a first-rate master besides. As a traveling companion he would be a strength rather than a burden.

“Very well. In return you will do as I tell you.”

Yu Seong turned and ran off with the air of a man who had known all along how it would go.

“Where are you going!”

Yu Seong answered Mak Jin-yul’s shout.

“I have to explain the circumstances to our house’s people. I am dropping out of the sparring tournament.”

A little later, as Cheon Tae-san’s party set out, Yu Seong came hurrying to join them.

Mak Jin-yul spoke.

“He gave permission once you said you were going with me, didn’t he?”

“No. He was against it, in fact. Because he knows I am weak against Senior Sister. He said there was no telling what I would be put through.”

“Why, you—! You’ve got even more brazen. Now there are two of you I can’t stand the sight of.”

Thanks to Yu Seong, they got on the road quietly.

Mak Yeo-heun, who heard the story only later, roared with laughter fit to carry the great hall away.

“He made her hit her own cheek with her own hand? What an outrageous fellow he is.”

“Just so. Had Scholar Cheon struck the young lady with his own hand, we could not have stayed out of it; by making her strike with her own hand, he got round us.”

“That is what I mean by shrewd. Who would think of such a thing? He left this seat no room to step in. It is a thoroughly unorthodox-sect turn of mind.”

Still roaring, Mak Yeo-heun muttered.

“That one has been swaggering about with no notion that the world is a fearful place; after a drubbing like that she may come to her senses a little.”

“The young lady Jin-yul is not of a nature to give up easily, but even so I think Scholar Cheon will handle her well.”

“Mm. Until not long ago the Shadow Master seemed to think little of Scholar Cheon — the estimate has grown a good deal more generous, has it not?”

“Is he not out of the Murim Alliance? He was well worth suspecting. Still, I cannot make out why the Murim Alliance cast out a talent like that.”

“Why do you think? Because he challenged their vested privileges without a trace of fear. Orthodox, unorthodox or demonic, men who mean to keep their privileges will bear injustice but never bear a loss.”

He knew Scholar Cheon had dug up the corruptions of Elders, Grand Elders, Corps Chiefs and Hall Masters and fought them over it. No organization could like such a man, and the more closed and the more rotten the organization, the more that held.

“It means the Murim Alliance too has rotted through. If war does come with the Demonic Cult, can a Murim Alliance as rotten as that really hold out?”

The Shadow Master answered.

“As things stand, with the Alliance Leader and the Elder Faction checking each other like dog and monkey, it would be hard.”

“And our sect?”

“My lord is wise and in full vigor — who would dare harbor any other intent?”

In the murim as it now stood, six men in all were known as masters of the Transformation Realm. First came the masters called the Three Kings Under Heaven: the Murim Alliance Leader, the Demonic Cult Leader, the Unorthodox Supreme. Then the masters known as the Three Swords Under Heaven: Cheong Jing, the Gentle Sword of Taihua¹ and sect leader of the Mount Hua Sect; Myeong Gong, the One Sword of Wudang and sect leader of the Wudang Sect; and Namgung Hak, the Radiant Sword of the Nine Heavens and head of the Namgung Clan.

Such was the level of attainment called the Transformation Realm, a level a man had to pass beyond the human to reach.

“The Demonic Cult’s movements are not ordinary. We must secure funds to the utmost. Something is going to happen, whatever it turns out to be.”

“We are already securing all we can of the takings of the factions around Poyang Lake.”

“Even that is not enough. We must find somewhere that will bring in more.”

“The Strategist Hall has taken it up and is studying it.”

Mak Yeo-heun was preparing for war.

“We should be able to arrive in two days.”

Gwanryong Jin had charge not only of the escort but of the party’s whole journey. He was clever enough to take in the situation as a whole and carry the schedule forward himself.

Gwanryong Jin is too fine a talent to be left a mere Corps Chief. If I were Mak Yeo-heun I would have put him to something larger.

I did not say so merely because he and I were acquainted.

As the light went, we took a spot better for sleeping rough than any inn.

“What is this! Why do we have to sleep on the bare ground? There’s an inn a little farther on!”

Mak Jin-yul’s voice went ringing through the forest.

“Be quiet! Do you mean to call in every wild beast in the neighborhood?”

I was the only one there who would shout her down.

“I’m telling you to give me a proper bed!”

“Hey! Mad Flower! I told you — if you don’t like it, go back to the Hyeoncheon Sect. Go now, for all I care!”

“Mad Flower?”

“That’s right. They call you the One Flower of Jiangxi, don’t they? To my eye you’re no One Flower. You’re the Mad Flower.”

“Are you seriously calling me a flower gone mad?”

“Look at the state of you. Isn’t a flower gone mad too good for you?”

Perhaps because nobody had ever treated her so before, Mak Jin-yul’s face worked as though something had risen in her throat. Her hand moved toward her sword.

“Draw that sword and you may get to watch your own sword cut your own throat.”

The chill in my voice made Mak Jin-yul let go of the hilt she had caught hold of. The memory of the last beating must have come back to her.

Yu Seong, beside her, said something meant to comfort her, and it scraped at her insides instead.

“Senior Sister, there is a saying, is there not. The one who spits at you is not the one to fear; the one to fear is the one who drools. To my eye Master Scholar Cheon is a man who drools. The drool of madness.”

Yu Seong looked at me with strange eyes, as though he had felt something in me.

Everyone had gone to sleep except the warriors standing the night watch. A small tent had been put up for Mak Jin-yul and Mak Ji-mong. It had been meant for him, and with his sister moving in as well he grumbled that it was cramped. There was room enough inside for five to sleep, and still he was dissatisfied.

I sat on a rock nearby, unfolded the mental image and sent out spirit energy. The point was to draw out the Flying Dantian, to bring it up and find how much internal force it had absorbed.

Mak Ji-mong’s blood flow and Mak Jin-yul’s put it beyond doubt that the two of them were asleep. Blood flow, at least, is the one thing a human being cannot fake, since it cannot be governed by conscious will. That held even for a master of the Transformation Realm.

My sense for qi picked up the Flying Dantian more clearly than before, which meant it had absorbed a fair amount of Mak Ji-mong’s internal force in the meantime.

Good. Just come to me like that.

When I sent my will out, the Flying Dantian slipped free through a gap at the corner of the tent and came swiftly to me. I caught it in my hand. Just in case, I swept the surroundings, and only the blood flow of the night-watch warriors moving in the distance came through. I washed it well with water from a bamboo flask and swallowed it.

“Haa. What is this?”

I had thought five years’ worth would be a great deal at best, and it had absorbed ten years’ worth of internal force.

At this much internal force, Mak Ji-mong will notice that his own has fallen off sharply.

Sixteen years’ worth in all stood gathered in the Flying Dantian. The greater harvest, of course, was that thanks to it Mak Ji-mong had come to feel a good deal more regard for me.

I drew the Flying Dantian back out and sent it into the tent again.

Any more absorbed from Mak Ji-mong is dangerous. In that case…

I moved it across and slipped it into Mak Jin-yul’s mouth.

A few days of the Flying Dantian sitting in Mak Jin-yul’s dantian should take a great deal of the hostility toward me out of her.

I could not afford to be worn out dealing with Mak Jin-yul. If I was to give everything I had once I reached the Hohyeon Estate, I needed her biddable.

The corner of my mouth went up a little before I knew it.

After Mak Jin-yul it is Yu Seong’s turn. Yu Seong is the heir of the Noeryong Sect. If I bring Yu Seong closer to me as well, he will be a great help.

I smiled, well satisfied, and went to sleep.