Running A Swindle

Cheon Tae-san decided to borrow the swindler’s trick that quack physicians sometimes run.

“Take the decoction I brew for you for some ten days. And I shall go on putting the needles in you. Once the medicine and the needles have opened the channels of the body, you will be able to work the power. As you know, this is a technique I came by at the Murim Alliance, when I went into the secret vault and read a strange medical text.”

“Is it a healing art that can be trusted?”

“With it I have cured a good many men who were as good as dead.”

He talked like one of the swindling acupuncturists who turn up now and then on the market street, and Mak Ji-mong believed him as firmly as iron and stone. Desperation was what the trick fed on.

“Oh! Is that true?”

If the Flying Dantian absorbed no more than ten years’ worth of the spirit medicines’ energy, the energies jammed into Mak Ji-mong’s meridians would come loose. Done that way, though, nothing whatever would show for it, and the cure would look like no work at all. So Cheon Tae-san meant to feed him decoctions and ply the needles, and by that make a show of curing him at enormous labor. Only then would Mak Ji-mong believe it.

Who would believe a cure announced with no measures taken at all? All of it was swindling, to win the patient’s trust.

“How would it be to begin this very day?”

“There are medicinal herbs to prepare, so at once is difficult. It will not be too late to begin after we reach the Hohyeon Estate. Until then, prepare yourself in mind. And put away any thought of working the power before the treatment.”

“Very well. Whose word should I follow, if not my own physician’s?”

Already Mak Ji-mong was coming out of his madness by degrees. Heartened at the thought that he might get free of his misfortune, he had begun to look at things with a normal eye.

Myeong U-jong, too, was unable to get to sleep until a late hour. When I came up, he made room for me at his side.

“We shall reach the Hohyeon Estate tomorrow. There is no telling what may happen the moment we arrive, so you had better get your sleep tonight.”

“I know. But sleep will not come.”

“Censor, do you know why the Demonic Cult is attacking the Hohyeon Estate?”

“I have made inquiries through the government service at Nanchang and learned nothing to the purpose. All I know is that masked attackers keep coming at them. Only, there is one thing that occurs to me.”

“What is it?”

“I know that the Hohyeon Estate’s ancestral burial ground is in Poyang County. They own several mountains there, and he used to boast that a great deal of rare medicinal herb comes off them.”

“If mountains yielding a great deal of rare herb lie in Poyang County, that does link up after a fashion. Whether it is enough to bring the Demonic Cult in is another question.”

“I think so too. But if the herb were something men of the murim prize, would that not be another matter?”

I nodded.

“Just so. A herb that increases internal power is a different story. In any case, it seems nothing will be certain until we get to the Hohyeon Estate.”

I asked the thing I had been wondering about.

“But, Censor Myeong, he is your friend, granted — yet why go so far as to stake your life to help him?”

“The man Hohyeon Jun is my sworn brother, and beyond that I owe him my life. Long ago, when a convict I had put in jail came to kill me, he saved me. If a sworn brother of mine has fallen into trouble, am I not bound to throw myself in and get him out?”

Myeong U-jong’s heart at this moment was the same as my own. I was going to help Hohyeon Byeok, the one sworn brother of my life. It came to the same thing. When a brother stands in peril, a man cannot turn his face away.

A night with everyone asleep but the night watch.

I drew the Flying Dantian out of Mak Jin-yul’s body. The point was to have it back before we reached Nanchang tomorrow. I washed it clean and swallowed it. My internal power had grown, and I was well satisfied.

When we reached Nanchang I quietly began to worry. Mak Ji-mong did as I said readily enough by now; it was Mak Jin-yul who was the problem.

“I won’t! I’m going to the Hohyeon Estate too. I’m a first-rate master as well. What is this? I’m strong too. I can fight.”

Taking Mak Jin-yul to the Hohyeon Estate carried a risk, so I meant to leave her with an unorthodox faction nearby. The place was very likely to become a battlefield, and leaving Mak Yeo-heun’s golden branch and jade leaf in the middle of one was a fearfully dangerous business. I had told her there would be fighting and it would be dangerous, so she should stay elsewhere, and this was her springing up in outrage over it.

“If you want to come, you’ve no choice but to do as I say. If you don’t like that, go straight back to the Hyeoncheon Sect, or to an unorthodox faction here in Nanchang.”

I said it to Mak Jin-yul, who was flushing red and going livid by turns.

“You can’t have everything your own way. Mad Flower, for the Supreme’s sake I’ll nag at you one last time. If you do not live as you think, you end up thinking as you have lived. Think about whether the way you’re living now is the first or the second.”

Was it the Flying Dantian’s doing?

Or was it the last piece of advice I had given her?

About a quarter of an hour later, Mak Jin-yul asked Gwanryong Jin.

“Corps Chief. Is there a faction hereabouts where I could lodge?”

Gwanryong Jin answered.

“If it must be near the Hohyeon Estate, there is one. That would be the Ilji Sect, as it happens, the school Hall Master Eon Bok-seong of our own Law Enforcement Hall came out of.”

“Is it a decent place?”

“A decent place. They set up as chivalrous heroes of the unorthodox sects, and to my mind there are none among the unorthodox who keep to the Way as they do. That is why not only our Law Enforcement Hall but the Eunhae Hall, which has charge of receipts and payments, is staffed out of the Ilji Sect.”

“As much as that? But why the Ilji Sect? The name looks a little shabby. Everyone else puffs themselves up — Saryong this and Noeryong that and Hyeollyong the other.”

Yu Seong, the Noeryong Sect’s heir, standing beside her, looked abashed. Most of the unorthodox schools’ names were of a kind to make a man’s toes curl.

That much Gwanryong Jin did not know.

“I know the story. Want me to tell it?”

“It’s a place I may be obliged to, so I ought to have some knowledge of it beforehand. I’ll do you the particular favor of listening properly.”

Even when she was the one asking, Mak Jin-yul was evidently not satisfied unless she got to stand on her pride.

“The Ilji Sect was originally a school registered with the orthodox faction. But long ago a fight with one orthodox school brought it to the point of being wiped out root and branch. That’s when it came into Jiangxi and put itself under the Hyeoncheon Sect. If it hadn’t, it might really have been wiped out.”

“The hypocrisy of those orthodox curs, as always. So — why the Ilji Sect?”

“The sect leader of the day said that a righteousness that is not just is no righteousness at all, and declared he would found his school by lifting out of the character for ‘righteous’ the stroke standing topmost in it, the character for ‘one’. That is why it is the Ilji Sect.¹”

“Ah — so there is a story like that behind the school’s name.”

Gwanryong Jin marveled at it, as though he were hearing it for the first time.

“How do you know a thing like that?”

“Because I’m clever.”

“I get told I’m insufferable often enough. And you do know that to be called insufferable by someone as insufferable as me is the worst insult there is?”

I gave her sniping half an ear and said,

“You’ve thought well. The Ilji Sect will make you welcome. You’re the Supreme’s golden branch and jade leaf.”

“Anywhere in the world would treat me better than you do.”

“Stay there until our business is finished. Great Hero Gwanryong, take her to the Ilji Sect and come back. I shall go on ahead to the Hohyeon Estate.”

“I understand.”

“Young Hero Yu, you stay with Miss Mak as well.”

Since Mak Jin-yul had done as I said, I promoted her from Mad Flower to Miss. She flinched at it.

“Er, the truth is, I came along because it looked as though there would be fighting. Might I not go to the Hohyeon Estate as well?”

I knew why Yu Seong had given up the sparring tournament and come. A man with the energy of the Heavenly Slaughter Star in him would surely have been pining for a battlefield where he could kill.

“See Miss Mak safely there and come back with Great Hero Gwanryong Jin.”

Yu Seong answered in a glad voice.

“Yes! I will follow your command!”

He said it in that teasing voice of his, and Mak Jin-yul screeched.

“Go? Go where! You are to wait on me!”

Gwanryong Jin took ten of his men and vanished along with Mak Jin-yul.

“The Ilji Sect will not have a quiet day for a while. I may have done a wicked thing. All to make my own life easier.”

At my muttering to myself, several people nodded, as though in agreement.

The Hohyeon Estate had lived at Nanchang like one of the powerful local families, and had done so longer than the Hyeoncheon Sect. When the unorthodox sects came to hold sway in Jiangxi and Nanchang, the estate turned itself from a martial house toward a house of scholars. Reckoned strictly by orthodox, unorthodox and demonic, it stood nearer the orthodox faction, and the turn was made because it had no wish to fall out of favor with the unorthodox sects. A great many of its men had gone into the government service besides, so it had kept itself a house of scholars rather than a martial house.

We went in at the Hohyeon Estate to find it as unruly as a junk market and nothing less. Beginning with the people treating the wounded, martial artists came and went, and servants hurried back and forth out of their wits with business.

Hohyeon Byeok scolded me the moment he saw me.

“You fellow. What do you mean, coming without a word sent ahead?”

As though we had parted only yesterday, there was no awkwardness between us, though it had been a long while since we had met. That was the power a sworn brotherhood has. A sworn brother was a friend whose mind ran with yours far enough that he could stand in your place for your life.

“A friend comes when he wants to see you.”

Hohyeon Byeok was leading the household now. His father and his uncles, younger and elder alike, had all either died in the fighting or been gravely wounded, and every one of them lay in a sickroom.

“But what are these people?”

“I heard there was a calamity in your house, so I brought martial artists along.”

“Good grief. Kind words, at any rate. You have come, and I cannot send you straight off, so stay here tonight and leave the moment morning comes. It is dangerous here.”

“What are you talking about? I told you I came to help you.”

“I have no wish to see you hurt. The masked men are all masters. Masters of first-rate and better keep coming at us.”

Hohyeon Byeok was somewhat small of frame, but he had thick brows and a tiger’s eyes, and at Nanchang his byname the Tiger-Eyed Confucian Sword had carried his fame far.

“First let me go and pay my respects to your honored father and your lady mother.”

“No. You fellow. If you pay your respects you will not be able to leave, will you. Just go. I shall tell them later.”

Hohyeon Byeok was speaking out of a genuine fear for me.

“As it is, I mean to send out every maidservant and every servant in the house who wants to go. If a large-scale assault comes we cannot hold.”

He stated the present situation frankly.

“The government service gives no help?”

“I went several times and asked for help, and they nailed it down flat — this is a matter of the murim, and the government service does not concern itself with it.”

“The fellows have played a move beforehand to keep the government service out. But do not worry. The men I have brought are not simply martial artists.”

Hohyeon Byeok had a dim notion of the attackers’ purpose and identity as well, and he tried hard to stop me from getting involved.

“It is no good whoever comes. It is throwing an egg at a rock.”

“There are eggs and there are eggs. Do you know who that young master over there is?”

“Who is he?”

“Mak Ji-mong, the only son of Mak Yeo-heun the Unorthodox Supreme. And there are more to come by and by. And those warriors over there are the elite of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps.”

Hohyeon Byeok too would have heard of Mak Yeo-heun and the Hyeoncheon Sect until scabs formed on his ears. To live in Nanchang and not know it, a man would have to be deaf and blind besides.

“How is it? At this point may I not sit and drink the tea you set out and hear the story? And do not send the maidservants and the servants away. This fight we shall win.”

“You! Really!”

Hohyeon Byeok choked up, as though it had struck him that he had not lived his life in this world for nothing.

“And — do you know this gentleman here?”

I put Myeong U-jong forward.

“My eye is dim, and I do not know who this honored person may be. Widen my eye for me, if you will.”

“This official is called Myeong U-jong, sworn brother to your elder brother Hohyeon Jun.”

“Ah — my elder brother spoke often of Censor Myeong U-jong. He called you his one and only sworn brother, and he smiled every time he spoke of you.”

“Then from this time on do not think of this official as a stranger, but as your own elder brother.”

“But have you news of my elder brother?”

“You do not know either? I have come partly to look for Jun, who has gone missing.”

I cut in.

“We should not do this out here — let us go in and talk it over in detail. Is there a room for us to stay in?”

“There is. Half the main house’s people are dead. Empty rooms we have to spare.”

Hohyeon Byeok answered bitterly and led us to the Hohyeon Estate’s annex.

Gal U-heon made sure that Scholar Cheon’s party had gone into the Hohyeon Estate, and tilted his head.

“You — go and find out what is happening at the Hohyeon Estate now. And Scholar Cheon’s connection with the Hohyeon Estate, too. Ask the Hao Sect in Nanchang², or those beggar bastards of the Beggars’ Sect, whatever you must; if there is information, bring it.”

Traveling in company with Mak Ji-mong and Mak Jin-yul had brought them to the Hohyeon Estate, a name he had heard and nothing more. Gal U-heon had heard that Scholar Cheon had left the Hyeoncheon Sect and was going somewhere, and had gathered his men and followed, meaning to strike him on the road if the chance came. But with Mak Ji-mong and Mak Jin-yul among the party he could work no trick, and so he had trailed them the whole way to Nanchang.

“The Hohyeon Estate…”

The house had spent longer as a family of scholars than as a martial house, so the Gal Sect had never had a point of contact with it. Still, he knew at least that its underlying strength was not to be taken lightly: a fair number of first-rate masters, and a great many of its men holding office in the local government service besides.

“I hope it is a complicated business. The more complicated, the more room there will be for me to squeeze in.”

A black flame burned up in Gal U-heon’s eyes. The flame of vengeance in his breast, far from dying down, was rising higher, like a wildfire running through a field.