Seizing Poyang County

The Iron-Bear Ring Saber closed on me and then put on a sudden burst of speed. The great saber came down with a shriek of split air, as though it meant to cut me in two, and I slipped aside and flicked it away with my fan.

— Dooong!

Gong Chun’s face went slack with astonishment as the great saber was driven back. He could not believe a single stroke carrying all his prodigious strength had been swatted aside with a fan.

“Let’s see you knock this one away!”

Gong Chun set to swinging the great saber about like a chopstick.

— Whump! Bang! Whump! Whump!

The sound of a water mill pounding grain burst out between us. Nothing about it sounded like iron meeting a fan.

Had it been only Gong Chun and me, I would have kept him company the whole day long. A life-and-death duel with a master of his order was a fair amount of fun. But this was a battlefield, and every moment I spent on him cost our own side more men.

I kicked up a masterless sword from the ground. From that moment the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique unfolded out of my hand, and with every killing move that came out in its turn the blood-lines on Gong Chun’s body multiplied.

Not one fatal blow will go in.

Gong Chun was Corps Chief of one of the Demonic Cult’s armed bodies. Measured in real combat we stood a heaven and an earth apart, and it was experience that kept getting him clear of my attacks.

When I breathed more spirit energy in and pressed harder, the light in Gong Chun’s eyes changed. He took a sword to the chest from Skyflash Parting the Sea, and that was when he showed his resolve.

— Whoom!

He drove the great saber into the ground and came in at me in a bodily charge. I saw it and snorted a laugh.

“Gong Chun, you’re in a hurry. To think you’d have your sure-kill technique out already.”

The life-saving killing move of Gong Chun the Iron-Bear Ring Saber, which I had read of in the Murim Alliance’s secret vault, lay in exactly that charge. Nor was it a simple one. Before I knew it two daggers had appeared in Gong Chun’s hands.

“You think I’m nothing but strength!”

His body moved fast enough to leave afterimages trailing behind it. I set the three spirit energies spinning.

“Now then. Shall we see who’s faster, you or me?”

I breathed internal qi and spirit energy into the sword, and as Gong Chun came in I sent out the Returning Dragon Ascends to Heaven. Sword qi took the shape of an azure dragon, clearer than it had ever been, and came down over Gong Chun. It looked for all the world like a single azure dragon swallowing a bear.

Gong Chun drew out every scrap of internal force and strength he had and brought the great saber down to break the azure dragon.

— Kooong!

The azure dragon passed through Gong Chun and vanished. Where Gong Chun should have been standing there was nobody at all. He hung from a branch in the wood where the dragon had gone, torn to rags.

The Demonic Cult’s martial artists had been watching our fight out of the corners of their eyes even as they fought, and the sight of the outcome made them flinch as though they could not believe it. A fair number of them died standing there with their wits gone. The Corps Chief’s death must have shaken them that much.

“All ranks, retreat!”

One warrior’s shout, and the Demonic Cult men pulled out of the battlefield all together. I had taken them for the sort who would sooner shatter like jade¹, and here they were retreating on the instant to preserve their strength.

“A wise fellow. A man who’s wise may as well live a while longer.”

I praised the fellow who had given the order to retreat.

We were gathering up the bodies at the Hohyeon Estate when I felt a great many blood flows a thousand feet off. A moment later came the sense of a mass of warriors running toward us, and Hohyeon Byeok shouted in alarm.

“Make ready for battle!”

Tension came creeping back, and I spoke into it.

“No need. They’re not the enemy.”

I had read the blood flows of the ones coming and knew them already for Gwanryong Jin, Yu Seong and Mak Jin-yul. Feeling blood flows as often as I did, I had learned that the Demonic Cult’s ran differently from an unorthodox sect’s. Their martial arts use few meridians, and their flow seemed frayed, broken off in strands here and there.

“How do you know that?”

I answered Mak Ji-mong, who was watching me with questioning eyes.

“There are ways of knowing these things.”

Mak Ji-mong asked his own escort.

“Can you tell whether the ones coming at us are enemies or not? Off their aura, say, or something of the sort?”

“Young Sect Leader. Say a bird crosses the night sky… a first-rate master feels that something is crossing the night sky, and a transcendent-first-rate feels that it is a bird. Only at peak can a man make out roughly the shape of the bird. At transcendent-peak he can feel where that bird is flying to, and how many times it beats its wings.”

Mak Ji-mong lost his temper with his escort.

“That’s your trouble. Why do you always have to talk the long way round? Must you go out of your way to feed me sweet potatoes?²”

The escort’s face went tight with hurt.

“A good illustration. A very good escort. If you keep them at your side, Young Sect Leader, I think they will be of help to you for a long while yet.”

At my words Mak Ji-mong’s eyes went wide.

“Oh? That so? I’ve always thought as much myself. Unlike the other escorts, this one does a very good job of acting clever.”

For the good word, Mak Ji-mong’s escort bowed their head to me quietly.

“What’s this? It’s over already?”

Mak Jin-yul came bursting into the Hohyeon Estate the moment the fighting stopped. Gwanryong Jin had made good time in his own way, but the battle had finished sooner than anyone expected and left him a step behind.

“Bah. And I even brought thirty warriors out of the Ilji Sect…”

She had gone so far as to muster the Ilji Sect’s warriors, and now that the contribution had come to nothing she was out of temper about it.

Gwanryong Jin came over.

“With the Demonic Cult fellows’ corpses lying so thick, how is it that our dead and wounded are so few? My own men have taken no great hurt either.”

Mak Ji-mong answered.

“A great many of them died at the scholar’s hand. It’s thanks to the scholar the losses are light.”

Gwanryong Jin said to me.

“I hear you killed the Iron-Bear Ring Saber as well? Even had I fought him myself, he was a master I could not have promised an easy outcome against.”

“You are too kind. Corps Chief Gwanryong would have had him down in no time.”

Mak Jin-yul was still huffing.

“The moment I got to the Ilji Sect I put together a picked force and came. Even by my own reckoning it looked like the Demonic Cult fellows would strike, if not today then tomorrow or the day after. If I’d been a little quicker we could have wiped them out to the last man.”

So that was why she had gone off to the Ilji Sect without making a scene of it. I had not known she was thinking of anything like this.

So she used her head in her own way. Though it would have been better if she had told me about such a thing.

I knew perfectly well why she had done it.

“Miss Mak came a little late and so it came to nothing, but it was a good attempt. Had the tide of the battle gone against us it would certainly have been a great help. It was very finely done.”

At the words Mak Jin-yul’s face flushed a burning red.

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Ohohoho!”

Mak Jin-yul laughed heartily and twisted about where she stood.

Mak Ji-mong saw it and spoke in a serious tone.

“She’s got cause. That’s likely the first praise she’s had from anybody in her life. Even as a child she was forever getting into trouble, so all she ever got from Father or from anyone else was a scolding.”

His words showed me where Mak Jin-yul’s want had come from. A person carrying Seven Stars wheel-energy suffers a madness that comes of spirit energy; a person carrying none suffers a madness that comes of want. A person starved of affection craves love from others, and never receiving any in return, tends in the end to slowly destroy themselves, and others besides.

She might have grown up well enough had the people about her disciplined her properly. Instead she had been steeped in the air of an unorthodox martial house that pursued the survival of the strong too far, and left, in effect, to herself.

I was still looking at her with pity in my eyes when a familiar face thrust itself up in front of me.

“You do not mean to finish it like this, surely?”

Yu Seong’s eyes had an enormous anger lodged in them. The look of it said, Something this entertaining, and you play at it with only me left out?

How is it that there is not one normal person anywhere about me?

Yeo-seol to begin with, and Song-ran too, and Mak Ji-mong, Mak Jin-yul, Yu Seong besides. Every last one of them looked the sort to go over the cliff of death at a single misstep.

I can hardly blame anyone. It is I who go about seeking out none but such people.

And Yu Seong had seen it rightly. I had no intention of finishing it like this.

“You are quite right. We cannot finish it like this. I must lay on a banquet for Young Hero Yu to enjoy his fill of.”

“I knew it! I knew you would understand me. Extremes have always met. Bwahahaha!”

Yu Seong laughed his hearty laugh, and Mak Jin-yul came over. We were making merry among ourselves and she wanted to know why.

“What’s got you all so pleased?”

“There is a use for the warriors Miss Mak brought with her.”

“Oh! Is there? What is it?”

I called the principal people together outright.

“The battle begins now. We go to Poyang County at once, drive the Demonic Cult fellows out, and take over what is there. Only then does this battle end.”

Not one person spoke against me.

“The Hyeoncheon Asura Corps will follow Master Scholar Cheon’s directions.”

Gwanryong Jin, Corps Chief of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps, backed me actively as well.

Myeong U-jong added a word.

“And while we are about it we must take over the government office of Poyang County. Likely the Demonic Cult fellows have their grip on that too.”

“Understood. We shall follow the Investigating Censor’s wishes. From this moment we are officially lending him our support.”

Hohyeon Byeok nodded.

“So it must not look like a fight between the unorthodox sects and the Demonic Cult.”

“Just so. It has to become a fight between the Demonic Cult and the government service. That way the fighting won’t spread.”

Everyone present nodded at my words.

The Demonic Cult warriors, left like the remnant of a routed army, were driven hard.

“Die honorably, as warriors of our Cult should!”

Demonic Cult warriors with their minds made up to die were not to be disregarded.

Gwanryong Jin shouted.

“Hyeoncheon Asura Corps! Unfold the Great Roc Rends the Heavens!”

At the word the corps’ elite unfolded, in perfect order, a formation in the shape of a phoenix.

Gwanryong Jin’s eyebrows twitched. It gladdened him to see his men unfold the Great Roc Rends the Heavens with himself set at its head, not a hair out of place.

“Heh heh heh. You wretches! The elite are a different thing after all.”

Cheon Tae-san stepped a pace forward, out toward the Demonic Cult men throwing themselves in with their deaths already decided.

“Master Scholar Cheon, draw back. These are fellows coming at us with their deaths made up in their minds. There is no telling what may happen.”

A first-rate master with his mind made up to die will sometimes kill a master of peak standing.

“That is why I have stepped forward. If any of you were to take hurt from fellows like these, how should I save face before the Supreme?”

Cheon Tae-san drew out a leather pouch, took up a fistful of inner elixirs and scattered them into the air. They hung there floating, every color of them, and cries of amazement burst out at the sight.

“What’s this! Surely that’s not the Empty-Air Grasp?”

“He’s floated objects in mid-air, so isn’t that the Qi-Driven Sword rather than the Empty-Air Grasp?”

Watching the inner elixirs hang in the air, the warriors at the rear fell to bickering.

Hohyeon Byeok could not take in that the friend he had known was now a master well past peak standing.

“What in the world happened to you!”

Mak Jin-yul, who had been taking an interest in everything going on around her, went over to him.

“So that fellow wasn’t of that order before?”

Hohyeon Byeok knew her for the Unorthodox Supreme’s golden branch and jade leaf, and so did not trouble himself over her way of speaking.

“He was a genius in every direction, that much is true. Medicine, music — give him a few months and he did them better than the masters of them. Perhaps he brought his martial arts up to that pitch in a few months as well. If it is that fellow, it is possible.”

“Oho. Seems you know a great deal about that scholar fellow. From now on you’ll stay at my side and assist me.”

Hohyeon Byeok, dumbfounded, was on the point of refusing. But the Hyeoncheon Sect’s part in breaking this present crisis had been great, and he could not disregard it, so he nodded.

“I shall assist you only for as long as you are in Nanchang. But I have the affairs of my house as well and cannot always be at your side. I ask your understanding on that point.”

“As you like. At any rate there’s not a biddable one among them, that scholar fellow or his friend either. Now that I think of it, there’s nobody like Yu Seong.”

Yu Seong turned to look at Mak Jin-yul, who had brought up his name. He had been staring at the beads and the entrancing light coming off them, and his mouth had filled with saliva. He was excited to the last degree.

What does he mean to do with those beads?

With a thing like a glass bead, that looked as though it would shatter if a man let even weak internal force into it and closed his hand.

He heard the scholar’s muttering distinctly. He was standing close enough behind him to hear the man breathe.

“O evil! Return to nature!”