Gaining A New Post

“This is—!”

Hohyeon Jun recognized it first.

Myeong U-jong drew out a silk letter of appointment.

“It is the letter of appointment given by the Jiangxi Provincial Surveillance Commission.”

Hohyeon Jun nodded.

“So it is. A Covert Surveillance Commissioner.”

A Covert Surveillance Commissioner was exactly what the name promised: an official who concealed his standing and carried out his inspections in secret. The Provincial Surveillance Commission could appoint one on its own authority, and where the Censorate’s Investigating Censors took the whole realm for their object, this commissioner’s writ ran over the government offices of Jiangxi. It ranked high, answering to the senior fifth rank, with authority enough to inspect even a Prefect.

Of course I knew perfectly well what the office was. Seeing my own name stamped upon the commissioner’s plaque, I looked at Myeong U-jong.

“It seemed to me Scholar Cheon would have need of it, so I requested it of the Surveillance Commissioner myself.”

“But why give this to me?”

“Because I have need of your strength. At the outset I requested it so that Poyang County might be inspected. Give you the authority, and the experience you have of the Murim Alliance’s administration and the force at your command can both be put to use. The business is settled for the present, but there is no knowing what provocation the Demonic Cult may try next.”

Hohyeon Jun nodded.

“I too mean to discharge my duty, but the truth is my health is not in a very good state. There is no telling when I may take to my bed. And then whom is the work to be entrusted to? With this in hand, Scholar Cheon may take on the county’s business without offending against the law.”

Hearing how matters stood, I understood what Myeong U-jong had done. In his place I would have done the same.

“Does Scholar Cheon mean to remain in Jiangxi?”

“Yes. For a time.”

“Then you had better keep hold of this. Jiangxi being a place where the unorthodox sects hold sway, there is no small number of offices whose administration runs after the unorthodox fashion. It will serve you well at such a time.”

With so many unorthodox sects about, their people had worked their way into the government service in numbers as well, and a man could hardly avoid meeting with disadvantage of one kind or another. That, no doubt, was what he had in mind in saying it.

“I understand.”

“And if you would truly bend your strength to the good of the common people, better still.”

Between them, Hohyeon Jun and Myeong U-jong had handed me a post of that importance and felt not the least anxiety about it. So Myeong U-jong pressed the office of Covert Surveillance Commissioner on me whether I wanted it or not.

I wonder whether there will be anywhere to put this to use.

Mak Ji-mong caught sight of it and spoke up.

“So Scholar Cheon is a Commissioner now? Well, well — your standing has altered overnight.”

“Scholar or Commissioner, there is nothing to choose between them.”

He shook his head at that.

“You are a man of the government service now. How can that be the same?”

Myeong U-jong spoke to me on the way out.

“In truth I gave you the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s post partly to tell the Hyeoncheon Sect not to handle Scholar Cheon roughly. Whatever else they may be, they are the unorthodox sects. Let something go against them and there is no knowing what they might do to Scholar Cheon.”

“I am grateful for your concern.”

“It is as good as having one foot planted in the government service now, so even they will not be able to handle Scholar Cheon as they please.”

I was grateful for the care Myeong U-jong had taken.

“It falls short as a return for your saving my life, but I am glad to have paid off a little of it first. I shall go and have the gold mine settled the way you spoke of. The Provincial Administration Commissioner and the Surveillance Commissioner are both at Nanchang, so it will not take so very long.”

Myeong U-jong did not so much as stop to rest. He took his escorts with him and set off then and there.

Mak Ji-mong watched Myeong U-jong go and put a question to Cheon Tae-san.

“Did Scholar Cheon see it coming?”

“I caught on when I saw that the Young Sect Leader and Miss Mak were being sent along with me.”

“Father said the same. That Scholar Cheon would see it coming. So — does it make you angry?”

“How should it? Thanks to it I saved my friend and his house. That is enough for me.”

Mak Ji-mong grinned.

“Indeed, Father said that was how it would be. That Scholar Cheon might even be pleased about it. Since it would come to us guarding his friend’s house.”

Mak Ji-mong thought back to the several things his father had charged him with at that summons.

“Father, the whole business may go wrong on account of Mak Jin-yul. There is no telling which way she will bounce.”

That was how he had argued against putting Mak Jin-yul into the party. To Mak Yeo-heun’s mind, though, her going along was one contingency among several. Should the business go wrong, she was the pretext, the justification made ready for stepping in.

“At any rate we must stay here and set the place in order until warriors are sent to guard the gold mine. That gives you until then to treat me, does it not?”

Gold mine or no gold mine, Mak Ji-mong was more interested in having the trouble with his own dantian settled.

“Let us begin at once. The medicine is already prepared.”

“Just as I thought! Scholar Cheon has a gift for reading a man’s heart.”

The medicine needed nothing but tonic herbs of a kind that could do no harm, and the needles nothing but the sort of acupuncture that clears the head. Cheon Tae-san obtained herbs from the Hohyeon Estate and brewed up a decoction.

“Take this medicine until I tell you to stop.”

“Whatever else I may not do, I do listen to Scholar Cheon.”

“You’re making a noise like a dog cropping grass.¹ As if you’d ever listened to a word anybody said.”

Mak Jin-yul had come up without anyone noticing, and she cut across Mak Ji-mong’s words.

“Good grief. What is to be done with that hellion.”

“Pah! It’s having a hellion for a Brother that brings out a hellion for a little sister.”

Mak Jin-yul turned to Cheon Tae-san.

“Why does Brother get all the good medicine? Give me some too.”

“This medicine is to mend the Young Sect Leader’s body. It is not for just anyone to take.”

“Mend Brother’s illness? His hellion illness?”

Cheon Tae-san smiled broadly.

“Something of that sort.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You really can mend it?”

At Cheon Tae-san’s nod, Mak Jin-yul looked about her and lowered her voice.

“Then can you mend me too?”

At that Mak Ji-mong burst out laughing.

“Bwahahaha! So she does know she is a hellion.”

“Be quiet. Hellion Brother.”

Cheon Tae-san nodded to her as well.

“Of course. Miss Mak can be mended as well.”

“Then mend me too.”

“Very well. I shall treat the Young Sect Leader first and see to you after.”

Mak Jin-yul’s face brightened.

“Good. You promised.”

No sooner had Mak Jin-yul gone than Yu Seong appeared.

“I heard it from outside — you are mending the Young Sect Leader’s madness, and the young lady’s? Then would it be possible for me as well?”

Cheon Tae-san asked first.

“Does Young Hero Yu truly wish to be cured?”

“I have studied the matter, and as I understand it my madness is unlike other people’s and cannot be treated. But is Master Scholar Cheon able to treat it?”

A snort of a laugh escaped Cheon Tae-san.

“I dare say I can cure it. Though no other physician could.”

Yu Seong had the look of a man weighing it in earnest.

Cheon Tae-san knew that Yu Seong was aware, to some degree, of his own Heavenly Slaughter Star, and that the star was why he took such pleasure in killing. Whether he wanted the thing cured, though, was likely another matter altogether.

“I shall have to think it over a little.”

“Do so.”

Once they had gone, Cheon Tae-san worked the acupuncture on Mak Ji-mong. He went into a quiet room, let nobody in, and set the needles thickly over the head and the upper body, every one of them placed to guard the meridians and loosen the blocked acupoints. Then, while Mak Ji-mong slept, he put the Flying Dantian into his mouth.

Ten days or so, and once the Flying Dantian has absorbed the spirit medicine stopping up his meridians, he will be able to circulate his true qi properly.

Cheon Tae-san would get true qi for nothing, and Mak Ji-mong would get his blocked acupoints opened.

When a moment’s leisure came my way, I walked alone in the garden. Now that the business which had kept my head in a whirl was dealt with, a question had begun to sprout.

Why was the Demonic Cult so set on the gold mine?

A gold mine could of course supply enormous funds. But there had to be a reason for coming all the way out to Jiangxi and overreaching so. Working this far out did not look wise at all. They could hardly bring their influence to bear on the province directly, and to reach it a man had to cross the Sichuan murim, and then the Shaanxi murim and the Jiangnan murim. Sending masters to Nanchang a second time would be no easy matter for the Demonic Cult.

If even one Demonic Cult master had survived, I might have questioned him.

Every Demonic Cult man who had come through the fighting had swallowed poison and died. Not one of their martial artists was left alive.

Disappointed, I was on my way back to the Hohyeon Estate’s annex when I came upon an astonishing sight.

Hm, what sort of pairing is that?

I tilted my head at the sight of Hohyeon Byeok keeping steadily at Mak Jin-yul’s side, then called over Yu Seong, who stood watching the two of them and smirking.

“Young Hero Yu.”

“Is there somebody to kill?”

I let out a sigh and asked.

“Since when have those two been stuck together like that?”

“Ah, Young Master Hohyeon has undertaken to attend on the young lady until she leaves Nanchang.”

“What? By what means does that fellow mean to manage Miss Mak, that he made such a promise?”

“I thought the same myself, but the two of them suit each other better than one would expect.”

“They suit each other? In what?”

There was no possibility of it. Hohyeon Byeok was my sworn brother, and nobody knew him as I did; his temper and his values ran close to my own, so there was not the least chance of his suiting Mak Jin-yul.

“Young Master Hohyeon praises the young lady so hard that listening along with them leaves not your ears smarting but your asshole.”

Which was to say that Hohyeon Byeok told Mak Jin-yul nothing but what she liked to hear. I turned my spirit energy and pushed my hearing to its utmost.

“I wanted to be a good person too, at the start, but the moment I show anybody goodwill they take me for an easy mark.”

Mak Jin-yul’s voice was downcast.

“Who does? Who would dare take the jade branch and jade leaf² the Unorthodox Supreme prizes so for an easy mark?”

“Everybody. There’s no naming one of them. Show them goodwill and they come at you like a shot, out to take one more thing of mine off me. And guarding what was mine turned me sharp too.”

“Where goodwill is shown, goodwill ought by rights to come back.”

“That’s exactly it. And treat them well and they set about grinding you down. Unorthodox-sect bastards are a bit like that. Before I knew it I had got hard.”

“True enough. Seeing a person as much like a flower as Miss Mak turn out this way, one comes to understand how very harsh a life the unorthodox sects lead.”

“Isn’t it? Whoa, you’re the first person I’ve met who understands me.”

“Is that so? There may well have been others who understood. Only Miss Mak was on her guard and did not know it.”

“This is what troubles me. I know that going on living like this is no good at all, but it’s not an easy thing to mend.”

Hohyeon Byeok’s warm voice rang out.

“Miss Mak, there is no flower that does not shake before the wind. Even a stout branch is shaken — how should a flower hold out? But the root is not torn up.”

“You’re a hundred times the better scholar of the two of you — you and that Scholar Cheon fellow.”

“Am I indeed?”

“Of course! That bastard even slapped me across the face. Dozens of times.”

“Come now. It has been said that a woman is not to be struck even with a flower. How could that fellow do so lawless a thing? He must have changed. The friend I knew in the old days would never have done such a thing.”

“Sworn brothers with a fellow like that — what a pitiable thing. How could you ever be sworn brothers with such an ill-bred wretch?”

The more I heard, the finer a spectacle it was. Hohyeon Byeok was cursing me right along with her and building common ground between them.

I understood Hohyeon Byeok. He had to win Mak Jin-yul’s favor if his house was to be preserved, and on top of that the two of them would soon be dividing a gold mine and had to be on good terms, so he was at pains not to cross her.

In the old days he would not have spared a woman like Mak Jin-yul so much as a glance.

I took Hohyeon Byeok’s change for a good thing. A man who holds out for nothing but his own convictions ends by having to leave the Alliance, as I did.

Any more of the two of them, though, and my ears would rot, so I turned and came away.

“Elder brother. Will more of the Demonic Cult fellows come?”

Yu Seong had been studying my face as he asked.

“Why? Do you want more fighting?”

“My blood has not cooled yet.”

“It will not be an easy thing for the Demonic Cult to come raiding.”

Yu Seong tossed the words out flatly.

“Does something like an Orthodox-Demonic War not just break out…”

It was a remark to make the flesh crawl. He wanted a war between the orthodox murim and the Demonic Cult, and wanted it for the sake of his own delight in slaughter.

Still, is there no way to be rid of this cursed Heavenly Slaughter Star? He is going to cause some real trouble before long.