Finding A Way

The Heavenly Slaughter Star was not formed the way the wheel-energy of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes was. It came with a man’s nature. Call it something nearer to innate true qi; that was why the Heavenly Slaughter Star could not be taken out of a man at all. Men of the murim sometimes die from exhausting their innate true qi completely, and that is precisely because innate true qi is a human being’s root true qi.

The surest way to remove the energy of the Heavenly Slaughter Star was to kill the man who carried it.

Could I not bring the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy down with spirit energy? I ought to try it once.

Since I had an ability that could absorb Seven Stars wheel-energy, I thought it might be worth attempting.

The fifth day.

Mak Ji-mong went on taking the decoction from my hand and lying down for the needles. So many of them went in that it must have hurt, and yet he never grumbled.

“But my head really is clearing. Scholar Cheon is a master physician. A master physician.”

Naturally.

The needling was meant to clear the head and get the blood moving freely.

“At this rate am I not going to turn into a genius? Before, I could read a book and little of it would go in, and now I read a difficult classic and it goes in line after line.”

There was no hostility left in the look Mak Ji-mong turned on me. Part of it was the Flying Dantian making him well disposed toward me, and part was gratitude for how carefully I had treated him; together, the two had turned into goodwill.

“The Young Sect Leader will have been a clear-minded man from the first. Only, as your qi grew tangled, it will have told upon your powers of mind as well.”

“Bwahahaha! Then Scholar Cheon is nothing less than my benefactor. I said it before — cure me, and Scholar Cheon and I become sworn brothers.”

As I took up a needle, Mak Ji-mong looked up at me where he lay.

“Scholar Cheon.”

“Say on.”

“When I become sect leader, will Scholar Cheon not be my Strategist?”

I was on the point of setting the needle, and checked. The offer had to have come out of a trust that went past goodwill.

“You become my sworn brother, and my Strategist along with it.”

I smiled.

“My talents are of no account. I should be no great help to the Young Sect Leader.”

I refused him obliquely.

“What nonsense is this? Do you suppose I know nothing about Scholar Cheon? I have looked into everything there was to look into.”

“And what is it you have looked into?”

“That you are better than anyone. Which is why, all your time in the Murim Alliance, you lived with the chisel always coming down on you. Hypocrites have a habit of trampling on anybody they take for their better. To keep their vested privileges.”

“And the unorthodox sects are otherwise?”

When I answered him smiling, Mak Ji-mong let out a laugh in spite of himself.

“Of course we are the same. Only, once we have submitted to a better man, we do not stab him in the back after that. Having submitted, we obey. Which is how a kind of order is kept. However wicked the unorthodox sects may look to your eyes.”

Mak Ji-mong’s word for me had changed.

From “that fellow” to “you.”¹

The unorthodox sects certainly did have that side to them. Mak Ji-mong had shown a face unworthy of the Unorthodox Supreme’s heir often enough by now, and not one Elder or Grand Elder had picked a quarrel with him over it. Having submitted to the Unorthodox Supreme, they submitted to his heir as well.

In the Murim Alliance they would have raised an outcry to drag him down as a man without ability. And a system of that kind spurred competition too, and brought better men forward.

Even so, if Mak Ji-mong still had no ability to lead them, there was no guaranteeing that the loyalty given to Mak Yeo-heun would carry over to his son. The unorthodox sects were, after all, a world where the strong endure. He knew that perfectly well, and it was why he had no wish to let slip this chance to grow strong. What he needed, no doubt, was someone who could stand solidly at his elbow and hold him up.

“There will be good scholars among the unorthodox sects as well. It is only that the Young Sect Leader has not yet met them.”

“…Will there?”

Mak Ji-mong’s eyes glinted.

“Very well. Then let Scholar Cheon recommend me a scholar the equal of Scholar Cheon. Otherwise I shall set my teeth in Scholar Cheon and not let go.”

I smiled wryly. Which was to say he meant to make my life a misery.

I did not answer. I drove a thick needle deep in.

“Ugh! Why do the needles hurt so much today of all days? It is only my fancy, is it not? Is it not?”

“I have been setting them at one steady depth throughout. How should today alone hurt?”

“Ugh! Ow! Agh!”

“It is your fancy. All of it.”

“Truly it is only my fancy?”

“Of course.”

I made myself a promise. I would set the needles painfully until the ten days were out. Yes, and I would use something a little more bitter for the decoction, too.

I went out from the Hohyeon Estate. Part of it was to hunt down sophora root, an herb with a fierce bitter taste, to punish Mak Ji-mong with, but I genuinely did need herbs that would guard the acupoints.

Since it was only herb-buying, I set out alone. Alone for the first time in a long while, I felt unburdened. I had run up against so many people and so many events of late that for a while I had half forgotten who I was.

Nanchang was the provincial capital of Jiangxi. Naturally the Hyeoncheon Sect’s power ran strong there, and one might take it that the martial houses all lay under their rule. This was my first time in territory the unorthodox sects governed, and their influence showed less than I had expected. The armed powers did not touch the common people’s daily lives.

From the Hohyeon Estate one had to cross a river to reach the main quarter. With the water between them, the side the estate stood on had a desolate feel to it, while the far bank had grown into a walled town. The river ran broad and full, and along it anglers and fishermen in little skiffs were at their fishing. On looks alone it was a scene fit to come out of a painting. I asked a passer-by the name of the river, and it was called the Gan.

Looking at the river, I thought suddenly of my friend Hohyeon Byeok. Taking a boat out on Poyang Lake for pleasure is the finest amusement in Jiangxi, and he had been sorry that we could not do it. As though he had committed a crime, he had been sorry as well that we could not go together to the Tengwang Pavilion, famed as one of the Three Great Towers of Jiangnan. The pavilion is Nanchang’s great sight, the sort of place any outsider wants to see once. He had settled that he would go with me once his house’s urgent business was wound up.

I crossed the river and came into a street thronged with people. The air of it was quite unlike the North Road in Anhui, and there was some fun in looking about. Here they touted for custom rather harder than on the North Road. The people of the place ran to high spirits.

I bought several herbs at an apothecary and made for an eating house. For taking the measure of a district there is no place like an eating house. The busiest one in any district always had a famous storyteller, and a storyteller talked of the local situation and of what had lately happened, so that word got round by way of him. I asked the merchants nearby and went into the largest.

The place ran to five stories; ordinary folk could go as far as the second floor, and the third and above were for high-paying guests. I took a seat in the middle of the first floor. The meal hour had only just passed, and there were not many empty seats.

“What will you have, sir?”

A pleasant-faced waiter asked me. At this eating house the waiting was done by men who looked to be of a fair age.

“Is there no storyteller today?”

He seemed about thirty, so I spoke to him with courtesy.

“Ah, no, sir. Two storytellers come to this house. One came and went at midday, and the other will be here shortly.”

“In that case bring out your fine dishes. A man cannot eat plainly while he listens to a storyteller.”

“Thank you, sir.”

By unwritten law, a man who meant to hear a storyteller paid for his seat with an expensive dish.

The waiter was just coming out with what I had ordered when a party came in through the door in a clamor of voices.

“The Tengwang Pavilion is less than I looked for. And I had my hopes up, being told it was one of the Three Great Towers of Jiangnan.”

“Hey, famous sights are always like that. All name and nothing to look at.”

“Red Cliffs in Hubei, where the Battle of Red Cliffs was fought, was a real letdown too.”²

“Still, we have seen the famous Tengwang Pavilion. That is enough.”

The party was made up of two men and two women. All of them wore blades, but they were in plain long robes, so there was no telling what school they came from.

This being the Hyeoncheon Sect’s ground, they have taken care over what they wear.

Every school has its own distinctive martial robes, but a martial artist of the orthodox murim going about here in his school’s robes could find himself in a quarrel. Most of the martial artists who came sightseeing to the Tengwang Pavilion or to Poyang Lake would be doing the same. There is no reason to come out on a pleasure trip and pick a fight.

They did not head for the second floor or the third but went to a table by a window and sat down. After that, perhaps mindful of where they were, they dropped their voices until they could scarcely be heard. I paid them no mind.

Another party came into the eating house. Three men.

One was a man past his prime, just come into his fifties; one was a young boy. The boy was carrying a drum, which looked to be for beating time to the tale.

So these are the storytellers.

And one was a middle-aged man with a sword at his waist; they looked enough alike that I took them for family.

The man past his prime went up onto the small stage in the corner of the eating house.

“I am the storyteller Wind-Listener.”

Wind-Listener was one of the storytellers with a fair name in Jiangxi.

“This time there is a deal of good matter to tell, and plenty of it. What shall we begin with?”

He began with comic tales. A thing that had happened at an escort agency; robbers breaking into a money house and being put down by a chivalrous hero who had happened to call in there; small incidents at the schools of Jiangxi. He spent an hour laying his ground that way.

“Wind-Listener, your preamble runs too long today. Give us some murim news.”

A man said it and flicked a silver coin. The coin dropped into Wind-Listener’s bowl, and at that everyone round about, one and all, threw money in after it. I too gave the waiter a silver coin and asked him to put it in the bowl for me.

When a fair heap of money had gathered in the bowl, the storyteller wetted his throat and began.

“Let me begin with what has lately happened here in our Nanchang. A new star has been born in Jiangxi.”

His grandson beat time on the drum, and Wind-Listener went on.

“A scholar invited by the Unorthodox Supreme — and this scholar’s knowledge surpasses the Myriad-Learned Master’s, while his martial arts stand level with the Pavilion Masters of the Demonic Cult.”

“Where in the world is there such a scholar?”

“His name is Cheon Tae-san, and he came originally out of the Murim Alliance as a scholar. While he was with the Alliance he reformed Paeng So-un, famous as a hellion; after that he went to the Namgung Clan and reformed Namgung Mu-baek, the Namgung Clan’s own headache; and now he is teaching Mak Ji-mong, Young Sect Leader of the Hyeoncheon Sect. You might well call him a scholar who reforms hellions by trade.”

— Whump! Tak!

His grandson kept the beat on the drum while Wind-Listener ran his eye over the listeners filling the eating house.

“In the Murim Alliance he brought the corruption of the Elders and Grand Elders to light and was called the Ghost-Trailed Scholar; at Hefei he fought bands of the Demonic Cult and the Blood Cult and won the byname of the Azure Dragon Scholar. That byname he earned by mastering the Namgung Clan’s Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique through and through and bringing forth an azure dragon.”

— Whump! Ta-tak!

“At Hefei he went up onto the sparring platform at the Supreme’s sixtieth-birthday feast and won the byname of the Scholar Divine Sword. There are some who say that if he reforms even Young Sect Leader Mak Ji-mong and makes a human being of him, the Hyeoncheon Sect will come into its full flourishing, and that if he does not, it will fall.”

“The future of the unorthodox sects hangs on Scholar Cheon, then.”

“Just so. And Scholar Cheon was given eighty acres of land by the Supreme as a gift³, and he has been taking in landless slash-and-burn farmers there and parceling out fields to them, so that people are gathering to him. His martial arts are high and his learning is high and he holds the common people dear, and many follow him for it. If any of you wish to farm, or have nowhere to go, try asking Scholar Cheon. Out of eighty acres, will he not spare you one place to lay your body down?”

It made my skin crawl, this Wind-Listener who knew me through and through and stood there broadcasting it. They say most storytellers come out of the Hao Sect, and it was a claim with some force behind it.

Just then somebody spoke.

“Is that the truth?”