The Things Gained

What I had gained by coming to Jiangxi was no small thing. From Mak Yeo-heun I had come away with land running to eighty acres and two Dragon Blood Pills.

I had gained people, too. I had cured Mak Ji-mong of the madness that came of the spirit medicine’s energy blocked up inside him, and in Yu Seong I had gained a younger brother.

Perhaps Yu Seong could become a master contending to be the first under heaven.

Gaining the strongest younger brother in the world was by itself a greater windfall than a thousand fortunes in gold. I had also, in effect, forestalled a Great Slaughter Star of the future, and there was deep satisfaction in that. Above all, I had won the favor of Mak Yeo-heun the Unorthodox Supreme, a treasure I would not have traded for anything.

Back in the room, I drew the Flying Dantian out of Mak Ji-mong’s mouth and put it away inside my robe. Then I pulled every needle from his body.

“Young Sect Leader, rise now and try circulating the qi.”

For ten days Mak Ji-mong had followed my instructions and taken the treatment in real earnest. Not one grumble out of him, and not a word of complaint either. They were, I suspected, the most diligent days of his whole life.

“Scholar Cheon, you stand guard for me.”

“Certainly.”

He had his escort with him as well, but just now it seemed to set his mind more at ease to have me standing guard.

Mak Ji-mong finished the Small Circulation over the course of an hour and opened his eyes.

“Scholar Cheon.”

The voice had gone weak, and Cheon Tae-san tensed.

“Speak, if you please.”

“The qi circulates. It circulates.”

And as he said it, Mak Ji-mong suddenly wept.

His qi and blood had been blocked and the circulation would not come, and in trying to solve that he had eaten more spirit medicine and made it worse. So he had lived in pain, unable to speak of it to anyone. In the unorthodox sects, the moment a man showed weakness, others came at him to tear the living flesh off him. He had never reached even first-rate, and had lived like a broken thing.

Nothing whatever could cure what lay beneath that life, the self-loathing of a man who was the Unorthodox Supreme’s own issue and could never be a proper heir. The longer it worked on him, the more crooked he was bound to grow.

And then today, at last.

“Scholar Cheon. You are my benefactor. The savior of my life.”

Cheon Tae-san looked steadily at him.

“From this day you are my sworn younger brother. Brother Cheon, we shall hold the rite of our sworn brotherhood in grand style once we are back at our sect.”

“As my elder brother wishes.”

When the scholar fell in with it, Mak Ji-mong laughed in high delight.

“Bwahahaha!”

Only now did Mak Ji-mong look like the Unorthodox Supreme’s son.

A station, as a rule, is worth something only where there is strength behind it.

Cheon Tae-san said to him.

“Now that you have become my sworn elder brother, may I offer you one piece of advice?”

“Of course. Say it.”

“If it is put about that my sworn elder brother’s meridians have recovered, there will likely be men who move against you because of it.”

He had passed for a ruined man so long that those who had written him out of the succession were bound to move against him.

“I am aware of that point myself.”

“So do not make it known at once. Tell the Supreme alone, and then recover by degrees and raise your martial standing little by little.”

“Hm.”

Mak Ji-mong had meant from the first to make the fact known to everyone at once. He wanted to win back the honor he had lost.

“The shock must be absorbed a little at a time,” Cheon Tae-san said.

Thinking it over, though, he saw that the scholar was right.

“Just so. This is precisely why I mean to take Brother for my Strategist.”

“Elder brother, when a man walks a hard road he does not fix his eyes far off. He must keep his eyes near and watch his own feet as he goes, and then he will not fall.”

The words landed on Mak Ji-mong like a blow. He had been rejoicing as though the internal qi running through his meridians had won him the whole world, and now he came back to his senses.

“Brother is right.”

“The seat of the Unorthodox Supreme’s heir is a great seat. Are there only one or two men with an eye on it?”

Had such a thing been said to Mak Ji-mong while his meridians were still stopped, it would have roused nothing but rage in him. But with the internal qi running through every meridian he had grown quick, and he caught Cheon Tae-san’s meaning.

“The reason the Unorthodox Supreme sent out both the children he prizes so — is it not that he meant them to see the ways of the world?”

Mak Ji-mong had wondered himself at his father sending both his children to the Hohyeon Estate. He had never known there was an intention like that hidden in it.

“Brother, it weighs on me that I have treated Brother so badly all this while.”

Time had passed, and behaving like a hellion toward Scholar Cheon now weighed on him. The others were men of his own school and gave him no concern, but Scholar Cheon had become his sworn younger brother, and that grated.

“From the moment my elder brother called me his younger brother, whatever hurt there was melted away like snow. If it truly weighs on you, is it not enough that you treat me well from here on?”

At Cheon Tae-san’s words Mak Ji-mong laughed heartily.

“Just so. From now on I need only treat you well.”

Mak Ji-mong took his hand.

“I am grateful to you for letting me see the world straight like this. Little brother.”

Cheon Tae-san thought it worthwhile to raise not only Yu Seong but Mak Ji-mong into a proper unorthodox-sect man. It was work done for the peace of the murim.

And above all, if Mak Ji-mong becomes the Unorthodox Supreme’s heir, then all at once I am the younger brother of a future Unorthodox Supreme.

The warriors from the Dark Heaven Sect who were to guard the gold mine arrived. Cheon Tae-san called back Gwanryong Jin, who had been out at the gold mine. Censor Myeong U-jong had been running from one government office to the next over the division of the mine’s ownership, and now he showed himself for the first time in a long while.

In the end the mine was to be watched and protected jointly, by the government’s men and the Dark Heaven Sect’s together. For the Jiangxi government it amounted to a windfall, and they pressed for no more. Most of the credit for it was Myeong U-jong’s.

The Dark Heaven Sect now kept a close relation with the Jiangxi government and had a source of revenue in hand besides, and Mak Yeo-heun was delighted. He had prodded at it thinking only that there might be money in it, and never guessed the pumpkin he prodded would turn out a lump of gold. And so word came round that Mak Yeo-heun now went about with the same phrase always on his lips, that Scholar Cheon was a bringer of good fortune.

With even Mak Ji-mong’s treatment finished, Cheon Tae-san had no reason to stay longer at the Hohyeon Estate. He was sorry only that he had not been able to spend more time with his friend Hohyeon Byeok.

“Next time let us have a proper cup together.”

Hohyeon Byeok could not keep the regret out of his face. The damage from the Demonic Cult had been so heavy that setting the estate to rights had by itself left him short of time.

Mak Jin-yul cut in on the friends’ parting.

“Don’t worry. If you need anything, get word to me.”

Hohyeon Byeok and Mak Jin-yul had grown close in the meantime, and looked like a brother and sister on the best of terms.

“I am grateful for the words alone.”

When he stood on ceremony, Mak Jin-yul answered him back.

“Don’t be so formal, not between us.”

Myeong U-jong spoke to Cheon Tae-san as he was leaving.

“This official has been busy and could not help Scholar Cheon much. I am sorry for it.”

“What are you saying? That you exerted yourself with the government offices at all is thanks enough. The Unorthodox Supreme too will surely be grateful to Censor Myeong.”

“This official did not do the work for Great Hero Mak. It was strength spent for the country, first and last. Only, since it was hard for the government to take the whole of the mine, I brought in the overlord of Jiangxi. And that is the usual way of such things besides.”

“I know it. What Censor Myeong has had to bear.”

Myeong U-jong had no liking for sharing the mine’s profit with the unorthodox sects. But as things actually stood, the government could not take the whole of it.

“And the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s post can be put to use anywhere in Jiangxi at any time, so keep it safe. I have already entered your name on the Jiangxi register of surveillance officers. So wherever you go, give your name and you will be able to act on business as a surveillance officer.”

In Myeong U-jong’s view the government service ought to have men like Scholar Cheon in it. So he had gone to the trouble of putting him on the roll of surveillance officers, arranging things so that the tie with the government would hold.

“Thank you for your care in it.”

Cheon Tae-san gathered his people at the Hohyeon Estate then and there and took the road for the Dark Heaven Sect.

Into Hwaryeong Village, the village now called the Three-Without County, people came crowding every day. Whole families arrived with their cauldrons loaded up, and men who looked to be slash-and-burn farmers came in droves. Now and then men who had learned martial arts turned up too, saying they meant to live in the village. So the village’s inns and eating houses did a roaring trade.

Storytellers in every large village of the province were carrying the tale of the Three-Without County about, and the rumor had run over the whole of Jiangxi; that was what brought the people crowding in. By word of mouth they even gathered out of the provinces round about: Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. The population swelled all at once by close to a thousand.

At first the newcomers were put up in the abandoned houses, but before long new ones had to be built. Men came out from the Dark Heaven Sect’s General Hall and set about parceling out allotments among the people, the farmers first. By rights it was work for Scholar Cheon to do, but it went forward on the order of Mak Yeo-heun the Unorthodox Supreme, and there was nobody to stop it.

Men who thieved and robbed in earnest did turn up, and, as Mak Yeo-heun had proclaimed, their arms and legs were cut off and they were driven out. They did not last long before their own enemies killed them, and the renown of the Three-Without County rose the higher for it.

Once necks had been struck off a few times and arms and legs really had come away, there were no thieves and no robbers, unsettled as things were with all the new settlers. In the eating houses and the inns there was no talk of a fight either. Sheer force had made that peace, and nothing else.

As they say, if you want peace, prepare for war. It seemed that only where there was overwhelming force did the seed of peace begin to sprout.

Song-ran was lodging with Cheong Yo in a place that had once been a small estate. They had given a splendid performance at Mak Yeo-heun’s sixtieth-birthday feast, and he had ordered the estate repaired for them himself.

Putting on her veil, Song-ran went out into the street with Cheong Yo. The people passing to and fro greeted them. Those who knew that Cheong Yo and Song-ran were acquaintances of Scholar Cheon met them with deference.

It was a difference of heaven and earth from the way they had been treated on the North Road. On the North Road they were reckoned performing courtesans, and once outside it they were handled as common courtesans. Here, though, Cheong Yo and Song-ran were honored persons.

“My young lady Cheong Yo, have a bite of this before you go.”

Passing the dumpling shop, Cheong Yo shook her head at what the owner said.

“We ate before we came out.”

“Come and eat next time, without fail. I won’t take any money for it.”

Cheong Yo knew well enough that people were kind to the two of them not for their own sake but on account of Scholar Cheon, the master of this land. Even so, there was a happiness in being met with kindness.

Song-ran murmured.

“They say kindness is like the root of a tree — it keeps reaching out and becomes a new tree. And the fruit of that tree becomes happiness. Truly, in the Three-Without County the happy laughter and the smiles never stop.”

“Quite so. One person’s sense of what matters can make the world a hell, and it seems it can make it an immortals’ realm too.”

Walking the street in good spirits, Song-ran stopped short.

“What is it?”

Song-ran wore a veil made of heavenly silkworm thread, and under it she went about with her eyes properly open. The veil meant that others could look at her without being caught by the soul-seizing art.

Going about with her eyes open had one advantage. She could see straight through to another person’s essence, for the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye was made to catch precisely that.

“Those people are hired killers. Sister Cheong Yo, don’t look that way — just listen to me. The teahouse on the upper floor. From three of the teahouse waiters I can feel a hired killer’s air.”

“Couldn’t the hired killers have come to the Three-Without County to live a new life too?”

Cheong Yo looked on the hopeful side.

“No. They didn’t come to live a new life. To do that they’d have to kill off their killing intent, and those men are full of it. They came here to kill somebody.”

“Then shall we tell Young Hero Namgung Cheol-ung?”

As things stood, order in the Three-Without County was kept mostly by the Dark Heaven Sect’s warriors, but the direction of it lay with Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun and Namgung Pyo.

“There’s no need. They say Master Scholar Cheon will be here before long, so it will do to tell him then.”

“Right. Let’s leave it for Master Scholar Cheon to deal with as he sees fit.”

The two women passed quietly on down the street.