Portent

The young man with the hero’s headband set with red jade about his brow opened his mouth.

“I am Heo Yu-on. My father is the Grand General.”

The woman took it up after him.

“I am Heo In.”

Grand General Heo Gyeong was a minister of great power, with the military authority of an entire nation in his grip. And these were that minister’s son and daughter.

Cheon Tae-san’s party turned their eyes this time on the other two.

“This official is Jo Mu-saeng, grandson of the Grand Academician.”

“I am the granddaughter, Jo Im.”

Those who had been listening to the introductions went stiff as stone. They might not have come out of the imperial palace, but the power they held was greater than the imperial clan’s. Grand Academician Jo Baek-hong was a scholar who served as adviser to the Emperor and teacher to the Crown Prince.

Hearing their names, Cheon Tae-san nodded. All four of them were lay disciples of the Wudang Sect, which was why it had puzzled him to see them unfold the Grand Purity Sword when they fought: no lay disciple may learn that sword, and these four were not even Daoists. However well a lay disciple did, he could learn no sword learning above the Lesser Purity Sword.

For a power-holder of the imperial palace, though, it was another matter. Even coming in as a lay disciple, such a one would have been able to learn sword learning above that rung.

Cheon Tae-san asked Heo Yu-on.

“How is it that Young Master Heo goes about without so much as one escort warrior?”

“We studied at the Wudang Sect, and on the way back to our house we settled on touring the famous sights of Hunan and Jiangxi. Once we are home again there is no telling when we shall get to travel.”

That could well be. They were people of skill besides, close to first-rate; there would have been nothing to stop them.

“Was this the first time you were attacked?”

“It was. But who are the men who attacked us?”

“We are questioning them, but they have not yet let out who they are. Though I do have a guess where.”

“And where is that?”

“There are more of them we took alive, and I mean to question them and find it out.”

“Would it not be better to hand them over to the government service and let them find out?”

Heo Yu-on said it.

“Those men used the martial arts of the unorthodox sects. And yet not one of my party knows them. So we must find out for what reason they used unorthodox-sect arts to attack you Young Masters. Handing them over to the government service will not find that out.”

Heo Yu-on looked hard at Cheon Tae-san, then spoke.

“I must know it too. Why they meant to kill us. Where are you bound?”

Cheon Tae-san thought a moment and opened his mouth.

“We were on our way to the Dark Heaven Sect. It is where the Unorthodox Supreme is.”

“That is nothing to us. We shall go with you.”

Heo Yu-on spoke with Jo Mu-saeng a while, then nodded.

“My junior brother has settled on going as well.”

Sure enough, being of the government side, they did not shrink even from going to the school of the Unorthodox Supreme.

“You are lay disciples of the Wudang Sect. Will that not trouble you?”

“We studied at the Wudang Sect, but we are not of the murim. We do not weigh the orthodox, the unorthodox and the demonic against one another.”

Lay disciples of the Wudang Sect though they were, they did not hold to the murim’s scale of values. Only people who had become Wudang lay disciples because they had need of martial arts could think so.

“Very well. Let us go together.”

Cheon Tae-san set out for the Dark Heaven Sect with the four Wudang lay disciples.

These young people passed most of the journey in conversation with me. Being a scholar, and the hero of the storytellers’ tales besides, I seemed to be something they envied. No doubt they too wanted to learn martial arts and win a name as chivalrous heroes.

Jo Mu-saeng in particular had learning enough to stand out, perhaps because he was the Grand Academician’s grandson, and he debated scholarship with me.

“That a man such as Scholar Cheon should have won no office and become a man of the wilds like this — it is truly a thing to be lamented.”

Jo Mu-saeng, moved by my learning, spoke his mind without reserve.

“I never set my mind on office.”

“How should a true man not dream of rising in the world and making his name?”

I rode along in the carriage they had made ready. Their own coachman had been killed, so one of the Dark Heaven Asura Corps had taken his place. I made myself a companion in talk for them, there being nobody but me fit to talk with the four of them.

His younger sister Jo Im, whose martial standing looked higher than her brother’s, asked me.

“But how is it that Master Scholar Cheon keeps company with a pack of unorthodox-sect people? Are you not afraid? The unorthodox sects and the demonic path are vicious by nature.”

That was the common prejudice about the murim. Nor was Jo Im’s thinking wrong.

“This official thinks so too.”

Jo Mu-saeng, being a Hanlin Academician¹, styled himself this official.

“Keep company with wicked men and you are bound to take their color. I fear that a man of such excellence as Scholar Cheon may come to harm at their hands.”

Jo Mu-saeng thought highly of me. I smiled at them.

“Mount Tai sets up no likes and dislikes², and so, taking in earth and rock alike without sorting the good from the bad, it was able to attain its height. And the rivers and the sea threw away not even the smallest stream, and so grew as abundant as they are.”

The others nodded, taking it for a fine saying. But Jo Mu-saeng understood what I meant.

“Scholar Cheon indeed. It was Han Feizi who said it.³ I too am fond of Han Feizi’s books. Of his rule of law.”

“I am the same. If we divide off the orthodox, the unorthodox and the demonic and hold to our prejudices, we shall never come to union — there will be only division. Demonic path or underworld, wherever I am needed, I mean to go and do my duty there.”

“Ah! This official has come to a great awakening, thanks to Scholar Cheon.”

Jo Mu-saeng made a cupped-hands salute inside the narrow carriage.

“So Scholar Cheon offers himself up with the thought of purifying the unorthodox sects.”

He was reading it otherwise, but I had no particular mind to correct him. Explaining would have been awkward besides.

Heo Yu-on, hearing Jo Mu-saeng, let out a cry of wonder too.

“I had wondered why a scholar of the Murim Alliance should be with a pack of unorthodox-sect people — so that was the meaning of it.”

I put this question and that to them, trying to find out why the Demonic Cult had meant to kill them. But they could not so much as guess at the reason. They had never killed a Demonic Cult man, they said, nor ever fallen into a quarrel with one.

Then there is only one conclusion. What profit did the Demonic Cult mean to take by killing them?

Dig a little deeper and another conclusion could be drawn.

If they go to the trouble of killing them inside unorthodox-sect territory, with unorthodox-sect martial arts, what trouble does that make?

The back of my neck went cold.

One the son of a Grand General who holds the armies, one the grandson of a Grand Academician who can move the Emperor and the Crown Prince. Had they died here, the unorthodox sects of Jiangxi would have had to fight the armies of the state.

That was what puzzled me.

But was that the real intent? What does the Demonic Cult gain by it? It can hardly be that they mean to pull Mak Yeo-heun down. The reason?

My thinking had run smoothly along until then; now it stopped dead, because a chilling supposition had built itself up. My eyes drifted on their own to Yu Seong, who was taking Mak Jin-yul’s badgering.

Perhaps it may go as he said…

Mak Jin-yul narrowed her eyes to a glare and rounded on Yu Seong.

“Why on earth have you changed like this? Eh? Who made you like this?”

Ever since they left the Hohyeon Estate, Yu Seong, who had obeyed her every word absolutely, had taken to pretending not to hear her or turning away from her, and it seemed to have put her out of temper. For all her rounding on him like that, Yu Seong at her side did not so much as blink. The boy would once have been all in a fluster.

“Don’t tell me you’ve learned something strange from that wicked scholar fellow?”

Yu Seong, who had not even been answering her, flared up at that.

“Senior Sister, have a care what you say. To call my elder brother a fellow — the younger brother who hears it takes it ill. Choose your words a little.”

“What? What did you say? Why, this bastard—!”

Yu Seong fixed his eyes on her and spat the words out one by one.

“The Snake-and-Scorpion Wicked Flower and no mistake. Should Senior Sister not give some thought to why her own byname is the Snake-and-Scorpion Wicked Flower?”

It was growing more outlandish by the moment.

“That you dare take me to task.”

“Until now I have borne with it and let it pass, as one of the same school with Senior Sister. But from now on, when you speak of me and my elder brother, be careful.”

“Y-you dare do this to your own Senior Sister?”

Yu Seong’s eyes went cold.

“Come to your senses, Senior Sister! From now on you must live straight. Did you not see it at the Hohyeon Estate? Lean the least bit crooked and you are carried out dead. Senior Sister is grown now, so it is time you saw the world as it really is.”

When Yu Seong went so far as to lecture her, the anger rose to the very top of Mak Jin-yul’s head and she brought a slap across his face.

— Knock!

Once he would have put his cheek up to it; this time he caught her by the wrist.

“You are not to slap a man’s face as you please. It is not only Senior Sister’s own face that falls by it, but the face of Senior Sister’s father the Unorthodox Supreme. That he taught his child badly.”

Mak Jin-yul was in such a fury that it seemed rather to have left her without words. Then she turned to Mak Ji-mong and spoke shrilly.

“Brother, are you just going to stand and watch a fellow like this?”

Mak Ji-mong half opened his eyes and asked back.

“And what am I to do about it? Every word out of him is right.”

“Have you fallen for that scholar fellow’s wiles too, Brother?”

“Come now, Jin-yul. Sister of mine though you are, I will not allow you to speak and behave so toward Scholar Cheon. Scholar Cheon is my sworn younger brother now. You had better take care.”

“Wh-what did you say? Y-you’ve gone mad. Everyone’s gone mad.”

I listened to them clamoring outside the carriage, and thought.

It seems I shall have to put the Flying Dantian into Mak Jin-yul and raise her regard for me. At this rate she will come to hold a real enmity against me.

Jo Mu-saeng watched our side of it a while, then asked abruptly.

“But, Scholar Cheon. Is that Three-Without County a real place? I heard of it from a storyteller, but the tale was so preposterous…”

Certainly, hearing the tale of the Three-Without County, a man might well think so. There was every chance of taking it for something the storytellers had made up for the fun of it.

“It is truly land I received from the Unorthodox Supreme. When I came away there was no such name as the Three-Without County; the name seems to have come up after I left.”

When I explained how people had come to move into the Three-Without County, they let out cries of wonder. Each of them wore the look of someone turning something curious over. Seen one way, it was the look of men who had been moved; seen another, of men who coveted.

For several days Cheon Yeo-seol shut herself up in her room and went back over the martial arts she knew. Fathoming the Ice Palace’s martial learning and the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique her Brother had taught her, she came to see that there was nothing left to delve into.

Now I understand the whole of what it means.

Yeo-seol had comprehended the whole of the Ice Palace’s martial learning and of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. In less than ten days. But it did not even strike her as astonishing. She had only to think of a thing and it carved itself of its own accord into the mental image, so there was nothing hard in it.

In the midst of that training, Yeo-seol took a shock from another quarter. Every time she sank deep into meditation, a shadow of another shape rose from the very bottom of her consciousness. It would spring up and come at her as though to throttle her, and her meditation broke, again and again. Once it overpowered her outright and she lost consciousness for a while.

Yeo-seol understood afterward that another memory had come to her.

Is this, perhaps, the memory they say I lost?

But it was strange.

If it were a memory I lost, the shadow ought to have a child’s body. But that memory has the body of a grown woman.

Her own breast had not developed yet, and this was nothing like it. The body was alien to her.

There is no chance that I am a grown woman. Then who in the world is that?

Walking along deep in thought, Yeo-seol found that she had come out by the Dark Heaven Sect’s rear gate and was strolling in a bamboo grove. The heavy scent of the bamboo had drawn her all this way. Never before had she set foot outside the Dark Heaven Sect.

There were guards at the rear gate, so Yeo-seol had come over the wall. She meant to stay quietly a while and then go back. The scent of the bamboo and the wind blowing between the stalks were so fresh that she walked on a little further.

The bamboo grove behind the rear gate was where the sect leader’s direct-line family lived, so there was no coming and going there. Alone and quiet, with a little time apart to think, Yeo-seol felt her jumbled memories settling somewhat into order.

Is my memory coming back?

She had walked in the bamboo grove for about an hour, and was just on the point of turning back.

It was then.