The Facts Coming To Light

“So these three were hired killers, then?”

I looked at the bodies, which had not shed a drop of blood, and then at Yeo-seol. The answer came from Namgung Cheol-ung, though.

“Yes. We looked into these men, and there was not a single clue to be found.”

“No clue at all, and that makes them hired killers?”

“Yes.”

He had a point. Unless these were hired killers well out of the ordinary, there was no way for a trail to come up that clean.

The hired killers who attacked on the bridge were the same… And that they went for Yeo-seol this time means it is the work of somebody who bears me a grudge.

When I ran through the men who bore me a grudge, the list came down to a few.

Gal U-heon knows what I can do, so he would never send hired killers of all things. Which leaves the one who bears me a grudge without knowing what I can do, and that one is obvious enough.

Gu Jin-ha came to mind, and I snorted out a laugh. I had had no news out of the Alliance lately and could not say for certain, but if Wang Cheong had hauled him in, the Law Enforcement Hall would have come down hard on him.

With the charges against Gu Jin-ha, if not the prison, then at the least it would have ended in his leaving the Alliance.

I counted it a piece of luck that I had taught Yeo-seol martial arts. Had I not, something would certainly have gone badly wrong.

“Yeo-seol, you’re not hurt anywhere?”

“Mm. I’m fine.”

I stroked her head as I said it, and she nodded, then put her arms around my waist and burrowed in.

So you are of the murim now too. The moment a person understands that men they have never laid eyes on mean to kill them, and that such men must be killed in turn, the world of the martial artist opens. This will likely be the day you first knew the murim for what it is.

Sorry for her as I was, and unable to hide the bitterness of it, I drew Yeo-seol’s head against me.

For the first time in a good while I gathered the whole party together for supper.

Cheong Yo, Song-ran and two maidservants, Eun-bi and Yeo-seol, Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun, Namgung Pyo. We had not been apart for any length of time, and still they were faces I was glad to see.

“Miss Cheong, I hear the Supreme has arranged a place for you to stay?”

“Yes. He was pleased with this girl’s playing, and gave a gift beyond her deserving.”

“That is good to hear.”

Cheong Yo looked easy in her mind.

Song-ran kept her veil on even at the meal, lifting it a little to get the food under it. Otherwise she would have had to eat alone.

“Miss Song, is the veil not uncomfortable?”

Song-ran shook her head.

“Not at all. Discomfort of this sort is nothing whatever. Even now I cannot say how grateful I am to Master Scholar Cheon.”

I nodded.

“Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun, Namgung Pyo — you’re to go back to the clan now.”

“What? Are you not going, Master?”

“I’ve business left to see to. I’ll finish it out and then go back. My mother is on her way from Hubei to Anhui, they say, so I’ll be back before that.”

“Ah. Yes.”

At the thought of going without me, the three of them looked bereft.

“The Three-Without County has to be put in order too. The man who owns the land has to see to it. What else is there for it?”

I made the land my excuse. In truth I had the Moon Shadow Divine Thief’s hidden storehouse to find, and could not go to the Namgung Clan yet.

“Looking at it now, didn’t the sect leader give the Master that land just to bind him to it?”

“That’s right. I think so too. He means to keep the Master from leaving. I did think it strange, his giving away so great a stretch of land.”

“A man who plays the landowner has to keep his mind on this place. Thinking of it now, it’s not that he has great nerve. He’s very shrewd.”

The three of them each put in a word, denouncing Mak Yeo-heun.

Watching Yeo-seol eat without a word, I tilted my head.

She is not a child to sit and eat this quietly. Is she unwell somewhere?

I laid a hand on her forehead as she ate, and she gave a start.

“What?”

“I wondered if you were unwell. Our Yeo-seol hasn’t said a word.”

“It’s because I’m worried Brother might come to harm on account of my killing three people.”

The shock of the killing was slowly working its way up in Yeo-seol. When she first killed, the feeling had been one she could not name and she had been well enough; as time passed, the guilt was slowly taking a shape she could see.

“I’m all right. And let’s not tell anyone that Yeo-seol killed those men. Understood?”

“Mm. Understood.”

Knowing Yeo-seol was no ordinary person, I could understand it and let it pass. The others could not so easily take in her having killed three hired killers, and Cheong Yo in particular looked shaken that a girl not yet grown had killed.

Cheong Yo asked.

“After killing the hired killers, didn’t you feel anything different?”

“That I’m strong?”

“And about the people who died?”

“I know what Sister’s worried about.”

Yeo-seol laid out the values that were her own.

“I understand shrinking from the killing of a person. But I’ve no thought of handing my life to someone who means me harm. If it lets me protect myself and protect our family, I’ll do anything.”

Cheong Yo grinned.

“I think Yeo-seol’s right too. It’s only that I worry she may be shaken by it.”

Her bold answer left them all with nothing to say. Every one of them but Cheong Yo lived a life on the edge of a blade, so they understood her well enough. The first thing any of them had learned on taking up a blade was that if you do not kill, you die.

Even so, they must all have felt that something in her had changed. The clear innocence of a child had gone out of her, and it was a hard thing to put into words.

A pity. She is learning the coldness of the world far too soon.

They all had the look of thinking so.

Guided by Mak Ji-mong, I made my way to the Dark Heaven Sect’s secret vault.

“Our sect’s secret vault is a place a man goes into, looks at what he came for, and comes straight out of. To stay two hours or more — Brother Cheon is the first.”

Which was to say that Mak Yeo-heun had, in his way, shown me consideration.

“Two hours will be enough.”

My heart was pounding.

From the moment I learned that the clue to the Auspicious Spirit Flower lay in the Dark Heaven Sect’s secret vault, I had turned over how I was to reach the sect at all. To lengthen my life first, I absorbed Paeng So-un’s Seven Stars wheel-energy at the Murim Alliance, then went on to the Namgung Clan and absorbed Namgung Mu-baek’s, and so stretched my span out. I was still laying plans for the Dark Heaven Sect when Mak Yeo-heun’s invitation brought me here after all, and now I had come as far as the vault itself. It moved me deeply.

The Moon Shadow Divine Thief will have hidden a clue in the Sanskrit book to where the Auspicious Spirit Flower was put away.

That the Moon Shadow Divine Thief had stolen the Auspicious Spirit Flower was likely a thing only I knew. Tracing the thief’s movements meant working through a great mass of records, and nobody alive would take on anything so plodding.

I sensed masters standing guard over the vault in several places. That was how much the Dark Heaven Sect valued it.

Even inside the vault Mak Ji-mong opened a further door and went into a hidden library. A sterner watch could be felt there.

Mak Ji-mong ran his eye along the shelves and pointed to one volume.

“This is the book. I am curious — what is it you mean to find?”

“I can read Sanskrit, and I was curious what the Moon Shadow Divine Thief might have left written there.”

“Is that so? I hope you find what you want.”

Mak Ji-mong answered as though it were nothing much. A thief’s records would hold no interest for him.

I took the Moon Shadow Divine Thief’s Sanskrit book in hand and opened it.

“I am to keep watch for the two hours. You will understand. Sit down and read.”

Mak Ji-mong said it with a laugh when, in my impatience, I opened the pages standing where I was.

Gu Jin-ha, reading a letter, grinned.

“Elder Gal. Look at this.”

Gal U-heon read the letter Gu Jin-ha held out and knit his brows.

“This—!”

“Well? With this, could we not bind that scholar fellow Cheon fast in a noose?”

Gal U-heon could not answer. If what was in the letter was true, Scholar Cheon would be helpless and would fall to them. And still he had no appetite for it. It was likely the gap that came of his being a martial artist and Gu Jin-ha a scholar.

Gal U-heon had, for what it was worth, a martial artist’s pride. He was not some martial artist of the demonic path but a man who had held an Elder’s seat in the Murim Alliance, and blind with revenge or not, there was such a thing as a line.

Gu Jin-ha had no such line.

“If we take that scholar fellow Cheon’s mother, we shall have that stiff neck of his.”

Gu Jin-ha ran on, delighted with himself.

“If we overtake her as she comes to the border of Hubei and Anhui, we should meet her somewhere about Lake Tai.”

“Must it really go this far?”

Gal U-heon answered sullenly, a little out of temper with it.

“Elder Gal. Why are you like this? Now of all times.”

Gu Jin-ha gave Gal U-heon a sidelong look and went on.

“When I was at the Murim Alliance I watched from beside him how much the fellow does for that mother of his. The fellow’s greatest weak point is his sick mother.”

“Blind with revenge though we may be, laying hands on a man’s family is rather…”

Gal U-heon’s brows knit, and Gu Jin-ha took offense at it.

“Do you suppose I wish it so? But we sent hired killers into the Three-Without County, and did they not fail?”

Looking into those eyes, burning with a vengefulness and a grudge greater than his own, Gal U-heon felt a chill go through his chest.

“Leave it to me. This time I shall hire proper men and carry Scholar Cheon’s mother off.”

“See here, Scholar Gu. Do you imagine hired killers of any sort can get through the Namgung Clan’s escort? Not by a long way.”

Gu Jin-ha grinned.

“I have no money left to hire killers with now. And these are not hired killers of the middling sort but elite warriors.”

“Elite warriors? And how do you come to know such men?”

“Not long ago I met a master of the Blood Cult, and they came to me with a bargain.”

At the word Blood Cult, revulsion rose in Gal U-heon.

“What bargain?”

“How they knew I was taking revenge on that scholar fellow Cheon I cannot say, but they asked that if they saw to the business of Scholar Cheon for me, I have a Blood Cult Elder shut in the Murim Alliance’s prison set free.”

Gal U-heon had held an Elder’s post in the Murim Alliance, and so he knew.

Knew that no demonic fiend could be got out of that prison.

“Do that, they said, and they would send the elite warriors. With that much, we could carry her off easily enough, couldn’t we?”

“Are you mad… Joining hands with the Blood Cult for revenge?”

“And what of it? So long as it catches the mouse, what does it matter whether the cat is white or black?”

“Until a short while ago you were an Inspector of the Murim Alliance, man.”

“And now I’m not. That’s the thing that matters, isn’t it?”

“Haa…”

For a moment Gal U-heon doubted whether working with Gu Jin-ha was a wise thing to be doing. But he had waded in too deep to pull out now.

“Well then? And can you get a Blood Cult Elder out of the prison?”

“I can. Little as I may look it, my connections run wide.”

Gal U-heon shut his eyes tight.

So the Murim Alliance too has gone as far down as it can go.

As I read the Sanskrit book the Moon Shadow Divine Thief had left behind, I felt as though I were being hit over the back of the head again and again.

No wonder. I had thought it strange, this Sanskrit being handled so ably.

The Moon Shadow Divine Thief’s name was Yeo Eung-won, and the trouble was that Yeo Eung-won was no mere product of the murim. They had been a martial artist of the Musang Heaven, one of the Three Immortal-Shard Heavens.

More startling still, the Ghost Immortal had been a martial artist of the Musang Heaven as well.

And, beyond that, the two of them had been friends.

This is absurd. I have come to know about the Three Immortal-Shard Heavens without needing to hear a word of it from Song-ran.

The Sanskrit book set down the tale of the Three Immortal-Shard Heavens in fair detail. One of the Musang Heaven’s own, Yeo Eung-won had filled the pages with grievance, and along with curses of every kind, every fault of that school was written down too.

So Song-ran belongs to the Ink Forest Heaven. They can use the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye, and it does not only seize the soul — it can break a move on sight, so that one of them who learned martial arts could become invincible under heaven.

By that account Yeo Eung-won had been caught by the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye of a martial artist of the Ink Forest Heaven and had lain unable to move for a year, so the power was dangerous beyond doubt. That was why Yeo Eung-won wrote the book in Sanskrit while recovering.

I learned besides that when Yeo Eung-won came into the Central Plains with the Auspicious Spirit Flower, the ones who gave chase were the Ink Forest Heaven and the Orthodox Unity Heaven of the Three Immortal-Shard Heavens. They too had coveted the flower Yeo Eung-won had got hold of.

My heart pounding, I turned page after page. I was coming near the passage that described the place where, hunted by them, the flower had been hidden.

At last.

Swallowing hard, I read the page that held the place where Yeo Eung-won had hidden the Auspicious Spirit Flower.

Mak Ji-mong watched Scholar Cheon turning the pages as fast as a man with an ordinary book in his hands, and tilted his head.

Can a man read Sanskrit that fast?

Now and then the scholar sighed, now and then he screwed up his face, and from that it seemed he was following every word of it.

Scholar Cheon truly is a talent sent down by heaven. He is a man I could not presume to measure.

Set against himself, Mak Ji-mong felt more and more keenly what an outstanding talent Scholar Cheon was.

Sunk in thought a while, Mak Ji-mong was startled out of it.

“What—!”

Because Scholar Cheon, in the middle of his reading, had suddenly cried out.

“Curse it! What is this? Honestly! Blast it!”

Scholar Cheon glared at the book as though he would tear it to pieces and snorted with fury, and Mak Ji-mong’s eyes went round.