Finding A Clue

Scholar Cheon spat out a few more curses and went back to the book, and Mak Ji-mong watched him without a word. He had never seen Scholar Cheon angry like this before, and it surprised him.

Before even two hours had gone by, Scholar Cheon closed the book.

“Have you read it all?”

“Yes.”

“What is there in it to make you so angry?”

“Ah, I read it through and found nothing in it but useless talk, and I was angry at the waste of my time. Forgive me for shouting.”

“Not at all. A scholar cannot hold in his intellectual curiosity, I suppose. Most of the scholars I know are much like you.”

“Hahaha…”

Cheon Tae-san could only laugh, abashed.

“Let us go out.”

“Will that do? There is time left yet. Why not look a while longer?”

Looking at Mak Ji-mong, who was now considerate of him, Cheon Tae-san felt how much the man had changed. Under that steady stare, Mak Ji-mong rubbed at his face.

“What is it? Have I something on my face?”

“No. It is only that you are much changed from before.”

“Ah, hahaha. I think so myself. Even now, if I am lying down to sleep and something I once said or did comes back to me, I shout and jerk upright. It shames me half to death.”

Opening the door of the secret vault, Mak Ji-mong went on.

“Had it not been for my brother here, I do not know what would have become of me. I should still be at all that damned foolery, is what I am saying.”

“For my part I am glad, for it seems to me elder brother will make a fine heir to the Unorthodox Supreme.”

“Hm. Is it me you are glad of? Or the heir to the Unorthodox Supreme?”

“Now that I have gained a brother with a solid backing behind him, is it not both at once?”

At Cheon Tae-san’s words, Mak Ji-mong thumped him soundly on the back.

“Hahaha. Just so. Ah — and I mean to go into closed-door training before this day is out. Thanks to my brother here I have felt a great deal, and I am going to train my martial arts in earnest. Father says he will help me a great deal, so I should master them quickly.”

“Is that so? The heir’s schooling in earnest, then.”

“With a war against the Demonic Cult perhaps coming, Father means to settle the succession quickly.”

“The Unorthodox Supreme indeed. It is a good thought. Settle the succession early, and no talk comes after it.”

“All of this is owing to you. Had I still been living like a cripple, it might have gone hard with Father, and the unorthodox sects might have fallen into confusion too.”

“You have grown up.”

“Ho ho ho. That pricks me for no reason at all.”

Cheon Tae-san thought it strange, that Mak Ji-mong could hear such a thing and still laugh it off.

Mak Ji-mong’s madness must have been a madness bred of his sense of inferiority, of failure and of despondency. Give up on the world, and a man is bound to live like a wastrel.

“I look forward to the next time we meet.”

“By then I shall have grown stronger than my brother here.”

“Elder brother, might this younger brother offer you one piece of advice?”

“Of course. From another man, perhaps not — but for my Brother Cheon’s advice I shall wash out my ears and listen¹.”

“There is a saying: if you would go fast, go alone; if you would go far, go together. Does elder brother wish to go fast? Or does he wish to go far?”

Mak Ji-mong thought it over carefully, then answered.

“Were I a mere martial artist I should go alone. But if I am to climb to a seat that must answer for the unorthodox sects, I shall have to go far.”

“Then keep decent people about you, elder brother. As I see it, there is nobody about elder brother at all. Keep the flatterers at a distance and keep at your side the men who will speak the hard truth.”

Mak Ji-mong had lately come to his right mind, and looking about him he had despaired to find nobody near him but fawners and flatterers. It was because there was no proper man among them that he had wanted Scholar Cheon for a sworn younger brother.

“I shall mind it, and try to keep good people at my side.”

Grateful to Scholar Cheon, who advised him in earnest and for his own sake, Mak Ji-mong clapped him on the shoulder.

“Thank you.”

Cheon Tae-san answered him with a smile. He truly hoped the man would grow through his closed-door training.

With the Supreme to help him, I daresay he will be changed past knowing when next I see him.

I had not let it show while I was in the secret vault, but I had taken a tremendous shock. After parting from Mak Ji-mong there was only one thing in my head.

Why did that dog Yeo Eung-won hide the Auspicious Spirit Flower in a place like that?

That was the whole of my thinking.

When the Moon Shadow Divine Thief was being hunted by the Ink Forest Heaven and the Orthodox Unity Heaven, the thief hid the Auspicious Spirit Flower and several other treasures in a place nobody could reach.

To my own mind, too, it is the safest place there is.

I shook my head over it. Yeo Eung-won’s notion was ingenious and preposterous at once.

Of all places, to have hidden the Auspicious Spirit Flower in the forbidden ground of the Dang Sect of Sichuan.

It was on reading this very passage that I had poured out my curses.

And in the tomb of the Dang Sect’s founder, no less.

The story ran thus. Having stolen the Auspicious Spirit Flower out of the Potala Palace in Tibet, the thief fled with it into Sichuan. But with the Ink Forest Heaven and the Orthodox Unity Heaven doggedly on the trail, the thief hit upon the thought of hiding it in the burial ground of the Dang Sect of Sichuan.

Because the tomb of the Dang Sect’s founder is the best-kept burial ground there is, so the Auspicious Spirit Flower could be stored a long while without rotting. And being the founder’s tomb, nobody goes near it either.

The tomb of the Dang Sect’s founder is built as a great burial mound, and to keep grave-robbers off, the Dang Sect long ago loosed the venomous creatures in its keeping there and bred them. So the founder’s tomb became the forbidden ground of the Dang Sect of Sichuan.

So to get in past the venomous creatures a man must have a poison-warding bead, and the Moon Shadow Divine Thief had one, and so hid it there.

Wish as I might to slip in unseen, without a poison-warding bead there was no way in at all.

And the reason the Auspicious Spirit Flower has never been found is that nobody has any business going into the tomb of the Dang Sect’s founder — decades have gone by and still it has not been found.

Looked at another way, the thief had stored it in the safest place there was.

It is hard enough merely to get into the Dang Sect of Sichuan — how in the world is a man to reach the tomb of its founder?

The Dang Sect of Sichuan is a closed school, and even its Guest Pavilion was built outside the sect proper, after the manner of an annex. Not so much as a guest was let in past its gates. The word given out was that venomous creatures and poison were forever overflowing inside and a man might be poisoned, but that was mere pretext; it came of the closed habits of the Dang house.

Turning over how I might get the Auspicious Spirit Flower out of the Dang Sect, I came at last to a house in the Three-Without County. Yeo-seol and I had made it over out of an abandoned place to live in. The house was not large, but it had a big yard and a stone wall high enough to keep the inside from view, and the place had a snug feel to it.

I stepped into the house and was brought up short. Eun-bi stood behind Yeo-seol, who sat at the flower bed, watching her with fear in her eyes. When I looked to see why, I found a cat lying dead in front of Yeo-seol with its head cut off. There was a dagger in Yeo-seol’s hand, so it seemed she had killed it.

“Yeo-seol.”

“Huh? Brother.”

“Why is the cat dead?”

“I killed it.”

She said it with a face bright and clear, and it left me unsettled in a way I couldn’t place.

Could it be that Yeo-seol has found the memory she lost?

Since our return from the Hohyeon Estate the change in Yeo-seol had kept catching my eye. At first I had taken it for ordinary growing pains, but it came to me that something more fundamental lay at the root of it. What put the thought in my head was that Yeo-seol was no ordinary person, but the Ice Sacred Body.

“Did I do wrong?”

Before this, Yeo-seol would not have asked such a question. She would not have killed the cat in the first place. Now she showed her violence with nothing held back.

This time it was a cat. What it would be the next time, there was no telling.

“Of course! You mustn’t kill a living thing as you please.”

“But it’s all right to kill hired killers. So isn’t it all right to kill a cat too?”

I said it firmly.

“The cat wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“But it bared its teeth at me and got angry. As if it would kill me.”

Yeo-seol had taken the cat’s show of wariness for an attack on herself and felt it as danger. So I told a more instructive story instead.

“Yeo-seol. Why do you suppose a human being can use both hands freely as they please?”

“So we can eat?”

“That too, but will you hear what I think?”

“Mm.”

“I think it’s heaven’s will that we look after the animals who have no hands and live uncomfortably for it, and look after the powerless lives that aren’t our own.”

“Hm. Really?”

“Mm. That’s what Brother thinks.”

“If Brother thinks so, then I’ll think so too.”

Talking with Yeo-seol, I came round to the thought that she might have another self inside her. The Yeo-seol who had once thought so maturely was gone.

Then it needs looking into. If it is a bad memory, better it were removed. And for that I need Song-ran’s help.

For the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye is a power that can make out another’s memory and self. From the Moon Shadow Divine Thief’s Sanskrit book I had come to know what it truly was, and it was no power that stopped at the soul-seizing art.

Which is also why Song-ran trembles with unease.

I set everything else aside, and the moment supper was done I took Yeo-seol with me and made for the house where Cheong Yo and Song-ran were.

Cheong Yo and Song-ran welcomed me gladly when I called. As it happened they had just finished their own supper and were sitting over tea. Seeing the two of them so happy, I understood why Cheong Yo had not gone back to Hefei.

Where a person is happy is where that person ought to be.

I said as I took a seat.

“It is good to see.”

“It is thanks to Master Scholar Cheon that we live at such ease of mind.”

“The village is not yet in order and rather unsettled. Is all well with you?”

“For my part I like it the better for being so full of life. The people coming in to set up shops and the people farming, every one of them with a smiling face. Because there is nobody to torment them.”

Song-ran took up the words.

“As you know, wherever one goes to trade, what with the stall fees and upkeep charges wrung out of one here and there, and the taxes on top of that, it often happens that nothing is left over. But here one need only pay the tax, and so the mind is at ease.”

She went on, smiling.

“So do you know what the people of the Three-Without County say? They say the true magistrate of this Three-Without County is the Scholar Divine Sword, Scholar Cheon.”

Yeo-seol said, beaming.

“I even saw one of the village folk call Brother ‘Master’.”

“Master?”

When I asked, Song-ran answered.

“Master Scholar Cheon is the master of the land here, after all. So there are some who call him ‘Master’.”

“Ho ho ho. Well now.”

Abashed, I let out a great open laugh. Then Cheong Yo spoke.

“Is it not truly funny? That it should be unorthodox-sect ground, of all places, where one trades with an easy mind?”

“It is the way of things: with one catfish living in the pond, the loaches cannot raise havoc. Raise havoc, and the catfish eats them.”

“Now that I hear it, that is a true word. But how is it you have come, and brought Yeo-seol with you?”

“I have come because there is something I would ask of Miss Song.”

“Ah. Then I shall go and be in my room.”

Reckoning that Cheong Yo knew something of Song-ran’s affairs, I said,

“There is no need.”

“No. It seems to me better that I not know. I am not of the murim.”

Cheong Yo was quick to see how things stood, and she seemed to be taking herself off out of consideration for me.

When Cheong Yo had gone out, I put up a qi screen in the room. Song-ran caught the presence of it the moment it went up, and looked at me and nodded.

“Is it a matter of Yeo-seol?”

Song-ran asked without preamble.

“Yes. I told you, did I not, that Yeo-seol had lost her memory? Lately that memory seems to be coming back, and it is a little strange. I wondered whether, if it is a bad one, it might be removed.”

“I have no such power.”

Song-ran was quietly backing out of it, so I spoke.

“I know that the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye holds the power not only to seize the soul but to remove a person’s other self, and even their memories.”

Song-ran’s eyes went round. Her veil stirred, which told me she was flustered. She had never once told me of the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye’s other powers, and here I was, knowing them.

“That — how did you come to know it?”

The talk having come this far, I went deeper still to win her help.

“The truth is that I have read the Sanskrit book the Moon Shadow Divine Thief left behind.”

“…”

“The Moon Shadow Divine Thief’s name was Yeo Eung-won, and they were out of the Musang Heaven.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Reading the book they left, I came to know of the Three Immortal-Shard Heavens. And the power of the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye besides. That the Soul-Seizing Divine Eye even shows how a move is to be broken.”

“Ah!”

At words that amounted to saying I knew the whole of it, Song-ran’s breathing seemed to go ragged, and her veil went on fluttering.