The Sad Reason

Paeng So-un came up to Cheon Tae-san. He was wounded here and there and bleeding, and even so the hearty swagger particular to the Paeng Clan had not gone out of him.

“So damn splendid! When did my elder brother get to be this splendid!”

Paeng So-un stood staring at him, grinning from ear to ear.

The place reeked of blood and rang with groaning, and still the survivors could not take their eyes off Cheon Tae-san. He had taken on scores of Demonic Cult martial artists single-handed and driven them off, and the astonishment of that had not left them. They themselves could scarcely handle so much as one Demonic Cult warrior, and their escort warriors had died to the last man. Those escorts were first-rate masters, and the Demonic Cult had cut them down inside ten exchanges; against martial standing enough to sweep such killers aside, their wits simply deserted them.

Dang Jin-ok bit his lip, and Dang Ga-ryeong, watching him, let out a sigh. Not even the Ten-Direction Flower Rain had killed Oh Ju-hyang, and it had cost him an arm besides; now the scholar he had quietly made light of had beaten that same woman to a bloody pulp, and the self-loathing in him was past all describing.

“The Scholar Divine Sword indeed! Elder brother! Why have you kept this younger brother in the dark all this while? I tell you. Every time I came into Hunan and stopped at an eating house and heard the tales of the Scholar Divine Sword’s exploits, how my heart would race.”

Paeng So-un said it with the spit flying.

“At first, when they said the Scholar Divine Sword was Scholar Cheon Tae-san, I never once thought of my elder brother. I took it for another man of the same name. But when I listened closely, was it not my elder brother’s story? The business at the Murim Alliance, the fight with the Demonic Cult at Hefei, driving the Demonic Cult off at the Hohyeon Estate, reforming the Unorthodox Supreme’s hellion of a son, and all the rest of it.”

Cheon Tae-san stood haughtily in the middle of the battlefield with his gaze fixed on the Demonic Cult men disappearing into the distance, and Paeng So-un chattered on at him with a longing admiration in his eyes.

“Young Hero Paeng, restrain yourself. The dead here are not one or two. Now is a time to mourn. Not a time to make noise.”

Cheon Tae-san put a hardness into his eyes as he said it, and Paeng So-un drew himself up to attention and bowed his head.

“Whoops! It came out before I knew… I am sorry.”

Un Sang, the Wudang Sect disciple, was startled at Paeng So-un’s manner. Much of the man’s hellion temper was gone, by all accounts, but the wild streak in him had not died with it, and by everything Un Sang had seen until now this was not a man who would ever bow his head to another or say that he was sorry.

How many times had Un Sang regretted traveling in his company? The fellow could not be made to take a word in. Arranging everything to suit himself was par for the course. Even that would have been well enough. But he had the drive to go with it, so that Un Sang had been all but dragged along in his wake.

This excursion on Dongting Lake was the same. Un Sang had argued that the party must get into Sichuan quickly and help the Kunlun Sect; Paeng So-un had hired a boat instead, saying he would regret it his whole life long if he did not see Dongting Lake, and had all but hauled them all out here.

As it turned out, doing as he said was the right of it. Had we set out on our own and been ambushed by these people, we should have been wiped out to the last man.

On that count, at least, Un Sang was grateful to him.

Cheon Tae-san went over to the Black Wolf Beggar.

“The losses among the Beggars’ Sect men are heavy and your head must be in a whirl, but it is the Beggars’ Sect men’s help I badly need now. The Beggars’ Sect will have to take up the bodies of the Demonic Cult martial artists here, and the dead of the Murim Alliance’s masters.”

The tone of it sounded like a request, but to the Black Wolf Beggar it felt like an order from a high officer of the Murim Alliance.

“W-we must, indeed. I am sorry.”

“Pardon? For what?”

The apology had come out of nowhere, and Cheon Tae-san asked the reason.

“I ought to have taken Scholar Cheon’s words seriously… Then the losses would not have been so heavy.”

“It is done and past. Do not trouble yourself over it. Clearing this place alone will be trouble enough for your mind.”

The Black Wolf Beggar let their head drop. They had brought some fifty elites, and those left alive came to about a dozen. The Demonic Cult warriors were strong, too strong by far. Scholar Cheon had swept such men away with the Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade and his beads, and he loomed large before them.

Inwardly, the Black Wolf Beggar muttered.

They say that when a presence is too great it cannot be seen from close by, and only now do I feel the truth of it. He is a man whose size you can only take in from far off.

In that instant the scholar seemed to them like some vast mountain.

I had not known it, but when I came to myself a great many people were watching the fight from all about the boat. Perhaps because it was a fight between the Demonic Cult and the Murim Alliance, the docks were packed with onlookers. We had fought like men possessed without knowing a thing of it.

The Black Wolf Beggar, being the eldest of us, was the first to speak.

“First let us leave this place and see to our wounds, and then I would ask you to come to the Heavenly Fragrance Inn, where Young Master Dang is lodging. There are things we must discuss about this business.”

Every one of them knew that this battle mattered, and they nodded. Jegal Do-won and Dang Jin-ok, who had each lost an arm, wore the look of men who had lost the world, and their eyes had gone glassy.

“Understood. We shall meet again in four hours, then.”

“Elder brother, I shall see to the escort warriors’ wounds and take up the bodies first, and then I will come to you.”

Paeng So-un would not stop calling me elder brother, and it sat on me like a weight.

I brought Yeo-seol back with me to the inn.

“Brother, are you all right?”

“About what?”

“Your eyes look sad, Brother.”

Yeo-seol had grown mature enough to read the look in my eyes, and that was not a wholly good thing.

“A great many people died.”

“But the people Brother killed were all bad men. You’re always saying it yourself — one who is not human may be killed, that if a man isn’t human you may kill him, and that you can only keep the good by taking the evil away.”

Yeo-seol’s eyes said she could not understand how I could speak and act by such values and then be sad after fighting the Demonic Cult.

“Even if they’re evil now, when they were born each of them was some mother’s darling son. Nobody is born evil from the start. Call it sadness over a world where a man turns evil in the living of his life.”

“I almost understand that and then I don’t.”

“It’ll be hard for Yeo-seol to understand yet.”

“Saying that made me think of something… Brother, if I turned evil in the living of my life, what would you do?”

“Did Yeo-seol understand what she just said before she said it?”

“Of course.”

“You rascal. There’s a saying: do not take a fool for a road-companion¹. I think of evil in the same way. Keep company with the wicked and either you become as they are or they kill you, one of the two. That’s why evil leaves no room for second thoughts.”

“So you’re saying that if I don’t go near evil people I won’t turn evil?”

“Just so.”

When I ruffled her hair, Yeo-seol giggled.

“I learn by watching Brother, so there’s no reason for me to be stained with evil.”

“Yeo-seol takes after me, so she’s far too clever.”

“Hehehe.”

Of late Yeo-seol’s face had seemed dark, and it was a relief to see it brighten.

Had I passed it by without knowing, Yeo-seol would have been eaten away by Mae Yu-yeon’s soul, and this innocent Yeo-seol would have been gone.

That was a dreadful thing in its own right.

“You’re going to be meeting a great many people, so you act like someone who knows nothing of martial arts, Yeo-seol. So that people take no interest in you.”

Catching what was worrying me, Yeo-seol nodded.

“All right. It’s dangerous if anyone finds out what I am.”

Yeo-seol too was coming to realize that she was not simply a girl who had lost her memory. Even so, she did not ask for the details. She seemed to have come naturally to the knowledge that there are cases where a thing is better not put into words.

Four hours later, they gathered at the inn where Dang Jin-ok and I were lodging. Our inn stood at the center of Changsha, so the others could reach it quickly.

Paeng So-un arrived earlier than the appointed hour and came looking for me.

“Elder brother!”

He spat the word elder brother out the instant he laid eyes on me, and I answered.

“Young Hero Paeng, since when have we called each other elder brother and younger brother, that you should call me elder brother?”

“Eh? Have I been the only one all this while holding my elder brother in my heart? Now that is unkind. By the talk going round, that hellion bastard Namgung Mu-baek calls you elder brother too. And you have even sworn brotherhood with the unorthodox sects’ hellion bastard. Is our history worth less than those fellows’?”

“With them I have memories of goodwill.”

“Eh? By that reckoning am I not the very best of them? My memories are full of my elder brother.”

“In my memories there is nothing but Young Hero Paeng tormenting me.”

“That is truly unkind. Was all of that not my clumsy way of showing what I felt, to get close to my elder brother?”

Born to the Lucun Star among the wheel-energies of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes, Paeng So-un had been for all the world like a rabid wild dog. Overbearing by nature, with a temper that did as it pleased, and the Lucun Star’s madness laid over the top of it, what else could he have been?

“Who are you, pestering my Brother like this?”

Yeo-seol had been watching a while from behind me, and now she snapped. Talk of that much would get through even to a dog that takes nothing in, and still he went on making a nuisance of himself, so Yeo-seol had stepped forward.

“Eh? And who is this ugly little thing, turning eyes like hatchets on your Brother here?”

The Paeng So-un of old would have led with abuse; with the madness gone out of him he tried for ordinary conversation instead.

“Me? I’m the little sister of the Scholar Divine Sword standing right here.”

“Little sister? You sure it’s not a little brother?”

The words were so plainly meant to tease that Yeo-seol’s eyes came open, bright and crisp.

“Eyes like a frozen pollack’s², a mouth like a yellow cur’s asshole — the people around you must have a hard time of it. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

At that Yeo-seol went so far as to click her tongue at him, and Paeng So-un broke into a great laugh.

“Kuhahaha! This brat is a fine amusement. I’ve been stifled of late, keeping company with a Wudang Sect Daoist and the Jegal Clan’s students — where’s such an amusing brat sprung from?”

Yeo-seol did not seem to like the brazen Paeng So-un; she folded her arms and answered.

“Brother, can’t you get rid of this person? I really can’t stand the sight of him.”

“It’s the way of people that the more you hate a man like this, the more you come to love him. Look — my elder brother and I are just so. I hated him that much, and now I love him. So the more you hate me, the more you’ll love me.”

“Ah well. I’d best hold my tongue.”

Never before had anyone worn Yeo-seol out just by talking to her.

“Brother, how did you ever reform a person like that? If he’s in that state even now, what an utter hellion must he have been before?”

Yeo-seol covered her mouth with her hand as she said it, but pitched it loud enough for Paeng So-un to hear every word.

I played along with her.

“Of all the hellions Yeo-seol has seen, who’s the one you remember best?”

“Namgung Mu-baek, of course.”

“Think of it as five of that Namgung Mu-baek.”

“Ugh! I’d die. Brother, that isn’t a person, that’s near enough a mad dog.”

Paeng So-un did not look the least bit put out to hear it.

Before long Jegal Do-won, the last of them, reached the inn as well, and the Black Wolf Beggar spoke.

“Gather over here, if you please.”

We hired a large room and went into it.

“Master Scholar Cheon, if you would.”

At that I unfolded a qi screen at once, so that our words could not leak out of the room.

“Were your wounds seen to properly?”

Jegal Do-won’s and Dang Jin-ok’s arms were wrapped in bandages.

“Yes.”

Un Sang too had bandages about arm and leg and chest, but the Daoist robes they wore hid them well enough.

“Master Scholar Cheon, this is our first meeting. I am Un Sang, second-generation disciple of Wudang.”

We were meeting face to face for the first time, but I remembered everything there was to know about Un Sang. Still, I took the greeting as though I knew nothing.

“Daoist Un Sang, then.”

“Had it not been for you, Master Scholar Cheon, this poor Daoist’s life would have been lost as well. My thanks to you.”

Un Sang made me a punctilious greeting, near enough a bow to the ground.

Jegal Do-won, on the other hand, did not look on me at all kindly, perhaps still over what had happened at the Namgung Clan.