The True Intention

Un Sang took up what Paeng So-un had said.

“Now that I think of it, that is so. The Demonic Cult’s Pavilion Masters are ordinarily masters of the transcendent-peak, and if the rumor has it right, ought they not to have reached the Transformation Realm, or the Mystic Realm? And yet I could feel nothing above the transcendent-peak in her.”

“That will be because amplifying the innate true qi raises the level of attainment and does not amplify the internal force. And it may also mean that, however far they amplify the innate true qi, they cannot manifest a martial standing above peak.”

At Cheon Tae-san’s words Paeng So-un put in a remark of his own at once.

“It seems to me this part needs a great deal of study and examination. What is fortunate, at least, is that masters above peak grow no stronger, just as Master Scholar Cheon says. If even they had their level of attainment raised — the thought alone makes my head swim.”

Cheon Tae-san could well understand the dread they felt. The Demonic Cult’s preposterous strength had struck fear into them, and they knew that once the balance of the murim began to slip, the road ended in war. A power grown this strong would never sit still, and that knowledge left their minds troubled.

Paeng So-un’s eyes lit up all at once.

“Elder brother, but what is your real identity? Is it as the storytellers say?”

Un Sang asked.

“What have the storytellers been saying?”

Even while traveling with Paeng So-un and Jegal Do-won, Un Sang had never listened to the storytellers’ comic patter, holding that Daoists must not steep themselves too deeply in worldly tales. Paeng So-un was another matter. He took the tales for stories about his own elder brother, and went round the inns and the eating houses and the teahouses hearing every last one of them.

“There are far too many to tell them all, so I shall give you only the few standings that seem likeliest even to me. First there is the theory that you are a disciple the Alliance Leader is raising in secret. That one, I think, is said because a scholar of the Murim Alliance holds a martial standing that beggars sense.”

Un Sang looked hard at Cheon Tae-san a while, then asked Paeng So-un.

“And then?”

“Next is the theory that you are the joint successor of the Nine Great Sects. It seems that when you fought the Demonic Cult fellows at Hefei you gave them a display of the Nine Great Sects’ martial arts.”

“Might there have been a Wudang Sect art among them?”

“Hmm, there was no Wudang Sect art. What they said was Shaolin Temple and Kunlun Sect arts.”

Un Sang turned to Cheon Tae-san and asked.

“Do you know how to use the Wudang Sect’s martial arts as well?”

To Un Sang the question mattered. He might be a joint successor their own sect knew nothing of.

Cheon Tae-san could not answer. In truth he knew the Wudang Sect’s arts too, and could unfold the Flowing Cloud Sword, the sword technique the Wudang Sect prides itself on.

“You do know it. That is why you cannot answer Daoist Un Sang.”

“I cannot do it.”

“I am sure you cannot.”

Paeng So-un answered indifferently.

“And then there is talk that you are a master the Namgung Clan is raising in secret.”

Un Sang opened their mouth.

“Is it not that Master Scholar Cheon was at the Namgung Clan, and so bought himself that misunderstanding?”

“That may be so, but you saw it, did you not? How he beat the Fourteenth Pavilion Master.”

“Ah, truly, I have never seen the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique so beautiful. To think an azure dragon could be given form with sword qi…”

Un Sang answered in a daze, and Paeng So-un wagged a finger as though to say, there, you see.

“As Daoist Un Sang knows too, has the Namgung Clan ever handed the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique down to an outsider? And leave that aside — is there anyone even in the Namgung Clan’s direct line who has brought the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique to such completion? I have never seen an azure dragon from Namgung Seong-jin or Namgung Mun-seol either.”

Namgung Seong-jin and Namgung Mun-seol were Namgung Mu-baek’s elder brother and elder sister; the one belonged to the Azure Dragon Corps, the other to the Phoenix Corps.

“Hearing it put so, Young Hero Paeng is right. And how could a scholar’s martial standing be stronger than our martial uncle’s? That is an impossible thing.”

Cheon Tae-san had no mind to play along with them. The more he explained, the deeper the misunderstanding grew.

Paeng So-un asked him.

“But what must a man do to grow strong as you are, elder brother? The aura of your internal force is not even strong.”

In truth, no one but Paeng So-un could have asked such a thing. The question was far too blunt, and far too crude.

Inwardly Un Sang was appalled. Scholar Cheon was of an age with them, and yet he had shown a martial standing that surpassed every one of the murim’s Twelve Dragons, who were reckoned the highest of the rising talents.

At that level, might he not be a master of an earlier generation who has made the return from age to youth?

A person does not come to a thought like that for nothing. Who else could use a sheet of paper as a Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade, or work beads to bore through the forehead of a martial artist who had reached the peak? That would be a power possible only to one who had entered the transcendent-peak level of attainment.

Was it that the shock had been too great? Nobody put a finger on any of it. Or was it that the gulf felt too wide? Perhaps that was why every standing the storytellers gave Scholar Cheon seemed to be the right one.

Cheon Tae-san knew that Paeng So-un had let his effort fall short of his talent. Anyone carrying the spirit energy of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes could hardly be wanting in talent, and yet only one thing kept Paeng So-un’s level of attainment from overwhelming the other rising talents.

He was lazy.

“Young Hero Paeng, do you know what a sword must pass through to become a famous sword?”

Paeng So-un caught the intent behind the words and stared hard at Cheon Tae-san.

“I should think Young Hero Paeng has never once trained a single move by repeating it more than ten times.”

“Eh? How do you know that?”

“Unfold a move once or twice and you have it, so there is no need of it. Because Young Hero Paeng is a genius.”

“But that is a secret only our direct line knows. The fact that I am a genius.”

He said it like a joke, in a tone of perfect sincerity, and Jegal Do-won and Un Sang looked at the pair of them the way one looks at a strange person.

“If Young Hero Paeng wishes to be a strong sword, keen as a famous sword and not to be broken, he must be ready to bear the fire of the forge gladly. A famous sword is made of good iron, quenched some dozens of times.”

Paeng So-un gave his whole attention to the ringing in his heart. Never until now had anyone told him outright, in so many words, that he must train. Anyone who did, he made suffer for it.

Not only Paeng So-un but Un Sang too closed their eyes at the words, as though in meditation. And Jegal Do-won, for the first time, looked at the scholar with no hostility in his eyes. All three had grown up hearing themselves called geniuses in their own houses, so it did not sound like a thing said to Paeng So-un alone. It was their own story, and it struck them to the heart.

The party had pressed on along the road and reached Gojang County, the border county between Hunan and Chongqing. Government troops were coming along the official road with several hundred people roped together like a line of dried croakers¹. The passersby saw it and clicked their tongues, as though the sight grieved them.

“Oh dear, what is to be done. They are taking the Twin Tiger Martial Hall’s people too.”

“They conspired with Demonic Cult men, so they will be beheaded.”

“The Twin Tiger Martial Hall has stood thirty years — what conspiring with Demonic Cult men? Man alive. You and your son both learned your martial arts at the Twin Tiger Martial Hall and worked as escort guards on the strength of it… That is not a thing you should be saying.”

“And what of it? They say they learned Demonic Cult arts. Where would they have learned Demonic Cult arts? They learned them because they are Demonic Cult men.”

There was something odd in what they said, and Cheon Tae-san asked.

“May I ask you something? Has this business happened only at the Twin Tiger Martial Hall?”

“What are you saying? Four days ago the Heaven-Serving Martial Hall’s trainees were taken away as Demonic Cult men as well, and every last one of them beheaded.”

Even where there were Demonic Cult men, the government service did not root them out and behead them like this. Short of the Cult doing something especially wicked, it tended not to intervene that far.

“Is there a reason Gojang County alone is like this?”

“The Gojang magistrate, now, where was it… Ah, there is talk that he was a lay disciple of the Kunlun Sect. I did hear a rumor that with the Kunlun Sect all but wiped out root and branch this time, his hatred of the Demonic Cult pierces the heavens, and that is the reason for it.”

Cheon Tae-san saw now why the Demonic Cult had been handing its secret martial-arts manuals even to the small martial halls.

“The reason the Demonic Cult scattered its demonic arts is not simply the murim turned Demonic Cult, then.”

Paeng So-un asked.

“What is it, then?”

“They want a riot.”

“A riot?”

“If small martial halls, martial houses and small and mid-sized sects are driven together as Demonic Cult by the government service like this, what do you suppose will happen? They will fight rather than sit still and die. Or else they will truly go over to the Demonic Cult outright. And when that happens, a riot will break out.”

Un Sang nodded.

“That is right. The people who attend a martial hall will be people of the neighborhood, and the people of a neighborhood will rise up when their families are killed.”

“They can throw the times into confusion and shake the murim besides, so what they were after was two gains at a single stroke.”

Cheon Tae-san watched the government troops dragging the people away, and said.

“I do not think this can be left as it is. To let it alone is the same as standing by and watching the Demonic Cult’s plan go forward.”

“Elder brother, what do you mean to do?”

“I shall have to go and see the magistrate.”

“We are to go? On what authority?”

“I am going to the county office now.”

Jegal Do-won, who had kept his mouth clamped shut, spat out a word.

“Honestly, now he means to meddle in the government service’s business as well. A mere scholar, mind you. I doubt the magistrate will so much as see him.”

Paeng So-un opened his mouth.

“I shall go with you, elder brother. I shall be no great help, but this younger brother will stand behind you and lend what strength he can. The Paeng Clan has no power to wield in Hunan, but it is one of the Five Great Clans all the same.”

At Paeng So-un’s words Un Sang came forward too.

“This poor Daoist will come forward and help as well.”

Dang Jin-ok seemed to find something in it hard to swallow, but he said he would come along even so.

“I shall go as well.”

As we moved off, Paeng So-un looked back and said.

“And why is Young Master Jegal coming?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The magistrate may not see us at all — will you not be making the trip for nothing?”

He was needling Jegal Do-won with words the man had said himself.

“Since we are all going together, I mean to lend a hand myself.”

At the brazenness of it Paeng So-un let out a snort of laughter.

“They say a man may bear injustice but never bear a loss to himself — that is Young Hero Jegal to the life.”

Scolded to his face as he was, Jegal Do-won did not dare lose his temper at Paeng So-un. Paeng So-un had not been like this when they traveled together before. He had never been warm, but he had not said rough things to a man’s face either, nor gone out of his way to needle him. Then that scholar fellow appeared, and ever since he had trailed after the man calling him elder brother, and the instant Jegal Do-won said so much as a word to that scholar fellow, Paeng So-un turned eyes like hatchets on him and shouted him down.

It is all that bastard’s doing.

Jegal Do-won knew it for the thought of a petty little man, and still he could not stop the fiery resentment and the jealousy seething up in his heart.

When we reached the government office of Gojang County, a government soldier blocked the main gate.

“What is your business?”

“We have come to see the magistrate.”

“The magistrate has given strict orders that he will receive no one for the time being.”

“We come from the Murim Alliance.”

“The Murim Alliance?”

“That is so. This gentleman here is of the Dang Sect, this of the Paeng Clan, and this of the Jegal Clan.”

When I introduced the people standing behind me, the government soldier knitted his brows.

“It is no use even so. The magistrate said beforehand that he would not receive them though martial artists came from the Murim Alliance.”

“Do you take it that we stand here like this because we have no power?”

That was Paeng So-un, shouting as the government soldier went on refusing.

“Do you mean to set yourselves against the government service?”

The government soldier’s mettle was no ordinary thing, which meant the magistrate had laid his threats down that hard.

They were all looking at me, asking with their eyes what was to be done.

“He refuses us like this — is there any need to insist on meeting him?”

Jegal Do-won plainly had no wish to fall out of favor with the government service.

“Even so, must we not make the Demonic Cult’s plan known and see that it does not go as they intend?”

If I withdrew now, innocent people would go on dying, and if the people’s hearts turned and it came to a riot, the Demonic Cult would have its plan after all. I could not stand by and watch that happen.

There was nothing for it, and I drew a plaque out of my robe.

“Do you know this for what it is?”

I held the plaque out.