Chapter 13

“Moyong Bi.”
“What.”
“That Divine Cascade Step of your Moyong Family. Is it on the easy side to learn?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then how am I supposed to take it up?”
“…”

The two warriors stared blankly up at the boy standing in the tree. Gwang-seon, the boy genius, worked his way out along the branch, slow and careful, from the thick inner wood toward the tip where it thinned away to nothing. By rights it should have snapped long since, but the slender branch only bowed a little, as though some small, light animal, a squirrel maybe, had settled on it.

“Hmm. So this is the feel of it, more or less.”
“…”

Up on the branch, Gwang-seon bent and straightened his knees, rocking his weight up and down, and then….

“Hup.”

— Tak!

He flew like a bird and alighted softly on the top of a wall a good thirty feet away. The two warriors who watched him do it felt their mouths fall open.

“Good heavens….”
“How, in the space of a mere two hours….”

Patter-patter-patter— watching Gwang-seon run off along the top of the wall just like that, the two warriors were lost for words.

“Hah… I can hardly believe it even seeing it.”
“A mind art takes a good three years, and he learned one in a day. Next to that, perhaps this is not so astonishing after all.”
“At that level, how far would you say he’s got with the Divine Cascade Step?”
“First Star is grasping the principle of the lightness arts and making the body light. Second Star is being able to move in that state. And Third Star is being able to change direction, to spring up lightly, to move about with a fair degree of freedom… so, somewhere between Second Star and Third Star.”
“Well, I never. It’s absurd. Reaching Second Star the moment he learned it.”

Off to one side, the elders of the Moyong Family had heard the news and come rushing out. They stood watching with appalled faces as Gwang-seon scampered along the top of the wall like a squirrel.

“Haaaah…!”
“Am I truly not seeing things?”
“A most uncanny thing!”
“If this is a dream, somebody shake me awake!”

Their faces had gone past astonishment and on into the territory of shock and horror.

Still romping merrily along the top of the wall, Gwang-seon spotted the elders in their confusion, ducked his head in a bow of greeting, and came back over.

— Tak!

He landed lightly on the ground and said:

“I think I’ve got the rough feel of it.”
“…You’ve got the rough feel of it?”
“Yes. Just as you said, these lightness arts are terribly difficult. It gave me quite a bit of trouble getting used to it, haha.”
“Ha, haha… trouble, he says.”
“How does it look to you? I think it’s still very clumsy… if there’s anything that needs shoring up, please tell me without holding back. I’ll listen closely.”

Moyong Bi waved a hand.

“No, no. There’s nothing more for me to teach you about the lightness arts for the time being. It’s the first learning of it that’s hard. After that — well. It’s a fight with yourself. All you have to do from here is train steadily and adjust it for yourself through trial and error. In the end, every martial art has to be altered little by little to suit the man using it. Like taking in a set of clothes to fit your own body.”
“Is that so. Confirmed.”

Gwang-seon nodded along, then stared at Moyong Bi with a blank, expectant look.

“What?”
“Aren’t you going to teach me the Butterfly Step?”

“…”

“Teacher?”

He was actually serious?

Dumbstruck, Moyong Bi sat there a moment. Then he said:

“…I never learned the Butterfly Step. Only the Divine Cascade Step.”
“Oh, really?”
“That’s right. It’s usual for the men to learn the Divine Cascade Step and the women the Butterfly Step.”
“I see. Then who should I ask about it….”
“Ask Rin. You’re at much the same level, so she’ll teach you well.”
“I shall do that.”

In a deflated voice, Moyong Bi brought the lesson to a close.

“…Right, we’ll leave today’s lesson there.”
“MO! YONG! Thank you for another fine lesson, sir!”

Throwing a strange hand salute nobody had taught him, Gwang-seon went trotting off and then hopped clean over the wall. There was no comparing the lightness of his step now with what it had been.

“…”

Baek Un-cheon watched him go for a moment, then said:

“Didn’t you say those two lightness arts were so different in nature that they can’t coexist?”

Moyong Bi nodded.

“That’s right. They sit at opposite poles from one another. The Divine Cascade Step suits straight-line movement, so the men take it; the Butterfly Step favors curved movement, so it suits the women — that’s how they came to be sorted that way. They can’t be mixed. Learning both is next to impossible.”
“Then why?”
“I didn’t actually send him to Rin to learn the Butterfly Step. I said it so the two of them would get a bit friendlier. Besides, he hardly looks like the sort to listen if I told him not to. He’ll only understand it’s impossible by trying it himself.”
“Hm.”
“Even Gwang-seon can’t learn two mutually opposed lightness arts at the same time. Not normally, anyway.”
“Ah-ha.”

Hold on. Not normally?

Baek Un-cheon’s head tipped to one side.

— Yong-rin taught me, so I’ve picked up the Butterfly Step as well! It’s really no easy thing, this.

A picture rose in his head: Gwang-seon humblebragging like that¹, then casually mixing the Butterfly Step and the Divine Cascade Step together as he unfolded them. Moyong Bi must have thought the same thing, because their eyes met.

“Oh, come on. Surely not.”
“Listen to us. That’s like talking about learning the Ice Soul Divine Art and the Nine Yang Divine Art at the same time.”
“Hahaha!”

Pfahaha— Moyong Bi burst out laughing and said:

“A genius often becomes an object of envy and jealousy. Watching at the Intra-Family Sparring Tournament the other day, the children were very much on their guard against Gwang-seon.”
“Hm.”

Natural enough, in its way. Gwang-seon was a stone that had come rolling in out of nowhere², and a very noisy one at that.

“A competitive spirit is all well and good, but since they share a surname, cooperation matters too.”
“The best way to build a cooperative spirit would be to mix them and have them train together.”
“The gap in level is too great for them to do it together.”
“True enough.”

Moyong Bi stroked his chin and said:

“The family head is thinking of sending the children out on a real-combat assignment or something before long, to let them pick up a bit of varied experience. They’d best get acquainted well ahead of time.”
“Real combat, is it… has it come to that already?”

Moyong Bi looked up at the sky, his eyes gone soft with memory. Vwee-yoong-yoong— thinking back to that time, he could almost hear the eerie cry of a monster.

“Come to think of it, it was around this time of year that I first met you, wasn’t it?”
“Was it? I don’t really remember….”
“Come on — a monster came leaping out at us and we joined forces and barely put it down. If it hadn’t been for each other, neither of us would be sitting here laughing and talking now.”
“Ah, now I remember. Some friendless crybaby kept hanging about underfoot and it was quite the nuisance.”
“Has the man gone senile? If not for me you wouldn’t have come out of it in one piece either!”
“I wouldn’t know about that. But one thing’s certain — without me there’d be no Great Hero Glancing River Sword.”
“Tch. I should never have stepped in for you. I worry Gwang-seon will turn out like you.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“From what I hear, he means to split them into teams of two or three and send them out. If the members of a team can’t trust one another, they’re worse off than fighting alone. And besides, someone who only ever drifts on the outside will never be fit to govern a family.”
“True enough.”

Baek Un-cheon had answered without giving it much thought. Then his head whipped around and he stared at Moyong Bi.

“You… what did you just…?”
“What? If a man of that sort of talent doesn’t become family head, who does?”

Moyong Bi shrugged and said it perfectly calmly.

“Of course, for an adopted son who came in from outside the family with no connections whatsoever to sit in the family head’s seat is next to impossible. However great the achievements he piles up. But what if he married into the direct line?”

Baek Un-cheon’s eyes went wide.

“What…! Are you serious?”
“Oh, entirely serious.”

The wide-open sky lay reflected in Moyong Bi’s ambitious eyes. Like the Crouching Dragon³ coiled in rustic obscurity, he stroked his chin and intoned:

“That boy will put the Moyong Family not at the bottom seat of the Five Great Families but in a first seat nobody could argue with. I’m certain of it. Across the Five Great Families and the Nine Great Sects both.”
“You madman. You’ve gone completely out of your mind.”

Moyong Bi threw an arm around Baek Un-cheon’s shoulders and said:

“And on top of that, if our own celebrated Great Hero Cold Moon Wanderer were to put himself forward as Gwang-seon’s master, the odds would climb a little higher still.”
“Nonsense.”
“Looked at that way, I don’t think it’s altogether impossible. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“So that’s why Rin…?”
“It’s a hypothetical. If the two of them don’t want it, then it’s off.”

Moyong Bi let out a short laugh, unhooked his arm, and gave Baek Un-cheon’s shoulder a light slap.

“It’s a joke. Unclench your face.”

Then he walked on ahead, humming to himself. Baek Un-cheon watched him go, and his eyes trembled with fear.

I knew he was no ordinary man. But to think he had been nursing a scheme this terrifying in his breast…!

Had he been looking that far ahead all this time? Baek Un-cheon found himself seeing Moyong Bi in a new light.

The depth of the man’s calculation! Was he sharper at stratagem than at martial arts all along?

Whether the Moyong Family would take the first seat among the orthodox sects, Baek Un-cheon could not say. Of one thing he was certain, though: in the near future they would best the Jegal Family.

— Knock, knock—

At the sound of the knock at the door, Moyong Jin-seong set down his teacup.

“What is it?”

— A guest has come from the Imperial Army.

“…From the Imperial Army?”

Why on earth would a guest come calling from the Imperial Army, all of a sudden?

— Family Head?

“Ask him to come in.”

The door opened,

and a giant of a man in armor came striding into the room.

His bulging eyes were pulled up as fiercely as they would go, and the thick beard grown along his jaw, like a lion’s mane, only sharpened the effect.

Imperial Army if ever I saw it.

There are not many who can move freely in armor that heavy.

And among those, this man is….

In the Imperial Army, beneath the Grand General, stand the Ten Generals, a constellation of powerhouses.

A bigger fish than I expected.

Clicking his tongue inwardly, Moyong Jin-seong rose from his seat without letting a trace of it show and greeted his guest.

“Welcome, General. I am Moyong Jin-seong, head of the Moyong Family.”
“I am Hwa Mu-hong. My apologies for calling on you without sending word.”

After a light exchange of courtesies,

the two sat down facing one another.

“I trust the journey gave you no discomfort?”
“What commander under orders looks for comfort?”

A few ceremonial words passed between them,

and Moyong Jin-seong went straight to the point.

Soldiers, unlike other men, rather preferred it that way.

“What has brought the General to trouble himself with a visit to our Moyong Family?”
“Have you heard of the Bursting Fist Demon?”
“Of course. Is he not one of the public enemies of the murim? I had heard the Murim Alliance was after him.”
“The man dared to murder someone in the service of the state. The imperial house does not intend to let it pass lightly.”

Still, for a General to come in person just to catch one public enemy of the murim.

That Bursting Fist Demon. He picked the wrong man to cross.

Of all people, the man he killed seemed to have had a thread running back to the imperial house. Or else the whole thing was a pretext for setting the imperial house’s prestige straight; when you came down to it, officialdom was no different from a subordinate of the imperial house. Officialdom and murim were spoken of as mutually inviolable, but if one side broke that covenant, the other had no particular need to keep it either. The unwritten rule had fed on blood from the beginning.

Whatever the case, it was no great concern of the Moyong Family’s. They and the other orthodox sects were closely tied to officialdom to begin with. If anything, this was a chance to put the imperial house in their debt.

“So you are pursuing the Bursting Fist Demon.”
“That is so.”
“If it is a matter of catching a villain like that, how could we refuse to help? We will cooperate to the fullest. You have only to say the word.”
“There is someone who saw the Bursting Fist Demon last.”
“And who would that be?”
“I hear you have a waiter here who came from Fallen Star Village.”

Moyong Jin-seong blinked.

“…You mean our Gwang-seon?”

Hwa Mu-hong’s bulging brows twitched a fraction.

“…‘Our’ Gwang-seon?”

The provincial capital of Liaoning. Shenyang.

…Or rather, a little way outside it.

— Ta-dak!

Every time a foot comes down, a branch high overhead shakes,

and startled birds go clattering up into the air.

“At that pace, where do you imagine you could go and claim you run well?”

I’m in the middle of practicing the lightness arts, running through the forest after Big Bro Un-cheon. From time immemorial, apparently, the lightness arts are best trained somewhere with plenty of terrain and obstacles, like a forest, rather than out on flat ground.

“You chose the lightness arts first so you’d be good at running away, didn’t you?”
“Hah. Hah.”
“On bare flat ground there’s nothing for it but to run honestly. Hard to open up a gap.”
“Hah. Hah.”
“In real combat all manner of terrain and obstacles will stand in your way, so it’s right to prepare for that. Besides, if you’re running, it means your enemy is a greater master than you….”
“I get it, so would you please go a bit slower!”
“Slower, he says. Out of the question. Didn’t I tell you your enemy won’t wait for you? Even if Moyong Bi comes after you, you have to be able to get away.”
“Haah. Hah. Why bring my teacher into it all of a sudden?”
“Because nobody knows when today’s friend will become tomorrow’s enemy. That’s the sort of place the gangho is. It puts me in mind of something that happened in Sichuan. Now, when was that….”
“Oh, for— honestly!”

There I was, hard at work surviving the gangho again today.

I’m running myself into the ground to survive this brutal gangho somehow, but

I think I’m going to die before I get there.

“Run until your feet blur! Will you dawdle like that when Moyong Bi is on your heels?”
“That’s what I’m asking — why would Teacher Yong-bi be chasing me!”

Big Bro Un-cheon kept up a steady stream of nagging as he bounded from tree to tree. I’d thought I’d gotten fairly nimble since picking up the lightness arts, but I was no match for him. He sprang along with his hands clasped behind his back, light as a man out for a stroll, while I ran with my teeth clenched just to keep from dropping behind.

Enough to make you wonder whether he was human. Maybe he’d been a mountain goat in a past life.

“Tch, tch. As slow as all that. Run into a Mountain Lord and you’d be a packed lunch on the spot⁴.”

“…”

I’m too worn out to even answer.

I ran on hard with my mouth shut. Big Bro Un-cheon had been needling me for a good while by then, and something mischievous seemed to take hold of him; he grinned and said:

“Gwang-seon. Shall we make a wager?”
“Haah. Hah. What wager?”
“If you get past me even once before the day is out, I’ll grant you one wish.”

My ears pricked up.

“A wish? What kind of wish?”
“Anything at all.”
“Really? You mean it?”
“Of course. Have you spent your whole life being lied to? A man doesn’t speak twice out of one mouth.”

Big Bro Un-cheon ran on with his hands behind his back and burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! But can you really beat me — Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step!”

I ran with my teeth clenched, but there was simply no catching Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step.

Well, obviously.

How was a boy who’d only just picked up the lightness arts supposed to catch Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step, star member of the lightness arts club? Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step had simply wanted to tease me. And guileless Moyong Gwang-seon had duly been played.

“Hah. Haah.”

That’s my limit.

Keeping up had been all I could do as it was, and a flat-out sprint on top of that left me with nothing in the tank.

“Big Bro! I concede. So can we stop now and rest—”
“Have you got lumps of iron tied to your feet? Why so sluggish? An old man off to have his coffin measured would be faster than you, hahaha!”
“No — I said I lose. I give up, I’m giving up!”
“Now, now. A warrior, properly speaking, knows nothing of giving up.”
“I’m not a warrior, I’m a wait—”
“Here’s an amusing riddle to bring even a guttering will back to life. Which sect in the murim is best at opening doors?”
“…Sorry?”

The instant I opened my mouth to scold him for spouting nonsense out of nowhere,

“The Gaebang.”
“…Sorry?”
“Haha, do you follow? You see, it’s a play on words — not gaebang the Beggars’ Sect, but gaebang meaning to fling something open⁵….”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

An unbearable rage went up in me like a brushfire.

Snap— I heard the single thread of reason I had left give way.

I turned over the hand with the ring on it, and intricate mechanisms surfaced, spreading across my palm.

“Well? Funny, isn’t it? Really, brat, fancy being surprised by a little thing like that.”

I pressed the lower of them down hard, without hesitating.

— Pshoo—

A laser burst from the soles of my feet and a dizzying rush of speed came over me. The scenery around me seemed to stretch out long, and then it was shoved helplessly away behind me.

“Excellent. The laughter bundle is flung open. One more….”

— Kwoooooooosh—

In an instant I had caught Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step.

“What?”

Seeing the triumphant face of Baek Un-cheon of the Instant Step flood with shock, I felt like I could fly.

No. I really am flying.

“Gyaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Somebody please stop me!”