Chapter 18

We’d had a good solid breakfast, too. So we began the climb.

A climb, they called it. In practice we were rock climbing. They said this was the roughest mountain in the whole Changbai range, and they had not been exaggerating.

I looked at the murderous angle of the slope and muttered:

“There are people who climb this?”
“Murim warriors, mostly.”
“Which means there are people who haven’t learned martial arts doing it too.”
“Not so many, I shouldn’t think?”

Of course there wouldn’t be many. One wrong move and you’re off sightseeing in the next world. Even with the lightness arts, my chest goes tight just looking at it. And I’m a man who’s up these mountains all the time gathering wild greens, no less. If somebody used to hill-work feels like this, what on earth is going through an ordinary person’s head when they climb it?

“It’s not a question of there not being many. At this rate, isn’t it normal for there to be nobody at all?”

If our boss ever announced he was going up this, I’d talk him out of it if I had to break both his legs doing it. Though our boss is a born-to-be chicken, so he wouldn’t so much as look at it.

Moyong Danho, walking ahead of us, said in an offhand tone:

“Where there’s money, people always gather.”
“Money?”

Moyong Rin cut in.

“I told you, didn’t I. All sorts of curious things get found around ruin sites. Pick up a few scraps of meteoric iron and you’re still in profit.”
“It’s mostly herb gatherers. Spirit herbs grow well in rough mountains where there aren’t any people to begin with. So they come up to dig for spirit herbs and take care of two things at once.”

Money really is a terrifying thing, to make a man walk into death on his own two feet.

No — well, granting all that.

“It’s so foggy you can hardly see a thing, so how are the two of you getting about so easily?”

I’d assumed we’d set off once the fog had cleared away completely. We hadn’t. The moment it looked to have settled a bit, it was ‘Shall we get moving, then?’ and straight into the climb. And then the pair of them went flinging themselves off into the white fog.

Aren’t they even frightened?

“We’re used to it.”
“Used to it?”
“Mm. At the Moyong Family we did most of our lightness-arts practice on the rough mountains round about. We did it here on Phoenix Mountain often enough, too. A bit of fog is nothing.”
“Rin, do you remember? When you slipped practicing the lightness arts on a rainy day and nearly went over the edge?”
“That was great fun, that was. Memories.”

…Crazy murim warriors, the lot of them.

I realized all over again that money is not the most frightening thing in the world. Murim warriors are. Being a normal person who prizes his own life above everything else, I simply trotted along at their heels. Moyong Rin seemed rather pleased with the sight of me like that, and kept glancing back with a contented smile.

“Hmph-hmm.”
“What. What is it.”
“Nothing. Just checking you’re keeping up.”
“Then why are you smiling.”
“Am I not allowed to smile as I please?”

How long had we been climbing like that? I happened to look down, and the drop was dizzying. I swallowed dryly without meaning to.

When did we come this far up?

What frightened me more was how much of it was still left.

“How far have we come, at this point?”
“About half?”
“…We’ve only come about half?”
“What, did you think the ruins were right under your nose? That’s odd. I assumed you knew all this and picked the ruins survey anyway.”
“…”

Put like that, I had nothing to come back with.

Grumbling away as we climbed,

— Boom!

from somewhere far below came a roar none of us could place. A dull, heavy tremor swept over the mountain.

Skitter-skitter— sand and small pebbles and the like came sliding down the slope.

“Wh-what was that?”
“An earthquake?”
“Everyone hold!”

We stopped climbing for a moment and watched to see what would happen. Thankfully the tremor came once and did not come again.

“Are earthquakes common in these parts, normally?”
“No. There’s never been anything like it. It’s rather unsettling.”
“It seems to have stopped, thankfully. Let’s carry on up.”

Leaving the earthquake behind us, we climbed on again.

And after some while of that.

“Hang on, though. Now I think about it, shouldn’t it be ‘it’s dangerous, let’s go back down’ rather than ‘the earthquake’s stopped, let’s carry on up’?”
“What are you on about. Do you want to go home empty-handed?”
“Better to go home empty-handed than not go home at all.”
“And whose fault is it we came all this way? Rather than go back empty-handed we might as well catch a monster and take it home with….”
“Shh!”

Moyong Danho, out in front, raised a hand to his lips, then gestured urgently for us to get down.

Moyong Rin dropped into an awkward half-crouch and whispered:

“What is it?”
“A monster.”
“A monster?”

Keeping ourselves as low as we could, we made our way over to Danho, then poked our heads up over the undergrowth and looked where he was pointing.

And there it was, the monster we’d only ever heard about in stories.

The thing was shaped like an enormous rat. Its body ran to the size of a mid-sized dog, and its ears were grotesquely large. On those terms alone, it was just a mutant rat with somewhat oversized ears, and if you looked closely, there was even something rather cute about it. But you couldn’t just call it a big rat and leave it at that. Something about it was far too alien.

And no wonder.

“…That thing. Is it eating rock right now?”

Because it was gnawing away at solid rock. Anyone watching would have thought it was working through a loaf of bread.

A rat that gnaws rock like bread. The absurdity of it left me with nothing to say.

If those teeth that gnaw rock like bread ever got hold of you….

Moyong Rin was staring blankly at the rat monster. I gave her shoulder a light tap.

“Where’s the person who was saying let’s catch a monster and take it home?”
“…”

Leaving Moyong Rin with nothing to say for herself, Danho explained in a voice pitched right down.

“It’s a thing they call an Ear Rat.¹”

Ear Rat. The name meant a rat with big ears.

Well, the name’s about as literal as it gets.

That aside.

“Danho.”
“Mm.”
“You said all the dangerous monsters were dead. Were you lying to me?”
“That one’s on the cute side, as they go.”
“…A giant rat that gnaws through rock is on the cute side?”

Then what in the world are the ones that count as dangerous?

“Ear Rats are on the weak side compared to other monsters. But their ears are big, so their detection range is wide — you have to be careful.”

I listened to Danho’s explanation while staring hard at the Ear Rat.

What is it?

Something about it felt off. I couldn’t have said what, exactly, but there was something intensely unnatural about it?

Presently the thing broke off from chewing out the rock and jerked its head up. Its great ears twitched at some sound or other, and then it was gone in a flash.

Moyong Danho grinned and asked me:

“Well? How does it feel, seeing a monster for the first time?”
“Umm… grotesque?”

It didn’t feel like a living creature of the same order as us. How to put it. Like watching something that had pulled a rat’s hide over itself and was doing an impression of a rat? The whole thing was deeply unsettling, and unpleasant.

“…It gives me a bad feeling, somehow.”

Moyong Rin agreed.

“There’s a reason they’re called monsters.”

Moyong Danho shrugged and got to his feet as he spoke:

“Right, then — let’s get a move on while it’s gone. The entrance to the ruins is further up.”

We followed Danho and hurried on up the mountain. This was where the monsters started turning up in earnest, so we took still more care not to be spotted.

“There’s another.”

At Moyong Danho’s gesture we held our breath and poked just our eyes out from behind a rock. Another Ear Rat, and this one too was gnawing away at the rock with relish.

“…”

Only now did I understand why surveying a ruin site carried the highest difficulty of them all. Mountain terrain this brutal, and monsters mad enough to eat rock on top of it.

The looks my Moyong Family agemates gave me are still vivid in my mind. I’d blithely volunteered for a place like this, so of course they stared at me as though I were insane.

This Ear Rat, too, gnawed away at the rock a good while, then twitched those great ears at some sound or other and was gone in a flash.

“Let’s go.”

Just as we were hurrying to slip past in that gap,

Hm?

I spotted something glinting in the place where the Ear Rat had been. I went over and picked it up. A small triangular piece of metal.

What is this?

Danho saw what I had picked up and brightened.

“Oh, Gwang-seon. Sharp eye you’ve got there. So you won’t be going home empty-handed after all.”
“What is this?”
“I told you before. A scrap of meteoric iron. Put it somewhere safe so you don’t lose it.”

Danho gave my shoulder a clap and walked on ahead, and Moyong Rin shot me a sharp look before following him.

“Hmph. I’m going to find two.”

The triangular scrap sat neatly in my palm. I held it up to the sunlight and turned it this way and that, and every time it moved it caught the light and sent rainbow ripples shimmering across it. Anyone could see it was no ordinary metal.

Such things turned up near ruin sites now and then; Danho had told me as much. But was it simple coincidence that this one had been lying in the very spot where the Ear Rat had been?

“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Gwang-seon! There’s no time to be standing about!”
“Ah — right!”

I put the scrap in my pocket and hurried after Danho and Moyong Rin before I could get myself lost.

“We have to hurry before the sun goes down.”
“How much further do we have to climb?”
“We ought at the very least to check the Three-Point Gate before we go.”
“The Three-Point Gate?”
“The entrance to the ruins I mentioned earlier. The door’s a triangle, so that’s what everyone calls it.”
“The one you said nobody’s ever got inside?”
“Mm. There won’t be anything different about it, but it’s a survey in name at least, so we have to check.”

We climbed on, giving the Ear Rats a wide berth. The higher we went, the thicker the fog grew. No, could you even call this fog? Somewhere along the way we seemed to have climbed as high as the clouds.

It’s perilous enough as it is, and now fog on top of it? Lose our way in here and we’d be ideally placed to get eaten by monsters in the fog. Would things that gnaw through rock turn up their noses at human bone?

“Stick close behind me. One wrong step and it’s the easiest thing in the world to be lost in the fog.”
“Hmph. Never mind the nagging, just do your job and lead.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Rin.”
“I’ll keep up without being told, so don’t worry.”

As I answered, I tapped the ring and checked what was left of the battery.

One bar and a half.

If only I hadn’t flared up at Baek Un-cheon’s needling back then, I’d have had the second bar filled by now.

The charging speed was slow enough to be maddening. Of course, considering what that one bar can do, I can hardly whine about it being slow. But a shame is a shame.

Isn’t there some way?

This is all Big Bro Un-cheon’s fault. If it weren’t for Baek Un-cheon I’d have been able to get a couple of laser shots off.

I was grumbling away like that, looking ahead. Behind Danho, who had turned back to face us, something came jutting into view.

“Bear with it a little longer, however hard it is. We’ll rest once we’re back do—”
“Duck!”

At my shout, Moyong Rin caught Danho by the shoulder on reflex and hauled him down. A long blade thrust out of the fog and swept through the place where his neck had been.

Thanks to her, Danho still had a neck. He drew his sword in a hurry and opened up the distance.

“Who’s there!”

Two black figures emerged from the thick fog.

“Well now. Fancy them dodging that. Quick-witted little brats.”

One of them stood smiling faintly, still holding the long saber that had tried to take Danho’s neck. The other had one eye covered with an eyepatch and was staring at us in silence with the eye he had left.

“We’ve come because there’s something we want to ask. We won’t harm you, so there’s no need to be on your guard.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”

Moyong Rin sniffed at the air, then drew her fine brows together.

“The smell of blood.”

Moyong Danho reset his grip on his sword and spoke in a tone gone quite flat:

“So the murderous fiends have come calling. How about exchanging names, at the very least?”

At that, the man with the long saber said, smiling all the while:

“I am called the Smiling Ghost. And this taciturn friend of mine here goes by the fine byname of the One-Eyed Dragon.”
“…!”
“Why has the Demonic Cult come all the way out here…!”

Both of them looked as though they knew, so I asked in a small voice:

“You know these guys?”
“Fiends of the blackest notoriety.”
“Are they strong?”
“We’ve no chance. We have to run.”
“…!”

If proud Moyong Rin said that without a moment’s hesitation, they really must be masters. And even supposing I fired the laser, I had only the one shot in me.

What do I do?

Then the One-Eyed Dragon, silent until now, took a step forward and opened his mouth. His single eye was fixed straight on me.

“Who killed the Bursting Fist Demon? Speak willingly and I won’t harm you.”

My heart dropped clean out of me.

Damn it.

I’d kept telling myself surely not, surely not. And of all the places for it, here. It could not have been worse. There wasn’t a single grown-up anywhere near to help us. We would have to break out of this on our own strength alone.

I felt my lips go bone dry, and opened my mouth.

“Why come asking me about the Bursting Fist Demon, sir?”
“You would know the reason better than I.”
“I don’t know anything about it. All I did was guide him to the Great Hero Cold Moon Wanderer. What happened after that I don’t know either. Who’s to say he isn’t hiding somewhere, waiting for the two of you?”
“Your tongue runs long. We come from giving him such burial as we could manage, so speak straight.”

Damn it all.

“It’s my understanding that the Bursting Fist Demon fought the Great Hero Cold Moon Wanderer, sir.”
“It was not the Cold Moon Wanderer who killed him.”
“And what makes you so certain of that?”
“That man prized his own life above everything else in the world. ‘A cunning hare keeps three burrows’ — the saying might have been coined for him.²”

The Smiling Ghost nodded along in agreement.

“He’d have fled without a moment’s hesitation from the enemy who killed his own parents, if the odds turned against him. There’s a reason he was never caught, for all that he’d been named a public enemy of the murim.”
“Do you suppose a man like that would have gone up against the Cold Moon Wanderer without arranging himself a bolt-hole?”
“And above all, that ghastly martial art. That was no martial art the likes of the Cold Moon Wanderer could use.”

— Shhing.

The One-Eyed Dragon slowly drew his sword.

“So speak straight. Who killed the Bursting Fist Demon?”
“Don’t fret too much. You’ll be telling us whether you want to or not.”

The Smiling Ghost came toward us twirling his long saber, his face brimming with glee.

“What do we do?”
“There’s nothing for it but to fight.”

The two Moyongs said there was no chance of winning and meant to fight anyway. That was exactly what you’d expect from the valiant warriors of the Moyong Family.

But I thought differently. At this rate we would certainly die.

What am I to do?

Think.

Think.

What cards do I have to play? Are we really the only ones on Phoenix Mountain?

We are not.

The odds are slim. But there’s nothing for it but to try.

“Ha!”

I forced the corners of my mouth up into a twist.

“How very amusing.”

The two fiends faltered.

“And what is it you find so amusing?”
“That mere peasants should believe they can do this personage harm — how should that not be an amusing thing?”
“…What?”
“That Bursting Fist Demon begged for his life like a cur. Do you know what a sorry sight he made, writhing about and swearing he’d lick my feet?”

Moyong Danho and Moyong Rin stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. I didn’t know what I was saying either.

But the carriage had already pulled out. Falter here and it would come out neither porridge nor rice.³

“And is that all? You should have heard how much he had to complain about this Demonic Cult of yours. Said he ought to kill the Cult Leader and take that seat himself, he did.”
“Has this little bastard lost his mind.”

A horrifying killing intent came into the Smiling Ghost’s eyes. The dangerous smile deepened.

“Desist!!!”

But before the Smiling Ghost’s blade could swing, the One-Eyed Dragon’s furious bellow burst out. The force of it swept the fog around us clear in an instant.

“I have changed my mind.”

The One-Eyed Dragon’s eye glittered with killing intent.

“I’ll have you begging me to kill you.”

And in that moment, several Ear Rats came bursting out of the fog and fell upon the One-Eyed Dragon.

“Run for it!”

Together with the two valiant Moyongs, I fled without so much as a backward glance.