The Mad Dog Of Blood Sand Plain

I was born the legitimate eldest son of a murim clan¹ and trained in the martial arts my whole life, yet I never rose past the third-rate realm. It did not take me long to learn how wretched my talent was. The proof came the day Father channeled his true qi into me so that I could learn the family’s secret heart method. They say the gifted feel their qi before a single day is out, while the giftless can take months. I was the second sort.

“I’ve done it!”

It took a full ten years before I could gather any internal energy in my dantian. I had been born with the worst talent imaginable.

In a murim clan, nothing mattered more than the heir’s skill at arms, and mine was a seed that could split the house apart. So I moved first.

“I wish to step down as Young Master.”

I meant it for the good of the family, and for my own. But Father would not hear of it.

“Denied. You are the Young Master of House Yang.”
“Come out with your mother for a bit. The air will do you good.”

Mother soothed me, the way she always did.

Heaven had given me no talent for the martial arts, but fortunately it had not left me empty-handed.

“Father is right, Brother. You are the Young Master of House Yang.”
“Brother, when you go out with Mother, please take me along too.”

A family who never begrudged me a thing, who cherished me with all their hearts. And…

“It’s a comfort to us all, having you as our Young Master.”
“You’ve only to say the word if you need anything, Young Master.”
“A medicinal herb from the Western Regions. It was hard to come by, so you’re to take it yourself, Young Master.”

And retainers who gave me their boundless trust.

That was it. When it came to people, I had been born lucky.

So what if I had no gift for the martial arts? I had something that neither the finest martial arts under heaven nor all the gold and treasure in the world could buy.

The thought did not last long. At some point the people of the house began getting hurt, one after another. A man wrenched his back hauling cargo; another took a wound from some passing martial artist’s stray blade. They were ordinary enough accidents, so I thought nothing of them.

But the accidents never stopped. The injured mounted up the way a drizzle soaks a coat through, and the escorts and laborers we hired in haste were forever causing trouble.

Even that we could bear. The real trouble began when a notorious band of bandits made their nest nearby. There was no reasoning with them. Even when we offered them a toll, they killed our men and seized the cargo.

After they had plundered our shipments several times over, the damages the family owed snowballed. Father ran himself ragged to clear the debt, and when he landed a large commission, he led our own people out on the escort run himself.

I remember what Father said before he set out.

“Son. I leave the family in your hands.”

They turned out to be his last words.

If only he had taken along some renowned knight-errant of the gangho², and not only our own people.

Had he done that, perhaps Father, and the family with him, would have come through it.

From that day on our fortunes fell away sharply. We sold off everything we owned, and it was still nowhere near enough to cover the damages. In the end we had no choice but to go begging to the moneylenders.

I took whatever work I could get, tenant farming by day and waiting tables at inns and pleasure houses by night. I turned down nothing that paid, but I could not keep up with the swelling interest, so the moneylenders came around near enough every day to make a scene.

“This month’s interest is short. Why not make up the rest with your little sister’s body? Or your mother’s?”
“Working a pleasure house isn’t so bad. Fed, housed, and a bit of the other besides. Eh?”

I couldn’t stand it. I threw a fist at the sneering bastard’s face.

— THWACK!

The one who went down was me.

“Not worth a single punch and he comes at me every time. If the interest isn’t paid by the last day of next month, your mother and that sister of yours will be settling it.”

All I could do was lie there and glare at his back as he walked away.

The last day of next month. By any ordinary means, it was a deadline I had no hope of meeting, and I was still racking my brains for an answer.

“Don’t worry, Brother. From here on, I’ll throw myself into whatever the family needs.”

My brother had come home.

He had left to learn the sword of Diancang³, and now here he was, back without a word of warning. He was the one who had taken himself off to Diancang in the first place, so that his talentless older brother could keep the Young Master’s seat. That he would step forward now steadied me and left me guilty in the same breath.

True to his boast, the moneylenders who had come around nearly every day to make trouble stopped appearing altogether.

“Not having to look at their faces — it’s a weight off my chest. It’s all thanks to you, Ugyeom.”
“It’s nothing, Brother. Though — I’ll need to be away from the house for a few days.”
“Why? Do you have somewhere to be?”
“…I’ll tell you when I return.”

After that my brother was often away for days at a time. More often than not he came home pale, and one by one the wounds on him multiplied.

I knew, and I pretended not to.

Then one day he came home with his dantian shattered. My brother, who had had a brilliant future ahead of him, was a broken man from that day on.

I should never have pretended not to see.

If I had forced him back to Diancang the first time he came home hurt, he would never have been broken.

But I could not afford to sit in regret. With my brother down as well, there was no one left to protect the family but me.

In the end, I made a decision.

A few days later the moneylenders, who had kept quiet for a while, came back.

“Your brother’s useless now, so who pays the debt? You? Or your mother and your sister?”
“The debt ends here.”

I drew a promissory note from my robes and threw it on the ground. One of them picked it up.

“How much is this?! And it’s drawn on the Mangeum Bank — where does a man like you get this kind of money?!”

I glared at him as he flinched back.

“Does it matter where it came from?”
“Not at all. We get paid, that’s all that matters to us. Come borrow again if you need more.”
“Get out.”

After they had gone, Mother and my sister came to me.

“Mujin. A promissory note — where did that kind of money come from?”
“Brother, you haven’t gotten mixed up in something bad, have you?”

I answered the two of them evenly.

“I’m serving another man’s military term in his place. That’s what they paid me for.”

In that instant Mother’s face went rigid, and my sister’s with it.

“How long… before you come back?”
“Ten years.”

Mother let out a long breath, and my sister’s eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t worry. Would the Patriarch of House Yang die so easily?”

I forced a smile.

The next day, as I left the house, Mother pressed something into my hand.

A black orb.

“It is our family’s heirloom, handed down for generations. Take it with you.”
“I’ll keep it safe.”
“Do not fret over your mother or your brother and sister. Travel safely.”
“Come home whole, Brother.”

But with my mother and sister seeing me off, the place I was bound for was not a battlefield.

It was a prison.

“Number Forty-Eight. That’s what you’ll be called from now on.”

The jailer’s voice bored into my ear.

I had told my family I was serving another man’s term. Half of that was true. To be exact, I was taking the fall for the crimes of some powerful house’s son, and serving out ten years of military labor for him.

They were sending me to Blood Sand Plain, in the northwest of the Central Plains, a hell no man had ever come back from alive. In exchange, they paid well for a life.

I should have done this sooner.

Then Ugyeom would never have been hurt. My weakness had ruined my brother’s future, but from here on it would be different.

I will survive. Whatever it takes.

By any means, by any method, I would make it back to my family. I repeated the vow to myself the whole way to Blood Sand Plain.

And so ten years passed.

Every day at Blood Sand Plain was a living hell. The man I greeted in the morning came back a cold corpse by evening.

For a man without talent, there was only one way to survive that hell.

Learn everything I can get my hands on.

With nothing in my head but staying alive, I carved everything I learned into my mind and my body. The more scars I gathered, the more skills I had for surviving. I gritted my teeth and lived through it, over and over, until at some point the others had taken to calling me the Mad Dog.

And then, at last, only a single day remained before my discharge.

“Drop dead!”

I gripped the spear shaft in both hands and bore down with the whole weight of my body. The blade sank deep into the man’s heart. His body shuddered, then went limp.

— Splash.

I lay back in the pool of blood.

“Kh-hurk! Hah, hah—”

I was bringing up so much blood I could barely breathe. I forced my shut eyes open.

Red.

Blood must have gotten into my eyes, because even the night sky had turned that color. Across the full moon hanging above, the faces of my mother and my brother and sister flickered.

I have to get back…

I had only just won my freedom, and my body would not move at all. Blood poured from the sword wound in my chest, and I bristled with arrows from head to foot.

My hand trembled as I fumbled inside my robes. My fingertips knocked against something, and I drew it out.

It was the black orb, House Yang’s heirloom, which Mother had given me the day I left. For ten years I had carried it like a talisman, praying to see my family again.

— Tap.

The strength went out of my grip, and the orb dropped onto my chest. I tried to take hold of it again, but no strength would come. I could no longer so much as twitch a finger.

Ah…

My mind was slipping, and my sight blurred by degrees. As the past flashed before my eyes, my brother Ugyeom’s face rose up.

That first time he came home hurt, I should not have looked away. If I had chosen to come to this place back then, he would never have been broken. And Mother and my sister would not be suffering now, with the rest of their lives given over to caring for him.

Life was a chain of choices, and I had always chosen wrong.

What if I had chosen right, back then?

Then perhaps I, and my family with me, would be living better lives.

After ten years grinding through this hell, I understood in my bones what a foolish, pathetic wretch I had been. Every tragedy that had befallen me, I had brought on myself.

Just once… if I were given just one more chance…

Couldn’t I protect my mother, my brother and my sister?

I wanted to set right the wrong choices of my past. The man I was now could do it.

And then it happened.

The noise of the battlefield vanished as though it had never been. The world went silent.

— Hsssssss!

The place over my heart flared hot as a coal. At the same instant, black light burst from my chest and drowned everything around me.

A voice I did not know rang in my ears.