The Tiger Came Down

— Thwaack! Crunch!

“Gwak!”
“Aaaaagh!”

The Great Saber Gang’s men went down like leaves in the wind. In front of them stood an old man.

Hwangbo Mueul.

His face was unhurried; he had the air of a man out for a stroll. He swung no weapon and no fist. Only a single motion of the hand, no more than a light flutter of his sleeve.

But what came of it was anything but small. The men his hand caught had arms and legs bent into shapes limbs do not take; others caved in where they were struck and vomited blood. Some screamed. Plenty went down without managing a sound. Not a quarter of an hour had passed since he smashed through the palisade and walked in, and a dozen-odd men of the Great Saber Gang were rolling on the ground.

Peak? Or is it Pinnacle?

I had never once set foot in that realm, so I could not take the measure of Hwangbo Mueul’s martial prowess.¹ Even so, one thing I could see clearly. He was in a different class altogether.

The Eight Great Clans indeed. A man like that, and not the head of the house but an Elder. There was a reason the Hwangbo Clan reigned as the overlord of Shandong.

Just watching sent a shiver through me. My blood boiled without my meaning it to, and I clenched my fist.

One day I will reach that realm myself.

My heart hammered. I wanted that power. I wanted it badly enough to go mad. And for me it was more than possible.

Not easy, of course. In my past life I had never once reached it. But I would manage it all the same.

This is not bluster with nothing behind it, nor a dream I am telling myself. I was no longer the thick-headed fool of my past life. I know how a man grows, and what a man must do to get stronger. And I was resolved to bear pain that cut to the bone.

Above all, I had the fortuitous encounter that made it possible.

The voice.

That power worked like a miracle. It never betrayed a drop of the sweat I shed; it gave it back to me as more than I had put in. With the voice behind me, a mountain other men needed ten years to climb would take me less than a quarter of that. I stood at the threshold of second-rate now, but if I kept at it, climbing to Hwangbo Mueul’s realm was no vague dream either. No. I might go clean past him.

So for now I had to take in Hwangbo Mueul’s skill at arms with my own eyes. A chance to watch a master at work does not come often.

“Uwaaaagh!”
“Spare me!”

My thoughts were cut short. Under Hwangbo Mueul’s one-sided butchery, what was left of the Great Saber Gang’s will to fight shattered to pieces. They threw down their weapons, backed away, then turned their backs and ran.

— Shwip!

Hwangbo Mueul’s figure blurred, and he snatched one of the fleeing men by the scruff of the neck.

“Kuk!”

“Where is the young bureau head of the Shandong Escort Bureau?”
“Th-that’s…”

The Great Saber Gang’s man he had hold of stammered. Hwangbo Mueul broke his arm in a single motion.

— Crack!

“Grraaagh!”

“I will ask again. Where is the young bureau head of the Shandong Escort Bureau?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything!”
“Useless creature.”

— Wrrrench!

Hwangbo Mueul turned the man’s head clean around. He dropped the gang member, neck bent at an impossible angle, and took hold of another.

“Do you know?”
“K-know what…”
“Where the young bureau head of the Shandong Escort Bureau is.”
“What are you talking ab…”
“You do not know.”

— Crack!

Before he had even heard the answer out, Hwangbo Mueul snapped the gang member’s neck. There was no mercy in it. A man who could not answer, or who showed any sign of not knowing, had his neck broken and died. He took hold of them one by one that way and asked after the young bureau head’s whereabouts, but not one of them knew.

As the bodies piled up thick across the ground, Hwangbo Mueul frowned and looked at the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau.

“Bureau Head, something is not right. Not one of them knows where the young bureau head is.”
“So it seems. Young hero Yang, is it truly certain that the Great Saber Gang took Yeonggwang?”

The bureau head put it to me with his brow drawn. He had every reason to doubt. We had gone through their home base, and the kidnapped son was nowhere in it.

I spoke without flinching.

“Look down.”

At that, the bureau head and Hwangbo Mueul both lowered their heads.

“There are cart tracks here. I was told they used carts when they moved people. It looks as though they have penned the ones they took inside that cave.”
“Oh!”
“There is sense in that.”

We followed the cart tracks into the cave. Inside, dozens of people crouched bound with rope, old men, women, and children alike.

“Please, spare us!”
“Please don’t hurt us!”

The people who saw us screamed, seized with terror.

“Yeonggwang! Yeonggwang! Where are you!”

The bureau head’s shout rang through the cave, but Jo Yeonggwang, the young bureau head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, gave no answer. Jo Mansik pushed through the people and checked every one of them, and his son was not in the cave.

“Where in the world is he…”

He sank down where he stood, his face gone hollow. Not finding his son here had taken the strength out of him. I raised him to his feet.

“Be calm, Bureau Head. It is early to give up. My thought is that they have most likely moved him aside as a hostage of value. I will go outside and search the surroundings further.”
“Thank you, young hero Yang.”

I left Hwangbo Mueul and the bureau head behind and came out of the cave. The Great Saber Gang’s encampment was bedlam. Dozens of men lay dead with their necks wrung around, and the ground and everything about it was soaked with blood. Most of the gang must already have fled, because it was quiet all around.

I looked about me, searching for one particular thing, and before long I found what I wanted. A tent with a red cloth hung at its door. I went inside.

“Yo, Young Master.”

Duho raised a hand in greeting. Sprawled in one corner were the Shandong Escort Bureau’s people, the young bureau head among them. He had pulled them out of the cave exactly as planned.

I nodded and spoke.

“Good work.”
“This much is nothing. Wasn’t a hard job.”
“The rest of the Great Saber Gang’s men?”
“They’ve been gone a good while. Didn’t see Black Leopard either.”
“Take your boys and lie low for a bit. I’ll come find you when it’s time.”
“Got it. See you later, Young Master.”

Duho left the tent. I went out as well, made a round of several tents, then came back to the one the young bureau head was in and called out.

“I’ve found him!”
“Where! Where is he!”
“This way!”

I stepped out in front of the tent and called the bureau head. He came at a run and ducked inside, and when he found his son sleeping like the dead off to one side he cried out.

“Yeonggwang! Open your eyes! It’s your father!”

Jo Mansik, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, gathered his son up and shook him. But Jo Yeonggwang did not stir at all. At the sight of his son hanging limp, the bureau head’s face went the color of death.

“The boy… why can he not wake…”

He was stammering in his alarm when Hwangbo Mueul came over, took Jo Yeonggwang’s wrist and felt the pulse.

“Be calm, Bureau Head. He is alive.”
“Ah! Thank you, Elder.”
“His pulse is quite normal and quite regular. He has only fallen into a deep sleep. Unorthodox sect that they are, it appears they put the young bureau head under with a drug.”
“Is that truly so?”
“Yes. You need not worry.”
“Haa… Thank you. O gods of Heaven and Earth…”

The bureau head let out a breath of relief.

“Bureau Head, if it is agreeable to you, allow me to take the young bureau head to our Yang manor. There is a physician in our house, and his medicine is excellent, so he should be able to draw the drug out of him.”
“I will set my shame aside and be in your debt.”
“I will carry the young bureau head on my back. I will send word to have the escorts and the escort runners seen to separately, so you need not worry over them.”

I took the young bureau head onto my back. Just then Hwangbo Mueul spoke.

“I will sweep up the remnants left in the area and follow after you.”

…?

Hwangbo Mueul’s words left me with a question. Nothing remained in the Great Saber Gang’s encampment now but the people who had been taken. The gang’s men had long since fled or died at his hand. It felt to me that there was nobody left to call a remnant, but I nodded soon enough.

There may well be more of them in hiding.

Hwangbo Mueul’s realm is, at a guess, Peak at the very least. There was no chance that such a man’s qi sense was the same as mine. There would be things only he could see and feel.

The bureau head nodded.

“Then we will go down ahead of you, Elder.”
“I will see you shortly.”

Our farewells done, I set off for the Yang manor with the bureau head, the young bureau head still on my back.

— Tap. Tap-tap.

Black Leopard ran down the forest path, his breath coming rough. Branches tore his clothes and left scratches on his face, but he did not stop. He had no time even to look behind him.

What in the world happened?

His head was spinning. Why had that personage, Elder Hwangbo Mueul, appeared in that place? He had turned it over the whole way as he fled and could not work it out. All he could guess was that one of his men had paid his orders no mind whatsoever and seized somebody connected to Hwangbo Mueul.

“Haa—”

Black Leopard let out a sigh without meaning to. The Great Saber Gang, which he had built up with such care, had been smashed in a moment. With money he could rebuild it soon enough, but there was no helping the pang of regret.

Even so, there was one hope.

He hasn’t thrown me away completely.

Their eyes had met a moment ago and still the old man had not seized him. Hwangbo Mueul was a master who had reached Peak. A man like that had looked straight at him and pretended not to know him. Did that not mean he was being given a chance? It surely did. Black Leopard was certain of it.

That’s right — think how much money I’ve handed over.

It would have been more than the old man could bring himself to throw away. All the tribute money he had been feeding him was paying off handsomely. As his mind eased, his steps grew lighter too.

Black Leopard ran a long while and came at last to an old shrine, in a spot people seldom went. This was where he had met Hwangbo Mueul whenever he brought him his tribute money.

— Creak.

He opened the door and stepped carefully inside. There was no sign that anyone else had been there; it looked as it always did. Only then did Black Leopard let himself relax and get his breath back. He had run without a rest and his heart was beating fit to burst.

Perhaps the time it takes to drink a cup of tea had passed since his breathing came back to normal.

— Creak.

The hinges sounded and the door opened. An old man came into the shrine.

It was Hwangbo Mueul.

His clothes were clean, without a single drop of blood on them, and he was not out of breath. There was no believing this was a man who had killed dozens.

At the sight of him, Black Leopard threw himself flat on the floor.

“Sir! I have committed a crime deserving death!”
“…”

Hwangbo Mueul said nothing. A cold silence filled the shrine, and a chill sweat ran down Black Leopard’s spine.

The old man looked down at him and broke the silence.

“You stupid animal. To lay a hand on the Shandong Escort Bureau. Are you in your right mind?”

Black Leopard waved his hands as though he had been wronged.

“No, sir! Short of losing my mind, how would I ever touch the Shandong Escort Bureau! It seems the men under me made a mistake.”
“A mistake…”

Hwangbo Mueul’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes, yes. It is the truth! I told them to bring in orphans and beggar brats and nothing else. I swear I had no part in this business! Spare me!”

Black Leopard begged, knocking his head against the floor. Hwangbo Mueul fixed him with a cold stare.

“Very well.”
“Thank you, sir!”
“Have you ever spoken of me anywhere else?”

At the sudden question Black Leopard’s head snapped up.

“As if I ever would! I have never let a word concerning you past my lips! I swear it on my life!”
“That is fortunate.”

As Hwangbo Mueul’s expression eased a little, Black Leopard took heart and went on.

“Of course, sir. This time the men under me botched the work and it got tangled, but there will be nothing like this from now on. Give me one chance, just one!”

For all Black Leopard’s pleading, Hwangbo Mueul was unmoved. He walked slowly toward him.

“I should give it. A chance. There is what you have offered up to me all this time, after all.”
“Thank you, sir! I will not forget this kindness even in death!”
“See that you don’t.”

Hwangbo Mueul reached out and patted Black Leopard on the shoulder.

Black Leopard was overcome with the thought that he had lived, but in that instant.

— Wrench.

With a horrible sound Black Leopard’s head bent at a grotesque angle. The old man raised his hand lightly, and the head came away from the body.

Hwangbo Mueul took up the head and left the shrine.