The Severed Head
“To stab your client in the back? You really are nothing but filth from the bottom of the gutter. You picked a fine name for your sect.”
Even after Choe Sa-deuk openly spat on the sect, none of the Haomu Sect members answered him. The one who spoke for the group was someone else.
Ye-hyang stepped forward.
Everything about her was different from the night before, when she had stood before Choe Sa-deuk with a biwa in her arms.
A sword hung at her waist now, and on the face that no longer bothered to hide its feelings, there was only a grudge-soaked hostility. Even her voice had gone hard and sharp.
“The Haomu Sect keeps faith with its client until the job is done. But when the client’s enemy is involved, that is an exception. We will collect the blood price, whatever it takes.”
“Enemy? Don’t play games with me! You schemed with the Black Night Gang to swallow my manor whole, didn’t you? What grudge could I possibly have against the Haomu Sect?”
Ye-hyang glared at Choe Sa-deuk and said coldly, “The Haomu Sect’s Gangseo Do-gok branch.”
Choe Sa-deuk’s eyes twitched.
“You slaughtered them eight years ago. The branch leader, Oh Jong-geum, and all seventeen of the Haomu Sect members under him.”
As soon as the bloodshed was mentioned, the killing intent in the Haomu Sect members deepened. The blades in their hands trembled as if they had caught the scent of blood.
“At first, the sect thought it had been the work of the heterodox factions. Gangseo was a place where even the orthodox sects couldn’t get a proper foothold, after all. The Sect Master searched every sect and gang in Gangseo from top to bottom, but nothing turned up. Then, from an unexpected place, we finally caught the killer’s tail. The last job the Do-gok branch leader took on was the problem...”
It had been a request to obtain information about opium crackdowns.
It was right after the newly appointed provincial commander-in-chief, sent down under imperial order, had declared that he would launch a sweeping purge of the opium-smuggling and distribution networks.
The branch was attacked the very night it handed over the information it had extorted from a local official after bribing him.
“It was an effort to silence everyone who knew. We interrogated and tracked down every opium merchant in Gangseo, and eventually learned that the killers had ridden smuggling boats up the Yangtze. After they burned their boats and fled toward Hubei, we lost them. We couldn’t find a trace of them anywhere, as if they’d simply vanished into the sky.”
Choe Sa-deuk glared as though he could kill her, but Ye-hyang did not stop.
“The seasons changed, the years turned over again and again, and still no word came. Seven years were wasted like that, and all the while we came back empty-handed. Until last winter, when one of the enemy’s acquaintances finally brought a request to the Haomu Sect. Do you still think the Haomu Sect betrayed its trust?”
Choe Sa-deuk ground his teeth hard enough to make the sound audible.
“Damn it... I should’ve cleaned out those bastards back then.”
“Why did you massacre the Do-gok branch?”
“Heh-heh. So you still don’t know? You stupid bitch. The provincial commander offered a pardon and one thousand taels of silver to anyone who provided information about the opium ring.”
Choe Sa-deuk narrowed his eyes with a sinister look.
“At a thousand taels, there isn’t a soul who wouldn’t go mad for it. A parent would turn in their own child, siblings would strangle each other for it. A few men under me even wavered. I only got them under control after I cut every last one of them to pieces and fed them to the fish.”
As though remembering that time, Choe Sa-deuk stared thoughtfully at the Paepung Dao in his hand.
“Why would the Haomu Sect be any different? If I’d hesitated even a little, the Do-gok branch would have followed my trail and reported me to the commander-in-chief. I simply struck first and faster. In the martial world, blaming your opponent because your own hand was too slow is nothing but the whining of the weak.”
Ye-hyang drew her sword.
“Since the enemy has confessed, I’ll collect the blood price in the name of the Haomu Sect.”
Choe Sa-deuk raised his saber and took a stance. His bloodshot eyes glinted like a beast’s.
“Very well. Come on, then. I’ll split your skull open nice and clean.”
Ye-hyang kicked off the ground and rushed him. As if waiting for that exact moment, the twenty Haomu Sect members moved at the same time.
No matter how skilled a master might be, when dozens of blades came at him from every direction, his mind would still go blank. More often than not, he would freeze up, falter, and end up reduced to minced meat without even understanding how he died.
Choe Sa-deuk was not one of those men.
He ignored the other blades completely. He charged straight at Ye-hyang and swung the Paepung Dao without hesitation.
Clang!
Ye-hyang deflected the saber strike with a flexible sword technique, but the force behind it drove her back a step.
Having seized the momentum, Choe Sa-deuk’s eyes flashed as he thrust forward. I cut in from the side with my long saber, striking down his arm and breaking his rhythm. Startled, Choe Sa-deuk twisted his body away just in time.
Seeing the blades close in on him, he spun the Paepung Dao like a dancer, forcing the Haomu Sect members back.
No matter how many men there were, only so many could attack at once.
Choe Sa-deuk knew that well. He was clearly used to brawls like this, because he never once shrank back.
Ye-hyang’s sword arced like a snake, cold and sharp, aiming for Choe Sa-deuk’s throat.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
It was still rough around the edges, but it was a rather vicious sword style, and the foundation beneath it was solid.
Choe Sa-deuk’s saber technique had been tempered on the Yangtze, where he had spent years fighting entangled with river pirates aboard smuggling boats. His movements were less about form than about killing intent.
As with all blades hardened by real bloodshed, it was savage, but full of openings. There were plenty of clumsy gaps in it too—places where he relied on pointless tricks and reckless luck instead of solid method.
I could have finished it easily with the Thousand Steel Saber Technique, but I kept my attention on escorting Ye-hyang from the side.
Revenge against Choe Sa-deuk belonged to Ye-hyang and the Haomu Sect members.
“Graaah!”
At last, one of the Haomu Sect blades began to bite into Choe Sa-deuk’s back.
The wounds were not fatal, but blood soaked his back, and perhaps because that sight made him anxious, Choe Sa-deuk clenched his teeth and hurled himself forward.
The savage gamble he threw with his whole body was aimed at Ye-hyang’s throat.
It was nearly over.
I stepped diagonally out of the line of attack with footwork, sliding to the side and drawing my saber in a long upward arc from below.
Clang!!
With a heavy metallic crash, the Paepung Dao was knocked upward.
For a split second, Choe Sa-deuk’s chest was laid bare. Ye-hyang did not miss the opening. She surged forward and drove her sword in with all her strength.
For some reason, the line of the sword looked strangely familiar as it flashed through the air. The blade pierced Choe Sa-deuk’s left chest and burst out through his back.
“Gah!”
When Ye-hyang pulled the sword free, Choe Sa-deuk collapsed at once.
She kicked the fallen Paepung Dao aside, then knelt and pressed her sword to the throat of the man now slumped on the ground.
“Cough, cough... Who are you? Yesterday, when you were playing the biwa, you were trembling like a virgin, and today you’re as venomous as an adder in late autumn. Were you one of the women I sold off?”
Ye-hyang spoke with a look of cold contempt. “Ha Un-gil. My father. He was a Haomu Sect member of the Do-gok branch. He died by your hand. Geum Yeong-yeong. My mother. After the Do-gok branch fell, she was kidnapped along with me by the local Black Path gangs. My two older brothers drew their knives and fought back, and were cut down in the most brutal way. My mother died in a brothel. And I...”
The emotions she had sealed away surged up so violently that her throat tightened, and her voice began to break into rough fragments.
Drawing in a deep breath, Ye-hyang looked straight at her enemy.
“Ha Cho-yeon. I have waited for the day when, with the help of an old acquaintance of my father who recognized me, I could return to the sect, cut off your head, and dig out your entrails to chew them.”
Choe Sa-deuk gave up resisting and extended his neck.
“Heh-heh. Then kill me. I’ve lived a whole lifetime without regret. Dying like this would be a good death.”
As if refusing to cooperate in completing her revenge, Choe Sa-deuk grinned mockingly, his face full of sneering calm.
That shameless expression, as though he had already transcended life and death, twisted Ye-hyang’s face. She bit down on her lip and raised her sword.
It looked as though she meant to cut off one of his arms first, letting him thrash in agony until he died.
Then, as if she had suddenly remembered what true pain was, Ye-hyang’s expression grew calm. The blade slowly lowered back into place.
In a voice drained of all feeling, Ye-hyang said, “Don’t worry about the family you hid away with your in-laws. Since the Shaanxi branch is already on the move, you’ll be seeing them soon enough. Your only son is said to be quite clever. He’s already past the age for the village school, isn’t he?”
The instant she threatened his family, Choe Sa-deuk’s face turned vicious.
“You damned bitch. If you touch even a hair on Won-i’s head, I’ll tear you to pieces—”
Swish.
Ye-hyang’s sword cut Choe Sa-deuk’s throat.
His head rolled across the ground once and came to rest facing the sky, its eyes still glaring eerily wide. Even in death, it looked as though it could not close its eyes for fear of the suffering that would befall his family.
She must have liked that expression.
For the first time, something like a smile appeared at the corner of Ye-hyang’s mouth.
Suddenly, I understood why Hong-hui had given her this mission.
This was not merely a chance to let her cherished adopted daughter settle her grudge and take revenge. It was also a kind of test, one meant to let her earn merit and become stronger.
The seat of a Haomu Sect branch leader could not simply be handed over to someone because she was loved.
She had to gain the Sect Master’s approval from above, prove her ability to lead the organization from below, and win the trust and loyalty of the disciples.
It made for a good story, too. The daughter of an unjustly murdered Haomu Sect member had avenged herself on the very man responsible.
Since this matter would also be reported to the Haomu Sect master, Ye-hyang would be recognized as Hong-hui’s successor.
Ye-hyang bent her knees, then reached out with her long, slender fingers and seized Choe Sa-deuk by the hair.
When she stood, blood poured in a steady stream from the severed neck in her hand.
She turned and headed for the carriage. With every step she took, drops of blood fell to the ground, leaving a long red trail behind her.
With the severed head of her enemy in one hand and the sword stained with his blood in the other, Ye-hyang had faced the fear of a lifetime head-on and walked all the way here.
That was the road the next Seochon branch leader of the Haomu Sect would walk.
Choe Manor changed its signboard to the name of a small escort agency. It was not a real escort agency, of course, but a front and safe house for the Haomu Sect.
Every servant and maid working at Choe Manor became a member of the Haomu Sect, with not a single exception. They were all in no position to be thrown out, and nowhere else to go, so they accepted their new master without resistance.
Publicly, Choe Sa-deuk was said to have died of illness. Since that was the sort of situation bound to raise questions, the madam invited the county magistrate and the local notables to Simhyangru.
Chests full of silver ingots were loaded onto carriages, and the branch leader himself was there to add his presence to the occasion.
That night, every connection that might have opened a mouth on Choe Sa-deuk’s behalf was cut off cleanly. Everything was wrapped up as smoothly as water flowing downstream.
The Black Path conflict that broke out in the mountains near Seochon in the middle of the night was even easier to settle.
The gossips were thrilled and eager to turn it into table talk, but the government merely took one look at the bodies strewn along the foot of the mountain and went home.
There were dozens of corpses recovered from the Blood Blade Gang and the Heaven-Splitting Sect, and not a single body from the Black Night Gang.
The corpses that ended up abandoned and unclaimed were left to the crows and wild beasts.
An affair of this scale could never be kept completely secret, no matter how carefully it was handled. The rumor would spread somehow, one way or another.
So the Haomu Sect did not try to silence people’s mouths. Instead, it dressed the rumor up in a form that suited them, turning it into a revenge story that served their interests.
Did martial artists condemn the Haomu Sect for betraying a client’s trust?
No. The martial world was the very place where grievances and debts were settled most decisively.
Rather, the Haomu Sect’s reputation rose a little higher for properly avenging the wrongfully slain disciples.
Ye-hyang’s biwa playing had already been famous, but after this, it became even more so.
People said that before, her playing had simply been full of aching sorrow, but now her emotions and expressions were richer and more varied.
They even said there was a fresh, bright quality to it, like winter wind giving way to new green shoots. I still didn’t know what that meant, even after hearing it myself.
This request had been a troublesome one, full of twists and turns. Since I wasn’t a member of the Haomu Sect, I couldn’t know the details or how the whole thing had unfolded.
Still, the payment for the job was more than satisfying.
“You said before that you were looking for a spiritual herb, didn’t you?”
The wooden box Geuk-hwan held out contained a fist-sized medicinal herb bearing bright red berries.
Unlike the Heavenly Mountain Snow Ginseng, this one gave off a faint yang energy, but there was no doubt that it was a spiritual herb.
“This is Sun-forgetting Ginseng. It was hard to procure...”
“Do you have one more root?”
“...No.”
I tucked the spiritual herb into my arms, left Simhyangru, and headed straight to Doctor Sang.