Opium
"...When my master took me in, killing my parents was an act that was both impulsive and utterly calculated."
The sunset had gone out, and dusk had settled in. The room had grown dim, so I struck a fire and lit the lamp.
The darkness retreated a few steps, but Do Goeng-il’s face did not brighten at all.
"Even when the sect was collapsing and the disciples were fleeing into the mortal world one by one, I could not do the same. The enemy who killed my parents was right in front of me, so all I could do was grit my teeth and train in martial arts. My master achieved his aim through my hands. I killed the men I wanted dead. That was Mun Hwi’s grand-uncle."
"...Did you avenge your parents?"
"I did."
For someone who had paid back a blood-soaked grudge, Do Goeng-il sounded almost indifferent. I thought I understood what sort of heart he must have had.
"It was not enough. What do you think revenge is?"
Did he really need to ask something like that?
"It’s paying back, with interest, the bastard who harmed me and my family."
If you grabbed a hundred people off the road and asked them, all hundred would nod. It was common sense.
All the stories by authors who wrote about revenge said the same thing. The only difference was whether you cut off a head or slit the belly open and pulled out the entrails.
Do Goeng-il shook his head.
"Revenge is not done to a person. It is done to fate."
"So that’s why you won’t take a disciple? You’re trying to take revenge by cutting off the sect’s line?"
He had said exactly that before. Revenge.
"My master wished for the Sword Sect’s hatred to continue even after he died. He was as though he meant to cling to the sect as a vengeful spirit. Only when the Sword Sect, the Saber Sect, and the Cheongsan Sect all disappear will the foolish resentment of that ghost also vanish. Along with the fate that was laid upon me as the Sword Sect’s rightful successor."
Something about it did not fit together.
"Then there’s no need to force a duel with me, is there? The Cheongsan Sect is already ruined anyway."
"Closing the gates of a sect that has stood for more than a hundred years is no small matter. Though I entered it against my own will, I have still held a sword for forty years now. I cannot accept such an empty ending."
Do Goeng-il placed the sword he had set aside on the table.
"I mastered the Late Wisdom Myriad Swords and gained insight into the Jade Spring Sword Technique, and I even delved deeply into the Saber Sect’s martial arts, yet in the end I never reached Cheongsan Art. I tried every method and every effort, but all in vain. Now there is only one thing left."
Do Goeng-il fixed me with a cold, gleaming stare, like an arrow about to be loosed toward its target.
"A life-and-death duel with a worthy rival who inherited the Saber Sect’s legacy. That is the final thing I have prepared for the Cheongsan Sect."
With that, Do Goeng-il emptied his teacup and stood. I remained seated, following only with my eyes as he walked away.
The main gate closed, and his presence receded into the distance. In the silence, I stared steadily at the center of the table where he had set down his sword.
I could not look away for a long time, as though an invisible duel notice still lay there.
Do Goeng-il came again the next morning and checked my posture and the proper points of the latter eighteen forms.
After another two days of instruction, he suddenly drew his sword.
I thought he meant to spar, but without warning he took up a formal stance and demonstrated a profound sword art. Then he showed me another peerless technique, as obscure yet wondrous as the latter eighteen forms themselves.
"This is the Jade Spring Sword Technique and the Late Wisdom Myriad Swords. Burn them into your eyes. They may yet become your teachers as well."
"Is it really all right to let the Cheongsan Sect’s secret arts leak out like that?"
"I know all of the Thousand Steel Saber Technique. It would hardly be fair if you did not know the Sword Sect’s finer arts."
Do Goeng-il slung on the bundle he had set aside and put on a bamboo rain hat.
"It’ll be winter soon. Where are you going this time?"
"Since it is winter, I am going somewhere at ease. We’ll see each other next year."
Do Goeng-il vanished just as suddenly as he had appeared the first time.
*
It was the full face of autumn. Frost had begun to fall white in the mornings and evenings, and the temperature had dropped so sharply that I could no longer sleep under just a blanket.
When I went to light a fire in the brazier, I found there was no kindling. The storage shed was completely empty.
It was time to start preparing for winter.
First, I needed to pile up so much dry firewood that the shed would be overflowing.
There was plenty of wood up in the back mountain, but swinging an ax was not something just anyone could do.
An ax used different muscles from saber arts or swordplay. If I underestimated it, I could strain myself or get injured easily.
Cutting the trees down, hauling them home, splitting them, and letting them dry would not be done in a day or two either.
That could become one way of tempering the body, if done right, but for now I was too busy training in the Thousand Steel Saber Technique.
Fortunately, my money pouch was heavy.
Last time, on the road back from Heuksi, I had wiped out a band of bandits and taken seven horses besides. After handing them over to the Haomu Sect, I still had plenty of silver left from what they paid me.
After practicing my saber forms and doing a simple breathing meditation, I stopped by Poongcheon Inn in the afternoon.
It was past noon and not yet evening, so the inn only had the farmer Pung Chil, who always came to eat noodles.
"You’re here?"
Pung Chil greeted me with a bright face.
"Where’s the one who usually comes with you?"
"Who? Do you mean Jangcheok? He went to the next village to do day labor. I’m thinking of joining him tomorrow or so. What’s the point of lazing around at home? You’ve got to earn a few coins if you can."
The harvest was over and barley sowing was still a ways off, so he might as well have rested. But farmers were the sort who felt uneasy unless they had something in their hands.
Even in the dead of winter, when the whole world froze, they would still do whatever they could to stay busy.
He was smiling with obvious pride, so it looked like Pung Chil was about to start boasting about his youngest again.
After entering the martial hall in another town, Pung O-bok had been sending word home once a month through the people who traveled back and forth.
None of them could read or write, so the news was passed from mouth to mouth.
According to the reports, Pung O-bok’s sturdy body, built through farm work, and his keen enthusiasm for martial arts had earned him the special expectations and affection of the hall master.
I had assumed it would be the same kind of story today, but I was completely wrong.
"This time it was that boy, O-bok, who sent money back. It’s not much, but he’s already earning his own keep. I used to worry endlessly about when he’d finally grow up, and now he’s gone and become this big already. Hah, can you believe it..."
He had only been in the martial hall for a few months, and he was already handling money?
From what I heard, after the day’s training was done, he worked from evening until night as a server at a tavern the hall master had introduced him to.
Something about it felt off, but Pung Chil was so happy that I did not want to spoil it with pointless comments.
There were decent people in this world too, people like the owner of Poongcheon Inn. The hall master of Cheongun Martial Arts Hall was probably a rare sort of good man as well.
Even with his youngest sending money, Pung Chil still ordered only one plain bowl of noodles.
"It’s a little late, but once I’ve saved up a bit more, I’m thinking of sending the eldest son to a village school. If he can at least get through the Thousand Character Classic, he may not be able to sit for the civil service exams, but he should be able to take one of the technical exams, shouldn’t he? If he passes that, the state gives him a post and a salary. He won’t starve to death for the rest of his life, at least. And if I want to marry off my little girl without missing her proper age, there are all sorts of things to prepare..."
Maybe now that money was coming in, his breathing room had returned. Even Pung Chil, who had spent his life staring at the ground, had begun to dream about his family’s future.
Pung O-bok, struggling somewhere far from home, must have shoulders heavy enough to break.
"Is there anywhere in Seochon where I can get firewood?"
"Firewood? Plenty of places sell it. This is the right season for it. There are even farmers who split wood on the side to make pocket money. Don’t go into the shops; it’s cheaper from the street stalls. Head out past the end of the busy district here and..."
Following Pung Chil’s directions, I found people at scattered stalls piled high with firewood for sale.
Even if the trees had all been cut from the same mountain with the same ax, the firewood was not all the same. The lengths and thicknesses varied, and the dryness differed too.
There was only one pile I liked. It was the right size and had clearly been left out in the sun for several days.
"How much for all of this?"
"Where do you live?"
When I told him where I stayed, the young woodcutter made a counteroffer before I had even begun bargaining.
"If I deliver it to your house, I’ll give it all to you for one hundred copper coins."
It seemed a bit expensive, but there was too much firewood for me to carry alone. Rather than hiring a porter separately, it was better to let the woodcutter handle it.
"Fine. Let’s go."
As I stepped in to pay with coins, I caught a strangely foul sweet smell from the man’s body.
"What is it?"
"...Nothing."
The woodcutter tied the firewood bundles securely and hoisted them across both shoulders with a rope.
I led the way, and the woodcutter followed behind me.
Carried by the winter wind from behind, that foul sweet smell kept pricking at the tip of my nose.
To think I would smell that again in Seochon.
It made me uneasy, and I even wondered if something was wrong with my nose.
No. This was a smell you could never forget, even after a single whiff. No herb in the world could produce such an alien scent.
Opium.
That was the smell of opium being burned.
Opium was almost a cure-all.
It could bring down a raging fever, stop a cough, ease diarrhea, and soothe any pain as if washing it away. Even men screaming because their arms and legs had been severed would quiet down if they took opium.
But it was also terrifyingly addictive. Once the effects wore off, the user would suffer appalling withdrawal.
That was why anyone who ever touched opium kept seeking it out. They would stop eating, stop sleeping, and do nothing but smoke opium until they withered into a skin-and-bone wreck and dried up to death.
At first I had thought of using it as emergency medicine, but after witnessing the end of an opium addict, I never touched the stuff again.
The woodcutter looked perfectly normal.
His eyes were steady, and even with a mountain of firewood on his shoulders, he followed along without wavering.
He must have started opium not long ago.
When we got home, I stacked the firewood in the shed. The shed was roomier than it looked, so there was still space left. I ordered more firewood on the spot.
The woodcutter roughly estimated how much more would be needed to fill the shed, then nodded.
"If I stretch it, it’ll take about seven days. My mother isn’t well, so I can’t stay away from home for long."
"Is your mother seriously ill?"
The woodcutter let out a sigh, his face dark.
"It’s a chronic illness. The physician said there’s no hope. Isn’t it a son’s duty to ease her pain, at least?"
Now I understood why he could reek of opium and still seem so calm.
He wasn’t using it himself. He was using it to make his mother’s last road a little less painful.
Opium was difficult to get and expensive besides. I wondered whether the money from selling firewood would even cover it.
The firewood problem was solved; now it was time to get dry rations and jerky.
I had already eaten through the supplies I brought when I returned home, little by little.
Most people setting out on long journeys would stop at an inn, no matter how shabby the place, to have a meal.
Very few wanted to chew on dry rations with no taste at all, or jerky that was foul-smelling and tough.
There were plenty of places to eat in Seochon. Inns, taverns, and even pleasure houses.
I had no intention of leaving home again now, but after so many years living like a wandering drifter, I felt uneasy unless my bundle was packed full of dry rations and jerky.
They were perfect for a meal when I did not want to go to an inn.
Unfortunately, Poongcheon Inn did not carry dry rations or jerky.
"Well... there aren’t many people looking for them. The other inns are probably the same."
Just as Gu-sam had said, I checked several other inns, but they all gave me the same answer and shook their heads.
The few that had stock carried dry rations that were so old bugs had chewed through half of them, and jerky that had dried into a hard twist I could not possibly put in my mouth.
Since they did not sell well, no shop specialized in them.
After asking around, I eventually reached a drifter’s inn in an outer alley.
It was where Tang Se-yeong, while running from the pursuit team, had hired three swordsmen.
When I went inside, martial artists living only for tomorrow licked their lips and glared at me with ominous eyes.
They looked like people hunting for some fool to fleece. I had been ready to give them a clean shot if they tried anything, but after sizing me up for a moment, they all looked away and went back to their business.
Since most of the customers were martial artists, the drifter’s inn, as expected, had proper dry rations and jerky.
"We have them in three grades: low, middle, and high. Which would you like to see?"
"Let me see the middle grade first."
The low grade existed purely to make people recoil and ask how anyone could eat that. There was no point in even looking.
There was not a huge difference between the middle and high-grade dry rations, but the jerky was very different depending on the grade.
The middle grade was passable, while the high grade had fewer off smells because it used spices.
I planned to eat them here and there while training through the winter, so I bought four catties each of the middle-grade rations and high-grade jerky.
"That’ll be half a tael of silver in total."
The innkeeper rubbed his hands together with a slick smile.
"...Damn expensive."
"The jerky is high grade, after all."
"The meat used for jerky is just the toughest cut of beef or pork, isn’t it?"
"As you can tell from the smell, there isn’t the slightest trace of gamey odor, is there? And the texture is so tender. That’s all thanks to our inn marinating the meat thoroughly in a special seasoning mixed with fine liquor and expensive spices when making the jerky."
After paying, I wrapped the dry rations and jerky in oiled paper and put them into my bundle.
Just as I was turning to leave before trouble started, I paused.
A face that did not belong in a drifter’s inn was scanning the room. He was not even wearing a blade on his back or waist.
It was the young woodcutter who had sold me firewood yesterday.
As though he had found the face he was looking for, the woodcutter hesitated and walked toward a table by the back door.
He sat across from a middle-aged man with sharp eyes, glanced around, then took a money pouch from his chest. After checking the money, the middle-aged man handed over something wrapped in paper.
The woodcutter checked the contents and nodded.
The middle-aged man who had finished the exchange vanished through the back door. The woodcutter also tucked the item away and stood.
He walked while warily watching the drifters glaring at him, then his eyes met mine.
He jerked in surprise and froze for a moment, then quickly looked away as though he did not know me and hurried out of the inn.