The Secret of the Nine Dragons Painting

Gu-yang Baek and Dong Yeon-hwa said nothing for a long while. They met each other's eyes as though weighing a secret that had lain buried for decades.

At last, Gu-yang Baek broke the heavy silence and spoke, as though he had finally made ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up his mind.

"Gang, I believe the time has come for you to know as well. But before that, let me make one thing clear. The Ouyang Clan does not possess the Celestial Martial Emperor's 'Treasure Map.'"

Ouyang Qiangang's eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly. 'Was what Hwang Nodae told me nothing more than an idle rumor, then?'

But Gu-yang Baek's next words overturned his expectations entirely.

"We have no Treasure Map. But we do have something even greater."

Gu-yang Baek slowly raised a hand and pointed toward one wall of the training chamber. Hanging there, at the tip of his finger, was a mounted scroll painting.

"What you are looking at right now — that is the legacy our first Family Head left behind, and the wellspring of the power with which our family once commanded the martial world of Jiangxi."

Ouyang Qiangang's gaze turned to the scroll. At first he had taken it for an ordinary ink painting, but now, after Gu-yang Baek's words, the very same picture struck him in an entirely different light.

The scroll stretched roughly ten feet across and half that from top to bottom, and at its head was inscribed the title Nine Dragons, Ten Thousand Mountains. It was a monochrome landscape rendered purely in gradations of ink, yet the energy welling out of it was nothing short of overwhelming. Tens of thousands of jagged, improbable peaks filled the frame, perilous ranges winding and coiling between them. The brushwork was rugged yet exquisitely fine, its living vigor seeming to drag the viewer bodily into the painting.

Deep in the valleys, a mysterious vapor — mist or cloud, no one could say — billowed thick and low, and through it nine dragons writhed, each wearing a different form. One roared skyward as if ascending to heaven. One, sporting with a flaming pearl, conjured endlessly shifting illusions. And another lay coiled deep in the mountains, hidden from sight, contemplating the world in stillness.

Forest and tree, rock and waterfall, cloud and dragon — none of it was mere scenery. It all felt like living, breathing qi itself, like some vast cipher concealing a meaning too profound to name. The longer he gazed, the more he sensed at once the boundless vastness of heaven and earth and the inscrutable law hidden within it, until awe rose in him unbidden.

"This is... a secret manual?"

Ouyang Qiangang asked, his face etched with disbelief. Gu-yang Baek nodded, a complicated smile on his lips.

"It is. Our first Family Head — the founding patriarch Gu-yang Dam, the Iron Palm Grand Hero — obtained this painting from the descendant of an attendant who had served the Celestial Martial Emperor all his life."

"So the legend was true."

"It was. It is not the true insight the Celestial Martial Emperor himself set down, no. But a portion of the Emperor's martial learning — what that attendant glimpsed and overheard at his master's shoulder and came to grasp — lies hidden inside this Nine Dragons, Ten Thousand Mountains, divided into five supreme arts."

He went on, his hand still gesturing at the painting.

"But those arts were never written out as formulas or diagrams of the human body. They are hidden in the shapes of those forests and trees, in the grandeur of the rocks and ranges, in the spirit and movement of the nine dragons among the clouds. Only one whose insight reaches all the way to the heavens can decipher them and make them his own."

Ouyang Qiangang swallowed. The impression the painting had given him was no illusion. The thing was, in itself, one enormous encrypted text.

"Our first Family Head was a genius of the martial arts rarely seen in any age. He spent his whole life in contemplation of the Nine Dragons, Ten Thousand Mountains, and in the end he managed to wrest two supreme techniques from it: the Limitless Return-to-Origin Heart Sutra and the Thirty-Six Forms of the Gale Cyclone Chain Palms — the two arts the world knows as the Ouyang Clan's exclusive legacy."

Pride and deep regret weighed equally on Gu-yang Baek's voice.

"With those two techniques alone, the first Family Head was hailed as the finest martial artist in Jiangxi, and he lifted our Ouyang Clan into the ranks of the great families. But in the hundred years and more since, not one of his successors has managed to pry even a single additional technique out of that painting. No descendant gifted as he was has ever been born."

His gaze settled on Ouyang Qiangang.

"And forty years ago, amid the chaos of the Fifth Orthodox-Demonic War, even those two techniques were lost. I, too, have spent these last decades burrowing into that painting, and to this day I have not so much as laid a finger on a single thread."

A heavy silence flowed through the training chamber. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠It was a history that held, undiluted, both the glory and the despair of the Ouyang Clan.

Then his stepmother, Dong Yeon-hwa, who had kept her silence until now, spoke softly. Her voice was composed, but complicated feeling churned beneath it.

"Gang, your father speaks the truth. The Ouyang Clan holds no 'Treasure Map.' But the Treasure Map that leads to the Celestial Martial Emperor's 'Grand Canon' exists beyond any doubt."

Ouyang Qiangang's and Gu-yang Baek's eyes swung to her at once.

"That Treasure Map is divided into four pieces, and my father — your maternal grandfather — chanced upon one of them."

She pointed at the jade figurine of the Cloth Bag Monk, which Ouyang Qiangang had absently drawn from his robes and was turning over between his fingers.

"That figurine you carry is a curiosity my father stumbled upon at the very moment he obtained his fragment of the Treasure Map. Yet even he never once pierced the secret hidden inside it. He sent it to you on the chance that you — the boy they call a genius of the age — might find something."

Struck dumb, Ouyang Qiangang stared down at the figurine in his palm. That this was one of the heirloom treasures the Celestial Martial Emperor had left behind — he had never even imagined it. 'Then that heart sutra that appeared to me as a hologram... was that something the Celestial Martial Emperor left behind too?'

While he was lost in that thought, Dong Yeon-hwa's voice came again, this time laced with resignation and sorrow.

"The reason my father never bathed the Ouyang Clan in blood to take his 'fragment of the Treasure Map' is that he believed your father was the only person in this family who knew where it lay."

"Ah."

"But your father is a man of iron will. Even with a blade at his throat he would never carelessly give up that secret, and my father knew it full well. And so... he sent me here."

"Mm..."

"The design was to see my son — a child carrying the blood of the Ouyang Clan — seated as Family Head, so that the secret would pass to him of its own accord. That plan is already in its thirteenth year."

"A man of extraordinary patience."

"That he is. But my father had no other choice. If word of this 'Treasure Map' ever escaped into the world, every power under heaven would rise and march, and then not even our Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor could escape the river of blood. He had no choice but to move in this deep a concealment."

Dong Yeon-hwa went on with a sigh.

"My father believes that if he joins the fragment he has already secured with whatever the Ouyang family holds, he can come within reach of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠truth of the Martial Emperor's Grand Canon."

"You keep saying 'one fragment of the Treasure Map,' Mother. Does my grandfather know nothing of the Nine Dragons, Ten Thousand Mountains?"

"Nothing."

"Ah... you never told him."

"A daughter married out is an outsider, after all. My bones will be buried in Ouyang soil. However much of a father he may be, he is not of this house — so how could I let slip its most dangerous secret to him?"

Then, unbidden, a deep curiosity about Dong Hyeon-do himself took root in Ouyang Qiangang. A man who had kept so vast a design running for more than thirteen years — a ruthlessness that spent even his own daughter like a piece on a game board.

"Mother... what sort of man is my grandfather, exactly?"

At the question, the air in the training chamber seemed to freeze for an instant. Dong Yeon-hwa gave no answer; she only stared at some empty point in the air. Over her beautiful face, in place of its usual frost, a deep shadow had settled. Only after a long while did she part her dry lips.

"He is..."

Slowly, laboriously, she picked out each word.

"It is difficult to sum him up in a single phrase. To him there is only one value that matters: the endless prosperity of Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor, and absolute power. Everything else is a secondary concern."

Ouyang Qiangang waited quietly for her to continue.

"Ordinary people want to see everything accomplished while they still live, do they not? So they grow impatient, and now and then they overreach... My father is fundamentally different from such men. He does not rise and fall with whatever result stands before his eyes."

Resignation and fear were plain in her voice.

"For my father, only the great design matters — the one meant to be completed across generations. If your own generation cannot fulfill his will, your children's generation will. And if that, too, proves not enough, then a grandchild... someone among his descendants will inherit the will in turn and see the plan through to the end. That is how he lives."

Dong Yeon-hwa swallowed a bitter smile. It was a smile so mournful it ached to look at.

"That is why even this long game of mine — the thirteen years I have passed since marrying into this Ouyang house — is to him no more than a single piece of an immense picture, one step in the process. He is a man who can wait. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠For the glory of Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor, he would gladly wait a hundred years."

Her final words scattered, heavy and cold, into the chill air of the chamber. Only then did Ouyang Qiangang begin, dimly, to grasp the terror of Dong Hyeon-do — and the weight of the life that man had pressed down onto Dong Yeon-hwa's shoulders. A bitter smile touched his own lips. The name he had privately pinned on Dong Hyeon-do — Treasure Map zealot — was no exaggeration whatsoever.

Ouyang Qiangang was speechless for a long moment. Then he turned to Gu-yang Baek.

"Father — did you know all of this about Mother?"

Gu-yang Baek nodded slowly.

"...I did. Some years after we were wed, your mother laid her heart bare to me — about her birth family, and about me. And I told her everything in return. Because before she was the daughter of the Lord of Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor, I chose to believe she was my wife, and the mother of you, Cheon-gi, and Cheong-cheong."

At those words, the rims of Dong Yeon-hwa's eyes turned red. Ouyang Qiangang looked from one to the other. Only now did he understand it all: the deep anguish hidden behind his stepmother's coldness, his father's loneliness and crushing sense of duty, and the love of two people who, knowing everything, had trusted and leaned upon one another all the same. As heavy as the secret the two of them shared, their trust ran far deeper and held far firmer than he had ever imagined.

Akasha's voice rang through his mind. Ouyang Qiangang nodded without a word. It felt as though he had uncovered a great deal — but in truth, he had only just set his first foot at the mouth of the mountain of secrets that still lay before him.

In the underground chamber, a heavy silence pressed down on all three of them. Only after a long while did Gu-yang Baek manage to open his mouth.

"Yes... my father-in-law is a man possessed by the 'Treasure Map.' And he believes a piece of it rests inside our Ouyang Clan."

Gu-yang Baek lifted his hand and pointed to the great Nine Dragons, Ten Thousand Mountains hanging upon the chamber wall. In his eyes burned a fierce pride — and with it, the weight of a fate that had trailed him like a shadow all his life.