The Light Within the Bamboo Forest
"It seems this was the true identity of the flute sound."
At the place where the jade flute had been heard, the Beggar Clan disciples had found a rock that appeared and vanished with every ripple of the water's surface.
"Look here."
The Beggar Clan man waded into the water and, the moment the rock emerged, struck it with a blast of palm wind.
Wheeeeiiiii…
A flute's cry. Looking closer, one could see the wind passing through the tiny holes bored into the stone, shaping the sound.
"The water behind the rock is deep. People must have come searching for the source of the flute, wandered into the deeper water, and drowned."
"Mm…"
It made sense. The sound had truly been that of a flute.
The will-o'-the-wisps were the same.
A graveyard sat nearby. According to the Beggars, the exact cause was unknown, but strange lights often appeared near burial grounds. One man who had handled corpses claimed that certain substances released by rotting bones could gleam blue under moonlight.
One by one, the mysterious legends of Dongho were being dismantled by the Beggar Clan's investigation.
"People are like that. Most of them never investigate the cause the way we do. They simply see the phenomenon, cry out in wonder, and that is how legends spring up everywhere."
"I see."
Jegal Mun-Hyeon gave a small nod at the consoling words and let out a quiet sigh.
Already five sites had been reduced to nothing. Watching the legends analyzed into ordinary facts left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The Immortal of Dongho…
Had it all been nothing more than the idle talk of some fraudulent Taoist?
And so his steps carried him to the final place—the bamboo forest that fringed the southern shore of Dongho.
The wind rose. Bamboo stalks swayed, their leaves brushing together in a soft rustle that almost sounded like human voices.
The Beggar Clan disciples who had scoured the grove returned shaking their heads with apologetic faces. After failing yet again to find what Mun-Hyeon sought, they wore the expressions of men who had lost the world—and they had every right to look that way.
"W-we'll search a little longer."
"…Very well."
The beggars scattered once more.
"Haa…"
Mun-Hyeon sighed and dropped onto a boulder near the edge of the forest.
Had he been too optimistic? When he first heard the words "Spiritual Embodiment," he had been certain he would find something at Dongho…
In the end, there was nothing.
"Young Master Mun-Hyeon, do not be too discouraged. Even if an immortal does dwell here, how easily would he show himself to mortal eyes? If we search a little more…"
"I don't know."
Perhaps because his hopes had been so high, the disappointment left him hollow.
Yet after sitting only a moment he rose again, brushing the dust from his clothes.
Time had already flowed far. Disappointment? This was only one attempt. If he were going to collapse over something so small, he never would have begun.
Even if Dongho yielded nothing, somewhere under heaven a trace would remain. And he had not left Dongho empty-handed. Ya-cho and his subordinates would join the Beggar Clan branch on Yungjung Mountain, giving him eyes and ears across all of Hubei. That alone was enough. Through them he would be able to search still more places in the days ahead.
He would not give up. Never…
Steeling himself, Mun-Hyeon rose and spoke to Mujin in his usual tone.
"Let's go."
"Yes… but is that golden engraving?"
"Hm?"
Just as he turned, Mujin said something strange.
Golden engraving? What was the boy talking about now? The forest was nothing but bamboo; no golden characters were in sight…
"Peculiar script. Not Sanskrit… Hmm, I've never seen these characters before."
"What?"
"That staff at your waist, Young Master. It looks like some kind of iron baton, but the shape is unusual. An octagonal form is rare."
"…?"
At Mujin's words, Mun-Hyeon blinked.
He meant the Eunhangon. The characters Mun-Hyeon understood—but golden engraving?
Nowhere on the Silver Cold Staff was there anything resembling gold-inlaid lettering.
Puzzled, he drew the staff free.
"Huh?"
Just as Mujin had said, some of the characters now glowed with a faint golden light.
"W-why is it doing this?"
It was absurd. The thing had never reacted even when he poured inner force into it, yet now it was shining of its own accord.
The moment he turned the staff toward the bamboo forest, the gold deepened.
Wooooong—!
It vibrated finely and released a soft, resonant hum.
"Oh! How marvelous. You don't seem to be pouring energy into it at all, yet it sings by itself. Is this one of the Jegal Clan's divine weapons?"
Mujin's obsidian eyes sparkled with pure wonder, but Mun-Hyeon could find no words.
He would have to understand it first before he could speak.
Had this hunk of metal simply gone mad? Why was the same staff that never so much as twitched under inner force now throwing a golden fit—no, radiating light?
It was a divine weapon, true enough. He had taken it from the third vault, the deepest chamber of the Jegal Clan's treasure storehouse, the Hall of Martial Spirits. Yet aside from the name "Roadside Find"—something picked up on the road—no history had been recorded. An unidentified object.
"Hmm, so that is why it is octagonal… It contains the Eight Trigrams."
"What? The Eight Trigrams?"
"Yes. Doesn't the Jegal Clan also study formations? The Eight Trigrams of the One Origin, Two Poles, Four Images—or the Five Elements. Look here."
"…?"
Mujin, studying the Eunhangon with fascinated eyes, pointed to the tip of the staff.
On each face, three short lines were carved.
"These are the Eight Trigram patterns used by the Taoist schools. These three unbroken lines (☰) represent Heaven—the Qian trigram. The one with a broken middle line beside it (☴) is the Xun trigram, meaning Wind. Looking leftward in the order of Qian-Xun-Kan… this is Fuxi's arrangement of the Eight Trigrams."
Mun-Hyeon's ears pricked; his eyes flew open.
The Eight Trigram diagrams of Fuxi and King Wen. Both were of critical importance to formations; the Jegal Clan studied them in depth. The Eight Trigrams Formation itself had been born from them.
To think I only noticed this now.
The faces had been so crowded with unreadable characters that he had overlooked the trigrams. A Wudang Taoist had been the one to recognize them.
"Mm, these characters appear to explain each of the trigrams."
"Explain the trigrams?"
"I don't know if you've heard, Young Master, but the Taoist schools say Fuxi created the Eight Trigrams to contain the principles of change in all things—the workings of nature and every phenomenon that occurs in the human world."
"…"
"Qian is Heaven. Yang stacked upon yang, vigorous, firm, and dynamic. Heaven moves without cease; though it seems empty, it is filled with the energy that is the source of all things… or so it is written."
The words were difficult. When Mun-Hyeon frowned, Mujin smiled.
"In truth my own realm is not high enough to grasp the meaning either. I am only repeating what is written in the Taoist scriptures… Muryangsubul."
"…"
Mun-Hyeon kept his gaze fixed on the Eunhangon and found himself nodding.
It was always that way. The words of the enlightened sounded like nonsense to ordinary men.
"Still, it is curious. If this weapon was truly forged according to the principles of the Eight Trigrams as I suspect, then it must originally have been a Taoist treasure. How did it come to be bound by fate to the Jegal Clan?"
"…"
"Whatever the case, seeing it now in Young Master Mun-Hyeon's hands… as you once said, this too must be destiny. Muryangsubul."
Even as Mujin smiled and spoke the Taoist phrase, Mun-Hyeon's eyes never left the Silver Cold Staff.
A roadside find. Something someone had simply picked up. Its extraordinariness had been recognized, and so it had been stored in the deepest third vault of the Hall of Martial Spirits. Without any known history… and later, because no one could decipher its meaning, it had been left untouched by human hands.
Wait. Hang on—this…
Mun-Hyeon looked again at the glowing characters.
Kan (☵). The Kan trigram symbolized water.
A staff that might be a Taoist treasure. A water-symbol that lit and sang of its own will… and Dongho, where an immortal was said to dwell beneath the waves.
"Could it be…?"
His grip on the Eunhangon tightened. He lifted his head. His gaze was drawn naturally to the bamboo forest that swayed left and right in the wind, whispering its soft ssarrrk.
The Beggar Clan had already searched deep inside and found nothing.
Yet his feet carried him toward the grove as though something had seized him.
Wooooooong—.
The Eunhangon released a longer, deeper cry, pouring out light.
This could not be coincidence. Something lay within that bamboo forest—something the beggars had failed to discover.
"Young Master Mun-Hyeon? What is the matter?"
Mujin looked puzzled, but in that moment every nerve in Mun-Hyeon's body was fixed upon the bamboo.
There was something. He could feel it.
Crunch, crunch.
With each careful step, the dry bamboo leaves that carpeted the ground shattered. There was no need to study his surroundings for direction. The Eunhangon was leading him.
Mun-Hyeon walked on as though the light had stolen his reason. When he reached the very heart of the deep forest, the staff's radiance vanished like a candle whose wick had burned to nothing and gone out with a soft puff.
His steps halted.
Only then did he look around and realize once more that the forest held nothing at all—only the crunch of dry leaves underfoot and the soft brush of leaf against leaf.
"Huh? Mujin?"
Stranger still, Mujin was nowhere in sight. He had clearly been following right behind.
"Mujin!"
He shouted with all his strength, yet only his own voice echoed back before the bamboo swallowed it whole. No answer came.
What kind of trick was this? It felt as though a boundary had risen between the place where he stood and the world Mujin still occupied.
If the sensation was like this…
"Could it be a formation?"
That was the first thought that struck him. No—it was the only explanation that made sense. The reason the Beggar Clan had found nothing was because a formation had been laid inside the bamboo forest.
His heart began to pound, racing. If someone had set a formation here, then its master might well be the Immortal of Dongho.
But he could not simply remain trapped. With that thought, Mun-Hyeon began to search every corner of the grove.
No illusions rose to seize his mind; nothing moved to attack him. That suggested the formation was meant only to keep visitors out.
He needed to find the axis. If it was a formation, there would be some artificial mark.
Yet nowhere could he find a single trace of human hands. Of course not. If an immortal had laid it, how easily would a mortal discover the signs?
He searched and searched again… until a wearisome stretch of time had passed. Then Mun-Hyeon stopped, staring in puzzlement at an object hanging from a thick bamboo stalk that stood before him like the master of the grove.
It looked like a bamboo… no, like a fruit. No other tree bore anything, yet this one did…
"Is this perhaps bamboo rice?"
Depending on the species, a bamboo tree bore fruit only once in thirty, sixty, or even a hundred years. Legend claimed it was the staple food of the phoenix, that mythical spiritual beast.
But what was this sudden hunger that rushed over him?
His face twisted of its own accord. From the instant he discovered the fruit, the hunger had grown stronger and stronger until it felt as though his stomach lining had glued itself to his spine.
"Th-this…"
The pain that struck in a single breath was too vicious for even inner force to quell. Instinctively Mun-Hyeon reached for the fruit. It felt as though the thing itself were telling him to swallow it.
Grab!
The fruit he tore free entered his mouth. A brief, sharp tang on the tongue—then it melted away and slid down his throat like water.
And then—
"Ugh!"
Mun-Hyeon's eyes bulged wide. The hunger vanished in an instant, yet an enormous heat began to rise inside his body.
What… what is this? Could this be… a fortuitous encounter?
The situation was absurd, but a fortuitous encounter was never unwelcome…
His moment of delight lasted only a heartbeat. The instant he circulated his energy, Mun-Hyeon's face turned deathly pale.
It was a fortuitous encounter, yes… but this energy was Yeong-gi—Spiritual Energy.
Damn it all. He wasn't ready for this. He hadn't even formed a spiritual body yet.
He was finished.
This was exactly why one should never eat whatever one found lying around.