Drive the Tiger to Swallow the Wolves
BOOM!
Steeped in demonic qi, Mujin had no need of a sword.
With a single gesture he tore apart the five water bandits nearest him.
"Y-you bastard…!"
The startled pirates seized their swords again—
CRASH!
—only to be smashed apart by the next sweeping blow.
Since time immemorial, Wudang had reigned supreme in the arts of internal energy. Their power was Myeonmyeon Bujeol—unbroken and unending. Inner force flowed without pause, piling upon itself until its weight alone crushed all opposition. Layer upon that the rampaging demonic qi, and who could hope to stand against it?
And more than that—
"Th-this bastard's eyes…"
Even the water bandits who had swaggered without fear now faltered.
Those eyes. Scarlet blood-light poured from them in streams; he was drenched in gore and still laughing like a beast. How could anyone not be terrified?
I had just unleashed Mount Wudang's mad tiger upon a pack of pirates.
Grrrr…
Look at him—reason gone, growling with a majesty that filled the shore.
"GRAAAAH!"
Roaring as he charged, Mujin's bare hands slaughtered without hesitation. Overwhelmed by that presence, the water bandits no longer rushed him as before. They fell, one after another.
"You useless fools! Out of my way!"
Seeing his subordinates too cowed to mount a proper counterattack, the pirate with the great moon-blade vaulted forward and struck at Mujin.
BOOM!
An attack that made full use of a heavy weapon. A man who knew how to handle his armament.
But did he really think thrashing a madman would make him listen?
All it did was stoke the fire.
The interference seemed to have sent Mujin's rage soaring. The blood-light in his eyes deepened; demonic qi surged until his unbound hair whipped about him, and an almost ghostly aura clung to his frame.
"Y-you—!"
The great-blade pirate had every right to be unnerved. There was no flinching left in Mujin—only denser killing intent.
I could leave the rest of the water bandits to him. He would not stop until every drop of unsealed demonic qi was spent.
Hmm. Using a tiger to devour a pack of wolves—the Strategy of Driving the Tiger to Swallow the Wolves.
It felt deliciously worthy of the Jegal family. My mood brightened at once.
"So? Just the two of us should be more than enou—?"
Jegal Mun-Hyeon glanced back at the people in the prison cage and broke off with a wry smile.
At the sight of Mujin indiscriminately pulverizing water bandits, they stood with mouths agape, bodies trembling in fine shivers. One parent even clutched a child and covered the little one's eyes.
To them, their savior might have looked far more terrifying than the pirates. In the end, what they saw was simply another man of the murim.
BOOM!
The great-blade fighter could not overcome Mujin. The more he attacked, the more frenzied his opponent became, until at last the man faltered for a single heartbeat—and became prey.
One sweeping blow burst his skull.
The fight ended more anticlimactically than expected.
Well done, my disciple. That's how it should be. Anyone who received my final insights had better manage at least this much.
The wounded, barely able to move, had lost all will to fight and only tried to crawl farther from Mujin.
Mujin himself looked exhausted. His upper body heaved violently with every breath; most of the demonic qi in his body had clearly been spent.
That was fine.
Ordinarily, once a man fell into demonic nature he would not stop until every scrap of demonic energy was gone, walking straight into self-destruction. But Mujin's demonic qi was sealed. Only up to the third seal. Beyond that he could not open it, and so could not use it. His body would be drained, but his life would not be in danger.
Still, already seized by frenzy, he sought new prey. His gaze turned.
Grrrr…
Then it locked onto the people in the cage.
"GRAAAAH!"
Anything living was something to be annihilated. He sprang in a single bound.
"Aagh!"
The prisoners recoiled in shock, crowding deeper into the wooden cell.
Futile. What strength did a timber cage possess? One gesture and they would all be dead.
Except—
CRACK!
Jegal Mun-Hyeon stepped into his path and swung the Eunhangon with all his strength, smashing Mujin across the skull. Mujin slammed face-first into the sand.
"No!"
Grrrr…
Outraged at the blow, Mujin lifted his head and unleashed killing intent at Jegal Mun-Hyeon—
CRACK!
"Enough!"
—only for Mun-Hyeon to hammer his head into the sand again, voice iron.
Grrrr…CRACK!
Grr…THWACK!
This little bastard—trying to bite his master… well, someone as good as a master!
If he did not listen the first time, Mun-Hyeon would hit him until he did. Mujin's fury meant nothing. He had already burned through most of his demonic qi fighting the pirates. And when a head under that condition took a severe shock—
"Ugh…"
The demonic qi that had invaded his mind receded. Mujin grimaced in pain and finally came back to himself.
Shock therapy. There was a reason for the old saying: if a thrashing fails to make someone listen, consider whether you simply have not hit them hard enough.
"Young Master… just what…?"
With his demonic qi spent and finally suppressible, Mujin looked up with resentful eyes.
Jegal Mun-Hyeon grinned down at him.
"You idiot. Don't you understand?"
"Sir?"
"How did it feel—walking through the dark?"
"W-what do you mean…?"
"You can't just suppress it, or just burn it away. The demonic qi you carry is a power that amplifies through emotion. Better to unleash it and make it know it is yours as well."
"Ah…"
At those words, Mujin recalled the preface of the Gwanghongyeol.
—Boil the blood with hatred. Burn with rage.
A martial art true to emotion. The kind that took hatred and fury as kindling and amplified power in a single breath.
He knew? He has never seen the formula, never even heard it…
Once again Mujin felt how formidable Jegal Mun-Hyeon truly was.
"Now sit and govern the demonic qi with the power of the Dao. Little remains after what you spent, so wind your own energy around it slowly until the two become one."
"S-surely not…?"
"Indeed. All of this was to awaken you…"
Jegal Mun-Hyeon spoke like a sage who had attained the Way. He even casually clasped his hands behind his back.
"Ahh…"
Told that everything had been for his sake, Mujin could not suppress his awe. Tears welled. Respect for the man before him swelled like a tide.
He forbade me to call him so—yet how can I not name him Master? Not with my mouth, but with my heart. I will engrave him under that name.
"Ahem! Did I not tell you to sit? Will you waste the chance I so carefully made?"
"…No, sir."
At Jegal Mun-Hyeon's bark, Mujin sat without another word and began circulating the Six Yang Heart Method. Blood still ran from his scalp.
I didn't hit him out of spite—only to bring him around. The force was simply… a little excessive.
All that remained were the water bandits groaning from their wounds.
Jegal Mun-Hyeon regarded them with satisfaction, then said quietly,
"What are you waiting for? On your knees. All of you. Unless you'd rather die."
Spoken with a bright smile, the threat needed no shouting. The pirates dropped to their knees in neat ranks at once.
Pain from their wounds? They had just watched this man beat that terrifying tiger of a Mujin into submission with a few swings of a staff. What rebellion could they hope for? Their leadership was already dead…
Thus the subjugation of Silver Scale Stronghold was finished in short order.
And historically, after crushing a mountain or water stronghold, it was only polite to collect a little spoils. It was not that he coveted money. Ownerless goods simply ought to be gathered.
"Bring out everything you've stockpiled. Every last scrap."
"…Yes, sir!"
The water bandits dragged their limping bodies about and hauled forth the wealth stored in the stronghold. Quite a pile. Squirrels preparing for winter, the lot of them…
But—
"Is that all?"
"Sir?"
"If I catch you holding something back for a rainy day, I'll make you wish you'd died clean."
"…"
Whether the threat worked or they simply read the room, the bandits who had been watching him carefully produced the items they had tucked into their pockets.
Aigoo. These bastards… true to their profession till the end.
Jegal Mun-Hyeon shook his head and ordered every load transferred to the boats.
"Anyone who can sail—hands up."
Several raised their hands.
"Good. From this moment you will take us to Danpung County."
"What? But our wounds—"
"Shall I just kill you instead?"
"…!"
One threat, and a casual flash of the Eunhangon, turned them into models of enthusiasm.
Should have done that from the start. Killing a few more pirates won't put money in my pocket or rice in my bowl. Better to make them sail the boats we need. I can't make exhausted villagers walk home—there are children and old folk among them.
"Oh, and just in case: don't even think about swimming for it."
As a precaution, Jegal Mun-Hyeon splayed his fingers and flicked them toward the river.
Whoosh—!
Five streams of finger-wind split the air and plunged into the water. Moments later, blood bloomed across the surface and fish floated belly-up.
"That's called the Water-Bottom Needle. Best thing there is for catching fish. You understand what I'm saying, right?"
The water bandits swallowed hard and nodded vigorously.
"All right then—for Danpung County!"
"Yes, sir!"
Having crushed the stronghold and commandeered the pirates' boats, Jegal Mun-Hyeon set off at a leisurely pace for Danpung County with the kidnapped villagers. Only after they had bound every wounded pirate tight, following his instructions, did the villagers' faces ease.
Mujin, still needing to regulate his demonic qi, required more time circulating energy and withdrew into a cabin.
Now came the purpose Mun-Hyeon had set aside until this moment. How long he had waited for it.
He approached the ninety-year-old man he had already marked and spoke. Time was precious.
"Elder."
"Yes, Young Master!"
The old man sprang up and answered with utmost deference.
"Please, sit. And speak comfortably."
"I cannot. How could I be anything but respectful to the one who saved my life?"
"It's all right. I only did what a son of the Jegal family ought to do."
"Ah…"
The elder's face filled with emotion, as if to say, In this day and age, such a young man still exists…
"There is something I wish to ask."
"Please speak."
"You said you were once of the Beggar Sect, did you not?"
"I was, once. I served as a Transmission Beggar under the Yeongsan branch of Hanyang. My working name then was Yangpunggae—the Wind-Measuring Beggar. I rose as high as a Three-Knot disciple before age forced me into retirement. That was some thirty years ago now."
Three Knots at sixty. Retirement made sense. Unless one's realm was high enough for internal force to hold back the body's decline, continuous service was nearly impossible. Three Knots was also too low to be recognized as an elder.
But a Transmission Beggar—a carrier of intelligence. He would know things.
"Then do you by chance remember a time about sixty years ago, when Wudang was searching for the Ascension Method?"
"Of course I remember. How could anyone forget the days when the entire murim united?"
"Then do you also know how news of the Ascension Method traveled at that time?"
"Hmm…"
The old man Yangpunggae fell silent, sifting through memory. It was an ancient matter; an immediate answer would be difficult, and the recollection itself could hardly be perfect. Too many years had passed.
"Ah! Yes—I have a faint recollection."
"Would you tell me?"
"Well… at the time there was talk that an immortal lived at Dongho."
Dongho was the great lake below Wuhan.
An immortal?
"Ordinarily we would have laughed it off as idle rumor, but those days were different. We had to learn everything we could. Young Master may not know this, but the reason the search for the Ascension Method began was that the evil of the world—"
"Let's skip the secondary explanations."
"Pardon?"
"Start with the immortal of Dongho."
"Ah… understood."
Mun-Hyeon had barely headed it off. From the flow of conversation, the man had been about to launch into some tirade about the Evil Seed.
"Ahem. In any case, because legend claimed an immortal dwelt at Dongho, my colleagues and I combed the area around the lake down to the last louse."
"And?"
"But… it was a fraud."
"What?"
"You know the type—men who play at being Taoists, build something like a hermitage, delude the people, and peddle talismans."
"…"
"Claimed he'd learned sorcery from an immortal who lived under the water, or some such nonsense. But we had to report something, so we confiscated every Taoist text he owned and sent them all to Wudang."
"Ah…"
Damn. Wrong trail.
He had never expected an easy find, but still…
He was about to end the conversation when—
"Was it Hoejeong Ib-yeong, Yeongche Ib-jun? So many years ago, yet because of that Evil Seed bastard our superiors hounded us so mercilessly that I still can't forget it. Anyway, there was a talisman with that incantation written on it, inside the hut where the fraud lived."
"Hoe—Hoejeong!"
At Yangpunggae's muttered words, the disappointment that had filled Jegal Mun-Hyeon's face blazed into color.
Hoejeong Ib-yeong, Yeongche Ib-jun.
When the energy is purified and enters the realm of spirit, preparation to form a spiritual body is complete.
It was the first verse of the Ascension Method as he remembered it.
Then—
"Elder!"
"Yes?"
"Where was it? The place where that hut stood!"