Something's Off
"Heh. Now this I can hardly believe."
Jeong Geum-sik muttered it in a hollow voice. That a martial artist who had not even reached First-Rate could execute Transposition — a technique he himself had yet to complete — pointed to only one conclusion.
So the Shaanxi Four Chivalrous Heroes have been hiding their true strength all this time.
Seo Joo-cheon had weighed whether to unfold the Time Dilation Authority in front of Jeong Geum-sik. Saving Jang Sun's daughter, however, would not wait, and he already knew that anyone watching would take the Authority for a movement art of the Peak Realm rather than a supernatural gift. He used it without hesitation. Jeong Geum-sik was, besides, a man he was almost certain to become entangled with later; showing this much ability seemed acceptable. He had also taken into account that if he displayed nothing at all, Jeong Geum-sik was more than the type to look down on Po Un.
Having sealed Pyo Seon's acupoints and subdued him, Seo Joo-cheon spoke to the pensive Jeong Geum-sik.
"Take this one outside."
Handing over the culprit drew an unexpected look from Jeong Geum-sik. The gesture carried another meaning as well: the credit for capturing Pyo Seon would go to him.
"I'll examine this young woman. Don't let the hall master in just yet."
Passing off the criminal and then turning to tend the girl himself — it was a fiercely chivalrous act, nothing like what one expected of an Unorthodox martial artist.
The more I see of him, the stranger he gets.
Jeong Geum-sik glanced back as he hauled Pyo Seon out, watching Seo Joo-cheon lean over the woman.
The two women whose yin energy had been drained to the last drop were already cold corpses. The one who still had her clothes on, however, was alive. Her acupoints had been sealed; she could not move, and only her eyes blinked. Realizing she had been pulled back from the brink of death, she wept without end.
"Wait just a moment. I'll release the seals."
Ordinarily, acupoint seals could be undone only by the one who had placed them. No one else could know which points had been struck, and a careless attempt at release could do more harm than good. There was, though, a quick way to find out. On the dead women's bodies, livid bruises marked every sealed point. After death, blood coagulated in a sealed meridian and the flesh there necrotized faster than anywhere else.
But when Seo Joo-cheon examined those bruises, he could not quite hide his dismay.
Ah. If I'd known it would be like this, I should have brought Kang Chu-mi.
Pyo Seon had chosen the women's most intimate places with deliberate care. The seals were concentrated around the chest and the groin — and he had even struck the Huiyin acupoint.
"You have two choices. The first is that I bring a woman who can release the seals. Fetching her will take about an hour. The second is that I do it myself."
A humble martial hall like this would have no female disciple with the inner energy to unseal acupoints. Bringing Kang Chu-mi, counting the time both ways, would take a full hour.
"Blink once if you want the first. Blink twice if you want the second. Which is it?"
The question had barely left his mouth before the woman blinked twice, fast and hard. In her position, she could not wait another hour. She had been sealed too long already, and there was the chance that no woman capable of the release would be found at all. Letting an unknown man touch her most private places was mortifying — but set against everything she had already endured, it was something she could bear.
Seo Joo-cheon followed her choice and began releasing the seals at once. He struck the last of them, the Huiyin included, then turned her over to free the points along her back.
The mute point must have come free, because the woman opened her mouth.
"They didn't seal my back."
Her body began to twitch, faintly at first. As the seals lifted and true energy started to circulate, she was already sending her own qi into the meridians that had been locked. A moment later she sat up.
"This humble one thanks you for your grace."
Having offered her gratitude first, she fell silent, and Seo Joo-cheon asked,
"Are you the hall master's daughter?"
The woman nodded, her face drawn and desolate.
"Yes. This girl is called Jang Hong."
"I'm glad you're unharmed."
Even as she spoke the courtesy, she gathered the dead women into her arms and broke down.
"Sister!"
She had lived with them as if they were true sisters, and Jang Hong wept without shame. In the original work Seo Joo-cheon had written Jang Sun into the story, but he had never created a daughter named Jang Hong. Reality, it seemed, had gone on forming characters he had never put on the page, shaping them to fit the world as it now was.
"The hall master is waiting outside."
"Ah—"
Jang Hong staggered out of the cave. A moment later Jang Sun's voice rose beyond the mouth of it.
While father and daughter found each other, Seo Joo-cheon dressed the dead women before anyone else could come in. Midway through, something hard caught against his hand on the cave floor.
What's this?
He swept the dirt aside and a pale shape showed through. Digging a little further brought human bones into the light. The sudden hope that the Five Realms of Southern Splendor might be buried here collapsed in an instant.
Did they bury an ancestor of the martial hall in this place?
The cave had been used as a closed-door training chamber; it was easy enough to imagine a forebear dying in the midst of cultivation and being laid to rest where he fell. Seo Joo-cheon put the thought aside and finished clothing the dead.
With the dead disciples still unburied, those who had come back alive could not give themselves over to joy. Jang Sun and Jang Hong least of all. Jang Sun set his remaining disciples to the funeral rites, and even in the thick of that work he found the words to thank Jeong Geum-sik and Seo Joo-cheon.
"I do not know how I can ever repay this kindness."
A little later, and his daughter might have been drained to a husk like the others and left for dead.
"Hero Po here is the one who saved your daughter."
Jeong Geum-sik said it plainly, as if keeping the credit for himself would have sat wrong.
"I heard as much from my daughter. I will repay this grace even if it costs me my life."
Jang Hong was the only child Jang Sun had. She could not have been more precious to him. Jeong Geum-sik slipped away from the exchange. Binding Pyo Seon properly and keeping the demonic energy suppressed would take some aftercare.
Once Jeong Geum-sik was gone, Seo Joo-cheon looked at Jang Sun and Jang Hong and asked, keeping his voice low.
"It may not be the most fitting moment, but there is one thing I would like to ask. I would be grateful if you answered me honestly."
"Please — ask anything at all."
Seo Joo-cheon glanced aside just long enough to confirm that Jeong Geum-sik was occupied with Pyo Seon, then spoke.
"Have you ever found a scripture of some kind at the pavilion — something handed down through the Jang clan?"
Calling the Five Realms of Southern Splendor a martial manual would have been a stretch. That was why he had said scripture.
The two of them looked at each other, then answered.
"How does Hero Po know of that? A year ago my daughter was cleaning the pavilion and dropped a bronze mirror into a crack in the floor. While she was searching for it, she found a scripture in a gap in the rocks."
"What was the scripture called?"
Seo Joo-cheon's heart was pounding.
"It had Southern Splendor Immortal Art written on it. Though to call it a scripture is almost too much — it was only a summary of the words Zhuangzi preached. There is not much value in it. Apart from the ancestral annotations interpreting the Master's teachings, there is nothing remarkable. Our own hall has dozens of annotated copies by later descendants."
They had taken the Southern Splendor Immortal Art for just another of those commentaries.
"Might I see that Southern Splendor Immortal Art?"
At the question, father and daughter looked at each other again, their faces troubled.
"I do not know why our benefactor would seek that book, but we do not have it now."
"You don't have it?"
Seo Joo-cheon felt his heart drop.
"It is a shameful matter for this hall, and I had not meant to speak of it — but since our benefactor asks, I will be honest."
The words came hard. Jang Sun held his silence for a moment. Jang Hong spoke in his place.
"Father's first disciple ran away with that scripture. I don't know why he took it, but after Senior Brother vanished, we realized the scripture had vanished with him."
"Ah. So that's how it was."
The story was so bleakly empty that hollowness overtook anger.
Of all things. The single most important opportunity Jang Hyeon-nam was meant to have — and it's been ruined like this.
Seo Joo-cheon could not let it go.
"Do you know where your senior brother went? Has there been any news of him recently?"
Urgency made the questions tumble out.
"I did once meet someone who said they had seen Senior Brother."
"Where?"
"They said they had seen him as a bandit. They ran into a bandit troop while traveling the mountains, and Senior Brother was the chief of the stronghold. They barely made it back alive because he recognized their face. That's why we say nothing to anyone about where he is. Father considers it a disgrace to the family and will not speak a word of it."
Seo Joo-cheon nodded without comment.
"Then only the two of you know."
"It is nothing to be proud of. There is no reason to tell anyone else."
Seo Joo-cheon let out a quiet breath.
"What was the disciple's name?"
He would have to find the man somehow. He needed the name.
"Gong Myeong. Diligent and brilliant — we had every hope he would be the talent to raise this hall."
Regret sat heavy in Jang Sun's voice.
"How did you know he had disappeared?"
"My daughter said she saw him steal the scripture and flee."
Seo Joo-cheon turned to Jang Hong.
"Do you know where Gong Myeong was seen?"
"They said it was a mountain on the crossing from Shaanxi into Sichuan, but I don't remember the name of the mountain very well."
Finding Gong Myeong, he suspected, was going to be miserable work.
"But how does our benefactor know of the Southern Splendor Immortal Art?"
Seo Joo-cheon gave the answer he had prepared.
"Years ago my late father met a descendant of the Soyo Martial Arts Hall and fell into a discussion of Zhuangzi. That was how he came to hear of the Southern Splendor Immortal Art. He said even as he listened he found it profoundly subtle, and that it stayed with him for a long time. I cannot be certain of the memory, but I believe the hall disciple he met was named Jang Uk."
"Ah! Then you met my elder brother."
Jang Uk was Jang Sun's older brother, a descendant of Zhuangzi who mixed freely with martial artists. The setting still had him traveling the jianghu even now. In the original work, Jang Uk had been written in solely to give the Southern Splendor Immortal Art a plausible path into Jang Hyeon-nam's hands.
Her suspicion eased, Jang Hong looked toward Pyo Seon.
"What do you intend to do with that man?"
"We'll have to turn him over to the authorities, I expect."
"Ah."
Jang Hong let out a small sigh and murmured,
"Pyo Seon will spend a few years in prison, then. Or the escort bureau may use its influence and pull him out early."
"The incident is far too large. Even the escort bureau will not extract him easily."
Jang Hong stared at Pyo Seon for a long time, then spoke to Jang Sun.
"Father, I would like to rest."
"Y-yes. Let's go inside."
"I am sorry we could be of no further help to our benefactor."
Seo Joo-cheon stood rooted where he was and watched Jang Sun lead Jang Hong into the martial hall.
What is this? This sense that something doesn't fit.
A strange dissonance had been eating at him for some time. Then a thought struck him, and he called Jang Hong back.
He had heard her say Pyo Seon in the middle of the conversation. That was what had been catching on his nerves.
"The two of you said it earlier, in the cave."
"Ah."
Seo Joo-cheon nodded, started to ask more, and then closed his mouth.
No. In the cave we never said Pyo Seon. We said Young Master Pyo. And we never once mentioned that he ran an escort bureau. If she claims she learned it from our conversation, that means Pyo Seon never gave his own name.
The dissonance turned into a crawl of gooseflesh. Seo Joo-cheon stood thinking for a long moment, then started off somewhere.
"Big Brother, where are you going?"
Ham Cheon-yeong asked, and Seo Joo-cheon answered,
"I'm going back to the cave for a moment. Watch Pyo Seon carefully. If the demonic energy flares again, it will be dangerous."
Ham Cheon-yeong answered quietly.
"Yes, Big Brother."
Seo Joo-cheon went into the cave and stopped before the white bones.
Will Character Search work on a skeleton?
He had only ever used it on the living. Whether bones would answer, he had no idea. From the moment Jang Hong had known the name Pyo Seon, the skeleton in the cave had been sitting at the back of his mind and refusing to leave. He gathered true energy into his eyes and attempted a Character Search on the remains.
Target: Human Skeleton
Status: Search Successful
Oh. It works. It actually works.
Seo Joo-cheon read straight through the skeleton's history — and sucked in a sharp, empty breath.