Father and Daughter
Mt. Qingcheng was a place where the ancient pines and bamboo forests never lost their green, year after year, through every season.
After crossing Moonlight Pond, veiled in thick mist, and passing through Dawn Grotto, the cave where rumors said Zhang Sanfeng had once preached the Dharma, they finally saw the Shangqing Palace before them, said to house the Grand Supreme Elder Lord.
"You’ve come?"
Before the palace stood an old man with narrow eyes and prominent cheekbones.
At a glance, it was easy to tell he was not the sort to bend easily.
"Qingcheng is just as it always was, no matter when I come. The scenery is so lovely, and the Taoist halls are grand yet refined. I’m sure the Sect Leader is quite satisfied."
The man who received the greeting was also elderly, his voice carrying an easy calm. Looking more closely, he was the same man who had once invited Im Cheongwol and Ak Seo-ah to sit with him in the pavilion.
"I appreciate the praise, but Qingcheng’s bearing is not about appearances. What matters is people, and even more than that, the spirit they have upheld."
"When Kunlun said as much the other day, it struck me as rather true."
"...As one would expect."
After the brief exchange of pleasantries, the two men slowly made their way inside.
"I was quite surprised when I received your letter. We searched the whole of the Central Plains and never found a trace. I’d already assumed you had hidden yourself away beyond the borders and more or less forgotten the matter."
"A lantern beneath its own shade is the darkest place of all. Who could have imagined she’d concealed her face with disguise arts all these years?"
"Even so, I never imagined she’d be working in an inn. Without the Beggars’ Sect, flaws like this do become much easier to expose."
"Don’t even bring up those beggars. Just thinking of them makes my skin crawl."
A little later, when the door opened and they stepped into the room, the first things to catch the eye beyond the curling incense were the portraits of the Grand Supreme Elder Lord and Lu Dongbin.
"Incense smells the same whether it’s Taoist or Buddhist. The teachings may differ, but the way one honors those above is not so different, is it?"
"Strictly speaking, Buddhism does not make a practice of enshrining anyone."
The old man called Sect Leader replied without the slightest stir, then passed the incense burner and strode toward the person tied to the chair.
"I’ll say this in case you’re wondering: to keep her alive, three of our disciples lost their lives and five more were gravely injured. We did our utmost, so don’t blame us for how this ended."
The woman’s disheveled head hung low. Blood had dried in dark red crusts over every wound that showed through her clothing, staining her horribly.
"Then I’ll leave you to it."
The Qingcheng Sect Leader, Ling Huayun, left the room. Once he was gone, the person with her head bowed slowly lifted her face.
Her hair, matted with blood and sweat, clung to her cheeks so tightly that her features were hard to make out, but there was no mistaking that she was a woman.
Yu Baekheon, the Leader of the Wulin Alliance.
From the mouth of a man who had never wavered in the face of anything, a rare and deeply weary sigh slipped out.
"If only you’d run farther away. If you had hidden yourself beyond the frontier, none of this would have happened today. If only you’d at least crossed the Yangtze."
At the sorrow-laced voice, the woman forced her lips apart with difficulty.
"...Father."
Her voice was so thin it seemed it might snap at any moment, and with each uneven breath, Yu Baekheon’s expression grew darker.
"So I still am your father, after all."
He raised a hand and pressed at several acupoints, and black blood suddenly surged from the woman’s mouth.
Thanks to that, her breathing steadied for a moment, but from the look of her condition, it was only the last flicker before death.
Yu Baekheon’s gaze turned complicated as he gently stroked her hair, almost as though she were a child.
"Though you were only my adopted daughter, I raised you with no less care than my own blood. I imagine you cannot deny that."
"...I know."
"So... if we were ever to meet like this again, I always wanted to ask you something."
The question he had already repeated a hundred times over in his dreams, holding his daughter’s hand all the while.
At last, those words slipped carefully from Yu Baekheon’s mouth.
"Baek Yeong. Why did you betray this father?"
The woman swallowed a mouthful of blood-specked saliva through her torn throat.
"Because your world... is a world where far too many people must bleed..."
Yu Baekheon let out an involuntary breath.
"...And so you let that man go?"
"I let go of the child in my arms... yes."
"You should not have done that. See where a moment’s compassion led you. The righteous world of the martial arts is already split apart, and now the swords are pointed at one another."
Their gazes tangled in the air between them.
"Now more blood will be spilled than you feared. Perhaps it will cover all of the Central Plains. If only you hadn’t let that man go that day, none of this would have happened."
"But..."
In the woman’s fading eyes, the ember that had been dying down flared once more with sudden, fierce light.
"What am I supposed to do when I see the blood of the innocent? It turns my stomach. In that moment, I understood. Your affection and the feelings in my own heart... could never coexist."
"Those who had the power to stop it yet hid themselves away, never even daring to speak of righteousness—if this is not sin, then what is?"
Even after twenty years had passed, the father before her had not changed in the slightest, and her eyes trembled with a complicated mixture of emotions.
"Even if what you say is right... the child did nothing wrong, did they? Much less... not even a child of the Im family..."
In the end, she could not finish the sentence, and her eyelids slowly drifted closed.
Feeling that the final moment had come, Yu Baekheon, not as the alliance leader but as a father, carefully brushed his daughter’s face with his fingertips.
"I heard you spent this time with a martial artist from the Dang Clan. Was he any good?"
For this one moment, the woman let go of everything and smiled faintly, no longer as a martial world figure but as one man’s child.
"You may not think him worthy, but... to me, he was more than enough. He was very..."
The father wiped the tears gathering at the corners of his daughter’s eyes and slowly nodded.
"If you liked him, then I’m sure I must have liked him as well."
"Did you... really...? If that were true... I’d be so happ—"
When her eyes finally closed completely, Yu Baekheon gently gathered her into his arms by the shoulders.
"Rest first. Before long, this father will be joining you."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Once Cheongwol entered Chengdu, she felt a mood unlike any she had known until then.
Burly men strode past with bundles on their shoulders, shouting at one another, while merchants’ cries overlapped and hammered at her ears from every direction.
It was a suffocating sight, a place so crowded she could hardly have found room to set foot no matter where she looked.
Cloth merchants shook out bolts of silk with loud snaps, and every tavern had thrown open its doors, spilling the smell of liquor into the street.
Only after squeezing through that chaos did the end of the main road finally come into view.
Thinking she would only need to walk a little farther to escape this asura-like pandemonium, she turned the corner.
What lay before her was an ocean of people, and Cheongwol froze in place as if nailed to the ground.
"Miss Cheongwol! Are you all right?"
"Seo-ah... I feel like I’m about to faint..."
Cheongwol swayed and, for the first time, showed a weak side of herself. Ak Seo-ah immediately grabbed her arm and supported her as if urging her to keep going.
"Just a little further. The Dang Clan is right ahead."
"Hm...?"
All she could see were black heads everywhere, and buried in the crowd, there was no way to tell where anything was.
"Look over there."
Following Ak Seo-ah’s pointing finger, Cheongwol turned her eyes and spotted a gate standing tall in the distance.
It was far away, but its authority came through clearly all the same.
The only problem was that, by any normal means, there was no way they would ever reach it by the end of the day.
"Should we just come back another time, when we’re free?"
She gave an awkward laugh and tried to slip away, but Ak Seo-ah shook her head and did not let go of her arm.
"I’m new to this road too, but experience tells me that the moment Miss Cheongwol wants will never arrive if we just wait for it. Besides, I don’t know what you have to worry about so much."
With that, she drew out the clan leader’s token she had been keeping carefully in her robes and shook it before Cheongwol’s eyes.
"We have this clan token right here!"
Had there ever been a moment when she looked so reliable?
Cheongwol squared her shoulders and followed Ak Seo-ah as she pushed through the crowd toward the Dang Clan.
Of course, in the process, sharp glares rained down from all around them.
But if it meant escaping this place, Cheongwol didn’t care in the slightest.
They strode forward with the air of victorious generals returning in glory, and when they reached the entrance, the Dang Clan martial artists were, as expected, scowling as they blocked the way.
"You’re the first ladies I’ve ever seen try to cut in so brazenly. Go back to the end and line up again."
"I’m so astonished I can’t even be bothered to stop you. Aren’t you young ladies ashamed of yourselves?"
Even under the martial artists’ scolding, Ak Seo-ah did not flinch at all.
Instead, she lifted the clan leader’s token, bright and gleaming, and spoke with complete confidence.
"I am the eldest daughter of the Shandong Ak Family."
Along with the token, there was the utterly composed air of someone almost offensively certain of her own standing.
What more verification could they possibly need?
The martial artists exchanged a few glances, then nodded to one another.
And then, looking at Ak Seo-ah, who wore a smug, triumphant smile at the corners of her mouth, they spoke with calm courtesy.
"Miss, the entrance for honored guests is the other side."