The Enchantress 1

Two days by boat along the Zhongjiang River that flows beside Chengdu in Sichuan, and the channel suddenly seemed to swell wider still—until a river of truly immense breadth revealed itself.

The moment the boat entered that broadened current, it began to rock hard from side to side.

—Splash!

Icy water slapped against the gunwales.

"The current's fierce—everyone hang on!"

"Whoa! Young Master So-ryong, careful!"

"Yes, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Commander Gu Pae."

At the boatman's warning everyone grabbed the creaking rails and braced themselves, faces tight with tension. Beside me, however, my elder sister stood alone with a completely unbothered expression, simply pointing at the widened waterway.

Once the boat fully climbed onto the great rolling waves and the rocking finally settled, her bright voice reached me.

"So-ryong, this is the Yangtze. The longest river in the Central Plains."

So this is the Yangtze—the lifeline of the Central Plains and one of the longest rivers in the world?

The knowledge that the river I was sailing was the Yangtze stirred something fresh and deep in me. In my previous life I had wanted to visit it at least once.

Not for any grand reason—simply because it had been home to the Yangtze river dolphin, declared extinct in that other life. There was also the cute little finless porpoise they called the jiangtun. Even someone who loved insects and reptiles as much as I did had to admit dolphins are animals everyone adores. I had always wanted to come here; now I was actually riding a boat upon those waters, and the feeling was newly profound.

"Wow, the river really is enormous."

"From here we just follow the Yangtze all the way to Wuhan, So-ryong."

Our final destination was Anhui, home of the Namgung Family. But before we reached Anhui we had to stop at the Murim Alliance headquarters in Wuhan. My father-in-law's errand was to deliver an additional supply of the Blood-Weeping Tree's poison to the Alliance.

"We put in briefly at Wuhan, then disembark at Anqing—that's what you said, right?"

"That's right, So-ryong."

I had expected we would need carriages or light-body arts to reach Anhui, yet our journey had turned into a river voyage. I had thought a boat would at least be faster than walking or riding, but once we entered the main stem of the Yangtze the vessel put on a completely different speed. Carried by the broad, smooth current beyond the rails, the boat was truly flying forward.

"At this rate we'll arrive incredibly early."

I asked with open admiration at the sudden acceleration. Elder Sister smiled.

"Even so, it will still take half a month."

"I see."

The Central Plains really is a huge landmass, I thought, then decided to raise the worry that had been sitting in my chest while we both gazed past the gunwales.

I can't help fretting about this…

In my haste I had gotten Father-in-law's permission and left at once, but during the boat ride I had started wondering whether a place like the Namgung Family would simply hand over something called Ice Jade without a fuss. Something that precious would not be given up lightly.

"Miss, while we've been sailing I've been thinking… if Ice Jade is truly that rare, will the Namgung Family really give it up as easily as you said? I keep worrying…"

"Just trust me, will you? Don't tell me you don't trust me?"

"O-of course I do."

I said I trusted her, yet the doubt was real. Elder Sister insisted everything would work out, but I had good reason not to take her word at face value. She had claimed she would handle the trade goods for her "friend" herself, yet once we were on the boat she had said something hard to believe.

And sure enough, when I asked, she pointed casually at my chest.

"We have that, so of course they'll hand it over. I've heard Ice Jade is of little use to her. That will definitely suit her better. She needs something she can eat, and Ice Jade can't be eaten—whereas that can, right?"

"Well, yes, but… will it really be all right?"

I fidgeted with the object tucked against my chest. Elder Sister smiled and nodded.

"Of course. Don't worry so much, So-ryong. What's worthless to one person can be precious to another. And that doesn't look worthless to me at all."

"This?"

"Yes."

Surely nothing will go wrong…? I fretted, still toying with the thing in my chest, then asked her something else that had occurred to me.

"Miss Hwa-eun, you said what we need is yin energy that carries cold qi. What exactly is that? I get the general sense of a cold force, but… Grandfather explained yang and yin to me once, yet it was hard to follow…"

The lizards needed yin energy imbued with cold, and I wanted to know precisely what that meant. A keeper has to understand the food he offers.

I can't feed the kids something I don't even understand.

If a keeper is ignorant about their diet, he has already failed. Grandfather Mandok Singun had given me a rough outline of yang and yin, but the explanation had been dense, and lizards are normally cold-blooded creatures that dislike the cold—though Seol and Bing seemed different.

"All right. Since it will also help with martial arts, I'll explain carefully. Listen and remember."

"Yes, Miss."

"Yin energy is the qi that produces yin-transformation, the opposite of yang energy. Among the energies of heaven and earth it is the kind that sinks and gathers. Ordinarily it is a force that suppresses the activity of living things. So the damp, fearful feelings that restrain life, darkness, cold—all of those are types of yin energy. We speak of yin energy that carries cold qi, but in the end it is simply one variety of yin."

"Uh… then is yin energy a bad thing?"

I more or less understood, yet the part about suppressing activity made me wonder if it was harmful. Elder Sister shook her head.

"No. The opposite of yin is yang energy, the qi that produces yang-transformation. It rises and disperses and leads the natural world, but because it drives the activity of living beings, too much of it is harmful—it ages you faster and burns your vitality away. The reason Seol and Bing need cold qi is that their bodies themselves are essentially cold qi, perfectly suited to drawing it in. That is how they grow—by absorbing cold."

Like some kind of recharge, maybe?

Elder Sister's words were still a little hard, but far easier than Grandfather's. She smiled gently.

"Has that cleared things up a little?"

It had, yet with the shallow knowledge from my previous life I still believed yin and yang needed to be in balance. So I asked about that.

"Yes… ah, but there's one more thing I'm curious about. I always thought yin and yang had to harmonize, the way men and women do. If creatures like Bing and Seol are made entirely of yin, how do they achieve that balance?"

I had simply wondered whether opposite things needed to form pairs. Elder Sister's face suddenly went scarlet and she began to stammer.

"Eh… th-that… w-well… maybe you should check later how the two of them achieve yin-yang harmony…?"

"Pardon?"

Suddenly she was telling me to "check later." At first I had no idea what she meant.

Wait—yin-yang harmony? Elder Sister, you don't mean…?

The more I thought about it, the clearer it became: she had definitely been possessed by some lewd demon. While I was still wondering how to handle the awkwardness—

"S-So-ryong, you ask such shameless things without the slightest hesitation!"

"Excuse me?"

She was the one with the lewd demon, yet now she was treating me like some heretical pervert. When I stared at her in pure disbelief, she tried to escape the crisis by pointing across the river and shouting.

"L-let's talk about something else! Ah! So-ryong, l-look over there! It's a baiji!"

"Baiji?"

I followed her finger. Something leapt from the water. A dolphin.

"Huh? That's—!"

The Yangtze river dolphin I had always wanted to see was jumping clear of the surface. Of course—extinct in my previous life, but not here.

The dolphins swam right up to the boat and began leaping, showering Elder Sister and me with spray.

Early night on a hillside of Huangshan.

The wind rose, carrying petals that had already bloomed and were now falling.

—Whoooosh.

The wind coiled once around the hill and then lifted the petals skyward. Just as those petals were about to ride the breeze high into the heavens—

—Shiiing!

A sword stroke flashed under the moonlight, leaving a long trail of light. The petals' ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠brief journey on the wind ended right there. With a single slash the wind scattered and every petal sank straight back to the ground.

The woman watching the carpet of petals sighed.

"Haa… still not enough…"

What she had just unleashed was the third form of the Imperial Sword Style—Imperial Crushing Strike. The first two forms piled inner force onto the blade, adding the weight that was the essence of heavy-sword principle; the third form then released that accumulated power to crush the opponent. That was the heart of the Imperial Sword Style.

She sighed because the third form was still imperfect. Had it been flawless, the sword pressure would have reduced the petals to powder; instead they still held their shape, only weeping a little flower juice.

Not yet twenty, she had already mastered the Namgung Family's Boundless Azure Sky Sword Art, entered the Imperial Sword Style, and could even unleash its core third form—yet her face showed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no satisfaction. Some might call it excessive greed, but she had good reason to slip away to a lonely Huangshan foothill far from the family and train in secret at night.

"Sister, let's go back. If we stay any later we'll definitely be caught. If Father finds out again I'll get scolded too. Swords are fine, but you're the eldest daughter of the Namgung Family—please take better care of your body."

As her younger sister said, the eldest daughter of the Namgung Family was named Namgang Seol, and her title among the Three Flowers of the Murim was Flower King Peony. Squatting on a rock with a lantern in one hand, her little sister grumbled. Seol nodded with an apologetic look.

"All right. I understand, Eun."

The reason Namgang Seol brought her sister out to the Huangshan foothills so late at night to practice the sword was simple: martial training had been forbidden to her inside the family. More precisely, training itself had been forbidden. That was why the two of them sneaked out and she practiced with her sister's sword in secret.

"Sister, my heart's going to give out from worry. Can't you just stop until Uncle brings back the spiritual medicine? If you collapse again I'll be the only one scolded for not stopping you."

At her sister's fretting, Namgang Seol gave a bitter smile of apology. The reason she came all this way to train the forbidden arts, the reason her sister watched her with such anxious eyes—everything traced back to her illness.

Connected Meridian Syndrome.

That was the name of the disease she carried.

At first the entire family had believed it a blessing rather than a curse. Every secondary meridian in her body stood wide open, so she accumulated inner force swiftly and circulated true qi without the slightest obstruction—as though she had undergone a complete bone-and-muscle transformation. A body born for the martial path: Heavenly Martial Physique. Everyone, including Namgang Seol herself, had first taken it for a variant of that rare constitution.

But around her fifteenth year she learned that Connected Meridian Syndrome was no blessing. Concerned by her abnormally rapid physical development, the family invited the Needle Sage. After taking her pulse, Uiseon spoke with a grave face.

Innate qi—the original vital force a person is born with, the force that slowly dwindles with age until death. In Namgang Seol's body far more of it than normal was being consumed simply to keep her form perfect. Her skin white as white jade, her ink-black brows as though painted with a brush, her slightly bloodless peach-blossom lips—every feature that earned her the name Flower King Peony was the work of that innate qi.

If Severed Meridian Syndrome was a problem of blocked or broken channels, Connected Meridian Syndrome was the reverse: too many channels stood open, so even the innate qi that must be conserved was freely spent maintaining a flawless body.

In a sorrowful voice her father had asked:

Pulling herself from thoughts of her illness, Namgang Seol answered her sister.

"All right. I'll do as you say, so forgive me."

"You mean it, Sister?"

"I do."

Her little sister brightened with joy. The answer, however, was a lie.

Following the lantern-bearing girl, Namgang Seol thought to herself that she was like the oil flame inside that very lantern. When the oil burned out, she would vanish. Therefore, before the oil was gone and she disappeared, she was determined to complete the Imperial Sword Style at the very least.