The Second Disciple
“I told you not to shed blood, and now you’ve learned how to kill a man without spilling a single drop?”
“That’s not fair. I just poked him—thwack—and he went urk… No, I only cut the shaft of his spear and he collapsed on his own.”
I hauled the unconscious brat over to a shady spot and laid her down. Horses in this era were little better than ponies, and even carrying just me and my master was already pushing them toward animal cruelty. There was no way we could manage a carriage on these mountain trails, let alone add another passenger. Abandoning her, though… only a complete lunatic would consider that.
Put simply, our lifeboat still had a few empty seats, and we’d found a kid floating on the wreckage. Food was plentiful and space remained, so saving her was the obvious choice.
“Master, I’ll go find us something to eat.”
“Did we not still have jerky left?”
“I’ve eaten so much of it my breath reeks. I might as well gather some Sichuan peppercorns and boil them into a broth…”
This was an age without chili powder—without even black pepper. Though I vaguely recalled pepper having been used since Roman times… I wasn’t sure. If I ever met an international trader running the Silk Road, I’d ask. Whether I’d actually meet one was another matter, but it couldn’t hurt to remember.
I unslung the bow from my waist, strung it, and nocked one of the carefully wrapped arrows from my pack. I tossed damp leaves onto the campfire to raise smoke, then rubbed it over myself to kill my scent. Walking slowly with the wind at my back and the fire behind me, I eventually heard the rustle of grass ahead.
Bingo. A deer.
---
“Nnngh…”
“Awake, are you?”
“Eek?!”
Lu Zhi offered the girl a waterskin as she opened her eyes. Most people used bamboo tubes or gourds, but my disciple preferred the cleaned stomach of a beast—the way northern barbarians did. He called it a botabaek, claiming the wooden stopper came from stretching a bladder. A ridiculous story. The stopper was clearly paulownia wood, not cypress, but given how fluently he sometimes spoke foreign tongues, Lu Zhi assumed it was some nomadic word. In truth it was simply an English “bota bag,” though many nomads did use similar handmade flasks, so the guess wasn’t entirely wrong.
“What… is this?”
“Water with honey. You were unconscious for nearly two hours; your strength must be drained. Drink and gather yourself.”
To Lu Zhi, his disciple was a profoundly strange man. Whenever they played Go, the boy produced openings, middle-game sequences, and endgames no master in the Central Plains had ever seen. Every move carried the weight of countless others’ struggles and the accumulated wisdom of generations of players. It wasn’t that the disciple was some unprecedented genius surpassing Confucius or Mencius; rather, he seemed to embody the entire history of the game—its rivalries, its defeats, its rebirths.
Almost as if these were the orthodox moves of another world…
With that thought, Lu Zhi smiled faintly at the girl who was now sipping the honeyed water like a wary cat, glancing sideways at them both.
“I am Lu Zhi. What is your name?”
“…Zhao Yun of Changshan.”
“I see. Did my disciple—the rotten scoundrel—do anything untoward to you?”
“…?”
“Baigyu. The man called Gongsun Zan of You Province.”
“H-Hiik!”
She dropped the waterskin and began to tremble. There were no obvious injuries, but the disciple must have done something awful—or shown her something awful.
What was that phrase he used… “trauma”? What a bizarre word…
“It’s all right. He does no harm to the innocent. You needn’t tremble so.”
Lu Zhi tied off the leaking waterskin and set it on the horse’s back.
Thud. Thud.
Footsteps approached from beyond the trees. Because he had walked with the wind at his back, the thick smell of ash and the metallic tang of blood still clung to him. Gongsun Zan returned with a deer the size of his own torso slung over one shoulder.
---
“You said you were gathering peppercorns, yet you return reeking of blood.”
“Ah, well, there was an eight-pointer I couldn’t just walk past.”
“I told you not to shed blood…”
“I brought plenty of peppercorns too. And now that our numbers have increased, we’ll need to recalculate our rations anyway.”
“U-Um…”
It was the kid.
“What, you’re up?”
“Did… you save me?”
Was this child born with killing intent like me, or had she been desperately fighting back against naturally occurring bandits? I still wasn’t certain, but she didn’t seem to have harmed my master, so my guess leaned toward the latter. A natural-born psychopath would have turned the old man into mincemeat by now. Even nearing sixty, he had once served in the army. No serial killer, no matter how vicious, could hope to wield a blade against a living Ma Dong-seok.
“Before that, let me ask you one thing. Those two men you were fighting with spears—were they villagers trying to stop you, or were they bandits?”
If I wasn’t sure, I could simply ask. At her age she wouldn’t have been trained to hide her expressions or emotions, so the answer would show on her face the moment she heard the question.
…Bandits, then.
“Bandits, huh.”
“Y-Yes?!”
“If you want to survive, learn to hide your expressions first.”
There wasn’t much else to say. A child wandering these deep mountains alone meant something serious had happened, and offering empty comfort without knowing the details would be pointless. I turned my attention to the deer, roughly butchering it for smoking while setting aside the offal that needed to be eaten quickly. I tossed in peppercorns and a few strips of jerky and started a meat stew.
After pitching a simple tent near the fire and watching my master and the kid spread out their bedding, I hung the cleaned deer hide over a nearby tree stump. Sleeping outdoors in times like these was practically suicide, but the distances between villages in this era left us no choice. I’d take the second watch, so for now I focused on working the hide while the crackle of the fire served as background noise.
Scrape… scrape…
It wasn’t much—just removing the remaining fat and meat so the hide could dry—but even that small effort made the difference between something sellable at market and something worthless.
“Um…”
The kid’s voice reached me while I was still working.
“What.”
“Why did you save me?”
“Why would I kill you?”
“…”
“Because of the rumors?”
“You know about them?”
“I spread them myself. Bandits are like insects—they spring up naturally in the mountains. Hunting them one by one is too much trouble, so I spread rumors to make them run.”
“Then… was it all a lie?”
I turned to look at her. Most children would have been terrified by my size, but the tension had apparently left her; she was now staring straight into my eyes with surprising boldness.
“Half of it.”
“And the other half?”
“There’s no such thing as a perfect lie in this world.”
“You’re… a villain, aren’t you?”
“Listen, kid. If you want an easy life, becoming a proper villain is the way to go.”
“…?”
“When a bad man occasionally does something good, people say, ‘He’s not so bad after all.’ But when someone known as good does something bad, people say, ‘I knew it,’ and tear him down with everything they have. That’s human nature.”
It was simply how people worked—East or West, ancient or modern. It was also why “bad boys” were popular. Humans adapted to the extraordinary with surprising speed, yet felt genuine revulsion when something they believed ordinary suddenly behaved extraordinarily.
“If you want an easy life, be a villain. Look at the bandits—how comfortable they are. No guts, no conscience, no pride… living like that must be peaceful.”
“I… don’t want to live that way.”
“Then you’ll have to walk through hellfire. Planning on revenge?”
“…No.”
“Then what?”
“I want to make sure no one else becomes a victim like me.”
“Big dream.”
“My father always told me to dream big.”
“Did he now.”
“Yes.”
It was an incomprehensible way of thinking. Or perhaps… if I were still the fresh academy cadet I once was, I might have understood. I wasn’t sure.
“Well then, you’d better do it. Even a path of flames can be a path of flowers if you walk it right.”
“Won’t you teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
“How to survive.”
What was this now—another Liu Bei? Leaving survival lessons to me? And why did every kid who wanted to learn from me ask for survival skills specifically?
“Teach her.”
My master’s voice drifted from inside the tent.
“She’s a lost child. We may not be able to raise her, but showing her how to cook is the least an adult can do. It’s not difficult, is it?”
“Tch… Fine. Understood.”
Well, if the man holding my leash had decided, there had to be a reason.
“It’s going to be hell. Prepare yourself.”
“Yes.”
I liked the look in the kid’s eyes.