Footprints in the Snow
Snow fell.
Heavy, thick snow fell.
My body temperature dropped.
I thought my clothes were far too thin.
—Huff… huff….
Without the aid of even a single strand of internal energy, relying solely on the pure strength of my body, I kept my feet moving steadily. I was trying to raise my body temperature artificially to ward off the cold. With every breath, white vapor puffed out from beneath the face mask that covered me up to the tip of my nose.
Winter was not over.
The Central Plains were vast.
The Jianghu was boundless.
I had heard that more than nine-tenths of the people living on this Jianghu continent spent their entire lives in one place without ever setting foot in another region. Until just a short while ago I would never even have dreamed of coming here, yet now I was advancing into that very land.
—He’s a very close friend of mine, so I can guess, but he’s probably there by now. If only for that bastard younger brother of his.
I recalled the second target among the Oho-samhwa that Cheongunryong had told me about: Jin Gabok of the Golden Brow Sect.
[Golden Brow Sect, huh. I never heard of that sect in my time. Must be a place with a short history.]
—Clink.
I moved my left hand, which wore the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet. As expected, a metal gauntlet was weak against the cold. I rummaged through my bundle and pulled out the heated pebbles I had buried deep inside. Gripping them, I opened one side of my chest and tucked them into my clothes. From the outside I now looked like a one-armed man.
“I’m not that knowledgeable about the martial world, but even I have never heard of the Golden Brow Sect. If it had any real reputation at all, there’s no way I wouldn’t have caught wind of it while scraping by in the capital’s underbelly.”
[A typical minor sect.]
At the words “minor sect,” I gazed out at the distant horizon.
“…Yeah. A minor sect, I suppose.”
I climbed the mountain path. The slope grew steeper. I walked an endlessly long white road. The sun set. The sun rose. Twilight fell, stars appeared, the moon rose, and then once more the golden light of dawn broke.
Suddenly I looked back.
Only my footprints remained.
“….”
I turned around and walked backward.
[Why are you walking backward?]
Mumyeong asked.
“…Just because.”
[Hmm.]
After a beat, Mumyeong continued.
[It would look neater if you made those splayed footprints a bit more straight.]
“….”
[I used to do that sometimes when I was alive. Walking and walking until I got so lonely and solitary that I thought if I looked at my own footprints while walking, I might feel a little less alone.]
I was walking my own story. A story no one recognized, no one acknowledged, and no one watched. Even if I suddenly clutched my chest and collapsed right now, no one would know. The people of the world would keep living exactly the same way—as if a being like me had never existed from the beginning.
I had no family.
No friends.
No lover.
That was why there would be no one to find my corpse. I had once wondered whether anyone would cry beside my body when I died. I snorted a laugh. There was no need to ponder it.
Forget laughing or crying—there’s no one who would even come in the first place.
I recalled the days after my mother’s death, when I had been beaten and driven out. After starving for days, the cheap sword I had bought snapped and was thrown away. When I glared, the gatekeeper beat me with a birch club until I cried. I felt as if I had been stripped naked and cast into the world. I was trying to do something, yet I felt infinitely short of this world’s standards.
What have you been doing not accumulating even a single strand of internal energy at that age?
I remembered the face of the examiner who had scolded me.
That, that guy’s eyes look like a heretic’s!
I remembered how he had hastily averted his gaze and cleared his throat the moment our eyes met. I had dreamed of climbing to the mountain peak and crawled endlessly upward, but when I came to my senses, reality was a sewer. Not the peak—the bottom of the underground. What was even more despairing was realizing that what I had thought was the bottom had yet another underground beneath it.
—Slither.
From one side of my chest rose a discomfort like the damp mud residue clinging to a corner of a sewer where wastewater flowed. Some people said that pain which does not kill you only makes you stronger. That was true. It did make you grow. But that did not mean the pain got better. If someone smiled and said “It was like that” while beautifying the pain, it meant that even at the time he had possessed a little leeway. If you truly felt pain that turned your soul inside out and made you want to vomit, that pain followed you for life. Moreover, that pain provided the driving force that pushed you to the extreme until the very moment of death.
I did not want to know. I never wanted to realize that the expression storytellers sometimes used—“I was so furious I wanted to smash my head against the wall and die”—was not a metaphor but a literal description. Even if that pain was the root that had made me who I was now and allowed me to grow tenfold, twentyfold, if I could choose, I would choose to live without ever knowing such a fact. It was something that gnawed away at me that deeply.
Heavy snow fell. All noise was buried beneath the heavy yet light cotton-like flakes. The snow that had once covered only the soles of my feet had now risen past my ankles and beyond.
From a merchant caravan I met along the way, I bought a smelly dog-skin fur cloak for one silver coin.
[That’s a rip-off.]
Mumyeong remarked.
[One silver coin for that old, rotten dog-skin fur cloak?]
“I’m the one who knows best right now that it’s a rip-off. But what choice do I have?”
Mumyeong sighed.
[Come to think of it, you buttoned the negotiation wrong from the very start.]
“I think so too.”
I had happened to meet the caravan on the road. Seeing me shivering in the cold, they told me they had a leftover fur cloak and that I should buy one if I needed it. In the process I had unconsciously revealed just how desperately I needed it, and from that moment the initiative passed to merchants thoroughly seasoned in such situations. When I came to my senses, they had handed me the dog-skin fur cloak after receiving one silver coin, speaking in the tone of men who were selling at a loss. The only consolation was that it was three layers rather than a single one.
[Some consolation that is.]
Mumyeong muttered. I was trying to console myself that it had been a reasonably good purchase, but with Mumyeong constantly needling me my insides twisted just the same. This world was still not easy. It would be the same even on the day I accumulated ten gaps of internal energy instead of three like now.
It was while I was climbing the mountain path in a foul mood that it happened.
“Hehe, I thought business would be slow because it’s winter.”
With a heavy thud, the snow piled on the trees poured down. We were deep in the mountains. I was always dressed in black martial robes. Black robes stood out sharply against the white snow. From between the flickering tree shadows, human figures walked out one by one. A large saber of the sort a blue-faced thug would carry came into view.
Green Forest bandits.
“Hey, mister. Where are you hurrying off to in this heavy snow?”
A bandit wearing a wolf skin like a vest approached me. Those who looked like underlings swaggered behind him, each tossing out a line.
“Just spare a coin, just one coin. Ehehehe.”
“Ha, damn. What’s a man doing walking around without a woman? Your lower half must be empty.”
—Huff… huff….
White vapor puffed from my mouth with each regular breath. My pupils shifted left. My pupils shifted right.
—Clack.
The pebbles fitted inside the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet rolled with a friction sound.
[Seven in front. Three in the rear. One in the tree.]
—Huff… huff….
I slowly bent at the waist, scooped up a handful of snow, slightly lifted my face mask, and put the snow into my mouth.
—Huuuuff….
With that final breath, no more white vapor came from my lips.
[Don’t kill them.]
“What?”
[In other words, don’t splash blood.]
Mumyeong whispered quietly.
[It’s the cloak you just bought. It’s a whole silver coin, you know.]
“…You’re being sarcastic.”
I let out a short sigh.
“Chi, Brother Chilsa.”
One of the underlings frowned.
“That bastard seems weird.”
The smiles did not leave their faces, but their steps slowed as they drew closer. They were feeling a sense of incongruity.
“Is this guy a mute who swallowed honey!”
“Cutting to the chase. Hand over everything you have.”
I answered quietly.
“Money? Why should I?”
“Think of it as the price for treating us disrespectfully. In a word.”
He cleared his throat and dusted his hands.
“All this extortion is justified. If you don’t want to die, obediently—”
I opened my mouth, frozen cold.
“I don’t even have money to give you guys.”
After a moment I quickly added,
“Really.”
“Is this bastard joking.”
The leader’s voice changed.
“This won’t do.”
He adjusted his grip on the saber.
“This bastard thinks it’s a joke because we’re only talking!”
The leader charged. He fixed his hold on the huge saber and swung it with full power toward my neck.
—Kaaang!!!!
The saber trembled. It had been stopped by a single index finger of my left hand, encased in the black iron gauntlet that had shot out from my bosom.
“You, you son of a bitch! Playing games where!”
The Green Forest leader’s arm muscles twitched. The saber began to flutter madly.
—Hwaak.
The cloak was flung open. The left hand wearing the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet shot out.
—Kararang! Karang!
Sabers swung from every direction bounced away with eerie sparks. The bandits cried out in surprise.
“Wh-what!”
“Steel gauntlet?”
I deflected every saber that came at me with only my left hand. While doing so I spoke to them.
“Wait. I have something to say.”
The leader’s saber stopped abruptly. He seemed inwardly relieved by my words. Steam rose in puffs from his shoulders as he lowered the blade.
“Why, are you trying to surrender even now?”
“I’m curious—how many times have you robbed people while sitting here today?”
“What?”
It was not the kind of question a normal person would ask. That was why their reaction was natural.
“Why does that matter?”
“It’s important.”
A bandit in the back laughed as if the whole thing were absurd.
“Five people. This is the only path leading to Guryong Village after all! And it’s also the territory of our Palwasun Green Forest!”
“Five people?”
“Yeah! Is there a problem!? Are you going to demand punishment for that like some champion of justice?”
I pointed at them and muttered.
“Mumyeong, I’ll settle it with those guys. Is that okay?”
[Hmm.]
Mumyeong trailed off as if calculating for a moment, then agreed.
[Alright.]
“Then you won’t nag anymore about getting ripped off on the dog-skin fur cloak?”
[If this makes up for the loss. However, I will continuously advise on the Host’s economic activities and money management going forward. You mustn’t waste.]
—Thud.
The bundle on my shoulder dropped onto the snow.
“Wh… what. What are you saying right now!”
The Green Forest band hesitated. Especially the leader who had briefly exchanged moves with me stepped back mercilessly every time I approached.
“Hmm.”
I hesitated. This was honestly the first time, so it felt extremely awkward. I scratched the face mask covering my lower face and muttered.
“Hmm, as expected, Blood Death Sect again this time?”
[Good idea.]
Mumyeong answered quickly. I cleared my throat and spoke in a deliberately solemn voice.
“Impudent bastards. From now on, think of the punishment I will mete out to you as the price for picking a fight with the strongest group in the Jianghu—the Blood Death Sect. In other words.”
I cleared my throat and dusted my hands.
“All the extortion that will follow is justified.”
An intense silence hung among the Green Forest group for a moment.
“H-Blood Death Sect?”
“No way. That strongest assassin group in the Jianghu…?”
The leader flailed his hands and shouted.
“W-wait! Teacher! Just a moment—!”
—Pfft.
My figure vanished. A desperate ghostly wail resounded through one corner of the snow-covered mountain.
“A-atchoo!”
So Yeomgyo sneezed through her cascading black hair.
“Lady So Yeomgyo! Are you alright?”
Baekho, who had been doing paperwork beside her, opened his eyes wide in surprise.
“Ah, I’m fine. Just the weather suddenly getting chilly these days.”
With a nasal voice, So Yeomgyo wiped her mouth with a handkerchief.
“You seem to be staying up too many nights. Please don’t overdo it and rest in your chambers…”
“Still, the documents I had to look at today are all done with this.”
So Yeomgyo collapsed face-down on the desk with shaded, sunken eyes.
“Ah, I really thought I was going to die. At first I wondered how I was going to finish all this, but if you keep at it, it eventually gets done…”
—Creak.
“Sect Leader. I’ll stack the approval documents here!”
An assassin placed a stack of documents as tall as his upper body on the desk and disappeared.
—Rustle….
A few sheets fell from the newly added pile onto her face.
“…Baekho.”
“Yes, Lady So Yeomgyo.”
Still with her head buried in the desk, So Yeomgyo raised a finger and pointed beyond the door.
“Wreck that bastard.”
“Yes.”
Baekho sprang up and kicked the door open as he rushed out.
“B-Baekho-nim?! Why… why me?”
“Don’t you know the rule that document submissions are only after the Sect Leader has lunch and one shichen later, when she’s in the best mood!”
Along with a distant scream came the sound of a thorough beating. So Yeomgyo muttered with her face pressed to the desk, cheek squished.
“Ah, damn it, this Jianghu doesn’t have a single day without incidents.”
The brush fell from her hand with a soft clack.
“I’d rather be out in the field blocking the Blood Cult or the Demon Cult. That would be easier.”
Muttering weakly, she blinked her Flame Eyes. She pulled the documents off her face and, still lying face-down, weakly began to read through them.
“…What’s this from Luoyang again. There shouldn’t be a Blood Death Sect branch there.”
Between her cascading black hair, her eyes scanned the papers.
“Huh? What. Wait…”
Her eyebrows twitched. She grabbed the next document.
“This document… wait, the next one too?”
She flipped through the mountain of papers. Flipped the next, and the one beneath that as well.
“What, what? This one too? Even this?”
Her hands grew faster and faster. Slowly her body straightened.
—Paaat!
Red energy burst from her eyes, and the desk began to shake as if it would explode.
“Th-this… this!”
Clutching documents in both hands, So Yeomgyo roared.
“Moyong Bi, you bastard, what the hell are you doing running around using the Blood Death Sect’s name!”