The Snow Human-Faced Spider
I never knew pretending nothing was wrong could be this hard.
I lifted the nearly empty cup and drank, trying to compose my face.
Back when the Eighth Elder of the Moyong Family had locked me in the basement, I had succeeded in copying the Plum Blossom Spinning Dagger for the first time without even realizing it, and I had been so overcome that tears had spilled out.
That old grudge had eased even a little, so remaining completely unfazed would have been the strange thing.
Perhaps to hide those fierce emotions, the voice that came next from me was ice-cold.
“Your preamble is rather long.”
Jin Gabok paused while pouring the wine and looked at me.
“Let’s stop the probing. We both have things we want, which is why we’re sitting here talking—me, and you, Jin Gabok. Isn’t that right? The idea that I simply admired your skill so much that I suppressed my anger and hurriedly agreed to talk…”
The cup left my hand and spun round and round on the table.
“That’s a story that only worked in the old Jianghu. It doesn’t fit the current era, where everyone pursues profit regardless of orthodox, unorthodox, demonic, or blood.”
This man felt different from Cheongunryong, whom I had met in Luoyang.
Cheongunryong had truly clear, pure, and upright eyes. His bamboo-like personality was so straightforward and stubborn it almost felt foolish, yet precisely because of that I had felt my heart disarm. That was why I had ultimately declared my loss and burned the debt documents I had worked so hard to obtain from him.
At first I had thought of Jin Gabok as nothing more than an utterly indecisive man. But at the very least, he was a bit more of a “man of the secular world” than Cheongunryong—in whatever sense that meant.
“…Your name is Biryu of the Blood Death Sect, you said?”
“Yes.”
Finishing the pour, Jin Gabok said, “It might be funny coming from me, but there’s something twisted about you. Is that the price you paid for the achievements you’ve made at your age?”
“…Just as I won’t dig any further into your family affairs, that’s none of your business either. What is it that you want?”
“That’s what I should be asking. You came to me for a reason, didn’t you? So shouldn’t you speak first?”
I picked up the cooled xiaolongbao. With my chopsticks I tore it in half. Even with its insides exposed, the chilled dumpling gave off not a single wisp of steam. Fiddling with it, I said,
“I need your seal.”
“Seal? You mean my stamp? Why mine?”
My mind was a tangle. How much should I reveal?
Saying it was because of the punitive trial at Cheonsubaekryeonsa would tangle the first knot too badly. This connection had continued from Cheongunryong, and though I didn’t know how much he had told him, Jin Gabok would already have some basic background on me. If I overturned that now and claimed I had actually come from Cheonsubaekryeonsa and needed his seal for the punitive trial, the entire premise about me would flip, and I would never gain his trust no matter what I said afterward.
After a brief hesitation I opened my mouth.
“Actually, I committed a crime against my sect, and the sect leader was furious. So I’m receiving punishment for it…”
It was a last-resort fabrication.
Sorry, So Yeomgyo.
I had built a new story by adding one part lie to nine parts truth. Right now in this martial world, the only person who knew my full circumstances was Flame Eye So Yeomgyo of the Blood Death Sect. She was wiser than I. Even if this tale later reached her ears, I trusted she would handle it without panicking and act accordingly.
Nothing had truly changed. I explained that the punishment the sect leader had handed down was to seek recognition from the Oho-samhwa and influential figures of the Jianghu, receive their seals as proof, and that success would bring forgiveness.
Will this work?
I finished speaking and watched him with a tense face. Coldly considered, there might be a few holes. But in a situation already tangled from the start, this was the best I could manage. All I could do was hope it landed.
Jin Gabok blinked. “Oh my. Well now.”
A moment later he continued. “That sect leader of yours is quite the eccentric! Cheongunryong or I are free-spirited about people’s statuses, so it’s no problem for us, but to tell someone from the Blood Death Sect to go collect recognition seals from influential figures of the Jianghu! Leaving skill aside, that’s not easy… Assassins have a social standing that can’t simply be ignored.”
As if realizing he might have overstepped, he added quickly, “Ah, I absolutely don’t mean to insult you.”
“It’s fine.”
I moistened my dry lips. “It’s not wrong, after all.”
This was reality. This was exactly why I aimed to graduate from the highest rank of Cheonsubaekryeonsa—Dong-mu-gwan.
This world is not simple. Believing skill alone lets you look down on the world is a delusion. Even with power that would shake heaven and earth, people might kneel before your face, yet deep in their hearts they will never truly acknowledge or follow you; behind your back they will despise and resist.
I had vividly witnessed how So Yeomgyo was treated even after saving them from the joint assault of the Blood Sect and Demon Sect at the Emei Sect. Even to her—the leader of the Blood Death Sect—they had subtly shown mockery and contempt simply because of her assassin origins. That is how thick and heavy social prejudice remains in reality.
I needed justification. I needed honor. I needed a position everyone acknowledged.
When I was young I found the way administrators and adults clung to justifications and honor endlessly ridiculous. I had been busy mocking and dismissing them for chasing after things that looked like empty shells, mere pretenses to anyone’s eyes. But as I grew older and rolled through the bottom of the capital, I understood. From the thoroughly calculating fox-like managers to the higher-ups, there was solid reason they clung to justification and honor—and corresponding benefits.
I want to live peacefully. I want to be acknowledged. I want to enjoy wealth and glory. And more than anything—
I don’t want to be ignored and hurt by others anymore.
I want to live well for all to see. I want a life where I never have to bow my head to anyone and live abjectly. For that, first and foremost, I needed a social status that even prideful martial artists would acknowledge without a second word.
Moreover, as a bastard son in the Moyong Family, as the Eighth Elder had said, I needed some kind of “certificate” others would recognize. For me the start of that was graduating from the highest Dong-mu-gwan of Cheonsubaekryeonsa. It was still an all-too-vague goal, yet it was something I needed as desperately as achieving a true realm in martial arts.
In the end I never put the divided xiaolongbao into my mouth. Jin Gabok, who had been watching me blankly, sipped his wine and said,
“It seems we might get along well after all.”
“What do you mean by that?”
To my puzzled look he slowly continued. “I’ve also fallen into a very difficult situation.”
He set his cup on the table with a short sigh. “The deadline I planned for dragging my good-for-nothing wastrel of a younger brother back to the Golden Beauty Pavilion has long passed, and before I knew it three months have slipped by. It was truly a dilemma. That’s how bad it was—when I became certain you were absolutely not some ordinary wandering martial artist, the first thought that struck me was, ‘I can ask this person.’”
“What problem was there?”
Come to think of it, I still didn’t know why one of the pillars of the Oho-samhwa, Jin Gabok of the Golden Beauty Pavilion, was stuck in this backwater village with his wastrel brother.
Jin Gabok’s face filled with worry. “If you grant my request, I’ll stamp that seal for you as much as you want. You’re someone Cheongunryong personally asked me to look after well, after all. Of course.”
I climbed the mountain path and rummaged through my robes.
In the center of the silk piece that symbolized the Golden Beauty Pavilion—Jin Gabok’s sect—was his signature in a calligraphy that seemed like a dragon writhing, together with a seal the size of a thumb. Enclosed with it was a paper on which he had separately written the recent whereabouts of the other Oho-samhwa he knew.
Mumyeong spoke.
Now we’ve finally secured one of the three seals.
“I must be pretty exhausted.”
What do you mean?
I folded the silk carefully and tucked it deep into my robes.
“Even at Cheonsubaekryeonsa, which I entered for protection, I got harassed so thoroughly that the moment Jin Gabok made his request the thought that hit me was, ‘Is this guy also…?’”
Hmm. Considering all the hardships so far, that’s understandable enough.
The reason the Eighth Elder of the Moyong Family had sent me to Cheonsubaekryeonsa was literally to keep me—whose martial skill at the time had almost bottomed out—from dying a dog’s death on the streets. In his thinking, if he placed me in Cheonsubaekryeonsa, a neutral zone where various orthodox interests tangled together and an educational institution besides, no one would openly harm me.
But that was only half right. For a massive organization like Cheonsubaekryeonsa to operate required enormous funds. Those funds were supplied by the Five Great Families, who—leaving martial force aside—would be second to none in capital throughout the Jianghu. In exchange they freely exercised their power in invisible places, within lines that would never be greatly publicized.
The Moyong Family people could have been stopped from wielding every scheme against me if Cheonsubaekryeonsa had truly wanted to. They simply didn’t. The reason was the one absolute condition the sons of the Moyong Family always observed when hatching their plots:
Ensure that throughout the entire process no other disciples suffer loss or damage.
Block any reason for the matter to become public. Confine it to an extremely private, personal dispute within the family. With one of the five massive funding sources already taking care not to harm members of other sects, no one in Cheonsubaekryeonsa would make an enemy of them by intervening.
Their little games end with this time.
I tightly gripped the silk piece inside my robes.
In the end I had accepted the request of Jin Gabok of the Golden Beauty Pavilion, one of the Oho-samhwa, and in return he had handed over the seal. As he gave it he earnestly requested, “I hope you’ll take responsibility for this deal with a martial artist’s pride.”
I had demanded the price for granting his request first, and he was in a hurry to leave with his wastrel brother. With mutual interests aligning, the deal was sealed. Above all, this kind of transaction was familiar to me.
What Jin Gabok had asked was hard to believe.
“Behind this village, on Seven-Tailed Peak Mountain, a spirit beast that eats people has begun appearing.”
The mountain grew steeper. Human traces had long since vanished. Snow piled to my knees. Wrapping myself in a dog-skin cloak, I asked,
“So what do you think? Does it seem right?”
There’s a possibility. His energy was so extremely refined that even I felt a slight reluctance—something rarely seen even among Taoist schools.
Mumyeong spoke after careful thought. His reactions were noticeably slower than usual. I had already given him one gapja of my current internal energy. Even while speaking he was expanding his sensory perception to read the terrain and objects within a five-jang radius.
“Hmm, is that so. Good. Then we just need to throw everything into resolving this quickly.”
Jin Gabok, who had been playing the wastrel while dragging his scoundrel brother back to his sect, had coincidentally stopped in this village, heard that a spirit beast was harming people, and promised to help with the extermination. The problem was that the internal energy he had cultivated originated from Taoist arts. Spirit beasts are particularly sensitive to Taoist energy; the moment he approached they fled like lightning. What he had thought would end in half a day—and for which he had staked his honor—had dragged on until now.
In the meantime the brother who had been hauled along after his wastrel antics, true to the saying that a dog’s habits never change, had even newly gathered the village thugs who once followed his brother’s martial force and caused fresh trouble behind his brother’s back. The repeated misdeeds in an already frustrating situation must have been the decisive blow that forced the return to the Golden Beauty Pavilion.
“Confirming again—it’s not something related to the Blood Sect or the White Lotus Demon Sect, right?”
On the snow piles, rat skeletons with nothing but bone remaining began to appear one by one.
It’s not that there’s no possibility. As you know, the Jianghu is wide, and the martial world is a place where things beyond whatever you imagine occur.
Bushes gave way rapidly to rocky ground. Fog began to gather. A cold winter blizzard started to rage.
—Flutter.
The ends of my old, tattered black martial uniform whipped madly in the wind.
At first I thought it was a rock. In the vast snowfield where the blizzard howled, a living creature crouched with its back to the cliff.
—Twitch.
As if sensing my presence it began to stir. The body that had been curled into a round ball started to unfold. Eight legs like steel bars spread to the sides and stabbed down into the snow. Dozens of eyes blinked simultaneously as they fixed on me. Green saliva dripped as a huge mouth opened. On the round belly a pattern seemed to rise, then the face of a wailing woman appeared. The dense white fine hairs covering its body stood on end all at once, reflecting the creature’s emotion.
—Kyaaaaaaaaa!!!
A woman’s ghostly wail that seemed to tear the snowfield apart reverberated. My whole body tingled from the sound.
Mumyeong said,
Snow Human-Faced Spider. It’s definitely what Jin Gabok mentioned.