The Fighting Ghost
The seven eggs of the Snow-Faced Lord were spiritual medicines in their own right.
How to consume them, however, was an entirely separate problem.
[So the eggs of the Snow-Faced Lord really do harbor a potent poison on their surface.]
I wrapped them carefully in cloth so my fingers would touch the surface as little as possible, then gathered all seven with the utmost care.
Mumyeong had said that to refine these eggs into spiritual pills for consumption, the first essential step was to soak them in flowing water and draw out the poison.
[I would not recommend descending the mountain. Exposure to others’ eyes would do you no good, and there is no telling how they might spoil if they meet the warmer air below.]
In the end I had to find flowing water somehow up here on the mountain itself.
I wandered without destination. The blizzard grew fiercer. The cold deepened. Everything in the world turned pure white.
Snow piled on the mask pulled up to my nose. My eyelashes froze solid, white icicles dangling from them. My breath froze the mask until breathing itself became difficult. The Chiljong-heukjusa-gap stiffened with frost until my left hand would barely move. Cold that pierced my shoes made my big toes feel as though they were freezing through, vivid and merciless.
Just when I thought the world before my eyes was beginning to vanish—
—Tap. Tap.
Unusually pale, long fingers rapped against my shoulder.
I turned.
My breath stopped.
Foolish dead man, how pathetic!
A white beard streamed in the blizzard. The speaker was a towering old man—taller than me by far—his white beard whipping as he roared with open fury.
With the Fighting Ghost already upon us, you mean to sit idle and become Mara Jin’s plaything!
“Hah!”
I sat bolt upright.
—Srrrk.
Snow that had piled on the blanket covering me slid away. A great deal must have fallen while I slept in the dug-out pit. Beneath my body wrapped in dog-skin, cold sweat soaked me through.
I possessed three jiazi of inner energy, yet my control over it remained endlessly crude. I was a crippled martial artist. Unlike the true experts of the great houses, I could only roughly mimic reinforcing my body with inner energy; I could never manage it with their perfection.
“Haa… haa…”
[Half a shichen has passed since you fell asleep.]
I swallowed hard.
[You dreamed again, I take it.]
Even after opening my eyes it took a long while to remember where I was. The sky remained dark. This was the fourth day. I was still searching for water high on the mountain.
“Y-yeah.”
Only after a long pause could I answer Mumyeong’s question in a parched voice.
[How many times is this?]
With my left hand free of the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap I rubbed my face. My rough palm felt as if it were scraping the skin. Burying my face in my hand, I whispered low.
“…The third.”
[The frequency is increasing.]
It had begun after I obtained the Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong in Sabidong. Was it because I had finally gained a martial art I had never possessed? I had judged myself “made” and let my guard down. That was when the Heavenly Blood Demon began appearing in my dreams without cease.
Having already faced him and Mara Jin in the mysterious space called Maseonrim, this was nothing I could dismiss. Both were existences beyond all ordinary measure; calling it a mere nightmare was impossible when they could deliver far more than anything the mind might imagine.
[Was there anything particularly different in the dream’s content, or any clearly presented meaning?]
Mumyeong’s even, emotionless voice was like a sip of cold water calming the chaos inside me.
“No. Nothing at all. Completely the same.”
[If the dreams differed each time one could at least dismiss them as nonsense. At this rate it is fair to regard them as a warning that something is going wrong.]
I agreed. All of it remained speculation. I had first encountered Mara Jin and the Heavenly Blood Demon when I laid my hand on the jade stele, when my two legs were taken as collateral by Mara Jin and I was dragged into Maseonrim. Even then they had been playing go with my life on the board.
Presumably Mara Jin stood higher than the Heavenly Blood Demon and shared some familiarity with him. Yet the two held subtle differences of opinion on some particular purpose and were testing each other beneath the surface. And that purpose, without doubt, involved me.
Neither openly bared teeth at the other. Each simply found the other’s plans disagreeable and sought to hinder them indirectly through me. The conclusion followed of its own accord: for all my struggling, I was still moving inside Mara Jin’s design.
When two people play go, there are often moves invisible to the players that stand clear as day to an onlooker.
“I’m missing something right now.”
That must be what the Heavenly Blood Demon could see.
“What the hell is the Fighting Ghost? Something so overwhelming that even the Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong isn’t enough? My skill was acknowledged by Jin Gabok of the Geummi Branch among the Oho-samhwa, wasn’t it?”
—Wooong.
As I tensed, the cold, dormant inner energy began to boil. Heat flooded my skull; snow around me melted away.
[I debated whether to speak or remain silent.]
“What?”
Mumyeong continued in measured fragments.
[Host, you possess a few pieces of information about me, correct?]
At the sudden question I stammered.
“The range of my qi sense changes with the amount of inner energy you grant. The degree of fine internal adjustment when using the Heavenly Demon’s authority. Maximum sense range is ten jang; conversely it has limits within half a jang or when targets stand densely packed… about that? Ah, and that you sometimes sleep as if fainting.”
[Yes. In other words.]
I rose, tidied the surroundings, and brushed off the moisture and mud left by melting snow.
[I maintain consciousness for a great deal of time. During that time I listen to the conversations around me in the hope of obtaining even one scrap of information that might aid survival. As you know, both Host and I are currently ignorant of the Jianghu’s true situation.]
“So?”
[You have already met them several times, so the concept should not be entirely foreign. I am speaking of the existence known as Guardians.]
“…Guardians?”
I had already directly encountered two of them. They were the beings of the Heaven Beyond Heaven, one each in the few great sects of the martial world that included the Nine Sects and One Gang. The world called them not humans but disasters, and also “the singular that overwhelms the plural.”
A single Guardian accounted for thirty percent of a sect’s total strength; they were both its symbolic heart and its core military power. Sects weighed one another through them and sometimes used their very existence as a bargaining chip to seize advantage in negotiations. The clearest emblem of that power was the Covenant of the Sacred Mountain.
The Covenant of the Sacred Mountain. A solemn promise of trust that a legendary martial artist of the Jianghu—a Guardian—would personally protect the subject.
When I lived at the bottom of the capital, one of my few pastimes had been listening to the gossipmongers who sold stories for a coin or two. The adventure tales that appeared most often were, first, the heroes of the Jianghu struggling against the Demon Cult and the Blood Cult, and second, the journeys of ordinary men who formed ties with Guardians—living legends and martial gods—through the Covenant of the Sacred Mountain and traveled the rivers and lakes. Without exception those tales were exaggerated for the entertainment of the gossips alone.
They say the last time a Covenant of the Sacred Mountain was formed by a Guardian’s personal judgment was at least a hundred years ago.
If a Guardian himself strongly desired the covenant, no one would oppose it. Yet a Guardian remained an individual belonging to a sect; there was little reason to defy the will of his root and foundation simply to form one. By the present day the Covenant of the Sacred Mountain was almost always sealed for the benefit and needs of the sect rather than by the Guardian’s private will.
Speaking of chivalry and righteousness had become an old story. The current Jianghu placed money and profit first; anyone who did otherwise, whether orthodox, unorthodox, demonic or blood, was treated as a fool. That was the prevailing air.
“Why are Guardians suddenly coming up here?”
[I am not certain. Yet even after Host reached the pinnacle stage and mastered the Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong—an extraordinary movement art—the Heavenly Blood Demon has continued to issue warnings of danger.]
It was a rational judgment. Cold and logical.
[Add the assassination squad dispatched by the Ju Family of Luoyang after they recognized Host’s Hyeol-yeong-mu-hwan-sin-sul, and various other combinations, and the existence called the Fighting Ghost cannot possibly possess ordinary martial prowess. Do you agree so far?]
An unwelcome truth pressed close. My throat felt rough.
“I agree.”
[Those of such prowess would find it nearly impossible to remain nameless in the Jianghu, reclusive masters excepted. Combining the stories I have gathered, unfortunately there is only one existence in the present martial world that matches the Fighting Ghost of whom the Heavenly Blood Demon continually warns—and who is pursuing Host.]
I walked the snowy path. In the days past I had combed the mountain as thoroughly as searching for lice. I had divided it into four large sections and searched them one by one; now I was checking the final quarter. If even here I failed to find flowing water that could wash the eggs’ toxicity, I would have to descend first, come what may.
“Who is it.”
[The Diancang Sect. The Guardian of the Diancang Sect.]
“What? Diancang?”
My voice trembled. Setting other matters aside, the world’s opinion of the Diancang Sect was far from favorable. Yet even putting that aside, the expelled Martial God of Diancang was famous enough that even a child would know the name.
The expelled Guardian of the Diancang Sect. The Fighting Ghost. The worst and most vicious existence—one that even other Guardians avoided fighting. His mad thirst for vengeance against the Blood Cult. There were many modifiers attached to him.
“No, that doesn’t make any sense…. Why would that be?”
[In the eyes of the one who commissioned Host’s death…]
Mumyeong’s voice was bone-dry.
[Host is absolutely a mid-or-higher ranking member of the Blood Cult who boldly pierced into the very heart of the Jianghu.]
“….”
I had never imagined that brief moment would return as so vast a catastrophe.
[Given the present circumstances, the one pursuing Host is highly likely this person. Of course it remains only a possibility. It may not be so. But if, by any chance—even a one-tenth probability, no, a one-hundredth probability—that this person is the one coming after you proves correct—]
The blizzard ceased. Fog began to gather, thick and dense until three paces ahead vanished.
Yet I pressed forward.
—Trickle, trickle.
For some time now a faint but unmistakably clear sound of pure water flowing had reached my ears.
[Our chance of survival will be less than one-tenth.]
“Bullshit.”
I cut him off flatly.
[…I have never hoped more that my conjecture would prove wrong than I do this time.]
“Why Diancang? No—since when has Diancang been connected to the Ju Family of Luoyang, taking commissions like that? Does that make any sense?”
[Host, I already told you.]
Mumyeong sighed.
[This Guardian is the first existence in the history of the Jianghu to be expelled even from the status of Guardian itself. It is a matter separate from the Diancang Sect. It would be more accurate to regard him as a natural disaster—a plague.]
In this Jianghu that greets with swords and asks after one another with blades, I had crawled up from the very bottom of the capital. I had fought until blood burst, rolled in the dirt, and howled my way upward. Through that time I had learned one truth: on this dogshit floor of the Jianghu, the things you desperately hope will never happen have a high probability of happening.
I do not want to bow my head to anyone. I want to live proudly and without shame. For that, more than anything, my own strength matters. I need overwhelming power. What must I fill in order to become that? No—setting everything else aside—what must I prepare against simply to stay alive?
—Whoooosh.
Wind rose. Like training mist scattering, the fog peeled away.
—Trickle, trickle…
The sound of flowing water continued to tease my eardrums. Ahead stood a temple clinging to a half-collapsed, crumbling wall. Spring water gushing from the rocks overflowed the wall and ran into the temple grounds.
—Clunk… clunk…
Inside the ruined wall a small pond was visible. In that pond a bamboo waterwheel received the freezing winter spring water and regularly cast a thin waterfall.
“Why so late? I nearly froze to death waiting for you.”
In front of that dilapidated temple a middle-aged man with a half-bald crown and a protruding belly stood waiting for me, wearing a genial smile.