You Will Travel With Me
When I first discussed this trial with her, I never expected anything like this.
This… this is.
A single beat after I finished copying the martial art, something came surging into my head like a tidal wave.
It was not the content of the technique.
What the hell.
Even before, when I copied someone’s martial arts, I had felt something like the other person’s past being transmitted to me intact. But those impressions had always flashed by far too quickly to grasp one by one. The details sank beneath my unconscious so fast I could never remember them.
What I faced in this moment, however, did not stop at the Mount Hua Sect’s foundational sword art, the Twenty-Four Forms Plum Blossom Sword, as if space and the trajectories of movement themselves had been cut out and transferred into me.
It felt like a lucid dream.
The life she had lived as a child while first learning the Twenty-Four Forms Plum Blossom Sword rose before my eyes with piercing clarity. Another person’s past unfolded vividly, as if I were dreaming it, and I could scan through every part of it. Every emotion of hers reached me as though I were feeling it myself.
In one razor-sharp fragment of memory from that day, she was—
“Moyong Bi?”
Rage.
Emptiness.
Regret.
Doubt.
She was wailing atop a hill of corpses, grieving so desperately that the cold, lofty figure she cut now was impossible to reconcile with that image.
“Moyong Bi!”
“…!”
Her cry snapped me back to myself.
“Is something wrong? Your face is pale.”
“It’s…”
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I tell her that while copying her martial arts I had, even for an instant, glimpsed her past? Would that wound her pride?
I answered in a dry voice.
“It’s…”
I blinked.
“That is…”
The wind stirred. Water ran along one side of the pond. On the veranda sat a teacup beaded with dew. Beside it stood a pine bonsai carved from silver, potted and set on the floorboards. Leaning against that pot was a small, lopsided stuffed doll.
“It’s nothing.”
I answered in a rough voice.
“Nothing.”
I looked at the woman staring piercingly at me.
…
I told myself this was consideration. For my unintended peeping and the rudeness of it, this was the best I could offer.
I saw her long eyelashes. She was wiser than I. She had lived far more than I. I could not know how I looked in her eyes right now. I could not know what she was thinking.
“…Well, if there’s no problem, then that’s fine.”
Eun Seollyeong did not press further.
“Have you learned anything about my physical condition? You said you would explain.”
“As of now it is still incomplete. I will tell you once it becomes clearer. More importantly.”
Eun Seollyeong nodded.
“If the gem you possess is what I believe it to be, there is no further need to hesitate. With this, it is decided.”
“Decided? What decision now?”
I had the strange sensation that something similar had happened once before. My throat burned. I lifted the teacup from the floor and drained it in several long gulps.
She stepped to my side, took up a cup, and spoke.
“Moyong Bi, you will travel with me for a while.”
“Pfft—”
I turned my head quietly to the side and spat the tea out. Then, with deliberate calm, I tugged up the hem of my top that had ridden up to expose my navel and wiped my mouth.
No middle ground with this woman, ever.
I started to speak, but she cut in first.
“You said that because of those worthless schemes of your family you are currently performing the third punitive trial while crying, did you not?”
“…I wasn’t crying.”
I offered a weak protest. She did not so much as pretend to hear it.
“From now on, I will help. We will finish that trial in one stroke.”
I doubted my ears.
“Elder—no, Eun Seollyeong, why would you help me?”
“Before the dogfight among the Guardians begins, every unstable element must be cleared away as thoroughly as possible.”
“What does that even mean? When a person talks they should make themselves understandable—”
Eun Seollyeong lifted a finger, caught the top I was still using to wipe my mouth, and pulled it back down into place.
“To remain affiliated with Cheonsubaekryeonsa yet respond effectively and proactively to the coming storm, one requires free movement—status of at least Chu-mu-gwan or higher. This is necessary not only for you, but for me as well. I cannot leave you wasting time on trials of absurd difficulty in the likes of Ha-mu-gwan any longer.”
…
For the first time in my life I was listening to something presented as an explanation and failing to understand a word of it.
“Eun Seollyeong, you never had disciples, did you?”
“What is the point of that question?”
“…No reason. I just felt like you wouldn’t have.”
“Ha.”
Eun Seollyeong folded her arms with a look of pure disbelief and snorted.
“If you knew how many existences like stars in the sky This seat has raised while traversing this Jianghu over long years, you would be astonished.”
“And the teaching method was probably less about understanding through words and more about mastery through the body.”
I newly realized that the more flustered she became, the more her old manner of speech slipped out. Eun Seollyeong averted her gaze slightly. The one who had asked the question felt oddly uneasy and pressed further.
“…It isn’t as if a disciple turned into a star during the process or anything like that, right?”
“That is not the case. Of course, This seat also, for the growth of a somewhat strong martial artist, bestowed a measure of, ah… um… that is…”
…
“Interest and affection.”
…
The sudden conviction that I would never learn anything from her flashed through my mind.
“Fine, let’s say all of that is true. But even so, how are you going to help me? We’re talking about tracking down the rising dragons of the Jianghu’s Oho-samhwa and receiving their seals. I only need two more now, true, but seals aren’t a joke—”
…
She looked at me. The gaze was one of profound pity. Not knowing how to answer, I simply stared back. She let out a short sigh.
“I did not expect I would have to say this.”
“Huh?”
“Even with me standing before you, you are far too un-tense. Dull, perhaps. Or unique.”
…
She squared her shoulders.
“This seat is the Guardian of the Mount Hua Sect. Once I have decided, there is no one who can stand in my way.”
…
I realized again how often I forgot exactly what she was. At a glance she looked like a woman of roughly my age. Looked at another way, she even seemed younger. Though faint, the woman before me occasionally showed emotion according to the conversation and reacted like anyone else. The fact that she was a Guardian who had lived for hundreds of years, a mythical figure treated as legend throughout the Jianghu, still lacked any sense of reality.
The silver pine bonsai on the veranda caught my eye—a gleaming tree of silver that would never change no matter how many years passed. The stuffed doll sitting beside it leaned against the pot with its head bowed. It was grimy and patched in many places. With time the doll would rot away.
“…That doll. Is it yours, Eun Seollyeong?”
“Hm?”
At my question she looked at me, then at the doll.
“Yes. It is a gift from one of the connections that have already passed.”
“With its head bowed I can’t see— is that doll smiling?”
She started to speak. Before she could, I cut in.
“Never mind. I don’t even know what I’m saying all of a sudden. You don’t have to answer.”
…
Eun Seollyeong regarded me. Her red lips parted.
“For the sake of cooperating with your trial as well, I intend to write a letter for a messenger pigeon. That means going down to a nearby village. Is there anything you need, or any matter that must be resolved?”
“Things to do.”
I lifted my head. Far off, beyond the clouds, Inhyeon Gorge was faintly visible between the horizons.
“Don’t worry about the village.”
As if reading my gaze, Eun Seollyeong spoke.
“It is safe. There is damage, but.”
“Damage…”
“That person is also unharmed. I confirmed it myself.”
“I want to go see them.”
I muttered through dry lips.
“Maybe because I’m a coward… I have no face left to show them.”
…
Eun Seollyeong looked at me with complicated eyes. A thought struck me. I spoke toward her.
“While you’re sending a letter… could I write one as well?”
“Of course. But in this situation, to whom?”
Eun Seollyeong’s eyes widened. I hesitated a moment, then bit my lip.
“One person. There is one person in this Jianghu I once entrusted my back to—one person I can still trust.”
“Achoo!”
So Yeomgyo rubbed the ticklish tip of her nose.
“Are you well, Lady So Yeomgyo?”
Baekho emerged as if seeping out of the shadows, voice solemn.
So Yeomgyo stroked her nose.
“Ah, seriously, I’ve been running all night every single day. Anyway, this is the last request, right? Right?”
Baekho drew a white sheaf of papers from his robes and unfolded it.
“Yes. As the seventy-second request—the one Munju tentatively set in place while saving Young Master Moyong… no, Young Master Biryu—calculating the disadvantages the Blood Death Sect would incur, accumulating and procuring funds in advance against that level of risk, and demonstrating to clients that ‘Munju herself steps forward to resolve it’ in order to raise trust… this leading-by-example request ends here.”
“Good heavens, seventy-two times. I really… Whew. Anyway.”
So Yeomgyo brushed back the black hair that had fallen forward and wound the flexible soft sword around her hand.
“Now this hardship is finally over.”
“You have truly worked hard.”
“Make certain the clients are told that after this request I will rest for at least a year.”
So Yeomgyo stroked the black scabbard strap fixed to her thigh, then lifted her head.
“In that spirit, I’m holding back and saying this one last time.”
Before her eyes lay a mansion reduced to rubble. The gate was smashed; here and there members of a household who had resisted, been beaten, and dragged out were bound. So Yeomgyo’s eyes flashed.
“Who’s the leader here? Come out right now.”
A group of men knelt. At the front, a man in black with one eye swollen purple and a bearded face was sniffling. So Yeomgyo glared.
“Not coming out? I stayed up four straight nights because you lot scattered and ran like a flock of sheep, and you’re really going to waste a full shichen dragging this out without showing yourselves?”
“H-hieek. Th-that is… the l-leader isn’t here… isn’t here at all.”
The man stammered, trembling.
“These ones seem to be waiting for reinforcements. A subordinate said he saw a messenger pigeon take flight earlier.”
Baekho murmured at her side. The man in front flinched.
“Ha. Reinforcements?”
So Yeomgyo exhaled a deep sigh and spoke to the man.
“Hey.”
“Y-yes?”
“I’m Flame Eye.”
“…What?”
With a faint whoosh her eyes began to burn a fierce, lurid red. As her energy surged, even her black hair seemed to take on a faint crimson cast, an illusion of flame.
“Ah…!”
The man made a short sound of dawning recognition. She enunciated each word clearly.
“I am So Yeomgyo of the Blood Death Sect—Flame Eye. Even knowing that, are you going to keep waiting for reinforcements without coming out?”
“Ah—come to think of it, I am the leader.”
…
The man spoke without the slightest hesitation. Baekho looked up at the blue sky with a long, weary sigh. The subordinates behind him did the same in perfect unison. So Yeomgyo pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.
“…Haa. If I had still been wearing the mask… never mind. Kids.”
She turned and gestured behind her.
“The leader is secured here. Strip that mansion behind us clean.”
“Understood!”
“And even though the Shaolin side already paid a visit, traces might remain—check everything I mentioned beforehand while you’re at it.”
“We receive the order.”
The Blood Death Sect personnel scattered at once. Baekho approached.
“Lady So Yeomgyo.”
He took a small folded paper from his robes and held it out to her.
“This one, I believe, should be seen by you rather than me, so I am delivering it directly.”
“To me?”
So Yeomgyo accepted the paper and unfolded it. As she read, Baekho continued.
“Apparently he did not know a direct channel to you, and recalling a place I once mentioned in passing for sending messages, he sent the letter to me first.”
So Yeomgyo spoke while reading carefully.
“…No name is written, but anyone can see it’s that man.”
Baekho nodded.
“There is no one else in the Jianghu who would send a letter like this to our Blood Death Sect.”
“But does this man not even know the proper format for a messenger-pigeon letter? Why is it written so hard to read? Don’t tell me this is actually the first time he’s ever written one.”
Baekho answered carefully.
“…It might truly be the first. Separate from his martial skill, that person is… well.”
“Really, as expected of a Jianghu greenhorn. Ugh. Does he think the Munju of the Blood Death Sect is some stray dog, making a request like this?”
So Yeomgyo frowned and flipped the paper. On the reverse, a village was sketched in clumsy, crooked lines. Baekho asked,
“So what will you do?”
“…I know this man.”
So Yeomgyo continued in fragments.
“Sometimes foolish. Sometimes upright to the point of stubbornness. Sometimes so faithful to his emotions it’s stupid—yet his pride is sky-high.”
At that moment—
“Ah…! Even if you bitch are Flame Eye, a mere assassin, not even a proper martial artist—!”
The kneeling leader suddenly roared, drew a dagger from his robes, and lunged at So Yeomgyo. She continued studying the rough map on the back of the letter.
“And that man bent his pride and promised this much compensation… I ought to grant it.”
Baekho nodded with a composed face, as if in full agreement.
“I think so as well.”
“Die!”
The leader charged.
Her red martial robe fluttered. A long, slender leg folded and rose; at the same instant the edge of her foot scythed out.
—Pabat!
She kicked the leader’s wrist aside. The dagger spun away. She drove a strike into his solar plexus. He vomited and folded at the waist. She kicked his chin upward, then stomped the crown of his head with her heel. As the foot came down she spun and, with the opposite foot, whipped the floating dagger by its hilt like a lash.
—Ttaang!
The flying dagger sank into the mansion’s threshold up to the hilt and quivered there.
“Hieek.”
A servant beneath that threshold collapsed as his legs gave out.
“Ueoek…”
The leader crawled across the floor, clutching his solar plexus with a shattered wrist. As if he had expected nothing less, Baekho regarded him and spoke.
“In that case, shall I go? Or…?”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen Baekho this favorably disposed toward anyone.”
Baekho’s eyes curved in a smile above the mask.
“Because in all the Jianghu—orthodox, unorthodox, demonic, or blood—he is the only ‘person-like person,’ and the only man, I have ever acknowledged.”
So Yeomgyo slowly lowered the raised thigh. Taking her eyes from the letter, she murmured low.
“I think so too.”