The Silver Butterfly and the Secret Gift
“It will take roughly a week to reach Shaanxi Province. Best to prepare as best you can.”
“Mm, preparation is good. The problem is—”
I nodded at Eun Seollyeong’s words. Dozens of tree branches I had methodically snapped while waiting for her lay scattered at my feet.
“The problem is that this waiting has already stretched past a full shichen.”
“Just wait a little longer. I am hurrying in my own way.”
If my ears were not deceiving me, the sound coming from beyond the closed door was that of a broom sweeping. She had asked for a little time, saying she wanted to tidy the house one last time before setting out on the road.
“Haa.”
I was wearing the new martial robes I had bought on the way back from sending the letter. Escaping the getup that left my navel bare and made me look as if I were wearing a skirt had been the absolute priority, so I had hurriedly chosen black clothes that could cover my body. In every transaction the more desperate party takes the loss—that is the law of commerce. Because of that, I had been overcharged again and ended up in slightly old, frayed martial robes.
“Hm?”
I glanced toward the door. Beyond the window paper of the lattice, her shadow was cast. The shadow moved this way and that while kneeling.
“Cleaning is the same as polishing one’s martial arts. Do not rush, do not employ tricks; do it neatly, calmly, and meticulously.”
“…Right.”
Soon a faint wiping sound followed—swish, swish—so it seemed she had started mopping as well.
Will we even be able to leave today?
As if reading my thoughts, her calm, clear voice rang out.
“It is done. I will simply put on my attire and come out.”
The kneeling shadow rose. A rustle followed. When the shadow brought a hand to its shoulder, something that looked like clothing slid down to its feet.
“….”
I lifted my left foot and planted the tip of my toe into the ground. Using that planted toe as a pivot, I spun around. Eyes closed, I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“…Damn it. Who knew that seeing it only half-clearly would be more dangerous.”
I sighed and forced my thoughts elsewhere, recalling what had happened earlier. Eun Seollyeong, Guardian of the Mount Hua Sect, had promised her full support in obtaining the brand from the Oho-samhwa for the third punitive trial I had been given. After that she had sent a carrier pigeon somewhere. Not even half a day had passed since the bird left. What departed had clearly been a pigeon. What returned to her like a brown arrow, however, was a single hawk. She seemed long accustomed to receiving letters by hawk; without the slightest fluster she untied the letter bound to its leg and read it.
‘We leave for Shaanxi Province at once.’
‘Shaanxi? Who exactly did you ask for help?’
She tucked the letter into her bosom and answered briefly.
‘Jegal Sea of Shaanxi. We had a connection in the past.’
A creak came from behind, accompanied by the rustle of cloth.
“Preparations are complete. Let us set out at once…. What are you doing standing with your back turned?”
“The weather’s nice. Flowers are blooming. It really is spring, I guess.”
I pointed to the flowers along the courtyard edge and answered as casually as I could. I thought the reply sounded natural enough. Her silver voice answered in the same calm tone.
“…So it has come to that already. Soon the plum blossoms will bloom as well.”
“Hm? Eun Seollyeong, do you like plum blos—”
I turned as I spoke and stopped mid-sentence. She was bent at the waist, slipping shoes onto her white ankles. Beneath the fluttering white garments the curves of her body showed clearly. Black border lines traced the edges of the cloth. The line of her waist and the slope of her shoulders were visible. Her arms, exposed from the half-rolled and tied sleeves, were sheathed from upper arm to the back of the hand in a semi-transparent black cloth that clung to her skin. The white legs that appeared as she put on her shoes under the drifting fabric caught my eye again.
“That’s an outfit I haven’t seen before.”
“This is my formal attire. Even so, when going to ask help of an old connection, one must show the courtesy of dressing properly.”
“….”
“Is there some problem?”
Without meaning to, I muttered the thought that rose unbidden.
“Ambiguous really is more dangerous.”
“…?”
My expression never changed, but the moment the words left my mouth I realized the slip. I did not commit the amateurish mistake of panicking. I let out a short sigh and said,
“Time has already been delayed. I was thinking that leaving in such an ambiguous fashion might not be for the best.”
“….”
Eun Seollyeong’s eyes rested on me; I thought the corners of those eyes were far too cold.
The greatest fool in the world is the one who thinks his own blunder is a brilliant move.
Mumyeong muttered.
Moreover, Host… how should I put it.
He continued in that flat, even tone.
You reek far too strongly of someone who has never met a woman. Even I was not that bad in my younger days…. Truly a perfect winter.
…Son of a bitch.
It was the first curse I had uttered—even inwardly—since receiving Asura’s ban on swearing.
You must be quite resentful. To think even a curse spat inside can be felt.
Sometimes I could not tell whether a nightmare of the Demonic Cult lived inside me, or a mother-in-law from the Demonic Cult.
Eun Seollyeong locked the main gate and carefully checked it this way and that for a long while.
“Do you have several residences like this?”
“There are two. There is no formal residence for me inside the Mount Hua Sect. So.”
She stroked the door handle. It was polished smooth with the touch of many hands, as if it had stood in that place for long years.
“…This place is precious to me. The more everything is crushed into obscurity amid the storms of time.”
A sharp crack of vision flashed before my eyes. A blood-red sky. Her figure wailing, pounding the earth with both hands atop a mountain of corpses.
I really know nothing at all.
The facts I knew about the woman before me were only that she was an immense existence as the Guardian of Mount Hua, that she possessed outstanding martial prowess, and that she had lived a long time. She always seemed to live as if pursued by something—for some purpose alone, for some result alone. I had felt it even when I first faced her. Eun Seollyeong always wore a cool and lofty expression. Others might not know, but I could tell. Because I had worn the same look myself. Her gaze was that of someone who had something they must do, something they must achieve, close to obsession. Those who had faced her called her the Specter of the Battlefield.
‘I wish I would just die already.’
Holding the dented silver bell she had taken from me, gazing at the stars in the night sky, she had muttered that once.
A spring breeze blew. We descended the low mountain and walked along the fields. The fields that had been frozen through winter had melted without a trace. Green grass was beginning to sprout. We did not even use lightness skills. She said the road to Shaanxi Province saw many martial artists and common folk coming and going, so actions that drew attention were unwise. But she was a Guardian, and I was a body of the Heavenly Martial Body that had trained in martial arts. We walked at a quick, unrelenting pace.
While we walked she laid out the plans ahead.
“It has been arranged to meet Jegal Seoryeon directly in Shaanxi Province. When we arrive we will meet her at once, and she is to hand over the brand unconditionally. And there is one more piece of good news.”
“Good news?”
Under the blue spring sky, in the middle of the green fields, white martial robes fluttering, she drew a deep breath of the flowing spring air.
“It so happens that she has invited one of the Oho-samhwa to her home and is conversing with them.”
“…!”
Seeing my expression, she nodded.
“If we can persuade that person well, the third trial can be finished in a single stroke the moment we arrive in Shaanxi Province.”
There was a grudge. A grudge that had seeped into the bones. I had clawed my way through trials of absurd difficulty from the clutches of the Moyong Family remnants who had toyed with me like a plaything. After hearing the full measure of those trials, Eun Seollyeong had given her brief impression.
‘It is like being shoved into a muddy path so that you would slip and die during a race, yet still forcing yourself along the course and eventually running all the way to the finish line.’
She glanced at my face and spoke in that same calm voice.
“You must have had a truly hard time until now.”
“….”
“I pay my respects to the fact that you did not give up and worked hard. It is not empty words but my sincere feeling.”
An ordinary person might have despaired at the unreasonable reality that could never be overcome, and smashed their head against a wall and died from the blood-vomiting resentment.
“If things go as that side promised, with this matter all the punitive trials will be finished. As the price for completing them all, one regular trial will be exempted, and if two trials are passed, promotion to Chu-mu-gwan will be confirmed at once. Those two trials will absolutely not be of the difficulty of what has come before, so there should be no problem.”
“Right.”
It had felt like groping forward through an endless cave. And now the end was in sight.
“Moyong Bi.”
She suddenly undid the belt at her waist and held it out to me.
“Hm?”
“It is a gift I am lending you for a while. Looking at your current circumstances, it seems you need it more than I do.”
“…These days gifts come with the concept of lending?”
Ignoring my gruff words, she blinked and said,
“When all the journeys are safely over later, you must return it to me with your own hands.”
“….”
For a moment I could say nothing. The belt she handed me was a slender silver leather belt.
“…You’ve lived a long time. You must have seen many people—incomparably more than me. You must have met many connections as well.”
“That’s right.”
“Even based on that experience, if there is anyone in the jianghu whose fate least suits the words ‘when all the journeys are safely over,’ you know that it’s me.”
“….”
We continued walking forward. In a way, I thought that this very step, this path, might be the first quiet I had encountered since starting this journey. I spoke.
“In this vivid reality, living a life that walks the tightrope with death, I sometimes think—”
“What thought?”
“Right now you are standing beside me. I can feel the wind, smell the grass, feel the texture of the earth under my feet. But I wonder if one day all of this will suddenly stop, be cut off as if wrapped in a black curtain, and disappear. As if it were nothing but a dream.”
Even if one frequently undergoes fierce battles that cross the line of death, one cannot become accustomed to it. Even if one has fought a hundred battles ready for death, it is human to hesitate in staking one’s life on the hundred-and-first. Until now I had survived by bad luck, but for me the precarious life always felt like flipping a coin.
Eun Seollyeong calmly opened her mouth.
“I exist right now. Just as you exist naturally beside me and look at me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“A specter cannot stay anywhere. Unable to get close to anyone, always filled with grudges, it is an existence that wanders here and there.”
A silver butterfly flew toward her. Eun Seollyeong raised a finger wrapped in black cloth. The butterfly landed on her fingertip and then flew away.
“Therefore a specter can sometimes become a shadow watching beside the plum blossoms that fall soon, and sometimes become the shadow of flowing willow leaves.”
She said quietly,
“For the sake of my purpose as well, as long as you are within my sight, you will not die. Furthermore.”
She let out a small sigh.
“I understand why you react that way, since I heard in advance of your hellish path of meeting monster-like self-conceit… but it seems you are under some misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding?”
To my puzzled look she lightly waved a hand and said,
“Do you know what that thing I gave you is?”
I looked again at the belt she had handed me.
“What is this? Does it amplify internal energy or something?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“The opposite. It is an artifact that suppresses and hides your energy.”
“Hm?”
Eun Seollyeong rested one hand on her hip and explained.
“Your brothers made a huge mistake. Those worthless ones seem to have forgotten the famous saying that a trial that does not kill me makes me stronger. Did they look down on you too much?”
“What?”
“As a Guardian, I guarantee it. Right now in the jianghu, no one knows that an outlier monster who crawled up from the very bottom has been born.”
She pointed straight at me and said,
“I mean the monster that is you.”