A Proposal That Satisfies All
“In truth, for a man to be the first to admit his own fault and apologize can easily be taken as an admission of his own incompetence, so it is said to be an extremely difficult thing to do.”
The Escort Leader cleared his throat with a deliberate cough.
“From the very beginning, I was impressed by the courage and bearing you showed in facing that tiger head-on. I had even intended to offer you encouragement.”
“Is that so.”
“There was a misunderstanding, you mean.”
I nodded.
I glanced behind me.
The others stood there wearing expressions of pure disbelief.
I shot them a subtle look.
“Well, looking back, even that sparring match earlier was probably you going easy on us to boost our spirits. Leaving aside the fact that you are the Escort Leader and the officer in charge of us, as a senior of the martial world your depth of character is truly impressive.”
Sa Ha-yun quickly grasped my intent and added the words in a calm, measured tone.
As if something had clicked for them as well, Gang Mu-jeong and Han Jung-mae scrambled to chime in.
“Y-yes, of course! Escort Leader! Such profound meaning!”
“You are truly remarkable. In truth, every single one of these events was carefully planned to teach us even one more lesson and grant us enlightenment.”
The Escort Leader looked thoroughly bewildered.
“Th-that… well…”
I offered him a light cupped-fist salute.
“Thanks to you I gained a great deal of insight. It seems I really ought to focus primarily on unarmed techniques after all. In truth, swinging a sword out of sheer terror just to keep the beast from closing in was all I was capable of.”
Only then did the Escort Leader appear to understand exactly what I was thinking.
“Ha, haha! Th-that’s right! Yes, exactly! I did it because I was worried you might grow arrogant after displaying such outstanding skill and even taking down a tiger! Hahaha!”
“Once again, you have my gratitude.”
The Escort Leader had already burned the memory of his defeat deep into his bones; his spirit was thoroughly suppressed.
Yet rather than crushing his pride further, I had chosen—even if only as a surface courtesy—to preserve his face. That attitude left him looking genuinely moved.
“Thank you. Because of you, everyone survived.”
I could feel it.
A plain, sincere emotion always cut through more cleanly than any flowery rhetoric.
This time, at least, the Escort Leader was not speaking empty words.
To someone who treated me with genuine sincerity, I could never respond with petty spite no matter what prior offenses might exist.
That was my creed.
“…I simply took the examination,” I said slowly.
“I did my utmost to pass. Nothing more, nothing less. You worked hard as well, Escort Leader.”
“….”
The Escort Leader regarded me quietly.
“I cannot understand why someone like you was forced to endure three consecutive disciplinary trials of such severity. To be honest, when I heard you were from the Moyong Family I held a prejudice that you might be some spoiled young master.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes. But it was truly nothing more than prejudice. That a martial artist of your caliber has yet to shine and remains buried in the jianghu is astonishing to me. You do not even have a known moniker, do you?”
There is the moniker “Butcher,” widely known throughout the black paths and assassin circles. Though that is the name of Biryu, not of Moyong Bi.
Mumyeong muttered.
I let out a short sigh.
“Yes, that is correct. As you know, I have only just ‘begun’ as a student of the Ha-mu-gwan at Cheonsubaekryeonsa. What moniker could I possibly have?”
The Escort Leader shook his head.
“No matter how rotten the jianghu has become, if a world exists that has failed to recognize you to this extent, then that world itself is wrong. I may hold only a lowly post at Cheonsubaekryeonsa, but from this moment on I will do everything in my power from my position to support you.”
“Pardon? No, there is no need for you to go that far.”
“Enough. Stop with the modesty.”
The Escort Leader opened his palm.
“I believe I know how to judge a person. With skill like yours, and the humility to consider others when the situation calls for it… I find myself thoroughly ashamed. Before long, starting with me, the prominent figures of the jianghu will all come to recognize your true worth. That is the way of the world. Of that much I am certain.”
“….”
I offered another cupped-fist salute.
“Thank you.”
“Enough with the thanks. The more you do it, the more my narrow prejudice truly mortifies me.”
At those words, Gang Mu-jeong, who had been hanging back, suddenly flared up.
“His character is upright my a—”
I shot a glance behind me.
“—s a matter of fact, no matter how I look at it, your insight is absolutely correct.”
“…Are… his eyes still ali—”
—Twitch!
Gang Mu-jeong quietly stepped behind Han Jung-mae.
There had been a faint spark of resistance, yet the last lingering dregs of resentment and defiance in his eyes had vanished completely after the exchange with the Escort Leader.
To be precise, after witnessing my swordsmanship Gang Mu-jeong now looked at me with a mixture of jealousy and outright admiration.
It was not uncommon for a martial artist to receive a single piece of advice from a stronger fighter and then advance by leaps and bounds.
As a martial artist himself, he surely harbored a strong desire to extract some guidance from me.
The problem is that what I used was the twin-sword art of Ilmanhyeolje. He could die and come back and still never manage it.
Ignorant of the circumstances, Gang Mu-jeong continued to steal glances at me from behind Han Jung-mae, eyes glittering with envy and a faint, hungry light.
“Pathetic herbivores.”
Sa Ha-yun regarded them with open disdain.
Then her eyes met mine again; her cheeks flushed pink and she quickly lowered her head.
“By the way, what became of the tiger’s carcass? The wild boar was small enough that it hardly matters, but a spiritual beast of that size—especially one that was a tiger-class spiritual creature corrupted into a demonic spiritual beast—would certainly…”
The Escort Leader smacked his lips.
“The inner core inside it would have been quite substantial.”
I put on an expression of complete ignorance.
“The moment I cut the tiger’s throat, for some reason it was engulfed in black flames.”
That was not a lie.
To be precise, the black flames had seized it and reduced it to ash immediately after I extracted the inner core and collected its blood.
“Ah, come to think of it, it was a demonic spiritual beast. My knowledge of such creatures is lacking, so that could well be… In any case, the fact that a beast tainted by demonic energy appeared in this region must be reported to the higher-ups.”
He said the words, yet the Escort Leader’s eyes were full of regret.
Watching him, Mumyeong spoke calmly.
Seeing this, I am reminded once again that whether Orthodox, Demonic, Unorthodox, or Blood, any place where people live is ultimately the same. Dividing everything into neat dichotomies of Orthodox this, Demonic that, Heavenly Demon Cult the other, is rather ridiculous.
I agreed with him.
When I had known nothing, I believed the Orthodox, Demonic, Unorthodox, and Blood factions were rigidly separated and moved according to their distinct colors.
That was true to a certain extent, yet the more I learned of their inner workings, the stronger the conviction grew that they were all the same bastards in the end.
That the jianghu had begun chasing money and dismissing the pursuit of righteousness and chivalry as the outdated spirit of the old martial world was hardly a new story.
Even before I formally entered the jianghu, I had often heard the tale-spinners in the marketplace mention it.
Some of them even spun amusing, light-hearted yarns about absolute masters of Orthodox origin who prioritized money and treated chivalry as a joke.
Everyone laughed, and I laughed along with them.
But the reality built upon that foundation, when I faced it directly, was filthy beyond measure.
…Would the Heavenly Demon Cult or the Blood Cult look the same if I peered into their insides?
I recalled the saying that whatever one looks at from the outside, the neighbor’s rice cake always seems larger.
I was currently inside the Orthodox factions, and so I had seen the unsightly parts that would remain invisible from the outside; that was why I held an excessively critical view, I told myself.
….
Suddenly the thought struck me that the more time passed, the less I understood what I even was.
What am I, exactly? Because I bear the Moyong surname, am I of the Orthodox path? Or because my very body and every martial art I possess developed from the Heavenly Demon Jade that is my root, am I a demonic being?
A person always paid a price when they gained something.
The fact that I possessed skill superior to others clearly meant I had paid something in exchange.
—Crack.
Before my eyes, I calmly erased the faint hairline cracks that had begun to form across the memory of a snow-covered plain.
What is my name?
I repeated it once more.
Every morning when I woke, I consciously recited it.
My name is.
Someday, on the day my forward footsteps finally stop.
My name is Moyong Bi.
I would be unable to answer this question that should have been the most obvious thing in the world.
For now, I focus only on what is in front of me.
The surrounding noise that had receded three paces returned to my ears.
Eul Mi-ye of the Huashan Sect had suffered serious wounds from the wild boar.
Dang Sa-mun of the Sichuan Tang Family had looked fragile and anxious from the start; apparently he had been unable to endure, and had returned to Cheonsubaekryeonsa ahead of us together with the injured Eul Mi-ye.
The Escort Leader explained that the moment I tumbled down the hill while fighting the tiger and three disciples went missing in the process, he had immediately sent an emergency messenger pigeon to Cheonsubaekryeonsa.
The return carriage that should have arrived two days later—after the regular trial ended and the additional field training that followed—was now racing back at full speed.
“Even if they hurry, it will still take half a day. Originally they intended to bring every high-ranking martial artist from Cheonsubaekryeonsa along, which would have delayed them further, but I urgently stopped that, so they should arrive a little sooner.”
The Escort Leader said after reading the short letter delivered by the returning pigeon.
The rest of us sat in a circle around a campfire we had built.
“It is ready.”
“Please sit.”
Han Jung-mae and Gang Mu-jeong carefully prepared a seat for the Escort Leader and invited him to take it.
“Thank you. You are well-mannered disciples.”
The Escort Leader sat with a pleased smile.
Beside him they gathered more dry pine needles to make a soft cushion.
Then they came to me.
“It is ready.”
The Escort Leader, overhearing by chance, tilted his head.
“Hm? Do you use honorifics with fellow disciples?”
I stared at Gang Mu-jeong and Han Jung-mae expressionlessly, saying nothing.
Gang Mu-jeong answered the Escort Leader without hesitation.
“I originally use honorifics with everyone, but—”
“…Bullshit.”
Sa Ha-yun muttered under her breath while roasting the rabbit she had hunted over the fire.
When her eyes met mine again she flushed and buried her face.
A delicious aroma rose as the rabbit meat cooked.
Sa Ha-yun’s skill was surprisingly refined.
I found the idea of freeloading off her somehow awkward, so I intended to roast my own portion myself.
“How can you cook it like that? Shit, are you crazy?”
Looking at the two rabbits’ worth of meat I had clumsily burned in places, Sa Ha-yun snapped in a sharp voice.
I looked at her.
“What? Shit?”
She looked back at me.
—Whoosh.
“No… I mean these two, both of them, are cooked insanely well. I just wondered if someone who likes them crispy even knows how to eat. You can roll this part a little more. If you do it like this, and then like this…. Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s a little bad at first. See? You’re doing fine once you try. As expected of a carniv—”
—Thud.
Gang Mu-jeong, who had been chewing half-raw meat, dropped his piece.
Han Jung-mae’s mouth fell open.
“That Sa Ha-yun is using that kind of speech? Should we tell the kids?”
“Even if you tell the Ha-mu-gwan at Cheonsubaekryeonsa, no one will believe it.”
Beyond the brief commotion, the Escort Leader set down the last of his meat and spoke.
“Anyway, I am in charge of both the second and third regular trials, yet from the very start a demonic spiritual beast—and a tiger-based one at that—has made a complete mess of things. My head hurts.”
“…Is there some problem, Escort Leader?”
I looked at him across the campfire.
The Escort Leader sighed.
“The tigers in this region always travel as a mated pair. Even if we cannot see it now, that means there is definitely one more nearby. We are unprepared this time so we will simply withdraw, but it is a serious matter.”
He took a gourd of liquor from his robes, poured some into a cup, and continued.
“Next regular examination we can make full preparations, form teams of at least four or five, and set the condition of taking that one down as the requirement for passing. That would be perfect for Ha-mu-gwan difficulty. But until then, there must be no harm to the common folk.”
“…!”
The information struck through my mind like lightning.
In a situation where, once we left this place, we might never return, that was something I absolutely could not let pass.
“Escort Leader, I have a confidential proposal. You said the carriage will take nearly half a day to arrive, correct?”
It was, in a way, a method that could resolve every troublesome matter in a single stroke.
Across the campfire the Escort Leader looked at me.
“A confidential proposal?”
I nodded.
“Yes. A proposal that can satisfy everyone—you, Escort Leader, myself, the companions here, and even the common people of the future.”