The Difficult Path
It was the morning after the banquet.
I crossed the corridor in the cool air of early dawn. The heated atmosphere of the long, raucous feast the night before had vanished completely beneath the chill of the morning.
“It should be around here.”
It was my first time seeking this place out. I retraced the path that a thoroughly drunk Jegal Sea had shown me the previous evening, tugging me along by the hand.
“This place really is ridiculously huge.”
I walked the endless corridor. The floorboards creaked underfoot. At the very end, before the most antique-looking door, I stopped and knocked.
“Come in.”
Beyond the door, in her study, Jegal Sea sat in neat attire, reviewing stacks of documents. I clicked my tongue at the sight of her.
“I half-expected it, but your self-discipline really is something else. You drank that much and you’re still fine?”
“That’s also one of my flaws.”
Jegal Sea paused in grinding ink on her inkstone.
“I just can’t bring myself to leave things to other people. Even when I do hand work off to someone halfway competent, they never do it quite as cleanly as I would… You have to trust people, I know. But look at this. In a single day, seven holes have already turned up. The numbers don’t add up front to back.”
“Holes?”
A beat later I realized the papers piled on her desk were complex ledgers tied to the Jegal Family’s finances.
“Want an example? For last night’s banquet I naturally accounted for the martial artists present, so instead of ordinary adult portions I prepared food for about a hundred and sixty people on a martial artist’s scale—plenty of it. Food’s cheaper in bulk, and for a feast it’s better to have leftovers than run short, so I ordered boldly.”
The room was filled with the fragrant scent of tea. I said,
“And?”
“And that supposedly overflowing amount of food ran out so fast that halfway through we had to start bringing more in from outside. The spending went well beyond what I’d calculated.”
Jegal Sea picked up a dry brush and twirled it between her fingers.
“I’m still a little tipsy, so my head isn’t turning as sharply as usual, but even so it doesn’t make sense. Circumstantially, either the head cook skimmed ingredients midway or someone in management was playing games… I’m reverse-tracking based on that kind of not-quite-evidence.”
I added carefully,
“It’s not great to go around suspecting people for no reason, is it? Maybe everyone just got excited and ate more. It was a feast day, after all.”
“I prepared generously on a martial artist’s scale—double what an ordinary adult would eat. And why was the liquor so short as well? Only the expensive stuff, at that.”
…
In one corner of my mind rose the image of Eun Seollyeong steadily pouring wine as if it were a side dish.
Jegal Sea looked at me.
“Feast day or not, the reason doesn’t matter. Other people can shrug it off, but if the last person in charge of the finances—me—starts cutting corners, everything goes to hell in an instant. Especially anything involving money.”
“When you put it that way… it does make sense.”
I scratched my head awkwardly.
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Strange.”
I glanced away. Jegal Sea blinked.
“Moyong Bi?”
“Hmm, thinking about it carefully, that cook looks pretty suspicious. How about we put the screws to him?”
Jegal Sea stared holes through me. I looked up at the ceiling. She said,
“Your complexion is unusually good today.”
“…Must be my imagination.”
She propped her chin on her laced fingers.
“Found you. The culprit behind the holes.”
…
“I missed the variable that is you… Ah, now it all makes sense. And Eun Seollyeong on top of that… Right… I was overcomplicating something that was staring me in the face…”
Jegal Sea nodded and leaned back in her chair.
“How anticlimactic. Fine, we’ll let this one slide. Anyway, there are plenty of other holes besides this.”
With a sigh she shoved the stack of papers aside.
“If it weren’t for me, the Jegal Family would’ve been swallowed by another house ages ago. Especially in times like these, with the Five Great Families at each other’s throats.”
After she spoke she seemed to catch herself and checked my expression.
“You know I don’t mean the Moyong Family as a whole—just your two older brothers, right?”
“You don’t have to watch my face that carefully.”
I pulled out the chair across from her desk and sat.
“I may carry the Moyong name, but even I’ve only visited the main house once or twice in my life.”
“Right. That’s part of why I wanted to see you in the first place.”
Jegal Sea neatly stacked the thick bundles of documents that had been heaped on the desk and set them aside. She spread a clean sheet of white paper before her.
“The most important plans—the ones that need the most thinking—are best handled in the morning.”
“Reassuring.”
“You know you have a visitor, right? He asked me to tell you to meet him by the rear gate later.”
I recalled the person who had sought me out near the end of last night’s banquet. Seeing me nod, Jegal Sea suddenly added,
“I knew you had ties to the Namgung Family, but I never expected you’d be connected to him of all people.”
“Yun Hyeon? Why?”
She poured tea from the pot and set a cup in front of me.
“There are exactly five people in the jianghu I keep a careful eye on. He’s one of them.”
Jegal Sea continued,
“Stay on good terms with him. He seems to dislike me, yet for some reason he likes you a great deal. You’re a stranger and stranger person the more I get to know you.”
“Why?”
“Plenty of people try to get close to Yun Hyeon, but he’s famous for always drawing a clear line. That head of his…”
She clicked her tongue and waved a hand.
“Completely unreadable. This is exactly why I hate smart people.”
“Hearing that from you is pretty funny.”
“Isn’t it?”
Jegal Sea winked.
“So, have you considered the two options I laid out at the banquet yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
Until the feast was in full swing, Jegal Sea and I had talked for a long time. I had told her everything I’d newly learned and how the situation had shifted. I still remembered it clearly. She had treated my affairs like those of her own family, examining them with every ounce of strategic rigor she possessed, ready to judge the direction I meant to take as my strategist and speak accordingly.
Chin in hand, staring at the floor as she listened, her eyes had burned more fiercely than the bonfire right beside us. The moment my story ended, her answer had come like a flash of lightning—proof that she had not spoken lightly or settled for some half-baked judgment.
“So which will you choose?”
She had offered me two paths then. Of course, later in the banquet she too had gotten drunk on the wine Eun Seollyeong kept pouring, singing and swaying—but that was only after every piece of advice had been clearly delivered.
“My choice…”
Last night I had been the only one who hadn’t taken a single sip. Sitting sober among the reeling crowd had been a bit of an ordeal, but not entirely unpleasant. Buried in that swaying, thoroughly drunk throng, I had turned countless thoughts over and over through the night, centering them on the model answers Jegal Sea had given me.
“First…”
…
Jegal Sea let out a short sigh.
“You actually picked the hard road, Moyong Bi. Honestly, even as I said it, I knew this was the most suitable path.”
She pointed once at her chest with her thumb, then at her head.
“Understanding with the head and understanding with the heart are different things. And it means abandoning the road you’ve walked until now.”
“…I’m not abandoning the goal of my life. Only the route and the method are changing.”
I drew a deep breath.
“And… the truth is, I felt it myself long before you said anything. Eun Seollyeong said something similar in the middle of the banquet yesterday.”
…
I turned the cooling teacup in my hands.
“I’ve already strayed too far from the path. And more than anything, the Guardian war has already begun. Living with a ‘whatever happens, happens’ attitude until someone hangs me is not an option I’m interested in.”
Jegal Sea tilted her head.
“Moyong Bi, have you ever been hanged to death? That can’t be right.”
“…Huh?”
I blinked. She snorted with laughter.
“Pfft. Still half-asleep? Even a slip of the tongue has limits. There’s no way you of all people received hanging—the greatest humiliation for a martial artist. Even the orthodox sects don’t do that when they execute unorthodox ones.”
…
[…]
A shadow in one corner of the room rippled and vanished. I scratched my head and waved my left hand through empty air.
“Guess I’m not fully awake yet. Why did I even say that? It just slipped out. Take it from the context. I meant I don’t want to get stabbed in the back.”
Jegal Sea spoke as if it were nothing.
“From the context I understood perfectly well and then some. In any case, if that’s your decision.”
She took a sip of tea.
“As for everything related to concluding your status as a Ha-mu-gwan student of Cheonsubaekryeonsa—I’ll handle all the paperwork.”
“Thanks.”
My life right now was full of unfinished business: progressing to graduation under my Cheonsubaekryeonsa identity, the internal strife over the Moyong Family headship, and the underwater war over the Guardians’ gems. Even while I was distracted, the world never stopped; it kept rolling steadily to its own rhythm.
The current state of the jianghu that Jegal Sea had described boiled down to three main points.
First was the intensification of the Guardian war. In a short span two more Guardians had died. The dantians of the dead Guardians had been left with gaping holes, their gems brazenly taken. The Guardians had already begun a war of their own, separate from the factions they once belonged to. One by one they were sensing the signs of great upheaval and starting to move. Even those who had stayed still until now felt the pressure to act. And there was no force that could stop them. They might be the spears and swords of their sects pointed at the jianghu, but they were also beings with their own pride and sense of self. Driven by the fundamental desire every martial artist carried—to possess ever greater power—no one could hold them back.
Second was the fact that the cracks among the Five Great Families were widening further. In particular, the Moyong Family’s rate of expansion was said to be like wildfire on a dry plain. At the forefront was the eldest, Moyong Jinryong, followed by the third, Moyong Ryu. Even so it was not enough; Moyong Ryu was gradually being pushed back. As the situation heated up, both Moyong Jinryong and Moyong Ryu had recently submitted written pledges abandoning any further stay at Cheonsubaekryeonsa.
Third and last: for the first time since the Orthodox-Demonic Great War, the Heavenly Demon Cult—including the Eight Demon Dragons—was showing meaningful movement.
For the ultimate dream I sought, I would eventually have to settle every one of these threads somehow. At first I had not known how or where to begin unraveling them. I had not even known how to walk the road just to keep walking. And even if I found the road, I had lacked the strength to walk it steadfastly.
But now everything had changed.
Jegal Sea had given me all sorts of jianghu intelligence I had not known. Through it I had found the path I needed to walk. And—
I clenched my fist faintly while leaning back in the chair.
The me of now had the strength to walk the path I had found, without wavering. Of course I was still far from enough. But if I set my will, I now possessed enough power to see it through to some degree. The road stretched endlessly, yet I could feel its end coming into view. I was clearly advancing. It had always felt like standing in place, and my body had never been whole, yet all of it was returning to me little by little—and as a result I was moving forward, even if only half a step at a time.
I turned my gaze to the calligraphy hanging in Jegal Sea’s room and slowly read it aloud.
“Manryu-gwijong. All streams return to the source… Everything’s origins are connected…”
“It’s still only a hypothesis. Not certain.”
“Your eyes already look more than certain.”
At my question Jegal Sea smiled lightly.
“My conviction is strong enough to pierce the heavens.”
She said,
“Come to think of it, it’s amazing. How is it that you’re involved, one step at a time, in every single one of those things that seem to have no connection at all?”
“Maybe this is fate.”
At the end of all that explanation, the hypothesis Jegal Sea had handed me was simple. And it had been the decisive blow that let me make every choice.
—The eldest of the Moyong Family, Moyong Jinryong, had dragged both the Heavenly Demon Cult and the Blood Cult into the heart of the family power struggle and the orthodox world.
Jegal Sea continued.
“On top of that, the Heavenly Demon Cult is connected to the Eight Demon Dragons, and the Eight Demon Dragons are salivating over the Guardians’ gems—that much goes without saying. If one could pull the power of those Eight Demon Dragons into the private sphere, they would become the most reliable allies in this world.”
I drained the completely cold tea in one go. Setting the cup down, I said,
“Jegal Sea, where did you say Yun Hyeon is?”
“Heading straight for the Moyong Family?”
I nodded.
“I need weapons and equipment.”