Nothing Comes Free
It felt as if a shard of ice had been driven into my spine.
The eyes that fixed on me held perfect, absolute emptiness. This was not the So Yeomgyo I knew. These were the eyes of the Blood Death Sect’s leader.
“I—that is—”
“I’m not the type who digs into every little detail, Moyong Bi. But.”
A chill autumn wind swept into the room. My hands and feet went cold. No one rose to shut the window.
“You should know that I, just like you, am always thinking.”
“….”
“In this world, even a passing beggar lives with thoughts of his own. And in the Jianghu, where only the strong survive, that goes double.”
Suffocating tension coiled between us and would not break.
“Especially in the underworld where I stand, you end up learning whatever scrap you need just to stay alive. Martial arts, yes—but I’m fairly skilled with sorcery and formations as well.”
So Yeomgyo poured wine into a cup.
A soft rustle. The bandage wrapped around my side loosened and slipped free. She reached out with long, pale fingers.
“I covered for that slip of the tongue you made. Said you were raving from the pain. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“….”
“And you should count yourself lucky that no one in this trade knows what it means, in terms of sorcery, to demand a Guardian’s hair right after the Blooming Ceremony ends.”
She rewrapped the bandage with careful, methodical hands.
“Is there some other meaning to hair?”
Her cold fingertips brushed my bare skin. I flinched every time that cool touch landed. Holding my hand, she looked quietly up at me. Her Flame Eyes bored into mine without blinking.
“Just as I expected. You don’t know a thing.”
The venom drained from those Flame Eyes. The gaze of the Blood Death Sect’s leader softened back into the So Yeomgyo I recognized.
“Moyong Bi, you really are a fool. It worries me. How did a kid like you end up rolling into this world and suffering like this? You’re just going to get used.”
She nodded to herself as if she had known this would happen all along.
“I’m not a fool, you know.”
“The thing fools and drunks have in common is that they never admit where they stand.”
So Yeomgyo lifted her cup and drank with a soft sip.
“Want one? Ah, no. You’re hurt. Alcohol’s out.”
I would bet anything she remembered perfectly and was teasing me on purpose. She spun the cup lazily on her fingertip as she spoke.
“There’s an old story. Don’t carelessly throw fingernail clippings or cut hair out into the yard.”
“You mean the superstition about rats picking them up and turning into people?”
I had heard it now and then as a child.
So Yeomgyo answered, “It is a superstition—but when it comes to a Guardian’s body right after the Blooming Ceremony, it’s not something you can just dismiss. When the jewel is passed down, the jewel’s inner power and will saturate the body from the crown of the head to the tips of the toes. Only gradually, over time, does it condense back into the jewel.”
Nothing in this world is free. Nothing anyone asks for is without meaning.
“To demand, out of nowhere, hair still charged with a powerful spiritual link and will, right after the ceremony ends… doesn’t that intention look a little too impure? Especially when it’s a child who hasn’t even properly grown yet.”
The more she spoke, the more something in me clicked into place. If someone promises you a reward for a demand that looks absurdly cheap, it means you are being played for a fool.
Mara Jin was no idiot. He had offered me the Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo and told me to bring him hair. There was no way that request was light. I had been so blinded by a supreme martial art that I had treated the whole thing far too casually.
So Yeomgyo went on. “I know everything about you, Moyong Bi—from your birth on down—so I didn’t take your head. If there had been even a shred of doubt about your identity, or if you’d been tied to the Blood Cult, I would have cut you down on the spot. Do you finally understand what you almost did?”
“…Yeah.”
Mara Jin’s bright yellow eyes and that eerie face rose in my mind. Looking back, it had been an obvious deduction. We were talking about the Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo itself. Even a halfwit would not hand that over for a meaningless fistful of hair. And he had fixed a deadline—must, without fail—and that deadline had been set for the exact moment the Blooming Ceremony ended.
I’m still nothing but a clumsy child.
I had thought I was thrashing awake with my eyes wide open. But the world was vast, and tacticians sharper than I was were everywhere. Frustration clenched my fist.
“Still, don’t take it too hard. Don’t sink into it either.”
She must have caught the shift in me, because So Yeomgyo spoke again.
“I stopped it, didn’t I? You haven’t actually done anything wrong yet.”
“….”
If I said I felt no regret, that would have been a blatant lie. I had let the Patcheon Hyeolma Gunrimbo slip away right in front of me. Worse—I might still have to pay some price for failing to keep that promise.
But then—
I pictured the small child beyond the bamboo blinds. Even so, I did not want to live by doing something to a child like that when I could not even guess at the aftermath.
There will be other chances.
I quietly cleared the thoughts from my head.
“And where did you get this? I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”
So Yeomgyo was turning a small flask this way and that, examining it.
“Ah. That… that’s—”
It was the flask holding the blood of the Golden-Furred Divine Ape. I had completely forgotten it existed.
“The blood of a spiritual beast based on the Ink-Blood Forge is so rare you couldn’t buy it for a thousand gold…”
She shook the flask of Golden-Furred Divine Ape blood with open admiration.
“Even a rotten herring is still a herring—I guess being a scion of the Moyong Family counts for something after all. To be carrying medicine this precious. With this you’ll recover faster. Open your mouth.”
“Ghk—!”
She seized my jaw. At a flick of her fingers the stopper popped free with a soft sound. A nauseating, rancid stench of rotten blood filled the air. My eyes flew wide.
“W-wait! You want me to drink that?!”
“Yeah. Isn’t that obvious? Didn’t you know what this was when you were carrying it?”
So Yeomgyo tilted her head.
“No—I knew what it was! I just thought it was something you apply—!”
She blinked once.
“What kind of joke is that? This stuff costs a full nyang of gold per small cup. What rich idiot would smear it on their body?”
A bell went off in my head.
“A nyang of gold per cup?”
She nodded.
“Smearing something this expensive on yourself is pure waste. Sure, the old immortals chasing the diamond-indestructible body used to do it to harden the outer frame—but if that’s the goal, you’d be a million times better off just carrying it as emergency medicine. Unless you’re some kind of freak.”
Without meaning to, I had become the greatest gold-wasting deviant under heaven. No wonder, after I had soaked myself in the Golden-Furred Divine Ape’s blood to recover, my whole body had briefly shone gold and felt harder somehow…
“If you understand, open up already. Ugh, the smell’s starting to turn. It’s going to spoil soon. You stored it terribly.”
I clenched my teeth and swallowed whatever she poured. It felt exactly like becoming a cormorant forced to gulp down an entire rotten fish. Honestly I wanted to spit it out—but after hearing “a nyang of gold per cup,” I forced every last drop down with stubborn greed. The memories of crawling the capital’s streets were still buried in my bones.
If I went to O-bi-dong even now, could I find an unrotted corpse of a Golden-Furred Divine Ape? No—before that, the snake in Yuk-bi-dong was several times bigger, so that means…
I stopped the thought cold. Any further and self-loathing would drown me and I would do something unforgivable.
“How is your body?”
The door opened.
A sharp crack. In So Yeomgyo’s grip the flask was crushed out of existence by pure pressure of qi, as if it had never been there. Aside from a smear of blood at the corner of my mouth, no trace remained that spiritual-beast blood had ever sat in this room.
“You might try knocking.”
With her little finger she swiftly wiped the blood from my lip, then licked her own fingertip clean. Every last trace erased, she turned with perfect composure and offered a silent bow.
“The patient will be startled, Strategist Seol Rinji of Emei.”
This was the acquaintance So Yeomgyo had mentioned—the very person who had requested Emei’s protection for her.
Wrapped almost entirely in bandages, I lifted only my head to look at her. She was older than So Yeomgyo. Black hair bound neatly atop her head, pale skin with a faint gray cast, and a soft smile. She looked like a good person—but she did not look as if she possessed the decisiveness or drive needed to lead an organization the way So Yeomgyo did. Just an endlessly gentle, kind-faced woman.
“And this young master is—?”
“Biryu. He is Biryu.”
Before I could open my mouth So Yeomgyo cut in and stole the answer. Seol Rinji repeated the name with that same gentle smile.
“Ah, Young Master Biryu. I offer my thanks for your help in this matter.”
“…It was nothing.”
“I have already heard the story of what all of you did during the Blooming Ceremony.”
The alias Biryu still felt endlessly foreign, but I showed nothing. There was no upside to letting the Moyong name surface anyway. And so, after my first real step into the Jianghu, my first official name was not Moyong Bi but Biryu.
Strategist Seol Rinji bowed her head with careful courtesy.
“To stand as our protectors even while suffering such grave wounds—you have our deepest gratitude. Both of you are benefactors of Emei.”
So Yeomgyo returned the silent bow and answered, “Not at all. We only did what anyone of the Jianghu ought to do.”
Something about the two of them felt off. From So Yeomgyo’s earlier words I had assumed they were very close. Yet the way they faced each other was careful, almost formal, as if both were deliberately observing every rule of etiquette.
I glanced around, puzzled—and then understood why.
The air is sharp as blades.
At least everyone in this room seemed to know exactly where So Yeomgyo truly came from. Only Seol Rinji was speaking with a kindly smile. The women standing behind her all wore the same look of open disgust and hostility toward So Yeomgyo.
Something twisted hard in my chest. It was the exact same gaze I had received more times than I could count. So Yeomgyo acted as if she had long since grown used to such looks and paid them no mind—yet a faint edge still crept into her voice. That much could not be helped.
Seol Rinji offered formal respects. “As the Sect Leader is still in recovery, I convey Emei’s gratitude in her place to you two, our benefactors. And once again, please forgive the discourtesy of our protection officers—”
“Even if the Strategist has old ties with them, I do not believe you need to lower your head.”
Protection Officer Seo Haemun cut in with a sharp voice. From the start she had been the most openly hostile toward us.
Seol Rinji frowned in confusion. “What do you mean by that? To show such rudeness before guests who saved us would damage Emei’s dignity as well—”
“Zhongnan Sect did everything.”
The air froze solid.
So Yeomgyo looked at Seo Haemun. I looked at her too. I could not understand what this person was saying.
Like frost cracking, Protection Officer Seo Haemun raised her voice. “Strategist, you are being deceived. Those two did nothing.”
“What? That can’t—”
Even So Yeomgyo, who always moved with crisp precision, looked blank for a moment.
“It’s true. The Emei disciples standing guard on the outer perimeter of the Blooming Ceremony all fell. We nearly fell for the same trick ourselves.”
The Emei disciples behind Seo Haemun nodded as one in agreement.
“Zhongnan Sect, who were present on the field at the time, have already testified to every detail.”
Seo Haemun’s voice rang out, full of triumphant force.
“While they fought desperately to hold back the Demonic Cult and the Blood Cult, one of them only got in the way—and in particular, even though the Flame Wolf King of the Demonic Cult could have been eliminated, Young Master Biryu lying there, with his childish actions, allowed even the Flame Wolf King to escape. We have testimony for that as well.”
I realized it late. This was the same woman who had once tried to browbeat us with talk of manners in front of Emei’s Guardian, only to tuck her tail when So Yeomgyo’s anger flared. The grudge from that humiliation had struck the flint of her rage.
So Yeomgyo’s voice dropped. “You… what did you just say?”
Seo Haemun twisted her mouth into a sneer aimed straight at her.
“Surely you weren’t actually puffed up, thinking yourself a benefactor just because you stuck your nose into a fight between martial artists—when you’re nothing but a cowardly assassin?”