The Immortal of Zhangjiajie (3)
"You blasted Daoist. Who do you think you're calling Acheon's Brother?"
Mukjeok scowled at her bloodless face and flicked a pebble at Baekhyeon with her foot.
Whoosh!
The stone flew with such terrifying speed that it was hardly any different from a hidden projectile.
And yet Baekhyeon avoided it with nothing more than a slight shift of his body on the donkey's back.
There was not a trace of the sluggishness one might expect from an old man.
"Hoho, it's been years since I've seen your face, and this is the welcome I get? Count yourself fortunate you stepped onto the Dao of Black Ink. With a temperament like yours, ascending to immortality was never in the cards."
"Your mouth is still alive, I see. As foul as ever."
Mukjeok clicked her tongue.
Baekhyeon. One of the Seven Unstoppable Heroes, a martial artist who had roamed the jianghu beside her, and one of the few friends she had in the world.
To everyone else, the two of them looked like they ought to draw swords the moment they met. In truth, this was the sort of relationship they had: trading insults as easily as other people traded greetings.
"Your face is still tight as a drum and just as pretty. I'm truly envious, I am."
"Don't cheapen yourself with nonsense."
"Can't you let our manners down a little, at least between the two of us?"
Mukjeok frowned at Baekhyeon's words.
She knew perfectly well that if he set his mind to it, this white-haired old man could ascend to the realm of rejuvenation too.
He simply refused to do so because he wanted, in his own odd way, to reach immortality without ever undergoing rejuvenation.
Knowing the truth behind that choice, Mukjeok found his joking far less amusing.
"Hmph."
Baekhyeon wiped the playful look from his face and came right up to her nose. His white brows twitched.
"Tsk, tsk. The stench of blood hangs thick on you. Your insides are rotting away."
"If you know that much, then shut up."
"Did I not tell you before? You should have killed that temper of yours when you were young. To think the great Moon Crow would be worn down and dying from illness—Master Mukzi in the afterlife would be weeping."
Though he clicked his tongue, Baekhyeon reached into his robes and tossed her a white porcelain bottle.
Mukjeok caught it carelessly. When she opened the lid, a clear fragrance pricked her nose. It was Purple Shiso Elixir, one of Wudang's treasured medicines.
"You're throwing away something precious."
"This poor Taoist is simply terribly curious about what you wanted to tell me. What good would it do if you collapsed halfway through the story and I never heard the rest?"
Having said that, Baekhyeon pretended to look elsewhere and stroked the donkey's backside.
Mukjeok looked at the donkey and let out a small snort.
"What is that donkey to you?"
"Perhaps this poor Taoist's new companion?"
"That isn't what I asked. Why on earth did you show up before my eyes riding a donkey backward? Are you planning to retire from the jianghu and become a clown, or a pimp?"
Baekhyeon actually gave her sneer some serious thought.
After a short silence, he finally spoke.
"Following the example of Zhuangzi's riding a mount to immortality, I tried riding a donkey backward. I wondered whether it might lead to some kind of enlightenment."
"And?"
"The donkey's backside smelled less awful than I expected."
Did I really send a serious letter to this addled Daoist?
For a moment, Mukjeok deeply regretted her judgment.
Baekhyeon burst into laughter as if her plainly contemptuous expression was the funniest thing in the world, then stroked his beard.
"So, what brings you all the way out to this backwater to fetch me?"
"Anyone overhearing us would think I had fallen to my knees and begged you."
"Did you not send me a letter, then? In all my life, the only letters I've ever received from you were death threats."
Before her headache worsened any further from speaking to this Daoist, Mukjeok drew a long breath and began again, her face serious.
"Baekhyeon."
"Speak. If it's a last will and testament, keep it short. If it's asking me to lend you money for drink, make it long."
"Be the godfather of my disciple."
Baekhyeon's hand froze on the donkey's rump.
His ever-smiling mouth went stiff for the first time, and silence fell between them. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
"...Well, now."
Baekhyeon's expression hardened in an instant.
From his chapped lips came a faint sound, light as a passing breeze.
"I didn't expect you to confess to me like this. Were we not supposed to remain like an elder brother and younger sister to each other?"
At those words, Mukjeok's killing intent flared instantly.
The materialized pressure of it wrapped around Baekhyeon as if it meant to crush him in place, so intense that the donkey under him let out a startled roar and kicked up its front legs like a horse.
"Hiiighh!"
"Oh, dear!"
Because of that, Baekhyeon nearly pitched face-first toward the donkey's hindquarters.
Watching the animal flee instinctively from Mukjeok at full speed, he clicked his tongue and shook his head.
"Tsk. A pity. I thought the time that little one and I spent together had forged a friendship deeper than blood."
"If you want to talk in your sleep, I'll make sure you never wake up."
"All right, all right. This poor Taoist cracks a light joke and you bare your teeth like this? For a fellow who coughs up blood just from using a single outer art technique, you're frightfully fierce."
Baekhyeon tsked again and brushed the dust from his white robe.
Then he put away the playfulness in his face and asked Mukjeok in earnest,
"Acheon's Brother, the disciple you're talking about—is that the child from eight years ago?"
"Yes."
"Why should I, of all people, stand as godfather for a child you've already raised so well?"
"Can't you see? I don't have much time left."
Mukjeok was calm.
"When that child reaches twenty, I will send him down to Mureung County. And I will lie down beside my forebears without resistance."
Her black eyes stared into Baekhyeon's wrinkled face.
"That is why I am asking."
"Hah."
Baekhyeon let out a dry laugh, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Mukjeok was a woman who had lived her entire life on nothing but pride. She had given aid to the whole world, yet never once bowed her head to anyone herself. She was the sort who would rather cut off an arm than ask for help.
And yet now, facing her own death, she was bowing her head—for the sake of one disciple and one disciple only.
Baekhyeon smiled faintly before speaking.
"I suppose you came to me, of all those people, because you believed I was trustworthy enough?"
"No. Because you were the closest."
"How heartless. Hoho."
The Daoist's long white beard brushed the hem of Mukjeok's black robe like a thread.
Still smiling, Baekhyeon said, "You have Mind's Eye."
Baekhyeon's eyes widened.
"Mind's Eye?"
"Yes. Just like the disciple you keep bragging about."
He fell into thought and began stroking his beard.
"I don't think it was there when that child first came to see me and Elder Son."
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that the child has Mind's Eye."
Mukjeok went on,
"That brat can read the flow of inner energy. He can even sense herbs buried in the earth and track the movement of the wind. Just now, he saw through the fact that my dantian is shattered and my qi is leaking away."
"...I see."
Baekhyeon rubbed his chin and swallowed a groan.
A child who had never learned martial arts possessed Mind's Eye.
That could mean either an unprecedented genius in the history of the martial world, or the seed of a disaster that would turn the jianghu into a sea of blood.
Mukjeok met Baekhyeon's eyes without flinching.
"When I die, that child will be alone. You know what that means."
Her voice trembled ever so slightly.
"I have never asked anyone for anything in my life. But this is the first and the last time."
The moment her black eyes met the old Taoist's white ones, the world seemed to fall still.
"Be that child's shelter. I am not asking you to take him into Wudang. I am only asking you to lend him a sword when the storms of the world try to sweep him away."
A plea from a dying old crow. Baekhyeon looked at Mukjeok's bent back. The shoulders that had always seemed as vast and encompassing as a mountain now looked small, almost pitiable.
"Hoho, Acheon's Brother, Achon's Brother."
Mukjeok twitched a brow.
Though he had been calling her Acheon's Brother all this time, Baekhyeon had always addressed her with formal respect.
This was the first time he had called her like she was his own little sister.
"Even if you've lived your whole life like an iron fortress, you're still only human in the end. So you've gone and picked up one last lingering attachment. Tsk, tsk."
Mukjeok disliked his tone just a little.
"So, will you do it or not?"
"It is said that one should grant the dying their last request. Why would I refuse?"
Baekhyeon smiled generously and stroked his beard.
"However, I will only lend a hand once that child steps into the jianghu. If he intends to live out his remaining years peacefully and never leave home? Then this poor Taoist need not interfere."
"That much is enough."
Mukjeok nodded.
With that, as though her business were finished, she turned her back and headed toward Zhangjiajie.
"Acheon's Brother!"
Baekhyeon's voice called after her.
"It was good to see your face after so long. I hope we can see each other often from now on."
Mukjeok did not look back.
***
"Tsk tsk. Still such a stiff, taciturn girl to the very end."
Baekhyeon stroked his beard as he watched Mukjeok's departing back.
Then he turned his head and shouted toward the woods in the distance.
"Yeona! You can come out now."
After a brief rustle, a girl emerged from within the brush.
Hair mottled with black and brown.
Purple eyes that shone deep and dark, as though they held amethyst within them.
Her small, fair hands fidgeted inside green sleeves, and the little white feather fan in her grasp announced that she was a daughter of the Jegal Clan.
Baekhyeon walked up to the child and gently patted her head.
"Yeona, what do you think?"
"What are you referring to?"
Her tone was cold and flat, completely unlike Baekhyeon's warmth.
It sounded less like a person speaking than a machine.
Baekhyeon deliberately frowned at that and lightly pressed the girl's cheek.
"You little thing, what's with that heartless way of speaking? Are you a machine? You're a person."
"What, precisely, are you asking about?"
Jegal Yeona's eyes shifted toward the finger pressing her cheek.
At her stubbornly repeated question, Baekhyeon let out a long sigh and vigorously mussed her hair.
"Hah, this poor Taoist has told you again and again to put down that burden in your heart, and yet when will you ever take my words to heart?"
Then, looking toward the direction where Mukjeok had disappeared, he went on,
"Do you think Acheon's Brother and I will ever meet face to face again?"
Jegal Yeona looked up at the sky for a moment.
Her violet eyes moved upward as if they were tracing the stars embroidered across the night.
Eyes that borrowed the laws of heaven to read the heavens themselves and divine fate.
People called her genius from heaven and gave her the epithet Heavenly Skill.
For an eight-year-old, it's a rather heavy title.
Of course, that did not mean Jegal Yeona lacked talent.
It was simply that, between her position as the favored child of a prestigious clan and the title she had received unwillingly, the burden of attention was far too great for an eight-year-old to bear.
This child is pitiful too. She ought to lighten her heart and play like the others her age.
As Baekhyeon felt a touch of pity for her, Jegal Yeona, who had been gazing at the sky, shook her head and spoke.
"There isn't."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. That heroic lady will never again see Grand Master Baek's face."
At those words, Baekhyeon's face stiffened for a moment, then relaxed again as though nothing had happened.
"Hoho! Is that so? So that's how it is!"
Stretching lazily, Baekhyeon laughed and stroked his beard.
"Then this poor Taoist can now rest easy, turn his back on the mortal world, and ascend to immortality."
"Are you retiring?"
"Not yet. This old man still has unfinished business in the mortal world."
Baekhyeon slowly looked at the girl standing beside him.
When he had mentioned going to Mureung County, she had suddenly seized on the idea and begged him to take her along as well.
That alone had startled him, since the child was not usually so forceful about what she wanted.
Smiling at the daughter of the Jegal Clan, Baekhyeon asked,
"What about you, then? What do you think?"
"What are you referring to?"
"You insisted on coming here with me, did you not? You said you had seen the Reversing-Heaven Star."
When the words Reversing-Heaven Star came up, Jegal Yeona looked toward the direction where Mukjeok had disappeared.
Her gaze slowly rose from the woods leading back toward Zhangjiajie and moved up toward the lofty peaks.
"Go on, Yeona. What did you see?"
At Baekhyeon's question, Jegal Yeona kept silent for a moment before slowly parting her lips.
"The heroic lady with the star of Ox Mansion has certainly seized the Reversing-Heaven Star in her hand."
"Is that so?"
Baekhyeon's eyes widened. He knew all too well what Jegal Yeona meant by the Reversing-Heaven Star, and who it referred to.
So the child really was the fortuitous encounter that had changed Mukjeok's fate?
But the words that came next from Jegal Yeona's slightly furrowed brow overturned that thought.
"And yet it is strange. Even though she has grasped the Reversing-Heaven Star, the heroic lady's fate has not changed."
Baekhyeon remembered the eerie prophecy Jeagal Yeona had given when she first met Mukjeok.
A sacrifice to open the Heavenly Gate. And death.
As if she had read that thought, Jegal Yeona continued.
"If anything, it looks as though the Reversing-Heaven Star is tangled up with her fate."
"I see..."
Then, in that case—
the Reversing-Heaven Star was awakening by forcing open the Heavenly Gate?
Using the female warrior of Ox Mansion, offered up to Heaven, as the sacrifice.
"What a pitiable life. Such a pitiable life..."
"What is pitiable?"
"Nothing, you little brat."
Baekhyeon patted Jegal Yeona's head and then lifted her easily onto his shoulders.
"Come along. Since the donkey ran away, this old man will be your donkey instead."
"Grand Grand Master Baek."
"What is it, Yeona?"
"I'm going to be sick. Please put me down."
"Denied."
Laughing heartily, Baekhyeon set off toward Hubei.
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