How Long Is Life? (3)
The night in Jegal Se-ga flowed in quiet stillness.
Unlike other clans, where the sounds of martial training drifted through the dark and banquets rang late into the night, Jegal Se-ga knew neither clamor nor revelry.
Only the turning of pages and the scratch of brush on paper could be heard as its people studied the countless bodies of knowledge beneath the lantern light.
The rustle of paper, the whisper of brushes, the chirring of insects in the bamboo grove—these white noises mingled softly together, lending the garden a silence both solemn and serene. There, a girl was looking up at the sky.
With skin white as a pearl and a white fox-fur coat draped over her shoulders to match it, the woman wore a faint smile.
Her neatly coiled black hair, streaked here and there with brown, stirred gently in the night wind, and her Jami Eyes, filled to the brim with starlight, gleamed with a mystery that seemed far too strange to belong to any human being.
"Yeona."
At the voice calling from behind her, Jegal Yeona turned her head with grace.
Light footsteps approached.
A gait so light it seemed to leave no trace of fallen leaves, as if she were walking on clouds.
A girl in a neatly arranged black-and-white taoist robe came toward her slowly, silently, wearing a soft smile.
Under the broad bamboo hat pulled low over her brow, there flickered jet-black hair and eyes so pale and milky they seemed diluted in water.
The taiji pattern drawn across the center of her robe and on the hilt of her sword marked her as a disciple of Wudang.
"What are you doing out here when it's so cold? The clan head has been worried sick because he couldn't find you anywhere."
"Seojin!"
Seated in the pavilion, Jegal Yeona fluttered her hands and tapped the cushion beside her, inviting her to come sit.
Yu Seojin, the disciple of Wudang, tilted her head for a moment, then slowly walked over and took a seat beside Yeona.
That a mere taoist disciple of Wudang could sit so easily at the side of Jegal Se-ga's precious jewel was the result of both the Jegal clan head's open-handedness and the Wudang sect leader's lack of ceremony.
Once Yu Seojin had sat quietly on the cushion, Jegal Yeona's mischief surfaced, and she whispered to her,
"Actually, I was just talking with an immortal. You interrupted me, and now the immortal's angry. What should we do? It might rain thunder on Wudang Mountain soon."
"……!"
Yu Seojin's brows twitched.
"Is that true? But the only inner energy I could feel here was yours."
"My, how can you say something so obvious? Do you think someone as lofty as an immortal wouldn't be able to hide a bit of inner energy?"
"Ah!"
As though she had suddenly realized something, she tapped her fist lightly against her palm and adjusted her bamboo hat with an expression of grave concern.
"That's terrible. My master has gone missing again, so I don't know where she is......"
Then, opening her milky white eyes in earnest, she asked Jegal Yeona,
"If I start fetching purifying water and bowing to pray right now, do you think the immortal's anger will subside?"
"Pfft! Hahaha!"
When Jegal Yeona clutched her stomach and burst into peals of laughter, Yu Seojin finally realized she'd been fooled again.
But instead of getting angry, she let out a faint sigh and smiled quietly.
"You always do that. Because I can't see, you tease me as much as you like."
"I'm not teasing you. I'm entertaining you. Come closer, Seojin. The night sky is truly strange tonight."
"Huh? How am I supposed to see it?"
Yu Seojin looked at Jegal Yeona with a sincerely bewildered expression.
At the same time, her dull white pupils caught the light.
Clouded irises, unfocused eyes.
The unmistakable appearance of a blind person.
To ask a blind girl to look at the night sky was quite a cruel and rude thing to say, yet Yu Seojin only looked troubled, showing not the least sign of offense.
Jegal Yeona grinned and took her hand, pulling her closer.
That softness, that purity of Yu Seojin's, was one of the reasons Yeona's own personality had changed so much.
"I'm not joking. I'll be your eyes, Seojin. Here, give me your hand."
"O-oh."
Yu Seojin held out her hand, flustered. Then Jegal Yeona gave a sly smile and caught Seojin's arm.
Yet the taoist girl showed no sign of alarm, only letting out a small breath as she felt the coolness of Yeona's fingertips.
"Your hands are this cold, and you're still in the mood to joke? If you don't go inside soon, I'll get accused of being your accomplice too."
"Tch. Don't say that. Just close your eyes and focus."
"Even with my eyes open, I can't see."
"Ah, right. Sorry. Anyway, I'll draw tonight's sky on your palm."
Jegal Yeona began tapping dots onto Yu Seojin's palm with the tip of her finger. Seojin's expression turned serious.
Through the warmth and pressure of Yeona's fingertips, she began sketching an invisible map of the heavens in her mind.
"All right, this is the night sky. Right here, beneath the thumb, is the south. The tip of the middle finger is the north."
Jegal Yeona's fingers drifted elegantly across Seojin's palm.
With her eyes shut, Yu Seojin focused on the warmth and movement transmitted from Yeona's fingertips.
"Right now, there's a very faint star in the northern sky. It's called Usu."
"I see."
"But listen, Seojin. Right there, the very greedy and obnoxious star called Cheongwae-seong is opening its mouth wide and trying to swallow Usu whole."
Yu Seojin discerned the shadow that fell across Jegal Yeona's face from the flow of her inner energy.
But she couldn't tell whether what lay behind that shadow was worry or delight.
"It's an omen that a great change is coming to the Jianghu."
[Master. Your disciple, Wolyeon, has learned and seen many things from you over the years.]
"Hmm."
[May you live ten thousand years and stay healthy, and if you would be so kind, please place some meat dishes on your disciple's memorial table once a year or so. As for the paper money, perhaps about three hundred sheets......]
"You foolish disciple, giving you even one word of nonsense just makes it go on forever. Get lost."
Thunk.
My master did not bother listening to her disciple's last words and, without warning, kicked me straight off the cliff below.
"……!"
Ah, being mute was such a bitter, heart-wrenching thing.
I should have screamed loud enough for Master to hear, no matter what.
I gathered what inner energy I could, twisted my body in midair, and kicked off a rock jutting from the cliff face before finally using lightness skill to make my way down.
The instant my feet touched the ground, I sent a wordless howl up toward the cliff where my master stood.
'She really kicked me off!'
People said that once you passed sixty, your temper would cool. Lies—pure lies. If I hadn't managed to use my lightness skill in time, I'd already have become fertilizer for Zhangjiajie's rich soil and bloomed into some nameless wildflower.
But I didn't even have time to complain. The ground beneath my feet began to ripple strangely.
What should have been an ordinary forest path warped from the point where I landed and split into nine branching routes.
This was the trial Master had warned me about: the Ten-Faced Formation.
The scenery before me changed without pause. A tree I had just seen vanished in an instant, mist I hadn't noticed before rolled in thickly, and a sheer cliff of rock blocked the way ahead.
Mind's Eye quivered. The flow of energy spilling in from all directions constricted around me like a living net.
This is the bind of the gate maze—every gate I pass opens into another.
I forced my breathing to steady. Every time I put down a foot, the gates changed without rest, threatening to make me lose my direction at once.
For the moment, I set aside the mathematical calculations I had learned in my past life and recalled the principles of formations that Master had practically hammered into me.
A formation was, in the end, nothing more than an illusion created by forcibly twisting the flow of nature.
Find the point where that flow bent—the joint, the knot—and the path would open.
Whooosh!
A blade-like wind burst through the mist from nowhere. I crouched low and concentrated my inner energy into the tops of my feet.
The invisible edge of qi brushed my skin and tore at my sleeves.
Nature itself is serving as the formation.
The gate maze had first been arranged by human hands, but what completed it was Zhangjiajie's own landscape.
That strange mist constantly leaking from nowhere, jagged stone pillars and ancient trees towering high above, the damp, overgrown thickets of grass.
All of it dulled the senses and forced me, step by step, toward the dead gates of the formation.
Damn it, what kind of formation is this? This is basically magic.
But if I stopped here, I would be crushed to death beneath the formation's weight.
Using my Mind's Eye, I carefully stepped on the first knot. Then I leapt straight into the second gate.
KUGUGUGUNG!
The instant I set foot there, a thunderous roar like tens of thousands of birds taking flight at once slammed against my eardrums.
This bastard really doesn't give me a second to breathe!
The illusion of the ground collapsing and enormous boulders raining down from the sky swallowed my vision.
For a moment I considered using my Mind's Eye to search for a route of escape, but then I shut my eyes quickly.
What you see with your eyes is false.
What you hear with your ears is false too.
Following the guidance of the Mind's Eye was the right course, but if I simply chased after everything that appeared before me, I would step straight into a dead gate without fail.
I opened my tightly shut eyes again.
I ignored the information visible to the eye and focused only on the Mind's Eye, trying to find the slightest crack in the flow.
There!
A faint breeze flowing in from due north.
That was the Life Gate. I immediately hurled my body toward it.
The cold energy of rock brushing my cheek was so vivid it raised goosebumps, but once I burst through it, the illusion scattered like a mirage.
Hoo.
I stood there for a moment, catching my breath.
Now I understood why Master had told me to come back only when I was hurt, but not dead.
If I tried to break it the orthodox way, I'd likely return half-dead. But if I tried to cheat, the formation would change by force and make me step into the dead gates anyway.
Who in the world made something like this?
I wanted to see the face of the bastard who built this gate maze. I might end up slapping him before the meeting was over, though.
Still, if you submitted this nonsense as a test, you'd better be prepared to get hit. It was like being handed an elementary school worksheet and then suddenly being given a college entrance exam paper.
I suppressed my thoughts and examined the formation a little more with my Mind's Eye.
There were ten gates in total. I had broken through two.
Still a long way to go. And that wasn't even the end of it—I still had to break through and make my way back home afterward.
With my resolve renewed, I stepped forward, and then—
Shiiiik!
Fshk!
Fapapapaat!
The harsh, cutting sound of something slicing through the wind reached my ears.
I quickly turned toward the source.
Throwing knives.
Hundreds of them were surging toward me.
There were traps too?!
No matter how I looked at it, those projectiles didn't seem to be something born of nature.
Unbelievable. Truly.
My inner energy already felt as though it was being leeched away with every step, and they had prepared traps on top of that?
I hurriedly gathered my qi.
Then I brought my hand to my waist and drew my sword.
Shrrrk.
I heard steel sliding swiftly from the scabbard.
Using the hilt as a pivot, I drew a circle across the ground with the blade as swiftly as a compass tracing its arc.
Now!
Then I poured my inner energy into the circle.
Clang!
Claaang!
The Mozi's Defense Array I had been beaten with, taught, and finally mastered under my master's ruthless hand—what I called the Mo Defense Array.
The perfectly drawn array blocked the flying projectiles like a barrier and scattered them into the air.
Wow, it really works like crazy.
No wonder this was chosen as a must-have formation in the early and middle stages of the game.
To think even traps like this could be trivialized—it was one thing to read it in text all the time, but seeing it for myself made admiration spill out of me before I could stop it.
The sound of iron striking iron rang out without end,
and when only three projectiles remained, still hurled toward me and blocked by the Mo Defense Array, I finally stepped out of the formation and knocked them away with my sword.
Chaejaejaeng!
Only after the sharp crack of metal had sounded and I confirmed that every last projectile had fallen did I finally catch my breath and move again.
By my reckoning, I had passed four or five gates already.
On the bright side, that meant the glass was only half empty; on the dark side, it meant the glass was still half full. And my view leaned heavily toward the dark side.
Getting back up this way is a problem too.
Of course, there were probably ways to break through the formation and circle back by another route, but I couldn't be sure what lay beyond it.
I had lived here for seventeen years, and even so, this was the first time I'd learned there was a place like this.
After catching my breath, I turned my gaze again, hoping to investigate the hellish obstacles ahead a little further with my Mind's Eye.
"……?"
Something foreign appeared in my sight.
An illusion created by the formation?
Just as I was carefully trying to examine the figure through my Mind's Eye—
Kyaaaaaaaaaaaak―!!
"!?"
The ear-splitting screech nearly made me lose my balance.
That sound.
It was horribly familiar.
It was the sound that rang out whenever I accidentally triggered a mechanism in a trap, the same sound that had echoed when I touched the wooden dummy in Master's study the wrong way—impossible to forget, even if I wanted to.
No way.
My heart lurched.
Mind's Eye vibrated violently.
This wasn't the mechanical killing intent of the formation I had faced until now.
Killing intent seeped in from the back of the forest, from a blind spot in the formation—something foreign, covert, and deadly.
My eyes moved quickly.
Six? No, eight?
Shadows with black cloth masks pulled low over their faces were moving along the outskirts of the gate maze, stepping against the formation in reverse.
At first they had seemed to move in secrecy, but the moment the warning alarm began to ring out loudly, they no longer bothered hiding themselves. They knocked away the projectiles flying at them and began using lightness skill with swift, practiced ease.
That direction.
There was no mistake—they were headed for our home.
No way, no way.
The event I had hoped would never come.
My master's death flag.
An assault by the Celestial Dao King, one of the six Dao Kings of the Demonic Cult.
The instant that thought flashed through my head, I turned without hesitation and began running back through the gate maze in reverse.
KUUUUUUNG!
It felt as if some colossal hydraulic press had come down on my body.
A heaven-sent pressure, punishment for those who dared run the formation backward, crushed my entire frame.
Guh......!
A breathless sound spilled from my mouth on its own.
The smell of blood surged up to my throat. I clenched my lips hard enough to hurt, though no sound could leave them anyway.
I heard the crack of bones splintering in my ears, but I didn't stop. No, I couldn't stop.
The fourth gate had now become the maw of a giant swamp trying to swallow me whole.
Thud, thud.
Every time I kicked through the mud, the muscles in my legs spasmed as though they were being torn apart.
The countercurrent of the formation forced my inner energy to run backward, twisting my blood vessels. My dantian felt as if it were burning.
Just a little farther, just a little farther......!
The silent cry spread out into the darkness of Zhangjiajie.
Dark red blood streamed from the corners of my mouth. My legs shook so badly I could barely stay upright.
Khuh!
Crack.
With the sound of something breaking, I felt the crushing pressure that had been covering my whole body suddenly vanish.
"Haaah, haaah......"
I sucked in ragged breaths.
It wasn't enough to be relieved just because I had made it out of the formation.
Staggering, I grabbed the cliff wall.
My fingertips split and bled, but I shoved myself into the cracks in the rock face and threw my body upward.
My lightness skill had already exceeded its limit. Whenever the surface beneath my feet collapsed, I kicked off the air and landed on another point, racing upward along the same path in reverse.
My battered body was defying gravity itself, sprinting madly toward the cabin where my master was waiting.