How Brief Is Life? (4)
"Hmm."
Mukjeok stared for a long while into the abyss beneath the cliff where her disciple had fallen—or rather, where she herself had kicked him down.
"Did I kick him too hard?"
The thought flickered through her mind with a threadbare trace of worry and regret, but she shook it off almost at once.
He was a child who had inherited everything she knew.
Mukjeok recalled the disciple’s uncanny genius.
He had understood principles no one had taught him, and he had unraveled the Mo Sect’s mechanical arts with bizarre, almost unsettling efficiency.
Even if the love and care she had lavished on him could be called a kind of private favoritism, so be it.
Her disciple was the one and only pure reward that had come to her after a life spent shedding blood beneath the lofty, sanctimonious banner of non-aggression and universal love.
He might be a little slick, a little lazy when it came to effort, but he was not the sort of boy who neglected his learning. He would surely be able to get through the odd formation without any trouble.
Mukjeok had absolute faith in her prized disciple.
But certainty and worry were not the same thing.
Even after she had forced herself to cast off all fear for his safety, she still could not quite bring herself to step away from the cliff. She stood there, staring down into the depths where Wolyeon could no longer even be seen.
"Don’t die. If you do, there’ll be no one left to put a meat dish on my memorial table."
Suppressing the cough that surged from deep in her chest, she turned and made for the hut.
Her steps were heavy. The medicinal tea her disciple had brewed for her today had done its work, but only enough to force a little life into her ruined body; it could not restore her dantian.
She moved slowly back toward Mukjeok’s hut.
If her disciple returned before the day was out, she had planned to prepare something sweet enough for him to taste by dinner.
But then—
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEE—!!
"……."
Mukjeok’s peaceful thoughts were shattered in an instant.
There was no time to linger in sentiment. She unleashed her lightness skill at once and shot back toward the hut.
It was the warning cry that sounded when a Mo Sect mechanism malfunctioned and a trap sprang shut.
Mukjeok knew that sound. It was not one her disciple would have triggered.
Not only was he versed in the Mo Sect’s mechanical arts, he could also see through them with his Mind's Eye; there was no way he would blunder into a trap so carelessly.
And the warning bells were not ringing only beneath the cliff where Wolyeon had fallen.
They were sounding all across Zhangjiajie—toward Mukjeok’s hut, toward the descent route, toward the Heavenly Gate, within the formation itself.
Across the entire mountain range, alarms rang like a thousand tolling bells, warning Mukjeok of what was coming.
The moment she reached the entrance to the hut, the air in the forest twisted grotesquely.
Chiiiiiik—!
The alarm mechanisms she had installed all around shrieked in unison.
Invisible strands of wire snapped, and the birds in the forest burst upward with cries of terror into the night sky.
This was no intrusion by wild beasts or clumsy mountain bandits.
It was a vast inner energy pressing down on the space itself as it advanced. No—an ominous force that might as well have been magi.
Mukjeok narrowed her eyes.
Clang!
The sound of a sword leaving its sheath cut through the cold moonlight, and the black-bladed sword at her waist was drawn in a single motion, leveled toward the front.
"What face do you have to set foot here?"
At the place where Mukjeok growled and unleashed her killing intent stood a single man.
A garment embroidered with the image of a dragon in red thread upon black sleeves. A plain bamboo hat that did not suit it at all.
Blue-black eyes set in skin so pale it seemed almost transparent.
He was as natural as an ancient tree that had always stood there, and yet as alien as a drought that withered every living thing around it.
What made him even more unnatural was the fact that the place where ears should have been was completely empty, wrapped instead in black cloth.
It was the miserable end of a man who, driven mad by hatred and fury, had cut off his own ears.
Bang Chunghyun.
Second in rank in the White Lotus Cult, the Heavenly Path Demon King.
Once a comrade who had roamed the jianghu with the same purpose.
The only blood relative of the scholar Fang Xiaoru, whom Mukjeok had risked her life to pull from the execution grounds.
"Ajeok."
Bang Chunghyun’s voice was flat. Colorless. Neither hatred nor joy stained it.
But the pressure hidden within that calm made the cliffs of Zhangjiajie tremble.
"Shut your mouth. Call me that one more time and I’ll cut off that filthy mouth of yours first."
Bang Chunghyun’s eyes read the movement of Mukjeok’s lips.
"You’re still as rough as ever."
Even after slicing off his own ears and losing his hearing, Bang Chunghyun’s voice held none of the awkward stumbling or hesitation one might expect from a deaf man.
He was certain of exactly what he was saying.
And certain that nothing he said could be wrong.
The result of that self-righteous arrogance was grotesquely successful.
Mukjeok scowled fiercely and began to send black inner energy coursing to the tip of her sword.
Cha-jae-jjaeng!
As Mukjeok’s killing intent flared, the masked figures standing behind Bang Chunghyun all drew their blades at once.
But Bang Chunghyun raised a hand to stop them.
"No one moves without my order. I’ll take the head of the first fool who dares."
The masked men lowered their swords at once and stood waiting, like machines, for the next command.
Seeing that, Mukjeok twisted her face as though she had seen something she could not bear to look at, as if fighting down a wave of nausea, and spat out, "What kind of nonsense is this?"
"Those worthy of respect are not divided by ally or enemy, friend or foe. And you are worthy of respect."
"You respect me?"
Mukjeok’s lips curled.
"Then why don’t you show that respect and cut your own throat?"
"That was my intention."
Bang Chunghyun’s response to her thorny provocation remained utterly calm.
"After I complete the grand design to bring down the Great Ming."
"You’re insane."
Mukjeok’s voice shook with hatred.
"Don’t bury that filthy magi in Zhangjiajie’s clean earth. Do you think your father, that noble Fang Xiaoru, wouldn’t be weeping in the underworld if he saw this?"
Instead of answering, Bang Chunghyun slowly removed his bamboo hat. Beneath his whitened hair, those blue-black eyes gleamed.
If her disciple Wolyeon’s eyes were like clear moonlight, Bang Chunghyun’s were like the deep sea.
Not the sea itself, but the bottomless abyss of it—filled with hatred and emptiness, devouring everything that drew near.
"The words of sages are only the songs of the well-fed. What one needs after shedding blood-tears is not Confucius’ little sayings, but a blade to take heads."
His dark blue eyes bore through Mukjeok’s black ones.
He was not looking at her at all, but at the ghosts of the past flickering behind her.
The Jingnan Campaign.
The day Fang Xiaoru refused to bow before the Yongle Emperor and had his entire clan exterminated.
That was when Mukjeok and Dang Jeong of the Sichuan Tang Clan had rescued Bang Chunghyun from the execution grounds, where he screamed curses and wept blood.
They had believed it was righteousness to save a friend who had roamed the jianghu beside them, and chivalry to preserve the bloodline of a loyal minister.
Though they had not been able to save his whole family, they had managed, through desperate effort, to drag at least his body away from the executioner’s blade.
Mukjeok had regretted that to the depths of her heart.
The Bang Chunghyun who survived did not offer thanks; instead, he poured hatred onto the Ming Dynasty, threw himself into the demonic path his father had despised so much, and now appeared before her as the grand figurehead of the cult staining the world with blood.
"Mukjeok. I didn’t come here to fight."
Rustle.
Every time Bang Chunghyun took a step, dead leaves crinkled and rotted away, eaten through by magi.
He held out one hand calmly and spoke slowly.
"The Three Strategies."
"What?"
"The legacy of Liuhou Zhang Zifang. The art of war personally taught by Huang Shigong. I’ve come to take it."
"You really have gone mad."
Mukjeok snorted in disbelief at his words.
"The Six Secret Teachings and the Three Strategies are all over every village academy. Has your ear gone rotten, along with your eyes and brain?"
"I have no interest in the fake texts the scholars of the Han and Jin dynasties penned to make themselves famous."
Bang Chunghyun showed no sign of lowering his hand.
"The Three Strategies sealed carefully beneath Zhang Zifang’s master, Huang Shigong, when Zhang Zifang retired in Zhangjiajie. That is what I want."
"Preposterous. You think I’d simply hand that over to you?"
The Three Strategies. A rare book on statecraft for governing the realm, the essence of military strategy for commanding armies.
A secret manual containing the brilliant stratagems of Zhang Zifang, the man who had helped topple the Xiang King and laid the foundations for unifying the realm.
But the Three Strategies was a military treatise, not some manual of martial arts.
Mastering it would never reveal the principles of heaven and earth or cause peerless martial arts to bloom.
It was already ridiculous enough that her family guarded Zhang Zifang’s tomb and the treasure preserved with it for a thousand years; that the chief of the demonic cult would demand it was even more absurd.
And if the person asking was the man she despised most of all, there was no way Mukjeok could possibly be inclined to indulge him.
So instead of answering directly, she met Bang Chunghyun’s words with sarcasm.
"What do you even want to use it for? What, are you planning to send your men to war?"
"Yes."
"What?"
Mukjeok’s expression changed.
"The heads of the loyal ministers who served the rightful Son of Heaven fell, and their entire families lost their lives. My father, my family, my father’s disciples, their relatives—even the souls of thousands of innocents who died simply because they had studied under my father—still wander the nine heavens. And yet the emperor who took all those lives fled like a coward and died just days ago while punishing the northern barbarians."
Hatred and murderous intent lay thick in every word Bang Chunghyun spoke.
And with that murderous intent came the flow of magi, so that Mukjeok found her hand trembling before she knew it.
The Heavenly Path Demon King’s eyes burned. Madness and rage were carved deep into them.
"What right does a Son of Heaven without the Mandate of Heaven have to rule the realm? I will slaughter every last demon in this rotten imperial house. I’ll tear out the very roots of the order the throne seeks to protect, the foundations of Great Ming themselves."
By the end, Bang Chunghyun’s violently trembling body and voice had both grown as calm as frost.
"And something better will rise from those ashes."
"……So you mean to wash the world in blood again?"
"It is an inevitable process."
His voice was so calm it was more chilling than shouting would have been.
He was serious.
Not a madman seized by frenzy, but an avatar of revenge forged from cold calculation and relentless obsession.
Mukjeok angled her black sword sideways. Black energy roiled from her dantian, sending her robes fluttering.
"If you want to repay a debt, then retreat now. If not, this place will be your grave today."
Bang Chunghyun’s brow tightened slightly. For some reason, there seemed to be sorrow in his gaze.
"I know the battle with the Blood Demon damaged your body. Your dantian is already shattered, and your inner energy has been patched together like rags. You think you can stop me in that condition?"
"Shut up."
Mukjeok ground her teeth.
Why had she thrown herself into battle against the Blood Demon, wrecking her own body to the point of collapse?
To wash away the guilt of having given birth to the monster before her eyes.
The demon in front of her slowly reached out a hand.
"I don’t want to kill you. But if you stand in the way of my great work……"
Red magi swirled and condensed in his palm.
"I’ll have no choice but to break even the hand that once saved me."
"Then try it, you fiend!"
Mukjeok’s sword split the darkness as it shot forward.
──Kang!
Bang Chunghyun did not even draw a weapon.
He simply clenched his fist and swept it wide toward Mukjeok’s sword path.
And yet the shockwave alone tore the roof from the hut in a shower of debris.
Cha-jae-jaeng!
The shriek of steel colliding with steel rang out with cutting clarity.
One side wielded a sword; the other, a fist wrapped in magi.
The storm of inner energy unleashed by the two masters shook the earth and swept the trees away like fallen leaves in a gale of sword force.
The masked men, cloaked in protective qi to endure the violence, hesitated over whether they should step in to aid their king, yet the Heavenly Path Demon King’s earlier declaration—that he would execute any fool who moved rashly—kept them from joining the battlefield.
All they could do was stare in awe at the clash between the two experts.
Mukjeok fought on, forcing back the blood that threatened to spill from her mouth.
Disciple, don’t come. Whatever happens, do not climb up here.
Even while fighting, she kept thinking of the cliff below.
This battle was the burden of her own past, the karma she alone had to bear. It was not a weight for a child who did not even share her surname, a child who had not even been born when this monster suffered that massacre.
Mukjeok clenched her teeth. Then she met Bang Chunghyun’s boxing with a sword built for defense.
It was humiliating to admit, but Bang Chunghyun was clearly holding back against her.
Back when they roamed the jianghu, Mukjeok might indeed have been stronger than him.
But now, with him having accepted magi and become the White Lotus Cult’s Demon King, while she had grown old and her dantian had been ruined—the gap between them was obvious.
Still, Mukjeok did not stop.
If she fell here, it would be an insult to the spirits of her ancestors, a step toward plunging the world into the abyss of war, and an act that would drive her disciple into a desperate corner.
"Too many distractions."
"!"
The Heavenly Path Demon King’s fist came straight through the opening created by Mukjeok’s momentary lapse of thought.
A fatal strike wrapped in crimson magi.
There was no way she could endure it.
Clang!
Bang Chunghyun’s iron fist split her sword in two.
The punch did not stop. It continued to bore toward Mukjeok’s body.
Time seemed to slow.
Mukjeok’s eyes widened little by little, clearly capturing the fist flying toward her vital point.
A fist wrapped in that gruesome black-red magi.
Her already ruined body would surely fail to withstand it. She would die there, just like that.
Didn’t people say one saw one’s whole life flash before one’s eyes before death?
Memories of her life swept past Mukjeok’s vision.
Being beaten by her father as she read Mukgyeong.
Being tricked by a young Daoist from Wudang into setting out on a righteous wandering.
Her father’s bitter expression before she left on that journey.
The seven comrades who roamed the jianghu together.
Bang Chunghyun, howling with blood in his eyes.
The Blood Demon who had drenched Gansu in blood. The battle in which she had nearly thrown away her own life while clashing swords with him.
And then—
Her disciple.
Of course that face was the last to appear.
Yes.
Those clear, beautiful blue eyes……
Clang!
Time began moving quickly again.
Between her body and the Heavenly Path Demon King’s fist, another black sword—different from her own—flashed by like lightning.
Loose black hair bound at the back whipped through the air and brushed against Mukjeok’s sleeve.
"You……"
Mukjeok could not even finish the word.
Why are you here?
The Heavenly Path Demon King reacted in exactly the same way.
He regarded the stranger who had blocked his boxing with quiet bewilderment and spoke in a low voice.
"……Who are you?"
His deep blue eyes and Wolyeon’s clear ones met.