Fateful Encounter
Swallow.
The moment my master gave me the task of making a wooden bird, the first one that came to mind was a swallow.
The reason wasn’t grand at all.
It was because the name my master had given me was Swallow.
A name taken from the wooden swallow she had supposedly made—one that had taken three years to craft, only to fly for a single day before breaking apart.
My new identity.
Following the image of the swallow in my head, I moved the chisel and began hollowing out the block of wood.
Scratch, scratch.
The rough sound of wood being carved away rang through the tavern.
I had thought that if Master said she would guide me, she’d be pointing out every mistake and filling in what I lacked. But she didn’t. Instead, she simply folded her arms and watched in silence as I carved the wood.
Her gaze was a little distracting, but not uncomfortable.
After more than a decade under her tutelage learning carpentry and mechanism-making, and since model kits had been one of my hobbies even before I possessed this body, the work I was doing now wasn’t especially troublesome.
First make the core parts, then fit in gears so the joints can move.
All that remained was to carve out a small chamber where the battery would go, except that in this world it would be inner power instead.
The reason I say inner power instead of a battery is that while it is a kind of energy accumulated within the body, in practice it’s much like the mana fantasy worlds talk about.
Just as robots in the real world need electricity to move, and fantasy worlds need mana, in a martial world mechanical devices are powered by channeling inner power through them.
Guided by the blueprint in my head, I carved the swallow’s parts one by one.
Head, beak, wings, body, tail, battery…
Hm.
I had thought it wouldn’t take that long, but once I actually got my hands moving, the tiny scale of the work meant I had to carve with precision, and it ended up taking more time than expected.
By the time I came to my senses, the sun was already sinking low, and red and blue coexisted in the sky like the pattern of a taiji.
Seeing the shadows stretch out, I guessed it was around the hour when the sun was passing from late afternoon into dusk.
Still, the parts were all finished.
If the parts were done, assembly wouldn’t take long.
I hammered the nails in with a small mallet to secure everything, then fitted the little gears between the body and wings, between the joints and the beak.
Creak, grind—then, with the sound of machinery turning, the mechanisms meshed and moved.
All that’s left is to insert the battery.
I opened the body of the finished swallow and installed the battery—meaning the chamber that would hold inner power.
After closing the cover and setting the wooden swallow in my palm, I couldn’t help feeling quite pleased with myself; it really had come out rather convincingly.
“The shape is convincing enough. Now, send it flying.”
I heard my master’s voice.
At her instruction, I sent inner power into the swallow.
Black, waterlike energy flowed quietly through the swallow’s body like a stream.
With a rattle and a clack, as though gears and mechanisms were turning, the wooden swallow began to move.
Flutter.
The swallow’s body, its little wings beating, rose lightly into the air.
Then it circled around my master and me, opening its small beak to sing.
“Peep. Peep.”
A high, sweet chirp slipped from the swallow’s beak.
At the sight, Master’s lips curved into a gentle smile.
“Well made.”
Hehe.
Being praised made the corners of my mouth lift.
“Tch. Don’t smile, you foolish disciple. You look stupid.”
Yes, ma’am.
I lowered the corners of my mouth at once.
Master watched the swallow circling in the air for a moment, then stretched out her hand toward it.
As if it understood her intention, the wooden swallow followed her inner power and landed on her palm.
She lifted the little bird and examined it closely before offering her appraisal.
“You’ve made it with considerable precision. Even if its power runs out, it should fly again whenever you feed it inner power. More than that, its form and the principle behind its movement are identical to an actual swallow’s, so it ought to fly freely without placing much burden on the mechanism.”
After finishing her assessment, she placed the swallow into my hands and continued.
“Good. This is worthy of a passing mark. But your master has something to ask you.”
[What is it?]
Taking the swallow, I wrote the words on Master’s palm.
“Why did you make a swallow?”
At her question, my hand twitched slightly.
But my answer had already been decided, so I moved my fingers without much thought.
[Because it shares my name.]
“And is that all?”
[My name came from my master, and all my knowledge and learning came from my master as well. My master shaped this disciple’s identity, so what is strange about carving that identity into wood?]
“You certainly do have a silver tongue.”
Master smiled.
Then, in silence, she looked up at the sunset sky.
“How peaceful.”
As the sun sank lower, the people bustling through the streets began to thin out.
Farmers stopped work one by one, wiping sweat from their brows as they headed home, and children who had been running about the roads hurried off to eat dinner.
Horses, oxen, and donkeys, too, trudged back under their loads, slow-footed and tired, to rest their bodies.
Master watched them all and remained silent.
She simply smiled and gazed at the sunset for the space of an incense stick’s worth of time, and I, finding it awkward to speak, watched the fading sky with her in silence.
The red glow that had colored the heavens was now fading away, and blue was once again spreading across the sky.
A deep, dark blue-green, different from the clear brilliance of daytime. A cold night wind was bringing the dark with it.
“Disciple.”
At last, Master broke the long silence and spoke.
I fixed my gaze on her at once and listened closely.
“If your master were to send you down the mountain, what then? Would you wish to step into the jianghu?”
I forgot how to speak for a moment.
I hadn’t expected Master to even consider sending me out into the jianghu.
After all, whenever she spoke of the jianghu, she always showed open hostility and disgust toward it.
So I had assumed she would think negatively of her disciple going out into that world as well.
And yet—
As I had already told Master:
[Your master’s will has reached the heavens, and this disciple follows your teachings and receives the will of heaven.]
As I wrote my answer, my hand paused for a moment.
I was sure I had once said this to Master, but…
When had that been?
I couldn’t remember clearly.
Still, answering a master’s question was a disciple’s duty, so I moved my hand on.
[When the will of our master and disciple has already reached the heavens, how could a mere stream or pond catch our eye?]
“Do you truly think so?”
At her words, a single question leapt into my mind.
Dreams of the jianghu. Longing for it.
When I first started Daemyeong Pungwhajeon, I had poured my fantasies about the jianghu directly into my persona and played the game that way.
And when I first possessed this body, I had been filled with the thought of learning martial arts and roaming the jianghu.
But did I still feel that way now?
I looked out over the peaceful atmosphere of Mureung County with Master for a while.
The peace of it, and Zhangjiajie’s beauty, and the childhood I had lived amid all that.
It had certainly been rough, uncomfortable, and at times so unreasonable I’d wondered whether any of it was right at all.
But—
[No.]
I gave Master my answer.
[You are here, and so are the villagers. This is my home, my hometown, and my jianghu.]
“Then what if your master and your hometown were to disappear, leaving nothing behind? What would you do then?”
[I—]
The moment I tried to move my fingers, a stabbing pain spread across my entire upper body.
“!?”
I nearly doubled over and vomited my breath out, but barely managed to hold on.
Gasping, clutching my stomach, I endured the pain and somehow met Master’s eyes.
She was smiling.
It was a gentle smile, somehow sad, yet also soft and warm.
“Heh heh heh.”
A quiet laugh slipped from Master’s lips.
“So that is your inner demon, is it, you foolish disciple. To think your inner demon would be so peaceful and homely. In all the world, how many martial artists do you suppose possess an inner demon like yours, aside from you?”
Whatever amused her so much, Master chuckled while making some incomprehensible remark, then poured wine into the cup before me until it brimmed.
Still clutching my stomach from the violent cramp that had only just receded, I moved my fingers with great difficulty.
[My stomach hurts this badly, and you want me to drink?]
“Did I not say I would impart a mental method to you?”
Had she…?
I couldn’t remember clearly.
The harder I tried to recall, the more my head throbbed.
[What do you mean by a mental method?]
“What else would it be? Everything you see before you is the mental method itself.”
Master spoke again, suddenly, and as ever, in words I couldn’t fully grasp.
“Must a mental method be nothing but lofty clouds being grasped at, the obvious, tedious, pretentious words of sages? No. A true mental method is to see, to feel, and to gain enlightenment deep within the heart. The reason the verses of mental methods have become so cumbersome and absurd in this age is that people are afraid their family or sect’s martial arts will leak out, so they puff themselves up and conceal enlightenment behind empty displays of superiority.”
Then she lifted the wine cup and offered it to me.
“Do you intend to let your master’s arm fall off?”
I hadn’t expected her to be the sort of person who would press wine on me like this.
It felt as if the image I had of Master had been peeled away a little.
With neither the energy nor the confidence to argue, I accepted the cup as she told me to.
I hadn’t much cared for alcohol even in my previous life, and I certainly didn’t think I could start enjoying it now.
But what could I do? When Master says jump, you jump.
I tipped back the aged wine in the wooden cup and drained it in a single swallow.
As Master had said, it really was a fragrant wine. I could taste a sweet yet tart fermenting aroma, along with a hot current sliding down my throat.
As soon as the wine entered my body, warmth began to spread through me.
Like a drop of ink blooming through water, the gentle warmth unfurled, spreading through my whole body and wrapping me up in its embrace—
…
I couldn’t bring myself to continue.
Because a profoundly familiar, yet vaguely nostalgic, true energy was swirling all through my body.
“Master.”
The word slipped from my mouth.
Startled by that fact, I jerked and my hand flew up to my lips on its own.
I spoke?
Me?
Me, who had no tongue and no vocal cords?
My pupils trembled violently.
Inside those quivering eyes, Master’s figure was smiling faintly, wistfully.
“It is not the voice of your flesh, but the voice of your soul. Why should it be strange that you can speak?”
***
“Master.”
The disciple’s voice passed through Mukjeok’s ears.
So that’s what his voice sounds like.
It was deeper than she had imagined, but at the same time, a clear and youthful voice beyond her expectations.
The disciple before her was staring at his master with a stunned, dazed expression.
“Disciple. The jianghu is, in the end, like the tides. Even if you do not seek it, the jianghu will come seeking you, push its way in, and only after sweeping everything away without leaving a trace will it finally recede.”
Wolyeon continued speaking to his still bewildered disciple.
“That is why this master had intended to send you down the mountain and into the world once you passed every trial. But before you were even prepared to meet the jianghu, the jianghu came crashing down upon you. As the saying goes, men may plan their affairs, but heaven decides their success.”
“What… do you mean by that?”
Wolyeon’s voice brushed Mukjeok’s ears once again.
A small pang of pity welled up in one corner of Mukjeok’s heart.
“Aigoo, you foolish disciple. How can you be so miserable? Your master can’t live to a ripe old age because of you.”
Laughing, Mukjeok grumbled softly.
But when she shook her head and went on, what followed corrected that complaint.
“No. Thanks to the medicinal tea you’ve been bringing me all this time, your master has been able to continue living longer than the years Heaven allotted. How could I say I can’t live because of you and die? On the contrary, I’ve been the one to enjoy Heaven’s full span because of you.”
Wolyeon seemed even more shocked at those words.
From lips trembling like leaves, his voice leaked out as if drained of breath.
“You… knew?”
“Do you know how much bitter taste your master had to endure every time you brewed that herbal medicine? It made my tongue ache terribly.”
Unlike Master’s smiling face, Wolyeon’s expression twisted strangely.
“Don’t cry. Your handsome face will turn ugly.”
As is the nature of meetings, so too is the nature of partings; why should you weep every time we part?
“……Please don’t go.”
And yet, despite her master’s words, a single tear stubbornly fell from the disciple’s eye.
Like a shower that begins with one raindrop and then overturns heaven and earth, that one tear running down Wolyeon’s cheek soon became a torrent, pouring from him all at once.
His tears flowed down his face and were stained by the darkness of night, spilling away like pale blue seawater.
By then, the sun had already taken the last of the twilight from the sky and carried it off with it.
Mukjeok gazed faintly into the darkness beyond the fading sunset.
“The sun is setting. It is time to go.”
“Please don’t go.”
The disciple’s voice struck into Mukjeok’s chest like a thrown blade.
It was neither sharp nor fatal.
Rather, it sounded fragile and pitiable, as if a single breath could scatter it away.
But though she was hearing it for the first time today, it felt as desperate and aching as though she had heard it thousands of times before.
It seeped into Mukjeok’s heart like poison, and the smile it had drawn from her began to fade.
Mukjeok closed her eyes for a moment.
Then she opened them again and looked into Wolyeon’s eyes.
“Wolyeon.”
Mukjeok called her disciple by name.
Wolyeon’s eyes widened. She only ever called his name when she was irritated or angry.
Which was why hearing it spoken in such a gentle voice came as a first for him.
“Go. Go to the jianghu you dreamed of.”
The same words Mukjeok’s father had left her with when she departed on the path of the wandering knight.
She left a similar message with her disciple.
“Did you not say that righteous travel is becoming the outcry of the voiceless? Though you may not be able to speak, if you speak through your actions and let those actions make your will ring out across the world, would that not become a cry that shakes heaven and earth?”
With every word, every sentence, the scenery and atmosphere drifted farther away, until the two of them could no longer tell whether this was a dream or reality, the world after death or the living world.
It was like morning dew; the days that had passed would remain only as memories, brushing faintly through the heart.
“And when you wake from the dream…”
You will come to understand how fleeting the jianghu you once dreamed of truly was.
Her father’s final words still rang vividly in Mukjeok’s ears.
Even as the last moment of life approached, her father’s final voice remained as clear as though she had heard it yesterday.
“Return here whenever you wish.”
Ah, Father.
This girl really is lacking in cultivation.
I cannot bring myself to say something so cruel.
“The duties and burdens of the Mo Sect have all turned to ash and vanished today, so this place is not some inner demon that traps your mind. This is your hometown, your home. When your righteous journey comes to an end, return anytime you like.”
“Please don’t go.”
“Your master’s body and spirit will always be here. As they always have been.”
Mukjeok raised a hand and wiped away Wolyeon’s tears.
“Disciple. When I first picked you up, I thought I would become your fateful encounter. But this master was wrong.”
And with a smile brighter than any she had ever given him, she said to her disciple:
“You are my fateful encounter.”
Before taking in the child before her, that was the line Baekhyeon had once left her with.
Only now, at the very end, was Mukjeok finally able to accept it.
How many people in this world are fortunate enough to leave behind something precious in the jianghu?
At the bottom lie countless white bones—those who were swept away by the storms of the jianghu, lost everything they had, and had even their most precious lives taken from them until not even a name remained.
Mukjeok knew that truth all too well.
So then, if she—having lost both the burden of her clan and the duties and responsibilities of her ancestors—was granted the fortune of leaving behind the one and only thing most precious to her in this world,
what else could that be but her own fateful encounter?
Wolyeon’s inner vision cracked quietly, carving a sheet of white lightning across the dark night sky.
It was time for Wolyeon to open his eyes and awaken from his inner demon.
“And when you return—”
Wolyeon’s figure receded from her like a mirage, growing farther and farther away.
She could see her disciple’s mouth opening wide as he shouted.
But his voice could no longer reach her.
What a pity. I would have liked to hear your voice a little longer.
With that lingering regret, Mukjeok left behind her final words.
“Remember this master’s final lesson, and bring me a cup of aged wine.”
When she finished speaking, Mukjeok closed her eyes in peace.
A faint, moonlit smile rested on her face, soft and gentle.
Just as it always did whenever she thought of her disciple.
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