I Go to the Jianghu You Dream Of (3)
I, Wolyeon, your unworthy disciple, submit this letter to you with blood in my mouth and tears in my heart.
This foolish disciple was shallow-witted and reckless, and committed the great sin of defying the bonds of heaven and violating both human decency and righteousness.
Master, you chose to accept your fate and wished to vanish in battle, upholding your spirit and your chivalric honor to the very end.
But this worthless disciple did not honor that lofty intention. Instead, I was led astray by a strange man’s coaxing, could not bear my own grief, and committed the sin of defiling your honored body with the White Lotus Cult’s vile poison.
Now your face seems peaceful, as if sunk in a deep sleep, yet I know the White Lotus Cult’s corpse venom writhes within, forcibly binding your noble soul so it cannot depart for the Nine Springs.
And yet, I beg you: remembering that for seventeen years I served and revered you faithfully, please grant me this one indulgence and allow me to do as I please just once.
You once taught me about untimely death.
Fate is not fixed; a person’s fortune and misfortune are not shackles laid down by heaven, but depend on one’s own effort and practice.
You said that if everything followed an unchanging natural order, then blessings would come even to those who did no good, and no one would suffer punishment even if they committed evil. That, you told me, would not be righteous.
Through your whole life, you upheld universal love and revered justice. You practiced chivalry and bestowed virtue in accordance with Heaven’s will.
But now disaster has struck in a single morning, seeking to take your life, and your life stands alone and in danger.
If Heaven truly exalts righteousness and hates injustice, then I dare to say this:
You must live.
Those vile White Lotus fiends who desecrated Yu Hou’s grave still roam the jianghu alive and well—so why must you wander the Nine Springs?
If Heaven is truly just, is this really what Heaven intended?
No. Never.
So I will follow the will of Heaven only if it is truly righteous.
If your death is Heaven’s decree, then I will dare to defy that decree and set it right.
That is why I have made this most venomous of poisons, the Three Corpses Brain-Devouring Pill, into my medicine.
I would like to believe, if only for today, the sophistry that the distinction between righteous and evil is merely a shell, and that what truly matters is the virtue of helping others.
Master, please understand me. Perhaps if I had been a little more clever, I might have changed your fate.
If I had been a little more decisive, a little more clear-sighted, perhaps what has happened today would never have come to pass.
But because of my incompetence, things have reached this point. I will regret what happened yesterday, regret the outcome of today, and regret the road ahead of me in the future.
I will regret it for hundreds, for thousands of nights.
Yet this foolish disciple no longer wants to leave behind any more regrets.
Perhaps a mute like me will be swept away by the storms of the jianghu and die before he can even make his will known.
Perhaps I will fail to live up to your expectations and lose my life beneath the blade of some petty jianghu thug.
But I have not dared to forget your teachings, so instead of weeping and begging, I will press on with pride.
For the Way and righteousness are not things one sits still and prays for; they are found in practical persuasion—in running, speaking, and acting until they are made real.
To shame no part of your instruction, I will reach out to all under heaven, speak of public righteousness, punish the corrupt, and become the voiceless cry of the speechless, until all the people beneath heaven can smile.
Your disciple’s tongue was cut away long ago, so I cannot speak, but my two legs are still sound and my two eyes have not yet lost their light.
I will search until my feet wear down to nothing.
I will sleep on windswept roads and beneath open dew as though it were daily bread, and even if I must stand beneath tens of thousands of blades, I will not stop.
I will give everything I have, strive with all my strength until the day I die, and even after death, I will not stop.
And the vile faction that brought matters to this day—I will see them to the end.
I must see them to the end.
Heaven blesses the benevolent and punishes the wicked;
is that not the chivalry of the Muk Clan?
Wolyeon.
The name you gave your disciple—swallow chasing the moon.
The swallow flies south after the Cold Dew and returns home in spring, they say.
I will return as well.
When this journey through the jianghu ends, I will pass through this bitter winter, seize spring in my beak, find the answer, and return to this home, to your side.
Even if it takes years, even if it takes decades, I swear I will return.
If my legs are cut away, I will crawl back on my arms.
If Heaven and earth are heartless and strike me down on this road, I will return as a soul and remain by your side.
If one day you wake again and curse this foolish disciple’s stupidity while raising your hand to cut off my head, I will gladly offer my neck.
Even if King Yama casts me into the Eighteen Hells, I will smile and leap willingly into the fires of hell.
Until then, please regard this old stone tomb as your home and sleep a little longer.
And if, even in a dream now and then, you should come out and let me hear your voice, I would be so happy I would not know what to do with myself.
Master, thank you for your great grace in taking me in and raising me.
Receive this deep bow from your foolish disciple, and please watch over me even if only in your dreams.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
When I lifted my head, the stone floor where my forehead had struck was stained a bright red with blood, but I didn’t care.
I could feel a warm trickle running down from my brow.
Without wiping it away, I rose and bowed quietly toward my master.
After staring at every character of the carefully written words, I folded the paper with care and placed it beside the wooden swallow in my master’s hand.
Those two things, in the cold stone chamber, seemed to hold the only warmth left in the world—and they were all my heart could offer.
I slowly got to my feet.
My steps were heavy as I left.
It felt as though my heart might split in two at the thought of leaving my master behind in this cold place like this.
But the nest had already collapsed.
Then I would have to throw everything I had into repairing it.
I dragged my heavy steps toward the tomb entrance.
With every step, it felt as if the smile I left behind at my back were clutching at my ankles, but I didn’t look over my shoulder.
If I turned around now, it seemed I would never be able to leave this dark tomb again.
Swish.
The first step out of the tomb crushed soft grass beneath my foot.
I turned then and looked back at the stone tomb.
A massive boulder, layered with dust.
Bang Chunghyun’s fist had shattered the entrance, but the part that opened and closed through the mechanism was still usable.
I reached out and touched the place my master had once operated when she first opened this hidden chamber.
Weathered by time, it had grown somewhat rough, but the Muk Clan’s mechanism still worked as it should.
I let my inner energy flow gently and activated the device.
Dark as black ink, sticky and slow, inner energy similar to my master’s flowed through the mechanism.
The tomb entrance trembled, and dust and dirt rained down in clumps.
With a thunderous rumble, the rock wept and sealed the tomb shut.
Thud.
At last, the tomb’s door locked fully into place, and its face became that of an ordinary cliff once more.
I covered the entrance with mud and fallen leaves to disguise it.
Now, at least on the surface, the tomb was nothing more than a common rocky hill—nothing more, nothing less.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the hill of stone like a man turned to rock himself.
Even after steeling my resolve and offering up my declaration of war, my feet still refused to easily leave the nest.
By then the sun had already dipped low, and the sunset was burning Zhangjiajie’s mist red.
In the end, unable to cast off all my lingering attachment, I turned and looked down the forest path.
The road winding down the mountain was so dark I couldn’t see its end.
It looked exactly like the future ahead of me.
I moved my hand toward the sword at my waist and clenched it so tightly my knuckles went white.
Then, using it as a walking stick, I slowly made my way down the forest path.
The road through the woods was the same as the one I had walked with Master inside my inner demon.
Horribly so.
“So you’re leaving at last.”
From the top of an unnamed peak in Zhangjiajie, a masked figure watched the man descending the mountain while guzzling a jug of Bamboo Leaf Liquor.
In his pale eyes, Wolyeon’s resolute face filled his entire vision.
The nest had broken.
The swallow sent forth by the crow would ride reversal and rise against heaven, and might yet become a hawk—and perhaps even a phoenix—that would one day cover the sky.
When he had first awakened from his inner demon and clung to his master like a child, the light of defiance in him had seemed so faint it might be snuffed out at any moment.
But the light now visible in his eyes was different.
Like the instant a clear star is born in the endless dark of the cosmos,
like the first ray of light that drives away the darkness when dawn comes,
the star of defiance hidden in the boy’s body was burning with unmistakable brilliance.
His gaze remained on Wolyeon until the boy was swallowed entirely by the shadow of the forest and the dusk.
Only when Wolyeon’s figure vanished and nightshade fell did the masked man’s gaze naturally drift toward the Stone Tomb of Zhang Liang.
Child, you don’t know it yet.
No matter how feeble and insignificant the power of a star of defiance might seem, it was never easy to stop a will that opposed heaven.
That Mukjeok had cast her own body into suspended animation trying to save her disciple was, of course, entirely Wolyeon’s fault.
It was because he was weak,
because his training was insufficient,
because he had met a calamity he could not possibly bear—the Heavenly Path Demon King.
And the master, for the sake of her injured disciple, had poured out everything she had.
And then she closed her eyes.
But he would not know this.
He would not know that his master’s death had long since been ordained, that today her life was fated to drift to the Nine Springs.
She was not supposed to survive the final struggle by dealing Bang Chunghyun a crippling wound; rather, she had been destined to die by his very first strike.
That was the death and the fate prepared for her.
To become a sacrifice in order to open the Heavenly Gates, and thus the fate of a falling star.
And yet Mukjeok did not die.
Though she had been reduced to a corpse-like state and trapped in a stone chamber, at the very least she could dream, smiling as she thought of her disciple’s face.
At the very end of the very end, freed from the inner demon of karma and responsibility, she had fallen into such peaceful sleep that it was almost as if she had attained liberation—or transformed into a butterfly.
She had received a miracle, a chance to postpone Heaven’s decree and wait for another opportunity.
A providential encounter.
“Heh heh heh.”
A low laugh escaped from beneath the mask.
“Yeona, you were wrong about something after all.”
Leaving those words behind, the masked man removed his mask and tossed it away as though casting it down the slope.
The black mask fluttered through the wind, drifting and spinning away.
Mukjeok slowly lifted her heavy eyelids.
The world was all colorless, all gray.
What reached Mukjeok’s vision was only black and white.
And between them lay nothing but a gray expanse, like ink that had spread before it could properly be dissolved.
Mukjeok quietly wandered through that space.
After walking a little farther, a clear river appeared.
Of course, the river was also a clear gray.
It was confusing how clarity and gray could coexist, but Mukjeok was calm enough to accept her circumstances.
Master Mozi had said that ghosts and supernatural oddities did not exist, yet the scene before her was plain enough.
So this is the River of Three Crossings.
Mukjeok slowly turned her head as if touring a famous scenic spot and looked at the water.
Then she began walking along the river.
One gak,
one sikgyeong,
one sjin.
Even after walking several hundred paces, the river never ended, flowing on placidly as though washing souls clean.
After walking like that for a long while, one question rose in Mukjeok’s mind.
Why is no one here?
She had thought that if she walked the River of Three Crossings, the Hanging Robe Old Man and the Robe-Stealing Crone would appear to guide her across.
Yet however far she walked, it seemed she alone existed in this vast gray expanse.
Mukjeok walked a little farther.
Then, with a hint of bewilderment, she looked around again.
How strange.
Neither the Ox-Head who waits for souls at the gate of the underworld, nor the Horse-Face, was anywhere to be seen.
When nothing appeared but the endlessly flowing river and barren hills, Mukjeok finally gave up walking and sank down where she stood.
Seated cross-legged, she stared at the river.
It is quiet.
It felt as though all the noise in the world had vanished.
Mukjeok found peace in the silence and stillness, gazing at the serenely flowing River of Three Crossings.
She no longer had any regrets about life.
The burden of her clan, the responsibility of the Muk Clan, and even her lingering attachment to her disciple—she had cast them all away at last.
If she forgot everything and drifted off like this, never to return, she would not regret it.
But then—
“If my soul has come to the Nine Springs, shouldn’t someone come out to greet me?”
The grumbling complaint burst from Mukjeok’s mouth.
In the end, Mukjeok simply sat there motionless for a long while, staring blankly at the river.
Another one gak, one sikgyeong, one sjin passed while she looked at the river.
“Piiip.”
It was a clear birdcall.
Mukjeok slowly turned her head toward the sound.
“Piiip, piiip.”
It was a small wooden swallow.
The swallow trotted over as if it were familiar with Mukjeok’s embrace, then hopped onto her hand and sang.
“Piiiririp, piiip.”
Mukjeok quietly watched the wooden swallow chirp as though it were truly alive.
“Hmm.”
Gently stroking the wooden swallow with her forefinger, Mukjeok lifted her eyes back to the river.
“This is not so bad.”
A faint smile touched Mukjeok’s face.
Together with the wooden swallow, she fell into meditation, waiting for the underworld messengers who would never come.
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