Miles Beyond, Without Leaving a Trace (2)
The road to Yichang, as I’d sworn to my master, was nothing but one long stretch of hardship and exposure to the elements.
By day, I pushed forward with lightfooted movement.
When hunger gnawed at me, I went into the woods to hunt wild game or gather berries.
The food in Mureung had all tasted sweet or salty, but food in the wild was different.
It tasted like nothing at all.
Truly, there was no such thing as flavor.
The meat wasn’t salty; it stank of raw animal and green, grassy reek, enough to make my face crease on its own.
Even when I chewed wild strawberries and thought of the strawberry rice balls old Mister Jeong used to give me in Mureung County, all I got was bland, flavorless juice running down my throat.
It was the sort of moment that made me keenly aware just how well I’d been treated in Mureung, how much I’d been living in comfort and abundance.
I forced down rabbit meat with the texture of chewed rubber.
Wild rabbits were fast, and there was so little yield that the bones and muscle made my gums ache.
The flesh from the breast or belly was soft enough to be edible, but even that was only about as pleasant as chewing a gum sole instead of a boot sole.
When I was thirsty, I filled a canteen by hanging it from a tree on rainy days, or else used my Mind's Eye to find a stream and rinse my mouth with it.
Even when I felt like dying, I was still hungry and thirsty.
I chewed, drank, and swallowed out of sheer obligation.
At night, I looked for a tree sturdy and broad enough to lean against, set my bundle atop it, and closed my eyes.
The night wind tore through the leaves like a mad thing, cold enough to cut straight to the bone.
It was a sign that the raging winter was driving autumn away.
And whenever I did drift off, my body might have remained out there in the world, but my heart was still in Zhangjiajie; even in my dreams, I wandered through its forests.
Sometimes I’d wake in tears, overcome with joy that everything had finally come back to me, only for the dream to scatter and vanish at the most beautiful moment.
Every time that happened, I’d jerk upright as though someone had stabbed me in the back with a blade, then burst into tears all over again.
Not once had it been any different.
And so ten days passed.
The roads of medieval China were, by nature, places where danger always lurked.
It wasn’t just roaming greenwood bandits charging out with sabers at their hips, shouting, “Hand over everything you’ve got!”
Wild beasts waited in the forest as well—boars, bears, tigers, the sort that appeared whenever they pleased.
Bandits, when threatened, would at least throw down their weapons and run. Wild beasts had no such option.
If they came down the human road to attack people, it was because they, too, had reached the end of the line.
That was why I’d made it a habit to use my Mind's Eye to scout the road ahead before setting out.
If I had to judge my own level honestly, I was skilled enough to be called a first-rate swordsman.
That had been Bang Chunghyun’s evaluation of me on the spot, and since I’d inherited my master’s inner energy, it would have been stranger if I hadn’t broken through by now.
Even so, that didn’t mean I could simply draw my sword at every threat in the world and cut down whatever happened to stand in my way.
A band of roadside robbers, at most, would be third-rate or second-rate.
Those I could handle any time.
But beasts were different.
A third-rate martial artist would die before they even had time to swing their weapon; a second-rate one would have to be prepared for a fight to the death.
A first-rate martial artist—one who might need several second-raters just to bring down—had a better chance, but the danger was still real.
Only someone at the Peak could sever a beast’s neck with a single exchange and stroll away from the road without looking back.
That was the difference in ability between man and beast.
What good were martial arts and inner energy if all you did was beat up a few people?
A bear could tear a man apart with a single strike, and when a tiger unleashed its movement technique, a person’s neck could be snapped in two.
So, as always, I scanned the road far ahead with my Mind's Eye.
Two silhouettes shimmered faintly in the distance.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to tell whether they were bandits about to rob some unlucky traveler, or simply passersby.
It was neither.
The two were locked in a life-and-death struggle.
One was a beast filled with murderous hunger, willing to burn even the last flame of its life for the sake of a kill.
The other was the opposite: a person whose flow was pure, still, and refined.
She’s a martial artist.
That was my immediate thought.
A tiger, driven savage by hunger with its belly practically glued to its back, lunged at a woman who stood before it without a trace of fear, sword drawn and pointed straight at it.
She held her sword with a certain elegance, and the inner energy flowing around her had long since surpassed the level of second-rate.
Her white daoist robes fluttered in the wind, and her bamboo hat strained against the gusts blowing in.
Underneath it all stood the figure of a woman radiating a sharp, brilliant force.
Thud!
With a roar, the tiger kicked off the ground.
The desperation of a beast that knew it would starve if it failed to hunt had been forged into a ferocious killing intent.
The woman’s sword rose in a graceful curve.
It was an utterly plain motion, far removed from anything flashy.
And yet there was a terrifying precision hidden inside it.
The Wudang Two Forms Sword Art.
A swordsmanship that embodied the harmony of yin and yang, turning aside an enemy’s momentum and letting it pass by.
The instant the tiger’s forepaw came crashing down toward the woman’s shoulder, her blade traced a soft circle in the air.
The marvelous principle of softness overcoming hardness.
Slash!
With the sound of flesh being torn, the huge tiger lost its line in midair and was knocked sideways.
It howled as it rolled across the ground, then sprang back to its feet with elastic ferocity.
It was the sort of movement you’d expect from a beast that had resolved itself to die trying.
“Grrrraaaah!”
The tiger was enraged. A low snarl rumbled from its throat.
It seemed unable to accept that its overwhelming strength had been blocked by nothing more than a frail human woman’s iron stick.
Again it lunged, this time lower, almost crawling along the ground as it closed the distance.
Clang!
The tiger tried to clamp its teeth onto the blade, but the sword slipped away like a loach and swung around to smash the bridge of its nose with the flat of the blade.
No blood flew, but the heavy force behind the strike made the tiger shake its head in obvious pain.
“Back away.”
A low voice slipped from the woman’s lips.
Clear as water, yet as unyielding as Mount Tai.
“I have no intention of taking your life. Do not let hunger blind you and push you beyond reason.”
She clicked her tongue at the tiger, now collapsed and panting.
Then she took a rice ball from her robes and tossed it right in front of its nose.
“Eat this and gather your strength before you return to the mountain. Don’t come down to the villages again.”
I nearly laughed in disbelief.
Has she lost her mind?
She’s giving a tiger a rice ball?
What, did she think it was a pigeon?
The woman looked at the rice ball rolling at the tiger’s feet with a satisfied expression, adjusted her bamboo hat, and turned away.
Her face held the kind of foolishly innocent contentment that seemed to say, Ah, I’ve saved another life and practiced the Dao again today.
But if you preach to a beast and offer it mercy, was a starving predator really supposed to listen?
There were limits to even blindness and idiocy.
Sure enough, the tiger lowered its body as if mocking her compassion.
Its gaze wasn’t on the rice ball lying on the ground at all.
It was fixed solely on the back of the woman’s neck as she walked away, completely defenseless.
The tiger gathered strength in its hind legs.
It was a final, desperate leap, the last ounce of life wrung from its body.
And yet the woman didn’t look back.
The absurd belief that Surely it won’t attack after I even gave it food was clouding her senses.
Bang!
The tiger kicked off the earth.
Its jaw split wide as it hurtled toward the back of her neck.
She flinched and started to turn around, but—
Too late.
There was no time to draw her sword, no time to dodge.
I planted my feet and moved.
My body reacted before thought did.
I didn’t want to watch someone die so pointlessly in front of me—especially not that stupidly.
I focused the inner energy of Mokshimgyeol into the soles of my feet.
True qi erupted from my dantian and surged down the meridians in my legs.
My body shot forward like an arrow.
I had no intention of leaving even the slightest opening.
The instant before the tiger’s teeth reached Yu Seojin’s neck, my sword pierced its throat first.
Thuk.
The heavy sensation of the blade driving through flesh and bone traveled to my fingertips.
It was so clean it made even me feel chilled.
The tiger’s massive body froze in midair.
Then gravity reclaimed it, and it crashed heavily to the ground.
Blood surged from its throat, staining the earth and its fur.
It was a mercy that its coat was black, since the bloodstains weren’t immediately visible.
Tap, tap-tap.
I lightly knocked the beast’s head with my foot.
Its bloodshot eyes remained wide open, but there was no movement at all.
It was completely dead now.
“Ah…”
A gasp came from behind me.
I slowly straightened and looked back.
The woman stood there with a dazed expression.
Her face, faintly visible beneath the bamboo hat, was splattered with the tiger’s blood.
Red droplets had bloomed across the hem of her white robe like clusters of wild strawberries.
“Um…”
The woman opened her mouth carefully.
“Did you save me, sir?”
I didn’t answer. No, I couldn’t.
Silently, I flicked the blood off my sword and slid it back into its scabbard.
After hesitating for a moment, she gave me a formal bow with clasped hands.
“I am Yu Seojin, a disciple of Wudang. I nearly rushed headlong toward my own death while trying to show mercy to a beast.”
“Thanks to your swift sword, sir, I owe you a great debt.”
Listening quietly to the daoist’s gratitude, I recalled her name and looked up sharply.
Yu Seojin.
Direct disciple of the Wudang Sect’s sect leader.
And blind.
The woman who would later be called the Taiji Sword, or the Blind Hero.
So she really was blind and foolish.
Now that the gossip I’d heard in passing had turned out to be true, an indescribable sense of discomfort rose in my chest.
No matter that I, too, had some similar physical handicap; there are some things even I can’t help but react to.
As I stood there with feelings I couldn’t quite explain, Yu Seojin’s voice came again.
“May I ask your name? If it isn’t too rude, would you tell me how I should address you?”
I looked at her face for a moment.
Her pale gray eyes were turned toward me. She couldn’t see me, but she was surely feeling my presence.
I quietly wrote on the ground with the tip of my scabbard.
[Wolyeon.]
Then I looked back at Yu Seojin.
For some reason, her expression began to change in a strangely complicated way.
At first it was confusion, then it shifted little by little into embarrassment, and finally into unease.
“U-um… sir?”
She cautiously backed away.
“Did I somehow offend you terribly? Or is my voice too quiet for you to hear?”
Yu Seojin tilted her head and leaned her ear toward me.
As if she were trying not to miss even a single breath.
“Or… are you angry? Is it because you feel troubled that I’ve burdened myself with the karma of taking a life?”
I remembered it again. Blind and foolish.
Ah. Right.
This woman is blind.
I slapped a hand to my forehead. Even after thinking of Yu Seojin, I’d forgotten for a moment.
Because she could read energy so well and had no trouble moving or using martial arts, the people around her sometimes forgot she was blind.
I’d done the same.
What am I supposed to do?
If I wanted to show her writing, I needed sight—and she didn’t have that.
Which meant there was only one way.
I approached Yu Seojin again.
Then I took her right hand.
“Eh? Sir, why are you suddenly holding my hand?”
Ignoring her puzzled tilt of the head, I moved my fingers across her palm.
[Wo.lyeon.]
Ticklish, perhaps, because her fingers twitched faintly.
She held her breath and concentrated on the movement of my fingertips.
“Nnh… um, sir? What are you doing? It’s ticklish…”
Yu Seojin twisted awkwardly and let out a small groan.
I ignored it and kept writing. For some reason, it felt like I was committing some great sin.
Stop making those strange little sounds.
[I cannot speak. I will use writing instead.]
There.
She’d understand now, surely.
I looked at her with expectant eyes.
Yu Seojin was still blushing, staring blankly down at the palm where my hand had touched her.
And then, very carefully, she spoke.
“Um…”
“?”
“I’m sorry, but…”
Yu Seojin lifted her head with a look of distress.
Her unfocused gray eyes trembled.
“I can’t read.”
“……”
“I’m illiterate. I’ve been training the Dao on Mount Wudang, so I never had the time to finish learning the Thousand Character Classic…”
Ah.
A single game setting flashed through my mind.
Yu Seojin: Illiterate. Cannot read. Even secret manuals have to be read aloud by someone else.
I was done for.
I froze where I stood.
This is unbelievable.
A mute who can’t speak, and a blind woman who can’t read.
Was there ever a more maddening combination than this?
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