A Fateful Encounter (1)
I didn’t really know exactly what kind of character my master was.
One reason was that her lore was scattered all over the game, split into pieces and scattered across every corner of it.
Out of everything there was to know, I could only say I was sure of two or three things out of ten.
It was all so scattered and exhausting to dig up that I couldn’t help it.
If I wanted to know, right then and there, why the Heavenly Demon was hostile to the martial world and why he pursued power, I’d first have to understand at least some of the history of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, as befit a game named Daemyeong Pungwhajeon.
Then I’d need to raise my affinity with the abbot of Shaolin and the head of the Namgung clan to hear the old tales about the Heavenly Demon, defeat two of the Demonic Cult’s Dao Kings to unlock the lore about the cult and its rank system, and finally kill the Heavenly Demon himself and read the description on his drop item to get a rough grasp of his background.
Even understanding the game’s main character among main characters, the Heavenly Demon, was that difficult and tedious.
So just how much harder was it to learn the lore of a character who only existed as background setting in the story, someone who had already retired or was dead?
You had to light up the map piece by piece, explore and expand your regional points, and somehow know at least the rough shape of a person’s background in order to stumble onto one of those randomly triggered fateful-encounter quests.
Depending on the situation, you might have to clear a combat quest or a puzzle quest to obtain an item, then use its description to piece together that person’s past and lore before finding someone close to them and triggering the conversation event.
That whole fate-system was so random it practically sent my blood pressure through the roof.
It didn’t even tell you the conditions. It only gave you a vague hint of where and how to quest, and never showed anything on the map. Since it was random, if your luck was bad enough, you could play for a thousand hours and still never see it.
It felt as though I could vividly hear the comments of other veterans mocking the poor soul who was getting bullied by even older veterans.
Anyway, because of that, over the eight years I had spent with my master, I’d been forced to learn about her only through the fragments visible to me.
What I had figured out, first of all, was this:
My master was so close with the head of the Wudang Sect and the head of the Qingcheng Sect that they could speak to each other without any formalities.
That meant she was either someone with tremendous influence across the jianghu, or a master whose skill matched theirs.
I leaned far more toward the latter.
There were many reasons for that, but the main one was her home.
Zhangjiajie.
The place got its name from the story that Zhang Zifang, one of the great founding ministers of the Han Dynasty, retired here in his later years with his household in order to become an immortal.
Three thousand peaks rose straight toward the heavens, piercing even the clouds, while mist and fog curled through the steep cliffs and gave the place an air of mystery.
It was such a magnificent sight that it wasn’t strange at all that the ancient Chinese mistook it for a paradise beyond the mortal world.
And if the setting was a wuxia world, then what of it?
It was easy to see why so many romantics and Daoist hermits had come all the way to Hunan to climb Zhangjiajie.
There was only one problem with this place.
It was truly, very, unbelievably, fucking hard to climb.
“You’re late, you slow little disciple.”
That was why I was greeted with an earful from my master the moment I arrived.
Even peerless masters could plunge straight into the abyss if they made one wrong move with their lightness skill.
So what would happen if you were trying to use that lightness skill in the body of an eight-year-old child?
While climbing the mountain in a hurry, I pulled out the excuse I had written down on paper and kept in my pocket.
[Compared to Master’s long, slender legs, this disciple’s legs are short and weak, so it is not easy to use lightness skill.]
[Moreover, this disciple has not even learned lightness skill for two full years yet. How could I possibly catch up to Master?]
But my master’s answer was firm.
“Excuses. Weren’t you two shichen late, just as I told you? If I had been that late when I was your age, I’d have had to crawl back down the way I came with my legs broken.”
Master, just what kind of master did you learn under?
“I thought I was growing old waiting for you, this foolish disciple. Wolyeon, do you have any more excuses to add?”
Wolyeon. That was the name my master had given me.
She said it because my blue eyes resembled the moon, and my black hair resembled a swallow.
But she usually called me nothing more than “disciple,” never by my name.
There were only three times she used my name.
When she absolutely needed me for something, when she was about to say something serious, or when she was annoyed.
And this time, she was definitely annoyed.
I quickly wrote on the ground with a tree branch, watching her expression carefully.
[Master is still so young; if you are to grow old and withered, wouldn’t the rivers and mountains need to change three times first?]
“What nonsense is this, you foolish disciple? I’ve already lived half a hundred years. If I’d married early like other women, I’d already have grandchildren.”
That was the second reason I suspected my master was a peerless master.
Even at fifty, she looked no older than her late twenties.
It was the realm said to be achieved only by experts beyond the Peak level: Transformation Realm, the stage where an aged body returns to youth through rejuvenation.
Normally, one had to reach at least the Transformation Realm and then stumble into a rare opportunity to attain such rejuvenation, so if my guess was right, my master was unquestionably at least in that realm.
Even knowing that, the gap between her age and her face was hard to accept.
Of course it was. The old Auntie Ju who had given my master medicinal herbs yesterday was the same age as her.
It was one thing to know that in a game; it was another to see it in real life. I just couldn’t get used to it.
Fortunately, my master seemed to brighten a little from that childish remark of mine. She stood up and began to pat my head.
“Your tongue is like a waterfall, you flattery-loving disciple. If only your lightness skill improved as quickly.”
With that, she lifted her hand from my head and began walking slowly into the forest.
She had only taken a few steps, yet the distance between us was already dozens of cheok, and I had to hurry after her.
***
“Come quickly, you turtle of a disciple. How long do you mean to keep your master waiting?”
Mukjeok called out to Wolyeon, who was sprinting toward her from far away.
Of course, it was nearly impossible for a child not yet ten to catch up to Wol-o, an absolute master, as she swept through the forest with top-tier lightness skill.
Even so, though he complained, Wolyeon never gave up and kept following after his master. More precisely, he was the sort who couldn’t give up, but Mukjeok still felt privately pleased by the sight of him quietly obeying her instructions without a trace of resistance.
Unlike Mukjeok’s worries, raising a child in Zhangjiajie was not all that difficult, at least not “more than worrying” difficult.
Of course, before the child could even walk, and even after he’d started toddling, he had demanded so much attention that every day felt exhausting.
Whenever he got used to roaming about on his own and the bundle loosened while she was using lightness skill, Mukjeok would start violently, catch hold of a rock face, and hurriedly retie the bundle while steadying her pounding heart.
She had never been so frightened even when dealing with all manner of unorthodox villains, and not even when standing beside the Namgung clan head and the Shaolin abbot to face the Blood Demon.
Yet a newborn infant had this mysterious ability to chill a person’s very liver and gallbladder.
Moreover, unlike other babies, if something was wrong with his body or he was uncomfortable, he couldn’t cry to call for his parents. He could only make faint, strangled sounds and twitch his little body.
After a day or two of that, Mukjeok had no choice but to keep half-watching him all night long in a light doze, checking his condition over and over.
When the baby fussed, she first checked his diaper to see whether he’d done his business. If he hadn’t, she wrapped Wolyeon in a sling and descended Zhangjiajie with great lightness skill, going all the way down to Mureung County below to beg for milk.
“Oh my, Immortal! You’ve come again. Here, take him.”
Here, at least, Mukjeok was not the famous female hero Wol-o of the martial world.
Her family, who for generation after generation had practiced *mutual benefit* in Zhangjiajie and in this very Mureung County, were called “the immortals of Zhangjiajie” by the people of Mureung County.
For a thousand years, the Mo family had built waterwheels and broken through dikes to relieve drought in Mureung, ground medicinal herbs into pills and shared them when plague spread, and even come down in person with shovels when heavy snow buried the roads.
To the common people, miracles were not anything grand.
The miracle was the person who reached out a hand when they were in trouble, and so the people honored her as an immortal.
Mukjeok wasn’t particularly fond of that nickname. Master Mo had declared that things like ghosts did not exist, and she herself believed the same.
Just as the great names of the martial world stirred no particular feeling in her, the title “immortal of Zhangjiajie” was nothing more than a mortifying nickname to Mukjeok.
But because of that, the people of Mureung County never refused Mukjeok’s requests. On the contrary, they treated it as a chance to repay their immortal benefactor, and women whose milk had not yet dried up would even step forward to feed Wolyeon first.
The seed of mutual benefit that the Mo family had sown was now returning to Mukjeok in full. She felt something strange in her chest.
Perhaps because of this master’s devotion and the sincerity of the people of Mureung County, Wolyeon learned faster than other children.
Before he had even reached a year old, he was already walking. By the time he was three or four, he was learning characters. After days and nights bent over the Thousand Character Classic, Wolyeon soon became able to converse with Mukjeok in writing.
Master.
The first time Wolyeon wrote those characters and addressed Mukjeok as “Master,” she did not change her expression.
She only ruffled her disciple’s soft hair like a madwoman, silently showing how pleased she was with him.
After that, Mukjeok found herself wanting to teach him everything she could, and she did.
The reason Wolyeon was now holding a wooden tablet and following behind his master while recording medicinal herbs was precisely because of that.
“Are you writing everything down properly?”
Wolyeon took a small sheet of paper from inside his robes and answered with a quick stroke of the brush.
[Yes, Master.]
“Let me see.”
After studying the wooden tablet Wolyeon handed over for a long while, Mukjeok finally opened her mouth while stroking his hair.
“Well done, disciple. You wrote down everything I taught you without missing a thing.”
[You praise me too much.]
“Then let me test you.”
With a tap, Mukjeok rolled the wooden tablet closed and asked Wolyeon, “What are the effects of fleeceflower root?”
[It makes the user’s internal energy profound and clear. It is usually simmered into a pill or medicine drink, and the older it is, the greater its effect becomes. A thousand-year-old fleeceflower root could even cure qi deviation.]
“And what is the Three-Eyed Toad Flower?”
[A toad with three eyes. It is highly effective for improving internal energy and for poison arts. The red-backed ones are even more toxic, but if properly refined into a pill, they can neutralize a hundred poisons.]
“Not bad, disciple.”
Mukjeok’s hand came to rest atop Wolyeon’s small head. Her slender fingers gently combed through the soft hair of her little disciple, and Wolyeon quietly let his head sink into her touch.
Before long, her hand grew faster, rubbing enough that static seemed to build and the hair started to puff up, and only when Wolyeon gave her a puzzled look did Mukjeok finally stop.
“Ahem.”
Mukjeok quickly came to her senses and cleared her throat.
It was true that she was pouring care and affection into Wolyeon.
But deep in her heart, Mukjeok had sworn that she would not treat him as something special.
Though there were times when she lost control of herself like this and acted embarrassingly, she gave him nothing more than a master’s affection, and she had no intention of giving him anything beyond that.
The moment she gave more than that, it would no longer be universal love, but special love—she would be loving Wolyeon more than anyone else in the world. Mukjeok might question the teachings of her sect, but she was still faithful to them and tried hard to practice them.
That was why she had not given Wolyeon her family name, and why she made him call her “Master” rather than “Mother.”
Of course, she did show a harsh streak sometimes—making him train in lightness skill, which even martial experts found difficult, despite him being not yet ten years old; teaching him a huge amount about the ecology of herbs and poisonous plants, enough to make even ordinary disciples of the Tang or Qingnang Sects look uneasy; and, when he made a mistake or answered a question wrong, leaving him alone in the forests of Zhangjiajie—but wasn’t that normal?
Even Mukjeok herself, when she had trained under her father, had gone through training far harsher than this.
Besides, she still hadn’t taught Wolyeon any martial arts, and she had no intention of doing so yet, so Mukjeok believed her disciple ought to be able to keep up with her teachings without difficulty.
She had never taught anyone before, so she was teaching Wolyeon according to her own standards.
“Take it. This is the reward your master grants you.”
Wolyeon politely accepted the sweet rice cake Mukjeok handed him and ate it. Watching him chew away, Mukjeok had to manage her expression to keep the corners of her mouth from rising.
“Let’s go. I think it may rain tonight. We’ll have to gather the medicinal herbs hanging in the yard before the rain comes.”
At Mukjeok’s words, Wolyeon nodded. Just as Mukjeok turned her back and was about to leave,
Swish, swish.
Wolyeon caught the edge of Mukjeok’s robe and tugged lightly. Mukjeok slowly turned around and asked her disciple, “Do you have something to say?”
Instead of answering, Wolyeon pointed with a finger toward the opposite side, where a large old tree stood.
“What about there?”
Wolyeon wrote on the ground with a twig in reply. Because Mukjeok had been asking him one thing after another as practice, he had run out of paper.
[Medicine.]
“Medicine?”
At that single word, Mukjeok tilted her head.
Medicine? Did he mean there was some herb beneath that old tree that she’d somehow missed? Had he noticed it while following behind her?
Mukjeok walked up to the base of the old tree where Wolyeon had pointed and began digging into the ground.
But after digging for quite a while, there wasn’t so much as a single leaf, let alone any herb, and Mukjeok began to cast Wolyeon a suspicious look.
Then Wolyeon wrote again on the ground in answer.
[A little more to the side from there.]
Let it be wrong and I’ll tear you apart.
Grumbling to herself inwardly, Mukjeok obediently dug into the earth a little farther to the side, just as her disciple had said.
At that moment,
Whoosh.
A clear, pure current of energy rose up all at once, making Mukjeok’s eyes widen.
“This is…”
Mukjeok let out a gasp that was almost a sigh.
Hundred-Year Fleeceflower Root.
Though it could not compare to a thousand-year-old root, it was still a medicinal treasure so precious that it was almost lacking only the name of a divine herb: something capable of reviving the weakened and opening a path for those who had reached the threshold of a higher realm but could not pass through.
Startled, Mukjeok turned her widened eyes toward Wolyeon and asked, “How did you find this?”
Something that even Mukjeok, who had wandered Zhangjiajie for years and dug up countless herbs, had failed to find—how had Wolyeon discovered it?
Had he discovered it long ago and simply not been able to say anything, intending to tell her after they got home?
All of Mukjeok’s countless guesses were shattered by Wolyeon’s single sentence.
[I saw it.]
“...You saw it?”
Wolyeon nodded.
***
No, why was she so shocked?
I just said I saw it because I saw it.