26. Do You Prefer Red?
The looks on the faces of the Mount Hua disciples as they watched Pungjin drop unconscious were quite a sight to behold.
"......"
"No way... Martial Uncle Pungjin, this easily...?"
"Is that what they call swordsmanship? She didn't even give him time to unfold his sword qi."
"Wasn't that ambush a bit much?"
"Ambush, nothing—he greeted him properly and everything. Pungjin simply let his guard down."
"Looks like he underestimated her."
"Ahh, how I would love to take a kick from that foot myself..."
"What sword art was that, anyway? It's nothing like the White Willow Plum Blossom Sword Art we saw yesterday."
A certain woman's strange remark had been mixed in among the murmurs, but the Mount Hua disciples, reeling from the unexpected outcome, were too deep in a daze to notice as they muttered on.
Soyul turned toward the wall where Pungjin lay and offered a respectful fist-and-palm salute.
"Thank you for the lesson."
Naturally, no answer came back from the unconscious man.
Watching her, Cheonghyeon quietly declared, "The victory in this duel goes to Lady Kang Soyul."
She is beyond what I imagined.
He had thought her extraordinary yesterday, when he watched her unfold the White Willow Plum Blossom Sword Art, but to see her now seemingly already past the boundary of mere forms and techniques—Cheonghyeon kept his face composed, yet he could not suppress his astonishment.
Save for the level of her internal energy, does her understanding of the sword not already surpass the elders'? What a magnificent talent. So this, too, is what the Ancestor saw in her.
After Cheonghyeon declared the victory, a hush fell, and everyone merely traded wary glances, unable to move or to find their voices.
"S-Sect Leader?"
"......"
"Sect Leader?"
"Ah! What is it?"
Snapping back to his senses at Soyul's second call, Cheonghyeon looked around at the others' reactions and grew sheepish.
"Hmm. I was thinking of paying my respects to True Man Cheongsu next. Might you tell me where I ought to go?"
"Of course, of course. This old man gives you his thanks for indulging my sudden request and for broadening my disciples' horizons. Now then, who will guide Lady Kang to Cheongsu—"
Before he could finish, hands shot up all around him.
It was a markedly different attitude from before.
"Sect Leader! Allow me to guide her!"
"No, I will!"
Reverence for the strong is a truth that holds for every martial artist under heaven.
Their eldest senior brother had lost, so were they supposed to hate the woman for it?
At a moment like this, the fact that the Mount Hua disciples still thought of Soyul as a courtesan worked as a decided advantage.
It was not as if she had defeated a disciple of Zhongnan or of Wudang, after all.
A courtesan by origin, yes—but having heard the Sect Leader's explanation, she was, when all was said and done, a disciple of their own lineage, one who had received her martial arts from their very own Ancestor.
When a fellow disciple who had appeared out of nowhere displayed such brilliance, their blood caught fire of its own accord.
And Daoists though they were, they were hardly free of worldly greed. Before anyone realized it, they were shoving one another aside for the honor of guiding Soyul.
"And where do you get off butting in?"
"Martial Uncle, is a task like this not traditionally the youngest's to begin with?"
Among the squabbling disciples, any thought of Soyul's attire had long since flown from their heads.
Well, what did clothes matter, anyway? She was that strong.
"Then why don't we all simply go together?"
When someone who could no longer stand the spectacle finally voiced the compromise, they all came crowding around Soyul at once.
Soyul could only stare.
The first to claim the spot at her right side was, of course, Myeonghwa.
"Unnie~ You were so cool!"
"Hm? You're awake? Are you feeling better now?"
"Oh, of course. I'm sorry for startling you. It's just—"
"Hold that thought. Let's talk about it later. There's something more important."
Soyul flashed an innocent smile.
"Please prepare an outfit just like mine—something Daoist Pungjin can wear."
A promise is a promise.
Cho Jaun—no, Cho Youngbin, the True Pine Sword Emperor, returned at last to his true identity—made straight for the Beggars' Sect's Shaanxi Branch the moment he came down from Mount Hua and revealed who he was.
Jin Churyang, branch leader of the Beggars' Sect's Shaanxi Branch, was startled by the arrival of so great a figure and attended Cho Youngbin with every courtesy.
"To what do we owe the honor of the Great Hero True Pine Sword Emperor visiting our humble branch...?"
"I have a commission for you."
Jin Churyang, wondering what commission could have the man so enraged that killing intent radiated off him in waves, nodded along.
"Yes. Yes, of course."
"Look into the bastards running courtesan houses built on human trafficking in Qinghai."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Shall I say it again?"
Cho Youngbin, displeased at the beggar's audacity in making him repeat himself, frowned, and Jin Churyang hastily waved his hands.
"N-no, not at all. It is only... there would be rather a great many subjects to investigate. Might I ask what this concerns...?"
"Hoh. So there are that many men dealing in human flesh? Has the Central Plains rotted that badly?"
"......"
Realizing once more that the man's repeated huffing meant his mood was considerably foul, Jin Churyang clamped his mouth shut.
A beggar reads a room far faster than ordinary folk, and he had instinctively sensed that silence was the wisest course just now.
"Investigate the courtesan house from which a courtesan named Kang Soyul escaped. In Qinghai."
"Kang Soyul?"
"That is right."
"Now, who might that be... ahaha. Never mind. No need for me to know that much, is there? Hahaha."
Given the Beggars' Sect's trade in information, the questions were only natural, but one glance at Cho Youngbin's face and Jin Churyang swerved away from them.
"How many days will you need?"
With the name pinned down so precisely, the work would go smoothly.
Vast as Qinghai was, the name of a woman who had fled a courtesan house would already have crossed the lips of everyone around her dozens, if not hundreds, of times.
Three days at the outside, he thought, and opened his mouth to say so—then froze.
Just to be safe... I had best allow for complications. This is a commission from a Hwagyeong master.
"Seven days and nights should suffice. It is a commission from the Great Hero True Pine Sword Emperor—we will treat it as top priority. Heheheh."
"Three days."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You will have three days."
Watching Cho Youngbin name, to the day, the very deadline he himself had just calculated, Jin Churyang felt cold sweat run down the back of his neck.
But if he gave ground so easily here, his earlier words would become a lie, and so he had to hold firm.
"Ah... it is only that Qinghai is so terribly vast, you see. There is a certain irreducible minimum of time that..."
Cho Youngbin watched him waffle for a moment, then drew something from within his robe and tossed it across.
"Whoa—!"
What landed before Jin Churyang was a gold ingot—a full nyang of it.
It was a fortune that would keep a household living comfortably for ten years.
"Great Hero!"
Jin Churyang shot to his feet at the fortune tossed before his eyes.
Flick—
"I will have everything investigated and reported within three days. Everything there is to know about that courtesan house. The bastards who run it, and if anyone stands behind them as a backer, I will shake them down too and report on the whole lot. Ah—should I investigate that courtesan Kang Soyul as well?"
The power of money was a mighty law.
Had it not just spared him the trouble of a long bout of haggling?
"Do exactly that. Bring me information on the courtesan Kang Soyul, on how she came to be trapped in that courtesan house, and on every last bastard connected to it all."
"Understood. I will contact you in three days."
"Good."
Utterly unaware that Cho Jaun was toiling so diligently on her behalf(?), Soyul was in a state of considerable fascination.
"So in the end, you are telling me to live as I please?"
"...That is not what I said."
"Isn't 'live as your heart leads you, like flowing water' just another way of saying 'live as you please'?"
Cheongsu opened his mouth, then shut it again.
When Soyul and the disciples had come flooding in after the duel, he had been thrown off balance, but he had soon composed himself and was calmly passing on the basic tenets of Daoist thought—only to be met with a question like this.
How was he to explain?
Partly it was that the Mount Hua disciples, who ordinarily listened to his lectures with half an ear, were now hanging on every word of the exchange with Soyul; partly it was that he was pondering how to phrase things so that this girl would truly understand.
"'Live as you please' is not what I said. What the Daoist school calls shangshan ruoshui—the highest good is like water—means that the greatest good resembles water. Water seeps into any vessel, flows not toward the heights but toward the low, and benefits all living things without ever parading itself."
Having said this much, Cheongsu stole a glance at Soyul's expression.
He wondered whether she was truly listening, but her eyes were bright and sparkling, and she seemed to be following along, so he continued.
"So when I say to live as your heart leads, like flowing water, I mean 'lay down your greed and your stubbornness and follow the current of the world'—not 'satisfy your every desire as you see fit.' Like a river, do not insist on doing battle with every obstacle; flow around it. And where the way runs against reason, learn the humility to lower yourself quietly and open a path."
"A life like the highest good, like water, is in the end a wise way of being: contending with no one, yet never losing the road you must walk; seeping into the low places and bestowing benefit upon the world. That, and nothing else, is what it truly means to live 'like water.'"
"Hmm. I see."
"Just so."
When Soyul seemed to have grasped at least the shape of it, Cheongsu's expression eased.
"So in the end, so long as nothing in my heart is out of tune, acting as I please is following the Dao."
"...?"
"Is that wrong?"
The words were not wrong.
If a person had already arrived at the realm of the Dao, then every offhand remark and casual gesture that person made would itself be the Dao.
But what was this feeling?
He had a grim premonition that answering "yes" here would be a mistake.
"......"
"Hm? Why aren't you saying anything?"
"You are correct. However—"
"Then that settles it!"
Settled? What settled?!
Cheongsu stared blankly at Soyul as she abruptly clapped her hands together.
"What exactly has settled?"
"I've realized that since my words and deeds already follow the Dao, acting as I please is, in the end, the Dao itself. True Man."
At the preposterous declaration, Cheongsu's mouth fell open of its own accord.
Had those words come from a disciple the Daoist school could be proud of, they would have warmed his heart—but Soyul had been sitting across from him, learning Daoist thought, for hardly any time at all.
Even Cheongsu, who had devoted decades to study and enlightenment!
Even Cheongsu, acknowledged by every elder and by the Sect Leader of Mount Hua himself, could not bring himself to declare, I have awakened. I am the Dao itself!
Just as Cheongsu was finally about to force out a word—
"Lady Kang shows a remarkable aptitude not only for the sword but for the study of the heart as well!"
"That's our Unnie for you!"
"We want to learn from you quickly too, Elder, and become martial artists like Lady Kang! Please, teach us!"
It was not the martial arts alone—the arts that had obliterated their eldest senior brother single-handedly—that had them in such a fervor.
They were in a fervor because a young, lovely woman had obliterated their eldest senior brother single-handedly.
And why would they not be?
It was the same shock as a burly, bandit-looking fellow taking top honors in the imperial examination over some obvious scholar.
Watching Soyul glow with triumph, glancing about and flashing smiles, and the disciples so hopelessly smitten that they kept applauding, Cheongsu smiled genially and opened his mouth.
"Mouths shut, books open, you little punks..."
And so the tedious Daoist lesson between Cheongsu and the young whelps at last began in earnest.
"Ugh... ughh..."
"Senior Brother? Are you coming to?"
"How... how did I..."
Pungjin, staggering upright with Pungyeon supporting him, shook his head.
An unfamiliar ceiling. So this is the Medicine Hall.
As Pungjin opened his eyes on the sickbed of the Medicine Hall, the outcome of the duel flashed through his mind once more.
"So I lost."
"...Senior Brother."
He would have preferred the sky he gazed up at to be an especially brilliant blue; what met his eyes instead was a wooden ceiling.
"Heh... heheh..."
How could he have been so arrogant?
Taking one clean, satisfying blow seemed to have knocked the sense back into him, and the training he had let slide of late circled in his mind as well.
When had he begun to neglect his training?
Pungjin. Oh, Pungjin.
Because you were a first-generation disciple, the eldest of them all, did a little swollen pride make you this arrogant?
Did you truly believe there was no one under heaven you could not beat?
He could not hold his head up.
If anything, he was grateful to that young lady, Kang Soyul.
"...Senior Brother? Are you all right?"
With his heart grown lighter, the smile Pungjin turned on Pungyeon—who seemed to have stayed at his side to comfort him—had grown lighter as well.
"Yes. I am fine."
"...Truly?"
"Spare me your worries. Ah, Pungyeon. Starting tomorrow, we must return to our training—"
"No, not that, Senior Brother."
"Not that," he says.
The audacity—his eldest senior brother speaks of training, and this is how the boy answers—
No. That was not it.
Cutting off one's junior mid-sentence simply because one was the eldest senior brother was every bit as shabby.
Pungjin asked with a faint smile, "Then what is it you wish to say?"
"The clothes."
"Clothes?"
"If you lost the duel, you... you agreed to wear them, remember? So earlier, Lady Kang asked that an outfit be prepared to fit you..."
"......I did?"
"Yes."
"Right. I did say that."
"Yes..."
"Pungyeon."
"Yes, Senior Brother..."
"Why did I ever agree to that?"
"...Well, Senior Brother."
"Never mind. If it is only consolation, it is fin—"
"Would you prefer red, or would you prefer blue? Or if there is a color you desire, I can hurry down and purchase it right away—ghueeehk!!"
WHAM!
CRASH!
Struck by the fist Pungjin had snapped out in an instant, Pungyeon punched clean through the Medicine Hall's door and went sailing off into the distance.
Having launched his incessantly smirking junior into the sky and left alone, Pungjin stared blankly at his own fist and muttered without pause.
"Why... why on earth did I..."
The other disciples, having witnessed him like this, did not dare approach, and so Pungjin sat alone and desolate on the sickbed, staring into nothing until the sun went down.