Sichuan's Greatest Nangin: The Star Lecturer — History of the Sichuan Nangin, Part 1
Sichuan's Murim is twisted.
To understand how that twist came about — the before and the after — you have to go all the way back to Sichuan of the distant past.
Sichuan was a region that developed quickly, and today it rivals any place in the Nine Provinces for sheer wealth. It was not always so.
Any number of factors drove that rise, but of those that touched the Murim, there was only one: the Tang Clan.
Metallurgy for crafting hidden weapons. Herbology that grew naturally out of the craft of poison. The Tang Clan steadily released that knowledge into the hands of ordinary people.
They did not single-handedly haul Sichuan into prosperity, but no one denied their contribution — and the Imperial Court, taking some of it to heart, granted the Tang Clan the status of Sichuan's local gentry.
And on the back of that development, another sort of people thrived as well.
The unorthodox factions.
Riding the chaos that rapid growth always breeds, unorthodox sects rose in droves. Drawn by the sight of a Sichuan growing richer by the day, even Yunnan's heretical groups stretched their hands northward.
A brief digression.
What comes to mind when you hear the name of the Sichuan Tang Clan?
Have you ever heard the saying, Repay kindness twofold, and grudges tenfold?
That is the Tang Clan's family motto.
Would a clan like that sit quietly while unorthodox factions ate away at Sichuan — territory they considered their own?
Of course not. They set out to wipe them out root and stem.
But even the Tang Clan, for all its renown, was not enough to scour clean unorthodox forces that had already swollen on Sichuan's chaos. So the Tang Clan called for aid from the orthodox powers settled in the region.
The Hwangbo Clan, one seat among the Five Great Clans. The Emei Sect, the Qingcheng Sect, and the Jeomchang Sect of the Nine Great Sects. Even the Zhongnan Sect. All of them took the lead in purging the unorthodox that had thrown Sichuan into disorder.
After one fight and another, Sichuan's unorthodox forces were wiped out. However high their momentum had climbed, they could not stand against martial arts tempered over centuries of Daoist tradition.
The Tang Clan kept its eyes wide open and tore the unorthodox out of Sichuan by the roots — true to a motto that repays grudges tenfold, they left not a seed behind.
"Where did you even get all this knowledge?"
"From the field."
Black Cat radiated a curiosity sharp enough to cut about where the information had come from, but I ignored it and pressed on.
I did not think she was ignorant of Sichuan's history. Still, the more important the work, the more carefully you lay the foundation.
Suppose I decided on my own that Black Cat already knows this much and pushed ahead — only to find a gap she had never filled in. By the time I turned and asked, Wait, you didn't know that?, the damage would already be done.
If the goal was to become Sichuan's greatest Nangin, we were not going to be traveling together for a day or two. This was going to be a long campaign. We needed to match our breathing from the basics up.
Back to Sichuan's history.
What was the real cause that twisted the present Murim of Sichuan into the warped thing it is now?
It might have been the Tang Clan, which pulled every last unorthodox seed from the ground. It might have been the sect leaders of the day, who failed to keep a Daoist's proper bearing.
At this point, causes hardly matter.
The Tang Clan already held territory equal to its strength, and taking more would have been a burden even for them. So once the unorthodox were rooted out, they handed the leftover ground to their allied powers — the Hwangbo Clan and the Daoist sects.
In other words, they showed the taste of money to Daoist sects that had been quietly cultivating the Way in mountain valleys.
There is a saying that a late wind is the fiercest. Pour the gold of a wealthy Sichuan into Daoist orders that had lived in lifelong poverty, and how could their eyes not spin?
It was like putting meat in a monk's mouth.
The Hwangbo Clan, which had always known the taste of meat well enough, and the newly addicted Emei, Qingcheng, Zhongnan, and Jeomchang Sects all threw themselves into Sichuan's power struggle.
But no matter how badly they craved the meat, they still had the dignity of Daoist orders to consider. Rolling up their sleeves and diving in directly was too much of a risk to their faces.
Day after day they fretted over how to grow their influence without losing face — and then the countless mid- and small-sized sects came into view.
In the mind of some Daoist of that era, a single word must have flashed past like lightning.
Subcontracting.
Lend strength to the mid- and small-sized sects, and receive a share of the profits as offerings?
No one could fault a Daoist order for accepting the offerings of worldly people. And was it not the true duty of a Daoist to aid ordinary folk when hardship struck?
If those folk happened to be orthodox factions still small in power, training in martial arts under the banners of righteousness and chivalry — all the more reason to help them gladly.
The mid- and small-sized sects gained a connection to a great order, a powerful backer, and the means to expand. The great orders took their cut without soiling their reputations. Mutual benefit. A truly excellent strategy.
Yes.
It was an excellent strategy.
So excellent that everyone adopted it.
However far the Hwangbo Clan and the four Daoist orders had gone for the taste of meat, they were still prestigious orthodox powers. At the very least, they did not covet the Tang Clan's territory — and the Tang Clan, for its part, did not covet theirs.
As the former hegemon of Sichuan, the Tang Clan might well have been furious at the free-for-all among the other sects, even if no one was eyeing its own land. But those five had freely come to the Tang Clan's aid in its hour of need. True to a motto that repays kindness twofold, the Tang Clan closed its eyes to their squabbling.
With the Tang Clan's tacit consent, the Hwangbo Clan and the four orders raced to bring Sichuan's mid- and small-sized sects under their wings.
The fiercest battleground was Sichuan City itself — the very heart of the region's development.
A city growing richer by the year, and it was not even Tang territory. For the Tang Clan, Sichuan City was a prize that made the mouth water. But unlike the other great powers, the Tang Clan wore a title granted by the Imperial Court: local gentry. Sichuan City fell under the direct rule of a prefect dispatched by the throne.
From ancient times, what has always been the high official's panic button?
Treason and assassination.
A local gentry family flooding a prefect's domain with private soldiers would already be called a challenge to the central government. For the Tang Clan to send martial artists carrying hidden weapons and poison into Sichuan City to build influence? Unthinkable.
So while the Tang Clan could not reach out, the Hwangbo Clan and the four Daoist orders — free of any tie to the Imperial Court — absorbed the mid- and small-sized sects inside Sichuan City without restraint.
Those absorbed sects swelled with pride.
In those days, the popularity of the Tang Clan, the four Daoist orders, and the Hwangbo Clan in Sichuan was at its absolute peak. The Tang Clan and the Daoist orders — and the Hwangbo Clan with them — had made Sichuan a pure land free of the unorthodox. The crowds could only cheer them on.
And now the Hwangbo Clan and the Daoist orders had become their backers!
The mid- and small-sized sects, burning with ambition to expand, stepped forward in full force.
"So what happened next? You already know, don't you?"
"...I wonder."
Black Cat sipped her tea with prim indifference and played dumb. Since her use of Shadow Image Qi Gong was already known, she had simply taken off her face covering and was drinking without a care. Even bare-faced, she kept the technique running around her features, so the teacup vanishing under the brim of her black hat disappeared into darkness as well.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught the Nangin who were pretending not to watch her, craning their necks this way and that on the off chance they might glimpse the face under that hat.
Keep trying. Really.
I was clicking my tongue at them when I spotted a pair of earwigs twisting their waists and cocking their heads for a better look under the brim.
...Yeo Jinsang and Jeong Sam.
God, I was embarrassed for them.
I was rubbing at my burning ears when Black Cat asked again.
"What do you think happened, Senior Ho?"
"Why ask me? I already know the answer."
"Who told you stories like this, Senior Ho?"
"Hey — I asked the question. And who would just hand you a story like this? It's seven years of scraps picked up here and there, fitted together. Not just anyone can tell it, so listen carefully."
"All right. I'm listening carefully. So would you please continue?"
Damn it.
The sects that had secured their sturdy backers did not charge forward and conquer Sichuan City.
What does a chivalrous hero need in order to be born?
Villains. Without villains, a hero has no stage on which to shine.
Under the Tang Clan's relentless hand, every great evil and every petty one had been torn out by the roots. Sichuan had become a pure land in the truest sense — and there was no longer an enemy left to make a sect's name, or a hero's, famous.
The mid- and small-sized sects were thrown into confusion. But a sword already drawn cannot be sheathed again.
In the end, they pointed their blades at each other.
Not that "pointing their blades" meant a blood-soaked war erupting inside Sichuan City.
Sparring matches.
Fierce martial contests began to break out among the mid- and small-sized sects within Sichuan City.