Sleight of Hand Enlightenment -1
Thanks to Tang Do-gyeong winning over every wandering warrior except me, a peculiar culture had taken root at the Wanderer Inn. The other nangin would roughly gather around to share meals timed precisely to Tang Do-gyeong's dining schedule.
It would be more accurate to say that the nangin who simply wanted to eat with Tang Do-gyeong flocked to his meal times.
Once Tang Do-gyeong realized this, he began setting his meal times with exact precision.
"Haha, ever since Hero Tang arrived at the Wanderer Inn... it's more or less turned into a big family sitting down to dinner," Yeo Jinsang remarked, floating the observation lightly.
Tang Do-gyeong simply laughed in embarrassment. He seemed mortified that his presence alone had changed the atmosphere of the inn.
"Haha, looking at this pack of rough men crammed together like this really takes me back to my childhood," Jeong Sam said.
"Oh? So Big Brother Jeong came from a big family, then. I grew up quiet—just me and my parents in a fisherman's household."
"After a landslide wiped out their homes, a whole bunch of relatives moved in with us. Our place was already tight for just our own family, so once the two households merged it got downright miserable. Mealtimes especially were a circus."
"Oh?"
"Not enough table space, not enough room, so we had to eat in shifts. If you got stuck in the second shift, there was never any side dish left. Those relatives had lost everything in the landslide, and our family wasn't exactly rolling in money either, so a full table was pure fantasy."
"Knowing your temper, Big Brother Jeong, you didn't just sit there and take it, did you?"
"You nailed it. Back then I told them to show some manners if they were going to freeload off someone else's food. The furious relatives piled on me and we went at it. Three against one—I couldn't avoid getting beaten, but I put up a hell of a fight. The adults were so furious at the kids brawling that they stripped us all bare and kicked us out of the house."
"Hahahaha! Kicking kids outside seems to be the universal punishment no matter the household. Whenever I caused trouble I got chased out onto the sand and left staring at the sea forever."
"Or you got your calves whipped until they split open!"
"Heh heh."
The nangin launched into a free-for-all of childhood stories, and the mood turned warm and lively. Even Tang Do-gyeong, swept up in the cheerful atmosphere, wore a smile.
Jeong Sam carefully broached the subject.
"Hero Tang must have a childhood story or two of his own, no?"
"Well, of course. Does everyone know about the Tang Family bloodline?"
The nangin nodded silently.
"At the Tang Family Estate there are academies where children are gathered by age for education. Whether it's lessons or play, everything revolves around those academies. Well... as for a proper childhood story..."
Tang Do-gyeong fell into brief thought, then let out a short laugh.
"People with the Tang surname usually have clever hands. Even among the martial branch, plenty shine in craftsmanship, and the ones who throw hidden weapons—well, their dexterity goes without saying. So some strange things happened."
"Every Tang Family member carries a Tang Token. Just having the Tang surname doesn't mean you belong to the Sichuan Tang Family, so the tokens exist to tell the difference. At the academy, stealing those Tang Tokens became a fad. It was a way of bragging about how slick your hands were... and of course I got my token stolen too. The little bastard who took mine stuck his tongue out at me while holding it—I wanted to throttle him."
"Hahahaha. So Hero Tang didn't just sit still either, I take it."
"Embarrassing as it is, you're right. I decided to get revenge, but simply doing the same thing back to him wasn't nearly satisfying enough. Then something caught my eye. It was a practice tool called a Rubber-Edged Throwing Blade—a hidden weapon with a rubber edge for training."
As expected of the Sichuan Tang Family.
They even encouraged little kids to throw hidden weapons. Early education at its finest.
"If I could fling a Rubber-Edged Throwing Blade and snatch the Tang Token right out of his robes, that would be a truly magnificent revenge, wouldn't it? So I practiced day and night."
Super-Peak Realm experts really were different from birth. Who else would even think of plucking a token out of someone's clothes with a hidden weapon? If I'd been Tang Do-gyeong, I would have just punched the kid right there.
"After bloody practice, I finally managed to pull the Tang Token from that bastard's robes. At the time I felt like I owned the whole world—but I'd torn his clothes and thrown a hidden weapon at a person, rubber edge or not. Father called me in and beat my calves until they were on fire."
"Hahahaha! So even Hero Tang couldn't escape the calf-whipping!"
"Wahahaha! To think Big Brother Tang was already that good with hidden weapons as a kid—makes me wonder what his level is now!"
A bitter smile settled on Tang Do-gyeong's face.
"I'm worse now than I was as a child. I never touched a hidden weapon again after that."
The atmosphere turned ice-cold, as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over the table. I pressed a hand to my forehead watching it. The nangin had no way of knowing Tang Do-gyeong's personal history, so of course they'd assumed that as a Tang Family man he would naturally have trained in hidden weapon techniques.
"Tsk."
I clicked my tongue watching the nangin and Tang Do-gyeong shovel rice into their mouths in that painfully awkward silence. It wasn't really the nangin's fault—they simply didn't know the core of the story.
Anyway, the trees were being planted. The countless little actions of the nangin would become a forest that hid those trees, so it was time for me to step forward as well.
At the mealtime when the nangin gathered, I appeared before them holding a bundle of paper and declared with full confidence:
"Gentlemen, Literature Day has returned!"
The nangin stared at me with looks that clearly said, What the hell is this guy talking about?
"Ahem! You people have been so distracted by Hero Tang that you've lost track of the calendar! Have you forgotten Literature Day? The day we post phrases all over the inn to share our learning, so that no one neglects the literary arts!"
"Ah, so today is that day!" Heukmyo chimed in with shameless smoothness.
"The day we write classical allusions, well-wishes, or original phrases of our own, stick them up, and share them! Literature is food for the soul—the day we soothe hearts worn thin by a nangin's life! Every single Sichuan nangin without exception will participate, how truly family-like!"
Only then did the nangin realize that what I was doing was part of the family-affection stimulation operation. They couldn't curse me outright in front of Tang Do-gyeong, but their gazes turned distinctly sharp.
"That bastard's starting something again..."
"Could he at least go crazy in a nicer way..."
"There! The short-on-learning crowd is already putting up a fierce resistance! Why was Literature Day established in the first place? To hone our scholarship and fatten the flesh of our minds! What you should truly be ashamed of isn't a lack of learning, but the sight of yourselves neglecting it!"
"Oh? This Tang fellow would also like to write a character or two—am I allowed to join?"
"Of course! For Big Brother Tang, anytime!"
Once Tang Do-gyeong stepped forward and took a sheet of paper, the nangin had no choice but to rise with long faces. Sudden composition homework had left their expressions full of despair and resentment toward me, but what did I care? The popular Ho Cheon-an had already died at Tang Do-gyeong's hands anyway.
Tang Do-gyeong was exactly the type to throw himself wholeheartedly into a positive event like this, so no matter how much the nangin resisted, the outcome was already decided.
You chose Tang Do-gyeong yourselves—endure it with pure spite and grit.
And so the sudden ambush quiz, the famous literacy exam, began. The nangin gripping brushes let out a chorus of groans. In contrast, Tang Do-gyeong quietly organized his thoughts, wrote a sentence without hesitation, and approached me.
"I just submit the paper, correct?"
"Hmm. Normally the custom is to mix them all up so no one knows who wrote what before posting... but everyone will be curious about Big Brother Tang's phrase, so if you don't mind, we can reveal it?"
"Haha, of course."
I handed the paper to Heukmyo. She smeared adhesive on the back and, using palm techniques, stuck Tang Do-gyeong's phrase onto the wall of the Wanderer Inn.
Do not worry that others do not know you; worry that you do not know others.
Where had I heard that before?
"It's a passage from the Analects, isn't it?" Heukmyo resolved my doubt.
"That's right. 'Do not worry that others do not know you; worry that you do not know others.' I know the original intent is to emphasize humility... but..."
"The impression I felt here—after rushing over in fear that my reputation would collapse because a mere nangin had taken the Blood Jade Token from me—when I saw all of you quietly polishing your martial path in conditions harsher than my own... the shame toward myself, and the joy of coming to know all of you... there simply wasn't a better phrase to express those things."
"Hero..."
Stimulated by Tang Do-gyeong's phrase, the nangin began glaring at their papers and scratching out a character or two. Of course they needed to know letters to read martial manuals, but writing poetry or elegant phrases was never hard just because someone was illiterate.
Nangin rolling their eyes hoping to steal a glance at someone else's phrase; nangin hunched over their papers to guard their own writing from those same eyes; nangin taking fresh sheets because they'd written a character wrong; one guy complaining his brush wouldn't take ink—and those who finished flipping their papers face-down. No matter where you go, people living together are the same.
"All right, everyone submit!"
The nangin hurriedly handed over the papers they'd flipped so no one could peek. Heukmyo and I also wrote our own phrases and mixed them into the pile.
With a pounding heart I passed the bundle to Heukmyo, who deftly applied adhesive and scattered them everywhere. The various phrases stuck all over the inn carried a unique charm, and even the nangin let out admiring sounds as they looked around.
"Now then, let's take some time to appreciate them."
The reason my heart was pounding wasn't because I wanted to show the nangin my brilliant prose. It was because I had written an enlightenment among those papers.
There were still seven days until Tang Do-gyeong's isolation was lifted, but that was no guarantee. Tang Dok-gi seemed willing to wait a week, yet seven days was more than enough time for rumors to reach the Tang Family Estate.
Even if Tang Dok-gi didn't report it, rumors could still arrive. And once the main family people at the Tang Family Estate heard those rumors, there was no telling how they would react.
Digesting an enlightenment also took time, so the sooner I passed it on, the better it would be for Tang Do-gyeong.
With his upright nature, Tang Do-gyeong would read every single phrase, so delivery itself would be perfect.
"Hmm."
Judging by the direction of Tang Do-gyeong's gaze, he would probably reach my phrase near the end, so I followed the writing on the ceiling as well.
Honey on the lips and a sword in the belly, rising again from the dust, rewarding good and punishing evil... mostly classical four-character idioms and allusions anyone would know—which roughly told you the educational level of the nangin.
Among them, a set of round, chubby characters caught my eye.
Love Beasts, Love Cats; Make Puffed Rice Delicious
There was only one person in this Wanderer Inn who advocated cat-loving and adored puffed rice, but for the sake of anonymity I will not name them. I really needed to find where that bastard had hidden the puffed-rice scoop and smash it.
Another paper snagged my attention.
Ho Cheon-an, Age Ten
A sudden gut punch of a phrase pulled a snort of laughter out of me. Whoever it was must have hated being forced to write so much that they wanted to mock me as acting like a ten-year-old. There was no such curse in the Central Plains, but whoever it was had succeeded. Once this business was over I would definitely root them out and get my revenge.
"That one... who wrote that..."
"Haa... even so..."
At the murmuring of the nangin I turned my gaze that way as well.
One Two Three Four
Who the hell wrote that, seriously. Free composition or not, even if it was just camouflage paper, that was far too rebellious a statement.
"That one over there is no joke either..."
"Haa..."
Heaven and Earth, Dark and Yellow
Had their learning been so short they only knew four characters? I burned with curiosity about who had written the first four characters of the Thousand Character Classic, but the important one was Tang Do-gyeong.
Tang Do-gyeong read every phrase stuck around the inn one by one, as if savoring them.
"Excess is as bad as deficiency... a fine saying... Clear mirror, still water... the mindset a martial artist must hold... One Two Three Four... hmm... it seems this Tang fellow's studies are still lacking."
Please do not take that seriously—I'm dying of secondhand embarrassment over here.
I was twisting my body under the flood of shame when Tang Do-gyeong raised his head.
"All good phrases."
...Huh?
"Big Brother Tang, you've read them all?"
"I have. Everyone wrote fine phrases. There were a few difficult ones, but... this Tang fellow will simply have to ponder them on his own."
No—don't ponder One Two Three Four or Heaven-and-Earth-Dark-and-Yellow. Look at the one you're supposed to look at. Why aren't you looking at your own enlightenment?
"I can't help feeling something might have been missed. How about looking through them once more?"
"Hmm. That could be."
I watched every single one of Tang Do-gyeong's movements that I had previously missed because of the phrases that had hijacked my eyes and mind. His gaze stopped on my phrase. Then he simply nodded and moved on to the next.
Why?
My writing was large and clean. I had taken special care so that if any typo caught Tang Do-gyeong's eye the meaning wouldn't be distorted.
And yet Tang Do-gyeong merely looked at my writing and nodded calmly.
"Haha, thanks to you, Big Brother, looking at them again I find something new."
With Yeo Il-ye I had first explained the meaning myself and then thrown out the koan. In truth that had just been doing the same action twice. Explaining the meaning and delivering the koan ultimately meant the same thing.
The quiz format had simply been longer and more fun because I said both the solution and the koan.
In the actual game, typing either one in chat was fine.
To deliver it as a koan you had to write the characters, so the two methods were simply split. In the end, explanation and koan were the same.
Why isn't he gaining the enlightenment? What's the problem?
Without realizing it I looked toward Tang Do-gyeong.
Completely unaware of my inner turmoil, he was simply laughing and chatting with the nangin.