Forcing Enlightenment -1
“Big brother! The family must have heard about your renunciation! A thousand-li hawk just arrived with the message!”
“Do-gyeong! This is a letter stamped with the family head’s seal! If you don’t cancel your declaration of renunciation, they’ll strip you of the Tang name, seal your internal energy, and lock you in the dungeon for ten years! Come back with us right now!”
Dang Do-yeon. Tang Do-yul.
They were blood relatives of the same generation as Tang Do-gyeong, friends who had attended the academy around the same time. Each was only a year apart from him in age.
“Haha, so you came all this way just to tell me that? Once word of this gets out, the family won’t sit still.”
“Who cares about our situation right now! If you spend ten years in a dungeon without any internal energy, you could die!”
Dang Do-yeon stamped her feet in agitation while Tang Do-yul pounded his chest in frustration.
“Do-gyeong! I understand you have grievances against the family. But how can you drive a stake through the hearts of your own kin like this!”
“I know I’m sorry for what this does to you and Do-yeon, hyung-nim.”
“Big brother… why are you doing this…”
At last tears spilled down Dang Do-yeon’s face. Tang Do-gyeong quietly closed his eyes at the sight. The sound of her soft sobbing filled the room.
“Yeon-ah. Do-yul hyung-nim. My decision isn’t impulsive. What do you think will happen if I go back to the Tang Family?”
“That is…”
“I’ll probably never be allowed outside Tang Family Estate again. At least until the family decides I’ve reformed enough, I’ll be confined within the clan grounds. That means giving up fist arts and learning hidden weapons instead, doesn’t it?”
Do-yul couldn’t bring himself to answer. It was far too obvious that such measures would be imposed on Tang Do-gyeong.
“If that happens, what becomes of the fist arts I’ve been creating? In a Tang Family that lives by hidden weapons and poison, there’s no way to gain experience with ordinary martial arts. The most widely used weapons under heaven are the sword and the saber, yet no one in the Tang Family uses them. Fist arts need no mention, and even palm arts are mostly tied to poison techniques, completely different from ordinary palm methods. Locked inside a place like that, I could never finish my martial arts.”
“What about Father… what about Mother?”
“What about Ryeo-ah! Are you going to drive a stake through that little child’s heart too!”
“…”
Tang Do-gyeong’s eyes trembled. He had never thought renunciation would be easy, but he hadn’t expected it to tear his chest open like this.
“This is the martial art I’ve devoted my young life to. I, Tang Do-gyeong, may be a man of the Tang Family, but as a martial artist, how can I abandon my martial arts? If I must choose between the Tang Family and my martial arts, I choose martial arts.”
At Tang Do-gyeong’s resolve, Do-yul could only clench his fists, and Dang Do-yeon simply kept weeping.
After sending Tang Do-yul and Dang Do-yeon away, Tang Do-gyeong closed his eyes.
From that moment on, he never left his room.
“Son of a bitch…”
Ho Cheon-an collapsed into a chair, giving up on everything. The moment he saw the Tang Family’s female expert leave the inn with tears streaming down her face, he had instinctively known it was over. That instinct became reality: from that day forward, Tang Do-gyeong didn’t even come out of his room.
“Brother Tang! What about our match!”
“Sorry, Brother Ya. I just want to be alone.”
Even the shell-game expert failed to drag Tang Do-gyeong outside.
Hoping the nangin’s training shouts might lure him out, Ho Cheon-an gathered every single wandering warrior and made them roar at the top of their lungs. In pure desperation he even released black smoke inside the inn to fake a fire.
If Yu Sa-yeon hadn’t come running and side-kicked me, it might have worked.
Blood had rushed to his head and, in his impatience, he had acted without any prior agreement with Yu Sa-yeon. Naturally she flew into a towering rage when she came rushing downstairs thinking a real fire had broken out. A massive bruise bloomed on Ho Cheon-an’s side and a long scratch from her nails scored his right cheek.
He had known Tang Do-gyeong wouldn’t come out, yet he still grumbled.
Knock knock.
“Senior~ Can I come in?”
“Yeah, come in…”
“Here’s some golden-wound medicine. Oh, and I looked into the punishment Tang Do-gyeong will face if they catch him.”
“…Tell me.”
“Seal his internal energy and ten years in the dungeon. Pretty mild for renunciation. Once he’s released after ten years he can resume normal activity. Of course… whether he can survive ten years in the Tang Family’s infamous dungeon is entirely up to him.”
“Fuck.”
He knew it was an extremely mild measure for renunciation. They would lock him in the dungeon, but having gone this easy on him meant they wouldn’t actually leave him to die.
Yet spending ten years without internal energy meant Tang Do-gyeong the martial artist would come to a complete stop. It might even be death as a martial artist. Ten years of sealed energy would wreck his meridians and atrophy his qi sense.
And fist-art training would be impossible too. Fist training without reinforcing qi was nothing more than flailing around.
“Ah…”
Ho Cheon-an let out a long sigh. The only thing left he could do was shout enlightenment loud enough for Tang Do-gyeong to hear. The nangin who were worried about him were already camped out in spots with a clear view of the third floor.
With Tang Do-gyeong having bolted his door and refusing to come out, there was no way into that room either.
Tomorrow morning the time Tang Dok-gi had promised would arrive.
“Heukmyo… no, never mind.”
To shout enlightenment he would at least have to reach the door of Tang Do-gyeong’s room. Ho Cheon-an had been about to ask Heukmyo to put up a qi barrier, then realized how unrealistic the plan was. A sound-blocking qi barrier only blocked sound; the flow of qi itself was like blowing a reveille trumpet.
Even first-rate or Peak Realm nangin sleeping soundly in the Wanderer Inn would bolt upright from a qi flow of that magnitude… so even if no one heard the words, it would still be the same as announcing to the entire world that Ho Cheon-an had given Tang Do-gyeong enlightenment.
“What are you going to do now?”
“…”
“Haven’t you done enough? You already tried everything you could to save Tang Do-gyeong, senior.”
At Heukmyo’s words Ho Cheon-an thought she might be right. He had done everything humanly possible. Do your best and leave the rest to heaven—what more could a man do if heaven refused to help?
Fuck, that just emphasizes the things I still haven’t done.
Even his inner thoughts refused to obey him. Ho Cheon-an closed his eyes—
and stood up.
“Are you leaving?”
Heukmyo spoke to Ho Cheon-an as his hand settled on the doorknob.
“Why?”
He glared at Heukmyo, who for some reason looked delighted, and answered curtly.
“Because I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
“Ahahahahahahaha!!”
Heukmyo suddenly burst into peals of laughter, making Ho Cheon-an flinch. She bent double, pounding the table, cackling until she wiped tears from her eyes.
“Senior, you know what? Sometimes you’re just too cute. You’re dying to save Tang Do-gyeong but you keep pretending you’re not!”
“Wh-what are you talking about…”
“Se. Cret.”
Ho Cheon-an saw Heukmyo’s fingers move. He tried to dodge on pure reflex, but dodging a hidden weapon thrown by someone only a single step from Super-Peak Realm was impossible.
A sharp sting pricked his neck.
“You… little…”
“Good night, senior.”
“Ungrateful… cat…”
Heukmyo pouted. She had planned to catch him as he fell, but “ungrateful cat” was going too far. Everything she was doing was for her senior’s sake.
Thud!
Heukmyo caught the collapsing Ho Cheon-an by the nape and draped him over the chair. She smiled brightly as she looked down at his face. No matter how she looked at it, it wasn’t handsome—far from it. Or maybe not quite ugly? Still, it was the kind of common face you could spot a look-alike for every hour if you stood people-watching in the marketplace.
“Hmm-hmm~”
After settling Ho Cheon-an in the chair, Heukmyo wrote a short message on a throwing dagger from her robes and flung it outside. She watched a waiting Wolbokdang member pick it up, then decided to kill time until they brought the items she needed.
Heukmyo pinched Ho Cheon-an’s cheek. She stretched the uninjured side, but the skin pulled so the other cheek hurt too and his body twitched. The sight was so comical she laughed, yet her fingers soon grew delicate.
“Mmm… if I clean up this filthy beard, maybe he’ll look a little better.”
While her mind wandered, the words “ungrateful cat” floated up again and she pinched his lip once for good measure.
“I work so hard for you, senior~ and you don’t even understand how I feel.”
Heukmyo had done a great deal for Ho Cheon-an.
First she had smothered the rumor that Yeo Il-ye had received enlightenment from a nangin. The rumor had already spread, but she mobilized the full power of Wolbokdang to erase and bury it. She had also quashed the Golden Family’s attempts to dig up Ho Cheon-an’s personal information. The intelligence that reached Hwanggeumga about him was nothing but empty husks with every kernel removed.
And why had Yeo Il-ye, who was supposed to appear with five nyang of gold, not shown so much as the tip of her nose until now? That was entirely because Heukmyo had guided her somewhere other than Sichuan Province.
And even now she had decided to expend one extremely precious rare treasure for Ho Cheon-an’s sake.
Ho Cheon-an’s value was already confirmed. Heukmyo could fully predict what he would do. If he gave Tang Do-gyeong enlightenment, the man would change just as Yeo Il-ye had. And then he would accept Tang Dok-gi’s proposal.
Well, people often change after experiencing the event of a lifetime.
She was confident she could change Tang Do-gyeong. And she knew exactly what kind of position Ho Cheon-an would be in if that event leaked outside, which was why he had agonized so long before finally storming out. Heukmyo could now be certain that Ho Cheon-an could see or sense other people’s enlightenment.
“Senior, if I really wanted to, I could just kidnap you, lock you up, and milk every last drop of enlightenment I need.”
He was only a second-rate who couldn’t even endure a single poison needle. If she had no human feelings, she would have abducted him right then, locked him somewhere, fed him drugs, tortured him, or carved a restriction technique into him.
Heukmyo licked her lips. That option had its own appeal—turning this ball of yarn named Ho Cheon-an into her private ball of yarn and keeping it in her garden.
But she didn’t want to.
“If I weren’t such a soft-hearted person, I might have.”
How many filthy deeds those hailed as sages actually committed—Heukmyo knew the underside of that better than anyone in the world.
Dogwi, Tang Do-gyeong… he really was a man who liked people. He had survived this long only because of his talents; otherwise it wouldn’t have been strange for him to die alone in some back alley.
The Gyeongsu Market, the magic show in front of Hwanggeumga, Literature Day, and the magic performance inside it—
and the half-crazed, chaotic accidents Ho Cheon-an caused afterward—all of it had been fun.
Heukmyo had no choice but to admit that affection for Ho Cheon-an had sprouted in her heart. After all, she was about to expend a rare treasure for him; how could she deny that feeling?
A kind, entertaining ball of yarn that stimulated her curiosity.
Yet so fragile a second-rate that the slightest taste of the world’s fire would burn him up in an instant.
I have to protect him. What else can I do?
If he barged into Tang Do-gyeong’s room, the nangin would inevitably suspect that Ho Cheon-an held enlightenment… but Ho Cheon-an would have had some plan of his own. He always solved incidents with the most unexpected answers.
Yet the situation was far too bad. The tangled mess was too heavy for Ho Cheon-an’s wits alone to unravel. Things might work out for the moment, but anything handled in haste inevitably left gaps.
Those gaps would one day widen and split open and swallow Ho Cheon-an whole.
So she decided to intervene—to leave only the barest minimum of gaps and clean everything up perfectly.
The fact that Ho Cheon-an had hesitated this long and only moved at the very last moment was itself proof of how difficult the situation was to finish cleanly. Therefore forcing her way in this once was the right call.
What face will senior make when he wakes up?
Heukmyo smiled as she imagined Ho Cheon-an’s expression. The aftereffects of the needle would erase his memories from just before and after the injection. So she would have to tell him herself that Tang Do-gyeong had gained enlightenment. In Ho Cheon-an’s memory he would have agonized for a long time, lost consciousness, and woken up, so he would wear a stupid look—but somehow even that imagined expression now felt endearing.
Heukmyo stroked Ho Cheon-an’s face.
It took quite a while for the Wolbokdang member to deliver the items.
But the time was not boring at all.
[Come out]
Tang Do-gyeong, drowning in endless worry, twitched his brows at the sound transmission that rang through his mind.
Heukmyo. The female nangin whose name he did not know.
He had meant to ignore her, but the killing intent she directed at him made him open his eyes.
[I’m different from senior. If you don’t come out, I might actually set the inn on fire.]
Tang Do-gyeong let out a deep sigh. That female nangin who used dark-killing arts was, even to his eyes, a suspicious and extraordinary person. He had watched the Sichuan nangin’s movements from a step away more than once or twice while she casually munched on puffed rice snacks.
She has quite a few strange corners; I can’t just ignore her.
In the middle of the night, Tang Do-gyeong—who had nothing to gain from being seen leaving his room—silently descended to the first floor.
Brother Ya…
He saw Ho Cheon-an sitting in a chair with his head bowed and Heukmyo standing beside him.
[Senior says he has something to tell you, so come a little closer.]
[What is all this commotion in the middle of the night? This isn’t Brother Ya’s way. Did you arrange this, young lady?]
[Of course I arranged it. But Young Hero Tang Do-gyeong, the fact that senior was about to step forward for your sake is the truth. I merely set the stage because if this matter spreads outside, senior could end up in serious trouble. Everything that happens tonight is a secret—from others, and from senior as well.]
What on earth was she talking about? Tang Do-gyeong frowned at the sudden words.
In the meantime Heukmyo took out beads, rolled them across the floor, and scattered them into the air. The beads, gleaming with an obviously extraordinary color, exhaled wind.
Ssssssss…
Eight beads exchanged wind with one another until a perfect curtain of wind formed. Except for the faint sound of air leaking, no sound that arose inside this barrier would escape outside.
A rare treasure.
What words could be so important that she would go this far? Tang Do-gyeong frowned as he watched Heukmyo whisper something into Ho Cheon-an’s ear.
“You—what did you do to Brother Ya…?”
Sensing that something was wrong with Ho Cheon-an’s condition, Tang Do-gyeong was about to speak when—
“How can a plant with weak roots ever become a great tree? A person’s roots are family and bloodline; those who neglect them can never thrive or grow great. Some may believe they live their lives alone, yet how can they forget that bonds are their roots?”
At the sudden koan, Tang Do-gyeong’s movement froze.
“Those called great trees are those who practiced righteousness. What is righteousness? Only when the self establishes and acts upon the will to protect the good as a sheep does, does it become righteousness. Those who have no sheep they wish to protect, no bonds they wish to protect—why do they seek to become great trees?”
“Isolated Roots, Weak Plant; Without Righteousness, No Greatness.”
So this is enlightenment.
Heukmyo watched Tang Do-gyeong through half-lidded eyes as every manner of thought seemed to whirl inside his pupils. After withdrawing the needle that circulated the truth-serum component through his body and inserting a detoxifying needle into Ho Cheon-an, she quietly retrieved the Wind Spirit Jades.
If she simply disappeared now, the nangin heading out for morning training would discover Tang Do-gyeong and make a huge fuss about standing guard for him.
Then she could naturally wake Ho Cheon-an and head down to the first floor—a perfect crime.
Heukmyo lifted Ho Cheon-an onto her back and climbed soundlessly to the second floor.