My Cute Junior Martial Sister, Yeong Yeong
Leaving the dawn behind at the Changjiang, I returned to Mount Wudang, where Chisehyeonak Gate, the entrance to the Wudang Sect, greeted me as always.
I was about to pass through without a second thought when I caught sight of someone standing before it, eyes fixed on the tips of their toes.
A slightly petite frame, with round, sparkling eyes—it was my junior martial sister, Yeong Yeong.
Cupping one hand beside my mouth, I called out.
"Yeong Yeong! What are you doing over there?"
"Huh? Senior Brother!"
At the sound of my voice, Yeong Yeong lifted her head, spotted me, and came bounding over in delighted little hops.
"Where did you run off to so early in the morning?"
"Hmm? Just practicing my qinggong."
Yeong Yeong nodded along to my answer, then said,
"So you're telling me that even though it was your turn to offer incense to the Zhenwu Emperor at dawn today, you skipped it and practiced qinggong instead?"
Oh, right. Incense duty for the Zhenwu Emperor. That was me today.
Had my thought shown on my face? Cheeks puffed out to their fullest, Yeong Yeong said,
"It's a good thing Father is so even-tempered—you could've been beaten black and blue!"
"Sorry, sorry. I'll make it up to you next time, promise."
I said this as I ruffled her hair, and the air hissed out of her puffed cheeks, her face melting into a sheepish grin. What a simple, adorable little sister.
Yeong Yeong had been two years old when I first entered Mount Wudang at the age of five. As the daughter of my master, Gakyeop Dojang, she was a little sister to me in all but blood, and I treasured her accordingly.
She had trailed at my heels from the time she could walk. When I returned from Toemagwangmyeong there was a brief spell of awkwardness between us, but we grew close again soon enough.
To think that the girl who used to follow me everywhere had grown into a young woman before I knew it. It honestly moved me.
And yet, even at her age, she remained in the dark about the ways of the world—for Gakyeop Dojang treasured her like the apple of his eye and kept her from so much as leaving the mountain.
Her mother—the woman who would have been my martial aunt—had passed away during my years at Toemagwangmyeong, and that seemed to make him cherish her all the more.
My master never spoke of her.
And I never asked, since he clearly had no wish to.
I had left for Toemagwangmyeong at such a tender age, and by the time I returned to Mount Wudang, I was old enough to know better than to pry.
At any rate, with even a simple outing beyond her reach, the Wandering was all the more distant a prospect for Yeong Yeong.
The Wandering was the journey one undertook to become a Dojang: leaving Mount Wudang behind to drift the jianghu for years on end, learning the world firsthand. For some it lasted three years; for others, ten.
And this was a master who drew his sword and threw the entire compound into an uproar if he didn't set eyes on me for a single day. If I vanished for years?
The jianghu would likely run red with blood.
For the record, my own Wandering had lasted exactly one month. I passed through this very Chisehyeonak Gate, returned precisely one month later to the day, and was formally recognized as a Dojang.
The elders had been visibly flustered by a return so much earlier than expected. Before long, though, they came around. Naturally they did—the distinguished guest I'd brought back with me had been the Emperor himself.
I had judged that to understand the world, one had to meet the man who was the world incarnate. So I arranged a month of private audiences with the Emperor, talked him around, and brought him back to Mount Wudang with me.
The particulars hardly matter. The point is that I brought the Emperor back, explained myself to the Sect Leader, and completed my Wandering in a single month.
But you, Yeong Yeong—how long would it take you? What if the world's rot took hold of you? What if you stained yourself alongside this world already steeped in grime, as ink blackens the brush that lingers in it?
With the world as it was, I could understand my master's heart.
They said she possessed the finest learning and martial arts of any disciple yet to become a Dojang, but in my eyes she was still nothing more than a delicate young girl.
I heaved a sigh.
"Aigoo, I worry. I really do."
"Huh? Senior Brother, what could you possibly be worried about?"
"Hm? You."
At my answer, Yeong Yeong suddenly bit down on her lip, cheeks flushing scarlet. Huh? What was that about?
And so it was, with these people around me, that I carried on the legacy of Wudang.
"Come on, let's go. We've got the day shift to prepare for."
At the word day shift, the light died in Yeong Yeong's eyes. Couldn't be helped, really.
In the year or so since our victory in the Great Demon War, the ambitious had multiplied across the murim. Sects boasting warriors trained at Toemagwangmyeong were especially popular, their renown shooting toward the heavens in every region.
Some welcomed this state of affairs; others sneered that the honor of the jianghu was being trampled into the mud.
Me? Strictly speaking, I leaned toward the latter—though that had less to do with my personal temperament than with the will of the Wudang Sect itself.
Naturally, there were those within Wudang who wished to throw our gates wide open to the world.
But there was a certain passage of record:
"Emperor Taizu of Ming, having long heard tales of Zhang Sanfeng, summoned him in the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu—yet the envoys could not find him."
The passage captured, word for word, the character of our founding patriarch Zhang Sanfeng: a man who coveted no merit, clung to neither private gain nor selfish desire, and had no wish to be known by the world.
And so I had inherited that will.
Yeong Yeong let out a sigh of her own.
"People who want to join the sect, we can judge when they show up and be done with it. But there are so many who try to enter the mountain without even knowing about the Sword-Relinquishing Pool, and that's what troubles me."
She had a point. The Sword-Relinquishing Pool was the rule that anyone crossing Wudang's mountain gate had to lay down whatever weapons they carried.
The moment someone passed that gate with a blade still on them, we had no choice but to treat it as a challenge to the Wudang Sect itself.
But the jianghu was vast. It was the sort of place where a man who couldn't read a single character might turn out to be a master. So when someone truly didn't know, we would inform them first.
Which left the low-ranking Three-Generation Disciples, tasked with minding those weapons so that not a single one went missing, in a thoroughly awkward position.
I did my best to cheer her on.
"Don't be like that. Let's start our shift today hoping no one like that decides to join, hm?"
Yeong Yeong nodded, listless. I was just stepping forward to pass through the gate when—
"Senior Brother!"
"Hm?"
"What's that?"
She came closer and plucked a single long black thread from my robe.
Uh-oh. That was—
Eyes gone round, Yeong Yeong held the thread up and examined it with grave intensity. I hadn't committed any crime, exactly, but the sight made my nerves prickle all the same.
After a long while of study, she abruptly pressed the thread to her nose and began to sniff. Wait—why were her eyes dead?
A nameless chill crawled up my spine at the sight, and I snatched the thread away and flung it skyward, scattering it where it could never be gathered again.
"Ah……"
"Honestly. What is with you, picking things up and sniffing them out of nowhere."
I turned back toward the gate.
"Come on, let's go. It'll be busy toda—"
"Senior Brother."
The voice that called my name had sunk a full register lower, heavy as a drawn blade. My feet stopped dead.
I meant to turn and look at her like before, but for some reason I found myself afraid to look back. I was a certified master—so why was I scared?
"U-uh?"
"Isn't that a woman's hair?"
"I-is it? I wouldn't know."
I knew exactly whose hair it was, but I feigned ignorance, doing my best to dodge. Yeong Yeong, however, had already closed the distance, standing beside me and staring me full in the face.
"Senior Brother. Were you indulging in a woman's company this early in the morning?"
……
Ice cold.
A dagger came flying and buried itself in my chest.
Yeong Yeong leaned in even closer.
"Senior Brother. Whether you spend the early dawn savoring life's pleasures, training your qinggong, or dancing—it's all fine by me."
"I-is that so?"
"But women are where I draw the line."
Her voice was utterly frigid. I scrambled to respond.
"O-of course. Naturally. Actually, I went down toward the village earlier for some soy milk, and a farmer's wife ran into a wild boar—while saving her, a strand of her hair must have caught on me."
Hearing my answer, Yeong Yeong beamed and drew her face back.
"I knew it! Our Senior Brother is so admirable. Come on, hurry!"
Seizing me by the wrist, she started up the mountain.
……I really was a master, wasn't I. Save for Eun Ae-hyang, I'd stake my pride that no one in the jianghu could cross blades with me.
And yet, sometimes, Yeong Yeong frightened me.
The hour of dawn, when everyone wished they could stay asleep.
By my travel technique, I had shot in a single breath to the heart of a vast plain lying in the southeastern reaches of the Taihang Mountains.
At the appointed place, Eun Ae-hyang—who had arrived first—sat waiting on a boulder.
I cleared my throat a few times and cupped a hand to my mouth.
"Eun Ae-hyang."
Whether she'd heard me or not, she turned her gaze in my direction.
"You're here. You're a little late toda—"
She cut herself off, a baffled look crossing her face as she studied me.
"What?" I asked.
"You look absolutely exhausted."
What was wrong with my face? When my puzzlement showed plainly, Eun Ae-hyang sighed, drew a mirror from her things, and held it up to me.
One glance at my reflection said it all. Oh. So it showed that badly.
Satisfied that I'd seen enough, she lowered the mirror.
"I suppose dawn truly is too early for you?"
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean? You think that because I've had a watchdog shadowing me deep into the night, I'm too wound up to sleep properly and I'll lose to you?"
It was the truth, too. Ever since the day Eun Ae-hyang's hair had turned up on my robe, Yeong Yeong had kept watch over my every move.
Even when I slipped out at dawn under the pretext of qinggong practice, she'd tried to tail me to the bitter end. Shaking her off was no great feat, but being watched always wears a man down.
At my words, Eun Ae-hyang closed her eyes, pressed a hand to her forehead, and sighed.
"She didn't describe it in quite so much detail, but the conclusion was about the same."
"Hah, do you not remember our thirty-eighth duel? I had a cold, and I still nearly beat you."
At that, Eun Ae-hyang opened her eyes and fixed me with a frosty stare.
"……If you were counting on that cheap provocation to work on me, then congratulations—you were right."
Any further exchange would be pointless.
I backpedaled to open the distance between us, then drew my sword from its sheath. Eun Ae-hyang drew hers just as slowly.
Behind us, a waning crescent had finally climbed over the eastern horizon, washing the world in pallid light.
Yet in my eyes, the thin light only made Eun Ae-hyang lovelier—she seemed to breathe out a cold, snowfield-like allure all her own.
All right. This time, I would win.
Holding our distance, we began to sidestep in a slow circle around each other.
I would show her, inch by measured inch, why Wudang was called the Mount Tai and North Star of the orthodox sects. Let her be swept off her feet—or lop my head off, whichever she preferred.
And then—
"……Huh……"
A voice came drifting in from the far edge of the dawn-lit world. Wait—that voice was familiar.
And I wasn't the only one rattled. Eun Ae-hyang had her eyes shut, her face pinched in a grimace.
The voice only grew louder.
"SENIOR MARTIAL SISTEEEEER!"
Huh? Senior martial sister?
Then that meant……
Moments later, a man burst from the darkness.
"SENIOR MARTIAL SISTEEEEER! I have arri—"
Having apparently spotted us, the man tried to brake his qinggong mid-flight and failed spectacularly; he shot clean past Eun Ae-hyang and went tumbling head over heels across the grass.
He rolled for a good long while before finally grinding to a halt at my feet. I glanced down.
Of course it was this guy.
Eun Ae-hyang's junior martial brother, and the official gate disciple of the Kongtong Sect.
Jeok Seong.
My head began to ache.