Lost Time with the Old Squad
The moment I came to a stop before the door, the signboard hanging above it caught my eye.
East Snake, West Poison
I glanced at the door Mu Yeong had gone through. Sure enough, the very same words were written there.
"A snake in the east, poison in the west, hm…"
While I was still turning it over, Eun Ae-hyang — who had somehow drifted up behind me — asked, "Do you happen to remember whether the door we're supposed to take was east or west?"
For now, the door we were meant to enter was the one on the left, so by conventional logic, that would be west. But I doubted the answer would be that simple.
Eun Ae-hyang stared blankly at me for a moment, then wheeled around toward the door.
"Let's just go in and see."
"Huh? Ah — right, sure."
Right. This was a parlor game at best. Surely no owner would design a simple amusement around some profound hidden meaning.
Following Eun Ae-hyang, I stepped into the room.
At a glance, it looked like a bedroom. A bed stood against one wall with a storage cabinet right beside it; across from the bed sat a potted orchid, and behind the pot, a hanging scroll was mounted on the wall. An ordinary bedroom, all told.
If anything set it apart, it was the door fitted with a padlock on the far side of the room from us — and the small wooden sign hanging beside that door, which didn't quite suit the room's cozy atmosphere. The sign was smaller than the one at the entrance, and up close, I found its message differed as well.
The Awl in the Pouch
A needle in the pouch, was it. The phrase no doubt carried a classical story behind it — but what on earth was it supposed to mean here?
Hm. Here I could read every character plainly enough, yet the meaning altogether refused to be read. Honestly — it was as if Laozi himself stood right before my eyes, and I, like Confucius, turned on my heel without knowing how to grasp him.
Just then, a chilling whisper of steel rang out behind me — the sound of a sword being drawn. I turned, and sure enough, Eun Ae-hyang was settling into a stance, blade raised to swing.
I said, "…Pardon my impertinence, Lady Fine Needle of the Spring Breeze, but might I be so bold as to ask what exactly you intend to do?"
"We have to open that door to reach the next room, don't we? So obviously, I break the lock."
There it was. The jianghu approach to problem-solving.
I went to her and took hold of her sword-arm, holding her back. "I keep telling you, that is not how this is meant to be solved."
It was because of friends like her that more and more shops had taken to hanging 'No Martial Artists Allowed' signs by their entrances.
Genius though she was, this girl always went hopelessly dense about anything that wasn't martial arts. She'd been the same back at Toemagwangmyeong. When the children of the great sect families picked fights with her, she would simply wear a look of honest incomprehension — and her maddening obliviousness frustrated them so thoroughly that they ended up in tears instead of her.
Apparently my explanation hadn't satisfied her any more than those had, because she knit her brows and gave me a look that demanded answers.
I sighed. "The words on that wooden sign are a hint for opening the lock. Search the room, and either a key will turn up or a clue that leads us to one. That's how you move forward, one room at a time."
Eun Ae-hyang listened, gave a thoughtful "Mm-hm," and nodded along. Then she abruptly stopped nodding and fixed me with a long, careful look.
"…What?"
"You've been to places like this with other people a lot, haven't you? You know your way around awfully well."
I had, in fairness, gathered information and done a bit of hands-on exploring — all for the sake of showing the young disciples, hardly through their first year in the sect, a little of the world. A whole year of devoted service to the Wudang Sect since the campaign against the Demon Cult. Somebody give this man a commendation.
I was about to admit that I'd done my share of it — but at that very moment, the incident with Yeong Yeong flashed through my mind. I had once taken her to a newly opened restaurant in a village near Mount Wudang, and she had asked me the very same question.
When I answered back then with something cut from the same cloth as what I'd just been thinking, Yeong Yeong spent that entire evening tearing through the female disciples' quarters on Mount Wudang like a storm.
"…I've never done it. I'm just repeating, word for word, what the young disciples chatter about."
"Hmmm…"
Hearing my answer, Eun Ae-hyang turned away and headed for the bed, beginning to rummage through it here and there. Though perhaps she only looked pleased because I was feeling so pleased with my own clever answer. Well, naturally — after all, I was soon to be Taiji itself.
So I moved toward her, intending to search for clues together — but she waved me off with her hand.
"We're still in the middle of our contest, aren't we?"
"You ended it when you accepted Gongmyeong's offer."
At that, Eun Ae-hyang turned a look of supreme confidence on me.
"And when, exactly, did I say it was over? That's that, and this is this."
"Oh ho. So now you're trading Zen riddles with me?"
A Zen riddle I could take any day of the week — I'd stake Grandmaster Zhang Sanfeng's name on it. But what came out of her mouth next, I had not expected.
"How about this: whoever opens more locks by the time we leave this building wins."
"So you're saying we hunt for keys separately, from here on?"
"That's right."
What I wanted to ask was, "And what happens if your clue turns out to be the clue to finding my clue, or the other way around?" But I didn't have the heart to shatter that proud little smile of hers — the smile of someone convinced she had just struck upon a stroke of genius. Mm. Yes, yes. Let her do as she pleases.
Ten thousand rivers may each flow their own way, yet every last one of them finds the same sea. It was a shame to lose the camaraderie of being teammates, all the same — but somehow I had a feeling the time ahead wouldn't be bad at all.
Now, then. I started with the hanging scroll.
Five immortals riding rams — judging by the imagery, it depicted the legend of the Five Ram Immortals, a tale out of the Guangdong region. I was still puzzling over what it could mean when a distinct click sounded from beyond the wall.
Don't tell me—
Before long, Mu Yeong's voice rang out.
"Young'uns! We'll be moving on to the next stage ahead of you. Do struggle on without us!"
"Ha — dashing ahead like the hare before the tortoise, are we? I won't give up until the very moment you lie down for that nap of yours, senior."
"Bwahahaha! See that you do!"
Soon his laughter faded, along with the sound of a door swinging shut. Perhaps the fact that Mu Yeong had pulled ahead made her impatient, because Eun Ae-hyang finished searching the bed and went straight for the cabinet.
Goodness, what a fierce competitive streak. Not that mine was any milder — I'd once fought her a hundred and one times just to settle a single match.
Hm? But something about this scroll was off.
Something in it differed subtly from the usual paintings of the immortals descending. In a composition like this, split down the middle, the side bestowing and the side receiving ordinarily face one another. But here, a single ram among the immortals' mounts was staring straight ahead — alone.
I followed the ram's gaze. There, I found a patch of well-tended soil planted with an orchid. So it's in there.
Sure enough, when I dug through the soil, I turned up a key. So that's the awl in the pouch, hm. Though for a needle supposedly sharp enough to pierce through anything, this one was buried so flat I'd never have guessed it had poked out at all.
Meanwhile, Eun Ae-hyang — evidently unaware that I'd found a key — had gone back to rummaging around the bed.
I moved to head for the lock. All right, first point to me, just like— Hm. But something about it sat uneasily with me. It struck me that proceeding this way wasn't exactly fair — because I was a seasoned veteran of Daldallasa, you see. That experience let me roughly predict how the clues would be laid out, and I'd found mine on the strength of it. But Eun Ae-hyang didn't know any of that. I'd kept it from her. So it wasn't fair.
We had contested fairly through all one hundred and one bouts; I could hardly tip the scales in my favor now, at the very end. …Right. My mind made up, I moved to the cabinet Eun Ae-hyang had her back turned to.
Well, well. There was a gap beneath it — just enough room for a foot to slip in. I balanced the key on the top of my foot, slid my foot under the cabinet, and gave its underside a light nudge with my toe. At the jolt, the key must have dropped to the floor, for a bright clink rang out across the room.
The instant she heard it, Eun Ae-hyang whirled around and thrust her hand straight beneath the cabinet. Before long her face brightened — she'd gotten the key.
Time for a touch of theater. "Eun Ae-hyang, I found it, so that's one point for me, yes?"
Brushing the dust off her clothes from fishing out the key, she said, "Oh dear. The contest is decided by whoever opens more locks — not by whoever finds the key."
Huh? Well, that actually made sense. But if that was the rule, didn't it mean we might end up dueling over seizing or defending the keys we worked so hard to find?
While I was turning all this over, Eun Ae-hyang stepped up to the lock. Click. The padlock came undone, and the door swung open. Twisting her upper body back toward me, she held up the unlocked padlock for me to see — then raised the index finger of the hand gripping it, informing me that she had claimed her first point.
And with that, we passed on into the next room.
The building truly lived up to the name Daldallasa. From outside it hadn't looked all that large, yet we passed from room to room, and past every room there was still another. As we went deeper, Eun Ae-hyang seemed to find her footing; even without me quietly slipping her keys, she began turning them up on her own. So we opened a door, and a door, and another door after that — until the number of doors each of us had opened came out perfectly even.
We unlocked one more door and stepped through into the next room, and Mu Yeong's voice drifted over from somewhere beside us.
"Oho, young'uns, so you've finally arrived? I waited so long I thought winter had come to my lush green forest."
"That forest must be a windy place indeed, then. Why, your breathing sounds quite ragged, senior — all that rushing so as not to be caught up!"
My retort must have pleased him, for his booming laughter rang out.
"Reckon this room's the last one. Did you check the words written above the door?"
At that, Eun Ae-hyang read the characters on the wooden sign above the door, one by one.
"East… snake… west… poison."
"The same name as the sign at the very first entrance."
"That's right. This is probably the la—"
Suddenly his words were cut short, and a thunderous clattering began from the room beside ours.
Eun Ae-hyang came over to me. "What do you suppose that is?"
"Hard to say. Mu Yeong has never once been predictable."
Surely he wasn't up to something unspeakable in there — like those lipstick marks pressed onto him earlier. But I would soon learn just how wrong that thought was.
THUD. Something slammed against the wall on the side Mu Yeong's voice had come from.
THUD! Louder this time.
The blows kept coming, each harder than the last, until at some point a crack appeared in the wall — and with every impact, it spread a little further.
A moment later—
CRASH. With a deafening roar and a cloud of dust, the wall came down.
Reflexively, I threw my arm out in front of Eun Ae-hyang to keep the debris from reaching her. The dust soon settled, and through it we could see the room on Mu Yeong's side — and the moment I laid eyes on what was inside, I froze where I stood.
Mu Yeong lay sprawled on the floor, bleeding.