Physical Rebirth (2)
Feeling how much lighter my body had become, I set about cleaning up the aftermath. I washed myself and put the soiled room back in order.
We were planning to stay here for several months yet.
My body was mended, but having gone to the trouble of forming a dantian, I needed to learn martial arts while I was at it.
Before that, though — an announcement first.
"I... got my memories back."
"Wh-what? Y-you remember everything?"
Zhuge Yang panicked. The naked incident had long since blown over, so by now I understood perfectly well why she was reacting like this. She was flustered because she feared I had recovered the memory of my parents setting the fire.
Of course, my memories of the fire itself had come back too. I would have to come clean about that part as well. But there was something far more important.
It was a shocking memory — yet because it belonged, originally, to this body rather than to me, I was able to share it calmly.
"My father was the head of the Hunan Ma Family."
Not only Zhuge Yang — even Yeon Hwa looked stunned.
"A-are you saying... that you are the blood of the great hero Ma Ho — the Whirlwind Fist Hero?"
The Whirlwind Fist Hero, Ma Ho. Head of the Hunan Ma Family, and this body's father. He had mastered the family's inherited art, the Whirlwind Fist, and together with his extraordinary constitution had once stood among the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven.
So overflowing with righteousness that his very epithet carried the word "hero," he was branded a public enemy of murim by the Murim Alliance — an Alliance that had swallowed the Demonic Cult's schemes whole — and perished along with his entire family.
"That is correct. I am Ma Won, the youngest son."
Yeon Hwa's face froze with shock. And Zhuge Yang broke into loud wails, pulling my head into her arms.
"Huaaaang! What do I do... my poor little Won... Go on, you can cry! Sob, hic!"
Because I had never been emotionally attached to this body's original life, I genuinely felt nothing. I had simply laid out the facts calmly — but she seemed to have taken it as me forcing myself to act okay.
Still, it had been a while since I'd had the chance to bury my face in Zhuge Yang's warm (physically speaking) embrace, so I tried squeezing out tears for the occasion. All I managed was a single, measly drop.
"S-sniff."
I nuzzled against her, doing my best impression of grief.
Soft. Wonderfully plush.
Ah, Yang... the buds were already showing when you were little, but you've grown into such a splendid, true adult...
I felt a little guilty for always thinking of Yeon Hwa as the fake adult, but I savored the brief happiness all the same.
A while later, I reluctantly pulled myself out of Zhuge Yang's arms. Any longer and my brain would have short-circuited.
I laid out the detailed circumstances. I had been only five at the time, but the conversations I'd shared with my father Ma Ho remained vivid to this day.
"The men of our family have been born with the Heavenly Martial Body for generations."
"What? So that's why you had the Heavenly Martial Body too?"
"That's right. No one had learned martial arts before him, so nobody knew — but Father happened to obtain a superior-grade art called the Whirlwind Fist, reached the Transformative Realm, and founded the Hunan Ma Family."
A master of the Transformative Realm — a peerless expert who had transcended humanity itself. With such a powerhouse, one who ranked among the ten strongest of the orthodox murim, our family, however modest its beginnings, swelled in power at a frightening pace.
The most renowned merchant guilds under heaven beat a path to our door to make the new powerhouse's acquaintance, and the many great and small sects of Hunan bowed their heads of their own accord. They had acknowledged him as the hegemon of the region.
Of course, every one of those ties was severed later, when the family was framed as murim's public enemy.
"Th-then... the Demonic Cult was behind the framing of the Hunan Ma Family too?"
"You know how the men of the Wiji Family — the line that has produced a Heavenly Demon in every generation — are born with the Extreme Demonic Body? It was probably meant to keep us in check. The men of our family are born with the Heavenly Martial Body, generation after generation."
"I never dreamed there was all that behind it... I was only five back then, after all."
Naturally. If I had been five and the house next door had burned down, would I have gone digging into that family's private affairs? I'd have seen nothing but the fire itself.
"And when our family was annihilated, my mother hid me under the floor."
"Sob..."
I hadn't even gotten to the heart of it, and Zhuge Yang was already bracing for her second wail.
"While I was hiding, a certain old man discovered where I was. Thinking back on it now, he must have been a master beyond measure. No one could stand against that old man. Not even my father."
"Wh-what did he look like?"
The memory of that day rose vividly in my mind: the emblem embroidered on the sleeve of his white Taoist robe as he wheeled his sword, and the tassel hanging from his blade.
"The Wudang Sect. He was a Taoist of Wudang."
He was an old man who carried, to the letter, every hallmark of the Wudang Taoists I had encountered on my trip to Mount Wudang for the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng.
"The S-Sword Immortal...?"
Nothing else came to mind. A master who had reached the Transformative Realm had been overwhelmed, helpless, without even mounting a proper resistance.
In any case, that wasn't the important part.
"That's right. Something about me must have given the Sword Immortal pause, because he spared my life."
"Ah... don't tell me that's when your qi core was...?"
I nodded, and let this body's past unfold before me.
When the old man hauled Ma Won out from under the eaves, the boy was bawling — so loudly that even a third-rate warrior passing by, never mind a master of the Profound Realm, would have heard him.
"...Even if he is Ma Ho's child, isn't he far too young?"
"Alliance Leader. He bears the Heavenly Martial Body. You must not let mercy stay your hand. Allow me to handle this."
Ma Won couldn't turn his head, but there had been one more person behind him. The old man called Alliance Leader and the unidentified voice continued their exchange.
"Enough. I shall end this by simply ensuring the child can never cultivate martial arts again."
"Alliance Leader!"
Paying the voice no heed, the old man brought his hand to rest on Ma Won's belly — and this body felt a sharp sting.
"Now this child will never so much as form a dantian. I declare that no one but I could ever cure it. Let this be the end of the matter."
"...Then permit me one measure of my own. If he grows up carrying the memory of today intact, he will bring harm to the Alliance in one way or another."
"Must you truly?"
"On this, I cannot yield."
He felt a hand settle on Ma Won's head from behind, and then his skull seemed to catch fire.
When he opened his eyes again, he was living in Longzhong with a servant couple of the household — people who owed his father a great debt of gratitude.
Ma was a common surname, and by coincidence the husband of the couple bore it as well. And so this body went on being called Ma Won.
Something must have gone wrong in his head, because looking back, the Ma Won of that time behaved in ways that deserved to be called foolish. His memories from those days were hazier than those from before he turned five, but the important things he remembered well enough.
The couple treated this body as their own true child. However dim and simple the boy seemed, they raised him without a single word of complaint.
Every so often, a warrior with a sword at his hip would ask the couple a few questions, look the boy over, and take his leave. Surveillance, most likely.
Then one day, a piece of news reached him in the marketplace.
"The Hunan Ma Family were never lackeys of the Demonic Cult! There's been an official announcement — they were framed!"
That night, when he woke from sleep, the house was roaring with flame.
"Oh, my poor Won!"
Beyond the burning door, he could see the servant couple crying themselves hoarse for Ma Won. Choking on smoke, the boy collapsed at last.
They looked ready to hurl themselves inside that very instant to save him, but when the sword-bearing warrior held them back, they could only stamp their feet in anguish. Perhaps they believed they would never see Ma Won's face again. In the end, the couple turned away.
Clutched in their hands as they went was a single money pouch — one they likely never got the chance to spend properly. For as they trudged off, he could see the sword-bearing warrior slipping quietly into their wake.
The fire demon spared nothing — not the room's only door, nor the room itself. The burns, he remembered, had been excruciating.
But just as he thought his whole body would burn to death, the wall of the house — flimsier than its own ceiling — gave way first, whether by heaven's grace or sheer chance, and Ma Won fled on instinct. His life, at least, was spared.
After that, Ma Won lived as the fool who wandered Longzhong. He had barely saved his skin, but the burns had ravaged him.
Looking back now, the danger had not ended there. Visitors came to the house again and again, and the sword-bearing warrior from the day of the fire kept trailing Ma Won wherever he went. Only after a certain incident did the warrior who had shadowed him for days vanish for good.
It was when Taoists in Wudang robes, searching for someone, came upon the burned and scrawny boy, pressed a single coin into his hand, and walked straight past him.
He couldn't say for certain whether they had been looking for Ma Won. But his face was so ruined that even his true parents, alive and returned, would never have recognized him.
And so Ma Won clung to life — called the fool, the monster of Longzhong — until the day, years later, when I came to possess him.
By the time I had laid out every truth except the possession itself, I was once again cradled in Zhuge Yang's arms. Hot tears came pattering down onto the top of my head.
Part of it was surely pity for my circumstances — but I suspected there was another reason too.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Won..."
Zhuge Yang apologized. Her slight frame shook like a leaf. For once, there was no warmth to be felt from her embrace. I slipped out of her arms, took her by the shoulders, and met her eyes head-on.
Inside those tear-brimmed eyes, her pupils trembled. Her faintly downturned eyes looked sadder today than ever before. They were eyes frozen with fear. Though she had nothing whatsoever to apologize for, she was drowning in guilt — her body shaking all the while.
"It's okay. This isn't yours to apologize for."
"B-but Father... he d-did that to you..."
Zhuge Yang harbored the same suspicion I did. I couldn't be certain who had laid hands on my head, but the one who had let me settle in Longzhong, kept watch over me, and tried to kill me — I suspected it was none other than the head of the Zhuge Family. Longzhong lay within the Zhuge Family's grasp, after all.
Factor in his ambition to make his the greatest family under heaven, and the fact that the Hunan Ma Family had once shoved the Zhuge Family out of the ranks of the Five Great Families, and the motive was plainly there. And if that were so — could he have been tied to the Hunan Ma Family's downfall as well?
Even as those thoughts surfaced, I knew I needed to comfort Zhuge Yang first. To me, this body's past meant nothing at all.
Zhuge Yang mattered far more.
"It isn't even certain. And even if it were true — you're not one of the Zhuge Family anymore. You're a Ma now. Right?"
"...Right... that's right... Mm."
Zhuge Yang, who had been murmuring to herself, spoke at last with a resolute voice.
"If... if it really was them who made you like this... then I won't forgive them — not even the Zhuge Family!"