The Wudang Daoist (2)
Who the hell is that guy?
The man was standing there the moment I came downstairs after finishing with our luggage. Even from behind, I could tell at a glance he was a Wudang Daoist. Not that I could just stand by and watch him make eyes at Zhuge Yang.
I headed straight for their table.
"Won!"
Zhuge Yang spotted me and called out, bright with relief. She had clearly been in an awkward spot.
"And who might this—"
The moment the Daoist turned around and I saw his face, the words died in my throat.
No way... what are YOU doing here...?
"Oh! So you had company, I see. I had no idea you were with such a handsome young master, miss — my humble apologies. I'd never carry on this way with a woman who already has a man, but dear me, what a blunder..."
With that, the Daoist lifted his rear off the bench and shuffled around to the far side of the table.
"What are you doing? Sit here, sit. Wasn't this the young hero's seat?"
Grinning that easy, silver-tongued grin of his, he patted the very seat he'd been occupying.
Naturally, without recognizing me in the slightest.
For now, I offered a greeting.
"Well, pleased to meet you. I'm Ma Won."
The Daoist's eyes went wide at my introduction.
"Ma Won? Ah — same name as a lad I once knew. I'm Bang Sahu. A Wudang Daoist, as you can see."
"Were you about to ask to share our table?"
"If I'm intruding, I'll get up. What's a fellow to do but go beg a seat at another table? It does look awfully cramped in here, though..."
"...You're welcome to join us."
At my words, the Daoist — who had been halfway to his feet — plopped straight back down, quick as a flash, as if the rear end he'd lifted in the first place had been nothing but a feint.
"Haha! Much obliged. Are you bound for the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament as well, young hero Ma?"
He fired off the question before I'd even taken my seat.
He really was always like this.
"That's right. Have you been a Wudang Daoist all along?"
"I began as a lay disciple and worked my way up to a full one."
"Um, young master?"
Someone cut in out of nowhere, and my conversation with Bang Sahu broke off.
It was the carriage driver I'd hired.
"What's the matter?"
"Forgive the imposition, but... might you spare me a moment? The carriage is stuck in the mud and won't budge an inch."
The driver looked utterly at a loss. Glancing outside, I saw that rain was now coming down in earnest. For whatever reason, he seemed to have tried repositioning the carriage and mired it good and proper.
"I'll give him a hand. Yang, I'll be right back."
"Mm-hmm... hurry back, okay?"
Zhuge Yang didn't look thrilled about being left alone with Bang Sahu.
From what I knew, the man talked a lot but wasn't a bad sort. I'd just help quickly and come back.
Stepping outside the inn, I found the rain far heavier than it had looked from within.
"Will we even be able to leave tomorrow?"
"Even if the rain lets up, the ground will be too waterlogged tomorrow. Best to set out around the day after, I'd say."
"Let's have another look tomorrow and talk it over then."
The driver held an umbrella out to me, but I waved it off. An umbrella hardly keeps the rain off entirely, so instead I spread the qi barrier I'd been practicing. It couldn't yet encircle me completely and shut out sound on all sides, but it was more than equal to stopping rain falling from the sky.
"This way, sir."
The driver seemed to marvel at my little trick, but he quickly collected himself and led the way.
Where he took me, one of the carriage's wheels sat sunk deep in the mud. The horses strained, and the carriage hadn't budged a hair.
I simply picked the carriage up and freed the wheel.
Martial arts really do have their perks. If I went back to the modern era with this body, I could stay at lightweight and still sweep the entire heavyweight division.
When I returned to the inn, Zhuge Yang's voice — pitched oddly high — snagged my ear.
"Oh my, and then what happened?"
It was definitely her. She'd seemed so wary of Bang Sahu, yet at some point she was questioning him with a voice brimming over with curiosity.
Shall I hear what this is about?
"Haha! You've no idea how adorable that boy Ma Won was. Big for his age, mind you, but a child all the same. Old enough to know what love even was? Please... Anyway, there he was, wailing to high heaven — how could I not help? Mount Wudang is as good as my own front yard. I hoisted the boy onto my back and flew down a shortcut, straight to the foot of the mountain."
Ah... so they've already drifted all the way to that story, huh?
I wanted to shut it down on the spot, but truthfully, the truly mortifying stretch seemed to be behind us already.
Unable to make my entrance just yet, I stood at the inn's doorway, sharpening my hearing with inner energy, and listened in on the tale alone.
"Ahahaha! So you helped save someone's life?"
And here I thought she only smiled like that for me... My chest twinged, just a little. Jealousy?
"Haha! Can't say whether the girl actually pulled through. I imagine it all worked out. And..."
"And what?"
"Well... seeing as I ate the thing long ago, no harm in telling you — the boy thanked me with an elixir, if you can believe it."
"Oho? What elixir?"
At Zhuge Yang's question, Bang Sahu lowered his voice.
"Brace yourself now. A Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, no less."
"A Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng?"
"I know it's hard to believe—"
"—I believe you. Quite the remarkable boy, wasn't he?"
"Eh? You believe me, just like that?"
"Of course."
"I've told this story at every stop along my way, and you're the very first to believe me without a blink, miss! Ah, that reminds me — your name?"
"...Yang. I'll tell you my family name some other time."
"How very mysterious, miss. Very well."
Bang Sahu. I'd taken him for merely long-winded, but the man was loose-lipped to boot. He seemed to be broadcasting his luck at eating a Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng to every ear in the Central Plains.
My mind drifted back to the day I first met Bang Sahu.
Our first meeting had come when I climbed Mount Wudang to dig up the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng I meant to feed Zhuge Yang. After unearthing it where the Treasure Locator pointed, I'd started down the mountain — only to find the Daoists had blocked the trails for some reason and were inspecting every traveler in sight.
I was guilty of nothing, but I absolutely could not let that elixir be discovered. I was fretting over it, watching from a distance, when I ran into Bang Sahu — a lay disciple of Wudang in those days.
"Hey there! Nice to meet you. Whoa, that face... must've hurt something awful, huh. What's your name?"
"It's Ma Won..."
"Name's Bang Sahu. Lay disciple of Wudang. So what's the matter? Why are you just standing there staring instead of heading down?"
With no one else to turn to, I begged him.
"If I can't get down this mountain right now, the person I love will die! Please, help me!"
"Wh-whoa?"
"Please! I'm begging you! I will never forget this debt!"
And then the tears came. Wailing at the top of my lungs, to be exact.
Bang Sahu didn't ask me a single thing.
"Hop on. I'll carry you down to the bottom."
"Th-thank you!"
Slinging me onto his back, he kicked off into his lightness skill and swung wide around the checkpoint, making for the base of the mountain.
"My father made some donations to the sect, and that's how they took me on as a lay disciple. But I want to be a full disciple, and they won't have me — they say I started martial arts too late. You're supposed to build inner energy from childhood, no? I mean, how am I ever going to learn any martial arts if they don't take me in early?"
And on, and on, and on.
He chattered without a single pause the whole way down, his mouth never resting for so much as a breath. By the time we reached the bottom, I had been thoroughly briefed on things I never wanted to know: the full roster of his family, his dream of becoming a great master someday, and his ambition to keep three wives and four concubines.
When he set me down, he said:
"Ma Won, was it? Go on, then — go save the one you love."
"Thank you!"
Having said my thanks, I impulsively tossed him the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng I'd been carrying and sprinted for Longzhong.
I'd thought that was the end of our thread of fate... yet here we were, years later, reuniting at an inn — the man now a full disciple of Wudang.
Seeing the dream he'd once rattled on about finally come true, I found myself genuinely glad to see him. After all, when it came right down to it, he was one of the people who'd helped save Zhuge Yang's life.
Their story seemed to be wrapping up, and I'd tarried long enough, so I finally stepped inside.
At some point, Zhuge Yang had removed her veil.
The moment she spotted me, she broke into the grin of a little imp.
...Looks like Zhuge Yang saw right through me, huh?
For now, I played dumb and took my seat.
Just then, the waiter arrived with our food.
Dongpo pork, white-cut chicken, and dumplings.
Naturally, I slid the white-cut chicken in front of Zhuge Yang, the Dongpo pork in front of myself, and the dumplings toward Bang Sahu.
"Hmm? This isn't the dumplings, though?"
I loved Dongpo pork and Zhuge Yang loved white-cut chicken, and we ordered it that way so often that I'd apparently gone on autopilot and mixed up the plates.
"Ah — my apologies."
I pulled the dumplings over to myself and slid the Dongpo pork to him.
Zhuge Yang, who had been watching my little dish ballet like it was the cutest thing in the world, belatedly caught the mix-up and jumped in.
"Oh — wait, the Dongpo pork is yours!"
"But you like the white-cut chicken?"
"They said today's portion was big... and you're the one who loves Dongpo pork. You eat it."
Whether he found our antics entertaining or not, Bang Sahu chuckled away, thoroughly charmed.
"Heh heh heh. You two really are close, aren't you? Truth be told, dumplings are my favorite thing in all the world."
With that, he took an enormous bite of a dumpling. He was grinning ear to ear — and then his expression slowly began to freeze. Tragedy had struck.
"Blegh! That tastes like pure garbage!"
In the end, I ordered him another plate of white-cut chicken.
I'd assumed a mouthful of food might quiet the man down a touch; instead, Bang Sahu kept up a steady stream of chatter even while eating.
Some manner of trick of the tongue, apparently — not once did a morsel go flying from his mouth mid-sentence.
"So right after I ate that elixir, who should I run into but my master. He praised me up and down — said I had a real gift for the martial arts. And thanks to all my hard training since, I've even earned a spot as the sect's representative at the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament."
Having let down the last of her guard around Bang Sahu, Zhuge Yang asked:
"Might I ask what your Daoist name is?"
"Ah! Hyeonja. I am none other than Bang Sahu, the Daoist Hyeonja!"
Hurk! Mid-chew on my pork, I very nearly spat it across the table. If my composure had been even a hair weaker, I'd have made an utter fool of myself in front of Zhuge Yang.
No, hold on — 'Bang Sahu the Sage'? The man's Daoist name is literally 'Sage'?
Zhuge Yang looked startled too. For a moment I thought she was surprisingly clued in on this sort of thing.
"Hyeonja...? Do you truly mean the Hyeon generation?"
Ah. She's stunned by something else entirely.
I'd thought I'd learned plenty by now, but the world still had plenty left to teach me. Sensing my puzzlement, Zhuge Yang explained for my benefit.
"Wudang's generational ranks currently run Mu, Hyeon, Jin, Heo, Seung, in that order. If he's Hyeon... that's the same rank as the sect leader."
"Ah...!"
No matter how I looked at him, Bang Sahu didn't seem remotely old enough for it. And since he clearly remembered our first meeting, he couldn't have crossed into some legendary realm of age-reversal either.
So how on earth did he end up holding a rank like that?
Perhaps sensing our baffled stares, he drew himself up, puffed out his chest, and declared with pride:
"As it happens, my master is Muho Jinin."
Even I knew that name.
Grand Patriarch of the Wudang Sect and leader of the Murim Alliance — the Daoist name of the Sword Immortal himself.