The So-yang River Maiden (4)
Park Taesu and Itkyu now stood facing the pursuit gang that had trapped them from both front and rear.
Between the two men stood Cha Un-hong and Neutdeok.
Spinning his saekjang once as if laying up a curtain, Itkyu reversed it and slammed the staff point-first into the ground with a heavy thud.
Then he said to the burly man in front of him, “Bare-handed, are you? Then this humble monk shall meet you bare-handed as well.”
Cha Un-hong and Neutdeok both shouted at him to cut the nonsense, but Itkyu, being Japanese, simply switched off his Joseon-language function for the time being.
And Itkyu had his reasons.
“It seems this Park Axe will not leave that man alive. Then I can only ask you. If I am to ask, you must remain alive to answer.”
“Your monk tongue is far too long. Where in the world did you learn to talk like that?”
“You lot look down on the Dharma most grievously. And where else should a monk’s homeland be but the Pure Land?”
The Japanese ancient style martial art Kurama Yoshin-ryu spread like a radiance from the Pure Land.
Itkyu bent one knee and lowered his stance.
Then he brought both hands together before his chest as if supporting something.
Originally, this was a technique used at tea tables or mealtimes—pretending to come forward to serve with a bowl, only to strike at the last moment.
But why had he made such a useless motion now? Because martial arts are not remembered by the mind, but by the body.
The movement that linked automatically through Itkyu’s body was a hundred times faster than serving a meal.
“Hrk!”
Itkyu launched himself at the burly man as if he meant to fly. The giant, who had been standing there thinking, What the hell is this guy doing?, went over despite having far more weight than Itkyu.
Itkyu had the same thought Taesu did.
His build is similar, but compared to Park Axe, he’s a lesser hand.
Proof of that was simple: an attack that had failed against Taesu succeeded now.
Itkyu’s iron-hard elbow crushed the fallen giant’s testicles.
“Aaaagh!”
The testicle-destroyer Itkyu always carried out his work for one purpose: to spread the Buddha’s way in Joseon.
The giant, now forever incapable of indulging in lust, still did not go down completely, for he was one of the men brought by Bak Seong-ok.
He thrashed with terrifying strength. In any case, in grappling, body weight was the most important factor, so Itkyu wisely backed away rather than overextend himself.
The giant then took a bizarre, almost unclassifiable stance that seemed like no martial art Taesu had ever seen. It was an eerie thing, the way both thighs stayed pressed together as he swayed.
“Y-you bald-headed monk bastard! H-how dare you!”
Itkyu did not fly into a rage, because he was not Zhu Yuanzhang. It was the serenity born of Buddhist discipline.
Gasping, the giant drew a short blade.
“You should have drawn it from the beginning.”
Itkyu, showing no courtesy either, raised the saekjang again.
The difference in equipment turned the giant pale.
“Damn it!”
He stabbed with his knife as best he could, but Kurama Yoshin-ryu was hardly a style that staked its life on nothing but one testicle.
Itkyu struck the upper part of the blade with his staff. The knife, as if magnetized though it was not, was shoved downward by Itkyu’s motion.
Then he snapped it upward again. The blade, following the staff as if caught in a current, slipped helplessly from its owner’s hand.
The next instant, a shock that spread from the center of the giant’s face to his whole body forced him to his knees.
Like a bolt of lightning, Itkyu had flipped the saekjang upside down and driven the butt end beneath the giant’s nose.
That was exactly the target modern bayonet fighting aims for, and if there is no mercy—as now, with Itkyu—then even a strike with a blunt staff can be fatal. The giant drooled and fainted.
“That high monk’s spiritual power is astonishing!”
“He is like Kim Yun-hu of old Goryeo.”
The women’s praise no longer meant much to Itkyu.
So when he turned his head, his gaze was no longer on Cha Un-hong or Neutdeok, but on Taesu’s duel.
* * *
Bak Seong-ok was a man who ate sword blades for a living.
By now he had also realized that Park Axe was treating him as nothing more than a practice partner.
Bak Seong-ok swung his blade hard once, shaking Park Axe off.
Then, seizing the tiny opening that had formed, he unleashed his fastest rap.
“You arrogant bastard! Do you really think you can beat me, a man who has served Hunin-gun and lived through every hell there is?”
He tried to subtly flaunt his backing, but Park Axe gave no reaction.
Is it because he’s some island bumpkin?
To be fair, Taesu knew him from Ganghwado, so he was withholding his response because he already knew the man too well.
With his finishing move failing to land in Seoul, where it had always worked, Bak Seong-ok panicked.
He had no choice but to trigger the secret technique he truly had never intended to use.
Backpedaling several steps, Bak Seong-ok pulled out a small tube.
It was about the size of a mobile phone.
Cha Un-hong shouted, “It’s a Jillyeop Fire Tube! Get away from it!”
It was a Joseon-era grenade, packed with gunpowder and iron caltrops and then exploded. Its history stretched back more than three hundred years.
Listening to the mountain spirit’s explanation, just as urgent as Cha Un-hong’s, Taesu tried to calm her.
“If he blows that thing, do you really think he’ll be fine? That’s all bluster. And besides, with flint, how long would it take to light it? So then...”
But Taesu had overlooked the historical changes he himself had set in motion.
Bak Seong-ok was a man working at the front line of commerce. He pulled out a pack of Western matches that had come up along the Imjin River and struck one.
Taesu kicked off the ground.
The arm holding the tube was cleanly severed. Taesu had meant to send the whole body flying, but Bak Seong-ok blocked him with that one arm.
The tube fell away with the arm.
But as a portable weapon, the Jillyeop Fire Tube had a very short fuse. It was already smoking and disappearing into the tube.
At that moment, Itkyu, who knew a thing or two about ninja arts, shouted, “N-no. That’s not a Jillyeop Fire Tube or an incendiary bomb! That’s... that’s poison! It’s definitely the Joseon poison weapon Chan-hyeol-bi-sa-sin-mu, said to have been sealed away ages ago!”
This is not a martial-arts novel.
This is history.
Yi Yeon, who had defeated the Toyotomi clan with the force of the rising sun.
A forbidden knowledge so dangerous that even he had proscribed it.
It was the most terrible chemical weapon in Joseon history, said to scatter every poison known to man and make anyone it touched bleed from all seven orifices at once.
It had to be avoided.
But behind Taesu stood Cha Un-hong.
Taesu widened his stance into a horse-riding posture and braced himself. Then he covered his face with both arms.
With a boom, smoke burst upward.
* * *
A slight shock rolled over Taesu.
Literally slight. The amount of powder had not been much.
Before even discussing the power of the black powder packed into that tiny tube, Bak Seong-ok was not the type to gamble his life on a pursuer’s fate.
What he had been aiming for was the smoke and the blast.
He intended to use the confusion, along with the chance to escape.
With eyes and ears thrown into disarray and poison apparently all over him, Park Axe would not be able to chase after him.
But the price Bak Seong-ok paid was steep.
An arm has no sphincter. There was no half-biological inner-force trick that could clamp shut the muscles and stop the bleeding; if such a thing had existed, he would have used it in the fight earlier.
“Aaaagh...”
The smoke screen he had created for no reason whatsoever at night was useless too. Bak Seong-ok was already shouting his location to the world.
He rolled away, yelping, toward the back of the shrine.
But Taesu could not go after him.
Cha Un-hong was crying and clinging to him, holding him back.
“Right now, chasing him down and killing him is not the important thing! Let’s wash off and go see a doctor, yes?”
Itkyu had tried to run after him.
But then he stopped in his tracks.
If Park Axe were to fall, he was the only one who could carry him. Even to the Kurama Yoshin-ryu, which pursued the ways of ninjutsu, the poisonous medicine of the East’s medical superpower, Joseon, was something to fear.
Taesu, flustered, pulled himself away from Cha Un-hong as much as possible so she wouldn’t touch him too much.
“We need to catch that bastard first. What if he goes back and rats us out to Hunin-gun’s house in Seoul?”
But Cha Un-hong had not been clinging to him without thought.
“That cannot be avoided anyway. We are here at So-yang River to show our authority to the Namcho guesthouse. If we bury them so thoroughly that no one knows which ghost took them away, it will all be for nothing. And that monk Itkyu still has to let the man he knocked unconscious live and go free.”
That was right. Taesu’s goal was not the annihilation of merchants, but the seizure of market power.
One of the means to that end was fear, and in this age there was nothing strange about that.
But then there had to be someone alive to carry that fear back. That was why execution squads did not really deter crime all that much.
In any case, the Namcho guesthouse and the river merchants would have to keep opposing Taesu.
So even if Bak Seong-ok had never met Taesu and instead been dragged off by a tiger, the result would be the same.
For its own gain, the Namcho guesthouse would somehow tie Bak Seong-ok’s disappearance to Park Axe and report it to Hunin-gun.
And the moment Hunin-gun became the backer of the Namcho guesthouse, he was Taesu’s enemy. Bak Seong-ok had nothing to do with it anymore.
After half-sobbing through that explanation, Cha Un-hong said, “So first we need to save your life, yes? Come on, let’s go!”
“A-alright. I said I got it, so stop touching me. You said it was poison, didn’t you?”
“What good would it do me to live if you’re dead?”
Neutdeok, who already knew Cha Un-hong was a woman, and Itkyu, who had long since transcended such distinctions, did not waste time being surprised and sprang into action at once.
Neutdeok, astonishingly, hoisted the still-living man-god onto her back. Joseon maidens really were strong.
And Itkyu slung over his shoulder the giant he had knocked down earlier.
As for Cha Un-hong, unlike her usual self, she trailed along right behind Taesu. But at Taesu’s command she came to herself and gathered up the money and various items from inside the shrine.
Meeting them after coming down the mountain, Lee Jin-hong did not panic, as befitted a future co-investor.
The result was a little unexpected, but Lee Jin-hong had of course been briefed on the plan in advance. He hid the spoils in the warehouse of the Gangwon Baekimbang building in Chuncheon, which was under construction.
Like the shaman of Bonguisan, Lee Jin-hong was a former shaman himself—a quack doctor without a license.
“Chan-hyeol-bi-sa-sin-mu... To think there would still be those who passed down that forbidden craft...”
Just when Taesu was starting to suspect that this really was a martial-arts world, Lee Jin-hong asked again, “Do you feel hot anywhere? Or any bleeding? You look fine on the outside.”
“I’m fine.”
“Chan-hyeol-bi-sa-sin-mu was a weapon strictly forbidden by His Majesty King Seonjo some 250 years ago. There’s no way its method could have been transmitted exactly.”
It was the same sort of thing as if Lee Jin-hong had somehow botched the making of the Ogyumjam beyond belief.
Cha Un-hong’s face brightened. Lee Jin-hong went on, “Still, just in case, wash off first. And if anything seems off, let a doctor see you. There’s no blood showing around the nose, ears, or eyes, but check the anus and lower region carefully as well.”
Since this concerned medical matters, even Neutdeok did not feel awkward.
Instead, with a very worried expression, she said, “Since this happened because of my business, what am I to do? Even if I am a servant, I know gratitude. I should properly tend to you and keep watch—”
Before Taesu could even be horrified, Cha Un-hong unleashed the breath of a Confucian dragon.
“Where do you think a maiden goes speaking of such things! Go home at once. I’ll attend to him. We definitely had a Western towel and some soap in our pack.”
It was, after all, the servant’s obvious duty. Lee Jin-hong nodded, trusting Cha Un-hong, that nimble servant.
“I’ll leave it to you. I’ll handle the cleanup here. Monk Itkyu, follow me. The office building isn’t finished yet, and there’s nowhere to sleep in a thatched hut, so we’ll have to go to So-yang River after all.”
Joseon did have the concept of a bathhouse. It was just a low priority, so there still wasn’t one in the Chuncheon office yet.
By the time Taesu, dragged by Cha Un-hong as if taking part in some variety-show punishment, was lowered into the So-yang River, the night had already sunk deep into the third watch.
* * *
He was a modern man, so he did not know much about ancient poisons, but Taesu wasn’t worried.
He simply trusted his instincts. Nothing hurt, and he wasn’t bleeding anywhere.
He decided to enjoy the bath instead, and for Cha Un-hong’s sake he kept his posture as relaxed as possible.
How could some thug possibly have a poison grenade like that? It was just Itkyu making a fuss.
Then the mountain spirit said, [No. That was poison all right. Of course, as Lee Jin-hong said, it wasn’t as refined a thing as those made during the Imjin War, but it would have been more than enough to kill a man.]
...Seriously? Then why weren’t you making a fuss too?
[Hm? You won’t die from poison or disease. Disease comes from an imbalance of one’s internal foundation, and poison enters through a break in the flow of qi—so how could it touch you? If it really had been a Jillyeop Fire Tube or an incendiary bomb, I too would have been alarmed.]
Taesu shot to his feet.
“Hey, why the hell are you telling me something that important only now?”
[I believe the first thing I ever told you was that a god dwells in your body and has made your qi flow unobstructed.]
“You need to explain that in detail!”
Then Cha Un-hong shouted from far away, “Is something hurting you?”
Taesu had no chance to answer, because a far more urgent question had just occurred to him at the mountain spirit’s words.
Hey, then what about Un-hong when she touched me just now?
[That? Well...]
Before he even heard the answer, Taesu burst from the river like lightning.
Then he grabbed Cha Un-hong and plunged back into the water with her.
“Y-you too, hurry and wash! I’m not the problem right now!”
“I already washed my hands in hot water earlier. I only touched you with my hands.”
“No! You have to wash everything! Soap! You brought soap, didn’t you?”
As he said that, Taesu tried to roughly strip her clothes away.
“H-hey, ah—why are you suddenly doing this...?”
Cha Un-hong stared at Taesu in flustered confusion.
Taesu froze.
It wasn’t because of her expression. It was because he heard the voice of the wicked spirit who had caused all of this.
[You truly know nothing of Taoist matters. What do you think is meant by the way of the bedroom arts, which prizes the union of clouds and rain? Emotion is essence; essence is emotion. To join in emotion is to exchange the vital core.
Cha Un-hong, like you, has nothing to fear from disease or poison. What do you say? You may rejoice. I bring glorious news: the divine is with you—hey, wait. You’re going too far! The axe is now on the riverbank—]
Cha Un-hong had no idea why Taesu had suddenly thrown her into the river and then tried to move to the opposite side with her.
As they crossed the river, she suddenly remembered the time on the Imjin River when Taesu had stopped the storm.
Just like then, wet hair was falling across the side of his face, which looked as though it had been washed by rain.
As if boarding a boat, he had pressed his lips together with some sort of stubborn resolve, and behind his ear the angle of his jaw stood out in a way that was strangely attractive.
Cha Un-hong let her expression soften.
He was the sort of man who shamelessly did as he pleased, all because he knew exactly how charming he was. At least, that was how it seemed to her.
The two of them stopped on a sandbar in the middle of the river, exposed by the dry season.
Somewhere a cuckoo that had woken too early cried out. The sound drifted hesitantly through the reeds along the riverbank.
The water reached only to Cha Un-hong’s waist.
She leaned against Taesu’s body.
On the Imjin River she had only been able to touch him through his clothes, but now he was hers alone. In any case, that shameless So-yang River maiden had no chance.
Cha Un-hong showed off the fact that she knew Taesu better than anyone else.
“You really do love the outdoors. Even so, if you’re this rough, it makes a girl jump.”
She gently took hold of Taesu’s hand and pulled it away.
“...Still, it seems you’re not in pain. The poison must not have gotten through. More than anything, I’m glad of that.”
Then she slowly untied the knots of her jeogori and trousers, the ones Taesu had twisted together in his haste by trying to handle both at once.
Taesu, who had been about to tell her the truth—that this was all the work of a wicked spirit—stopped dead.
Moonlight was sliding along Cha Un-hong’s body.
The moonlight, trapped in droplets of water, was like flowing jewels. Those ornaments strewn across her white naked flesh flashed with a beauty as intense as it was fleeting.
Deep shadows revealed every curve without darkening the sheen of her skin. It was the majesty of nature, something no artificial light could ever truly reach.
Cha Un-hong drew her hands behind her back. Her wet hair spilled richly down as she combed it with her fingers.
Without meaning to, Taesu stroked the collarbone exposed above the water.
She let out a weak little sound and, as if embarrassed, covered her upper body with her hair.
That was even more seductive than leaving it uncovered.
“The water’s cold. I suppose it’s autumn.”
Cha Un-hong said,
“It’s cold, so hold me.”
Author’s Note
1. Zhu Yuanzhang had a severe complex because he came from a monk-and-beggar background, so he prohibited any public document from using words that suggested baldness. Even the common character for “bright,” 光, could get you executed if it looked too much like a shiny bald head.
2. Chan-hyeol-bi-sa-sin-mu is just like history, except it’s fired from a cannon instead of being a grenade.