United by Buddhist Faith
Yi Ha-eung tried to think rationally.
The odds that Kim Jwa-geun was stupid enough to go head-on against the king were low. Open conflict was the very last thing that should happen to a man like Kim Jwa-geun, who stood at the top of the entrenched establishment.
This was probably a move to win over the training corps commander and use him as a deterrent.
Wait.
Yi Ha-eung froze.
Another thought—one he’d had about Park Axe before receiving Jang Sun-gyu’s report—slipped back into his mind.
Deterrence meant nothing to a man who wasn’t afraid of what came after.
And right now, anyone could see that the king had nothing behind him.
Yi Ha-eung clenched his fist.
By now, Park Axe must have left Chuncheon.
He could only guess that Park was heading north; he had no idea exactly where. Even if he found out where Park was now, by the time Yi’s messenger reached him, he’d already be gone.
But there was one place Park Axe had to go.
Yi Ha-eung looked over at Jang Sun-gyu.
“Give my letter to Master Cheon and have him go to Pyeongan Province.”
Yi Ha-eung was bringing out his final trump card, Cheon Hui-yeon, one of his Four Heavenly Kings.
Because it looked like Hwangjae Park Gyu-su would finally receive an appointment soon—at the ripe old age of forty-two.
A royal decree was only the final confirmation. Just as in modern times, the real decision had already been made at the working level long before that.
According to rumors circulating through the Ministry of Personnel, Park Gyu-su’s post would be magistrate of Yonggang in Pyeongan Province, now Yonggang County in Nampo.
Even if Park Gyu-su was taking his first office, it was still a petty post that did not suit his family or his reputation. If not high office, then at least a position of some dignity should have been granted.
It was obviously the obstruction of the powerful families who hated the faction of Crown Prince Hyomyeong.
As much as the king couldn’t be bothered with politics, Kim Jwa-geun was probably in a hurry too and simply hadn’t been able to block it outright.
But this time, it was a stroke of luck.
For Park Axe’s purposes, there was no way he could avoid stopping in Pyongyang.
And Yonggang County sat right next to it.
“If Master Cheon is the one who goes, he’ll keep Hwangjae from obsessing over the petty affairs of some backwater county and make him sit down to discuss serious business with Park Axe.”
Jang Sun-gyu didn’t blurt out something idiotic like, “Do you mean the leader of the Four Heavenly Kings, Cheon Hui-yeon? That’s dangerous! Please reconsider!”
Cheon Hui-yeon wasn’t some total wreck of a man, and he was capable enough. He would smoothly rein in the real wreck of a man—Park Axe—who might do God knows what if they simply met with a letter of introduction in hand.
And though this was still in the future, Hwangjae Park Gyu-su was the only man in Joseon to sink a warship built to withstand gunfire.
Something Taesu himself couldn’t do. Yi Ha-eung wasn’t a regressor, but he knew Park Gyu-su’s abilities, and so he was counting on him.
At that very moment, Taesu arrived at Geumgangsan, on the side opposite Yonggang County.
* * *
The scenery of Geumgangsan felt strangely alien to Taesu, who had been born in South Korea.
The jagged cliffs, like the scales of some savage beast, were nothing like the mountains he was used to seeing in the South.
Of course, nature’s art—rendered in the vertical joints of black mica granite—existed in mountains elsewhere too.
But Geumgangsan’s particular grandeur, formed by the unique northern species of trees and a host of other accidents, was in a class of its own.
It was, indeed, such a famous mountain that even Su Dongpo—who’d hated Goryeo with a passion—said he wanted to come see it.
“Well then. So I finally made it.”
“Hm? You wanted to visit Geumgangsan? For a man who’s traveled abroad, it would have been worth seeing at least once.”
“There were some reasons I couldn’t.”
With the expression of a man savoring the pain of division, Taesu glanced at the waterfall of the Nine Dragons. Visitors passing by kept stealing wary looks at his axe, as if it might split them in two before they even knew it.
Among the many scenic wonders of Geumgangsan, this Nine Dragons Waterfall was its true essence.
I wish I’d brought Kim Yang-won. He’d have loved this.
Of course a man like Kim Yang-won, who lived and died for poetry, must have visited this place before.
But even the accumulated flair and vibe of the country’s finest bards couldn’t fully capture the Nine Dragons Waterfall once they reached this sacred ground and started spitting out verses like a possessed man.
The view was like an East Asian painting brought to life, a masterpiece of such quality that it couldn’t be adequately conveyed to anyone else—you had to see it yourself.
From Taesu’s point of view, there was another reason it moved him.
He only knew from photographs, but Geumgangsan in the twenty-first century had suffered heavy environmental damage.
That was because the jackasses from the northern regime had carved giant slogans into every beautiful cliff face.
The moment you tried to enjoy the scenery, your eyes would catch nothing but things like “Heavenly General Kim Jong Il” and “Song of General Kim Il Sung,” ruining the mood entirely. They were so bright red you could still read them even when your focus went blurry.
But now it was different. Taesu intended to appreciate the mountain in its untouched form, the way no one in the twenty-first century ever had.
Or rather, that was the plan—until he spotted some writing carved into the flat rock at Guryongyeon.
“What’s this?”
Cha Un-hong answered promptly.
“Ah, you’re not used to cursive script. ‘A thousand lengths of white silk hanging down, ten thousand bushels of pearls scattered.’ It’s the work of the famed Silla man of letters Choi Chi-won.”
Taesu had found yet another thing to hate besides the letters themselves.
Seriously, those Silla bastards had gotten under his skin every time—during the Taebaek Ogyumjam affair and again at the Chuncheon Urae incident.
He vaguely remembered once seeing a comment on some completely unrelated news article insisting that Goguryeo should have united the Three Kingdoms, and now he thought that might have been right.
Well, they probably preferred splitting people open with swords to writing, so maybe you’d get along.
You go play with the Geumgangsan mountain god.
No, there are too many of them.... And the Buddhas too. It feels like watching a brawl with hundreds of guys tangled up in the marketplace.
To forget the mood-killing remarks just as bad as those northern propaganda slogans, Taesu asked Cha Un-hong, “And the one beside it?”
“...Ahaha. This is also in running script. It would be hard to read. It’s a poem by Master Song Si-yeol of Uam: ‘A furious waterfall pours down in the middle, making one dizzy enough to collapse.’”
“That’s a poem? Sounds more like Song Si-yeol fell in here and wrote a note asking someone to help drag out his ghost.”
His ignorance had reached the level of pure obstinacy. Before Taesu could grab the basics of the script the way one grabs a brush stroke, Cha Un-hong hurriedly changed the subject.
“Ah, look over there. That Master Il-hyu also seems deeply moved by this magnificent view!”
It seemed so.
Itkyu could no longer resist the surging delight of the Dharma and had fallen to his knees.
“This is Geumgangsan, the mountain of Joseon in the Land of the Morning! Truly, I can feel the overflowing spiritual power without question.”
As he had said from the beginning, Geumgangsan was Itkyu’s destination.
Taesu had wondered if Itkyu might change his mind and want to take employment with them, but that was too much like a modern person’s way of thinking.
Itkyu was, after all, a monk. His life was devoted to enlightenment, not to making a living.
Even the problem of food and shelter could be handled somehow in Geumgangsan.
If the saying “twelve thousand peaks and eighty-eight hermitages” was true, then the number of temples in Geumgangsan was twice the number of households in Hanseong.
It was obviously a Chinese exaggeration spread by some bastard like a reporter, but finding a hermitage that could feed one Itkyu wasn’t difficult.
That wasn’t because Joseon’s temples overflowed with money and compassion.
Quite the opposite.
As with the people who had just passed by, glancing suspiciously at Taesu’s human-splitting axe, there weren’t only Taesu’s party here.
Geumgangsan was already a tourist attraction in the Joseon era. People came here in droves.
And the ones who came were leisurely scholars, just like Choi Chi-won and Song Si-yeol—men who desperately wanted to carve their names into a convenient rock somewhere.
But this kind of tourism was extremely expensive. If stonecutters were involved, it was even worse.
A scholar of integrity could never afford it.
Yet the logic of Samcheok also applied here.
A scholar could be both righteous and spend a great deal of money.
Because they could just take it.
The scholars came to Geumgangsan with nothing but cudgels and servants, picked any one of the eighty thousand hermitages as they pleased, and stormed in.
Then they hung up the monks and beat them soundly. Every blow would jingle out coins, meals, and wine—occasionally wine, anyway.
The monks had to cook for the scholars, wait on them, carry their baggage, and serve as porters. Plenty of them ended up attaining nirvana from the ordeal.
Geumgangsan in the nineteenth century wasn’t some tourist spot every local government dreamed of having. It was a goblin gold dungeon, a place of cudgels and whips.
So a talent like Itkyu was essential for a temple in Geumgangsan.
Not because he looked like someone who could carry a lot of luggage—though that was true enough—but because monks, naturally, had to exercise their right of self-defense when the scholars went too far.
For example, what was happening right now over by that group, who seemed to have been sightseeing and eating lunch near the waterfall.
* * *
A scholar who looked like Im Kkeok-jeong threw down his bowl.
He barked at the monks attending him.
“You little rat! Why the hell does this buckwheat noodle taste like this? I heard Woljeongsa was a large, wealthy temple!”
“N-no, that’s the Woljeongsa on Odaesan.... We’re just a tiny hermitage run by five or six wandering monks. You came and saw it yourself.”
“Who said you could talk back? Why do these noodles taste like this? I clearly called because I saw the noodle frame hanging under your eaves at Woljeongsa. How can the people who make noodles every day have such lousy skill?”
It was the very dish Cha Un-hong had liked.
But since this wasn’t Dongnae, it seemed the taste just wasn’t up to par.
The monks were at their wits’ end.
“The Buddhist path does not encourage gluttony. We gave you exactly what we eat ourselves....”
The scholar launched a strike of his own brand of anti-Buddhist fury. The monk who had answered him went sprawling over the rocks.
“The crafty tongue of these monk bastards is astonishing. Fine. Then should I beg, ‘I’m a gluttonous scholar, so please cater to my tastes,’ is that it?”
“N-no, that’s not what we meant....”
“From the beginning, I can see right through that smug attitude of yours, making people spell everything out for you one word at a time. You don’t think about your own crime of failing to recognize your betters—you’ll just go around saying the gentry are tyrants and whatnot! Die, you bastard, die!”
And while he was kicking the monk who had fallen on the rock, the poor emaciated monk’s durability aside, they were on a “rock near a waterfall.”
Cha Un-hong shouted, “O-oh, watch out! He’s going to fall!”
Itkyu shot forward like an arrow.
Ignoring the dumbfounded stares of the scholars, he extended his staff.
At that exact moment, the monk who had rolled once with a groan toppled toward Guryongyeon.
Itkyu’s staff pierced the back of the monk’s robe at the last possible instant, snagging it and saving him.
He lifted the monk, who looked as though he’d been knocked unconscious, and set him down on the rock.
Taesu stroked his chin.
That was a show of force more terrifying than smashing the rock with a staff.
“I’m not fighting that guy while he’s got that thing.”
“Then don’t fight even if he doesn’t have it.”
But the scholars apparently didn’t understand what that feat meant—the one where he’d shot out the long staff without harming anyone and simultaneously hooked a human body’s weight on its tip and lifted it.
“Y-you bastard, who the hell are you? Why are you butting in when we’re teaching these hateful monks a lesson?”
“Shouldn’t a human life be saved?”
“Is the water down there, or is it fire? He could’ve just swum out! Fine. You’re one of them too. I’ll deal with you right this—”
But the anti-Buddhist combo never got to be completed.
Bang! The scholar who looked like Im Kkeok-jeong flew backward and plunged into Guryongyeon.
It wasn’t Itkyu’s doing. If Itkyu had acted, he would have forced the scholar into the worst kind of filial impiety imaginable: leaving no descendants.
Itkyu and the rest of Taesu’s party turned to look at the short monk who had just sent the scholar flying.
The hand he’d thrust forward was firm, and the feet planted a little wider than shoulder-width were rock steady.
Even though Taesu had been watching Itkyu, he hadn’t noticed the attack at all. It was that fast.
It seemed to be of a different type from the aerial striking techniques of Ahn Pil-ju or Bak Seol-chae.
What is that? Not a straight punch—more like karate’s kizami-tsuki? Is he Japanese too?
Karate had its origins in Ryukyu rather than Japan proper, and in this era martial arts nationalities weren’t so rigid, so maybe not.
Either way, it was clearly a strike that would also hit a “power-system” fruit user. The scholars were thrown into a panic as a group.
“Y-you, you dare—!”
The young monk answered coolly.
“Didn’t you say you could just swim back up? Every word and action of yours reeks so badly it would be a kindness to give you a refreshing wash in Guryongyeon.”
Compared with the monk’s neat, logical speech, the scholars sounded like a broken record that could only repeat, “You dare!”
After a while of making a racket like the villainess who’d just been slapped across the face, they finally called in the true force of the Confucian order.
The servants who had been lounging a little ways off, happily enjoying the sight of monks doing their work for them, rushed over in a group.
“What are you all waiting for? Bind these monks at once! We’ll never let them live!”
Of course, they were already running.
They just couldn’t make it as far as the scholars’ rock.
The servant in the lead was seized by a giant hand that suddenly shot out from the side.
One moment later, that servant learned Choi Chi-won’s famous line.
The Braille method taught in Ganghwado.
Taesu had grabbed the servant by the collar and used a modified shoulder throw, smashing his face into the rock. The servant, whose skull had just had poetry carved into it, fainted from sheer emotion.
The young monk looked at Taesu in admiration.
“Ah. I see. So that man is Park Axe, then?”
Itkyu asked in confusion, “How did you know, given that you’ve cut ties with the world and practice the Way?”
“Park Axe’s name has been heard even beyond the other shore. Still, that’s not the important part, is it?”
It was true.
What mattered now was the essence of Confucianism, who had tried to bring down a brass bowl on the back of someone’s head while the two monks were talking.
When the two of them turned around, the scholar flinched. It would be hard to claim he’d only been trying to eat noodles, given the earlier half-assed review-bombing.
While Park Axe was carving servants into the rocks instead of letters, the scholars themselves were sent flying one after another and plunged into Guryongyeon.
It was a performance so good that even the tourists around them, who had already thought Confucianism was being humiliated to death by spiritual force, applauded.
The young monk said to Itkyu, “Though my hospitality is rough, I can’t forget a debt of kindness. Won’t you stop by our temple?”
To suggest running before the other scholar-warrior squads swarming Geumgangsan came crashing in, and to say it so politely—he had to be a great monk who had surely attained enlightenment.
Itkyu expressed his thanks with a rare prostration, palms pressed together.
Author’s Note
1. Park Gyu-su was, in fact, appointed magistrate of Yonggang around this time. It feels like Hyeonjong finally managed to get him into office, but because he died soon after, Park was left in despair and stepped down again.
2. Of course, Geumgangsan did not really have 80,009 hermitages. If it had, the mountain would have been promoted to a county seat or a district office in the Joseon era. There are various theories about how this exaggeration arose; the leading one is that “Palram Guamja” was misread as “eighty-thousand-nine hermitages”—that is, eight garam, or major temples, and nine hermitages, or small temples.
3. Hyojeon Sim Noh-sung was a man of letters from the late reign of King Yeongjo to the early reign of King Heonjong, famous as a gourmet and a heavy smoker.
He visited Geumgangsan, saw a noodle frame hanging at a temple called Woljeongsa, and wrote in his diary that he “called the monks over and consulted them,” then ate the noodles they made and criticized them as tasteless. Still, perhaps he had some conscience, because he mostly blamed the ingredients.
In context, he may have meant Woljeongsa on Odaesan. It would be even more terrifying if he’d simply summoned people at will in that great temple, but Sim Noh-sung was a man driven into exile many times by political strife, so he wasn’t exactly a man of power to begin with. He probably didn’t act that way.
---