Unite Under the Power of Faith (3)
Cha Un-hong felt as if a storm of buckwheat noodles were raging right in front of her eyes.
That was all she could make out.
First, Taesu hurled his broad axe like the javelin throw he’d used on Mount Baekdu, using the recoil to fling his body backward.
Min-yeol, of course, dodged the throw.
But the Dang-chwi monk hiding behind the paper door behind him wasn’t so lucky. He couldn’t see it coming.
Taesu, who had been sitting when he threw the axe, had also narrowly avoided being pierced himself, but he couldn’t avoid taking a vicious blow from the axe’s ringed end and dropping unconscious.
Needless to say, that was thanks to Taesu’s senses, which could hear the breathing of a man through a thin paper door if he chose to.
Itkyu was greatly startled.
I’ve mastered ninjutsu and still couldn’t feel his presence. To take down a master like that in a single stroke—just how far does Park Do-gi’s martial skill go?
He was about to find out.
The instant after the bowl of noodles flew and the strands danced through the air, the two men were already set in their stances.
Taesu crouched low with the axe in his hands.
Across from him, Min-yeol had drawn a vajra from his sleeve.
[Well, I can’t exactly fault you for carrying an axe too, but damn, that’s a pretty monkish weapon you’ve got there. Looks expensive.]
But this time, Taesu wasn’t trying to take it.
It looked more like he intended to smash it.
He sprang forward as if a beast were lunging at its prey.
CRASH!
Min-yeol felt as though his vajra, arm, and knee were all breaking at once.
Even though he dispersed his weight as much as possible, the way Choe Je-u had once tried to absorb Taesu’s kick, it was still this bad.
Unless the vajra was a true masterpiece worthy of a Dang-chwi leader, and unless it was made from a very thick steel rather than something flimsy, he would already have been dead.
But there was no time to nurse the pain.
In the very next instant, Min-yeol had to whirl the vajra desperately to block the axe.
His forehead.
Below his left ribs.
Then his right shoulder.
His carotid.
In the blink of an eye, axe and vajra clashed four times.
This, this is bad!
The axe technique Taesu had begun to grasp in Chuncheon was now evolving beyond defense and into offense.
If the first strike had been heavy and crushing, now it came in a blistering storm. It was like a seasoned striker seizing the initiative and raining down punches.
But Min-yeol was no pushover either.
Like Taesu, he wielded a short, slow weapon, so he too used his hands and feet with practiced ease.
Hup!
The karate-like thrust Taesu had seen earlier came again.
Kizami-zuki was one of karate’s fastest techniques. It was fortunate he’d seen it once already.
Against any martial art, the technique from that art was naturally the most effective counter.
Taesu, waiting for the attack, swiftly dropped into a kumite stance.
Then, with his left arm—the one not holding the axe—he bent it tightly and whipped it outward to strike Min-yeol’s fist aside. Unlike Min-yeol, it was a textbook karate parry.
Min-yeol’s eyes widened.
He blocked that?
And he didn’t stop at blocking.
After using the circular block to defend himself with near-perfect stability, Taesu immediately stabbed at his opponent’s opening.
A sweeping right leg.
Min-yeol suspected he was dealing with a fool, but he still snapped the vajra toward it.
In that stance, he couldn’t use the axe. Because he was holding it in his right hand.
His right leg is finished now!
But in that instant, Min-yeol realized his premise was wrong.
Taesu’s axe was in his left hand.
Since when?
Taesu was only just trying it now, but in this era, anyone who made a living through violence had to pass through “this stage” before being recognized as a true master.
The lightning-fast exchange of weapons between left and right hand.
Or the technique by which a dagger or pistol seemed to appear by magic in a hand that had been empty a moment before.
That was because fights in the premodern world always erupted suddenly, in matters of life and death.
Even the gunslingers of the American West knew that trick. And because America hadn’t changed all that much since the nineteenth century, unlike Joseon, you can still watch it on YouTube today.
Taesu’s right leg was, of course, a feint.
The already withdrawn right foot stamped the floor as if it would smash it to pieces. Cha Un-hong felt the whole room shudder.
The force that could survive the hardwood floor built by the legendary architect Chimgyedang Min-yeol was then transferred without issue to the ex-class axe at the end of the opposite left arm.
The axe blade flew straight toward Min-yeol’s empty head.
* * *
CRASH!
Itkyu was shocked once again.
His skill and strength were such that, as he had shown at Nine-Dragon Waterfall, he could lift a man by the end of a staff.
And yet now he nearly lost his staff altogether and was flung backward with it.
What terrible power!
Two of the staff’s rings had been ripped clean off. If this had been a Japanese sword instead of a thick iron staff, it would have snapped like nothing.
And at the same time, Min-yeol’s head, now slumped to the ground, would have been split open too.
Itkyu couldn’t even speak carelessly now. He couldn’t afford to disrupt his breathing.
So Cha Un-hong spoke instead.
“Hold on a moment.”
“Why?”
Cha Un-hong thought hard about that “why.”
Her thoughts raced as quickly as Taesu’s axe.
To be honest, Taesu’s anger had always been, as usual, driven more by emotion than reason.
Of course, Min-yeol going after Yi Won-beom was practically a natural death sentence. Not because Yi Won-beom was anyone precious to Taesu, but because Min-yeol had tried to threaten him on purpose, knowing exactly what that relationship meant.
In other words, it had been a matter of mouthy insolence.
Min-yeol’s intention—to seize the initiative by exposing Park Do-gi’s weakness first—could not be denied. If Taesu had been dealing with him alone in words, he might have been dragged into it.
But ordinary people don’t normally go straight to chopping off a man’s head over that.
If you talked a little longer, maybe there’d be something useful in it. If you held back your rage for a moment, perhaps you could even make use of him somehow.
But Cha Un-hong discarded all those fleeting arguments at once.
She knew Park Do-gi. Better than anyone.
That kind of “reasoning” was exactly the sort of thing the man before her would do. So Cha Un-hong said, “Because I’m telling you to.”
Itkyu nearly dropped his staff in disbelief.
And in the next instant, he really did lose his grip.
Park Do-gi let the force out of his body and lowered the axe. The resentment Itkyu had thought was long gone, severed and vanished after being castrated by that bastard, surged up like a volcano in the form of betrayal.
By then, Min-yeol wasn’t even in a state to pick up the vajra anymore.
“Ah, th-thank you for helping me twice.”
“Thank Park Do-gi for it. If he’d brought his axe down one more time, I couldn’t have stopped it.”
“If I used a technique from Kurama Yoshin-ryu, it might have been different, but I didn’t really feel like going that far.”
His companion was Park Do-gi, and Cha Un-hong.
That was why Park Do-gi had stopped as well.
Taesu glanced at Cha Un-hong once, then said to Min-yeol, “From now on, don’t talk nonsense.”
* * *
To be honest, Min-yeol had nothing to say except nonsense.
He had indeed tried to “move Park Do-gi as he pleased.”
Taesu had noticed that thanks to Gang-sang.
In the conflict now unfolding between Gang-sang and Taesu, Gang-sang had been the first to act, but Taesu was the first to decide to become an enemy.
Why was that?
Because the ecological positions of Gang-sang and Taesu overlapped.
The same was true of these Dang-chwi monks and the Bobusang.
That was why it was difficult from the outset for Dang-chwi to truly help the Bobusang. What Taesu had said first—that they were “beasts gnawing the same meat”—was meant in exactly that sense.
Then, as Taesu saw it, there had to be a hierarchy of above and below.
Lions and ants both feed on the carcass of the same beast.
Was Taesu supposed to be strung along to Dang-chwi’s liking, or become one of their subordinates, while Dang-chwi became Taesu’s subordinate?
That objection was also valid.
If they had not committed crimes.
From here on, the story was different. Taesu glanced at the Dang-chwi monk who had fallen earlier after being struck by the staff.
The other ordinary monks had all run away. Taesu had called Itkyu over and told him to bring the man here.
“You’ve got a dagger.”
“……It was never an attempt at a secret ambush. If that were the case, we’d have called in more of our brothers. It’s just that there were many things we needed to be careful about…….”
“Keep circling around the answer and I’ll break this bastard’s neck right now. Say what you were trying to do.”
Taesu placed his right hand on the nape of the Woljeongsa staff fighter’s neck, right over the carotid groove.
His left hand was still holding the axe, ready for any attack from Min-yeol.
As with everyone who faced Taesu, Min-yeol had no time to think. He blurted out, “We thought you were about to start something, sooner or later. So we figured we’d find out in advance, then either fan the flames or stop you, and use the timing to our advantage.”
In the end, it meant they’d wanted to manipulate Taesu into staging a rebellion.
Taesu asked what the goal of that rebellion was.
“What exactly is your ‘timing’?”
“The same as yours.”
“I’ll kill you. Quit playing with words.”
Taesu grabbed the monk by the neck and lifted him. The Dang-chwi monk, who had been pretending to be unconscious, coughed weakly.
“……The time when we are no longer oppressed.”
“You’re already living however you want. Robbing people, chasing women.”
“Damn it all, do you think anyone does this because they want to? Do you think morality exists so other people can see it? Being aboveboard is something you prove to yourself first!”
Taesu did not ask whether the man was insane for daring to shout at someone who had already lost.
Min-yeol kept yelling, ignoring even the safety of his own brother monks.
“We, too—yes, just as you said—we live in lust, murder, intimidation, and every kind of apostasy, and when we look back at ourselves, we’re ashamed and horrified. We’re furious, and our very foundations collapse beneath us. We do this because we don’t want to be that way!”
“Now you’re finally saying something right.”
“What?”
“Tell me what you want to do. Don’t tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Itkyu, the monk, looked as though he had fallen into a koan.
Surprisingly, Cha Un-hong looked the same.
Min-yeol hesitated for a moment, then said, “We…… we want to come out of the shadows.”
“I see.”
Min-yeol drew a breath. After a pause, he continued.
“Not all monks are the same. I don’t know how much you know about Dang-chwi, but the great temples in Seoul have all enjoyed glory by cozying up to the court, while pretending not to see and abandoning their fellow disciples.”
Just as the great merchants of Joseon had, before Taesu and Cha Un-hong appeared, colluded with power to enjoy wealth and splendor comparable to that of prime ministers, while tolerating and even participating in the state’s exploitation and discrimination against small traders.
The great merchants had the power to stop it, just as Gang-sang and Song-sang did.
Likewise, not all monks were treated with contempt.
Merchants and monks alike were in no position to curse only the yangban.
They too chose sacrifices among themselves and made scapegoats of them. Instead of helping one another, they scrabbled to use each other as stepping-stones.
Dang-chwi were the ones who refused that.
Long ago, when the fearsome king swept Buddhism clean and forcibly merged the sects into the two schools of doctrine and meditation, they had refused to accept it and run away.
Cut off from learning and wealth, they declined and became Dang-chwi. At this point, they were little different from a band of thieves.
Min-yeol looked back at the fellow Dang-chwi who still hadn’t gotten back on his feet.
What he had said earlier to Taesu had been true.
Hiding the Woljeongsa staff fighter had been less a calculated scheme than a habit.
Like the natural selection that makes most insects choose dark, damp places once they leave the shadows and find predators swarming everywhere.
“You asked what we want? Let me say it again. We only want to come out of the shadows. If by that you mean we were willing to spill less of our own blood and use you as a tool, then I’ll admit it.”
Min-yeol was about to continue his excuse with a “but,” then stopped dead.
A not-insignificant amount of time passed.
Min-yeol said, as if bleeding the words out, “Yes. We’ve always been that way. Maybe that’s why…… today ended up like this.”
* * *
Save for one person, the rest of them fell into a rather uncomfortable silence.
Taesu said, “Looks like we’ve got something to bargain with.”
“……What do you mean?”
“If you were going to use me, then after threats came the bait you’d use to lure me, right? Tell me.”
Cha Un-hong, who had been waiting for her turn to say that, was a little surprised.
Taesu hadn’t stopped because he was helpless before a pretty woman or anything like that.
Cha Un-hong knew Taesu well, and Taesu knew her just as well, so he had stopped because “she told me to.”
In any case, for Taesu, who tended not to think very clearly when angry, that sort of “feudal” chain of command worked remarkably well. As long as trust was guaranteed, feudalism was incredibly efficient.
And if the blood in his head cooled again, Taesu could once more judge matters rationally.
Min-yeol seemed hesitant.
Earlier, a bargain had been possible. But now it was different.
Still, what could he do? Once a sinner had already been defeated, there was little else he could claim.
In the end, Min-yeol spoke.
“Judging by the route you’ve taken so far, I assume you’re planning to cross into Hamgyeong-do. Am I right?”
“Right.”
“A merchant would be headed to the open markets in Bukcheong and Hoeryeong. The days when the annual markets open are fixed, yes, but the real action is in the private bargaining that happens on both sides of the Tumen River under that pretext.”
In the long run, as Cha Un-hong and I had discussed in Samcheok, we’d have to seize control of Wonsan Port. But in the short term, he was right.
Taesu agreed. “Yeah.”
In fact, even from the standpoint of “opening the country to foreign trade,” the northern border markets Min-yeol mentioned were more important right now.
When people said “opening ports,” they tended to think of Europe, America, or Japan, but that was only because they were the winners of the original history.
In any matter involving Joseon and foreign powers, China could never be left out.
“We have connections there. I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but there’s a village on that side that believes in a somewhat unusual Buddhist path.”
Aha. Married monks. Well, if their ancestors were Jurchen, that might be useful.
“Got it. I understand what you mean.”
“Now it’s your turn. What can you do for us?”
Min-yeol seemed to expect Taesu to think for a long while, or perhaps raise his axe again.
But Taesu answered at once.
“You said you wanted out of the shadows.”
“I did. You mean you’ll get us out? If so, we wouldn’t have needed to fight like this.”
“No. You needed a beating.”
“…….”
“If all you can think about is getting out of the shadows, then you keep looking for somewhere to use someone and somewhere to watch. So what if only you get out?”
Min-yeol suppressed the rising revulsion for a moment and thought it over.
They could leave the shadows.
But if they did, someone else would take their place there. That was the law of the world, and the Dang-chwi—who had been through it themselves—understood that better than anyone.
Just as their old foes had once driven Dang-chwi into the shadows, Dang-chwi would now be driving others into them.
As if he had caught hold of the first thread of enlightenment, Min-yeol raised his head.
Then Taesu said, “I’ll cut down the trees for you.”
Not merely to escape the shade, but to bring them sunlight.
That did not mean Park Do-gi was some warm leader like the sun.
It meant he had an axe, true to his name, and he would happily chop down the trees.
Park Do-gi had never promised true equality for all, or the glorious flourishing of Joseon Buddhism.
Park Do-gi was simply saying this:
Whatever happens afterward, shouldn’t we crush those bastards first?
Min-yeol could not help recalling the theory of dependent origination that even a shaved-headed monk would have heard of at least once.
All concepts depend on one another. Without the opposite, there is no principle.
The “another king” Yi Ha-eung had thought of in Jeju carried that same meaning. A king is a king only if there is an opposing concept beside him.
That was Anti-King, and that was Antichrist. The greatest enemy bears witness to the greatest self.
Min-yeol said, dazed, “You…… what exactly are you?”
“I’m a human being.”
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