Even If I Covered My Ears
Even if she covered her ears, it was clear her husband would force his story upon her anyway. There was no stopping Banya at this point. 'Didn't he tell me to listen first and then decide?' Fine. No matter what he said, she would stubbornly insist she felt no sincerity in his words and refuse to budge. It was just like Hwa Banya to twist even a good child into being rebellious. Yeongso sat down, clasping her hands tightly. Her sullen expression remained firmly in place.
"Do you know who my master is?" Banya asked, taking a seat in the chair opposite her.
Still nursing her anger, Yeongso remained stubbornly silent. But even if she did speak, her only answer would have been a flat "No." In truth, she had no idea who Banya's master was. Her husband had never mentioned them.
"The only people who know of our master-disciple bond are myself, my master, and the Heavenly Killing Star. Now, my wife will be added to that list."
Banya explained that to tell this story, he had to go back to when he was nine years old. Caught in the vicious power struggles between the wives and concubines of Jeokhwa Palace, his mother, Yeop Dohong, fell gravely ill without ever receiving proper medicine. Her once-exquisite beauty had long since withered, and his biological father, Hwa Jak, naturally stopped visiting her. But while Yeop Dohong slowly and miserably wasted away, her illegitimate son, Banya, began to stand out in the Jeokhwa Palace training grounds.
Even when the other children beat him until his bones nearly broke, Banya never missed a day at the training grounds or the academy. Unlike the other boys, who only looked for excuses to skip class, Banya was brilliant—show him one thing, and he would master ten. Soon, many instructors began to notice his exceptional talent.
"Then one day, my biological father visited the training grounds. Even his blind eyes couldn't miss my talent. True to his rotten nature, he openly praised me right in front of his legitimate son, Hwa Mujin, while utterly humiliating him. He told Hwa Mujin that if he was going to be that pathetic, he should go wash dishes at Chunyangru, and that he had no use for such a useless son."
Hwa Jak had marched straight to the main quarters to torment his primary wife as well. Watching his mother tremble with rage before finally bursting into tears, Hwa Mujin snapped.
"Hwa Mujin framed me. He claimed I was trying to murder our father. He said the only reason I worked so hard at the training grounds and the academy was to win our father's favor, only to kill him the moment his guard was down."
A vial of poison Banya had never seen before was found in his room. To make matters worse, Hwa Jak was already in a foul mood, as a beautiful concubine he had spent a long time wooing had just been poisoned to death. The moment it occurred to him that he could have been the target, he stopped seeing his nine-year-old illegitimate son as a human being.
"I was beaten within an inch of my life. I didn't say a single word to those bastards screaming at me to beg for forgiveness."
When he finally regained consciousness, he and his sick mother had been dumped outside the back gate of Jeokhwa Palace.
"My mother didn't last three days. Did you know, wife? Those without connections or money aren't allowed to be buried inside Nagan-seong. You have to carry the corpse on your back and bury it in the wild mountains outside the city walls, but..."
Banya laughed soundlessly. "How is a nine-year-old boy, beaten so badly he can barely stand, supposed to carry an adult woman all that way on his back?"
He said he had no choice but to turn away, leaving his mother's still-warm body behind in a back alley.
"All I could think about was killing them." In an instant, Banya's eyes darkened. "I wanted to kill them. I wanted to slaughter them all and take my revenge. But to do that, I had to learn martial arts. A bloody, broken nine-year-old couldn't even climb over the walls of Jeokhwa Palace."
"...But surely it must have been difficult to find a master?" Yeongso couldn't help but ask.
And indeed, it would have been. Jeokhwa Palace was one of the largest Sapa sects. With countless disciples and a thriving network of restaurants, inns, and silk shops across multiple provinces, their financial power was immense. Naturally, their influence within the Sapa was absolute. What sect would dare take in a child who had been cast out by Jeokhwa Palace? Especially a half-dead, battered child.
"I expected it to be hard back then, but..." Banya shook his head. His jaw clenched, a clear sign that the memories of that time were rushing back. "What I faced wasn't just being turned away at the door. I don't know what my biological father told them, but every sect I approached tried to kill me. Once, when I refused to leave and kept bowing my head, they stripped off my rag-like clothes and spat on me."
"Heavens..."
"They told me that if I endured the humiliation, they would accept me as a disciple. I did as they asked, only to be mocked for actually believing them."
Banya was rejected by every single sect he visited. There were still places he hadn't tried, but even if he risked his life to go there, he knew the outcome would be no different. The young Banya's murderous intent and despair festered deep within his soul.
"And then, I met that person. She said she only saved me at first because she thought I was a girl." 'Because I was incredibly pretty back then,' Banya said, lightly tapping his own cheek as if to say, 'You can tell just by looking at me, right?'
"I was born with exceptional looks, after all. On top of that, my voice hadn't cracked yet, and since I didn't even have a ribbon to tie my hair, it hung loose like a girl's."
"But," Yeongso interjected cautiously, "if she only saved girls... didn't she have rather sinister intentions?"
"Ah, about that." Banya said this was exactly where the story got interesting. "The person who saved me was a woman. A fierce, sharp-featured beauty who looked to be in her mid-thirties. The moment she realized my actual gender, she tried to kill me. She said she was utterly sick of men."
Banya chuckled, recalling how she had complained about not wanting to save a man even by mistake. "But I had already witnessed how incredible her martial arts were. I had even heard her title. It flashed through my mind that this might be the absolute last chance I would ever get."
The young Banya had fallen to his knees before the woman who held a drawn sword, begging her to take him as her disciple.
"I told her in detail what my biological father and half-brother had done. With bloodshot eyes, I told her I wanted to take my revenge, cut off their dicks, and offer them before my mother's spirit. I told her I wanted to slaughter every single bastard who had ever looked down on me."
Apparently, that did the trick. The woman had suddenly burst into a shrill, ringing laugh and ordered him to bow to her three times.
"Could your master's title happen to be..."
"The Yin Blood Demonic Empress, Dokgo Mimi. A notorious demoness feared by both the Jeongpa and Sapa for absorbing the internal energy of men."
Even Yeongso, who had lived a sheltered life tucked away in her family's estate, had heard of her terrifying reputation.
Banya spoke as if suddenly remembering a detail. "Would you believe me if I told you that, by my master's orders, I lived dressed in girls' clothes until I was twelve?"
Yeongso stared blankly at her husband. His long, thick eyelashes, sharp features, and striking, gorgeous looks. Banya was indeed remarkably beautiful, but with his broad shoulders and tall frame, it was impossible to mistake him for a woman now. Anyone could tell he was a man from a mile away. To think her husband had spent his childhood dressed as a girl.
"But why only until you were twelve?"
"That was when my voice began to break. The moment my master heard my voice cracking with a harsh, metallic rasp, she called it disgusting and told me to change into men's clothes immediately."
Even so, Banya defended Dokgo Mimi, saying she wasn't an entirely terrible person. "She would treat me well, then curse at me, then beat me... she did whatever she pleased, but at least she kept her word. She taught me martial arts every single day. And she never let her disciple starve."
For the young Banya, that was more than enough. So, he grit his teeth and endured the brutal training. Though he surpassed his master's realm before even reaching adulthood, he did not rashly enter the Gangho, choosing instead to bide his time.
"Though I did happen to pick up the Heavenly Killing Star while he was fleeing from an execution ground during that time."
Dokgo Mimi had laughed in disbelief when she saw her disciple return with a stray in tow. When his master declared that she had nothing left to teach him and would rather leave on her own two feet before she ended up dying by his hand, Banya had bowed to her.
"I swore to her that wherever she went, I would make sure she heard the news of Hwa Jak of Jeokhwa Palace being castrated by his own son."
And a few years later, Banya kept his promise. In a single night, over the course of just a few hours, he single-handedly decimated Jeokhwa Palace, the largest Sapa sect. On the very grey stone floor where he had been beaten as a child, he nailed his biological father's hands and feet to the ground. They said Hwa Jak's screams that night could be heard all the way outside the walls of Nagan-seong.