The Yacha
Dokgo Dan-ya liked Yi Do.
"I'd like a word with him alone. Would you all give us some space?"
At those words, the elders including Chodong vacated their seats without a word of protest. Elder Chodong's gaze did linger on Yi Do for a long moment as he was the last to leave, but Yi Do paid it no mind.
Stare all you like.
Myo Man-li, the last one remaining, spoke to the Sect Master with a ferocious expression.
"He's mine. Try to steal him from me, and you'll get a proper look at what madness truly is."
"Great Elder."
"What is it."
"Have I not told you? The beginning of all things in this world is the small universe within, and its master is the self."
"...Spare me the scripture recitation. I warned you clearly, didn't I? And he came in under my name, so at least give him a proper position."
"Very well."
Dokgo Dan-ya smiled softly. Myo Man-li scrunched his brow at that smile, grumbled under his breath, and left the Sect Master's hall.
Once only the two of them remained, Yi Do saluted with a cupped fist.
"I greet the Black Wind Sword Venerable."
It was proper courtesy — but anyone entering the Asura Sword Sect would never have used those words. I greet the Sect Master — that was the fixed greeting. This meant Yi Do was still drawing a line between himself and the sect. It meant he was proceeding with caution.
And strangely, that made Dokgo Dan-ya like him all the more.
Dokgo Dan-ya asked.
"Do you revere the Demonic Dao?"
"Do I look like it?"
"Then the Hegemonic Dao?"
"That depends on the observer."
"Then the Righteous Dao?"
Yi Do answered with an unshakable face.
"I revere nothing."
"Hmm..."
"The path I walk, the actions I take — all of it is moved by debts and grudges, and decided by gain. How any of it appears to others is of no concern to me."
"And if you become the enemy of the entire Murim for it?"
"Then I will crush the Murim."
"And if Heaven comes to regard you as a calamity?"
"Then I will crush Heaven as well."
"And if you die for it?"
"I will have lived without regrets, so I will die laughing."
And in truth, Yi Do had died laughing.
A bright, guileless smile bloomed across Dokgo Dan-ya's face.
"Good."
Yi Do studied him in silence. The undisputed powerhouse of the present martial world. Even when Yi Do pushed boundaries, he was not a man without manners.
"There is something I wish to ask."
"Ask."
"As I understand it, the Asura Sword Sect reveres freedom and the Hegemonic Dao."
"That's not wrong."
"My coming to the Asura Sword Sect was entirely my own will — yet you, Sect Master, accepted my entry without hesitation. May I ask why?"
A smile curved Dokgo Dan-ya's lips.
"Because this is the Asura Sword Sect."
"..."
"What is a martial artist, if not the freest of people in this world? And what is the path of the martial artist, if not the road granted to the free? The Righteous Dao, the Demonic Dao, the Hegemonic Dao, the Heretical Dao — every one of these is a choice that can only be made by those who savor their freedom to the fullest. Even after I entered this sect, I never failed to hear the rumors about you."
Yi Do stayed quiet.
"Some call it the Demonic Dao because your handiwork is excessive and your dealings with officialdom run deep — but as I see it, you are far removed from the Demonic Dao. Then is it the Righteous Dao? No, that isn't it either. Then the Hegemonic Dao? Its character certainly runs strong in you, but strictly speaking, not that either. You walk a path that is yours alone. Depending on the observer's eye, you might appear demonic, or hegemonic, or righteous. It is a dangerously ambiguous road... and I find that I like it."
Licking his lips as if savoring a delicacy, Dokgo Dan-ya continued.
"Above all — a martial artist who reached the Convergence of Three Harmonies at the age of seventeen. How could I possibly refuse one whose future shines so brightly?"
"I understand."
"But you know this already. Every choice carries a price."
As if he could fail to know.
"As long as the Asura Sword Sect stands behind you, you must treat the sect's interests as your own and act accordingly. On this point alone, as Sect Master, I cannot compromise. I ask that you understand — what say you?"
"I have no objections. Only—"
"Only?"
"I am merely concerned whether the Asura Sword Sect can bear the consequences of the actions I intend to take."
Hahahahahahaha.
Dokgo Dan-ya erupted into wild laughter.
"What an amusing fellow. You worry whether the Eight Great Sects can contain you? Hahaha — this one, truly, is something else."
Dokgo Dan-ya's laughter cut off abruptly.
"Then go mad and run wild, once. I find myself curious as well — whether this Asura Sword Sect can hold you, or whether it cannot."
Dokgo Dan-ya meant every word of it.
"The Great Elder brought you in, but I cannot hand you a great office outright. Now, what would suit..."
After a moment's thought, Dokgo Dan-ya smiled again and spoke.
"Unofficially, your post will be Dharma Protector to the Great Elder."
"And my official post?"
"As it happens, a branch leader's seat in Asura Pavilion has opened up. Not long ago, a clash with the Pacheon Fist Sect left eighteen branch members and the branch leader dead. Take that man's seat."
"Yes. I will."
Yi Do saluted with a cupped fist.
"I'll take my leave."
Leaving the nodding Sect Master behind him, Yi Do made for the door. As he went, Dokgo Dan-ya's voice reached his ears.
"I hope this entry into the Asura Sword Sect proves a beneficial thing — for you, and for me alike."
"Did you not just tell me to treat the sect's interests as my own?"
"I did."
"And I told you that I am a man who moves by debts and grudges."
"That is also true."
"Then I will act treating the sect's debts and grudges as my own. Whether the 'end' I pursue and the 'end' you pursue are one and the same, I cannot say — but I will do my utmost."
Dokgo Dan-ya gazed at Yi Do in silence for a long while before finally speaking.
"Good."
He waved a hand.
"Now go. Keep you here much longer, and I shudder to imagine what our fire-breathing Great Elder might get up to."
Yi Do left the Sect Master's hall without another word.
Alone now, Dokgo Dan-ya's lips were still brimming with that smile.
He murmured in a small voice.
"I've no habit of taking what belongs to another, and yet..."
Strangely.
He coveted the boy terribly.
Myo Man-li, waiting outside in visible agitation, turned his head.
He watched his future disciple ambling toward him.
"Well? How did it go? How did it go, I say?"
"How did what go? Nothing happened."
"...Really? Nothing at all about taking you as a direct disciple, or making you Young Sect Master... none of that?"
"No. Nothing of the sort."
"Really? That doesn't make any sense..."
Yi Do asked the man wearing that complicated expression a question — one he had genuinely wanted to ask for a long time.
"Must you make me your disciple?"
"What sort of question is that? Of course I must."
"I told you before — I already have a master I serve."
"..."
"That man made me who I am today, and he made the man I will become. He planted in me the will and the strength to decide every road I must walk and every road I do walk. Even if you insist on taking me as your disciple until the end of days, I have no intention of becoming Myo Man-li's disciple."
"Hmm..."
"And frankly, setting the matter of discipleship aside, I have already learned your martial arts. Walking beside you as comrades — that I can accept. Even becoming sworn brothers — that too. Anything beyond that is difficult."
This was less a matter of drawing a line than of laying bare Yi Do's own resolve — a resolve that would not waver, now or ever. And Myo Man-li read the sincerity in it.
"Hmm... yes, I did hear you had a master you already serve... Difficult. Truly difficult."
"Though the little games you played with that cultivation manual were going a bit far."
Myo Man-li flashed a sly grin.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Yi Do didn't bother pressing the point.
In his past life, he had heard all manner of rumors about Myo Man-li. But he had not believed all of them. Yi Do's principles were firm. Rumors were not to be trusted — unless he had seen a thing with his own eyes, he withheld judgment.
"Do you, by chance, prefer men?"
Myo Man-li's face twisted into something grotesque.
"This brat — there's truly nothing out of your mouth anymore, is there? What kind of senseless filth is that? All my life I have embraced nothing but women; never once have I embraced a man."
"I see. It's just that your obsession with me is so enormous, the question suggested itself."
"Heh heh..."
Yi Do's expression turned odd.
So that rumor about him violating men — it had been nothing more than the crude slander people always smeared across archfiends, then.
He wanted to ask about the affair with the Imperial Palace, but that was an event that had not yet come to pass, and it felt wrong to probe. No — actually, now that the topic had brushed against it, better to ask while he could.
"Do you happen to have any connection with the Imperial Palace?"
At those words, Myo Man-li flinched.
"...What... did you say?"
The reaction was so bizarre that even Yi Do found himself thrown off balance.
"Heh heh heh. A connection? What nonsense is this now. I have no connection with the Imperial Palace."
But for an instant — a fleeting one — Myo Man-li had most certainly been flustered.
Strange. Why that reaction? He could hardly be some hidden blood relative of the palace.
So it seemed the rumors about Myo Man-li had not all been distorted after all.
Still, setting aside the palace affair and the like, it remained true that he had razed the Murim into a wasteland thoroughly enough to earn the name of Public Enemy.
Yi Do set it aside for now. What did it matter, one way or the other? He judged only the present.
"No connection, then that's all I need. And the Sect Master told me to serve as your Dharma Protector and take up a branch leader's seat in one of the branches. What exactly does a Dharma Protector do?"
"Hmm... I've no need of anyone guarding me, so just do as you please. As for branch leader... best go speak with the Lord of Asura Pavilion yourself. Ah, and I hear you've been given leave. If you've nothing to do, go down to the General Affairs Pavilion over there and see about finding yourself some occupation."
Something in Myo Man-li's manner was off — rambling, almost flustered. As Yi Do quietly studied him, he drew two books from inside his robe.
"What's that?"
"Take them."
"Well, I won't refuse a gif— hm?"
Myo Man-li went stiff with shock.
On the two volumes Yi Do held out were written the words Thunder Spirit Boundless Sword Art and Thunderquake Sundering Art.
These two martial arts.
Yi Do himself knew little of them — but to a wielder of thunder-force like Myo Man-li, they were anything but unfamiliar.
"You... these... don't tell me... these are the Iron-Blooded Demonic Emperor's arts?"
"You know of them?"
"You brat! How could anyone not know the Iron-Blooded Demonic Emperor? The monster who contended for supremacy of the world four hundred years ago — Sect Master of the Thunder Spirit Sect, the fiend who razed half of Kunlun... Hoo... don't tell me this is..."
Deeply shaken, Myo Man-li's eyes raced down the pages of the secret manuals.
He read straight through, then — thump — snapped them shut.
"You... don't tell me the master you serve is the Iron-Blooded Demonic Emperor himself."
"He is not."
"Then how do you have these... Hoo... no, more than that — why in the world are you giving them to me?"
"You gave me martial arts, did you not?"
Myo Man-li blinked twice.
"And you went to the trouble of bringing me into the Asura Sword Sect. By my own way of keeping accounts, that settles the debt."
"He... heheh... this fellow, truly... you really were properly insane."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"Yes... but are you certain you won't regret this? These are treasures beyond price. Among every martial art that exists in the Murim, these rank at the very top."
"Did I not tell you already?"
Yi Do's two eyes remained perfectly clear.
"I am a man who moves by debts and grudges. Those arts are of no use to me, and a man who can wield them better than I stands right before me — what could possibly matter more than that? By the way — you said the General Affairs Pavilion?"
"Y... yes. The General Affairs Pavilion..."
"Understood. I'll go on ahead."
He brushed straight past the dumbstruck old man.
Long after Yi Do had vanished from view, Myo Man-li stood staring blankly at the space where his back had been.
Walking on in silence, Yi Do stopped in his tracks.
He had not a single regret about the choices he had made so far. Joining the Asura Sword Sect was no exception. As he had said before — but he was curious.
When the Righteous-Demonic War broke out, the Asura Sword Sect was annihilated. That much was certain. The Sect Master? Gone. All of them, dead. Everyone perished — every last one, save for Great Elder Myo Man-li, who at the time had been dispatched to another region.
That was the truth.
And yet, right now, Yi Do was profoundly confused.
Regression meant carrying knowledge of the future in one's head — knowledge that no one in the present could possess. Looked at another way, the breadth of what he knew depended on how far his own experience had reached.
Myo Man-li's current realm was the very threshold of Entering Divinity, on the verge of stepping up from the Realm of Harmony. More than worthy of holding a Great Elder's post in a great sect.
Why Myo Man-li had almost left the sect, only to stop — Yi Do could roughly guess the reason, too. As of now, setting Dokgo Dan-ya aside, the finest master in the Asura Sword Sect was Myo Man-li. Were Myo to withdraw, the sect would sway on its foundations. And when Yi Do had said, in the future, that the man belonged to the rebellion's forces and had to die — how had Myo reacted? His attachment to the Asura Sword Sect was unmistakably deep. Because he could not bring himself to turn his back on it, he had never left.
Yi Do swept a hand back through his hair.
The war had not yet come, so the martial world of this era held at least ten masters of Myo Man-li's caliber or greater. What, then, of those above them?
The prime example: Dokgo Dan-ya, Sect Master of the Asura Sword Sect. As far as Yi Do knew, his martial realm stood at the very summit of Entering Divinity. He had never witnessed it firsthand, but by every account he had gathered from many sources, that was the accepted truth.
And yet.
When Yi Do had first laid eyes on Dokgo Dan-ya earlier, he had been forced to manage his expression with everything he had.
The Dokgo Dan-ya Yi Do beheld was, at the absolute minimum, of the Realm of Myth.
The number of Myth-realm masters presently existing in the martial world was exactly five. Dokgo Dan-ya was not counted among those five. The problem was that all five of them were Sect Masters of the Eight Great Sects. In other words, the upper five sects could sort their own hierarchy among themselves, while the remaining three could never lay claim to those seats — for want of a single Myth-realm master.
Even so, the Asura Sword Sect had long been rated above those other three sects, which was why it was granted the sixth rank among the Eight Great Sects.
That was the Asura Sword Sect.
Did any of this make sense?
However many masters were butchered when the Righteous-Demonic War came, a monster of Dokgo Dan-ya's caliber could absolutely protect the sect called Asura Sword Sect. No — beyond merely protecting it, he could contend for the highest seat of all the Eight Great Sects. Depending on his mood, he could declare before the world that he would unify the Murim outright.
'...Something is wrong here.'
It was far too strange. A monster of that caliber is known, in the future, as a mere Entering Divinity master? He even died alongside the sect when it fell?
Ah.
He didn't want this — not this soon.
But already, something reeked. The smell of scheming — the foul stench that rises when someone harbors a filthy heart.
Tsk.
Clicking his tongue lightly, Yi Do set off for the General Affairs Pavilion. First things first: he had to raise his martial realm. Given the state of his current body, he needed elixirs and time. And to obtain those two things, he had to first prove his worth within the Asura Sword Sect.
He was just moving to walk again when it happened.
"Um... Ex-excuse me, Lord Yi Do! One moment, please!"
He thought he had misheard. The voice.
It was far, far too familiar.
Yi Do turned his head.
A slender man with long hair. A strikingly youthful face — twenty years old at the very most. The man came up to him and said,
"The Great Elder asked me to show you around the sect — would that be alright?"
Yi Do stared at him in silence. Dissected this way and that, examined from every angle — the man before him was, without question, the 'him' Yi Do knew.
Why was he here?
He was a man who should not be here.
Why, of all people—
"Um... Lord Yi Do? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
More to the point.
"What is your name?"
"Ah — forgive me for the late introduction. I am Myeong Hyeon, a second-generation disciple of the Asura Sword Sect. I also serve as a member of the Sacred Flame Branch of Asura Pavilion."
Yi Do laughed outright.
"Myeong Hyeon?"
"Yes. Myeong Hyeon."
How fascinating. Barely a couple of hours since he had joined the Asura Sword Sect — how was it that such endlessly entertaining things kept happening? Above all, the fact that his ties to the Imperial Sword Sect proved so absurdly tenacious kept drawing hollow laughter out of him, again and again.
Myeong Hyeon.
Yi Do knew this man.
The Imperial Sword Sect kept three hidden martial artists. None of the three bore a name — they had been orphans from birth, raised directly by the Sword Emperor's own hand. They were known only by code names: Azure Dragon, Black Tortoise, and Yacha. When Yi Do had faced them, all three had been Harmony-realm masters, and the arts they wielded were, without exception, demonic arts.
Exceedingly troublesome opponents, all of them.
And the Myeong Hyeon standing before him right now was the Yacha.
Why was the Yacha here, of all places — in the Asura Sword Sect?
His instincts were already curdling.
Perhaps coming here had been a mistake after all.
"You said you were heading to the General Affairs Pavilion — allow me to guide you there."
Yi Do let out a long sigh.
"Fine. Lead the way."
"Yes, my lord."
And Yi Do followed behind the brightly smiling Yacha — no, behind Myeong Hyeon.