Chapter 222
Chapter 222: Ho-ae and Seok-gyeong (3)
His feet were heavy.
It wasn't because his load was heavy. Even carrying two people's worth—the bundle tied to his back and the pack he had taken from the staggering middle-aged new disciple—his legs held firm.
What was heavy wasn't his feet, but his heart.
Trudge, trudge.
It had been about an Hour since passing through Gangdo's city gate. An unpaved road wound along in curves, and on either side of it, reeds of considerable height swayed in the morning breeze.
The dust rising from the front of the formation sparkled like gold dust in the morning sunlight.
Seok-gyeong walked while watching a man's back through that dust.
Kim Rae-won. Guild Master of Hero Gate.
He hadn't turned around once. And yet his pace was being adjusted in a strangely precise way. When those at the rear fell behind, he slowed ever so slightly; when the formation closed in again, he sped back up. As though he had eyes in the back of his head.
Whether that was martial arts or sheer instinct, there was no way for Seok-gyeong to know.
***
A procession of dozens was crossing the plain.
Twenty new disciples. More than half were already gasping for breath. Though only One Full Hour had passed since their departure, two were already panting to the extreme, and one was barely moving forward with a hand on the shoulder of the person beside him.
Seok-gyeong was different.
His breathing was even and his stride steady. He had never formally learned martial arts. He had only been hauling loads, pulling carts, and digging earth since the age of twelve.
There were things his body remembered.
That shortening one's stride meant one could go longer. That breathing through the nose kept the chest from burning. That one had to put all one's weight into each step while releasing the strength in the ankles.
None of this was martial arts.
It was simply the habit of someone who had survived.
The wind blew. The reeds all leaned to one side at once, making a brushing sound as they swept. That sound felt like it was the rustle of young Seok-ran's hair scattering in the wind.
……Ten Thousand Gold Tower.
The moment that name surfaced, a bitter taste rose from deep in his throat.
***
Ten Thousand Gold Tower.
It was a mid-sized organization located on the street in Gangdo's western district, known as the Western Road.
The Western Road was a jumble of martial halls and merchant guilds, escort agencies and pleasure houses, big and small. Without exception, only their plaques were impressive; the insides were mostly shabby. A plaque was one's face, and one's face was one's survival.
Ten Thousand Gold Tower was one of those.
It called itself a martial hall. The name alone made it sound like a vast sect where ten thousand gold changed hands, but the reality was different. Its main businesses were freight transport, escort services, and…… gambling den operations. The name Martial Hall was nothing more than a facade to secure a place in the Western Road's hierarchy.
Sixth in the hierarchy.
Five above, dozens below. But even that hierarchy had little real meaning in practice.
There was only one thing that had meaning.
The Iron God Society.
The enormous power that ruled the western side of Gangdo. Every martial hall and merchant guild in the Western Road had to pay tribute to the Iron God Society.
If short on silver, tribute in goods.
If short in goods, tribute in people.
Seok-gyeong's father had been a low-ranking martial artist of Ten Thousand Gold Tower.
A level that didn't even reach Third-rate. Even so, he was a diligent man. At dawn he swept the Training Grounds, during the day he hauled goods, at night he guarded the gate. He was closer to an odd-jobs worker than a low-ranking member of a martial hall, but his father was not ashamed of it.
"I earn what goes in your belly. Earn for yourself what will move you forward."
Something his father said often.
His mother was a maidservant of Ten Thousand Gold Tower. She was in charge of laundry and cooking. A small, thin woman, but with large, rough hands. The memory of her smiling while smoothing down Seok-gyeong's hair with those hands is still vivid.
His father collapsed while hauling goods. It must have been accumulated exhaustion.
His mother did not survive that winter. Whether it was illness or a broken will, there was no way to know.
It was when Seok-gyeong was fourteen and Seok-ran was ten.
Seok-ran.
His younger sister, four years his junior. Her name contained the character Ran, meaning orchid. It was said to be the name their mother had given her. She was sometimes teased for having too beautiful a name given the family's circumstances, but Seok-ran liked that name.
Ten Thousand Gold Tower did not drive out the siblings who had become orphans.
Instead, they put them to work. Seok-gyeong became a porter, and Seok-ran went into the kitchen. They simply carried on the work their father had done, and the work their mother had done.
Up to that point it was bearable.
No.
It had to be borne.
When you carry a load, you either endure or collapse—one of two. There was no third option for a porter.
The Martial World was said to be like that by nature. It was not a place where sympathy was given to children who had lost their parents. If you could earn your keep you could live; if not, you had to leave.
And.
At that time in Gangdo, surviving as an orphan with no shelter like Ten Thousand Gold Tower was simply impossible.
Seok-gyeong worked hard enough for his sister's share too.
Two years passed that way.
The year Seok-ran turned twelve.
The season of tribute came around.
They turned over both silver and goods, and it still wasn't enough.
"We'll have to send a person."
That single sentence from the hall master split Seok-gyeong's life in two.
A 'person' worthy of being paid as tribute from Ten Thousand Gold Tower to the Iron God Society meant a young girl, or one whose body could be used as a servant.
It was Seok-ran.
Young, accustomed to kitchen work, and above all, without parents.
Seok-gyeong pleaded with the hall master. He knelt and slammed his forehead into the floor until it split open. The reply that came back was a single sentence.
"Do you want to add your own life to the offering as well?"
"Brother, it's all right. They said it's kitchen work."
Seok-ran's last words.
It was not all right.
Seok-gyeong knew that people sent to the Iron God Society for kitchen work almost never worked in a kitchen.
But he could do nothing.
Seok-ran was dragged away.
She didn't look back.
A month later, word arrived.
She had died, they said.
The body never came back. What kind of death it was when not even a body returned—Seok-gyeong did not imagine it. Not that he couldn't, but that he chose not to.
From that day on, something inside Seok-gyeong died.
Not anger, not grief, but something from a deeper place than either. An arrow aimed at himself had lodged there and would not come free.
He had done nothing.
When his sister was being dragged away.
Nothing at all.
***
The wind blew.
Seok-gyeong raised his head and looked up.
How high the sky is, as if it will pour down.
A blue sky without a single cloud. Beneath it, just over thirty people were marching, raising dust.
The scent of dry grass and soil blended in the breeze and brushed past the tip of his nose.
Ten Thousand Gold Tower had suddenly fallen apart. On the night that the man with the most solid-looking back in all the world had unified Gangdo, it had become that way.
That night, which everyone in Gangdo called the Night of the Long Sword.
—Are you going to kill all of us too?
—Have you done evil enough to die for?
—N-no. I…… have not done anything worthy of death.
—Then what are you afraid of? I do not kill those whose lives have value.
Perhaps it was the conversation that person had with someone from Ten Thousand Gold Tower on that night that had led him here.
After that day he had simply drifted through time, then left Ten Thousand Gold Tower. He had come out after seeing the recruitment announcement for Hero Gate's interview. He hadn't said anything separately to Ten Thousand Gold Tower. Who would care if one porter was missing? They had already become a pathetic group just barely clinging to life by then anyway.
He himself wasn't much different, but this one body alone had remained sturdy.
What kept him from leaving wasn't that there was something to hold onto. He had simply forgotten how to take a step forward.
Truthfully, even back then he hadn't the slightest expectation that he'd be able to get into Hero Gate.
The memory of the interview naturally surfaces.
He had been the two hundred and fifteenth—that is to say, the last.
He waited a long time. Hundreds had gone before him, and most had left the Training Grounds with their heads lowered. By the time Seok-gyeong's turn came, the sun had already set.
Only Guild Master Kim Rae-won remained before him.
His face was expressionless.
Not cold, but empty. Eyes that held no emotion. Like a well filled to the brim with water—deep, yet nothing reflected on the surface.
But the moment those hollow eyes looked at him, an inexplicable weight settled over his entire body. Breathing itself wasn't difficult, but strangely his back went straight.
"What is Chivalry?"
The moment he received that question, something…… made him feel ridiculous about himself. What did a porter who couldn't even be called the son of a Third-rate martial artist think he was doing here? So he thought for a long time. The answer that was eventually produced amounted to no more than……
"I don't know what Chivalry is."
Seok-gyeong lowered his head.
"However."
He gritted his teeth.
"However, I know that doing nothing when my younger sister was dragged away to the Iron God Society is not Chivalry."
Silence fell.
But it didn't last long.
"That sister—"
"She died."
Another brief silence.
"Name."
"I am Seok-gyeong."
"No, your sister's name."
Seok-gyeong looked up at Kim Rae-won with a slight sense of puzzlement. But his eyes remained like a fathomless abyss, impossible to read.
"She was……Seok-ran."
His voice trembled ever so slightly.
The Guild Master nodded a beat later.
"I'll remember that."
That was all.
But those words changed something. Some unknown ripple was spreading outward in Seok-gyeong's heart. What it meant, what seed it was—Seok-gyeong still cannot explain it.
Only one thing was certain.
His sister's name, which no one in Ten Thousand Gold Tower had ever breathed aloud—a name with no grave, as not even the body had come home—
He had said he would remember it.
The man who had turned Ten Thousand Gold Tower, which had abandoned Seok-ran, into an empty shell.
The man who had erased the Iron God Society, which had swallowed Seok-ran, from this world.
It was certain that he had shattered one stone-like door that had been shut for five years.
***
Around the time past the Hour of the Horse, the Guild Master stopped for the first time.
"Rest."
A single word, and the formation all sat down at once.
At the rear of the formation, there were two who were noticeably at ease. A woman with a sword on her back, and a man with a fan. They were said to be Trigram Leaders of Formation Tower. Since they were said to be formation arts practitioners, it was hard to know how to describe them, but they were likely masters who had reached a height he himself, an ignorant bumpkin, couldn't even imagine.
The woman leaned her back against a tree and stared forward with no change of expression whatsoever, while the man slowly fanned himself and scanned the formation. Even after having walked at nearly a sprint for half a day, not a speck of dust seemed to have landed on their clothing.
Why such people were in Gangdo, of all places, and in Hero Gate at that—Seok-gyeong had no way of knowing. But that fact alone was enough to confirm that the Guild Master of Hero Gate was no ordinary person.
Seok-gyeong sat in the grass, drank water, and watched the Guild Master up ahead.
Just then, a commotion broke out in front.
A disciple had collapsed.
The moment Seok-gyeong moved to stand, that child called Instructor was already running over. She grabbed the arm of the fallen disciple, helped him up, and handed him water. She said something in a low voice. It was too far away to hear, but the fallen disciple nodded and began walking again.
It was fast.
It was over before Seok-gyeong could even move.
She was called Instructor.
At best, a child who looked no more than fourteen or fifteen.
When he first heard it, he hadn't thought much of it. A martial arts sect is not a place where hierarchy is divided by age, but Hero Gate was clearly a completely new sect. He'd heard that even when the Iron God Society was destroyed, Guild Master Kim Rae-won had done it alone, and founded the sect alone as well. If that was so, then that child must have joined after the fact—which meant her martial arts could only be shallow……
But.
Watching now, he had no choice but to admit that judgment was wrong. That child is the first to spot those who fall behind. The fact that she had positioned the children in groups at the front and rear, and that the front group responded to the Guild Master's pace while the rear group caught those who lagged—she had calculated all of that before departure.
It was not a porter's eye.
It seemed more like the eye of a commander.
The rest lasted less than an Hour.
The child called Instructor went around personally checking the feet and legs of each person one by one. Then she went to the lean-framed woman and reported something in a low voice. The woman standing right beside the Guild Master. The woman who carried the roster.
The woman nodded, gave some instructions to the Instructor, and the Instructor returned to the formation and repositioned the children. She moved two children from the front group to the rear group, and brought one child with better stamina from the rear group forward.
Seok-gyeong watched all of this while only drinking water.
That woman seemed to be the Guild Master's subordinate. But she was no simple subordinate. Given that she was issuing directions to the Instructor, she appeared to be handling practical management. The Guild Master sets the direction, the woman handles the specifics, the Instructor moves the ground. Three people, each operating on a different level, were holding this formation together.
It was a structure he had never seen at Ten Thousand Gold Tower.
Ten Thousand Gold Tower's hall master only gave orders. The specifics were done by the hall master, and the ground work was done by the hall master too. Everyone else simply moved as directed. So when the hall master collapsed, everything collapsed with him.
There was no one to share the load, so one person carried it all, and when that one person fell, the load spilled to the ground with him.
Here was different.
Going beyond just different behavior—these had to be people who joined after Hero Gate was founded, and yet…… they had martial arts.
That woman and those children were strong. Just how strong was beyond someone at his own lowly level to estimate, but the bearing of skilled practitioners was clearly visible.
Whether it was possible to achieve that in such a short time or not—he honestly didn't know.
Because at Ten Thousand Gold Tower, no one had ever properly taught him martial arts.
"Let's go."
The Guild Master rose.
One word. That was all.
At that one word, everyone rose at once. Even those who had been collapsed gritted their teeth and pulled themselves up. Not a single person said 'let's rest a bit longer.'
That was strange.
Seok-gyeong hoisted his pack onto his back as well. Two people's worth.
The march began.
And.
Things changed.