Climbing the Cliff
“……But Guildmaster, why are you asking about Liaoning?”
The Moyong Cheongjin inside me seemed to thrash and roil.
I forced down the shock and confusion and asked in as calm a voice as I could manage.
“Why else? Because the client who specifically named you appears to have business in Liaoning.”
The client had summoned me to that place, and supposedly had work for me there as well.
In short, this job would take place in the very hometown I least wanted to return to.
In an instant, a flood of images flashed through my mind. The sprawling manor of the Moyong Clan. The cold stares of my own blood. And last of all, my sister’s anguished face as she drove the blade into me.
“Who is this client, that they would single me out and call me all the way to Liaoning?”
“That I don’t know. They never revealed their identity. Instead, they paid the entire advance up front.”
An anonymous client. In the detective business, that type came along often enough.
In exchange, they usually paid double the fee.
“Boss, this is a lifeline in a drought. Why are you hesitating?”
After covering the academy repair costs last time, we had been flat broke again. As the one who handled the office accounts, she clearly had no intention of letting this job slip away.
“I have painful memories of Liaoning.”
It was a long way from Beijing. At my answer, both Ilhong and Jo Harang turned to look at me at once, curiosity written on their faces.
“Ah, and for reference—the advance is a small gold ingot.”
At the same moment, Guildmaster Gamun set a little horseshoe-shaped gold yuanbao down on the table with a soft tak.
“But I don’t believe in painful memories.”
I snatched up that small, brilliantly gleaming lump of gold and tucked it into my robes at once.
My subordinates stared at me with faces gone slack with disbelief.
“Then I’ll take it that you’ve accepted the job. Make ready to leave for Liaoning at once.”
Liaoning—a place so steeped in Moyong Cheongjin’s trauma that even the mention of it sent him into a panic.
But who was I? Dan Wonjun, the all-purpose troubleshooter, the monster born of capitalism. Greed for money conquered everything.
……
And Salsung, apparently so appalled by the sight of me, stopped mid-scribble and just sat there.
What? Got a problem?
At the mention of Liaoning—where the Heavenly Killing Star had once awakened—she had bloomed to her fullest, only to be left speechless.
I immediately circulated the Seongun Simbeop and drove the creature, which had crawled out again, deep back into my body.
Salsung vanished in a fit of thrashing, almost as if she were screaming KRAAAAGH.
“Leave it to me. I’ll see this through so thoroughly you’ll never regret naming me.”
Money has a way of healing sorrow and ugly memories.
It seemed my next destination had finally been decided.
The manor of the Moyong Clan, white and crimson blossoms spilling across the grounds in full bloom.
In a quiet family head’s chamber where every color of the landscape could be taken in at a glance, a middle-aged man was warmly greeting a blood relative who had come after a long absence.
“Cheonghye. I never expected you to appear without so much as a word of notice.”
This place was always heavy with the thick scent of ink and brush, no matter when one visited.
So many things had happened here.
Moyong Cheonghye swept her gaze once over the Moyong Clan’s family head’s chamber—strange, and yet familiar.
“Have you decided to return to the Moyong Clan?”
“……No. That matter was already settled when the Blood Sect launched their attack, Family Head.”
During the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering, Moyong Cheon had dismissed her when she insisted the Blood Sect would strike—believing his son Moyong Hwi’s victory was all but assured.
The Blood Sect had been silent for decades. He had even wagered that if nothing came of it, she would return to the family.
Instead, the Blood Sect had announced a spectacular return that shook the entire Central Plains.
“You didn’t believe me. I understand. I, too, failed to believe my younger brother…… to the very end.”
When she dredged up that buried, long-ago past, Moyong Cheon’s brow twitched in reaction.
Unlike the days when she had obeyed every command of the family head without question, Moyong Cheonghye now carried herself with the hardened judgment of the Myeolmade’s vice leader.
“Moyong Hwi’s championship in the martial tournament has fallen through. He is now of an age that bars him from the next Dragon-Phoenix Gathering as well. And this father of yours is still recovering from the internal injuries of that day.”
When the call to return failed to move her, Family Head Moyong Cheon began methodically listing the misfortunes that had befallen the clan, laying the weight of them on Moyong Cheonghye’s shoulders.
“Ill fortune has found the Moyong Clan like this. Outside pressures are blowing harder than at any time before. At a moment like this, should not at least you remain with the family?”
There is a saying in the game of Go: Asaengyeonhusalta—first secure your own life, then kill the other.
The leader of any group must read the board with cold clarity, and when the situation demands it, know how to call their own stones back.
“This family…… has always blamed my younger brother whenever misfortune piled up like this. Insisting that such ill luck must surely have sprung from that cursed ‘root of calamity.’”
And the one stone most needed on the board right now was the one that had rebelled against him and seemed to have left him utterly behind.
As she spoke of the treatment Moyong Cheongjin had endured within the clan, a quiet, simmering anger showed through.
“I wonder, Family Head—and the rest of the clan as well. Who is it you’re blaming now?”
“Watch your tongue, Cheonghye.”
Veins stood out on Moyong Cheon’s wrinkled forehead. His patience with his daughter’s defiant manner seemed to be nearing its limit.
“I have never blamed anyone. If I have blamed anything at all, it was only the heavens.”
Beyond the window, the sky laid bare its blue expanse.
“And yet a man like you…… would give me such an order……?”
“…….”
At the sight of Moyong Cheonghye biting her lip until it bled, Moyong Cheon could not speak for a moment.
The family head of the Moyong Clan let out a long, heavy breath and slowly bowed his head.
“It was a choice I had no alternative but to make. At the time…….”
Heaven had marked the Moyong Clan as the place where a world-shaking vortex would rise, and he had merely thrashed and fought to keep the family alive.
As the family heads before him had done, he too had made a agonizing decision for the clan’s survival.
“And Cheonghye—do you truly mean never to call me Father again?”
“As I have said repeatedly, I am now the vice leader of the Myeolmade, and I have come today on official business. Family Head of the Moyong Clan.”
To his question, thick with hurt, Moyong Cheonghye answered with a face of ice.
“Official business, is it. Very well, Vice Leader. For what purpose have you come to the Moyong Clan?”
A bitter smile touched his lips as Moyong Cheon asked the reason for her visit.
“Do you know the Blood Sect’s ultimate purpose in attacking you, Family Head?”
“Revenge, of course. Just as we nearly wiped them out decades ago, they mean to do the same to us. Would they not?”
Moyong Cheon stated their supposed aim with the ease of something self-evident.
But Moyong Cheonghye shook her head from side to side, as if to say otherwise.
“Young Hero Blue Cloud Sword obtained intelligence when he stormed their hideout alone.”
Unlike the other combat units, he had not moved in a group—and so had been able to strike deep without being discovered.
At the news that Namgung Jin—who had so often blocked his son’s path—had distinguished himself yet again, Moyong Cheon scowled first of all.
“They desperately desire the descent of the Blood Heaven God upon this earth.”
And upon hearing the secret that detestable youth had supposedly uncovered, he let out a sharp snort of contempt.
“That Blood Age slogan they chant like a prayer…… is that what you mean? Nonsense.”
He cast his mind back, then shook his head firmly, as if the whole idea were absurd.
“It was a rite that ended in abject failure decades ago as well. I question whether such a heavenly being even exists—but to house it in a human body? The flesh would never survive.”
What they had witnessed as a result had been nothing but shreds of meat bursting apart.
After that, he had simply cut down every enemy alongside the Heavenly Sword of his youth, as the Thunder Sword.
“Twisted ravings. That is all it is.”
“And yet, Family Head. The Heavenly Killing Star—who took that baleful star of the heavens into a human body—was real as well, was it not?”
“…….”
At Moyong Cheonghye’s words, Moyong Cheon went stiff.
In the past, he had found that tale—little more than a legend passed down by word of mouth—inside his own son’s body, and the shock had been beyond measure.
“Young Hero Blue Cloud Sword told me. What they are searching for is the flesh of the Heavenly Killing Star.”
“……!”
He fixed his eyes on her, wide, at words he could not simply let slide past.
“At the time, there was no body that could receive the descent—but you and I both know, Family Head. That in this generation, the Heavenly Killing Star did descend……!”
It was a matter that could turn the entire Central Plains into an enemy. There had even been mysterious forces watching and taking note of the Heavenly Killing Star’s appearance.
That was why they had hidden it with such desperation, and why he had cut off his own child for the sake of protecting the clan.
“The Heavenly Killing Star is dead. You confirmed it with your own eyes!”
When Moyong Cheonghye tried to deny it, Moyong Cheon’s voice rose of its own accord, nearly to a shout.
“We never found the body, did we?”
“It was a height from which even you—a Peak Realm martial artist at the time—could not have survived!”
The family head of the Moyong Clan shouted again and again that she was speaking nonsense.
“Just once more. Just once more, I ask that you launch a full-scale search. I have come here today as the vice leader of the Myeolmade to make that request.”
One of the few who knew the Heavenly Killing Star had descended upon this world. And a hostile force that was hunting that body.
If she had never learned of it, that would be one thing—but now that she knew, it was not a matter she could leave alone.
“The baleful star lost its light, and still you claim it did not die. Are you saying a human altered the heavenly signs?”
“…….”
“Those star-spirits of the night sky—by a mere human?”
In truth, Moyong Cheonghye herself knew her logic was thin.
It had been a height no human could survive, and Heaven itself had marked the Heavenly Killing Star for death.
But people—no, a sister who had lost her younger brother—sometimes found themselves possessed of an irrational intuition that outran reason.
Especially an intuition that had only grown denser after she crossed paths with a certain young man.
“I will not commit the people of the Moyong Clan to such a thing. Vice Leader of the Myeolmade.”
At the flat refusal, Moyong Cheonghye lowered her head with a look of regret.
“‘Such a thing’? Searching for Cheongjin’s body is, to Father, nothing more than ‘such a thing’?”
“……That is not what I meant. Only that it is time to cast off lingering attachment and look ahead. Especially you, Cheonghye.”
He spoke as if coaxing, hoping to draw back the child who had left his arms.
To him, his daughter’s refusal to look forward—clinging to an impossible attachment—could only be frustrating.
“I…… simply cannot do that. Family Head.”
But even as he tried to soothe her into returning, Moyong Cheonghye coldly rejected him and rose from her seat.
When his request for manpower was refused, he could only stare blankly at his daughter’s back as she stood and walked out the door.
“Back then…… should I never have sent that child away……?”
Deep regret. Deep regret and longing.
But there was no use turning it over now.
Where, exactly, had it all gone wrong?
“Haa. What am I supposed to do?”
The family head of the Moyong Clan let out a long sigh, as though he had lost not only his son but his daughter as well.
Liaoning.
It was a place you reached by climbing still farther north from Hebei.
The terrain began in the east with rugged mountains and, as one moved west, opened into plains and hills—so most of the population was concentrated in the west.
Being so far north, the yearly temperature swing was extreme; when winter came, ice floes formed and everything froze solid. A harsh climate, by any measure.
How would a Beijing troubleshooter know any of that? Courtesy of Moyong Cheongjin’s memories.
They had exiled him to a remote place and not even given him proper bedding or blankets.
No—more precisely, the supplies had been issued, but someone along the way had clearly skimmed them off.
So he had memories of shivering through the bitter cold as if he were weathering a deep freeze.
If Sister Moyong Cheonghye had not come out of worry, this body would have frozen to death back then.
“To think I’d end up coming back to this uncomfortable place after all.”
I muttered as much as I set foot on the green-grassed earth of Liaoning.
“Well, from the boss’s point of view, it would be uncomfortable.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you called the family head of the Moyong Clan—the ones who rule here—a greedy old man, didn’t you?”
“…….”
Come to think of it, there was that reason too.
I nodded at Ilhong’s perfectly sensible observation.