Temple Stay
This was the second time I'd climbed the treacherous mountain paths of Mount Song.
Given our purpose, I needed to slip quietly into Shaolin Temple, so I'd secured a bit of help on the way here—from the branch chief of the Beggar Sect's Henan branch, who'd greeted me warmly the moment I announced my visit.
"I heard from Bak Chil. You need my help, do you? Tell me anything you need."
Ever since that affair where I'd persuaded the Emperor, I was treated as a hero at every branch. The higher-ups of the Beggar Sect fussed over me with careful hospitality despite their meager beggar means, practically regarding me as a candidate for the next sect leader.
"You don't have to go this far. I'm still just some nobody who hasn't even been officially recognized as the successor."
"Nonsense. That person simply hasn't returned as sect leader and made the formal proclamation—you're a disciple who learned the Dog Beating Staff Technique. How can you think of yourself so lightly?"
In any case, with the help of O Geol, the Henan branch chief, we were able to infiltrate Shaolin Temple disguised as lay disciples. My cover identity was the second son of a mid-sized merchant house in Henan Province—the Yangju Trading House—and Ilhong beside me...
"I'll be a distant relative of the Byeok Clan. Just enough to scrape by with legal permission to use firearms."
In the Central Plains, using firearms legally required an authorized identity, and the Byeok Clan had once sent an additional gift along with the black powder containers.
"Don't go causing trouble with that and making problems for the Byeok Clan."
"I won't. Do you think I'm you, Boss?"
"Ahem. What's that supposed to mean?"
I brushed it off with a cough. Lately every job I took kept blowing up in scale, so Jo Harang and Ilhong seemed to regard me as something of a bad-luck charm. Still, I'd never failed a commission despite all that adversity. That was what mattered.
"All lay disciples visiting Shaolin Temple this term, gather promptly at the mountain gate!"
When we arrived at Shaolin's mountain gate, a monk with a booming voice called people together amid the murmuring crowd. There were a fair number of them—about forty—and according to Ilhong, these were this term's lay disciples, each of whom had donated a certain sum to enter Shaolin Temple.
Murmur, murmur.
The foremost of the righteous martial world. A chance to learn Shaolin's martial arts. And if things went well, an opportunity to build connections too. For the great families, merchant houses, and local powers of Henan and across the Central Plains, who wouldn't want to send their children even if it meant donating a fortune?
"Form an orderly line. From this moment, you are disciples of Shaolin."
Of course, these were lay disciples who would never touch Shaolin's ultimate secrets or highest martial arts. Still, learning even a little was reason enough for them to compete to send their kids. The lay disciples thronged to the towering mountain gate of Little Room Peak and lined up with proper discipline. Then a procession of people emerged from within Shaolin Temple and took their places.
For reference, distinguishing lay disciples from true mountain disciples here was extremely simple.
"So those baldies over there, shiny as bare mountains—those are the true mountain disciples?"
"Shh, they'll hear you. Please keep your voice down."
Unlike the lay disciples who still had lives and businesses of their own, a shaved head was the strongest proof that one had left the secular world behind. Hearing my muttering, Ilhong flinched and clamped down on me at once.
"You just look for anyone with an odd facial structure. She's definitely slipped in among this crowd of lay disciples."
The lay disciples' entry period, when dozens of strangers who didn't know each other poured in all at once—it was the perfect chance for an unknown person to quietly blend in. So that Emei Sect female master was surely hiding somewhere among these people. I had no choice but to hope Ilhong, who had a talent for this sort of thing, would find her as quickly as possible. Life at the mountain summit—eating temple food among a swarm of baldies—would only get more miserable the longer it dragged on.
"From this moment, even as lay practitioners, you are disciples of Shaolin Temple, and strict rules will be imposed. Those who fail to follow them...!"
The bald martial artist who'd gathered everyone with his shouts began explaining the rules of Shaolin Temple as if possessed by a training-camp drill instructor.
"...will be made to descend Mount Song according to the sacred precepts of Shaolin Temple."
In short, they'd lose their status as lay disciples and be expelled. Of course, even if you were kicked down the mountain, there was no refund of the donation. You couldn't even claim to be a former Shaolin lay disciple afterward, so getting caught was purely your own loss.
"Then, to sever worldly attachments, we shall now begin your farewell to the secular world."
With those words, the bald true mountain disciples swarmed in and began stripping the lay disciples of their belongings.
"Shaolin martial arts are about casting off worldly afflictions and attaining enlightenment."
"Set aside anything that would interfere, for now. We will return them when you leave."
Just like boot camp—handing over all your money and belongings before entering the unit. Since they were all children of wealthy households, wealthy enough to bring servants along, all sorts of things came out of their pockets. On the other hand, there was also a guy who produced nothing but dust no matter how thoroughly he was searched—like a complete pauper.
"Young hero, have you truly brought nothing at all...?"
One Shaolin monk asked me with a look that said, What kind of person is this?
"I've got some roasted beans."
Having started as a beggar and lived a life with absolutely nothing to my name, I pulled out a handful of beans I'd been crunching on whenever I got bored.
"...Just keep those. No point taking even those."
I received a look of pity from a Shaolin monk who ate nothing but temple food. And a bit of a commotion was breaking out beside me as well.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Ilhong set down the various projectile hidden weapons and bombs she'd been concealing in her clothes. At first the monks flinched when a small thunder bomb popped out, then they recoiled in horror as endless round iron spheres kept coming.
"What on earth is this...?"
"I'm from the Byeok Clan."
Ilhong was shamelessly making full use of her borrowed identity.
"Even so, why would you bring this many thunder bombs on your way to become a lay disciple...?"
Yeah, seriously. It wasn't like she was heading off to war—and she was always fiddling with them back at the office too.
"Better safe than sorry, right? Bandits could jump out on the way here."
The people around stared at Ilhong with exhausted eyes.
"Ahem. In any case, these will be returned once you successfully complete all your training."
She'd worn loose clothing for her male disguise—who knew she'd stuff every gap with weapons. Was she trying to become a bomb maniac like Byeok Nana? For a while she'd been desperately chasing the Peak Realm to help me, but when that proved difficult, it felt like she'd slightly changed direction.
"As expected of the Byeok Clan..."
"Not a normal person among them."
The people around muttered among themselves. In any case, that was how we said farewell to everything worldly and began living as monks among the baldies at Shaolin Temple, high in the mountain range.
Back in Korea, when the military ran short on manpower, they'd start dragging even kids from orphanages into the service one by one. So I'd prided myself on being fairly used to a life under control—but life at this temple, where even appetite itself was treated as something to be guarded against, was somehow different.
The sleeping arrangements were a problem right from the start. Claiming that comfort of the flesh was the enemy of training, they made people sleep on hard wooden beds. Then there was the rule of ringing the bell to wake everyone the moment the Hour of the Rabbit arrived, even when it felt like you'd barely slept a few hours. Above all, the extremely restricted portions and the temple food that kept meat at arm's length left me feeling more and more ground down as time went on.
"Ilhong. I've got one earnest request."
We were in the mountains—wild game was everywhere—and yet here I was chewing nothing but greens, as if I'd gone back to my old beggar days. On top of that, while starving like this, I had to perform dawn services, then run laps around Shaolin Temple as so-called morning training, then get through martial practice and the rest of the daily schedule. My stomach spent every hour of every day squeezing out nothing but growling noises. This high-performance body of mine, which could take a dozen knife wounds and still keep going, needed high-calorie cooking packed with protein and fat—not temple gruel.
"Meat. Please find me some meat side dishes..."
We could look for the Emei master later. For now, just bring me something to chew on. Unlike me, who was suffering because temple life was utterly unsuited to my constitution, Ilhong seemed perfectly fine.
"Boss, have you forgotten your beggar days? It was worse than this back then."
"Hey, I was a tiny kid back then."
Now I was tall, muscled, and my body's performance had shot up considerably. Ilhong's clothes were baggy, but her frame was slender, and she'd always been a light eater, so temple-food living seemed easy enough for her.
"The Shaolin monks here say all is created by the mind, and that afflictions themselves are enlightenment."
Everything arises from the mind, and through these wavering afflictions one attains enlightenment. In other words: just endure it and gain some insight.
"What enlightenment... That was hunger talking."
"That's what the Shaolin monks here say, anyway."
"Ugh."
I'd heard that once you became a true master, you could regulate your body so thoroughly you could go long stretches without food or drink. This body of mine was terribly inefficient. Or maybe, given the overwhelming specs it boasted when it came to martial arts, there had to be something lost for everything gained.
"Maybe I should slip out quietly and look for some wild game."
If I caught even a single pheasant and roasted it nice and golden, I couldn't imagine a finer delicacy. Hunger was the best seasoning—it'd taste better than any lavish dish at a high-class inn.
"If you get caught, you'll be expelled on the spot. You know that, right?"
But Ilhong immediately threw a wrench in it. There was a rule against leaving Shaolin Temple without permission.
"Hey, have you found out anything? Still not even a trace of Hye-yul Sinni?"
She scratched her cheek, looking embarrassed by the question.
"I still haven't found anyone whose face looked off. All I've managed to learn is the power-struggle situation around here."
She needed to identify who this person was so we could wrap up this temple-stay lifestyle and get out of here already.
"If that Emei master isn't wearing a human-skin mask, but instead learned and used appearance-altering techniques or the bone-shrinking art, then it's all her own skin and face. Even I might not notice."
In other words, it wasn't a mask—it was martial arts that actually shifted skin and bone—so even she, a human-skin mask specialist, might not be able to spot it.
"Then there was no reason to bring you along."
"...Ugh."
Ilhong had been sensitive to remarks like that lately, as if she felt she wasn't being useful enough.
"I'm kidding."
"Whatever."
Given how thoroughly we'd failed to find her, the odds that it wasn't a human-skin mask were high. The timing of events lined up, and my gut kept whispering that she was hiding among these dozens of outside personnel.
"So how do we find her now? Is there no way?"
Ilhong asked whether we'd hit a dead end.
"No. It's a bit of a hassle, but there is a method."
Gi Hyo and Jeong Yo, was it? They seemed to have a discerning eye that could foresee how things would unfold. They'd gone to the trouble of sparring with me just to show me Emei martial arts and let me experience them firsthand, saying it would give me a means of finding her—and in the present situation, that was going to be extremely useful.
"They say they'll have all the lay disciples spar with each other in rotation. I'll find her then."
Martial arts I'd once seen—or been hit by—my body remembered to a certain degree. One of the few real advantages of a Heavenly Killing Star body that seemed to converge and evolve through every martial art it encountered.
"Unless she's reached the return to origin, putting sword or fist against her should give her away."
A master recognizes a master. All I had to do was hold out until everyone had learned enough martial arts for sparring time to arrive.
Turning that thought over, I clutched my starving stomach and strolled through Shaolin Temple with Ilhong—when something like the sound of a fight drifted from around a corner of the outer buildings between the halls.
"Ack! Wait, there's some kind of misunderstanding...! Ugh!"
I peeked in and saw one greasy-looking lay disciple surrounded by a group who looked like they'd been raised soft and privileged, getting beaten so thoroughly the dust flew as if it were raining.
"Who do you think you are, acting friendly?"
"The son of some worthless trading house—"
"Unbelievable."
They'd been told to set down every worldly worry and come here. But they were all children of well-connected families from their respective regions, so of course that was never going to happen. Was this part of that power struggle Ilhong had mentioned earlier?
"Reminds me a little of when I first met you."
"Ugh, why bring that up now?"
Ilhong bristled, apparently remembering the days she'd been surrounded and beaten as a beggar.
"It just occurred to me."
Answering like that, I walked forward toward the ones who seemed to have traded the Buddha's teachings for a pile of garbage.