Midnight Rendezvous
While the main hall rang with the steady, measured beat of wooden fish as monks cultivated the Buddhist path—
Here, at the mouth of an alley, the sound spilling out was anything but regular: the ragged thuds of a beating in progress.
Curses and snarls tangled together into one long, rolling thrashing. A slippery-looking young man kept shouting that it was all some kind of misunderstanding, but our Shaolin Temple “bullies”—the secular disciples—did not appear to know the meaning of mercy.
“You worthless merchant brat.”
“You dare sell our names for your own profit?”
“This is exactly why you can’t trust money-grubbers!”
Stomping, grinding him underfoot, sneering the whole time—they were the pure, unfiltered embodiment of every worldly affliction that clung to people who had never left the dust of the secular world.
“They’re all kids from rich families, and they still act like this even after coming to a temple.”
“People always start ranking each other and flexing the moment they gather in a group, Boss. It’s just human nature.”
Ilhong said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world: whether you were a rich kid or a secular disciple of Shaolin, people were the same everywhere.
Ever since I’d arrived here I’d always moved alone, so I’d never run into anything like this. Well—I did have subordinates, so maybe “alone” wasn’t quite the right word.
“Amitabha.”
I spoke up from the middle of the Shaolin bullies who were still thoroughly absorbed in their group beatdown. The well-connected secular disciples jolted and whipped their heads toward me.
“Who the hell are you?”
“What’s with the sudden ‘Amitabha’?”
“You’ve barely been here five minutes and you’re already playing monk?”
They abandoned the guy they’d been working over and rapidly closed in on their new targets—me and Ilhong. Fresh-faced youths who had only just started learning martial arts swaggered forward with threats, and Ilhong snorted under her breath beside me.
“You donors are quite violent. However, in the Central Plains one must not casually throw punches…”
This was the Murim—a place where even if you tried to settle things with your mouth, it still ended in violence. And these kids had already cultivated the habit of leading with their fists.
I pressed my palms together in a formal mudra and offered a piece of advice.
“What the hell are you even saying, you bastard.”
“I told you to stop doing that fake monk act.”
My clumsy imitation only seemed to piss them off harder. Their curses turned vicious as they closed the distance, knuckles whitening. From the way they clenched their fists, they looked ready to swing any second.
The young man who’d been surrounded and pounded stared at me—the sudden interloper—like I was some kind of lunatic.
“Why shouldn’t we throw punches? Explain yourself, pretty boy.”
The biggest of them shoved his face right up into mine, deliberately baiting me. Not only had they ganged up like cowards, now they were throwing personal insults based on looks.
These donors clearly needed their characters refined by methods other than the Buddhist path.
“Because the Buddha taught that such violence…”
Apparently he hadn’t asked because he wanted an answer. The instant I opened my mouth, the youths charged from every direction.
“…only invites even greater violence!”
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
My knife-hands flashed like lightning, cracking down on the crowns of the secular disciples one after another. Years of being beaten by Hwang Geolgae had taught me the true profundity of a proper thrashing; the Shaolin bullies rolled their eyes back and howled under the exquisite precision of those blows.
“Gghh—!”
“Kuhek—ghhk!”
It felt like their skulls were splitting open, yet not a single mark of violence remained. In other words: the perfect crime.
“You son of a—kuh-heok.”
One of them started to spit a curse through the rising pain, then his eyes rolled up and he went limp.
“Namu Amitabha.”
I pressed my palms together again and offered a brief prayer for the departed—well, the temporarily departed.
Ilhong watched my little victory lap with a thoroughly unimpressed look.
“Boss, that way of talking is really getting on my nerves.”
“That’s the point.”
Cheap concept-playing was always good for winding people up. And I’d always enjoyed messing with the kind of bastards who picked on weaklings and ganged up on them.
“So, you there—the nameless guy who was getting the stuffing knocked out of him. You okay—”
“Friend! Thank you so much for the help!”
Before I could even finish the sentence, the young man grabbed my shoulder and shouted his gratitude. Calling me “friend” when we’d only just met—this guy had zero sense of personal distance. From a distance he’d looked like a soft bookworm type, but up close there was a definite sly, oily quality to him.
“Annoyingly handsome.”
He heard my blunt mutter and pulled an exaggerated look of shock.
“Friend, that’s a little harsh. Wait—is that a compliment? You know what, I’ll take it as a compliment!”
Thick-skinned, too. He laughed brightly, declaring he’d accept it as praise. Hard to believe this was the same guy who’d just been pounded into a rag doll.
“I’m Jo Gon, second son of the Hallim Merchant House based here in Henan Province. Pleasure to meet you, friend.”
“…Yeah, sure. Nice to meet you, brand-new friend. I’m the second son of the Yangju Merchant House. Name’s Mu Hong.”
The moment I finished introducing myself, he clasped my hand like he’d found a kindred spirit and beamed.
“Ohhh! Finally, someone like me! Everyone else here is either a local big shot, a mega-rich heir, or from some famous clan that spits out court officials left and right. Trying to have a normal conversation has been a nightmare.”
All of them strutted around with their noses in the air, he said. The second or third son of a mid-tier merchant house simply had no place to stand. On top of that, the high-and-mighty types who looked down on commerce as vulgar had been treating the merchant kids like dirt even among the secular disciples. So that was where the “money-grubber” cracks had come from earlier.
“Us mid-tier merchant kids stick together, eh? Mu Hong, my friend.”
Comradeship apparently surged through him so hard he went past a handshake and straight into draping an arm over my shoulders. I just stood there and took it, but the instant familiarity was starting to get on my nerves. No wonder those guys had surrounded him and beaten the hell out of him. A little bit of that had been self-inflicted.
“And who’s this devastatingly handsome, delicate friend standing next to you?”
Jo Gon pointed at Ilhong, who was standing beside me with a sulky expression, and asked who she was. Ilhong’s eyes narrowed; she yanked my arm—the one currently trapped in Jo Gon’s shoulder-hug—firmly over to her side.
“I’m Geumhong. Please don’t get too close to our big brother. It makes him uncomfortable.”
I explained that we’d met on the way here and hit it off.
“I see, Geumhong, was it? From where I’m standing, you look like the one glued uncomfortably close to him.”
Exactly. Jo Gon scratched his temple as he watched her mark her territory like she refused to let anyone take me away.
“So what? I’m fine with it. We’re close.”
She’d gotten pretty shameless lately, too. Jo Gon looked back and forth between us with a strange glint in his eye, like he was watching a rival for someone’s affections. Then something seemed to click; he slapped a fist into his palm.
“Ahhh, I get it. So that’s your… inclination(?), is it?”
“What the hell are you talking about.”
I peeled Ilhong’s arm off and frowned.
“No, no, don’t worry. I don’t find that sort of thing strange at all. The world is full of people with all sorts of inclinations.”
Jo Gon winked theatrically. The weirdly understanding look in his eyes was starting to seriously piss me off.
“I said, what kind of nonsense are you spouting.”
“Even this sacred no-women zone—the very symbol of abstinence—must have looked like a well-tended flower garden to you. I understand completely.”
A creeping regret that I’d bothered to save him began to rise. I was also starting to understand, in some quiet corner of my heart, exactly why those guys had beaten him up earlier. Because right now I suddenly felt like landing a punch myself.
“Just… don’t come too close to me, all right? Otherwise, to protect my pure and unsullied body, I may have to scream—!”
Thud—!
He tried to raise his voice. One solid fist to the gut shut him up completely. He looked broken, so I hit him once to reset him to factory settings.
“There. Finally quiet.”
Morning physical training ended, and we got a short rest period. Jo Gon, second son of the Hallim Merchant House—now that the previous misunderstanding had been cleared up—came over and clapped me on the back.
“Ahaha! This Jo Gon made a terrible mistake. I was rude, so allow me to apologize.”
Whether it was his speech or his gestures, everything about the young man was oversized and theatrical. He looked like he’d be fantastic at hawking goods on a street corner.
“Two men linking arms in the Central Plains—anyone would get the wrong idea. Be careful next time.”
I shot Ilhong a look that clearly said, You hearing this? She scratched her cheek and quietly averted her eyes, short on excuses.
“Is this your first time at Shaolin, friend?”
“How many first times can an outsider have? Of course it’s my first.”
At my answer he let out a loud “Khahat!” and dropped himself down next to me.
“Then allow me to fill you in on a few things. This Shaolin Temple may look like a closed-off place, but it’s actually full of all sorts of spaces and human types!”
He started with the famous Sutra Depository that housed Shaolin’s greatest martial manuals and all manner of scriptures, then moved on to the Hall of Nurturing the Heart in the Precepts Courtyard where they cultivated the Dharma. After that came the Precepts and Discipline Office—the place that oversaw Shaolin’s rules and had the closest connection to a secular disciple’s daily life. Finally he covered the Arhat Hall, residence of Shaolin’s elite experts, the Eighteen Arhats.
Jo Gon introduced every major location and organization without missing a beat.
“And the flower of any organization is connections, my friend. Connections. You paid a fortune to get in here—shouldn’t you also be building ties with the important people of Shaolin?”
As a secular disciple who’d bought his way in with a massive donation, he’d clearly done his homework before arriving; the information poured out of him without a hitch. Which true disciples held real power, which lines you needed to ride if you wanted an easy life as a secular disciple…
“Beopgwang. That one is a truly upright Shaolin monk. He’ll be teaching us martial arts soon, so make sure you get close to him.”
…which Arhat had the foulest temper, whom you needed to butter up, and which promising young shoots among the monks you absolutely had to befriend for the sake of the future. If I had actually come here as a real secular disciple, every word would have been pure gold.
I appreciated the thought, but none of this was information I could use.
“Anything else? Different kind of information?”
“What other kind of information? I feel like I’ve already dumped everything I know.”
He tilted his head as if to ask what more there could possibly be.
“You know. Suspicious people, that sort of thing.”
“…”
He stared at me in silence—the same me who had just wiped out a pack of bullies with suspiciously high-level martial arts.
“Not me, you bastard.”
“Ahem, ahem.”
He cleared his throat and tried to change the subject.
“Is there someone you’re looking for? I won’t pry.”
Since he owed me a favor, he promised to keep his mouth shut. Even if he hadn’t promised, I would have made sure of it myself.
“Anything unusual is fine. Just tell me whatever you’ve got.”
“Hmm. Anything unusual… Come to think of it, there are a few words that are absolute taboos among the Shaolin monks—things you must never mention, like an unwritten rule.”
Taboo words among monks walking the Buddhist path? I asked him what they were, grasping at straws.
“‘Dragon-Phoenix Gathering’ and ‘Dan Mujin.’”
“…Ah.”
Memories from the past flashed through my mind. A few unfortunate misunderstandings had left me with a bit of bad blood here.
“The reason goes quite deep, you see—”
“Ah, it’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain.”
I already knew the reason without being told.
Ugh.
The hour when people sleep most deeply: the Hour of the Ox.
I finally couldn’t take the growling of my stomach any longer and sat up.
“This is ridiculous.”
A decision made in the dead of night. I needed to go out and catch something to eat—or raid a storehouse. The Shaolin monks assigned to watch the secular disciples couldn’t be anything special anyway.
I decided on a little midnight adventure.
Slip. Slip.
My footsteps glided soundlessly through the dark. But in this hazy night, I wasn’t the only one prowling suspiciously around Shaolin Temple. Another presence moved out there.
Huh?
A familiar face—someone I’d seen before. The Shaolin monk Jo Gon had called the real power player this morning, the one he said I absolutely had to get close to.
Beopgwang.