Scandal on Mount Song
Even in the deepening dark of night, the bald head catching the moonlight stood out with stubborn clarity.
The moment I stepped out of the dormitory to follow that suspicious figure, a sleepy voice rose behind me.
"Captain, where do you think you're going at this hour?"
Ilhong must have woken at the rustle of my movements. Her words were thick with drowsiness.
"I'm starving. Just gonna sneak out and grab something to eat."
"…Are you insane? Get caught and they'll kick you down the mountain."
She shot me a look that said my gluttony had finally crossed into pure delusion. From her perspective I was about to commit two crimes at once: brazenly eating meat inside a Buddhist holy ground, and deserting the training camp. She planted herself between me and the door.
"Forget it and come back. Tomorrow I'll give you a little of my portion."
Rations were fixed; she barely had enough for herself. What a fine, promising subordinate.
"I appreciate the thought, but no. I just spotted someone suspicious."
I pointed toward the faint human silhouette flickering between the buildings.
"Eek—there's another human like you, Captain…? Who is it?"
Someone like me. Kind words, but the kid could be bold when she wanted.
"That Shaolin monk Jo Gon told us to get close to—said he was the real power around here. Looks like he's got somewhere urgent to be in the middle of the night, same as me."
"You don't mean Beopgwang? The senior of the Arhat Hall who spent the whole afternoon teaching us martial arts?"
Ilhong's eyes widened a fraction.
During the Great War of Orthodoxy and Demonic, the Eighteen Arhat Formation had collapsed only once. Beopgwang was its backbone—experienced, skilled, influential. People called him the true power of Shaolin.
"The way he's scurrying around this late… maybe he's going to meet Hye-yul Sinni?"
"Hmm. A midnight tryst… possibility's there."
My theory must have sounded plausible; Ilhong nodded slowly, agreeing it was fishy.
"Let's tail him quietly."
I pulled even the reluctant Ilhong along, and we set off after the bald monk.
Once the decision was made she pulled a grayish powder from her robes and sprinkled it lightly across every threshold.
"What's that?"
"Just something. But Captain—we really have to stay quiet, okay? No causing trouble."
"…Of course."
The answer held the faintest hesitation.
And so we melted into the night, slipping silently through the hushed grounds of Shaolin Temple.
Moonlight shyly silvered the ridgeline; stars hung soft overhead. Long human shadows brushed carefully past thickets and trees.
The Shaolin monk, lost in whatever filled his head, never noticed us trailing at a distance as he descended the mountain.
"This is weird. Even for a secret meeting with a woman, does he really need to come this far…?"
Ilhong voiced her doubt just as Beopgwang's destination grew clear. My face hardened with every step.
"Captain, why that look? Is there something ahead?"
The place the monk was heading toward was none other than the mid-slopes of Mount Song. And there, I knew, sat the site that had nurtured the Purple Micro Star so well—the mysterious sect said to have been shaped by the intervention of an incomprehensible being called Cheonoe.
"Beopgwang, what brings you here at this deep hour of night?"
The instant that familiar, elegant voice reached me, my whole body locked in place.
I had half-feared it, yet the place Beopgwang sought under the moonlight was the Jaha Sect of Mount Song. And the owner of that voice was, beyond doubt, Jo Harang's master—Song Ryeong.
"Captain, whose voice is that? You look shocked."
"…Someone I know. Jo Harang's master is here."
We hid behind a boulder and eavesdropped.
Beopgwang offered Song Ryeong a formal martial salute, fists cupped.
"Amitabha. I am deeply ashamed to have barged in so suddenly in the dead of night."
Song Ryeong arched a brow, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
"So you are aware it is sudden. Good."
Her reply was calm, yet edged with cool steel. They clearly knew each other already. Two sects sharing the same mountain; some form of contact was only natural.
"Lady Song Ryeong… this foolish disciple can no longer endure the feelings I hold for you. That is why I have come."
A man sworn to Buddha dropped a bomb without warning. I clamped a hand over Ilhong's mouth just as she was about to gasp.
"…Senior Beopgwang, for one who has entered the Buddhist path to speak such absurdity is most improper."
Embarrassment and discomfort tangled in her voice. When Beopgwang stepped closer with his confession, Song Ryeong retreated two paces.
"Compose yourself. Govern your heart with calm."
She was trying, with quiet dignity, to guide the derailing almost-apostate monk back onto the proper road. Of course the master who had raised the Purple Micro Star would possess such character.
"…Captain, what on earth is this situation?"
Ilhong watched the scene through a crack in the rock with bright, fascinated eyes. A Shaolin monk who should keep his distance from women, breaking taboo to confess—it was pure lunacy.
"No idea. What situation is this, indeed."
I muttered around a mouthful of roasted beans, crunching them softly at the sudden, awkward spectacle. It felt like peeking through an old television at the elders' love-triangle drama. So this was why people watched morning soaps.
"Song Ryeong. They say even the brushing of sleeves is destiny. If this desperate heart of mine violates the precepts of Buddhism, then I am prepared to break those precepts willingly."
A monk who had spent his life knowing only the Buddha's way, never a woman, was now hurling his heated feelings straight at her. Late-blooming passion truly was the fiercest kind; he would not back down.
"What must I do for you to accept this heart?"
"Nothing you do will make me accept it, Senior Beopgwang."
"…How can that be? When I was young and wandering the jianghu, you saved my life. That day I vowed to offer you both body and heart."
"That is all ancient history. I have forgotten it; please let it go."
Song Ryeong retreated another step, thoroughly cornered. So they had met during the days when she cut down villains across the Central Plains. I had heard her grudges and debts ran deep throughout the Murim; I simply never imagined a connection like this.
"But the woman really doesn't seem to feel a thing, does she?"
"Right? And the guy just barging in like that isn't going to work either."
The two of us were glued to the show, so absorbed we lost track of time. Yet when we left the dormitory we had actually had a purpose…
Ah. Right. We had been searching for the Emei master who had snuck into Shaolin dressed as a man. And for all its entertainment value, this place was clearly a dead end. That merchant friend Jo Gon had told us to watch this monk, and we had simply pointed at the wrong person.
"Enough sightseeing. Let's go, Ilhong."
"Ah—just a little longer."
She pouted in the softest possible whisper.
"Focus. We have work to do."
I was curious how their little drama would end, but Song Ryeong was practically a parent figure to my female friend. Privacy alone demanded we stop watching.
So I took Ilhong's hand and started back up Mount Song. That was when she, being dragged along, stomped hard on a dry branch.
Crack.
Whether misfortune or pure bad luck, the sound was loud. Beopgwang, stalled in his fruitless confession, flinched and whipped his head toward us.
"Wh-who's there?!"
A brief silence. Ilhong looked up at me with pure guilt.
"What do we do, Captain?"
"Hss… what do we do, indeed…"
Our eyes met in the dark. After so long together, the same thought flashed through both our minds at once.
"Run…!"
We split left and right and bolted. At the sight of us shooting off like arrows, Beopgwang panicked as if his deepest shame had been laid bare and shouted after us.
"W-wait! It's a misunderstanding! Everything you saw and heard is a misunderstanding! I can explain…!"
So we were supposed to stop right there and listen to his explanation. We had seen everything; whatever excuse he planned was going to be nonsense.
"Stop, you brats! Please, please just stop…!"
He held status and power inside Shaolin. Getting caught meant expulsion at minimum. So we fled for our lives while his flustered cries echoed behind us.
Shashashak—!
On the way back to the lay disciples' dormitory of Shaolin Temple.
"I thought we were dead."
Beopgwang's howls after losing us still seemed to ring through the forest. Thankfully Song Ryeong must have recognized my presence; she held him back just long enough. Without her we would have been caught halfway and suffered at the hands of a lovesick bald monk.
"Captain, wait a second."
At the dormitory entrance Ilhong stopped me with a gesture and began carefully examining the ground. Under the moonlight her eyes gleamed sharp as a cat's.
"Someone left the dormitory tonight. Same as us."
She pointed at the gray powder scattered across the dirt. Footprints we had not seen on the way out now stood out clearly thanks to the powder she had laid. While we were chasing Beopgwang, someone else had also slipped out into the night and wandered Shaolin.
"How do you know that?"
"I sprinkled Hundred-Li Fragrance before we left. Just in case. Better safe than sorry, right?"
Ah. So that was the powder she had been scattering on the way out. She was certain one of the lay disciples here was the Emei expert, and she had used the tracking powder she kept hidden for just such a chance.
"Oh. I never even thought of that. Clever work."
I praised her with genuine admiration, then suddenly remembered old habits and gave her a suspicious look.
"But you didn't secretly sprinkle any of that on me again, did you?"
"…Don't worry. Only very occasionally."
Ilhong laughed awkwardly and avoided my eyes. So "occasionally" meant she still did it sometimes. Our Ilhong never used to be like this as a child; she had grown into a slightly clingy young woman.
"Anyway—the second we stepped out, someone else started their own nighttime activities as if they'd been waiting."
It certainly was not another glutton like me raiding the storehouses. Anyone willing to risk expulsion was almost certainly the Emei master who had hidden herself here. She would never have left just to snoop around randomly.
"Who the hell is it?"
"Captain, they stepped in the Hundred-Li Fragrance without knowing. I can find them later. I've already memorized the unique scent."
Working with me had given her a slightly reckless edge, but the preparedness and meticulousness she had honed since the Haomu Gate days had not gone anywhere. Every so often that side of her proved a huge help.
"Today's the big sparring day when every lay disciple gathers. We can pinpoint them then."
"Exactly."
The mysterious, men-forbidden territory of the Emei Sect. And Hye-yul Sinni, the one said to have fallen for a man during her jianghu wanderings and fled.
"Let's get a look at that face."
At last the expert had taken the bait. I looked up at the sky as dawn began to pale and burned with the resolve to unmask the culprit.
And when the last of the dawn dark had lifted, the morning of sparring day arrived.
It was the day the lay disciples would demonstrate how far their training had come. In the training grounds behind Shaolin's main hall, every true disciple who taught martial arts and every lay disciple gathered in one place.
The young man I had once rescued from a gang-up approached me with his usual friendly voice.
"Hey, friend. Your eyes look hollow. Did you lose sleep last night? For the record, I was so nervous I didn't sleep a wink either."
It was early enough that most people would still be emotionally dry, yet he grinned and radiated his trademark sociability. Merchant blood, no question.
"It's just a spar. Nothing worth losing sleep over."
I shrugged with deliberate indifference.
"Hah. You really don't get it. You have to look good here if you want the important people to notice you. Of course it matters."
Having donated a considerable sum, he insisted he needed to get his money's worth, and once again hammered home the importance of connections. In this Murim talent was everything; the better your martial aptitude and comprehension, the better they treated you. Especially for a merchant's son, he said, proof was essential.
"And friend—I've prepared a little gift for you."
Seeing my lukewarm reaction, he chuckled and rummaged inside his robes.
"What gift?"
"I heard your stomach growling all day yesterday. Honestly, it was painful to watch…"
He carefully produced something wrapped in white cloth. Then he opened my hand and gently placed a still-warm mantou and a wheat cake onto my palm.
"Holy… where did you even get food like this?"
After nothing but crumbly temple meals that reeked of wild greens, the sight of real carbohydrate-packed food made my eyes go wide on their own.
"It's what the high monks of Shaolin eat. I pulled a few strings and got my hands on some, friend."
Ever since he started hanging around me, the annoying challenges had stopped, he said. This was his way of saying thanks.
"…Jo Gon, have I ever told you this? You're a really good friend."
Afraid someone might see, I took a huge bite of the mantou and wore an expression of pure gratitude. Savory fluffiness filled my mouth. In this rugged corner of the mountain I felt as though I had found a true brother-in-arms.
"Haha, really? That makes me happy."
"Of course. We're bros now."
After that drought-ending food drop, the declaration of brotherhood came easily. Jo Gon seemed satisfied with my reaction; he grinned, said he would see me at the sparring, and headed deeper into the training grounds.
The moment he left, Ilhong tapped my shoulder with a grim face.
"It's him."
"What is?"
"The one with Hundred-Li Fragrance powder on his feet."
"…!"
I flinched and stared after the direction he—no, almost certainly she—had vanished.
"Jo Gon. So it was you."
Betraying my trust. Unforgivable. The brotherhood was hereby canceled.