The Night I Stabbed My Master
I stabbed my master last night.
I stabbed my master last night. The reason is ridiculous. I just wanted to see him get angry.
Everyone in the world is born with different talents. Some are called geniuses from a young age because what they’re good at happens to be what they love, and they live comfortably. Others spend their whole lives hating their own talent and only suffer until they die. In my case, I was born with an uncanny ability to read people. Even as a child too young to tell right from wrong, I enjoyed watching people and imitating their actions and thoughts. So you could say I was also born with a love for that talent.
Having been blessed with such great fortune, I rarely felt frustrated or angry about anything. Being treated like an idiot, getting slapped around for annoying someone—none of that bothered me. Even if someone harbored a deep grudge against me, it might be uncomfortable, but it never made me angry. Because of that, I thought I was simply a person without anger.
But lately, it seems that isn’t entirely true.
“...Morning already.”
The moment I opened my eyes, I felt frustrated and angry with myself.
Our sect’s rules aren’t particularly strict. To be honest, if I said I didn’t feel like training and just lay down in the yard, Master would simply say, “Suit yourself.” What he actually cared about more was fetching water and cooking. Not because he’d scold me, but because if I didn’t do it on time, I’d be the one going hungry.
Master pretends to care deeply about my meals, but if I don’t say anything, he wouldn’t even notice that mealtime had passed. So, having woken up early, I grabbed the water jug and headed up the mountain toward the spring.
“How am I supposed to face Master now?”
When I thought about it, the situation was almost comical. The very disciple who had tried to kill his master with a blade the night before was now climbing the mountain to fetch water like always.
I wasn’t so ignorant that I didn’t know a master is supposed to be like the heavens to his disciple. Especially not when our master had taken in a dying orphan from the streets, raised him into a proper martial artist, and asked for nothing in return. I should have been grateful a hundred times a day, yet I had committed such a heinous act. I really was an ungrateful wretch.
Still, even someone like me had a shabby excuse.
“This should be enough water… Since I’m here, maybe I’ll gather some more kindling…”
I had always been perceptive, but there was a specific moment when I fully realized how to use my talent. It happened when two big beggar boys were fighting over who would be the boss. What started as an argument quickly turned into a fistfight. Once blood was drawn, the brawl grew fiercer until one of them grabbed a rock and beat the other to death.
It wasn’t a pretty sight, but I was captivated. Until then, what I had been observing and imitating was only the surface. In that desperate, ugly moment, I learned that the thick, sticky essence hidden beneath the shell was the true core.
The next day, wanting to see it again, I killed the remaining boy. He was bigger and stronger than me, and I nearly died instead, but the result was satisfying.
I’ve gone on too long with useless old memories, but the point is this: I love reading people. And the only time someone truly reveals their heart is when they’re consumed by intense emotion and stop caring about themselves.
“Time to head back down.”
Once I had gathered enough kindling, it really was time to descend. I had woken up a little earlier than usual, so I had some time to spare, but it was still only about fifteen minutes. Soon I would have to greet Master.
“What will he say…?”
Master was truly an impressive man. My experience was limited, so I couldn’t say for sure, but he was so strong that I doubted anyone could match him. He was wise enough not to try changing the world despite that power, and kind enough to never ignore an orphan in front of him even though he knew it was hypocritical.
Even someone like Master had flaws. He always seemed indifferent to everything. Beautiful scenery, fascinating stories, the people of the world, the world itself—he only glanced at them lightly and never gave any of it his deep heart. To me, who found the world and its people endlessly interesting, that was incomprehensible.
The reason I couldn’t take my eyes off him the first time we met wasn’t just because I was fascinated by the vastness of his heart. It was also because I instinctively realized that even that vastness was merely a tiny part of something far greater.
From the very first day we met, I had wanted to see Master’s true heart.
So, blasphemously, I couldn’t endure that frustration any longer and finally committed the ultimate sin. Yet beyond the guilt and shame, a part of me was still hoping for something.
Last night I had passed out instantly without seeing or hearing anything, but today when I went to greet him, I would have to face him. What kind of emotion would Master show then? Would he be angry? Would he find it amusing? Or, knowing his personality, would he worry about me instead?
If he asked why, I planned to answer honestly. It seemed unlikely, but even if he was disappointed and took back the life he had saved, I could accept it gladly. At that moment, even if it wasn’t quite like the instant of life-or-death, he would surely reveal at least a little of the heart he had kept so tightly hidden from the world.
Because I was his one and only disciple.
That’s what I thought.
It didn’t take long to realize how arrogant that was.
The moment I actually stood before Master, the mix of tension, shame, guilt, and blasphemous anticipation left me unable to speak. I hesitated for a long time, carefully choosing my words, but Master, who had been quietly watching me, simply turned away with the same expression as always and said,
After that, I don’t remember how the morning passed.
To the transcendent Master, I was nothing more than a passing part of the scenery, no different from anything else. He had simply shown a moment of kindness by giving that scenery a name. When that realization hit me, the flood of shame and self-loathing was unbearable.
That day, I lied to send Master away, then fled the sect without leaving so much as a letter while he was gone.
I ran east with all my strength for the entire first day after leaving. All I wanted was to get as far away from Master as possible, but in the end it wasn’t a bad choice. Our sect was located on the eastern slope of an unnamed peak in the Kunlun Mountains, so heading east would soon bring me to Gansu Province.
Even if Master chased after me riding the clouds like the Monkey King, he was so uninterested in people that he could barely distinguish individuals with his senses. If I hid among the crowds, he would never find me.
By the time the sun had circled once and sunk back beneath the horizon, a fairly decent village came into view. Following my old beggar habits, I lay down under a suitable bridge, closed my eyes, and it felt like everything that had happened after meeting Master was just a dream.
After sleeping deeply and waking up today, when I finally calmed down and thought it over carefully, I realized Master probably didn’t see me as just another grain of sand on the roadside. If he had simply taken pity on an orphan and raised him, teaching martial arts because that was the only skill he knew wouldn’t be strange. But once the child had reached a certain level, it would make sense to let him live independently.
Yet Master had never once spoken about my future even though I had already passed the age of aspiration and was nearly twenty. In any other one-disciple sect, I might have assumed he intended to pass on the sect, but that was impossible in ours. Master hadn’t gained a single white hair in nine years—who would he pass anything on to?
I dared to guess that even though Master found everything in the world boring, he kept me around because talking with me gave him at least a tiny bit of enjoyment.
…Of course, it was also entirely possible that he simply had no sense of time and didn’t even know how old I was. But I was the kind of person who tried to think positively about everything.
If I assumed Master cared about me at least a little, then there was only one reason he hadn’t reacted to me stabbing him. My skill and mindset were so insignificant—like a clump of cotton blown by the wind—that he hadn’t even considered it a real threat.
“Hey! Boss! Some bastard is sprawled out over here!”
“What the—? This punk is smiling, Boss.”
“What’s with him? His skin is so pale. He doesn’t look like a beggar, more like a crazy person. Just leave him alone. They say you shouldn’t mess with crazy people.”
Lacking real experience, I filled in the gaps with what I had read in martial arts novels. It was a relief that I had read a few of those books since leaving the mountain with Master.
“Right, so let’s see… What I need right now is…”
Fame, connections, and above all, enough money to buy a decent sword and robe and order some roasted duck and Zhuye Qing at an inn.
When I suddenly turned my head and met their eyes, the two middle-aged beggars gasped.
“You… you’re from the Beggars’ Sect, right?”
“Y-yeah. Why?”
“I need directions.”
I stood up, straightened my back, tensed my core, and shook out my arms and legs with all my strength. A loud thump rang out as a thick cloud of dust exploded in every direction. There was no waterfall here, so this was the best way to clean myself. Now I was no longer a beggar. I was the proud… well, our sect didn’t even have a name. So I was the proud disciple of my master.
“Please guide me to the nearest branch of any evil sect. Ah, I don’t have any money right now, so I’ll pay the information fee once we get there.”