Who Would Help? (2)
“Stop this.”
“No—tell me where I’m wrong.”
The elder who had spoken up nearly shouted, as if he no longer cared to hide a thing.
“Let’s be honest. If it were the Heavenly Friends Alliance, they wouldn’t have left us like this. Even if they couldn’t come all the way here to save us, they wouldn’t have ignored us for more than a year as though we didn’t exist!”
“Mind your words. Do you think that was because they didn’t want to help? The Jiangnan Invincibility Agreement….”
“Must I really keep my mouth crooked just to speak straight? Did someone else make that Jiangnan Invincibility Agreement for them? If they’d cared about us Hainan even a little, could they have signed such an agreement? If this isn’t proof that Shaolin never thought of us at all, what is?”
“I said stop.”
“You all think it too, don’t you?”
The words landed in the hall like a bomb.
“You may not say it out loud, but isn’t that what every one of you thinks in your hearts? Shaolin abandoned us. No—maybe they abandoned us years ago.”
“……”
“And in all this time, what good is it to keep crying out for Shaolin when they were never going to come?”
Heavy, frustrated sighs slipped out from here and there.
No one had dared say it plainly, but who in the room thought differently? They had only pressed the words down and buried them, afraid that once spoken, those words would return with a weight they could never bear.
The elder who had been speaking bit his lip hard, then spat the rest out as if vomiting poison.
“Before we ended up like this, dangling from a broken thread, we should have gone over to the Heavenly Friends Alliance first….”
“Did I not tell you to shut your mouth!”
Then someone roared, and the hall shook with it. The answer that followed was even fiercer.
“What, you think the rest of us didn’t know? If you’re going to speak, at least speak sense! Do you really not know who the true leader of the Heavenly Friends Alliance is?”
“But….”
“Mount Hua! Yes, Mount Hua! The original owner of the place we now occupy!”
“……”
“When Mount Hua fell, what did Hainan do? Did we help them? Did we fight for them? No! We were pleased, weren’t we? Pleased that an opportunity had come at last!”
Everyone’s faces flushed red.
It was already past history.
But they knew. The only people who could brush aside the past by calling it history were those who had not been fattened on that past. For them—those who had enjoyed the glory of the Ten Great Sects—there was no escaping responsibility for the choices they had made.
If they had at least spoken up and said the truth—that what they enjoyed was, in fact, unjust—then it would have been different. One who kept silent when silence was not due forfeited the right to speak when the time finally came.
“That Mount Hua…!”
The elder, still shaking with fury, ground his teeth.
“They’re supposed to help the people who fell? Why would they have any good will toward us, the ones who took their place and sat there like we owned it? Why in the world would they accept us into the Heavenly Friends Alliance, let alone come all the way to this remote island as comrades to save us!”
“……”
“If the roles were reversed and you were the disciples of Mount Hua, would you be mourning this state of ours? No! If it were us, we’d be looking for a chance to seize the place Hainan left behind, just as the old Hainan once did!”
Several elders lowered their heads.
Only now did they truly feel, deep in their bones, what they had done. What must Mount Hua have thought as it watched them? While bleeding tears of blood and collapsing into ruin, what bitter grief must it have swallowed while looking at Hainan standing in their place, strutting about and thriving?
“If a person had any shame….”
The elder who had gone that far closed his mouth tightly. He knew that was not something he had the right to say as an elder of Hainan.
A quiet sigh leaked from Geum Yang-baek’s lips as he sat under the weight of the cold, suffocating atmosphere.
“What’s done is done… There’s no point regretting it now.”
Complicated thoughts churned in his head.
“There is some truth in Ziyang’s words. If we had bowed first to the Heavenly Friends Alliance before matters reached this point, things might have been different.”
“……”
“When we still had something in our hands, something to offer. If we had apologized then and sincerely repented, the situation might truly have changed. But… we already missed that chance, didn’t we?”
In Geum Yang-baek’s mind, the sight of Mount Hua from the martial arena remained painfully clear.
The younger disciples had not known better, so they openly showed their hostility toward Mount Hua. But the sect leader and elders, old enough to know better, had only scrambled to avoid Mount Hua’s gaze.
That look had been far too hard to bear.
Even then….
Perhaps “confessing sin” was too grand a phrase. But at the very least, they could have lowered their heads. They might have uttered even a hollow apology—said they truly regretted what had happened.
But Geum Yang-baek had not been able to do that. So he could not even force himself to claim this was the sin of his predecessors alone.
Passive accomplices might be worse than active participants. Those who wanted to avoid guilt while still enjoying the gains were precisely the sort who became passive accomplices.
“Yes. In the end, this is only retribution.”
He was merely paying the price now. Though they were a righteous sect meant to honor chivalry, they had not thought to resolve another’s injustice; instead, they had taken advantage of the opportunity for their own gain… Perhaps it was only fitting that they should now be wiped out in this way.
He simply could not say that such a fate was natural because he was the leader of Hainan.
After a long silence with his eyes shut, Geum Yang-baek finally opened his mouth in exhaustion.
“How are the disciples holding up?”
“They don’t say it, but none of them can hide how unsettled they are.”
“I thought as much….”
The enemy was too powerful, and this island was too lonely.
“Ziyang.”
“Yes, Sect Leader.”
“There is no use bringing up the past. It would be better to focus on what can still be done, even now.”
“……”
“If the Ten Great Sects won’t help us… if they have no intention of helping us, then we’ll have to beg for aid elsewhere. Let us send word to whatever sects are willing to lend Hainan a hand.”
At that, Ziyang gave a bitter smile.
“Who would come?”
“……”
Geum Yang-baek likely had not said it expecting anything in return. But Ziyang could not even accept such a polite formality.
“To ask people to fight beside Hainan now is no different from asking them to die beside Hainan. Who in heaven or on earth would break through that Jiangnan land and come all the way here?”
“Ziyang….”
“If there really were that many people in this world overflowing with chivalry, Hainan wouldn’t be in this state in the first place.”
With a short sigh, Geum Yang-baek spoke in a hollow voice.
“Still, we must try to grasp at straws.”
“Sect Leader… there aren’t even straws left in the water we’ve fallen into. Even if we want to send word, there’s no way to do it, is there?”
In the end, Geum Yang-baek shut his eyes again.
He wanted to rebuke them for always speaking in ways that drained the strength from his body, but he didn’t even have the energy for that. Merely managing the flesh that sagged like waterlogged cotton was exhausting enough.
“Sect Leader. Perhaps it would be better to abandon the island and escape….”
But Geum Yang-baek shook his head before the suggestion could even finish.
“Why do you not understand? The ones waiting most eagerly for us to leave this island are the Evil Tyrant Alliance. The Jiangnan Invincibility Agreement. Yes—the agreement that has been choking us applies to us as well.”
“……”
“The moment we step off this island, they gain a reason to strike us. And here on the island, we may be Hainan Sect, but on a ship we are no different from ordinary men. No matter how much martial arts we’ve learned, what can we do in the vast open sea?”
“Sect Leader….”
“Whether we remain in Jiangnan or head out to sea, neither path offers a good end….”
“But even so, we can’t just sit here and wait for the day we die, can we?”
Geum Yang-baek fell silent.
He was frustrated too. But what could he do? If you’re thirsty and drink salt water, all you do is hurry death along.
“Has the term of the agreement already passed?”
“By the calendar, yes. But neither the Evil Tyrant Alliance nor the Ten Great Sects has said it aloud.”
“I see… yes, of course.”
There was no need to announce out loud that the two sides had become enemies who could go to war at any moment.
The Ten Great Sects found even speaking the words “Jiangnan Invincibility” humiliating, while the Evil Tyrant Alliance had no desire to bring it up and stir trouble prematurely.
The moment that Jiangnan Invincibility Agreement was formally brought to an end would likely be the day the Evil Tyrant Alliance’s blade invaded Hainan.
It won’t be long now.
Even if he tried to ignore it, he could feel it. That day was right on top of them.
“Lim Gyeom.”
“Yes, Sect Leader.”
“Send the younger disciples out through the mountain gate and have them return to their families.”
“...Sect Leader?”
“I cannot stop those who wish to bury their bones here with Hainan, but the children who still do not know what they are doing must be stopped. There is no guarantee those fiends won’t extend their claws to the families they return to, but it will be better there than it is here.”
At those words, Lim Gyeom bit his lip until it nearly tore.
Those words amounted to admitting that Hainan no longer had any means left to resist the Evil Tyrant Alliance.
“...I will obey.”
“And… if any of the disciples wish to be expelled, grant it as they ask.”
“Se-Sect Leader! That’s…!”
“Shouldn’t those who can live, live?”
Geum Yang-baek shook his head.
“One corpse clinging to the roots of Hainan is enough for me. There’s no need for anyone else to do the same.”
No explanation was needed for how much resolve lay hidden in those words. Yet Ziyang could only let out another frustrated sigh.
“What good will any of that do….”
“……”
“The Evil Tyrant Alliance is not made of people who keep to the proper path. They will never leave behind a future problem. After they finish with Hainan Sect, they’ll scour the island from end to end and try to uproot every last person connected to Hainan Sect. That is the Evil Tyrant Alliance’s way… and isn’t it also the way of the Myriad Man Sect?”
Ziyang’s sighing voice settled over the hall like a lead weight.
“What place is there for a man without wings to go? Where would he even fly? He can only go to Hainan. Only Hainan….”
“……”
The tips of Geum Yang-baek’s fingers trembled.
Extermination.
The two words he had never imagined would one day confront him had come so suddenly, so violently, and sank their teeth in.
Though Hainan had always been warm, he now felt nothing but cold and loneliness.
How was I so blind that I never realized how heartless the world of Jianghu truly was?
Why had he never understood that the chivalry they shouted so loudly about was nothing more than the pastime of the powerful?
“Heh… heh heh….”
A weak laugh slipped from his mouth.
“Heh heh heh heh….”
That laugh, sadder than tears, wandered through the great hall like a ghost for a long while.