Is This Really Okay? (4)
“Hey, you bastard! What kind of thing is that to do with a human face on? You’ll be struck down by heaven’s punishment!”
“Wow... I live a long time, and this is the first time I’ve heard a Sapa bastard go on about heaven’s punishment.”
Jo Geol dragged the whiner from the evil sect away without the slightest mercy.
“L-let go! Let go of me! Aaaagh!”
“Sahyeong! This bastard’s resisting!”
Yoon Jong glanced into the gaping cave. Even though it was broad daylight outside, almost no light seeped in, leaving the interior so dark it gave him the creeps.
“Hmm. If they’re going to be trapped in this dark cave, of course they’d be frightened. Can you really blame them for that?”
“...Then what should we do?”
“What do you mean, what should we do? You ask the most obvious things.”
Yoon Jong replied with a gentle smile.
“Compassion should be shown without distinction between man and beast. Human beings are born fundamentally good, so should we hate them for a mistake made in a moment?”
At those words, Jo Geol looked at Yoon Jong as if something had just clicked in his head.
“Then...”
Yoon Jong nodded with a placid expression, as though he already knew the answer without needing to hear it.
“Yes. Throw them into the cave at once.”
“...Sahyeong, I think that’s a little contradictory.”
“Not at all. Those who follow the Dao must certainly have compassion even for the smallest creatures. But those Sapa scum are less than beasts, aren’t they? They’re not even equal to tiny vermin.”
Yoon Jong drove the point home with an innocent face.
“So there’s no reason to hesitate.”
“...”
Before Jo Geol could even react, Hye Yeon kicked the bandits and shoved them in a heap into the cave. Watching a monk mutter “Amitabha” while shoving people bodily into a pitch-black cave, one couldn’t help but feel a profound, existential question rise up from the gut: what, exactly, was Buddhism?
“Y-you bastards!”
“Aaaagh!”
The evil sect members, hurled into the cave, rolled their eyes and thrashed desperately.
Jo Geol found himself shaking his head before he knew it.
The Black Ghost Fort had always been infamous for its cruelty among the evil sects. But he hadn’t expected them to keep kicking and screaming like that even after having their dantians smashed and their tendons and meridians severed.
Well, I guess that’s exactly why they ended up in the evil sect.
Unless they were steeped in wickedness to the bone, they wouldn’t be able to slaughter ordinary commoners as casually as swatting flies.
“Do you think the Evil Tyrant Alliance will just sit still for this!”
“You’ll all be ripped to pieces soon enough and stuffed into a beast’s belly, you brutal monsters!”
“Oh, really?”
Jo Geol grinned and grabbed the boulder they had prepared beside the cave.
“Huh?”
“Then keep cursing us from in there until that happens.”
Rumbleeeee—!
The boulder, as large as a house, began sealing the cave entrance. The faces of those trapped inside turned white.
“W-wait...!”
“N-no!”
“What are you doing, you insane bastards!”
Rumbleeeee—!
The opening was nearly shut. The Sapa members, stripped of their inner force and with their meridians destroyed, had no way to move the rock aside, and before long they would surely starve to death in the pitch-black darkness.
By then, their attitude changed as well.
“P-please, spare us!”
“We were wrong! We’ll never do it again!”
“P-please!”
But...
Thunk.
In the end, the boulder completely sealed the cave.
“Aaaagh!”
“You bastards worse than Sapa!”
“I’ll curse you even if I become a ghost! Aaaagh!”
Those left behind in the darkness with no light at all screamed in despair until their throats were raw and their voices failed entirely.
“Let’s go back.”
“Yes.”
Yoon Jong, Jo Geol, and Hye Yeon turned away after staring blankly at the rock blocking the cave. Before they had even taken a few steps, Hye Yeon’s voice, somewhat heavier than before, floated out.
“Daoist.”
“Yes?”
“Those men will die, won’t they?”
Yoon Jong’s expression stiffened slightly. Hye Yeon shook his head.
“No, Daoist. I am not trying to say this choice was wrong. Those men should, of course, be punished. People with such natures must have taken many lives over the course of theirs. So this is only natural, if anything is.”
Hye Yeon paused, then went on.
“Amitabha... But even so, it is true that my heart does not feel entirely at ease.”
“...You looked pretty thrilled shoving them in there.”
“Kh-heh. W-what do you mean by that, Jo Geol Daoist?”
“No, I mean, that’s just the truth—”
“Khk-khhm! A misunderstanding, it’s a misunderstanding!”
Watching Hye Yeon’s ears slowly redden, Yoon Jong let out a small snort of laughter.
“To be honest, I don’t feel quite as clear about it as the monk does either. If they had been a bit stronger, I might have felt less troubled, but... there is a part of me that feels as though we are bullying the weak.”
“Amitabha. Indeed, that is so.”
“But... well. I don’t think there was any need to hesitate. The punishment we gave them was nothing more than depriving them of their martial arts and making them go hungry for a while.”
“What? But they...”
Hye Yeon turned to look back in confusion. With their tendons and meridians severed, they would not be able to move the boulder, nor could they dig through the cave wall. So their only end would be to die painfully inside...
Yoon Jong said,
“They may not be able to get out with their own hands, but there are those who can let them out, aren’t there?”
“...You mean the villagers?”
“Yes. The rock is large, but if everyone works together, rolling it aside won’t be impossible. So if the villagers put their minds to it, they could save them at any time.”
Hye Yeon nodded as if he understood. In fact, if the villagers all joined forces, they really did seem capable of moving a boulder that size with relative ease.
“But will those people really save them?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“...Pardon?”
Yoon Jong gave a small smile.
“When you consider Cheong Myeong’s personality to begin with, those men should already be dead.”
At that, Hye Yeon nodded. It was certainly surprising that Cheong Myeong had chosen to have them trapped instead.
Hye Yeon considered Cheong Myeong someone with more hidden warmth than he let on, but at least when it came to matters involving Sapa or wicked men, he had never once seen him show mercy.
“And yet he still deliberately chose such a troublesome method for one reason, I think. We don’t have the right to judge them. The ones who have that right are the villagers who nearly lost their lives to those men.”
“Ah...”
“That’s why Cheong Myeong entrusted their fate to the villagers. After making arrangements so they wouldn’t be able to take revenge even if those men were eventually freed.”
“He really went that far...”
At Hye Yeon’s words, Yoon Jong shook his head.
“They are people who’ve said they had to lick their enemy’s boots because they had no power. Would they truly feel satisfied deep in their hearts if we told them, ‘We have the power, so we avenged your grievances for you’?”
Hye Yeon nodded, seeming to understand what he meant.
“Cheong Myeong shiju...”
“He does have his moments when you think he’s surprisingly thoughtful.”
Yoon Jong smiled faintly. Then Jo Geol, unable to hold back, cut in gruffly.
“Sahyeong. Wake up. Do you really think Cheong Myeong thought that far ahead?”
“Hmm?”
“From what I can tell, that bastard just got pissed off and decided not to let them die cleanly.”
“...”
“To put it plainly, if you just cut their heads off, that’s it—they’re dead with a little sting and nothing more!”
“...”
“If you’re going to kill them, make them reflect properly before they die. They’ve committed crimes, so why should they get to die easily?”
For a moment, Yoon Jong found Jo Geol’s point more convincing than he wanted to admit and squeezed his eyes shut.
As the saying went, dogs see only dogs, and Buddhas see only Buddhas.
After taking a few more steps, Jo Geol opened his mouth cautiously.
“Sahyeong.”
“Yes?”
“Did you see it earlier?”
The question came out of nowhere, but Yoon Jong immediately understood what he meant.
“You mean the villagers’ reaction just now.”
“Yes.”
Jo Geol hesitated, uncharacteristically restraining himself for a moment.
“I don’t know how to put it... honestly, it was a little...”
“I know what you mean.”
Yoon Jong let out a short sigh. Jo Geol had probably been quite shocked.
Their swords existed solely to help the weak and punish the wicked. To make the world better through righteousness.
But the weak fear even the sword in their hands. To those who cannot wield a blade, the sword in the hands of an evil sect member and the sword in the hands of a righteous sect member may look like nothing more than the same sharp piece of steel.
“It’s something we have to understand.”
“But...”
“A person cannot simply lay their heart bare. Goodwill is something you can only infer and trust.”
“...”
“If someone who cannot resist fears even the sliver of malice that might be hidden inside supposed goodwill, can you truly say that is wrong? Isn’t that only natural?”
Jo Geol exhaled slowly. Yoon Jong was right; there was no way to blame them for that.
“I’m not saying those people were wrong. It’s just... I felt a little sorry. If we have to inspire fear even while acting righteously...”
At that moment, a firm voice cut into Jo Geol’s ear.
“Don’t get confused, Geol.”
“Yes?”
“Righteousness itself has no value.”
“...”
“We are not striving to create a world full of righteousness.”
For an instant, doubt flashed in Jo Geol’s eyes. But Yoon Jong’s next words cleared it away naturally.
“Righteousness has meaning only when there are people to help. A truly good world is not one packed with people eager to help each other. It would be a world where everyone can live without needing to help one another very much at all.”
“Ah...”
“Righteousness without force is nothing more than goodwill. In other words, righteousness is something that is only truly realized through power. But Geol, a world where only power can make things happen is not a good one. The world our descendants should one day live in ought to be one where the word ‘righteousness’ has become little more than a romantic memory of a vanished age.”
Yoon Jong quietly looked down at the sword hanging at his waist.
“The day Mount Hua truly becomes Mount Hua will be the day this sword falls from the waists of Mount Hua’s Taoists. A world where they no longer need to swing a sword. A world where they no longer need a sword to protect anyone.”
Jo Geol’s expression as he stared at him was blank, as though he had just been hit in the back of the head.
Yoon Jong smiled.
“If I had been born in such a world, wouldn’t I have been able to live in a quiet Taoist temple, reciting the scriptures? In a world like that, those villagers would have shared even a bowl of cold rice with me and smiled.”
“...”
“There’s no need to blame them. Let’s think of it as our own lack still remaining.”
“...Sahyeong.”
Jo Geol let out the words with a faint groan and scratched the back of his head.
“Talking to you sometimes makes me feel like I’ve turned into an idiot.”
“It shouldn’t be sometimes...”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
Yoon Jong chuckled and quickened his pace, and Jo Geol hurried after him.
“Sahyeong! Wait for me, Sahyeong!”
Watching the two of them run ahead and fall in step behind each other, Hye Yeon smiled faintly.
A world without righteousness...
Well. He didn’t know. Could such a day really come?
But if that day ever did arrive, the world would become far more livable than it was now.
“Amitabha.”
The soft murmur of the Buddha’s name spread quietly through the still mountains.
---