It’s One Thing or Another (4)
Gwak Hwan-so thought,
This is insane. What the hell am I hearing?
At first he was shocked, then he was speechless with disbelief, and finally he was simply flustered.
Cheong Myeong had just torn into him for being an idiot, but Gwak Hwan-so was the Great Disciple of Hainan. By nature, he was not the sort of man who could be stupid. There was no way he could have failed to grasp what they were saying.
“So, then…”
He opened his mouth with some difficulty.
“You mean the matter of serving as an envoy for the Heavenly Friends Alliance has fallen through, so we won’t speak of that any further….”
“Yes.”
“And you’re saying that you’ll set aside all those titles and join Hainan as ordinary martial artists?”
“That’s right.”
Gwak Hwan-so stared at the Heavenly Friends Alliance party with his mouth hanging open. Watching them calmly shovel food into their mouths while some conversation unfolded beside them made reality itself feel as though it were slipping further and further away.
He forced his thoughts into order as best he could and, in the end, blurted out the most reasonable thing he could manage.
“Are you all out of your minds?”
Too harsh? No, not at all. From Gwak Hwan-so’s point of view, that was the gentlest thing he could possibly say. What was there, anywhere in the world, that you could say more softly to people who were casually tossing their lives away?
“Hiss, listen to this bastard’s manners. You got any idea who you’re talking to—Mount Hua’s Acting Sect Leader?”
“Cheong Myeong, hold it in!”
“You’re the one who treats Mount Hua’s Acting Sect Leader the worst, though…”
Cheong Myeong snapped, but Baek Cheon merely smiled.
“Do I look insane to you?”
“That’s not the kind of thing a sane person says.”
“Well, it’s not exactly wrong, so it’s hard to argue.”
Baek Cheon shrugged with complete calm.
“But what am I supposed to do? That’s the decision that was made.”
Gwak Hwan-so, who had been staring blankly, suddenly jolted as if something had occurred to him.
“T-Then, the people here are all…?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Now he had no words left at all.
Are they really sane?
Who were the people here?
The Acting Sect Leader of Mount Hua, the young lord of Namgung, the young lord of the Tang Family, and the Palace Lord of the Ice Palace. Not even the Green Forest King was missing.
Of course, the Green Forest King was sitting in one corner radiating the unmistakable air of a man thinking, How the hell did I end up tangled up with a bunch of lunatics and sitting here like this? I want to bite my tongue off and die. Still, he was here all the same.
Gwak Hwan-so had no idea whether to laugh or cry, so he just scratched at his head.
Of course he was grateful. In a situation where everyone else had turned their backs on Hainan, these people had come all the way here, and even though the negotiations had fallen apart, they were saying they would stay. How could he not be grateful?
If his heart had its way, he’d be throwing himself to the ground in tears.
But in this moment, Gwak Hwan-so realized something anew: he was, in fact, a very rational man. Or perhaps he had merely realized that there were countless people in this world even more irrational than he was.
“Do you even understand the position you’re putting yourselves in?”
“…”
“You’re the ones carrying the future of your respective sects on your backs. Why on earth would you throw your lives away in this far-off land?”
“Because of that very reason.”
“Pardon?”
Baek Cheon said evenly,
“Just as you said, we’re the ones carrying the future of our respective sects. That means every step we take becomes an example for our sects to follow.”
“No, if you know that much, then…”
Then Baek Cheon cut him off with a firm voice.
“So if we simply turned around and went back, how would the people waiting for our return take that?”
“…”
“Should we tell them that we went all the way to Hainan, things didn’t go well, and so we ran away before the Evil Tyrant Alliance arrived?”
Baek Cheon slowly shook his head.
“We can’t do that. If we did, we’d only leave behind the precedent that whenever a powerful enemy appears, you abandon your comrades and run.”
“…”
“So we must fight. Not flee because the enemy is strong, but fight because the enemy is strong. That is the minimum duty of those who speak of righteousness and loyalty and have gained from them.”
“But the Heavenly Friends Alliance…”
“Yes. Of course, the stance of an individual, a sect, and an alliance can’t help but differ. A place like an alliance must sometimes suppress the private sense of loyalty that belongs to individuals. But…”
Baek Cheon stopped speaking and let out a soft chuckle.
“What does it matter? The Alliance Lord isn’t here. We’ll probably get chewed out later, but he can’t exactly do anything to us right now.”
“...Pardon?”
As soon as he said that, the faces of the people beside them—especially the Mount Hua disciples—fell.
“If the Sect Leader finds out, he’ll kill us.”
“He’s not the Sect Leader anymore. He’s the Former Sect Leader.”
“No, even if he hears about this, he’ll kill us, Senior Brother.”
“…”
“Senior Brother, you haven’t seen it when Martial Uncle Un Am gets angry, have you?”
“I don’t think I have…”
“I saw it once. That… I saw it, and that….”
Jo Geol shuddered as though just remembering it was enough to terrify him.
“He never should have stepped down as Sect Leader… We’re all doomed.”
The Mount Hua disciples’ faces turned gloomy at once, but Baek Cheon alone remained perfectly calm.
“We can worry about what comes later when it comes. Right now, all we need to think about is what’s right in front of us.”
At that moment, Gwak Hwan-so understood one thing with complete certainty.
He’s really a madman.
There was something profoundly strange hidden inside that handsome shell of a man.
His manner of speech was polite, his face utterly trustworthy, and yet inside him lived something unmistakably Mount Hua. Well, perhaps that was exactly why he had been made Mount Hua’s Acting Sect Leader.
His logic was entirely his own and made no sense whatsoever. It was so incoherent that Gwak Hwan-so didn’t even know where to begin calling it out.
But he couldn’t bring himself to say that aloud. Not because their joining them was convenient, either.
Comrade.
That one offhand word from Baek Cheon—comrade—had shut Gwak Hwan-so’s mouth for him.
“We…”
Gwak Hwan-so forced out the words that refused to come.
“We refused the Heavenly Friends Alliance’s proposal.”
“Yes.”
“We gave our word that we would not join the Alliance.”
“I know.”
Gwak Hwan-so fixed Baek Cheon with a hard look.
“And even so, we’re still comrades of the Heavenly Friends Alliance? Worth fighting and dying beside?”
“...Pardon?”
Baek Cheon looked more baffled than anything when he heard that.
“No, just because Hainan didn’t join the Heavenly Friends Alliance doesn’t mean you’ve become demonic or anything. You’re still orthodox, so why on earth would there be a reason not to fight together?”
“…”
“Of course, the relationship between the Ten Great Sects and the Heavenly Friends Alliance is a little awkward. But to put it bluntly, that’s because the Heavenly Friends Alliance and Shaolin don’t get along. Why should we have any ill feeling toward Hainan?”
Gwak Hwan-so shut his mouth and couldn’t answer. Baek Cheon smiled faintly and continued.
“What matters isn’t something like that. What matters is that Hainan is standing alone against the Evil Tyrant Alliance right now, and that we’re here.”
His voice had been calm from start to finish, as though he were talking about an ordinary fact so self-evident that it barely merited discussion.
“So we fight. I don’t really understand why anything more needs to be said.”
For a moment, silence fell.
Gwak Hwan-so’s head dipped. Emotion welled up inside him, and he didn’t want those people to see the expression on his face now.
Head still bowed, he spoke in a slightly strangled voice.
“...Mount Hua doesn’t exactly have reasons to feel warmly toward Hainan.”
“No, to be honest, I can’t say our feelings are all that fond. There are some tangled ties between us, after all.”
“And yet…”
“But that isn’t a reason for us to leave Hainan.”
Gwak Hwan-so bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say. Where was he supposed to begin, and how…?
“And I think there may be a misunderstanding. The position of an alliance and the position of an individual are different. But that doesn’t mean the Alliance would have abandoned Hainan if it had known about this situation.”
“…”
“We simply came here without properly understanding the situation. If we had known, we would have done everything we could to help Hainan, even if Hainan hadn’t joined the Heavenly Friends Alliance.”
Gwak Hwan-so clenched his lip and asked,
“Is that… the way of the Heavenly Friends Alliance?”
“No.”
“...Pardon?”
“This isn’t the way of the Heavenly Friends Alliance. It’s the duty of anyone who carries a sword.”
Gwak Hwan-so’s chest trembled.
Those words are easy enough to say. He had heard them countless times in his life, and he had spoken them just as often himself.
But how many people in this world could truly say them with their lives on the line? And yet those very few people were here right now. Right in front of him.
“...Thank you.”
Even now, Gwak Hwan-so set aside his own position. In this moment, these words were not being spoken as the Great Disciple of Hainan, but simply as one disciple of Hainan.
“Even if it’s only words, thank you for saying that. For saying you’d die alongside us….”
“Who said that?”
At that moment, a voice of utter displeasure cut in and sliced his words cleanly in half.
“...Pardon?”
“Who said we’d die with you?”
“...Ah, no, I mean, just now—”
“Argh, has this bastard really lost his mind?”
Cheong Myeong twisted his face into an ugly scowl and let loose a string of curses.
“Who’s dying, you punk? Am I crazy? Die all the way out here? I’d be better off being carefully buried in Mount Hua’s plum blossom grove and praised by generations of descendants for that.”
“...I’d rather not see that with my own eyes.”
“That’s a curse, a damn curse.”
“We should throw it into the bottomless pit.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to bury it in Mount Zhongnan? That way it can curse generations of descendants too?”
When Cheong Myeong whipped his head around and glared, the Mount Hua disciples quickly hunched their necks.
“Who the hell said we’d die for you, punk.”
“Ah, no… isn’t that the situation?”
“Situation? What situation?”
“The Evil Tyrant Alliance…”
“Hey!”
His eyes practically sparked with flame.
“If the Evil Tyrant Alliance comes storming in, are we supposed to line up and ask them to kill us? It’s not like all of them are coming—just part of them. And yet these so-called Ten Great Sects are acting like a bunch of old men already counting down the days to their own funerals. You little bastard! If you’ve got time to jaw at each other here, you should be thinking about how to butcher every last one of the bastards coming our way!”
“B-but the fighting strength…”
“Fighting strength my ass! In a fight, the strong don’t win. The ones who win are the ones who win. If you were going to sit around whining about fighting strength, the Central Plains would’ve been ruined a hundred years ago!”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
“Those Demonic Sect bastards were really strong.”
“...Apparently they used to be even stronger. Hell if I know how anyone beat them.”
“Compared to them, the Evil Tyrant Alliance is nothing.”
Still dazed, Gwak Hwan-so stared blankly at everyone. Then Cheong Myeong said each word with deliberate clarity.
“Listen carefully, you bastard.”
“…”
“Fighting with the resolve to die and going somewhere to die are two different things. Who said anyone here would die for you? Don’t spout bullshit. I’m here to fight those Evil Tyrant Alliance bastards, not to die here.”
“Mount Hua Divine Dragon…”
Cheong Myeong shot him a cool stare.
“So stop wasting time spewing useless crap and go make preparations. Once we finish eating, we’re going to talk.”
“...Talk about what?”
“What else?”
Everyone’s attention snapped to Cheong Myeong.
“We need to discuss how to kill those Evil Tyrant Alliance bastards.”
A crooked smile appeared at the corner of Cheong Myeong’s mouth.
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