Still, I Walk With Them (3)
Chung Myung walked as if he were possessed.
The feet that carried him took him to the Sword Tomb, which had already collapsed into ruin.
Neither fast nor slow, he reached the entrance of Mount Jeokgong and began climbing the single path upward with a dazed expression on his face.
"Yakseon. Sword-Stealing Traceless. Yakseon. Sword-Stealing Traceless. Honwon Dan. Disciple...."
Even as he climbed, he kept muttering under his breath.
Think.
Let’s think.
Thinking wasn’t his strong suit, but right now, he was the only one who could solve this riddle. Chung Myung’s mind tangled itself into a mess of countless clues.
What was I trying to get?
The Honwon Dan. And the method to refine the Honwon Dan.
Where did I hear it was?
The Sword Tomb. The grave of Sword-Stealing Traceless.
It had been wrong from the very beginning.
Yakseon was Sword-Stealing Traceless, but Sword-Stealing Traceless was not Yakseon. Failing to consider that subtle difference was the mistake.
If Yakseon had truly identified himself with Sword-Stealing Traceless, then he would not have tried to hide that fact, and he would not have announced the grave of Sword-Stealing Traceless to the world as the Sword Tomb.
In the end, if Yakseon had wanted to leave behind his own trace, it could never have been in the Sword Tomb.
As a result, the only thing they had found inside the Sword Tomb was nothing but decayed divine soldiers, wasn’t it?
Then where?
Where was the trace of Yakseon, not of Sword-Stealing Traceless?
It connects by a single path.
Long ago, Mount Jeokgong had apparently had several other mountain paths. But at some point, a natural disaster had left only this one route. It was almost as if the mountain itself had been arranged so that anyone climbing it would have to pass the place where the Sword Tomb lay.
Half out of his mind, Chung Myung climbed the mountain until his eyes caught sight of a pit so wide and deep it seemed to have been carved open by a giant hand. He stood before it and stared down with vacant eyes.
The Sword Tomb.
This was the Sword Tomb.
The place anyone climbing this mountain was doomed to arrive at.
"The Way. The Un-Way. The path. The place that isn’t a path."
Those who walked the Un-Way could not reach this place, and only those who walked the proper path could arrive here.
"...Did you figure something out?"
At Baek Cheon’s tentative question, Chung Myung whipped his head around.
The blazing look in his eyes made Baek Cheon flinch.
"Sasuk."
"Huh?"
"What did the people who discovered the Sword Tomb do?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I said, what did they do after they found the Sword Tomb!"
"Well...."
It was a strange question, but he had to answer it. Clearly, Chung Myung was trying to sort out his thoughts.
"They went inside."
"How?"
"No, what are you even talking about? Obviously they opened the door and went in...."
Baek Cheon shut his mouth.
They open the door and enter.
"Entering the gate."
It was a phrase that could be used in several different ways. But here, there could only be one meaning.
"A gate shaped like two swords crossing."
"Right. Entering the martial path."
Chung Myung said with a twisted expression.
"And after that?"
"A long path, narrowing more and more. With traps scattered here and there."
Jo Gul slapped his hands together.
"I get it! That’s training!"
"Right. It is training. Training is like walking a path that narrows little by little. Everyone starts on a broad road, but in the end, one by one, they can’t bear the narrowing path and begin to fall behind. Only those who endure it can move on to the next stage."
"And along the way, they face huge obstacles over and over again."
Chung Myung nodded hard.
Now it was clear.
"In other words...."
Baek Cheon summed up the situation.
"The Sword Tomb was made to symbolize the process of a person entering martial arts and refining their way through it."
"Probably."
Only then did Baek Cheon begin to understand the bizarre shape inside the Sword Tomb.
"But the path split apart in the middle."
"The same is true in martial arts. Even if the entrance is the same, everyone chooses a different road according to their own nature. But what happened at the end?"
"...The paths joined into one again."
"Myriad Streams Return to One. Even if you walk different roads, in the end, you can only follow a single purpose of great meaning."
Baek Cheon groaned softly.
"...The completion of martial arts."
"Exactly."
The enormous cavern where Chung Myung had fought with Jo Myeong-san and Samsal-gwi, among others.
The paths that had split into many branches had converged again there. It was as if even martial artists with different intentions could ultimately move toward only one goal.
"What was after that?"
"...A long, dark cave. And jiangshi."
Yoon Jong spoke with a low groan.
"A heart demon, then."
"Yes. The darkness that must inevitably come before martial arts are complete. A heart demon."
"Then that cliff? The one you climb after going through the heart demon...."
The answer came not from Chung Myung, but from Baek Cheon.
"The Road to Ascension."
Baek Cheon could now understand the meaning of it all.
"The blinding light that shone down from the end of that cliff must have represented the completion of martial arts. In Daoism, it is feathering and ascending to immortality; in Buddhism, liberation."
But there was still one thing that remained unresolved.
"Then what about those completely decayed divine soldiers and the empty wooden chest? If it’s ascension, shouldn’t there have been something there?"
Chung Myung bared his teeth.
"That there’s nothing."
"Huh?"
"Ascension, shedding the shell, whatever you want to call it. After fighting people and killing people to get there, there’s nothing at the end. That’s the point. Right from the beginning, the act of learning martial arts itself carries no meaning. The Sword Tomb wasn’t a place Yakseon made to test people; it was a place where he gave form to his own thoughts about martial arts."
Yu I-seol’s words provided the key.
Yakseon was a physician.
There was no way someone like that would look kindly on martial artists who injured and killed people. No, perhaps he saw them as mortal enemies. The more he loved and cherished human life, the deeper that hatred must have run.
"So he became Sword-Stealing Traceless to show the strongest figures of his day that the martial arts they clung to meant nothing. He stole the treasured swords that symbolized their arts, and since Yakseon was deeply versed in alchemy to the point that he could create the Honwon Dan, even if his techniques were lacking, he could still defeat the greatest fighters of the age with overwhelming internal energy."
"...And yet nothing changed."
"Right. Martial artists’ obsession with martial arts is beyond imagination. Yakseon wanted to say it outright: your martial arts are nothing but a poison that kills people. No matter how you dress it up as the Dao or the Buddhist law, in the end, there’s nothing there."
Baek Cheon hugged his shoulders, as if a chill had run through him.
What terrifying obsession, what terrifying madness. To build such an insane place called the Sword Tomb just to convey that one message—just how obsessive had Yakseon been?
"Then there was never anything inside to begin with?"
"Right."
"...So we were just doing useless work."
At last, those who understood the true nature of the Sword Tomb all let out sighs in turn.
"Then why did you come here? To confirm that?"
"No."
Chung Myung shook his head firmly.
"I told you. The Sword Tomb isn’t Yakseon’s grave. This place is just the grave of Sword-Stealing Traceless. Yakseon didn’t think of himself as Sword-Stealing Traceless. That was a fake identity. A mere false name, nothing compared to the alchemy and medicine he created."
"...."
"What do people usually do when the thing they set their hearts on collapses?"
"...They try to find a new goal."
They look upward.
Everyone had been unable to tear their eyes away from the collapsing ceiling, and even Chung Myung had looked for the light pouring down from the sky when the cavern fell apart, as though there were still brightness waiting up there.
"But the one who realizes futility looks down. And at the bottom of that place... at the lowest bottom, the kind martial artists wouldn’t even spare a glance for, there is life. There is survival. There are people trying to live."
Chung Myung muttered without pause.
His words weren’t directed at his sect brothers and sisters. They were simply thoughts spilling out in the form of speech.
"Then what about the ones who awaken to that? What should they do?"
"Go back?"
"No."
Chung Myung slowly began to move his feet again.
"Go on. Even those who chose the wrong goal from the beginning. Even those who walked the path of martial arts and hurt people. If they’re alive, they can keep going."
The path he was heading toward was the mountain trail beyond the pit.
Nobody had gone that way.
So many people had gathered here, but none of those who discovered the Sword Tomb had tried to take the path onward, and no one thought that odd.
Their goal was right here.
"There were clues everywhere. A stretch of land in the middle of the mountain where not a single blade of grass grew. To those driven by greed in search of rare treasures, it might have looked like a land made of gold... but it was just dead earth."
"Ah...."
At the words dead earth, everything seemed to click into place.
Looking back, there had been so many clues, and they had all been explained with excessive kindness. It was only that the mass of greed called the Honwon Dan and the divine soldiers had blinded them to everything else.
Even the disciples of Mount Hua had charged straight into the Sword Tomb the moment they arrived, and after it collapsed, hadn’t they turned back without hesitation?
For those who had placed their meaning solely in the Sword Tomb, a path further on had never meant anything at all.
Chung Myung moved on again, as if still under a spell.
Past the place of dead earth that had become nothing more than a huge pit—past the place where everything had collapsed and returned to emptiness—...
toward the path that still continued.
He pushed through the overgrown brush and kept walking.
So this was what you wanted to say.
The emptiness of martial arts is not the end.
Walk.
Even so, keep walking.
Even if you have lost the goal you staked your whole life on, if you do not despair over it and instead discover what lies beneath your feet... then it is not too late. Go forward on those two legs.
Not for martial arts.
For life.
Chung Myung’s steps grew solemn.
He did not agree with Yakseon’s philosophy. But he could not help but respect this appalling arrangement built by a man who had poured out everything in his life to create it.
At last, they reached another broad clearing.
Unlike the place they had first seen, this one was in perfect harmony with everything around it.
Water flowed through cracks in the rocks, and grass grew thick and lush all around. Trees stood where they had sprouted naturally, and the animals that had been playing freely among them scattered in fright when they spotted Chung Myung, fleeing in a rush.
It was nothing more than an ordinary, natural place.
And that was precisely why Chung Myung could be certain this was the ground Yakseon had truly chosen. It was the perfect contrast to the dead land where they had first arrived.
"Those who don’t understand Yakseon’s intention probably wouldn’t think anything of it even if they reached this place."
"Probably. This is just... really just a mountain."
From the beginning, Chung Myung’s gaze had been fixed on one spot.
The crack in the rock on one side of the clearing, where water flowed out.
That was probably the spring source of Mount Jeokgong.
"Water is humble."
Chung Myung muttered lowly.
"A thin, shallow stream joins with other waters to become a brook, then a river, and eventually flows into the sea. Along the way, it gives life to countless living things."
In the end, that was the Dao.
And benevolence.
"If Yakseon truly wanted to leave behind what was his, then he would have had to overcome both pride and concern."
The Sword Tomb was his concern.
Then what about Yakseon’s pride?
"I...."
Chung Myung muttered as if he himself had become Yakseon.
"What I have achieved will spread through the world like water and become the starting point that saves countless people."
A brazen thought, to be sure.
But... if the one who made this arrangement truly was Yakseon, then he had every right to be brazen.
Chung Myung slowly walked toward the fissure where the water burst forth.
If his reasoning was correct.
If what Yakseon had wanted to pass on to the descendants of the distant future had truly reached Chung Myung now.
Then what he had left behind...
was right here!
Chung Myung shoved his slightly trembling hand into the narrow crack where the water gushed out. The gap was barely wide enough for two human hands, and he forced his arm in up to the shoulder, groping around inside.
His body was drenched in an instant.
This was the spring source.
The origin of life.
If it was here, it had to be here. No—there was no doubt it would be here!
Only those who have known despair can understand.
Only someone who knew how empty martial arts truly were could understand what Yakseon had wanted to convey. Because Chung Myung had felt the deepest emptiness at the end of life and still gone on walking, he could understand what Yakseon was trying to say.
So here!
It had to be right here!
At that very moment—
Clack!
Something caught at Chung Myung’s fingertips.
The sensation said it was not stone. It was definitely....
Metal?
Chung Myung pushed his hand deeper. The feel of smoothly forged metal was unmistakable.
He gripped it tight and pulled the metal mass free.
Rumble—!
As water burst out violently, a square iron block was drawn from the crack in the rock!
Chung Myung could hardly breathe as he stared at the iron block he had pulled out.
A box.
His hand began to tremble.
His sect brothers and sisters could only stare at the box Chung Myung had drawn out, frozen like stone and unable to speak.
The box, sealed tightly with metal, had clearly spent two hundred years underwater, and yet it had retained its shape perfectly.
That alone was proof it was no ordinary object.
Chung Myung’s fingertips slowly moved toward the box.
Click.
He released the lock in a single motion, then drew in a deep breath. With trembling hands, he slowly began to open the box.
Creeeak.
With the tiniest scrape, the box opened.
Before his eyes could even register what was inside, a scent so pure it was impossible to describe pierced Chung Myung’s nose.
"Ugh...."
And then, inside the fully opened box.
Chung Myung saw it clearly with his own eyes.
Inside that small box were a little more than twenty tiny pills and an ancient-looking booklet.
"Hk."
His heart hurt.
His legs shook violently.
Forcing strength into his eyes as they kept trying to blur, he checked the title of the booklet.
Honwon Scriptures (Honwon Bicheol).
"Honwon...."
His consciousness slipped away.
"Fo... fo... fo... found iiiiit!"
"Found?"
"I found it, damn it! I found ittttttt!"
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
"What the hell! He found it! He actually found it!"
Chung Myung threw his head back and let out a howl toward the sky.
"Aaaaaaah! Yakseon, you bastard! I found it! I found it, you son of a bitchhhhhh!"
Chung Myung foamed at the mouth and slowly fell backward.
Sahyung!
Sect Leader Sahyung!
Damn it! Damn it! I did it!
In his fading vision, he thought he could see the smiling face of Chung Mun, looking at him with deep satisfaction.