A Sect Even Beggars Wouldn’t Pick Up On the Way (2)
Mount Hua had not changed. The wind still blew the same way, and the old, elegant halls stood exactly as they always had.
Only what had changed was not Mount Hua, but its people.
"Huff!"
Jo Gul yanked off his training clothes. The moment he clutched the garment he’d just tossed aside, sweat dripped from it in streams. After doing strength training from dawn, his whole body was soaked through; unless he changed clothes, there was no way to endure it.
"Ugh, today’s training was brutal."
"Do we really have to do this much from dawn? Seriously."
Listening to the grumbling around him, Jo Gul gave a crooked smile. All around him were his fellow disciples washing their clothes just as he was. Together, they rinsed themselves in an icy stream and scrubbed the sweat-soaked uniforms clean.
Jo Gul put on the spare clothes he’d brought and neatly folded away the laundry he’d finished.
"Let’s head back up."
"Yes, sahyung."
The Cheong-generation disciples picked up their washed uniforms and began climbing Mount Hua. Watching them from behind, Jo Gul couldn’t help but think over the change he’d witnessed.
They’ve really changed a lot.
In the past, he couldn’t even have dreamed of seeing such a scene. The Cheong-generation disciples were indeed members of Mount Hua, but they had never been passionate about learning martial arts. Even the great senior disciple, Yoon Jong, and Jo Gul himself had been no different.
And yet now, everyone was coming out voluntarily at dawn to train. They complained endlessly with their mouths, but none of it ever turned into actual rebellion.
How should he put it?
It really feels like a proper martial hall.
Jo Gul snorted with laughter.
To be looking at Mount Hua’s third-generation disciples and only now thinking it resembled a real martial hall—did that mean Mount Hua hadn’t been a martial hall until now?
"Why are you smiling like that?"
At the voice beside him, Jo Gul turned his head slightly. Senior disciple Yoon Jong was looking back at him while moving with lightfoot technique.
"Ah, sahyung. ...This is a little embarrassing to say, but I was just thinking that everyone finally looks like disciples of a real martial hall."
"Is that so?"
"It’s a bit of a strange thought, I know."
"No. I was just thinking the same thing."
"Haha... "
In the end, Jo Gul burst out laughing.
Not long ago, he never could have imagined himself sweating through training at Mount Hua. He had never missed the exercises assigned in Baekmae Hall, but that had been less effort and more like completing a quota.
His goal had been to kill time properly, then head back down the mountain and go home. No—probably that had been the goal of everyone else as well.
So how could there have been any real passion?
But lately, he had the feeling that something was changing. More than that, the eyes of the other disciples had changed considerably as well.
It’s all because of that bastard, isn’t it?
As he thought of Chung Myung, Jo Gul’s face twisted ever so slightly.
Chung Myung was changing Mount Hua. Right now, it was only a small breeze, but no one could yet tell whether that breeze would fade into nothing, or grow into a storm that would shake the entire mountain.
Still, the effect would surely show itself someday.
Jo Gul climbed the mountain and entered Mount Hua’s gate, straightening his shoulders. His chest swelled with a strange sense of pride.
But that satisfaction was blown sky-high in an instant.
"Hey! I told you, you can’t grab it there!"
"Move! Move! Get the materials inside first, then start! Are you deaf?"
"You over there! If that breaks, you don’t get paid for a month! We nearly crawled all the way up here, and this is what you’re doing?"
Jo Gul stared blankly at the scene spread out before Mount Hua’s eyes. It was busy. Chaotic. Utterly and completely so.
He slowly moved his gaze from left to right.
What... are these people?
Strangers he had never seen before were coming and going through the gate. Every one of them was carrying strange tools and unfamiliar building materials.
"There—no, not there! Over here!"
At least there was one familiar face among them, which was some comfort. Unam was standing in the middle of the crowd, giving hurried orders.
"...Sahyung?"
At Jo Gul’s look, Yoon Jong walked over toward Unam with a dazed expression.
"Uncle-master."
"Hm? Yoon Jong, is that you?"
"What exactly is going on here?"
"Ah."
Unam smiled warmly.
Under normal circumstances, he would not have explained everything to a disciple who was only of the third generation, but he was in an extremely good mood right now. So there was nothing he couldn’t explain.
"These are laborers."
"Laborers?"
"Yes. As you know, the halls are quite old, aren’t they?"
"They are."
It wasn’t merely that they were old.
They were so worn down they were practically crumbling; if the wind blew even a little, something was liable to snap and be carried away. The places where the disciples lived and trained had been repaired somehow, just enough to keep their shape. Most of the halls, however, had been left neglected, with no one available to maintain them, and not even the minimum upkeep had been done.
"I’m planning to renovate them properly this time. And rebuild the gate as well."
"Pardon?"
"Don’t just stand there. Go help carry the materials. It seems the laborers have had a hard time getting everything here. Most lumber can be cut nearby and made on site, but some of the wood doesn’t seem to grow around here."
"Pardon?"
"Move faster! Quickly!"
Seeing Unam beam as he shouted, Jo Gul could only stand there with a dazed look.
Maybe changes were arriving faster than he had imagined.
"What on earth is going on?"
Jo Gul stared at the dining table in utter disbelief.
Having spent even more energy hauling materials around, hunger had surged up to his throat. But the moment he saw what had been laid out on the table, bewilderment hit harder than hunger.
"What is that?"
"...Am I dreaming?"
"No matter how I look at it, this seems like that thing called 'meat'."
The reactions of the other disciples were much the same. Their eyes were fixed on the table.
An enormous event had occurred upon it.
Meat had been served.
"Is there really such a heaven-defying thing?"
"To think the sacred Daoist table would bear the remains of a dead creature, the vile culmination of killing a living being and tearing apart its corpse!"
"We’ve struck gold!"
"... "
Jo Gul let out a dry laugh.
Mount Hua did not particularly forbid cooked food or meat.
The Quanzhen lineage from which Mount Hua had inherited its roots did advocate vegetarianism and prohibit meat, but by the time it reached Mount Hua, much had changed. They still recommended a vegetarian diet, but they did not forbid meat.
That said, not forbidding it was not the same as putting meat on the table.
Several years had passed since he entered Mount Hua, but this was the first time he had ever seen meat served on the Mount Hua Sect’s dining table.
"Is this really all right to eat?"
"I think they put it out so we’d eat it."
Everyone kept sneaking glances at Yoon Jong. With the senior masters absent, Yoon Jong was the one with decision-making authority here.
Yoon Jong gave a wry smile and nodded.
"Let’s eat first. It’ll get cold."
"Yes, sahyung."
At Yoon Jong’s words, Jo Gul sat down first—then suddenly felt a prickling gaze and looked up. Every disciple was glaring at Jo Gul... no, more precisely, at Yoon Jong sitting next to him with fiery intensity.
Guessing what they were after, Yoon Jong picked up his chopsticks and took a piece of meat. And the moment that meat entered his mouth—
Pat-pat-pat-pat-patat!
Chopsticks shot in from every direction toward the dishes!
There were even some fools who used a technique based on Qinna just to snatch the meat. Jo Gul nearly shouted in disbelief at the sight, but his body was more honest than his head. His own chopsticks also flew like lightning toward the dish.
If I’m late, I won’t get any!
Move! Mine!
Meat! Meat!
Watching chunks of meat splatter in all directions, Yoon Jong squeezed his eyes shut.
Mount Hua.
His Mount Hua was changing into something strangely different.
"Well, that’s something. A person lives long enough and sees all kinds of things."
"Exactly."
"They suddenly start a construction project, and now meat shows up on the dining table. They even handed out two sets of new uniforms today, didn’t they?"
"They did."
Yoon Jong narrowed his eyes as if thinking about something. Seeing that unreadable expression, Jo Gul asked,
"What are you thinking about?"
"That money is truly wonderful."
"Heh."
Jo Gul laughed before he knew it.
Maybe it would be one thing if someone else said it, but hearing such words from Yoon Jong made the mood feel strangely off.
Then again, that applied to the rest as well.
"No matter how much money we’ve gotten, I didn’t think the seniors would change things this quickly."
"Do you think they’d have been happy letting the disciples scrape by in poverty? There was simply nothing they could do without money."
That was true.
Meat had not been absent because it violated doctrine. It had been absent because meat was expensive.
"Those were things they couldn’t do because they had no money, so now that they have money, they’re doing them. What’s so strange about that?"
Jo Gul nodded.
"...Didn’t you see Uncle-master Unam’s mouth? He can’t seem to stop smiling."
Right.
He had. Jo Gul would swear on his life that this was the first time he had ever seen Unam smile that brightly. There had been times he’d even wondered whether Unam might be someone who simply didn’t know how to smile.
And yet there he was, grinning like that!
One thing was certain: Mount Hua had stepped onto the road of change.
"Sahyung."
"Hm?"
"What do you think will happen now?"
The question came out without context, but Yoon Jong understood what Jo Gul meant.
"You know as well as I do. Mount Hua is already changing at a rapid pace."
"Yes."
"So we should be prepared too."
"Prepared... "
"This is not just a financial issue. You saw it too, didn’t you? In that chest."
"Yes. There was a secret manual."
The image of the Sect Leader reciting the name of the martial art and then fainting backward was still vivid in his mind.
"Mount Hua is changing. And it will keep changing. We won’t be able to avoid changing as well. So we need to steel ourselves and work hard. Then we may end up seeing something we never expected, don’t you think?"
Jo Gul nodded.
Is all of this because of that bastard too?
He couldn’t shake the suspicion that everything he was seeing had sprung from the scheme Chung Myung had pulled off not long ago. Thinking of that brazen acting, he frowned on reflex.
"What exactly did he do?"
"How should I know?"
There was no subject, but it was obvious who Yoon Jong meant.
"What’s certain is that he’s not someone we can guess in advance. You’d better stay sharp. If you go in with half-hearted resolve, you may just get swept away by the storm he creates."
"Don’t worry, sahyung. I’m Jo Gul."
"Yes. That’s true."
Yoon Jong laughed and headed toward Baekmae Hall. Jo Gul quietly followed after him, but different thoughts lingered in his mind.
A guy we can’t guess in advance.
Jo Gul thought differently.
Maybe Chung Myung was not someone that even they, along with the elders and the Sect Leader, could handle. Maybe that was the kind of person he was.
"But..."
"Hm?"
"Where is that bastard? I haven’t seen him since morning."
"Didn’t you hear? Today the Sect Leader called for him. He’s probably in the Sect Leader’s quarters by now."
"The Sect Leader did? Why on earth would he call for that bastard again?"
"How should I know?"
Yoon Jong shrugged, and Jo Gul let out a low sigh.
Seriously, not a single thing makes sense anymore.