What Did They Just Go and Poke? (6)
“Could it be true?”
“Could what be true?”
“That story we just heard. That Mount Hua defeated the Demonic Sect in the North Sea……”
“Then do you think someone like the North Sea Ice Palace Lord would make up something so obviously false?”
“Well, he did look pretty young, so maybe……”
The man speaking suddenly clamped his mouth shut. One of the Ice Palace warriors passing in front of him had turned and fixed him with a sharp, cutting stare.
He hurriedly bowed his head and looked away. Satisfied, the warrior turned back and continued on his way.
Someone beside him, who had been holding his breath along with him, whispered a rebuke.
“Watch your mouth! That damned mouth of yours!”
“S-sorry.”
“I heard the Ice Palace Lord’s position passes down by blood, the same way it does in a great noble family. If that’s the case, there’s nothing strange about a young palace lord, is there?”
“R-right.”
The man, sneaking a look around, opened his mouth again.
“Anyway, if it’s true, isn’t that an incredible feat? And not just anything—the Demonic Sect, of all things.”
“……Maybe they just found a few stragglers and took care of them?”
“Nonsense, man! Even the North Sea has standards. Would they really bow their heads in gratitude for something that small?”
“Now that you put it that way……”
“It’s frustrating. There’s no way to confirm it.”
“Why wouldn’t there be? There are people right here, aren’t there?”
“Huh?”
One of them subtly jerked his chin toward the Ice Palace warriors.
“This happened in the North Sea, didn’t it? Why not just ask the people from the North Sea?”
“……That feels a little awkward.”
The North Sea Ice Palace had little contact with the Central Plains. And because they were, after all, a foreign people, no one could bring themselves to strike up a conversation so easily.
“What’s awkward about it! They’re here to attend the Heavenly Alliance’s founding ceremony too—do you think they’d actually take offense? I’ll ask.”
He said it boldly, then rolled his eyes around to gauge the mood before finally stopping one of the warriors who happened to be passing by.
“Excuse me……”
“Yes? What is it?”
The Ice Palace warrior turned to look at them.
“I was wondering if I might ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
The man swallowed hard and quickly got to the point.
“A little while ago, that…… what the Ice Palace Lord said.”
“Which part?”
“You know. That Mount Hua defeated the Demonic Sect in the North Sea……”
The warrior nodded firmly.
“Ah, that story.”
“Y-yes! Is it true?”
When the man asked, visibly brightening, the warrior’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you suggesting our Palace Lord would speak falsely?”
“N-not at all! Of course not! How could that be? That would be absurd beyond all reason.”
Sensing the chill of the warrior’s qi, the man hastily added more.
“It’s just that I’m curious about how many of those Demonic Sect remnants there were……”
For a moment, silence fell. The warrior frowned as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You truly know nothing?”
“Well, we didn’t hear…….”
The warrior—Song Won—let out a quiet sigh.
Honestly, what hopeless people.
They had done something so extraordinary, and yet not a single word of boastful self-praise had come out of their mouths?
No matter how much one said a merit should not be flaunted, that was just an ideal. Most people couldn’t help their tongues from itching even after accomplishing the tiniest thing.
“How many of those remnants were there?” the man urged cautiously.
A smile appeared at the corners of Song Won’s mouth.
So they don’t trumpet their own achievements.
Wasn’t it said that to elevate another’s merit while hiding your own was the mark of goodness? If Mount Hua followed the good, then he had no reason not to do the same.
“Well, the way it happened was……”
Song Won began to explain what had occurred in the North Sea, embellishing the account just a little as he went.
“And that’s how it happened.”
“…….”
“…….”
By then, the people who had gathered around Song Won were so wide-eyed they no longer knew how to close their mouths.
“……The Bishop, you say?”
“Yes.”
“The Bishop and more than two hundred Demonic Sect members? Good heavens……”
It was an overwhelming force.
Those who had assumed Mount Hua had only caught a few remnants after hearing that they had stopped the Demonic Sect in the North Sea could only stare in stunned silence at the hidden truth spilling from Song Won’s mouth.
“Is that really true?”
“The people of the North Sea do not speak falsehoods.”
“O-of course. It’s just that it was such an enormous deed……”
“And I saw it all with my own eyes. I was present for that final battle as well.”
“…….”
Noticing the suspicion still lingering in their gazes, Song Won frowned.
“I can’t show you what I saw, but there is a way to show you what I experienced.”
“Huh?”
Song Won began undoing the fastenings of his upper garment.
Huh?
The surrounding people stirred at the inexplicable gesture, but Song Won gave no answer. Instead, he flung his shirt open.
“Gasp!”
“Th-that……”
Across his fully exposed upper body, a thick black scar like a serpent had been carved into his flesh, as though tattooed there. Though already healed, the wound still sat sunken and ugly in his skin, perfect proof that he had passed through the narrow gate of death and stood here now.
“That scar……”
“That’s right. It was inflicted in battle against the Demonic Sect.”
At a glance, it was a wound that had not yet had much time to fade.
Gulp.
Here and there, the sound of people swallowing hard in tension rang out clearly.
“My word…… it was all true.”
“Mount Hua……”
Watching the atmosphere shift so rapidly, Song Won buttoned his shirt back up and drove the point home.
“If the Five Swords of Mount Hua had not come, the North Sea would have become a land of death. Not a single North Sea citizen would have survived, and by now the Central Plains would not have been safe either.”
“…….”
On the surface, it sounded absurd beyond belief.
How much could really change just because five people came to help?
But no one could refute him. What sect in this world would belittle itself just to praise another?
If those words had come from the mouth of an Ice Palace warrior and not someone else, then it could only mean Mount Hua’s merit was that immense.
“So not only the Ice Palace, but the Central Plains should also be grateful to Mount Hua. Wouldn’t anyone who forgot such a debt be no better than a beast?”
Leaving that sharp remark behind, Song Won turned on his heel and walked away.
“……It was all true.”
Someone’s muttered groan sank clearly into everyone’s minds.
“You said you didn’t know the Four Evils-Slaying Five Swords?”
“…….”
Gong Man-ri shrank his neck like a turtle when he saw the Beast Palace warrior glaring at him.
It was the first time in his life he had ever received such a blatant look that plainly said, “What the hell is wrong with this idiot?”
“Ha…….”
As the Beast Palace warrior let out a dry laugh, the compact muscles packed under his bronze arms rippled with the motion.
“Fine, let’s say you don’t know the Four Evils-Slaying Five Swords. But you don’t know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint? Do the people of the Central Plains live with their eyes shut and their ears stuffed? How can you not know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint? The one thanks to whom you’re all alive and breathing right now!”
“…….”
“I’d heard the people of the Central Plains valued courtesy and propriety, but it seems that was all nonsense! How can you so proudly admit you don’t know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint—the man who defeated the Demonic Sect and slew the Heavenly Demon? Pathetic, truly pathetic!”
“…….”
Gong Man-ri, who had only asked a single careless question—“Just who is this Plum Blossom Sword Saint your palace lord mentioned?”—ended up receiving the most openly contemptuous glare of his life and muttered in wounded indignation, “I’m saying I’m hearing this for the first time……”
“What?”
The Beast Palace warrior’s eyes gleamed. His energy changed in an instant, like that of a hungry wolf, and Gong Man-ri unconsciously took a step back.
“How can a Central Plains man not know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint! How many Demonic Sect members were cut down by his sword, how many Bishops he defeated, how many sects he saved! Damn it all!”
As his voice rose, the disciples of Mount Hua came rushing over, startled.
“W-what’s going on?”
“No! These fools say they don’t know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint!”
“What?”
“They don’t know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint?”
“Are they insane?”
At the news that someone didn’t know the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, the Beast Palace warriors came storming over as well. Their momentum was so fierce and savage they looked ready to seize someone and tear him apart on the spot.
“You little punk, you?”
“You don’t know who?”
“Want us to enlighten you?”
Surrounded in an instant, Gong Man-ri turned ashen and looked desperately toward the Mount Hua disciples.
“P-please, spare me!”
“Spare you? The Plum Blossom Sword Saint spared us! And yet you say you don’t know him?”
“P-please, calm down!”
Yoon Jong wiped at the cold sweat on his brow and hurried to stop the Beast Palace warriors. When he had visited the Beast Palace before, he had already sensed it then—their reverence for the Plum Blossom Sword Saint was so extreme that even Mount Hua itself could not compete with it.
Mount Hua did not even maintain a separate shrine to the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, and yet the Beast Palace had one dedicated to him.
Come to think of it, they didn’t seem to have shrines for their own palace lords across the generations either.
At the time, he had been too tense to think much of it. But looking back now, how extraordinary was it that they had built a shrine to honor not a forefather of their own sect, but someone from another?
“Remember this well! The Plum Blossom Sword Saint defeated the Demonic Sect long ago and saved both the Central Plains and the outlying lands! The Plum Blossom Sword Saint of Mount Hua did!”
“Yes! Yes! We understand! We truly understand!”
“You really do?”
“Looks like they still don’t get it!”
“Should we carve it into their flesh or something?”
As the Beast Palace warriors glared and pressed in as if to threaten Gong Man-ri, Yoon Jong yelled in alarm.
“You can’t do that to someone who has come here as a guest!”
Then, as if by magic, the Beast Palace warriors obediently brushed their hands off and stepped back at once.
“Back away!”
“Those are the words of a Mount Hua guest. Let him go!”
“Yes!”
Their attitude was as though nothing had happened. Finally freed from the pressure, Gong Man-ri’s legs gave way and he collapsed to the ground.
“Tsk. If this were Yunnan, we’d have dragged him off somewhere dark.”
“Or tossed him into a snake pit.”
“What a pity.”
“…….”
At the Beast Palace warriors’ muttered remarks, the faces of the Central Plains visitors turned pale blue. Yoon Jong smiled faintly and looked up at the sky.
We shouldn’t have invited the Beast Palace.
Regret always came too late, no matter how quickly it arrived.
As the Ice Palace warriors gave a detailed account of Mount Hua’s achievements in the North Sea, and the Beast Palace warriors brandished their eyes and began praising the Plum Blossom Sword Saint with fervor, the suspicions of those gathered there only deepened.
It was all absurd beyond words.
If anyone else had said it, or if Mount Hua itself had told the tale, they would have snorted without listening any further.
But the ones telling the story were none other than the Beast Palace and the Ice Palace.
The Beast Palace had lived behind the wall they’d built against the Central Plains, and the Ice Palace had built its own world upon that barren land of theirs. What motive would such people have to praise Mount Hua so extravagantly if it gained them nothing?
Then the words had to be at least partly true…….
“Was Mount Hua really that great a sect in the past?”
“Then why was it so little known?”
“N-no, wait. I’ve actually heard something before. That the Mount Hua of old was stronger than Wudang.”
“I thought that was just the kind of story idle gossips liked to make up……”
“Would smoke rise if there were no fire?”
“How could such a sect be reduced to the point of being driven out of the Nine Sects and One Gang?”
“Reduced? How can you say that after hearing what Mount Hua did in the North Sea? Would a sect in decline accomplish something like that? And just recently, didn’t they also defeat Wudang in a duel?”
“R-right. Right.”
“Now it makes sense. I thought Wudang was holding back to match Mount Hua, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I couldn’t believe it when I heard a Wudang elder had been defeated by a third-generation disciple, but if what Mount Hua did in the North Sea is true, then maybe it isn’t such nonsense after all!”
“Exactly! Exactly!”
Watching the rapidly shifting mood, Baek Cheon smiled faintly.
So they say that if you don’t brag about yourself, people will eventually recognize you anyway.
If Mount Hua had gone around loudly advertising its own merits, this would never have happened. Sometimes it had been frustrating, even bitterly unfair, but because they had simply endured it and walked forward in silence, this was the response they were now receiving.
The founding ceremony is going to be a success.
If they could keep this favorable reaction going and guide it in the right direction, there did not seem to be any major problems ahead.
But…… as always in this world, where there are people gathered, trouble is bound to happen.
“What the hell are you mumbling about, you barbarian scum!”
At that instant, the shrill shout pierced the air, and Baek Cheon’s head snapped around like lightning.
What now?
He could see a crowd gathered over there too, and had assumed it was just another argument between an Ice Palace warrior and a Beast Palace warrior. But it seemed the situation was not nearly so simple.
“How dare a filthy foreign brute lift his chin like that! Know your place!”
At that utterly shameless abuse, with no understanding whatsoever of where the line should be drawn, Baek Cheon was aghast.
What is that supposed to mean……!
Then irritation surged up inside him. But his anger quickly gave way to a different concern.
He swept his eyes over the surroundings at once.
Baek Cheon had an obligation to see this event through flawlessly, no matter what. In other words, he absolutely could not allow an incident to erupt.
But within Mount Hua, was there not that one existence who could inflate even the smallest mishap into a catastrophe in the blink of an eye?
He’s not here, is he?
He’s not here, right?
Relief briefly touched Baek Cheon’s pale face.
Good. Quickly. We have to deal with this before that bastard shows up!
Baek Cheon hurried toward the side where the trouble had broken out. He would have to settle it first, by persuasion or by force if necessary, by kicking or dragging if he had to. Anything to contain it.
But tragically, bad omens are usually right.
“What did you say, you bastard?”
At the clearly familiar voice, Baek Cheon came to a startled halt.
“Who do you think you’re messing with? Do you have a hole where your brains should be, or has it just burst from overfilling?! Hey! You! Get over here! You hear me? I said get over here, you bastard!”
He didn’t even need to see with his own eyes to know exactly what was happening, and exactly what would happen next.
By then, he had gone beyond worry and into a kind of bleak sorrow.
Primordial Heavenly Lord.
Why is that bastard always, without fail, wherever trouble happens?
Why!
No—why why why why why!
There was no one around who could answer him in a way that would soothe his soul.