Oh God, Mount Hua Has Fallen (2)
Chung Myung’s head snapped around.
“Ah….”
There were people here!
It was the best news he had heard in a month since his reincarnation. There were still people living in Mount Hua, the sect he had assumed was already doomed and rotting away.
Creaaak!
The decayed, heavy wooden gate groaned open with an earsplitting scrape. Through the half-open gap, a Taoist priest in a neat black daoguan cautiously poked his head out.
“…….”
“No, why is there a kid here?”
A Taoist.
With that single line, Chung Myung was certain this man was the real deal. After all, for the past month, he had barely heard anyone call him a kid.
- Hey, what’s this beggar brat?
- Looks like a young beggar, doesn’t he?
- Since when do beggars travel alone?
‘Damn beggars.’
Beggar or not, age didn’t matter. Young beggar, old beggar—at the end of the day, they were all beggars together. The fact that this man could look at Chung Myung’s filthy, ragged appearance and still call him a “kid” instead of a “beggar” meant he was qualified to be acknowledged as a proper Taoist.
The middle-aged priest, who looked about forty, kept turning his head as he surveyed his surroundings. Then, with an utterly bewildered face, he looked back at Chung Myung.
“You came here alone? How in the world did you climb all the way up here by yourself?”
“Uh… well….”
Chung Myung stammered.
‘I just walked up?’
He wanted to say that there was nothing grit couldn’t overcome, but that didn’t seem like the right answer for the situation.
With Chung Myung’s skin-and-bones body, anything he said would only make him suspicious. Still, he didn’t need to make excuses. What mattered here wasn’t explaining himself—it was taking control of the conversation.
“More importantly, I have something I’d like to ask.”
“Hm?”
The priest’s eyes widened.
That made sense. Finding a child alone in a place even a grown man would struggle to reach was shocking enough; for that same child to suddenly announce that he had a question—how could he not be taken aback?
“Are you a Taoist of Mount Hua?”
“……How do you know the name Mount Hua Sect?”
“Is that so?”
“At least for now, yes.”
Chung Myung let out a breath of relief.
‘So it hasn’t completely collapsed!’
Of course, it was probably one step away from ruin. Even the look of the mountain gate made that obvious. But the important thing was that it hadn’t fallen yet.
‘That means the lineage is still alive, at least.’
Chung Myung made up his mind.
For now, he would do whatever it took to save Mount Hua….
“Come inside, then.”
“Huh?”
Chung Myung jerked his head up. The priest smiled kindly and said,
“The sun is setting.”
“……Huh?”
Come to think of it, the surroundings were already growing dark.
“Mount Hua’s nights are cold. It’s not even warmed up yet, and if you try to spend the night out there half-heartedly, you’re liable to freeze to death. It’ll be difficult to climb back down the mountain now, and I can’t exactly tell you to stay out here all night either, so come in for now. We don’t receive outsiders at the moment, but we can’t very well leave a guest who came all this way after hearing Mount Hua’s name out in the night dew.”
Chung Myung rolled his eyes.
They were letting him in this easily?
…Then again, come to think of it, there was no reason for them to be wary of him. Why would they be suspicious of a scrawny little beggar who looked like he might collapse any second from lack of food?
“If you came alone and don’t have any other plans, then come on in. We can hear your story afterward.”
Chung Myung felt a little dazed.
Something in his chest suddenly tightened.
The traces of the once-mighty Mount Hua Sect that had ruled the world with its sword were almost gone now, but before it had become a sect of swords, Mount Hua had been a Taoist sect. And that Taoist Mount Hua still seemed to have a fire that had not yet gone out.
‘Right. That’s enough.’
What did it matter if the sect no longer shook the world with the sword? Mount Hua had been a Taoist sect before it was ever a sword sect. As long as the Taoist lineage continued, Mount Hua was still alive.
“Then I’ll be troubling you.”
As Chung Myung dipped his head lightly, the man laughed and opened the gate wider.
“This way.”
“Yes. Before that, I….”
Chung Myung paused.
What was he supposed to introduce himself as?
‘I don’t know. They won’t suspect me, right?’
“My name is Chung Myung. If it isn’t too rude, may I ask for your Taoist name?”
“Chung Myung, is it? That’s a fine name. This poor Taoist is called Unam.”
‘Un generation.’
Chung Myung’s eyes brightened.
‘So the generations have already cycled around once. If he’s of the Un generation, does that make him my great-grand-disciple?’
Mount Hua followed the cycle of generations—Cheong, Baek, Un, Hyeon—and once the line of Cheong generation through Baek generation had turned over, it returned to Cheong again.
This priest named Unam was already four generations removed from Chung Myung’s time.
‘Then he definitely wouldn’t have seen me.’
The last Mount Hua disciples he had known had been the Hyeon generation. Back then, the Hyeon generation had been third-generation disciples, which meant this Unam had never seen the old him.
It made the passage of time feel all the more real.
Back when Chung Myung had been leading Mount Hua with his senior brothers—no, when he had been making his senior brothers’ lives miserable and getting in the way of Mount Hua’s leadership—he hadn’t even been able to climb the mountain as a child. And now that same child had become a Taoist priest of Mount Hua and was welcoming him.
It was a strangely moving feeling, one only he could ever truly understand.
Following Unam’s lead, Chung Myung passed through the mountain gate and stepped inside.
“Hoo….”
He exhaled deeply. Seeing the present state of Mount Hua with his own eyes was a little hard to bear.
Chung Myung kept telling himself over and over again to stay calm.
‘Stay calm.’
Considering what they had been left with, and what the circumstances had been when they were forced to return, it wasn’t strange at all that Mount Hua was a complete mess. No, if anything, that was the natural state of things.
But that wasn’t their fault.
It was the fault of those who had died to the last man, leaving behind only children who couldn’t even properly hold a sword.
To put it bluntly, Chung Myung had no right to be angry at these kids. If anything, he should have been apologizing to them.
If he had been in their shoes, would he have struggled on, determined to protect Mount Hua? Hell no—he would’ve packed up, sold off his name to the beggars, and gone to Wudang. Wasn’t that the sensible thing to do?
‘So what right do I have to blame these kids?’
He had failed to guide them properly when he was an adult, and now he was going to get angry because they hadn’t succeeded? That would be shameless beyond belief.
No matter what happened, he had to recognize that the responsibility was his and accept the situation with an open heart.
“Hoo….”
Drawing a deep breath, Chung Myung walked inside.
Soon, a vast training ground spread out before his eyes.
‘Ah.’
Memories came rushing back. In the past, hadn’t Chung Myung once stood in this great training yard, swinging his sword and nurturing his dreams?
That white, hard-packed floor of pure blue stone….
“……Huh?”
Chung Myung rubbed his eyes.
Blue stone? That white blue stone… no, where had the blue stone gone?
His eyes twitched violently.
‘Why is it dirt?’
Back when he had trained here, the training ground had been paved with firm blue stone.
His senior brother had once grumbled that a Daoist sect’s grounds were supposed to be humble, not laid with expensive blue stone, but since it was also pitiful to make the children train while swallowing dust, he hadn’t insisted on tearing it out.
So why the hell had every last stone been removed?
Was the current generation’s sect leader even more modest than his senior brother? Was that why they had ripped out all the blue stone?
“Huuuuugh.”
Veins bulged on Chung Myung’s forehead.
‘Stay calm.’
Calm. Stay calm. What the hell was a bunch of blue stone to him, anyway?
‘It’s just stones.’
No matter how expensive that blue stone had been! No matter how much his senior brother had once raged about these Taoists trampling stones more costly than a month’s worth of the common people’s grain….
People were born first, stones second. Or maybe stones came first and people were born from them…. Ah. Well, stones could come before people too.
Anyway!
‘If money’s tight, they can sell it off.’
What mattered was that Mount Hua survived. Preserving a bunch of stones was not important. Really, it wasn’t important at all….
‘Stay calm.’
“Hoo. Hoo.”
Chung Myung forced himself to breathe slowly. He tried to feel gratitude toward those who had preserved Mount Hua’s name even if they had to sell off such stones….
At that moment, his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Something else had caught his attention.
‘Where the hell is Gimgcheon Hall?’
He couldn’t see Gimgcheon Hall.
‘Ah, what do you mean you can’t see it? What kind of bullshit is that?’
Gimgcheon Hall wasn’t a living creature. It wasn’t supposed to have legs and run away, was it?
But no matter how he looked at it, the spot where Gimgcheon Hall should have stood was nothing but a barren open lot.
“……Um.”
“Hm?”
“Th-there.”
Chung Myung’s trembling fingertip pointed at the empty lot where Gimgcheon Hall had once stood.
“The, the layout seems a little strange… was there always nothing there?”
“Hmm. Looks like even your eyes can see that much. There used to be halls on that lot.”
Yeah, no kidding.
But where the hell had they gone?
“Ho ho. It’s not something a little one like you would know.”
Tell me, you bastard! Of course I know! I know better than you do!
“I’ll just call it a scar of glory. Though it is a little embarrassing for a Taoist to even use the word glory.”
“Glory my ass.”
“Hm?”
“It’s nothing.”
Chung Myung hurriedly mumbled his way out of it.
With the blue stone gone and the halls missing, Mount Hua looked desolate beyond belief. Even the slightest breeze kicked dirt up from the training yard, turning it into a yellow haze of dust.
Was this Mount Hua? This?
He could almost believe it was the Demonic Sect, you damned fools.
“Krrrrgh….”
“Does something hurt?”
“N-no. It’s nothing. Nothing.”
Chung Myung took another breath. Every time he inhaled, dust slipped into his mouth and made everything dry and gritty, and he found the whole thing terribly, terribly irritating.
“It’s… a little.”
“Hm?”
“Desolate, I mean….”
“Is that so.”
Unam gave him a sorrowful smile. The bitter look on his face stabbed at Chung Myung’s heart.
‘Right…. Of course.’
Something clenched in his chest.
Come to think of it, the people who had suffered the most from Mount Hua’s fall were the ones like Unam who had stayed behind and protected it. If they had been capable, would they have let their sect decay like this? If they hadn’t loved it, would they have stayed to defend it while it was crumbling?
‘You must have had it the hardest.’
Thinking that made his heart feel a little lighter.
No matter how shocked Chung Myung was right now, it was nothing compared to the sorrow these people had endured while protecting Mount Hua until now. So there was no point in acting pitiful.
“This way, please.”
“……Yes.”
“It would be proper to give a guest a place to rest, but Mount Hua is a Daoist sect, and there are duties a guest must observe as well. I understand that you must be tired, but first, please enter Okcheon-won and pay respects to the ancestors.”
Chung Myung nodded.
Okcheon-won was where the founder of Mount Hua, Haktae-tong—
—the ancestral tablet was enshrined.
Many halls within Mount Hua each had their own importance, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that nothing was more important than Okcheon-won.
If Chung Myung still thought of himself as a disciple of Mount Hua, then the moment he entered the sect, the proper thing to do was to go to Okcheon-won and pay respects to the ancestors. Since it was hard for him to bring it up himself in this situation, he should have been grateful that Unam had stepped forward first… but.
He was nervous.
After seeing so much already, he didn’t feel even a little excited about entering Okcheon-won. If the whole of Mount Hua was a disaster, what difference would the ancestral hall make?
‘Don’t be surprised.’
He took a deep breath in advance. No matter what he saw, he swore he would not be surprised.
“You can go in here.”
“Yes.”
After calming himself several times over, Chung Myung stepped into Okcheon-won.
And then he froze in place.
Okcheon-won was plain. All he could see was the portrait of Haktae-tong, the incense burner placed before it, and the ritual vessels.
It was austerely Daoist to the point of being spartan.
Spartan….
Yes, austerely spartan.
A groan escaped Chung Myung’s lips. His body soon began to tremble violently.
“W-where….”
The golden candlestick the Golden Emperor had supposedly bestowed upon Haktae-tong was nowhere to be seen, and the scrolls made from the ancestral master’s own calligraphy before his ascension had vanished without a trace.
The embroidered golden silk, the paintings that had once filled the hall—they were all gone too.
But that wasn’t what truly shocked Chung Myung.
“Th-there….”
No way.
No, that couldn’t be. They must have moved it somewhere else.
With shaking fingers, Chung Myung pointed toward the space in front of the altar.
“Hm?”
“Th-there w-was a fl-flower here, wasn’t there?”
“A flower?”
“Y-yes. A flower!”
“How do you know about that?”
“It—it was there, wasn’t it? What happened to that flower?”
Unam tilted his head. He had many questions he wanted to ask the boy, but seeing Chung Myung’s face contorting and then straightening and then contorting again, he felt he should answer first.
“It was there, yes. It certainly was. A plum blossom made of some strange white metal.”
“Yes! That flower! Where is it?”
“We sold it.”
“……What?”
“It wasn’t exactly useful, and it didn’t suit a Taoist hall either, so we’d been wondering what to do with it. Then a merchant came along who wanted to buy it, so we sold it off for a good price.”
“So, you sold….”
“That’s right. But you, just now—”
Chung Myung finally rolled his eyes back and collapsed backward in a dead faint.
“Hey! Hey, wake up!”
“Khk….”
Amhyangbaekmaehwa.
One of Mount Hua’s two greatest divine treasures, together with the Purple Jade Divine Sword.
It wasn’t flashy like gold or glittering like silver, and so it only seemed plain and modest. Yet it was said to contain the very essence of Mount Hua itself.
And those lunatics had sold it.
“There are other things you can sell.”
This….
“You sold this thing, you crazy bastards….”
The shock piled on top of the exhaustion from climbing all the way up Mount Hua, and Chung Myung finally let go of the thread of consciousness.
Through the whitening blur before his eyes, he thought he could see the horrified face of his sect leader senior brother.
Senior Brother.
Mount Hua is ruined.
Completely and utterly ruined.
Senior Brotherrrrrr!
And with that, Chung Myung lost consciousness.