Let's Go Back Together (3)
“Man, what kind of mountain is this….”
There were mountains like that sometimes. From far away, they looked harmless enough, almost modest in height, but once you actually stepped inside them, countless peaks rose up around you, deep valleys yawned below, and ridges bulged out here and there so irregularly that you could not guess at their shape or where they ended.
“What is this place supposed to be?”
“This is why it’s called the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.”
Yoon Jong looked around and spoke in a calm voice.
“One reason the Demonic Sect used the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains as their base was that it was far from the center of the martial world. But another was that the mountains were so vast and so deep that anyone who hid inside them could not easily be found.”
“Ah.”
“This is only the entrance to the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, but looking at the lay of the land, I can see why this became the battlefield that decided the fate of the Central Plains.”
Listening to Yoon Jong, Jo Gul looked up at the mountains with new eyes.
Not far from here, a battle had once been fought for the fate of the Central Plains.
The final struggle between the Demonic Sect, led by the Heavenly Demon, and the Central Plains, led by Mount Hua.
“The Great Mountain Blood Affair….”
“Yes.”
Yoon Jong nodded. His voice came out low and resonant.
“Time makes many things fade from memory. But there are things we must never forget. Because there were people who staked their lives there, we are able to live as we do now.”
“…….”
“We must never forget that Mount Hua’s forebears sleep here. No disciple of Mount Hua should ever forget that.”
Jo Gul quietly nodded, then closed his eyes for a moment.
How strange.
The mountains here were so different from Mount Hua.
Mount Hua’s peaks were steep and towering, but their lines were straight and honest, leaving nothing hidden. These mountains, on the other hand, were gentler in slope, but they gave the unsettling impression that something was concealed in their depths.
To those who had grown up on Mount Hua, this place felt terribly unfamiliar.
In a place like this…
What had the people who fought here, staking their lives on the line, been feeling?
They must have known they could never return alive. And yet what kind of resolve was it that let them throw their lives away without the slightest hesitation, as lightly as scattering chaff?
He could not even begin to imagine it.
“……I don’t know, Senior Brother.”
As though he understood what Jo Gul meant, Yoon Jong gave a faint smile.
“One day, you will.”
Then he, too, quietly swept his gaze across the black mountain ridges.
“Let’s hurry. If we dawdle, that brat Chung Myung will come chasing after us with a sword in his teeth.”
“Honestly, I’d rather he did.”
Jo Gul pouted.
“That bastard is the best in the world at getting under people’s skin. Usually he just throws a fit and bullies people to death, but now….”
He trailed off and let out a deep sigh.
Honestly, even throwing a fit would be better.
It was too strange seeing Chung Myung stay silent. In fact, it was even harder to endure facing a Chung Myung with no expression at all.
And yet they could not even properly chew him out, which made Jo Gul feel like his stomach was twisting inside out.
“That’s why we have to find it as quickly as possible.”
“…….”
“Don’t worry. He isn’t the kind of guy who’ll be shaken that easily.”
Jo Gul gave a slight nod and began scanning the surroundings with sharper eyes.
“Then let’s search every inch of it.”
“Yes.”
Watching Jo Gul move ahead, jabbing his sword into the ground as he went, Yoon Jong let out a small sigh.
Even Jo Gul was worried, which meant Chung Myung’s condition was not good at all.
I don’t understand.
Sometimes Yoon Jong felt as though Chung Myung were a man made of steel.
Before he had met Chung Myung, Yoon Jong had been nothing more than a man who stayed in his place, avoided what he disliked, and waited for troubles to pass him by.
To someone like that, Chung Myung, who smashed through everything in his path and kept moving forward, sometimes seemed almost too extreme, and yet at other times he was dazzling precisely because of it.
But over the past few days, Yoon Jong had felt as though he had glimpsed the flesh beneath Chung Myung’s steel body.
“……Damn bastard.”
Shaking his head, Yoon Jong thrust the scabbard down hard into the ground.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Who do you think it is?”
“Hm?”
Yu I-seol turned to look back at Dang Soso, who was following her.
“The person we’re looking for.”
Dang Soso’s face looked darker than usual.
“He said a grave or remains… So it has to be a person. But what kind of relationship could they have with Chung Myung Senior Brother?”
Yu I-seol was silent for a moment, gazing upward. Holding the night sky in her eyes, she let a small voice slip from her lips.
“Family.”
“…….”
“Probably family.”
She thought she understood. She knew what that expression meant.
Yu I-seol, too, had once looked at people with longing in the same way, wearing much the same expression on her own face.
Family she had no power to protect, and so had been forced to lose.
“But that was a hundred years ago….”
“I don’t know.”
Yu I-seol shook her head.
“What we need to know is that we have to find them. No matter what.”
There was unshakable resolve in her voice.
Dang Soso looked at her with renewed surprise.
Yu I-seol was not someone who usually pushed her own opinions to the forefront. In her heart, there had always only been the desire to grow stronger and the duty to protect Mount Hua.
I’ve never seen this before.
Even for Dang Soso, who was almost always attached to her side, it was an unfamiliar sight to see her showing this much interest in someone else’s business.
“We have to find them for sure, right?”
“Yes.”
“I guess then Chung Myung Senior Brother will come back to normal. Teasing people, swearing, getting angry….”
Dang Soso’s voice trailed off. A thought crossed her mind: was it really such a good thing for him to go back to normal? At that moment, Yu I-seol’s voice cut across her thoughts.
“No.”
“……Huh?”
Yu I-seol stopped walking altogether.
“Come back. Even if we don’t find it.”
“…….”
“Come back like nothing happened. Like always.”
“……Sago.”
Yu I-seol’s brow furrowed ever so slightly.
“That’s why we have to find it. I don’t want to see that.”
Dang Soso thought she understood what Yu I-seol meant.
Even if Chung Myung had some lingering regret in his heart, in the end he would return looking perfectly normal. But that would only mean his appearance had gone back to how it was before. It did not necessarily mean what lay inside him had also returned to the past.
Back to the past….
It made her wonder, all over again, how much she really knew about Chung Myung.
Monstrous martial power, absurd decisiveness, violent and outrageous, yet at the same time meticulous and delicate.
But could she really say she knew him well on the strength of those things alone?
Until now, Dang Soso had thought Yu I-seol was the hardest person in Mount Hua to read. She spoke only when she absolutely had to, and so all one could do was guess at what she was thinking.
But now that she thought about it, the person who was actually more impossible to understand was Chung Myung.
Unlike Yu I-seol, he never stopped talking, but his true feelings rarely ever showed through.
If Yu I-seol hid herself in silence, Chung Myung hid his truth behind a flood of words and actions.
“Sago, do you know what Chung Myung Senior Brother is thinking inside?”
Dang Soso was curious whether people who concealed their inner thoughts so well could understand one another.
“No.”
But the answer that came back was nothing like what she had expected.
“……I see.”
“But.”
“Yes?”
Yu I-seol quietly closed her mouth, then glanced at Dang Soso.
“Do I need to know? Do I really?”
“…….”
“Even if I don’t know what’s inside him, he’s still my martial nephew. He’s my martial nephew.”
The clouds drifted apart for a moment, and moonlight spilled down brightly. Dang Soso, who had been staring blankly at Yu I-seol standing beneath it, let the corners of her mouth soften into a smile.
“Me too! Me too, Sago!”
“Yes. You too.”
Dang Soso clung to Yu I-seol’s back and tugged at her with playful affection. Yu I-seol, expression unchanged, staggered slightly backward under the weight.
“We have to find him! We’ll definitely find him, and then tell that man he owes us a feast for helping him.”
“The expensive kind.”
“Yes! The expensive kind.”
“Really expensive. He’s rich.”
“Yes! Really expensive!”
The two of them prodded the ground with their swords, carefully searching as though feeling their way through the earth itself.
We have to find him.
Strong determination shone in Dang Soso’s eyes.
Yu I-seol probably felt the same way, but Dang Soso did not want to see Chung Myung returning to Mount Hua with slumped shoulders. It just didn’t suit him at all.
Don’t worry, damn Senior Brother. I’ll find it somehow.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
He had felt this strange sensation before.
The moment when he had suddenly sensed unfamiliarity in that guy’s not-so-large back.
But the times Baek Cheon felt that unfamiliarity from Chung Myung’s back were usually when he was facing an enemy or standing in front of Baek Cheon himself.
Each time, Baek Cheon had to feel the depth in him that did not suit his age. And because of that sight, he could drive himself harder.
But now….
I don’t know how to describe it.
Small?
No, it wasn’t that. It was just… something like that….
A low sigh eventually escaped Baek Cheon’s lips as he searched for the right words.
Trying to put into words the emotion that had risen in him while looking at that back in the first place suddenly felt pointless.
Thunk.
Chung Myung’s sword had already stabbed the ground several times.
Staring down at the earth for a moment, Chung Myung slowly lifted his gaze toward the distant ridgeline. The silent way he looked at the rising peaks filled Baek Cheon with a strange sense of discord.
“How is it?”
He had not spoken because there was anything specific he wanted to ask.
If he just stayed quiet, it felt like the distance between them might keep stretching until they were endlessly apart, and he could not help but blurt something out.
“Hm?”
Chung Myung turned his head and looked at Baek Cheon.
He did not look any different from usual. It was not the dark face he had worn on the way here, just a blank one.
And yet that face kept feeling unlike his own, unfamiliar somehow. Baek Cheon briefly wondered if he was simply being too sensitive.
Chung Myung asked again.
“What?”
“……Do you think we can find it?”
“Who knows.”
Chung Myung gave a snort at the question Baek Cheon had finally managed to get out.
“I’m going to try, but the thing is….”
He scratched the back of his head.
“Judging by the condition of that book, at least a hundred years have passed. It’d be weirder if anything were still left.”
“……You think it’ll be the remains of someone who took part in the Great Mountain Blood Affair?”
“Probably.”
Baek Cheon stared at Chung Myung for a while, then nodded.
“All right. I understand. Still, let’s keep looking.”
When Baek Cheon began prodding the ground again, this time Chung Myung asked him,
“Sasuk.”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“……Ask what?”
Now that he seemed to have regained a little composure, Chung Myung looked at Baek Cheon with a sullen face.
“You’ve got to be curious about a lot of things.”
“I am.”
“Then why aren’t you asking?”
“Because there’s no need to.”
“……What the hell does that mean?”
As Chung Myung complained, Baek Cheon shrugged.
“If it’s something you can explain, then you’ll explain it.”
“…….”
“If it’s something you can’t explain, then you won’t.”
“…….”
“So why would I push you? You’ll handle it yourself.”
“No, but a person is only human….”
“Enough.”
Baek Cheon cut him off and shook his head.
“When you have the room and can explain it, explain it then.”
“…….”
“Instead.”
“Hm?”
“If you’re going to lie, then just don’t explain it. That’s fine.”
Chung Myung stared at Baek Cheon wordlessly. Baek Cheon met his gaze without giving an inch and said,
“And don’t misunderstand.”
“Huh?”
“This is your business, but it’s also my business as Mount Hua’s great disciple. Finding our forebears’ remains and recovering them is a task more important than any other.”
“…….”
“I’m doing what I have to do as a disciple of Mount Hua. So if you’re going to interfere, do it later. I’m busy right now.”
When he finished speaking, Baek Cheon passed Chung Myung and moved steadily uphill ahead of him. Watching that firm back in a daze, a helpless smile slowly formed on Chung Myung’s lips.
“For Jin Dong-ryong, you sure have some nerve.”
Before his eyes, the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains still crouched in oppressive darkness. Chung Myung kept cutting off his gaze whenever it drifted toward them.
Then Baek Cheon looked back over his shoulder.
“Hurry up and come on.”
“…….”
“What are you doing?”
“……Nothing.”
Without realizing it, Chung Myung clenched his fist slightly.
Hurry up and come on.
It was nothing at all, just an ordinary line.
But… if even the Chung Myung of the past had been able to say such nothing at all.
If that had been possible….
Lowering his head a little, Chung Myung stepped forward toward the Baek Cheon walking ahead of him.