The Disciple Is Fine! (1)
“Ugh….”
The third-generation disciples gathered in Baekmae Hall exchanged hollow-eyed glances.
“I can’t even eat.”
“My stomach’s been wrecked with indigestion.”
“I’ve had nightmares for three straight days and haven’t slept properly….”
Looking at one another’s miserable faces, they all let out a collective sigh.
“Why on earth… why is he like that?”
“Isn’t he just crazy?”
“He was already crazy to begin with.”
“That’s true, but….”
No, the problem wasn’t that he had gone insane. The problem was that he wasn’t insane enough. Not being insane made him seem even more insane.
“So what is that lunatic— no, that perfectly normal person— doing right now?”
“He’s cleaning and polishing Okcheon-won.”
“Okcheon-won?”
“Yes. He said something like, ‘The foundation of every sect is the ancestral hall, and a sect that doesn’t properly care for its ancestral hall is a sect that doesn’t respect its forebears,’ and that he would clean it thoroughly himself….”
Yang Ho clutched his face as though he were tearing at it in anguish.
“No, why does he have to be right? Why!”
After a moment of misery, his shoulders slumped again. More testimony came from the others beside him.
“It gives me chills. I watched him clean for a bit, and he was muttering to himself the whole time, ‘Sect Leader Senior Brother, Sect Leader Senior Brother’….”
“Sect Leader Senior Brother? You mean Baek Cheon Sasuk? No, wait— that title is used by disciples of the same generation as the sect leader to address the sect leader, isn’t it? Unless you’re an elder, there’s no reason to use it.”
“How should I know what’s going on inside his head? He looked completely out of his mind.”
“I’m going insane, seriously….”
Just imagining Chung Myung muttering to himself while frantically scrubbing the ancestral hall was enough to send goosebumps racing over their skin.
Then Gwak Hoe, carefully glancing around to make sure no one was listening, spoke up cautiously.
“But, seniors, fellow disciples.”
“Yeah?”
“If you think about it calmly, this isn’t really such a bad thing. It’s bizarre to look at, and hard to accept, but if you think about it, doesn’t that mean Chung Myung’s gone and become kind?”
“...That’s the problem.”
“No, it is a problem, but….”
Gwak Hoe said firmly,
“Once we get used to it, wouldn’t it actually be a good thing? Seniors, do you like kind Chung Myung, or crazy Chung Myung?”
“What kind of stupid question is that, you brat!”
Yang Ho burst out in outrage, then answered without even needing to think.
“The crazy one is better!”
“Huh?”
Caught off guard, Gwak Hoe flinched and asked again. But the others seemed to agree with Yang Ho, and one after another they nodded.
“If it’s Chung Myung, the crazy one is better.”
“At least that version is familiar.”
“Exactly.”
Gwak Hoe’s pupils shook like an earthquake had hit them.
No, well….
Thinking about it, it kind of made sense, but… uh….
“More than anything, if I keep watching him like that, I feel like I’m going to burst my own insides and die.”
“Exactly!”
“Primordial Heavenly Lord, why are You testing us like this?”
The third-generation disciples let out despairing sighs.
“...Still, he’ll probably stop acting like that after a bit, right?”
“Do you know how many days it’s already been? If he were just pretending, he couldn’t keep it up this long.”
“Then you’re saying he’s really going to stay like this?”
“No way….”
Everyone shuddered together and turned to look in one direction. Toward Okcheon-won, where Chung Myung was supposedly cleaning.
Scrrrk.
Scrrrrkkk!
The statue of the Jade Emperor in one corner of Okcheon-won was gleaming with radiance. He had polished it so thoroughly that it looked like something freshly made and neatly oiled just moments ago.
Scrrrrkk!
Chung Myung wiped the face of the statue with a clean cloth.
“Hm, this part’s a little….”
Scrape.
He gave the slightly protruding part of the statue a careful nudge, smoothing it out until the proportions looked right. With a bright, satisfied smile, he muttered,
“There.”
Nice and clean. Very clean.
Satisfaction was written all over his face. He looked around Okcheon-won with fresh eyes.
Okcheon-won. Usually called the ancestral hall, it was where the tablets of Mount Hua’s past sect leaders were enshrined, a place to honor the spirits of the forebears.
“This place really has changed a lot.”
When he had first entered Mount Hua, there had been almost nothing left in Okcheon-won. The expensive ritual vessels, the antique Taoist furnishings, even the treasures Mount Hua had once accumulated— all of it had been sold off, leaving only the ancestral tablets standing there all alone.
But after Mount Hua began to gather wealth and Hyun Young reorganized the sect’s interior, Okcheon-won had recovered much of its former appearance.
“Though it still bothers me that the white plum blossom is missing….”
Amhyangbaekmaehwa, one of Mount Hua’s two great treasures alongside the Purple Jade Divine Sword, had yet to be recovered. Even after asking around through the Eunha Merchant Guild and the Beggars’ Sect, there had been no trace of it. It probably sat in some rich household’s storage room, where a collector had tucked it away, or had been sold cheap by someone who hadn’t understood what it was worth.
Still, it was undeniably disappointing not to have recovered an item once called a sacred treasure. But it wasn’t truly important. More important than any treasure was Mount Hua itself.
Chung Myung began wiping each ancestral tablet one by one with the clean cloth.
“Sect Leader Senior Brother, the descendants of Mount Hua have really grown a lot. Watching them makes me proud. I think it’s about time they stood on their own now. The thing you and I wanted….”
“Cut the crap, you bastard! Why the hell are you doing this?”
“Why are you yelling? I figured it was about time I grew up a little.”
“Jeez….”
Carefully, Chung Myung went on polishing the tablets one by one. It took a long while before he finally looked over Okcheon-won, now cleaner than it had been when he first began, and let it sink in.
“Hm. Good.”
He nodded in satisfaction and neatly folded away the white cloth.
“Sect Leader Senior Brother.”
Then, as if something had just occurred to him, he murmured to the tablets.
“Come to think of it, what the Sect Leader said was all right. That idiot Cheong Jin used to say it too, didn’t he? That I was someone who could leave nothing behind in Mount Hua. That meant I couldn’t understand ordinary disciples, sure, but if you turn it around, it also meant that disciples couldn’t grow any bigger in my arms.”
While Chung Myung was here, Mount Hua would not be bullied by any other sects. Just as Mount Hua had been in the past.
But after Chung Myung disappeared?
In the end, the remaining disciples would have to lead Mount Hua themselves. If Chung Myung acted as he had until now, the disciples of Mount Hua would only suffer once he was gone.
And that was not what Chung Myung wanted.
Had he not already experienced once what became of Mount Hua after he vanished— how it collapsed in such wretched ruin? What he wanted was not a Mount Hua strong because he stood beside it, but a Mount Hua strong even in his absence.
“The kids’ll probably have a rough time for a while, but in the end they’ll manage just fine on their own. They might get hurt a little, struggle a bit… but that’s how they’ll realize how precious I am. No, wait— no, that’s not it. That’s how they’ll grow.”
“You just said the quiet part out loud.”
“Hah. Always looking for something to nitpick, aren’t you? That was a slip, a slip.”
Chung Myung waved a hand dismissively.
Then, with a seriousness utterly unlike him, he looked out beyond Okcheon-won toward the rest of Mount Hua.
“I’d always thought that someday I’d have to step back little by little. It’s just happening a bit sooner than I expected. This is probably the right thing. If Sect Leader Hyun Jong says so, and Baek Cheon Sasuk says so, then it must be.”
That didn’t mean Chung Myung was actually going to retire into some back room like an old man. Up until now, he had been interfering in everything Mount Hua did to an excessive degree, even considering his abilities. Lately, he had even had to sacrifice a fair amount of his own personal training time.
Now everything was simply beginning to settle back into place. In the end, just as Mount Hua had in the past, he needed to build a system where the sect drew strength from Chung Myung’s mere presence, even if he no longer stood in the center of everything himself.
“I should trust the disciples a little more. That’s what adults are supposed to do.”
Chung Myung’s expression softened a little.
It was a little lonely, like watching a child who had once toddled about in his arms start to run and drift farther away, but even so, this was the natural course of things. The proper course.
“So what should I do next?”
Chung Myung picked up the basket filled with cloth and stepped out of Okcheon-won.
He set his next destination as the area around the sect leader’s quarters and started walking. Or rather, he tried to.
“Sect Leeeeeader!”
“Huh?”
From the mountain gate, someone came charging in at terrifying speed, accompanied by a booming voice.
“Huh? Ghost Sect Leader?”
Realizing it was Do Un-chan, Chung Myung tilted his head. Was that old man still at Hwaeum? Why hadn’t he come back?
“Sect Leader! Sect Leader, are you there!”
At the tremendous shout, the door to the sect leader’s quarters flew open. Hyun Jong rushed out with a startled face to meet him.
“Sect Leader Do. What is the matter?”
“I-I’ve found them!”
“Pardon?”
Do Un-chan screamed, his face drained white.
“A disciple! I found one of the disciples who had gone missing while on a delivery run.”
Hyun Jong’s eyes widened.
“I-Is he alive?”
“Yes! Fortunately, it looks like he survived. That child somehow managed to send a letter….”
“Yes.”
“It was the bandits. He said they were attacked and fell into the Yangtze, but somehow survived against all odds.”
Now even the elders, who had gathered around without anyone noticing, all stiffened at once.
“Hmm. That’s not good news. But wasn’t that already expected?”
“What matters is what came after.”
“Pardon?”
Do Un-chan swallowed hard and drew in a breath.
“The bandits who attacked him kidnapped everyone on the boat so that word wouldn’t reach Mount Hua’s ears.”
“...Kidnapped? Did you just say kidnapped?”
“Yes, Sect Leader! Without a doubt.”
“...What in the world…!”
Hyun Jong’s expression turned icy.
“What are they planning to do with innocent civilians they abducted?”
“From what I’ve heard, the bandits kidnap common folk and sell them overseas as slaves….”
“Those madmen!”
The word exploded from Hyun Jong’s mouth. He was a man who almost never used harsh language.
Hurting fellow martial artists and laying hands on common civilians were matters on entirely different levels.
And….
If word spreads that all of this happened because of Mount Hua, how will the world look at us?
Of course, Mount Hua was not at fault. Running a business was not a crime.
But public opinion was a strange thing, and it did not always work according to common sense. If rumors spread that Mount Hua’s business activities had caused great harm to common people, Mount Hua’s name could be dragged through the mud.
“Sect Leader. Shouldn’t we move immediately?”
Hyun Young spoke in a grave voice, unlike his usual self. He, too, was hardly ignorant of how serious the situation was.
“Hmm. We must rescue them as quickly as possible.”
Hyun Jong nodded firmly.
“If we miss the timing and they’re sold off as slaves, it will become far more difficult to save them….”
But no matter how quickly more disciples were sent out, there would still be time before they arrived.
Even if I send a letter to Baek Cheon… they’d have a hard time dealing with the river bandits on their own….
Was there no choice after all?
After much thought, Hyun Jong made up his mind and cried out, eyes flashing wide.
“Chung Myung!”
“Yes?”
Hyun Jong silently looked at Chung Myung, who had already come up beside them and answered.
Yes.
This was better. Better than having to keep looking at that spectacle….
“It seems you’ll have to go to the Yangtze first. I’ll send more disciples through Un Geom, so go ahead and stop the bandits from selling those civilians into slavery.”
Even if destroying the river bandit stronghold was impossible, with Chung Myung’s abilities, that much should be manageable.
Then, by the time Mount Hua’s main force arrived, they could wipe out the bandits altogether. At that point, Hyun Jong was quietly congratulating himself on what he thought was a near-perfect plan— when it happened.
“The Yangtze?”
“That’s right!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you….”
Wait.
Did that brat just say me?
Hyun Jong repeated the words in a daze, unable to believe they had come out of Chung Myung’s mouth, and slowly turned his gaze.
And in that moment, he saw it.
On Chung Myung’s face, which had worn a mild, calm expression for days now, there was every ounce of pettiness and ill will the world had to offer. Even the sight of his head cocking sharply to the side.
“Why me?”
“......”
Ah.
This was probably a disaster….