The Immortal (4)
The old man who had revealed himself before me was, in the truest sense of the word, a strange sight to behold.
…….
What comparison could possibly capture the impression I was feeling right now?
Right.
It was the feeling of running into one of those people who wear outlandish outfits on the morning subway.
Or perhaps: encountering a costume you never expected, in a place you'd never expect it.
I couldn't say precisely which era his garb belonged to, but one thing was clear — it predated the founding of the Han Dynasty.
"...What now? Another one of those Taoist cranks?"
At the appearance of an old man who looked suspicious to any eye, Lü Bu scrunched up her face and stepped forward.
Then she slammed the butt of the Sky Piercer Halberd down into the floor.
THUD—!
The crash was tremendous enough that the floor of the building cracked slightly, and for a moment I was at a loss for words.
...Why did she seem so much stronger than before?
If the Lü Bu of our days in Bing Province crossed weapons with the Lü Bu standing here now, I'd bet a hundred times out of a hundred on the latter.
She had accumulated far more experience since then, so it was only natural...
"'Taoist crank,' huh..."
Taoist.
Modern people probably summon up all manner of images at that word.
Among them, of course, were those who genuinely believed in and practiced the Taoist faith.
People who deified Laozi — founder of the school of the Dao — as the Supreme Old Lord, and trained ceaselessly in their longing to become immortals.
In other words, think of them as aspiring immortals, all of them striving for agelessness and eternal life.
The wish to live long and well is only natural in a human being.
"Heh heh. It's been a long while since I last heard that one."
When the old man, who had been stroking his long beard, flashed a grin, Lü Bu swept the Sky Piercer Halberd once through the empty air.
"Save it — just hurry up and come at me. Killing scum like you is, quite literally, the Way to go."
"What manner of talk is that?"
"...Huh?"
When the old man echoed back in a baffled voice, Lü Bu blinked her blood-red eyes.
"You didn't come here to pull something on Jeong Reung?"
"And just where would I find a reason to do such a thing?"
Somehow, the conversation didn't seem to be connecting.
I had known for a long time that Lü Bu had cut down more than a few Taoists who tried to harm me — she was constitutionally incapable of lying to me. Whenever I gripped her by the shoulders, looked her dead in the eye, and pressed the question, she would squirm for a moment but always come clean in the end.
According to her, every so often some unhinged lunatic would come bounding out of nowhere, ranting about the design of Heaven this and heaven-defiers that — all while trying to kill me.
The "History Defense Force" I had once daydreamed about for fun had actually materialized.
...Say it out loud and it sounds like the name of a squad from a children's cartoon.
Having read Romance of the Three Kingdoms in my past life, I had once asked Lü Bu how exactly she went about killing Taoists.
Those bastards didn't die no matter how thoroughly you skewered them with a blade — and on the rare occasion they did die, they simply became spirits and went on tormenting you forever.
For the former there was Zuo Ci, who sprang upright even after Cao Cao took his head and came charging with the severed head in hand; for the latter there was Yu Ji, who turned into a ghost, hounded Sun Ce without rest, and finally dragged him along as company on the road to the underworld.
"Huh? They died just fine when I stabbed them and cut them down."
"...They did?"
"Some of them tried to feed me illusions and get the better of me, so I killed every last one of them."
And of course — she made a point of adding — she hadn't forgotten to tear them limb from limb and burn the remains, Lü Bu declared with a thoroughly proud face.
"The ones who came back as ghosts and latched onto me after death, Zhang Jue took care of."
"I see."
So the answer to outlandish sorcery was, apparently, equally outlandish sorcery.
Then again, Zhang Jue was every bit as mysterious a figure as Zuo Ci or Yu Ji, so nothing about it surprised me.
While I was off reminiscing, Lü Bu — who had just received a question from the old man — tilted her head and spoke.
"You people are always charging in, day after day, spouting about 'setting right the design of Heaven.'"
"Hmm?"
At that answer, the old man's eyes went briefly round — and then he burst out laughing.
"WAHAHAHA—!! To think there are still fools like that in this day and age!"
"...What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing at all!"
When Lü Bu asked with a puzzled look, the old man continued at once.
"I was merely thinking that in every era, there are those who stray off in the strangest of directions!"
…….
"Those who ought to be defying Heaven in pursuit of eternal youth and long life, and instead they end up serving it... What a laughable lot, the whole bunch of them."
If you take the wrong road from the very start, it's only natural you'll never reach your destination — with that, the old man clucked his tongue.
Then he looked me square in the eye and asked:
"So. Did you receive the gift I sent you?"
"...A gift, you say?"
I asked back with all due courtesy.
Call it instinct, but the old man before me was not someone before whom authority of any kind would carry the slightest weight.
One look was enough to tell he was no ordinary man, and he showed no intention of antagonizing me.
In that case, the sensible thing was to rack up some goodwill and see what fell my way for it.
"Yes. The gift."
Apparently my courteous manner pleased him, for the old man answered with a satisfied expression.
"That Gongsun Zan fellow — by my reckoning, he ought to have been reduced to a broken husk by now. Was he not?"
"...Ahh."
I nodded slowly as his meaning settled in.
In other words, the one who had plucked the soul clean out of Gongsun Zan and made it possible for us to take Yijing Tower with ease was none other than this man.
I spoke with the utmost politeness.
"I am grateful for your assistance. Thanks to you, far fewer of my soldiers had to die."
"Heh heh. A lad with proper breeding. I like that."
Nice. Sounded like I'd earned those points after all.
Then again, if being spoken to respectfully put him in a bad mood, that would make him a rather twisted character in his own right.
...Huh?
Hold on.
"───I have met with Liezi!"
"───If the Immortal learns that his disciple is being treated in such a manner, verily who can say what calamity shall befall!"
That Gongsun Zan — hadn't he said the immortal he'd met went by the name Liezi?
"Um... might I ask just one question?"
"Hmm? And what would that be?"
I wanted to confirm whether the man before me truly was an elder who had lived for centuries.
"According to what Gongsun Zan said, your honored name was most certainly..."
"Ah. So that fool went and spoke of even that."
The old man murmured in an even voice.
"Indeed. I am that venerable elder whom certain fools worship so fervently."
…….
Having just admitted to being Liezi — one of the Hundred Schools of Thought — the old man turned his gaze upon me.
Liezi.
His true name was Lie Yukou.
Alongside Laozi and Zhuangzi, this man was counted as one of the three great thinkers of the school of the Dao.
...Though it's true he was comparatively less famous than those two.
Not that I was tactless enough to say so out loud.
But if the old man before me really was Liezi, then he had to be at least five hundred years old...
…….
Good grief.
An elder who had lived hundreds of years, stretching all the way back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods?
If this man had even a streak of the insufferable old-timer in him, I couldn't begin to imagine the living hell that would unfold.
He hadn't said a word about Lü Bu's rudeness, which suggested a forgiving nature — but the human heart is an unreadable thing.
"I take it that more or less settles your curiosity."
At that, Liezi — as if there were no sense in dragging things out — came straight to the point.
"I have sought you out for exactly two reasons."
"...Reasons, you say?"
The old man, now standing close to me, replied in a tone as calm as still water.
"First — that little runt Nanhua Laoxian fusses over you so shamelessly that I thought I'd come and see your face for myself."
…….
He had called me interesting when he first laid eyes on me, that much was true.
But Nanhua Laoxian?
I'd never so much as met the woman.
Zhuangzi — better known to readers of Romance of the Three Kingdoms by the name Nanhua Laoxian — was, like Liezi, a figure of roughly the fourth century BC.
She surely bore the same aged guise as he did, so why would Liezi go out of his way to call her a little runt?
Apparently the two of them were the sort who growled at each other on sight.
If I got swept into a quarrel between immortals, the shattered back at the bottom of it would be mine, so I resolved not to involve myself too deeply.
The shrimp would stay quietly hidden; the whales could settle their own quarrel.
…….
"Hmph."
Of course, even at this very moment there were two more whales guarding this particular shrimp — but the best policy was never getting caught in the fight to begin with.
I glanced sideways at Seo Yeo, with those two murderous-looking weapons slung across her back, and at Lü Bu, still snorting like an angry bull, then waited for the old man to continue.
"And the second reason... is that I have a proposal for you."
……?
What could a man who had become an immortal and gained eternal life possibly stand to gain from me?
As I floated an invisible question mark over my head, Liezi's expression turned grave.
"This autumn, a swarm of locusts on a massive scale will descend upon Hebei."
"I beg your pardon?"
The sheer randomness of it made me forget my manners entirely.
Locusts could only mean one thing.
A plague of grasshoppers that swept across the land in numbers beyond counting, stripping every field bare.
Not the Huang Zhong who was at this very moment hard at work with Ma Chao over in Yi Province — the other kind. The kind with six legs.
The old man fixed me with eyes steeped in profound mystery — the deep and subtle workings of Heaven itself.
"A calamity that will starve hundreds of thousands — no, millions — of people to death. Will you simply stand by and watch?"
"No."
Why on earth would I just watch?
Of course I would act.
When I answered without a heartbeat's hesitation, the old man broke into a wide grin.
"Good. Then see that you handle it well. I shall watch, and count just how many of the people you save."
Liezi stroked his white beard as he spoke.
"And who knows — perhaps this old body may yet set right that warped blood-qi of yours."
…….
"This is a proposal an immortal extends to you with his own hand."
With those final words, the old man vanished — in the time it took to blink, gone from his spot, just as suddenly as he had appeared before me.
"...Whoa."
I stared at the empty air where he had stood and let out a breath of pure wonder.
I'd bandied the word "supernatural" about often enough, but to think something like this would actually happen.
Such is life — the frontier elder's horse runs off, and who's to say whether it's fortune or calamity?
Truly, no one could ever know where the future would flow.