The Variable (1)

Seol-ha and I moved fast.

Beyond the western gate of Chengdu in Sichuan, the broad highway toward Dayi threw off countless side paths. Follow the loneliest of them — a brush track a cart could scarcely manage — long enough, and it ran out into a nameless wild hill. The summit was not high, but unless one took the hidden way, cliffs of strange rock lay across the approach like a snare, and pushing any farther in was brutally hard. The small fortress my third brother had concealed sat inside that trap, beside a valley stream still locked in ice.

The moment we reached the place Seol-ha had led me to, she dragged in ragged breaths and stared at me as if she had seen a ghost.

"Hah... hah..."

I patted her back while the breath refused to return to her.

"Breathe. Just breathe."

Color crept slowly back into her bloodless face, and only then did Seol-ha, who had not been able to get a word out, force her mouth open.

"In that short a time, your martial arts took another step forward?"

"My finer control has filled out, I'll give you that. Even so, I'm still a long way from the goal I've set."

"Just what is that goal of yours, Young Master?"

"Call it contentment in riches and joy in the Way, shared with my sister. Contentment in poverty and joy in the Way was never much to my taste."

"It seems to me you've already made wealth enough."

"Wealth without the strength to hold it is a sheet of paper. One gust, and it's gone. From here on I need the power to keep what I have. The wealth I hold now is only the force that grows that power."

Before long the balance of the realm would break under one vast upheaval after another, and the world would be dragged into a violent maelstrom of realignment. To survive inside it, the wealth and strength I had piled up so far would not be enough. All of it was nothing more than the road by which I meant to reach the summit.

"The dream you're chasing — I want to protect it."

"Think you can? It won't be easy. You're already out of breath."

"If I'm breathless, it's because the end of the road you mean to walk sits far higher, and far farther off, than I ever guessed."

I had no answer for that.

Heat that had not yet left her flushed Seol-ha's face as she laid her resolve bare.

"But even if I can't catch my breath, I won't stop. I don't want you to look back someday and find me left somewhere you can't see."

"Don't worry about falling behind. I'll train you hard enough that you'll be able to follow me, whatever it takes."

Her calm, and her peace, were part of the dream.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

She bound up her sweat-soaked, disordered silver hair, and drew her sword. At the same moment I half-lidded my eyes and set my hand to the ground.

It was not simply a hand laid on the earth. I was feeling the flow — more precisely, the lines woven out of qi. A novice gathers qi into a point. One of the middle grade draws it out into a line. Before the regression I had reached the furthest edge of that middle grade. This flesh had not yet attained the realm, but I had at least begun the entry that would carry me past it, and that alone was no small thing. I was cutting through a gap of several decades from my former life in less than a year.

In the space between breaths, true qi unraveled from my fingertips like thread, a thin hiss running out of me. A line is made of many things: true qi at its root, and with it the image in my mind, my flesh, the sum of all of it. As the number of those lines, their thickness, and their reach all grow, one comes to possess a speed of reaction no one can approach, and an influence that seizes the space itself.

Having brought the peak realm to completion, I now controlled a hundred lines. The same degree of control did not, of course, mean the same result. Sensitivity to qi, mastery, and a great many other factors meant that even among those at the peak, another's lines might surpass mine — or fall short of them.

"Within two hundred zhang, the number caught in them is roughly two hundred. Twenty are posted at the three watchtowers and the front gate. The rest are moving elsewhere. As for you, Sister..."

I weighed it a moment, then nodded.

"Better if you take all of them."

"Yes."

Watching her nod so calmly, I asked again.

"I tell you to take every last one, and it doesn't trouble you at all?"

"Then I'll do it."

The clarity in the eyes that answered me overwhelmed me more than anything had in a long while. To the enemy, there would be no madwoman alive with eyes so clear.

A bell rang out at a furious pace — clang, clang, clang. At that same moment the sword qi bursting from Seol-ha's blade smashed the fortress gate without the slightest hesitation. Wood splintered and blew apart with a crash.

The frigid ice qi, like heavy snow layered thick upon itself, was nothing like the sword qi of days past, which had lost its balance and failed to bring its strength to bear. It was fluid, and within that fluidity, dense and fine.

Seol-ha stepped into her footwork and moved.

Stable, and soft. The balance of the Water Armor Art and the heavy aggression of the Ice-White Snow Wind Art gave her a movement that could not be compared with what had come before. Boom after boom proved it. Seen through the shattered gate, she was a snow-wind the enemy could not dare to catch. Strike her, and she broke apart; try to seize her, and she scattered. And when they tried to pin her down with greater force, the heavy, merciless snow-wind she had stored for the counterattack tore them open.

"Aaaagh!!!"

Not a drop of blood on her, Seol-ha stood unruffled, and under the moonlight she was set against a battlefield soaked red.

"Enemy!! An enemy's appeared!!!"

With her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠arrival, the inside of the fortress filled with the smell of coming battle and with screams. The uproar was enough. I used it to vault a different wall, one where not a soul remained, because what I had wanted from Seol-ha was their movement — what they most wished to protect. To learn that, it was enough to watch where the manpower shifted when things turned desperate.

I sprinted through the fortress, chasing the enemy's motion. Once the commotion began, the crowds between the timber buildings grew frantic. Most of them ran toward Seol-ha. A portion, though, made for the wooden hall seated in the deepest part of the grounds. Before that hall, men in black wind-cloaks were gathering, and inside, heavy iron doors were being sealed one after another.

So this is the place.

What was being driven onto Seol-ha were the fortress's rabble. The true elites had come here to guard this. Some twenty cloaked saber-wielders blocking off the wooden building, and forty bladesmen dressed differently from them, fixed me with a murderous air. The forty took the front to meet me. The cloaked sabers set themselves before the sealed iron doors.

"You..."

One of the men in wind-cloaks seemed to recognize me and came walking out through the press.

"To think the famous wastrel of Golden Manor would track this place down. Impressive. So the rumors of late weren't an empty name after all?"

He was a saber-wielder with a sharp, starved look: no flesh in the cheeks, both cheekbones jutting, the eyes sunk deep as if set in the bottom of a bog.

"And you were...?"

"We've met. Seems you don't remember."

"You must not have left much of an impression."

"Turn back now, and I'll let this be as if it never happened. In exchange, you'll shut your eyes to everything you've learned so far."

He hefted his saber up onto his shoulder and let a thick killing intent show. At that, a name rose that fit the situation all too well.

"The Juseong House?"

"Fear of being cornered, and only now the memory comes back?"

It was rather interesting. At first I had thought the chief stewards of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Gold Coin Bureau and the Iron Mirror Bureau had built a slush fund among themselves. Dig deeper, and it turned out my third brother had stood behind them for quite some time. And now it was plain that the Juseong House — the ones who handled the Sichuan Tang Clan's dirty work — were the ones guarding this place.

"The chief stewards, Geon-hyu, and now the Juseong House on top of them. What next — some great figure of the Sichuan Tang Clan steps out?"

The man of the Juseong House flinched, small as the motion was. That was enough for me to be certain. The man of the Sichuan Tang Clan who had done so much toward the destruction of Golden Manor had joined hands with my third brother and raised this place. I had not known that from this point on that man would be moving my third brother like a piece on the board, but he had clearly been coveting Golden Manor for a good long while. Were it not him, the Juseong House would never have moved even this far for my third brother's sake.

"Well. I'll need a look at what's in there. Mind stepping aside quietly?"

"Fear has driven you mad."

I grinned.

"Leave now, and I'll pretend none of this happened."

"Before whom do you think you're putting on airs — before Yeom Sa-gaek himself? I'll prove in person just how worthless a merchant house's son really is. What are you all standing around for!!"

At Yeom Sa-gaek's shout, the bladesmen in the different dress moved first. Hired wanderers, by the look of them, brought in from outside the Juseong House. All forty poured different martial arts at me at once, and I stepped into the wave of blades as it came down.

The sword I drew from its sheath was a clumsy, gaudy thing meant for ornament. At least, it had been. Not now.

Heavenly thunder qi surged up inside me, loaded itself onto the sword's tip, and became sword qi. It broke over them with a splintering crack.

Those caught in my lines moved exactly as I had expected, without an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠inch of error. Five lives went flying with every step. Each time an arm or a head left its body, violet light scattered through the empty air. There was not even a reason to dodge. I could see every one of their movements at a glance, and to them my own movement was a variable they had never accounted for. No one among them could withstand an attack and a response any faster than this. Whenever that violet light flashed like a beast's fangs, I collapsed their ranks without mercy.

The instant the heavenly thunder qi whipped itself into a vortex and tore through them, steel rang, and the forty wanderers were nothing but resentful ghosts.

Yeom Sa-gaek looked at me and swallowed, dry. Anyone could see he was stunned by the way I had moved. The cloaked saber-wielders I took for the Juseong House, unlike a moment ago, began to give ground half a step at a time.

I, who had kept my eyes half-shut, slowly lifted my lids.

"A bit late to pretend this never happened, wouldn't you say?"

"Do you even know whose affairs you're meddling in right now? Refuse to withdraw, and nowhere — nowhere — will that future of yours be safe!!!"

Even his beard trembled as he thrashed. Instead of an answer, I kicked a blade that lay against my foot. It shrieked away like lightning and punched clean through the chest of the saber-wielder at Yeom Sa-gaek's side. Blood spattered across half of Yeom Sa-gaek's face.

I walked up to him where he stood overwhelmed, the words gone out of him.

"You prowled the businesses of Golden Manor and built up every kind of secret fund, and still that wasn't enough. You deceived me, and on this spot you meant to take my life and murder my house down to the last soul. The lot of you..."

I added it flatly.

"Worry about the future that's already on top of you."

Blue sword qi bloomed over the heads of the saber-wielders standing in a line with Yeom Sa-gaek.

As if in answer to my voice, silver-haired Seol-ha poured sword qi laden with powerful frigid ice qi down upon the enemy.

"Hraaa—!!"

Seeing it, Yeom Sa-gaek swung his saber to join them. But my hand had already wrapped the hand that held it and yanked him in. Heavenly thunder qi whipped from my fingertips and leapt through his right arm and shoulder like a bolt, and the air tore with the crack of it.

"Aaaagh!!"

Hand, arm, and shoulder all shredded by the heavenly thunder qi, Yeom Sa-gaek was cut on a slant by my sword.