A Fateful Encounter Born of Kindness (2)
Yeo Gwang-rae, the Golden Needle Venerable, was famous throughout the Jianghu for his strange and singular history.
There were plenty of peak masters in the martial world, but masters who were both brilliant physicians and capable of unleashing lethal hidden weapons were rare.
No, it was no exaggeration to say that Yeo Gwang-rae alone occupied that place.
So why had the Golden Needle Venerable, known both as the Heaven-Rescuing Needle and the Death-Dealing Needle, come all the way to a miserable slum at this dead of night?
- Ah! How empty the martial world is!
It was because he had grown weary of martial life.
Unlike other martial artists, the Golden Needle Venerable had lived as both a physician who saved lives and a chivalrous hero who struck down the wicked.
And yet, the deeper he sank into the martial world, the more bitterly he felt its futility.
There were few who wished to save others, while there were many who killed without reason at all.
In a world growing more and more absurd by the day, decent people were vanishing, while those with human faces and beastly hearts grew more numerous by the hour, shameless and vile.
Even if I save the weak and miserable, even if I punish the evil, will that help this muddy martial world even a little? No. Will this martial world ever truly change?
Perhaps that same sense of emptiness, which he had first felt when he learned the art of healing, had finally begun to drag at the Golden Needle Venerable’s ankles as he drew closer to death.
Then, as year after year passed and he grew older, retirement drew near, and like any old man, he suddenly found himself missing home.
The slums of Hebei. I miss them. I had nothing there, and yet I had everything in my childhood.
The Golden Needle Venerable, Yeo Gwang-rae.
He had originally been an orphan from a slum in Hebei Province, and until the age of fifteen, he survived there by begging.
What allowed him to grow, however poor his meals were, was the kindness of good people who understood the value of sharing, even in poverty.
Then he caught the eye of a monk who had mastered medicine, Ji-deok, the Medical Buddha, and by some twist of fate was granted the inheritance of both medical and martial arts.
After that, Yeo Gwang-rae left the slums and received even his name from Master Ji-deok.
The message, the final request left by the master who had shown him unconditional kindness simply because he had a little talent for acupuncture, was only this:
- Tend first to those who suffer the most and are the most pitiful.
Just as I did for you.
By now, the master had passed into the next world, and the poor boy from the slums of Hebei had become an aged master known throughout the Jianghu as the Golden Needle Venerable.
He was older now than his master had ever been, and yet the emptiness in his heart remained impossible to hide.
- I’ve studied medicine and martial arts enough.
In my old age, I’d like to set out on a journey to find myself, even if it’s late.
And so the Golden Needle Venerable Yeo Gwang-rae traveled the martial world, retracing the road of his own life in reverse.
He began with the grave of his departed master, and the final destination at the end of his journey was the Hebei slum where he had been born.
And then what did he find?
- The saint of the slums has appeared!
- Young Master Seok Geum-ryong, the fifth son of the wealthy Seokga Manor, is distributing an instant cure for the epidemic!
In this filthy world, where the good became rare and the wicked commonplace, it was a story difficult to believe.
No matter how much one possessed, medicine for a plague was something hard to share.
And yet, hearing that he was distributing peony decoctions said to be priceless and so valuable that even mountains of gold would not buy them, Yeo Gwang-rae, unable to believe it, had come home as though bewitched.
Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
At just the right time, however, villains had swarmed around Seok Geum-ryong, and the people of the slums who had once shown him kindness without reason had joined together as one to protect him.
The moment Yeo Gwang-rae saw that sight, he knew it at once.
At last... I found it!
The reason he had wandered the martial world without restraint despite his old age was nothing else.
Death was approaching soon.
In that case, just as Master Ji-deok had done, he too had a duty to find a successor and hand everything down.
He refused, absolutely refused, to commit the injustice of letting his master’s art die in his own generation.
So he stepped forward.
Fwoosh!
With two fingers, he flicked out a golden needle.
With each needle, one life vanished in vain.
Like dew dropping one bead at a time when dawn begins to break.
Why is it so hard to save people, and so easy to kill them?
At that crude paradox, Yeo Gwang-rae raised his aging eyes and shouted to those who demanded to know who he was.
“Yes. I am the Golden Needle Venerable.”
* * *
“Damn it...!!”
The leader of the bandits, who had unexpectedly found himself face to face with a tiger on a narrow bridge, trembled all over and panicked.
No matter how many first-class experts there were, confronting a peak master was no easy matter.
More than that, Yeo Gwang-rae was a figure of terror to wicked villains everywhere, a man who stood as fearsome as King Yama himself.
“Attack! Kill them all!”
“That Golden Needle Venerable won’t let any evil man live!”
“Forget the peony medicine. Run as far as you can!”
By then, all hell had broken loose.
Before their leader could even issue an order, the bandits were already divided among themselves.
The flood had already spilled; some argued that they should swarm the Golden Needle Venerable and kill him, while others insisted they should abandon the peony medicine and flee. The two sides stood in deadlock.
“What the hell are you all doing?!”
Unable to bear the mess any longer, the bandit leader, or rather the seasoned sapa master known as the Extreme Wolf Scythe, Gok Cheong-ho, vented his frustration.
In truth, perhaps this disaster had been inevitable.
As Shin Dan-woo and Seok Geum-ryong had predicted, these men were not a proper bandit gang.
Most of them were wicked ruffians who had drifted through the sapa underworld, only to be tempted into joining by Gok Cheong-ho’s promise that they might make one huge score.
From the outset, Gok Cheong-ho was not truly their leader, and they themselves had never been a disciplined group, so there was no real loyalty to bind them together.
Add to that the self-serving greed peculiar to villains, and the whole thing was already collapsing.
“Did you say your name was Seok Geum-ryong?”
Amid the chaos, with some enemies fleeing and others snatching up their weapons, baring murderous intent, Yeo Gwang-rae, who had lived his entire life amid such pandemonium, asked:
“Yes, Elder Yeo.”
Seok Geum-ryong answered with utmost courtesy and cupped his fists.
Not only because this man had just saved them, but because even in his previous life he had respected Yeo Gwang-rae and longed to meet him at least once.
“How would you have me deal with them?”
Yeo Gwang-rae asked, partly out of curiosity.
Of course, no matter what answer Seok Geum-ryong gave, he had already chosen him in his heart as a successor and intended to pass on everything. Still, he wanted to know his thinking.
“I believe killing one evil strong man is the same as saving ten, no, a hundred good and weak people.”
“...!!”
“Yo, Young Master!”
At that somewhat overbearing statement, Scholar in Blue Gong Sang-pil and Shadowless One Shin Dan-woo were both startled.
To be honest, they too had realized that Yeo Gwang-rae had taken an interest in Seok Geum-ryong, and they had been watching to see whether he would decide to teach him some extraordinary skill depending on his answer.
So they had expected a humane answer, the kind most physicians would give: that even wicked villains were still lives, and that life should be valued.
Or at least, if he thought otherwise, they assumed he would say so only to win the Golden Needle Venerable’s favor.
But Seok Geum-ryong was far too honest.
“Even though life is still life all the same?”
Yeo Gwang-rae asked again with sharp eyes.
“The wicked treat other people’s lives carelessly. The moment they act that way, I believe their own lives cease to be noble and become base instead.”
“Hahahahahat!”
As soon as Seok Geum-ryong finished speaking, Yeo Gwang-rae burst into laughter so hard he threw his back out.
In truth, Seok Geum-ryong’s answer was not exactly conventional, and it was far from the orthodox notion of chivalry.
But that was precisely why Yeo Gwang-rae liked it all the more.
“That is the same kind of chivalry I seek.”
Now Yeo Gwang-rae could make his decision without hesitation.
“Watch closely.”
Then, with a movement so calm it sent ripples through the air, Yeo Gwang-rae lifted fine golden needles onto each joint of his fingers.
The sight was so reminiscent of Thousand-Hand Avalokiteshvara that those watching could not help but marvel.
What came next was even more astonishing.
Heaven-Returning Golden Needle Technique!
As though putting on a display, Yeo Gwang-rae sent out ten golden needles with all ten fingers, drawing ten golden lines through the air.
They seemed slow.
But that was nonsense.
Rather, they moved so fast they left afterimages behind.
Fwapapapapaat!
When the Golden Needle Venerable truly set his mind to it and unleashed his supreme art, the Heaven-Returning Golden Needle Technique, which was at times a death needle and at times a life-saving needle, the sapa villains who had mostly reached the first-class rank were nothing more than straw dummies before those golden threads.
“Urk!”
Those who at least managed a dying cry before breathing their last were the lucky ones.
What did that mean?
Swish.
Most of them died with a thin golden needle driven straight through the center of the forehead or the philtrum, leaving behind a single line of bright red blood, as though they had simply drifted off to sleep.
Just look at that, ten excellent first-class masters taken out in the blink of an eye.
As expected of the Golden Needle Venerable!
Seok Geum-ryong, who had long admired him and wanted nothing more than to meet him, trembled with genuine awe.
“When saving people, and when killing them, one must be decisive, with neither excess nor shortage. That is my specialty, and my signature art... the Heaven-Returning Golden Needle Technique.”
“Heaven-Returning Golden Needle Technique!”
There was a saying that among the many kinds of masters lower-ranked fighters dreaded facing, the most troublesome were not swordsmen or blade masters, but those who specialized in hidden weapons.
They could approach without sound or warning and softly take your life, making them terribly difficult for weaker fighters to deal with.
Just as the proverb of the martial world said, the Golden Needle Venerable’s methods were bold and unrestrained, a new kind of physician who punished evil men.
“Young Noble Seok speaks truly. Evil men are a disease eating away at the martial world. As such, I do nothing more than treat them, as both a martial artist and a physician.”
With a grin, Yeo Gwang-rae smiled as though he had not just taken ten lives in the blink of an eye.
It was the kind of smile that looked almost like the benevolent smile of a Buddha.
When punishing villains, he is like the Four Heavenly Kings; when facing patients, like the Buddha!
Seok Geum-ryong found Yeo Gwang-rae’s manner deeply to his liking.
“The rest of them will be dealt with by us!”
Thanks to the Golden Needle Venerable’s intervention, the enemy force had been cut to less than half.
On top of that, their cohesion was already worse than a sandcastle, and they were fleeing in panic.
There was no need to pursue them further, but as Yeo Gwang-rae had said, only by eliminating evil could the decent live in peace.
Fwoosh!
While Shin Dan-woo and several of the guards chased after the sapa fighters disguised as bandits, the man who had looked most favorably on Seok Geum-ryong of all in this world, and judged him most accurately, was the Golden Needle Venerable Yeo Gwang-rae.
He made his proposal formally.
“I don’t want to burden you by demanding that you become my formal disciple. But... would you not learn my art, so that you might save more good people and punish more evil men?”