Heaven-Earth Scholar (2)
“Six! Six! They’re all sixes!”
At Hoho-gak, Xi'an’s finest gambling house in Shaanxi Province, chaos was in full swing.
Before the dice table, the simplest and most irresistible of all games of chance, a shabby old man bared his yellow teeth in delight.
To everyone’s astonishment, every one of his dice had landed on the highest number, six. All three of them.
“That’s incredible luck. Truly incredible!”
“Look at that old man in the red coat. He’s actually won big for once.”
“Honestly, it’s enough to make a ghost weep.”
The gamblers puffing on their bamboo pipes each muttered something envious under their breath.
And for good reason. The very man known as Hoho-gak’s resident spirit was this shabby, ragged old fellow called the Red-Coated Old Man.
Known only by that nickname and not even by his real name, he wandered Hoho-gak’s gambling floors day after day, reeking of the cheap red wine served in the lowest level of the house.
“Congratulations.”
The dealer who had rolled the dice offered the words, but there was not a trace of a smile in his eyes.
If things had gone according to plan, the last die would have come up five by the narrowest margin. Instead, he had failed.
Clatter.
Whatever the case, all three dice had landed on six, and the silver the old man had been losing and losing over the course of many rounds now made him rich with drink and sudden fortune.
So, as if to make a point, the dealer piled a huge sack of silver into the Red-Coated Old Man’s hands where everyone could see it.
It was all to advertise Hoho-gak’s gambling den by showing that even a man who looked this worn and pitiful could walk away with an easy win.
“Wahaha! Hah, hahahaha! Today my luck is truly beyond measure!”
Glug, glug.
The Red-Coated Old Man toasted himself with cup after cup of cheap red wine.
He had every reason to be happy. At Hoho-gak, his daily routine usually consisted of losing every last coin, then shouting himself hoarse and starting fights afterward.
But today, instead of losing money, he had walked away with a fat profit, which meant he had no need to raise his voice at anyone.
“Thank you, truly thank you. This is all thanks to you, dealer…”
Perhaps because it was the first time in years he had ever won here?
Grabbing into the sack, the Red-Coated Old Man pulled out a silver ingot the size of an adult’s fist and handed it to the dealer.
“What is this…”
“A tip. It’ll sting your heart, so go off duty and eat something good.”
The sight of him casually offering away enough silver to live comfortably for half a month made the eyes of every degenerate who lived for gambling, and especially for the fantasy of striking it rich overnight, go wild.
What was more, the Red-Coated Old Man handed out small bits of silver from the sack to the people he had grown familiar with over his regular visits to the gambling house, then left Hoho-gak.
At his generous, relaxed display, the people who wore human faces but harbored vicious hearts lowered their voices and said,
“Should we drag that feeble old man into an alley, knock him flat, and strip him of every last coin?”
“Forget knocking him flat. If you just twist his wrist, he’ll probably scream like a child.”
“That silver would’ve been enough to keep him coming to Hoho-gak for two whole months.”
A gambling house was, by nature, a gathering place for people pushed to the worst possible edge of humanity, and the atmosphere grew grim and ugly.
In fact, more than a few desperate men looked ready to follow the Red-Coated Old Man out right then and there and hatch some scheme against him.
“What stupid nonsense.”
Then a voice cut in.
In a gambling house, there was always not only the dealer turning the table, but also a member of the Black Hall known as the “fist,” a martial artist who watched the losers like a hawk to make sure none of them overturned the game in a rage.
The fist currently guarding Hoho-gak’s gambling floor, Seven-Hole Fist Geum Jin-taek, spoke up.
“That Red-Coated Old Man is very close with the owner of Hoho-gak here, and with our Cold Blood Sect as well. Didn’t you know?”
Geum Jin-taek was right.
It turned out the Red-Coated Old Man was on friendly terms with the proprietor of Hoho-gak, and especially close with the Cold Blood Sect, the great Black Hall faction that ruled Xi'an’s gambling houses.
Murmur, murmur.
The old man’s unexpected connections left the gamblers flustered and throwing the place into uproar.
“So the rumor was true?”
“I heard he’s got a number of remarkable talents, that he’s good at making restorative pills, and especially skilled at crafting hidden weapons and things like iron chains and spikes.”
“So of course the Hoho-gak owner and the Cold Blood Sect leader like him.”
Those who only passed through Hoho-gak superficially did not know it, but the Red-Coated Old Man had been traveling around, using his excellent skills to make the things various gambling houses and Black Hall groups wanted.
In exchange, all he asked for was the freedom to roam the gambling houses to his heart’s content. That was the only price, and because the owner of Hoho-gak and the leader of the Cold Blood Sect practically worked him for free, they valued his talents highly.
“Now then, if anyone dares set their sights on that old man or lay a hand on him…” Geum Jin-taek shouted, his voice sharp and hard, “then you make yourselves enemies not only of Hoho-gak, but of our Cold Blood Sect as well. Understood?!”
As one of the Black Hall’s experts, Geum Jin-taek was fairly disciplined and clearly trained in martial arts. His stern warning was enough to make the gamblers who had been thinking of following the old man and taking advantage of him shrink back with sheepish grins.
“Still, he’s a strange one.”
“He’s not even from Xi'an. What skill does he have that lets him get by like that?”
“I heard that when he was young, a plague swept through and he lost both his wife and child, and when he grew old he lost the one dear friend he had, and that drove him mad with gambling…”
“Heh. Is there anyone who haunts gambling tables without some story behind him? Anyway, next time, befriend him and get a tip.”
By sheer accident, the Red-Coated Old Man had become the talk of the room, drawing everyone’s attention.
His true identity was, of course, the man once called the finest artisan under heaven, a universal eccentric of extraordinary talents.
He was Heaven-Earth Scholar Na Cheon-lip.
* * *
“Wahahaha! Hah, hahahaha!”
For once, after winning big at gambling after a long time and returning to a shabby inn where no one else was around, the Red-Coated Old Man laughed like a madman.
By then, the side table beside him was already crowded with wine jars.
“Hic! Hihihihic!”
Whoever had said liquor was a man’s tears had not been wrong.
Once he had drunk himself half-dead, even the joy of striking it rich overnight and the thrill of winning at gambling all turned back into sorrow.
As always, the Red-Coated Old Man, no, Heaven-Earth Scholar Na Cheon-lip, cried whenever he got thoroughly drunk.
His tears poured endlessly.
Even when he closed his eyes, they streamed down. Even when he opened them, they kept falling.
When it rained, he felt as though the rain itself were made of his tears; when it did not, tears of grief still spilled from him.
“Hae-yeon! Seok!”
He did not want to accept it, but the gossipers behind his back had been right about everything.
Before he had even turned thirty, Na Cheon-lip had lost his young wife and his son, who had not yet learned to walk, to a plague.
While my wife and son were dying, I was blithely concocting restorative pills to save other people like an idiot.
How could a man feel, having saved strangers he did not even know while letting his own wife and child slip away in vain?
He was alive only in the narrowest sense. He was nothing more than a corpse that happened to have its eyes open.
Even when he ate, he could not taste the food; even when he lived, it felt like wandering through a dream of emptiness.
At last, he had sought refuge in Buddha, hoping to forget that agonizing pain, yet no matter how fervently he prayed, the faces that appeared in his heart were not Buddha’s, but his wife’s and son’s.
Just when it seemed he might truly follow after them, he had happened to take up gambling.
Drunk out of his mind, he found that only the intense rush gambling brought made him feel as if he were truly living this life.
When he was doing that, he could force himself to look away from the painful story of his life and the wound in his heart that had festered beyond endurance.
And just when Na Cheon-lip was truly sinking into ruin, the one who saved him was none other than his friend from home, his one and only companion, Je Seong-cheon.
In the martial world, people called him Chilseonggun, and praised him as a peculiar man of astonishing skill.
Chilseonggun could not stand by and watch the only friend he had in the world flounder in the gutter of life, so he pulled him back into the world.
Seong-cheon. Thanks to you, I made the Heaven's Promise Pill and even earned the absurd title of Heaven-Earth Scholar… and yet where are you?
Was Heaven-Earth Scholar Na Cheon-lip truly a wretched man forsaken by heaven?
Even his benefactor, the one who had guided him onto the path that allowed him to rise again, even his only friend, Chilseonggun Je Seong-cheon, had left him one day.
-Don’t worry.
I’ll quickly find someone to inherit Chilseong’s martial arts, then I’ll come back to your side.
When Chilseonggun had said he was leaving, Na Cheon-lip had felt the faintest unease.
He wanted to grab him and beg him not to go, but his one and only friend was inheriting a secret art meant to be passed down to only one person, and Na Cheon-lip understood better than anyone that fulfilling that mission was all that mattered.
-I understand. But… you must come back quickly.
He had promised to return soon, and firmly at that, yet more than ten years had already slipped by.
What was worse, Je Seong-cheon had been born frail and sickly, with an early death hanging over him from birth. Na Cheon-lip had fallen into despair.
It had not been one or two years, but well over a decade. He himself had grown old enough to prepare for death, so what must have become of the already frail Chilseonggun?
That was why Na Cheon-lip guessed that Chilseonggun had been caught up in some incident, or perhaps had met with some mishap while trying, against his ill fate, to find a suitable successor.
At first, he had also made every effort to find Chilseonggun, but his one and only friend had vanished without even leaving a trace.
It felt as if he had evaporated from the world, and Na Cheon-lip even had the insane thought that perhaps he had crossed into another world altogether.
Drip, drip.
Was that the sound of drinking, or the sound of tears falling?
Just when Na Cheon-lip himself could no longer tell which was which, a voice strangely familiar and somehow affectionate reached his ears.
“Are you the Heaven-Earth Scholar, Na Cheon-lip?”
Though too drunk to steady his body, Na Cheon-lip forced his eyes open to look ahead.
Sixteen, maybe younger.
The sight of a boy younger than even his grandson startled him a little.
It had already been years since anyone had called him by his nickname, Heaven-Earth Scholar, or by his real name.
Ever since he had last left the gambling houses of Seokga Manor, being addressed by either of those names had been almost unheard of.
“Heh heh heh. Who knows?”
So Na Cheon-lip laughed, reeking of cheap liquor as though his surprise had never happened at all.
It was true that the boy before him had aroused his curiosity, but for Na Cheon-lip, who had lost everything, this life was no longer important.
“I’ve come to ask a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Please forge a superb sword and armor from the bones, hide, and scales of a thousand-year great serpent.”
The young and bold boy, Golden Young Master Seok Geum-ryong, made his request.
What came back, however, was a cold refusal.
“Get lost.”
With such a flat answer, most people would have given up or wilted in spirit. Seok Geum-ryong did neither.
He had every reason to believe in himself.
“The Big Dipper. When people look at that constellation… they feel beauty, but I feel strength.”
In a low voice, Seok Geum-ryong suddenly spoke strange, uncanny words.
But even more astonishing was Heaven-Earth Scholar Na Cheon-lip’s reaction.
“...H-how do you know Chilseonggun’s habit of speech?”
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