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016
Hubei Province.
This land, with Wuhan at its center and the Yangtze River flowing through its heart, is known throughout the martial world as the territory of the Wudang Sect.
The Wudang Sect!
A sect whose founder was the era's mightiest martial artist and Taoist, Zhang Sanfeng—now a colossal power that vies near the very top of the Nine Sects and One Gang.
"Elder Brother Jang, if the Wudang Sect were to fall to ruin, what do you think would cause it?"
Jang Mu-bung, a lay disciple of the Wudang Sect, found the young man's words so absurd they left him dumbfounded. He could not even work up anger before sheer disbelief robbed him of speech.
"Are you mocking me right now?"
"Not at all. Is this majestic sight not beautiful to behold—enough to swell your chest with awe just by looking?"
"W-well, yes?"
"If a place like this were to fall, would that not be the day the entire Central Plains collapses? That thought crossed my mind, so I asked. If I caused offense, I offer my apologies."
The young man bowed deeply with immaculate courtesy. Jang Mu-bung could not entirely hide his discomfort at the youth's somewhat warped sensibility, but the five-spice jangyuk right in front of him kept him from voicing it aloud.
"Ahem. So what else did you wish to ask? Do you want to join the Wudang Sect?"
"No. I already belong to a sect. I am currently traveling all across the Central Plains, seeking to fill my eyes with the vastness of nature. I am cultivating my grand spirit, you see. Finding a single lovely flower blooming in the forest—that is my pastime."
Jang Mu-bung almost lectured the young man for his subtly insolent tone, but swallowed his anger.
It was bad enough that he was letting a man younger than himself treat him to a generous meal under the pretext of "information fees." Scolding the youth with "Watch your mouth before your elder" would have left a thoroughly unpleasant taste in his mouth.
"Flowers... a fine pastime you have. You said you came from Anhui? That region has quite a few spectacular views of its own."
"Spectacular indeed. The rounded slopes dropping between the swelling hills drew exclamations unbidden from my lips. Each time the waterfall struck my body, how my flesh trembled. Heh heh."
Oddly, Jang Mu-bung found himself entertaining a strange thought.
'His head is stuffed full of demons.'
Jang Mu-bung steadied his mind and worked his spoon and chopsticks. The food the young man had paid a fair price for had to be eaten before it got cold to be fully enjoyed.
"So you wish to see Wudang Mountain?"
"I do. If my heart had its way, I would climb to the very summit of Wudang Mountain and gaze out from its highest point...."
The young man pointed toward the path ascending Wudang Mountain and made a reluctant expression. Government soldiers were posted at every juncture along the route.
"Wudang Mountain is off-limits? What on earth does that mean?"
"Hm. Can you not tell by looking? Wudang Mountain has been sealed off. The Taoist masters on the mountain, along with the disciples and everyone else, are not coming down. More precisely, access is being controlled from below so that no one can go up either."
"What is the reason?"
"...Hm, no point in hiding it. A plague has broken out."
"Pardon?"
The young man's eyes went round. Jang Mu-bung shook his head with a bitter expression.
"You said you came to see flowers—what a shame. Right now, smallpox is spreading on Wudang Mountain."
A contagious disease that causes rashes to erupt, the body to boil with high fever, and, if it worsens, can cost a person their life. The young man set down the tea he was drinking and gaped in astonishment.
"Pox?"
"That is correct."
Smallpox. Known by another name as the red plague.
The flowers blooming on Wudang Mountain were covering human bodies in every sort of festering pustule.
* * *
"Smallpox at a time like this. What bizarre, unthinkable madness."
I booked a room at an inn with a view of Wudang Mountain and flopped onto the bed. I had come all the way to Hubei purely with the thought of climbing Wudang Mountain, but now that the mountain had been cordoned off by government soldiers, there was no way up or down.
'Even a peak expert can catch smallpox with one careless slip.'
Epidemics were the dreaded smallpox demon that, even during the Great Righteous-Demonic War, had brought the fighting between the two sides to a temporary halt.
Martial artists who had transcended the first-rate level could use methods like Samadhi True Fire or internal energy arts to expel the malign force and be done with it, but warriors of the second rate and below, without exception, collapsed bedridden once infected.
'The Murim Alliance Leader and the Heavenly Demon caught the plague together and were laid out side by side.'
Two martial artists who ought to have been vying for supremacy over the world were struck down by the same illness at the same time. What brought the Great Righteous-Demonic War—which had spawned countless Blood Calamities—to its end was neither the Orthodox Faction nor the Demonic Cult, but an epidemic.
Spread by the Blood Cult.
'It was the signal flare announcing the rise of the Blood Cult, which had been quietly consolidating its power. Probably.'
The Blood Cult Leader had deliberately spread the disease.
By means I cannot fathom, the power of the epidemic ravaged the bodies of the Alliance Leader and the Heavenly Demon.
Reduced to perhaps seventy percent of their true strength, the two finally grasped, in the final hour, that the Orthodox and Demonic factions had to unite their power against the Blood Cult—but by then, the Blood Cult's Blood Jiangshi—this lord—had already grown strong enough to face both at once and win.
The moment they realized it was too late, it was already too late. The Alliance Leader and the Heavenly Demon died at the hands of the Blood Jiangshi.
"If not for Gucheon Hyeonnyeo, the Blood Jiangshi would have been the strongest under heaven."
The Blood Jiangshi did die. As befits a murim where hidden hermits and fateful encounters run rampant, a black-haired woman who popped out from nowhere possessed martial arts that had reached a half-divine realm—surpassing the Alliance Leader, the Heavenly Demon, and the Blood Jiangshi controlled by the Blood Cult Leader.
— This is a farce! For a wench like you to jump out at the very last moment! This cannot be! Who in the world are you?!
— Gucheon Hyeonnyeo.
Every martial art the Blood Jiangshi had absorbed shattered before Gucheon Hyeonnyeo. With the Blood Cult Leader's head severed first, the Blood Jiangshi's control slipped, and though it lost its reason and charged at Gucheon Hyeonnyeo, it was defeated in the end.
Unless she was some transcendent master who had achieved Return to Youth, she was a powerhouse so overwhelming that—as the Blood Cult Leader put it—it seemed the world itself was cheating.
'But if you catch a plague and die young, none of that matters.'
Death and disease are fair to all. Even a prodigy fated to become the greatest under heaven is not immune to infection.
'That doesn't mean I'm the sort who won't go up.'
I channeled inner energy into my eyes. My pupils, reflected in the window, became vertical slits, as if observing the world from one step removed.
'The conditions here aren't good either.'
The energy of death drifting through the air was faintly visible. Inhaling it would not directly infect me with smallpox, but if I drew near someone already sick, it looked eight or nine times out of ten that it would spread.
"Hsss—ha—"
I channeled inner energy into my nasal passages and raised my yang energy. My body became fever-hot like someone with a cold, but the air flowing in through my nostrils pierced my lungs coolly and passed out again.
— All contagious diseases have pathogens. And in most cases, raising the body's heat high enough to sterilize and eliminate them resolves the problem.
'What practical meaning that has, I don't know, but there's no harm in following it.'
Just as the Blood Cult Leader always did, I donned a face covering. The black face covering, which blocked contact with the outside air, concealed my face while also filtering out as much of the death-tinged energy riding each inhalation as possible.
"Heh heh, here I come."
The flower I mean to pluck this time is the woman who will later be called the <Taiji Sword Empress>.
Not a disciple of the Wudang Sect, yet one who discovered a secret manual presumed to have been written by Zhang Sanfeng and grandly inscribed her name among the Five Great Swordsmen of the Central Plains.
A master of the Qi-Controlled Sword Art who wields four swords freely, grounded in the signature technique known as <Taiji Wisdom Sword>.
Sagong Hee.
'I'm truly looking forward to seeing what she looked like as a child.'
Her face was so severely scarred with burn marks that it was a pity she had been born a woman at all, but the figure hidden beneath her gray martial arts uniform was as beautiful as Paeng Yuwol's....
"......Huh?"
Smallpox. Sagong Hee. Epidemic. Skin.
"Nah, no way?"
* * *
"Please, good sir! My family and I have nothing to do with this disease!"
A gaunt middle-aged man clung to a man in martial attire, pleading with tears in his eyes. Behind him, two women held each other and trembled, desperately hoping that the calamity closing in on them would somehow be averted.
"Even if you are unrelated to the disease, it cannot be helped! For the time being, you will remain here!"
"Why must we?! We came simply to see the sights!"
"Argh...! A plague has broken out on the mountain—how can people who have stayed on the mountain for days be permitted to descend!"
The warrior's point was reasonable. The family had come traveling merely to receive the wondrous energy of Wudang Mountain and had nothing whatsoever to do with the illness.
It was simply that the plague had begun to spread at the very time they were visiting the mountain.
"This place has been sealed off because of the plague! We too are unable to leave and are quarantined!"
"Then why have you locked us in a prison like this?!"
"That is...!"
The warriors could not answer. They themselves had only a vague guess as to the reason, for they had not been told the exact details.
"Are you by chance treating us as the ones who spread the plague?!"
But the man was no fool. Although his frame appeared frail, he was a man who held an official post—his mind was exceptionally sharp, and he was renowned in the region as a promising talent.
"I am an official of Yichang, right next door! If I do not return at once, there will be severe consequences!"
"I have never heard of you! Enough, keep quiet! If you carry the plague out with you, it is not your livelihood you will lose—it is your life!"
"At least let us send word outside!"
"Agh, I told you, we already dispatched a letter!"
The warrior said a letter had been sent, but had it truly been delivered properly? The anxiety made the man all the more desperate and robbed him of rational judgment.
"Then let my daughter—Hee—at least let only my daughter go outside!"
"Daughter, family, it makes no difference!! Damn it, why do you keep trying to send your daughter out!"
Clang. Clang.
The iron bars the man gripped shook violently.
The family was confined inside a prison within the Wudang Sect compound as though they were criminals. One could not fathom why a sect building contained a prison, but one thing was certain—the family could not escape.
The cast-iron lock fastened at the entryway was the sort of thing not easily opened even with a key.
To free the family would require either a first-rate expert capable of cutting through the iron bars with a sword, or at the very least an elder of the Wudang Sect.
"Please, just let my daughter out!"
"I said no! Is there something wrong with the daughter?!"
The warriors' repeated refusals made the man frantic, and at last he let slip what he should not have.
"My daughter is someone who must not remain in a place like this!!"
"Dear!"
The man's wife screamed. The man, who had been gripping and shaking the bars, stopped moving, his mouth hanging wide open.
"What is going on here."
"El-Elder!"
A hawk-nosed Taoist with an unpleasant face strode into the prison dressed in a splendid martial robe. He swept his gaze lightly over the family, then raised a finger and loosed a finger wind.
Sssshk!
A chill wind like shards of ice blew through the cell. With it, the figure of the woman the man's wife had been clutching tightly to herself was revealed. The woman's face was covered with a veil.
"How peculiar. There seems little reason to conceal one's face to such an extent."
"Th-that is. She is said to be extremely shy with strangers...."
"The moment we so much as touch her, she screams and is on the verge of tears...."
At the warriors' excuses, the hawk-nosed elder, Great Master Hyeon-ta (玄他), loosed another finger wind. The man's wife tried to shield her daughter's face, but the woman's face was quickly laid bare by the gust.
"Ah...!"
The warriors recoiled at the sight of the pustules blooming across the woman's face.
Unlike an ordinary skin condition that might naturally occur as a person grows, the woman's face bore marks so characteristic of smallpox that no one could doubt the suspicion.
"Urp!"
The warriors guarding the prison swiftly covered their mouths with their hands and retreated. One of them hurriedly snatched up a torch and began waving it in all directions.
"...There is no room for excuses."
Great Master Hyeon-ta shook his head as he looked at the woman's face.
"Go on, speak. Do you think it permissible to take this girl and go outside?"
"Hee did not catch smallpox! Her skin has simply been poor since long ago—nothing more! It resembles smallpox, but it is by no means smallpox!"
"A lie has its limits! In times like these, do you think such lies will pass?! Those in whom the disease has manifested may never descend the mountain! That is the bare minimum of courtesy and duty owed to the people of Hubei Province!"
"W-we are different! We are different, I tell you! Please, let us—let Hee alone, at least—leave this place! Staying here means we will catch a plague we would never otherwise contract!!"
The man's outlandish words made the back of Great Master Hyeon-ta's head throb. How was one meant to handle someone who hid the fact they were infected and insisted on descending into a crowded populace?
Prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.
Even if it were truly not so, Great Master Hyeon-ta trusted his own instincts.
"Warriors, listen! We shall install wooden panels so that nothing may cross over the iron bars!"
Screeeech.
Sagong Hee's family was locked inside the prison.
And then.
"Hsss, agh. Why do I feel so itchy?"
"Damn it. Because of those people, are we catching it too?"
The warriors standing guard in front of the prison began scratching at their skin, one after another.