New Release - 4
"Volume two of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon, out this soon?"
"I was sure it would take at least half a year."
"So the reason volume four of Dangga Pungun never came really was that business with Daseogak."
"Which means once the Daseogak affair is settled, volume four will be right on its heels."
"To think we'll finally learn the true identity of the maiden from the end of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon — and so soon!"
Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon, released back to back. At this pace, readers might actually get to enjoy Author Hopil's novels one after another — a dream no longer.
The news of volume two's release had the members of the Tea Book Club fairly bubbling over.
In truth, Kang Yunho had written volume one well in advance, and volume two had been raced to the finish line with two women backing him in every way, material and moral; but as a single stroke of news to swallow the ill will mounting against Hopil whole, nothing could have served better.
Throwing wave after wave of workers into the print shop, they had produced Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon volume two at an unheard-of pace — and as copies filled Daseogak's shelves, release day arrived.
"The line's not as long as I expected."
A Tea Book Club member muttered it, standing midway along the long, snaking queue.
"Shorter? From here the Daseogak entrance looks like a speck — what in the world are you talking about?"
His friend craned his neck, glancing back and forth between the head of the line and its far end.
"Ah, right — you never saw the release day of Dangga Pungun volume three. Back then, walking out with a copy on day one was practically a miracle."
"Good grief. I thought this line was already monstrous. Just how long was it for Dangga Pungun?"
"I queued up before the sun rose, bought my copy, and it was dinnertime by the time I stepped back out."
The member — a man who loved Dangga Pungun rather more than Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon — said this with none-too-subtle pride, a day-one reader to the bone.
"Sis, look how many people there are!"
"Let's hurry and get in line! I can't wait to see Yunhyeon!"
"The line may be shorter than Dangga Pungun's, but there do seem to be more women readers now."
A martial artist had strolled up to the Tea Book Club member who'd been preening, greeting him with easy familiarity.
"Oh! If it isn't Escort Gong! Back from your escort run?"
The martial artist was none other than a devoted reader of Dangga Pungun — Escort Gong himself, a man whose name carried no small weight in Yichang.
"Got back two days ago. A familiar face while I wait for volume two of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon — that's a pleasant sight indeed. Has everyone been keeping well?"
Escort Gong was no member of the Tea Book Club, but he called at Daseogak often enough that he and its members knew one another by sight.
"Your fatigue from the road can't have worn off yet. Couldn't you have sent the young escorts under you...?"
"I forgot my daughter's gift while I was on the road, that's what it was. A girl who could be wed any day now, and she'd never let me hear the end of it. Then I happened to spot Author Hopil's new book sitting on her desk — so out I came."
A famed escort he might be, but at bottom he was a father utterly powerless before his daughter.
"Haha. Author Hopil's novels are all the rage among women these days. Have you read Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon yourself?"
"Take a look at these eyes and tell me."
"Pardon? Ah — you do look terribly worn, sir."
"Last night I read Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon. Road-weariness piled on road-weariness, and my heart was so worked up I couldn't sleep a wink. Never should have pulled it off my daughter's shelf on a whim."
He called it a mistake, but Escort Gong's face was all smiles.
"I lost a whole night's sleep to it myself."
"I'd always believed a man grows calm with age — that joy and sorrow alike become old friends in time. And yet this novel. I find I cannot make my heart sit still."
"There must be something in it that strikes at a martial artist's blood."
Escort Gong nodded and spoke.
"I mean to recommend it to the other escorts as well."
Strip the sensuality from a tale of chivalry, and it lacks the sting of Dangga Pungun. But what it gave up in spice it made up for with a different thrill — a book compelling enough to burn a whole night on. What's more, it was a novel so rich in things to chew over that Escort Gong would sooner press Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon into a fellow martial artist's hands than Dangga Pungun itself.
"Ah! The doors of Daseogak are opening!"
For his daughter's sake, and his own, Escort Gong began to edge his way toward the doors.
"Enjoy the read."
When the wait was finally over, Escort Gong handed his daughter one of the two volumes of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon he had fought his way to.
"Kyaaaah! Dad, you're the best!"
Perhaps that was what it meant for a daughter to be the very apple of one's eye. The girl was of an age to be wed any day now, and still she bounced for joy — and Escort Gong simply beamed at the sight.
"When you've finished, come tell me what you thought."
"Yes!"
He watched his daughter scamper into her room on quick little feet, then carried volume two into his own study.
Yunhyeon, a Taoist of the Wudang Sect.
To become a hero, he had completed his training in the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique — and on the road out into the world, he comes upon a woman.
Set upon by villains — who could this maiden be?
For the first time in his middle age, Escort Gong forgot his years and opened the book with a heart all aflutter.
"You villains! Even if I must lay down my life, did you truly think I'd hand over my honored father's sword?!"
A beauty with her long hair bound back stood sword in hand, crying out her defiance at the villains.
"A martial artist? So the maiden's true identity was a martial artist?"
She was no mere woman fallen prey to bandits. Feeling the stirrings of some great incident to come, Escort Gong read on.
"Wench! Hand over the sword quietly, and I'll spare your life — nothing more!"
"A wench, and a rare beauty at that. Big Brother... we will spare her life, won't we?"
"Kheheheh. You needn't ask twice."
"This wench... breaking her spirit would be a delicacy in itself."
"Traveling alone in a woman's body. Foolish."
Escort Gong muttered it with a bitter twist of his mouth.
In the murim there is a saying: be wary of the old, of children, and of women. Anyone who would make easy prey for bandits, and yet roams the jianghu all the same — that alone is reason enough to regard them with caution.
The profession of escort had not come to exist in the murim for nothing. Escort Gong knew better than anyone what fate, in the usual course of things, awaited a woman like the one in this book.
In the usual course of things, that is.
"Who goes there?!"
"A passing traveler who could not ignore injustice, nothing more."
Five villains, vicious of face, against a single woman. Any ordinary man — no, even a typical martial artist — would have turned his gaze from such a scene.
Yunhyeon appeared between the woman and the villains as though drawing a line in the sand.
"That's our Yunhyeon."
"A young hero, eh? That garb — don't tell me. Wudang?"
"Of all things, a Wudang cur! Don't let him close! Surround him and bleed him out, slow and steady!"
Grasping the situation at once, the five villains spread out and ringed Yunhyeon in.
Softness subdues hardness; the latecomer strikes first. The Wudang sword was a defensive art. A true master would have been another matter, but against a green pup swinging a Wudang blade, one need only refuse him distance — slip the killing blows, and the win was yours.
That was the villains' ironclad calculation.
"Young hero, run! I'm grateful for the aid, but these villains are no common thugs!"
"It's quite all right."
"Pardon?"
"For I, too, am no common man."
And at last, from Yunhyeon's hand, the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique — earned through long years of training — began to unfold.
"Kyaaaah! Young hero Yunhyeon!"
His daughter's voice rang out from the next room. No doubt she had reached the very same scene and was cheering all over again.
To cut down five men at a single stroke, when no one had dared hope, when every reader must have judged the odds hopeless. Even Escort Gong turned the page with a racing heart.
"Kgh?! H-how?!"
"That's the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique for you. A sword art made for those who venture forth into the world."
Escort Gong found himself picturing Mt. Wudang, rising lofty and aloof into the sky.
Defense over offense. Its magnificent range looked as though no force under heaven could ever break it — and yet there was something about the Wudang of today that brought to mind a turtle crouched in its shell.
And what of Yunhyeon's sword?
Offense over defense. Not crouched in waiting, but swung to venture forth — to go out and make one's way in the world.
More boldly than any man alive.
"Young hero, I give you my thanks. I am Jin Soyu, an instructor at the Pungun Martial Arts Academy."
"To think villains would swarm at the very last foot of Mt. Wudang itself. As a son of Wudang, I can only apologize."
"The fault is not Wudang's. It is the greed of the murim."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"The reason I am hunted lies with these swords."
"Swords?"
"Ten blades left behind by my father — a smith of no small renown — before he passed. I was carrying them with me on my way home to Wuhan."
Jin Soyu began to lay out how she had come to this pass.
She had worked as an instructor at a martial arts academy run by her grandfather. The academy, its fortunes failing, had taken on crushing debt — and with word of her father's death in a far-off land, she had set out to claim her inheritance and return home.
But the swords, of all things, were the problem.
"Truly exceptional blades."
Divine weapons they may not have been, but they were swords that could carve out the difference between life and death at the decisive moment. The woman's blades were treasures that any martial artist would covet.
And somehow, word had spread that Jin Soyu was returning to Wuhan alone, the famous swords in her keeping.
"Beautiful enough to be trouble in her own right — and on top of that, she carries famous swords any martial artist would kill for. That girl is walking into a fire pit hugging an armful of straw."
Escort Gong frowned. This was no ordinary matter.
"Young hero. If I cannot return to the academy with these swords, every last one of my family will be cast out into the streets. I know it is an unreasonable thing to ask. But please — will you help me?"
"Tsk, tsk. This is work that asks a man to wager his life. Even a proper escort agency would charge gold rates for this, not silver. Far too heavy a burden for Yunhyeon, a debutant fresh out of the mountains."
"......"
"Forgive me. I believed you were the only soul I could turn to, and I overstepped. I already owe you my life — what shame was left in me, that I asked for more?"
Jin Soyu, it seemed, felt the disgrace of her own request; she could not lift her head.
"As expected, even Yunhyeon cannot say yes so easily."
Even a chivalric hero finds things he can agree to, and things he cannot.
He'll make the sensible refusal, Escort Gong thought, and turned the page.
"To shake our pursuers, we will have to take the hard roads."
"Pardon?"
"What the—?!"
He turned the page, and what greeted him was an answer he had never expected.
"I was weighing our escape routes — I answered far too slowly. Come, we must move."
"So from the very start, refusing was never on the table. Heh, of course. This is Yunhyeon, the man who walked out into the world to become a chivalric hero!"
It wasn't the response he'd expected, but Escort Gong was all the happier for it. Shouldn't the world hold at least one madman like this?
A madman who casts everything else aside for the sake of chivalry.
"Thank you. Thank you so much! If it pleases you, take one of the swords my father left behind."
"Right. These are famous swords you could live a lifetime and never set eyes on again — gaining one would be no bad bargain at all. ...No, hold on. You've only the one life. It might be a loss after all."
An extraordinary famous sword as reward. A losing trade, or a profitable one?
As an escort, as a man of the murim, Escort Gong ran the numbers busily through his head. But from the very start, there had been no need for any such calculations.
"A hand extended to me is the hand of the weak — that is enough."
"Pardon?"
Through the sword, one walks the Dao.
For chivalry is not a deed weighed out in profit and loss.
"No payment is needed. Let us be going."
"...Shameful."
As a man of the murim, Escort Gong had no choice but to feel a small sting of self-reproach.
When had it been? Surely, back when he was a snot-nosed brat first gripping a blade, he had sworn to swing his sword for the weak. Yet here he was, grown old, reading of a chivalric hero while tallying profit against loss.
"Did you calculate even this, Author Hopil?"
Hands that had grown old before he knew it. Unlike these hands, turning pages while balancing the books, inside this book lived a hero who took the weak by the hand without a moment's hesitation.
"Kuh. I simply cannot bring myself not to turn the page."
Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon, volume two, was setting a middle-aged escort's heart ablaze all over again.