The New Novel — 5
The murim is a merciless place. A world that was a mountain of blades and a forest of swords, where the weak fell by the hundreds in a single day. Without a moment's hesitation, Unhyeon took the hand of a woman in need and leapt into that world. And so the great flight began.
"I can't tear my eyes from this book. How can writing be this gripping!"
The exclamations that used to drift now and then from his daughter's room had since fallen silent. Which meant she was all the more absorbed.
Unhyeon cut down the villains coveting the famous swords with the clean decisiveness of a sharp blade through tangled hemp. In his hands unfolded the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique, honed in pursuit of chivalry.
Of course, there were moments of crisis.
Once his enemies learned how considerable Unhyeon's martial skill truly was, they grew cunning in turn.
"They mixed poison into the food."
"How are you not poisoned?!"
"I fed it to the bird by the window first."
"Writer Hopil knew the trick us escorts swear by?! The research in the fine details is superb."
A small bird's tiny body lets poison take hold fast, making it easy to detect. To think Writer Hopil knew even that?
Escort Gong let out a cry of pure admiration.
"Charge!"
"To shake the pursuit, we must make for the water!"
"There are traces of a raft being built!"
"They fled downstream along the waterway! Find them!"
"Erasing their tracks—good move. But with no telling how many enemies remain, they're wearing thin. This is spiraling toward the worst."
It wasn't Unhyeon's martial power that fell short. It was his stamina. Even an escort seasoned by years on the road would have called the situation a bitter one.
What would Unhyeon do? Escort Gong turned the page.
"Will you truly be all right?"
"When the enemy's blade moves in a dizzying blur, standing still can be a strategy of its own."
"Fooled them and doubled back upstream to hide in a cave! That's not the thinking of a newcomer to the murim!"
It was a gambit.
Drift downstream with the current, and the pursuit is easily thrown off. Yet against all reason, they had rowed against the flow toward high ground.
Stamina drains, and they could be caught. A decision ordinary nerve could never make—the kind of idea no rookie of the gangho would dare conceive.
"Where in blazes have they vanished to!"
In the end, the enemy had never dreamed of it, and Unhyeon bought himself the time to conserve his strength.
"And here I thought it would end in a few sword strokes. A running battle where he's outmatched, mind games stacked on top, and gut-tightening suspense to boot. It's as if Writer Hopil has actually fled for his life before."
A chase tense enough to read with bated breath. If anyone out there scoffed—what could a mere author possibly know of the murim?—this was prose that would make you thrust Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon into their hands that very instant.
Unhyeon had conserved his strength, but not everything went smoothly. In the end, Jin Soyu was hurt.
"Climb on my back."
"Wha—why would I ride on your back, Young Hero Unhyeon?!!!"
His daughter's excited voice rang out from her room.
"Young Hero. Perhaps it would be better......"
Leave me and go. Jin Soyu couldn't finish the words, but her eyes said it plainly.
"It might be kinder to give up. Keep this up and they both die."
Escort Gong nodded. Unhyeon had done more than enough. There was no need to walk willingly down the road to ruin.
"If I never meant to see it through, I would not have drawn my sword in the first place."
"Heh heh."
Admiration spilled from Escort Gong's lips.
Why go so far? It wasn't as with Tang Jeong of Dangga Pungun, whose clan's arts had leaked beyond their walls and demanded blood.
Only because someone weak had reached out a hand to him there.
Unhyeon was helping Jin Soyu.
Exasperating. Stubborn as an ox. It wasn't that Unhyeon didn't understand the value of life. He prized the way of chivalry enough to stake his own upon it.
A man mad for chivalry.
"A protagonist like this should have readers tearing their hair out in frustration. Instead it's downright exhilarating. Remarkable."
Build a protagonist obsessed with chivalry, then grant catharsis by having him smash through impossible crises. It was a detail Kang Yunho had labored over for a world where martial arts novels held no sway.
In the end, Jin Soyu climbed onto Unhyeon's back.
"Ahhk..."
A sound of heartache slipped out from his daughter's room.
"A single sword to trust, and only each other to lean on. Kheuh. The murim I dreamed of as a youth—it's right before my eyes."
The youthful dream of carving a path through the gangho armed with one sword. That dream stood before Escort Gong's eyes now.
"Young Hero Unhyeon......"
And so did one woman's tender heart.
"Ahem. Well, is it any wonder a woman's heart begins to bloom?"
If anyone could open a path even for a Wudang Taoist sworn far from romance, surely it was Writer Hopil. Escort Gong turned the page in breathless anticipation.
When the flight ended, Unhyeon had not made for Wuhan. He had turned aside instead, toward a place called the Gangsu Sect.
It was one of the parties the Pungun Martial Arts Academy owed—his reasoning being that a debt could be repaid with the sword, and aid begged there in return.
"Why do you not eat? If it is the thin company at table, fear not. The others are away on sect business; they will return within days."
Though the Sect Leader's face was the picture of flustered hospitality, neither of the two raised their chopsticks.
"It seems you are waiting for the party that hunted us to come home."
Unhyeon answered the Sect Leader, his face carved from ice.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"The wounds of the three men seated at this table match the masked men I cut down ten days ago."
"......Tch. Sharp eyes."
"Young Hero Unhyeon, what are you saying? We brought the precious swords just as Sect Leader Gangsu promised. With these, the debt can surely be—"
Jin Soyu, unable to hide her bewilderment, pressed the Sect Leader she had once known.
"Something I could take by simply extending my hand—why would I bother paying for it?"
"What?"
"Did I not already tell you to enter my household as concubine? Why would I trouble myself with roundabout means?"
"No—you cannot mean it! All of this was your doing?!"
"Now you understand. There is nowhere left to run. Become my concubine, and I shall hand you the Pungun Academy. Give up, quietly."
It had all been the Gangsu Sect Leader's scheme: to swallow the Pungun Martial Arts Academy of Wuhan whole, and to take the beauty Jin Soyu for himself.
The Gangsu Sect Leader and his disciples kicked back from their seats and dropped all pretense.
"Filthy wretches! Threatening a woman's life and stooping lower than beasts!"
It was no rare thing in the murim. Rival sects had been swallowed before, their daughters taken as concubines. But to commit so vile a plot—
As a father with a daughter of his own, Escort Gong could not suppress his fury, and read on through the battle unfolding across the page.
They had to hurry.
If they lingered, the sect disciples who had chased them would return to the Gangsu Sect.
The strength Unhyeon had sharpened over the course of his long flight turned the three wounded Gangsu disciples into guests who would never return, in the space of a breath.
"It's finished, Sect Leader."
Unhyeon let his sword sink, speaking to the Gangsu Sect Leader, who clutched the unconscious Jin Soyu against him.
"Finished? This sect was cobbled together from riffraff anyway—I'm the only one who matters. With these swords alone I can raise it from the ashes as many times as I please!"
Ten famous swords, a sight rarely glimpsed in all the murim. At that scale, it was no idle boast.
"Then we have no choice but to settle this with blades."
"You Wudang Taoist bastard certainly loves to talk!"
In an instant, the two blades crossed.
One, a villain who had carved out his own dominion. The other, a hero already streaked with small wounds from his long flight.
Which way the scales would tip was plain as fire in the night.
"Kkuhk! Release the hostage!"
"Why ever should I?"
He had lost far more than he ever anticipated. The Gangsu Sect Leader's eyes gleamed as he cast about for new ways to wring torment from Unhyeon.
"Vile snake! What is the man supposed to do now! For Unhyeon to have lasted this long is already a miracle!"
No answer came to Escort Gong's anguished cry.
There was no path out. Feeling the blood crawl down his brow, Unhyeon looked at the Gangsu Sect Leader.
He could not harm the hostage. Then what of the Wind Form of the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique, swift and yielding as the breeze?
Wind unfolded from Unhyeon's fingertips.
"Not there!"
The power fell short. He had to pull the strike short of Jin Soyu, and that was all it managed.
If power was lacking, what of the Thunder Form? A form carrying a thrust like rolling thunder. A full-force Thunder Form would surely punch through the Gangsu Sect Leader's heart.
The problem was that Jin Soyu stood directly before that heart.
What could be done? Ride the wind in and strike like thunder? Wind and thunder were brothers so distant they had never met.
The Eight Trigrams Sword Technique was a sword art of ten thousand variations. Yet Unhyeon could not yet hold even a thousand, let alone ten thousand.
"Heh heh. Falling short, is it."
Escort Gong sighed in sympathy. It was the oldest story in the world. A wall the mind could see but the body had not yet reached—and how many warriors of the murim had become guests who never returned because they could not cross it?
Would Unhyeon be the same?
No. Unhyeon was different.
Because he had found the one thing he could do.
The Thunder Form. A thrust like thunder drove toward the Gangsu Sect Leader.
"Kkuhk! So you've finally thrown the wench away?!"
"No."
Wind and thunder were too far apart. His sword would never carry him there. But what of fire?
"None of your tricks—ugh! Wh-what—?!"
The Gangsu Sect Leader swung, certain Unhyeon was playing some petty game, and took a hidden blade in the shoulder—thrown from somewhere unseen.
Who? Unhyeon had sensed the presence too, but there was no stopping now.
The Eight Trigrams Sword Technique.
One variation begets a thousand.
A thousand begets ten thousand. And at the beginning of it all—
"The eight trigrams first transform."
"What—?"
The Fire Form. Flame, folded into a form, slid along the lapel of the Sect Leader's robe.
Like grassfire in early summer, burning the blades of grass yet never scorching the earth beneath. When the fire riding the lapel at last slipped past Jin Soyu—
the eight trigrams transformed once more.
Into a thrust like thunder.
"Th-this—what in the—"
Heart pierced, the Gangsu Sect Leader could force out only one final utterance.
"The Eight Trigrams Sword Technique. The sword Wudang forged for the sake of the world."
One wall crossed. The words Unhyeon could give in answer were one as well.
"Kkuoooooh. Crossing a wall in a duel of life and death, and shielding the woman besides! Hah! Truly! THIS is what a warrior is!"
Escort Gong could not contain himself before so rare and splendid a scene. But the story was not done yet.
"We won."
Jin Soyu had fainted mid-battle, but by fortune was unharmed. They had to get out, and quickly. Unhyeon was struggling upright on his tottering legs when—
Cla-clap-clap. Applause rang out behind them.
"Who goes there?!"
"Isn't that rather cold, for a man whose life I saved?"
Through a vision gone hazy with the blood streaming down Unhyeon's head came the clear voice of a woman he had never heard before.
"You would be the one who threw that hidden blade. My thanks."
Who could it be? It might be another after the swords. Unhyeon did not loosen his guard.
"And I should be the one thanking you, for clearing away that tiresome lord of the house."
Blood had darkened his sight, but as the woman drew near he could make her out—black clothes, and a mask.
"......A thief?"
"My, how piercing—just like your thrust earlier. Wouldn't you rather call me Muyoung Shintu?"
"Muyoung Shintu? The legendary thief from the tales of my youth?"
Escort Gong too remembered the feared name of Muyoung Shintu, who had made her name across Hubei Province and beyond.
"A gentleman of the rafters, are we?"
"Muyoung Shintu is quite famous these days, you know. You haven't heard of me?"
The woman murmured, sounding genuinely wounded.
"Her sword I will not surrender!"
Unhyeon, having just crossed his first wall, swung his blade—but it only grazed the shoulder of the thief who called herself Muyoung Shintu.
"Mind yourself! You nearly cut me! I came for the famous swords, but an owner has claimed them—so today I shall take something else of value instead."
With that, the woman began heaping the sect's treasures into a pile before Unhyeon's eyes.
"The very height of shamelessness."
One had barely scraped through a duel of life and death; the other was busy looting the place.
"Look here. Do you have any idea how much lifeblood the Gangsu Sect wrung out of innocent folk? For you it ends well enough—sword in one hand, woman in the other—but what do you imagine happens after?"
"With the Sect Leader who squeezed their lifeblood gone, the people's troubles go with him."
"Ever the innocent Taoist. Wherever there is a vein to bleed, a bloodsucker shows up. That is why I step in."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You truly haven't heard of Muyoung Shintu? I'd rather not gild my own face, but—the phantom thief who makes the redistribution of wealth a reality. A righteous thief who provides for the poor."
"A thief who gives to the poor? Is this woman claiming a horse's head could be some chivalrous hero?!"
Never in his life had Escort Gong heard such a thing, and his bewilderment got the better of him.
"You are giving all of this away to the people?"
The woman opened her mouth, wearing an expression of mild annoyance.
"Yes, yes. The phantom thief Muyoung Shintu steals from the wicked and gives unto the good. The black paper has been left behind, so everything is finished. I shall take my leave. You would do well to hurry out of this place as well."
The woman who called herself Muyoung Shintu left the black paper behind her and vanished like the wind.
With the Gangsu Sect Leader dead and a war of succession breaking out behind them, the two made it back to Wuhan without incident.
"The phantom thief Muyoung Shintu. To think she truly did divide that fortune among the poor."
Word had spread, after all, that the thief called Muyoung Shintu had shared her plunder with the destitute.
"I owe you a debt I can never repay, Young Hero."
Jin Soyu bowed deeply to Unhyeon as she spoke.
"My lady, I never did any of it expecting a reward......"
"These swords are what my father left me before he passed. They are still only blades, but you saved my life—so I would give you something as precious as life itself."
A sword yet unfinished. But it was the life's work of a father who had left it to his daughter before dying.
If it were ever completed, it would deserve to be called a divine weapon.
"I cannot accept these swords."
"Then refuse, and I will have them melted down for scrap."
"My lady!"
"In return...... until the sword is finished, would you stay at the academy a while?"
"Heh heh. Oblivious as ever. She's asking him to stay by her side, that's all this is. Head over heels. Head over heels, the both of them."
Escort Gong's eyes crinkled at the innocent romance unfolding between the two.
"My debts are all paid and I'm left a penniless wretch, but I have hired a maidservant to keep the house."
A divine sword, gained out of nowhere. But what would truly startle the readers of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon lay elsewhere.
"Hello. I look forward to serving you. Ow."
"Have you injured your shoulder?"
"Huhu. Yes. I hurt it while working."
"Huh? Huh?! Huhuhuhuh?!"
"I look forward to serving you, Young Hero Unhyeon."
"......Did I ever tell you my name?"
"Who can say?"
The clear voice of a woman. The injured shoulder. A woman who had appeared out of nowhere. Escort Gong thought of someone in the same instant.
"It can't be!"
Unhyeon carries on his chivalrous work in Wuhan. Unhyeon, Jin Soyu, and a maidservant who vanishes whenever night falls. A subtle current begins to stir between the three.
"He's living together with Muyoung Shintu?!"
Readers who finished Volume 2 of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon had no choice but to cry out the very same words.
"Neeeext voooooolume!"