The Tumun - 3
"You need to start with your martial arts training."
The next day, Ha Yeon returned from her meeting with the Tumun alongside the Gimun Hyangju and announced this in front of Lady Jegal and me.
"Out of nowhere?"
"The Tumun says they'll be sending someone to verify the facts. They can hardly take it on faith alone that you're that man's sworn brother, after all."
"I only just reached the second stage of the Shadowless Body Art. Do you really think my attainment can deepen that much further in ten days?"
I hadn't been idling since the day the Domun hounded me through the streets. To survive the treacherous murim, you needed a sword that breathed fire dragons, or the ability to copy any martial art you laid eyes on. Even if I'd never manage to walk on air, I should at least be good at running away. Thanks to that grim resolve and Ha Yeon's one-on-one instruction, I had, at some point without even noticing, grasped the Shadowless Body Art all the way to its second stage.
"That's exactly what has me worried. If only there were some way to prove it beyond doubt using the Shadowless Body Art itself..."
Apparently no clear answer was coming to Ha Yeon either.
"How about this, Tumun — 'Must I walk on water before you'll believe me?!' — and I demonstrate my Flat-Water Striding (Jesus Walk)?"
You never know. They might end up believing in me in a whole different way.
"I'm being serious."
So am I. I want the readers of Pungun Hyeopgaekjeon to believe the Shadowless Divine Thief can walk on water.
"Even if you can't make me a master of lightness technique, how about teaching me a few tricks that let me pass for one? You know — like how I huff and puff about being a master while catching blades with the Jade-Faced Guardian Divine Skill."
Ha Yeon pondered my suggestion for a while, but she didn't seem to have anything better.
"Ah, um, w-well..."
When the two of us fell silent, Lady Jegal, who had been watching from the side, cautiously opened her mouth.
"Lady Jegal, do you perhaps have a good idea?"
"I-I was thinking... what if you made use of Young Master Kang's eyyyyes?"
"His eyes? Ah! Wait a moment. At the second stage of the Shadowless Body Art, he should manage the No-Step."
Some idea had evidently struck Ha Yeon at Lady Jegal's words, because she began glancing around the room.
"No-Step?"
What did that mean?
Before I could even ask, a wooden staff had appeared in Ha Yeon's hand, and she was standing in front of me.
"Try to dodge my staff. Without moving your legs."
That is far too sudden! You should ask for my consent before you start swinging. Before I could say a word, her arm was already moving.
Fast. I concentrated the power in my eyes as quickly as I could. The motion was a thrust, driving straight in for my nose.
Ha Yeon's legs never moved. Four paces between us. It would land before I could take a single step.
I drew my chin back first, arching my chest to open a pocket of space where my head had just been.
Thankfully, the staff stopped exactly where my nose used to be.
"What in the—?!"
"Once more."
This time Ha Yeon moved a full step in. Dodge the same way and that staff would take my forehead. I bent my knees and twisted my shoulder, slipping past it by a hair's breadth.
"That was dangerous!"
"You didn't need to bend your knees. Changing their angle alone would have been enough. Lady Jegal saw it exactly right."
Ha Yeon nodded toward Lady Jegal, apparently impressed.
"Hmph. It was nooothing, really."
Um, excuse me? I'm fairly sure I'm the one who's supposed to be complimented here.
"That was the No-Step?"
"Part of it. Dodging in cramped spaces without moving your feet, using only minimal motion — and you'll need to handle committing to full footwork when an opening appears as well. But if you master it, a few of the Tumun will recognize it as the Shadowless Body Art."
"If it comes down to eyes and judgment, this doesn't seem impossible."
I'd been fighting with my eyes ever since my days drifting through the Central Plains — every time trouble picked one with me. It seemed worth a try.
"It truly is remarkable."
Ha Yeon said this while looking me slowly up and down.
"What is?"
"Your dynamic vision. It's impossible to believe you're only at the entry level of second-rate."
"It's nothing. You could do it too, Lady Ha Yeon."
"I can manage it because my realm is higher than yours."
"I think he's pretty amazing tooo."
Lady Jegal, apparently meaning to second the praise, nodded along while looking at me.
"Is it some family's secret art, by any chance?"
"Well... something like that."
The original form of the Soyun Mind Image Art had been the secret mental cultivation art of the Moyong Clan's family head, after all.
Thanks to its passive body-reinforcing effect, even back when I had no internal energy to speak of, knocking down the average thug or third-rate martial artist had been easy. And even after it passed through those two women's hands and became the Soyun Mind Image Art, it had remained the bedrock of my martial arts, saving my life again and again.
Considering that even lifelong wanderers of the murim struggle to get their hands on anything above second-rate, it was a mental art far beyond anything I deserved.
I hope the two of them are living well, wherever they are.
"Was it a woman?"
The voice was so frost-cold it could have flash-frozen the two women's faces floating through my head.
"Hm?"
I looked up to find two distinctly sulky faces: Ha Yeon and Lady Jegal.
"That woman taught you, didn't she?"
"Ah... well, you see. Hahaha."
It wasn't Hwarin who taught me — it was two entirely different women. No matter how oblivious I might be, there was no way I could say that out loud, so I just smiled sheepishly.
"Young Master Kaaaang."
Lady Jegal stuck out her lips and looked up at me with a trace of reproach in her eyes.
"Lady Jegal."
"Yeees, Lady Ha Yeon."
Ha Yeon called to Lady Jegal with something smoldering in her gaze.
The mood had turned delicate. The two of them appeared to be conducting some kind of negotiation through eye contact alone.
"Let's train him together. Properly."
"S-so he can't get any funny ideeeas?"
"Exactly that."
Ha Yeon and Lady Jegal nodded to each other and each picked up a wooden staff.
"I'm telling you, this is going too far."
On my way out of the inn, having secured promises of help from the Simun Branch Master and the Ma Gate Head, I muttered to myself, kneading my bruised shoulder.
I wanted to protest mixing personal feelings into martial training. But there had been results, so there was nothing to be said.
"How much for one frui— Hm?"
I was about to buy a piece of fruit from a street stall when a young child crashed straight into me.
"I'm sorry!"
Well, well. Look at this.
"Sorry, my foot. Kid, you ought to check who you're bumping into."
In the hand of the child I'd caught was my wallet — until a moment ago, it had been inside my coat.
"How—? L-let go of that!"
The little pickpocket thrashed with all his might, but no amount of squirming was getting him free.
What to do. Hand him over to the magistrate's office?
"Go on."
I deliberated a moment, then reclaimed my wallet and released his wrist.
"What?"
Rubbing his captured wrist, the child asked with a bewildered face.
"I said go."
I had no time to wrestle with a common cutpurse. Your big brother here, you see, has a Hyangju meeting to prepare for and a Lady Ha Yeon to install as Tumun Hyangju as quickly as possible. That's the only reason I'm letting you walk.
But the kid showed no intention of moving.
Why isn't he going?
"This isn't how it's supposed to go. Um... it's just..."
The child looked back and forth between me and the alley, stamping his feet in helpless confusion.
Hold on. You. That pickpocketing wasn't the point, was it?
"Lead the way, then."
"I brought him! Huh?"
The moment I stepped into the alley, a hidden projectile sliced through the air over the child's head.
"Tch!"
I had expected as much.
Without moving my feet, I evaded it with body movement alone. And I couldn't stop there.
The moment your thoughts stop, your path closes. Following Ha Yeon's teaching, I moved my legs.
The fastest possible motion, without any of the preparatory crouch of a lightness technique.
I drove my internal energy according to the formulas of the Shadowless Body Art, yet I neither shot skyward nor sprang backward. Like a skater across ice, I surged forward.
If my attainment of the art had been even a shade deeper, it might have looked like teleportation, but for dodging a hidden weapon and charging the enemy's position, this was more than enough.
"The Shadowless Body Art?"
"So it was, after all?"
"Not certain yet. Everyone, quiet."
When I reached the end of the alley, I found people seated in ranks across a yard the sun never touched.
"You'd think folk who barge uninvited into other people's homes would at least know how to extend a proper invitation. What kind of welcome is this?"
There was no need to ask who the people before me were.
The Tumun of the Haomen.
Pickpockets, black-market peddlers, thieves. Every last one of them belonged to the Haomen's Tumun.
"I have no intention of trading words with a constable for long."
In the center of the clearing, a middle-aged man rose from his seat, brushing the dust from his trousers as he spoke.
"That wounds me. I was rather hoping we'd get close on a personal level. We'd talk shop, and if you looked after my performance figures down the line, I'd make sure special meals reached you in prison."
You're the one who threw that projectile, aren't you? Then you get the special privilege of being arrested for obstruction of official duties.
"If you're not here to listen, leave."
"Doesn't look like the rest of your people feel the same way."
"..."
Plenty of others here look ready to talk in your place. Where'd you learn to bluff like that?
"You came because you wanted to talk to me, didn't you?"
The man went on glaring at me with an expression of sheer disbelief, then finally asked in a grudging voice.
"...Is it true, then? Are you really the sworn brother of the Tumun Hyangju?"
"You came here already knowing everything, didn't you? If you're that curious, go ask Uncle Kwak."
"Do you mean the Kwak family of Yichang?"
"How many other friends of my sworn brother happen to be surnamed Kwak?"
The man's brow creased slightly. Why? Did it throw him that I even know Uncle Wang's friends?
"That the Hyangju has a sworn brother is news entirely to us. And that he's a green boy barely past his twentieth year makes it harder still to swallow."
"Acceptance is a thing settled between brothers whose hearts run in the same current. Who's supposed to grant it on their behalf?"
Guan Yu had called the far younger Liu Bei his elder brother. What was an age gap between sworn brothers?
Just believe me. Have I ever lied to you? In any case, Mr. Wang of Chilgok County and I are sworn brothers.
The man stared hard into my face for a long while. Finding no lie anywhere in my words, he let out a small sigh and spoke again.
"We've confirmed the Shadowless Body Art. But that in itself is no proof you learned it from the Tumun Hyangju."
Was he suggesting I might have simply learned it from Ha Yeon?
"If all you do is deny, this will never end."
Pointlessly trying to prove the truth of it would only dig me deeper. Rather than picking apart his objections one by one, better to turn him into a man incapable of doubt.
The man had no reply to that, so he raised a different matter.
"I heard you brought other evidence as well."
"You mean this?"
I drew a black coin from inside my coat and flicked it over to him with my thumb.
The moment I passed over the Black Coin, the others who had been watching from the sidelines closed in around the man.
"It really is the Black Coin of the vanished Tumun Hyangju!"
"Impossible. It actually existed?"
"I saw it exactly once, fifteen years ago. There's no doubt — that's the genuine article!"
"Wh-where in the world did you get this?"
Anyone could claim they'd learned the Shadowless Body Art from Ha Yeon. The Black Coin was another matter entirely. Once the onlookers drifted back to their places, the man, unable to contain his bewilderment, asked me.
"My sworn brother gave it to me. Who else would?"
Never seen a Black Coin before?
"The Tumun Hyangju's Black Coin has surfaced in the world exactly three times."
"Three times?"
"One is held by the previous Tumun Hyangju himself. One was given to someone whose life he saved. And one, today."
"That coin is a precious thing, so don't go spending it anywhere cheap. Keep it for something that truly matters."
Uncle Wang, I have to say — however many times I think about it, you gave me something far too precious.
"You carry a Black Coin that precious, and you still doubt me? If this much evidence isn't enough to believe, why did you even come here to talk?"
There was no call to bare my heart any further than this.
You'd still doubt me, after all this? I gave a wry snort and shrugged.
The Shadowless Body Art, the Black Coin, the Hyangjus' testimonies, even the sworn word of the Muyoung Shintu-to-be. If you came here intending to believe, then believe.
"...We have no wish for a clash with the Domun."
"And isn't that Black Coin precisely so you'll do the things you have no wish for?"
"Do you know the Black Coin's code?"
The code? I know it well. Would it do to recite the question and answer Ha Yeon gave me?
"On a night without a moon's shadow..."
"Hm?!"
At my question, the man's eyes went wide in an instant.
Had they assumed I wouldn't know the code at all? I delivered the answer without a shred of hesitation, yet the reaction around me was nothing like the one I'd expected.
"Hoh."
"I see. So that is how it is."
What is with everyone? The clearing stirred in an instant.
"Did she really... did she truly teach you that?"
The man asked as if he could hardly believe it.
"The current Muyoung Shintu herself confirmed it as the Tumun Hyangju's code."
Judging by their faces, I hadn't answered wrongly. So why all the commotion?
"So that was how it came to pass. You are certainly worthy of the name of sworn brother."
The man approached me slowly, laid the Black Coin upon my palm, and folded my fingers closed around it as though commanding me to treasure it.
"I'm sorry — what?"
"We will acknowledge you as proxy at the Hyangju meeting. Look after our prospective Hyangju well from here on."
As the man nodded, the corners of his mouth were most definitely turned upward.
"You won the Tumun's approval? That easily?"
When I came home wearing a dumbfounded expression, Ha Yeon asked back as if she couldn't make sense of it either.
"Lady Ha Yeon. About the Black Coin's code."
"The code?"
"'On a night without a moon's shadow, I shall send a guest for a single flower.' Does it carry some separate meaning?"
"A meaning?"
"The moment I recited it, everyone was convinced."
Ha Yeon fell into brief thought at my words, and then she told me.
"I only ever knew the one code."
"Just one?"
"That man I met the last time told me. If someone ever comes looking for me carrying a Black Coin, and he answers this question, then he is a person you can trust."
"So that was it — the Tumun knew the very same one."
So the codes carried meanings all their own.
One code might say: this man saved my life, so take him in. Another: do the fellow some small courtesy and send him on his way.
And the one I'd spoken meant: he is trustworthy, so stop questioning him? If so, I could well understand why they'd stopped doubting me.
"That man does have his uses, it seems. One problem solved, at least. Come on — out with you."
Ha Yeon said this as she snatched up her wooden staff.
"We're doing this again today?"
The goal's been achieved — shouldn't that be the end of it?
"The Domun may grow suspicious as well. We train until the day before the meeting."
Well, nothing to be done, then. Rubbing my aching shoulder, I trailed after Ha Yeon.
Ten days, for Ha Yeon to become the Tumun Hyangju.
Ten days is a long time when you're waiting for something — and far too short when you're preparing for it.
"F-for the escape route, this way would probably be beeeest."
"You'll need to move differently depending on the situation."
Plans for what lay ahead, martial training, and the odd hour of actual work squeezed in between — the days raced past.
"I'm off."
The day of the Hyangju meeting had arrived.
