The Do Gate — 5
"Somebody find the Tu Gate Branch Master—quickly!!!"
On the banks of the Yangtze, beside the wine house where Haomen's new Mangju had just been born. The woman who had held herself perfectly still to project the dignity of her new station now wore an expression overflowing with panic.
"To think he'd actually swallow a Soul-Return Pill... We have to find Brother Kang! Someone hand me a torch!"
The Soul-Return Pill. What Dan Wan-gwi had swallowed in his final gamble was a drug that detonated the body's latent strength, lending a burst of power in a single instant.
Warriors of the unorthodox path kept it as a means of saving their own lives, but a single dose brought internal injuries so devastating that men said it bought survival at the price of becoming a cripple.
"All the Do Gate bastards who put up a fight have been subdued!"
"Never mind that! Find the Branch Master first!"
"Light up the whole riverbank!"
"Drag over any ferry you can get your hands on! Get boats on the water, NOW!"
Torch by torch, the banks of the Yangtze blazed bright as high noon.
Putting down the Do Gate remnants who had exploded with latent strength had cost them no serious losses—but it had cost them precious time.
The Haomen members swept their torches across the shimmering water again and again, yet no drifting figure showed itself anywhere on the river.
Could the current have swallowed him? Just as that grim thought flickered through someone's mind—
"Kang!! Yoon!!! Ho!!! Grrraaagh!"
"Bwahh—! Get off me already, you lunatic!"
"There! Off to the right! Dead center! I see them, over theeeere!"
Neither man, it turned out, was the type to die easily. Tangled together in the middle of the Yangtze, tumbling along with the current—both of them, unmistakably, alive.
"Brother Kang!"
"Darling! Wait for me! I'm coming right now!"
"You dolts!!! What do you think you're doing?! Can't you see Dan Wan-gwi and the Branch Master?! Get a boat out there, NOW! Huh?!"
"What's that?"
Just as everyone rushed to rescue the two who had fallen into the water, a sleek black ship pierced the darkness and glided to a stop in the very middle of the Yangtze. It halted close by the tangled pair. Had some kind soul spotted the castaways and anchored out of sheer goodwill?
"It really is the Do Gate Branch Master! Quick—haul the Do Gate Branch Master up!"
Lim Hayeon's hopes were ruthlessly dashed by the voices drifting from the black ship.
"No—you're joking! Is that the Do Gate Branch Master's ship?"
"Hurry! Get the boats in the water!"
Who could have imagined the Do Gate Branch Master had a ship stashed away all along? Lim Hayeon screamed herself hoarse in desperation.
"Too late, I'm afraid. That there's a courier ship—swiftest hull on this river. No boat afloat tonight lays a keel on her, no matter which one you take."
One of the officers who had defected from the Do Gate heaved a deep, deep sigh and addressed the crowd scrambling for the boats.
"What did you say?"
"That miserable snake! If he wanted to run, he should've run with the rest of us from the start! We told him to quit his fool schemes, and the whole time he was quietly squirreling away an escape boat! And now he sails off without us, just like that!"
Gnashing his teeth at the black ship that had materialized out of nowhere, the Do Gate officer poured out his bitterness.
While the Haomen members struggled to weigh anchor or row their ferries into the current, a rope came sailing down from the black ship.
Too far.
Launching the boats now would be too late. Giving chase would be futile.
"...So we're just letting Dan Wan-gwi get away?"
The hollow words drifted from somewhere in the crowd. A silence as deep as the pitch-black night settled over the riverbank.
To lose the man who had orchestrated the entire civil war—the Do Gate Branch Master himself. And the black-haired Branch Master who had ended that very war was now staring down death.
Just as a crushing sense of defeat began to seep through the ranks of Haomen—
"No. It's too early to give up."
"Mangju?"
Every head turned toward Haomen's Mangju, faces etched with despair. But there was neither defeat nor desolation in Lim Hayeon's expression.
Because she had not yet given up.
I have to find a way.
Lim Hayeon fixed her gaze on the black ship, eyes hard and unblinking.
It was, without question, the worst possible situation. But when had her beloved ever thrown in the towel just because things looked hopeless?
She had learned, at his side, how to refuse surrender even at the very worst. Time and again she had watched him—instead of despairing—take one slow breath, steady himself, and hunt down the single best move left on the board.
She only had to do what he did. Find her own strengths. Throw every means she had at the problem. And carve out a path where none seemed to exist.
"There is a way."
Lim Hayeon had found it.
"What are you saying?"
"We cross the river by stepping on the boats."
Countless craft dotted the water. Just as stars stitch constellations across a black sky, a single path—paved of boats—unfurled across the pitch-dark Yangtze in Lim Hayeon's eyes.
"...What?"
"Of course! Then I'm coming with you!"
There was no time to waste. The instant father and daughter nodded to one another, their feet were already moving.
"Wait, th-there's no way that works!"
"Watch us!"
A boat is no structure bolted to solid ground. For an ordinary person, simply keeping one's balance on deck was achievement enough.
It was not without reason that the water bandits who prowled these waters now and then trained tirelessly in the water arts, just to endure the Yangtze's savage currents.
No ordinary human being could hope to leap from boats rocking in the Yangtze's current. And even granting that the boats floated at all, the gaps between them were enormous.
The Haomen member who had moved to stop them could only stand and witness something astonishing.
"Good heavens! What—what is that?!"
The thief who had already become a legend of the Central Plains, and the thief destined to become one, were performing a feat that defied belief.
The two of them kicked off from decks, rode tilting ferries like levers, bounded off the spring of flexing masts, and with every leap closed the distance to the black ship.
"Someone's coming!"
"Something's wrong! Move! Get the Do Gate Branch Master out of the water, fast!"
Needless to say, those aboard the black ship had noticed them too.
"Do Gate Branch Master! Take my hand! ...Huh? M-my hand—?"
"Never mind me! Just haul that barbarian cur up here, and fast!"
I will live through this. And I will have my revenge. Ravaged by the backlash of internal injuries, Dan Wan-gwi dragged himself up onto the deck by his own strength alone.
"Yes, sir! Damn it all! They're closing in!"
"Raise the sails!"
The moment the men aboard the black ship pinned Kang Yunho down and hauled him up, the great sail unfurled.
"NO!!!"
Lim Hayeon's scream tore across the Yangtze.
"Someone bring me a blade! You barbarian bastard! The moment he's dragged aboard, I'll open his throat first thing!"
Mid-river, Lim Hayeon stood atop a tiny ferry, staring at the black ship's deck, her face twisted with grief.
As if to spite the two who had chased it so desperately, the ship opened the distance with unbearable ease. And Lim Hayeon had no boats left beneath her feet.
At this rate, everything would end here. She could not—would not—give up like this.
Lim Hayeon looked down at the raging current of the Yangtze.
"Hayeon! Don't you dare do anything fool—!"
Wang-ssi read his daughter's heart in an instant and moved to stop her—but the moment their eyes met, the words died in his throat. In the eyes of the daughter who had grown into a woman, he could see nothing but one man.
Lim Hayeon spoke to the father she had found again after ten long years.
"Anything is better than losing him."
When had it started?
In the beginning, all she had wanted was to cast off the identity of a runaway courtesan. But somewhere along the way, the matter of her fugitive status had slipped into second place.
She wanted to be at his side. She wanted to build a life with him. Her purpose in life had changed without her ever noticing.
What good was escaping the runaway courtesan's brand? What good was renown as a righteous thief? What good was the seat of Mangju?
A life lived without him no longer meant anything at all.
Lim Hayeon leaped onto the water.
"Hayeon!!!"
It began with a single plank drifting on the current.
She had trained for this. The Shadowless Divine Thief's arts in the novel were pure fiction. When he'd come apart over his readers' comments, she had practiced plenty—just to see the look on his face.
All that remained was the real thing.
Her body kicked off the plank toward the next piece of drifting wreckage.
"Ngh!"
Her ankle plunged beneath the surface.
One more step and she would fall in. There was nothing left around her to catch her fall. Should she turn back?
No.
When had he ever given up on her? Had he ever once abandoned her because something lay beyond the powers of an ordinary person?
I never learned how to give up—not from him!
Every nerve in her body snapped taut.
Find the way. Yes. The way lies with him. The qi of the elixir—the gift he had given her—coiled and crouched within her, waiting, uncertain what would happen if it moved.
Through the body of the woman who had rewritten the Tu Gate's history with nothing more than a fistful of wagers, the harnessed energy came roaring to life.
Lim Hayeon set her foot down atop the raging current.
The water wet her ankle.
It didn't matter.
Her longing to reach the man she loved burned more desperately than any fear of a sinking leg. All she had to do was take the next step.
One step. Two steps. Three steps. Before anyone realized it, a new chapter of the murim's history was being written beneath one martial artist's feet.
"Treading Duckweed, Crossing the Water...?"
The cry burst, thick with disbelief, from the lips of a thief who had once held an entire era of the murim in the palm of his hand.
An unprecedented realm—the first of its kind in the murim's long history—unfolded from the tips of one woman's toes.
"Sh-she—the Mangju—the Mangju is walking on water!!!"
None of it mattered to Lim Hayeon—not the stunned faces of the Haomen members lining the riverbank, nor even the miracle unfurling beneath her own feet.
His figure drew ever closer.
"Today I carve off your arms and legs! I'll turn you into fish food for the Yangtze!"
"You're hilarious. Come over here and try!"
"Oh, I intend to. Tonight the fish of the Yangtze will feast! Ghk—!"
Like a meteor tearing out of the very heavens, a pink arrow slammed into the Do Gate Branch Master's ship.
"Do Gate Branch Master!!!"
"Young Lady Hayeon?"
Lim Hayeon touched down on the deck and turned toward the face she had ached so desperately to see.
The person she missed even after mere moments apart. For the lover who had refused to give up on her until the very end—this time, it was her turn to say the words.