The Mantid Maiden — 3
Why was a Taoist of the Wudang Sect standing in an inn in Liaodong Province?
Within the silent inn, the assassins could only stare in bewilderment at the delicately featured Taoist who had appeared on the second floor. It was little wonder — they had no way of knowing that this man had read a book called the Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero and was merely passing through Liaodong on his way to Changbai Mountain.
"I gave you my answer. Now, who might you gentlemen be, dressed in black and setting your sights on a woman?"
None of the assassins had any reason to answer him.
At best, their opponent was a Taoist barely past his twentieth year. He claimed to be Wudang, so they could not afford carelessness — but neither could they afford to forget their target.
The assassins exchanged a glance, and three of them leaped up to the second floor to deal with Cheongun.
"Silence, then. No need for hesitation, I suppose."
As if he had no intention of further exchange, Cheongun raised his sword toward the assassins.
The sword of Wudang is a sword that protects. Whoever extends his blade in haste becomes, that very instant, a guest who never returns. What they needed was to open a distance from which all three could charge at once.
Cautiously, the assassins tightened their encirclement around Cheongun.
"Not so fast!"
It was Cheongun who moved first.
Just a greenhorn after all.
To abandon the advantage of swordsmanship and move first against three. If one of them blocked, the other two had only to tear the Taoist's back to ribbons.
Just as that same thought brushed through every assassin's mind—
"Hrk!"
A sword art devised for descending into the world and heaping up good karma — more alive, more dynamic, than any static blade Wudang had ever taught.
One assassin crumpled, clutching at his throat. He couldn't even block it? No matter. The remaining two would avenge him.
What in the—?!
As though caught in the current of flowing water, the assassin's blade was turned aside. One man was flung back like a stone skipping off the surface of a pond — the other was not so fortunate.
"Gahk!"
From Mt. Wudang all the way to Liaodong, the sword Cheongun had carried through his long pilgrimage had grown until it was nearly unrecognizable. The assassin who failed to escape the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique rolled lifeless across the floor.
He's no ordinary foe!
They needed reinforcements. By now that woman, Moyong Sang-ah, would be dead as well. The assassin retreated several paces from Cheongun and looked back over his shoulder.
Why is it so quiet?
The moment he took in the scene on the first floor, his eyes bulged in their sockets.
Three of the seven assassins who had faced Moyong Sang-ah had, in the space of a single heartbeat, become guests who would never return, sprawled across the floor.
"What in the world...?"
"It seems all you saw was a counterfeit Meteor Sword Technique."
Moyong Sang-ah answered the assassin's stunned words with a sneer.
The surviving assassins could hardly accept what lay before them — and no wonder.
Their opponent was a warrior barely twenty years of age who had already attained mastery of the secret arts reserved for the heads of the Moyong Clan. A peerless genius whom even her elder brother Moyong Bi — a man who despised her beyond all measure — was forced to acknowledge.
Because she was Moyong Sang-ah.
Kill them with attacks that throw our lives away, then break free.
Just as that shared thought crossed the assassins' minds at Moyong Sang-ah's unforeseen skill—
"It's shift change — why hasn't anyone come back? Don't tell me these bastards fell asleep?"
"If the vice-commander finds out, they won't live to die a natural death."
"Oh, come on. Men who wouldn't touch a drop of liquor on account of watch duty? Surely not... Huh? Why is this door locked?"
The voices of the Changbong Corps drifted in from outside the inn's door.
Reinforcements?!
This is disaster. The same thought tore through every assassin's mind at once, and—
"Urk!"
Moyong Sang-ah and Cheongun did not let that instant slip away.
Two more heads hit the floor. Three assassins remained.
"D-Damn it all!"
The mission could not continue. One after another — beginning with the man who had swaggered up to bar the inn's door — they bolted for the windows.
"What the—?! Who are these people?!"
"Assassins."
Moyong Sang-ah threw open the inn's door and delivered a concise account of the situation to the Changbong Corps.
"My lord?"
"Catch them. Now."
Not a single member of the Changbong Corps raised a word of objection to their lord's command.
"We have committed a crime worthy of death!"
With the desperate crisis behind them, Moyong Jinsu — one of the vice-commanders of the Changbong Corps — spoke up from within the inn, addressing their lord on behalf of the kneeling members.
"Vice-Commander. Raise your head."
Seated in one of the inn's chairs with a composed expression, Moyong Sang-ah addressed him.
"We brought your very life to the brink of the blade, my lord. How could we possibly raise our heads!"
The members of the Changbong Corps writhed inwardly, caught between the bitterness of having failed to stop the assassins and an apology for which no excuse existed.
True, the corps, having swollen in numbers so rapidly, was not without its flaws — but their loyalty, at the very least, was genuine.
"I granted you rest. Nowhere did I order you to neglect your watch."
Moyong Sang-ah, as Master of Changbong Hall, rebuked them in a voice cold as frost.
"Even with ten mouths I would have no excuse! I beg you, punish me!"
"There can be no pardoning those who fail in their vigilance. Vice-Commander."
"As you command!"
How was she to punish them? Moyong Sang-ah regarded the grief-stricken vice-commander.
She had taken no wound, but her life had been threatened. The commander of the Changbong Corps had already returned to the main estate, yet that did not dissolve the vice-commander's responsibility.
Someone had to answer for what had happened. After a moment's deliberation, Moyong Sang-ah settled upon the measure of discipline.
"Until I issue further orders, you are confined to your quarters with your pay withheld. Your duties as vice-commander will be entrusted to another for the time being."
No irrecoverable harm had been done. It was, nonetheless, a grave incident. Through what amounted to a suspension from office, Moyong Sang-ah chose a punishment heavy enough to bite, yet one that left a road back.
"I accept your command."
Though his heart lurched at the weight of the sentence, the vice-commander breathed a quiet sigh of relief at her consideration.
"How many Changbong members died today?"
The settling of the affair did not end with the vice-commander's discipline.
"Two who were held in reserve on the first floor, and two who stood guard within the inn."
"All four died without so much as a single scream."
"..."
At her words, every kneeling member of the Changbong Corps found his throat sealed shut.
That the men on duty today had not touched a single drop of liquor, that they would have kept watch with the utmost thoroughness — none of it was ground on which an excuse could stand.
Their lord's life was one, and only one.
Failure of vigilance admitted no excuse, whatever the reason.
Moyong Sang-ah looked over their stricken faces one by one, then spoke with perfect calm.
"See to it that the families of the fallen Changbong members are left wanting for nothing."
"...My lord?"
Every member of the corps looked up at their lord with startled eyes.
"They failed in their watch, yes — but they died shielding me. A mistake need only be set right; I have no intention of demanding that of the dead."
"W-We will carry out your orders."
"Changbong Corps."
Feeling the gazes pouring onto her, Moyong Sang-ah called her men to her.
"Yes, my lord!"
"You are my hands and feet. When hands and feet go astray, it is enough to scold them sternly and set them right. But no one wishes for their hands and feet to be severed."
This was a corps built with the fortune her husband had given her — hands and feet her husband had attached to her at the cost of his own life.
Every single one of them was precious.
"My lord..."
They had braced themselves for some punishment — and instead she was mourning their dead. Tears welled in the eyes of more than a few Changbong members who had lost their comrades that day.
"Once is enough for any mistake. Take this chance and become stronger hands and feet for me."
"We will serve you with our very lives!"
The answer of the Changbong Corps rang louder than it ever had.
"Bring the benefactor to me."
She had come within a hair's breadth of utter disaster. Returning to the guest chamber reserved for honored visitors, Moyong Sang-ah summoned the Wudang Taoist who had appeared so suddenly.
"I am called Cheongun of the Wudang Sect."
Still dazed by the discovery that the woman he had saved was of the Moyong Clan's direct bloodline, Cheongun bowed to Moyong Sang-ah.
"I am Moyong Sang-ah of the Moyong Clan. Thanks to you, benefactor, we escaped that crisis with our lives."
"My lord...!"
Those who lead others know that even gratitude has its proper measure. When Moyong Sang-ah bent one knee in a gesture of thanks to Cheongun, Moyong Jinsu cried out in alarm.
"It was simply what anyone ought to do."
Cheongun, too, waved off thanks offered at a level he had never anticipated.
"This is a murim overflowing with men who will not do the very things they can. I am truly grateful."
A world where those with strength refuse to aid strangers it does not concern. A world where men weigh profit and loss before so much as lifting a sword — and sneer at the 'foolish barbarian' who would lay down his life for a woman that was nothing to him.
With a weight pressing heavy upon her chest, Moyong Sang-ah bowed her head to Cheongun once more.
"I never dreamed the Demonic Cult was running rampant even here in Liaodong."
"Uproot them as you might, and when the season turns, the cult's hounds will always lift their heads again. No doubt they are weaving some fresh, insidious scheme somewhere even now."
It would be dire indeed were word to spread that the Moyong Clan was entangled with the Demonic Cult — all the more so before Wudang, a pillar of the Nine Great Sects and One Alliance.
Praying that Cheongun would not probe further, Moyong Sang-ah answered in a way that skirted the heart of the matter.
"Yes. Certainly, that is so."
Cheongun nodded, satisfied with her answer.
To anyone else it might have seemed a curious exchange, but Cheongun had already crossed blades with the Demonic Cult in Hubei Province.
"Might I be permitted to ask what business brings a Taoist of Wudang to Liaodong?"
Gratitude aside, Moyong Sang-ah asked her question, keeping her wariness carefully veiled.
Meeting a Wudang martial artist in the Central Plains was nothing out of the ordinary — but where Moyong Sang-ah stood was Liaodong.
Beyond the Great Wall. For a Wudang swordsman to roam Liaodong Province, a buffer land against the foreign tribes, there might well be some special purpose behind it.
Reporting the doings of the Moyong Clan to the Murim Alliance, for instance.
"I am on my way to Changbai Mountain."
"Changbai Mountain?"
Moyong Sang-ah tilted her head at his unhesitating reply.
"I travel in search of the mainline of the Dao."
"Changbai may not be counted among the Five Great Peaks of the Central Plains, but it is honored as a sacred mountain, is it not?"
"That is what I heard as well — hence the journey."
Moyong Sang-ah nodded at his ready answers.
A Taoist seeking out the sacred mountains of the Dao was nothing worth remarking upon. The Mount Hua Sect itself, after all, stood on Mount Hua, one of the Five Great Peaks of the Central Plains.
Nor was it rare for Taoists to make the rounds of all five sacred peaks. If he had come all this way merely to sightsee at Changbai besides, then he was a somewhat unusual Taoist, she supposed.
Moyong Sang-ah accepted his answer.
"I am to return to the Moyong Clan estate now, and I would be honored to have you join us as a guest, Great Hero Cheongun."
Moyong Sang-ah addressed him once more in a voice of careful courtesy.
"There is truly no need to go to such lengths."
"You delivered us from peril — how could I let this end with a mere word of thanks? The weariness of your road from Mt. Wudang to Liaodong shows plainly upon you. Rest and recover yourself before you go. How does that sound?"
"Y-You heard that?"
Cheongun grasped at once what she meant, and his face twisted in embarrassment.
"The next room over doesn't keep out sound very well."
So the groaning of a man worn down by his travels, which had lasted the whole night through, had come from the martial artist next door. Moyong Sang-ah smiled faintly.
"Then I shall accept your kindness."
"Should you desire anything, tell the attendants. I will instruct them to provide whatever you ask."
Moyong Sang-ah had begun to name a reward for her gratitude, then stopped herself. To ask a Taoist outright what wealth he desired would be a breach of courtesy.
It was proper to have the attendants quietly see to such things afterward. Circling around it in this way, Moyong Sang-ah nonetheless made her resolve to repay him unmistakable.
"Would the state of this region, or the rumors circulating in it, also be within what you might share? There is news I wish to learn, but having no ties to this land, I have no way of coming by it."
Cheongun showed the signs of long deliberation at her words, then at last opened his mouth with care.
"Ask me, and I will answer to the best of my knowledge, with all sincerity."
And yet Cheongun faltered for a moment even as he spoke.
The reason for his journey to Changbai was, of course, the Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero. But that tale was a closely guarded secret of the Wudang Sect. He could not speak of it rashly.
Nor would simply charging off to Changbai settle anything.
How was he to put it into words?
After long deliberation, Cheongun resolved to offer up the one clue he had barely managed to glean over all his months of travel.
"Do you, by any chance, know a man called Kang Mo?"
The author whose name was written in the Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero.