Mantid Maiden - 7
A martial fanatic. The Master of Changbong Hall. The woman who gripped the most vital commercial district of Liaodong Province in her hand—the lord who would raise the long-crouched Moyong Clan upright once more.
A prodigy the likes of which the Moyong Clan had never before produced, admired without cease by the clan's warriors. Moyong Sang-ah was called by a dozen such epithets now, yet a mere two years ago she had been nothing more than a woman who loved the martial arts.
The sword of Wudang.
The Wudang sword had pointed itself at Moyong Sang-ah. Cheongun of the Wudang Sect—she had heard, unmistakably, that he was her equal in age. A martial artist who had reached, in the blink of an eye, a realm that let him stand against the Demonic Cult's assassins.
Journeying from Hubei Province all the way to the perilous reaches of Liaodong with nothing but a single sword was a feat possible only for a man whose skill matched the tale. Into Moyong Sang-ah's weary, heavy body, the fervor of a martial fanatic came boiling back in an instant.
"It is I who would like to learn a move or two from you."
Opportunities like this were rare, and she wanted to measure her own sword against his. Moyong Sang-ah did not refuse.
"Very well. Let us take the measure of one another's blades."
The two exchanged bows, then leveled their swords.
The Meteor Sword Technique.
The sword of the Moyong Clan was an art born of the royal house of the Yan dynasty. In the time it took to perform some clever maneuver, one more enemy general's head had to fall. The phrase age of chaos had never once left the Moyong Clan's side, and the martial arts a chaotic age demanded above all were speed and strength.
Across a thousand years, even as their foes changed from enemy generals to foreign invaders, the Meteor Sword Technique had guarded the Moyong Clan for a full millennium.
The swift sword and the tyrant's sword. Faster still. More overwhelming still. Though the clan had lost the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives, where all its martial learning was enshrined, the martial principles of the Moyong Clan had not changed.
"Here I come."
From Moyong Sang-ah's hand unfolded the principles of the Meteor Sword Technique. The Moyong Clan and the Wudang Sect—the sword that had reaped the heads of countless foes, and the sword of one who protects. The two blades wove a dizzying tangle beneath the moon.
"Hah!"
In the end, the first to give ground was Cheongun of the Wudang Sect. The Meteor Sword Technique's relentless chain of attacks left even Cheongun flustered.
"As expected of the Moyong Clan!"
Cheongun looked at Moyong Sang-ah with an expression of unfeigned admiration.
"It is called the Meteor Sword Technique."
Her sword had landed true against a Wudang swordsman. Moyong Sang-ah introduced her blade with a voice that carried a quiet, unmistakable pride.
"Indeed. A name that befits an art so tyrannical it is hard to follow with the naked eye."
"And now I would like to take the measure of your sword, young hero Cheongun."
Moyong Sang-ah gave a small nod at his praise, then asked, as though to suggest the probing exchange had gone on long enough.
"Did my Taiji Sword Technique not catch your eye?"
"What I saw was the sword of Wudang—but not the sword of young hero Cheongun."
Cheongun's shoulders flinched at the remark she tossed out so casually.
She saw through all of it? In that brief span, in that dark inn?
The sword Cheongun had just wielded against Moyong Sang-ah was the Taiji Sword Technique. It was without question the Wudang sword he had trained in since childhood, yet it had lately become an art that felt like wearing ill-fitting clothes each time he drew it.
There was another technique that truly felt like his own skin.
"I have been discourteous. The art I shall unfold now is called the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique."
"And mine is the Meteor Sword Technique of the Moyong Clan."
The two took fresh holds on their swords. Moonlight streamed down; a chill wind blew. The shift in Cheongun's bearing took only an instant.
The two blades shimmered in the moonlight.
A snake? No. There is no killing intent in it.
The moment their swords crossed, Moyong Sang-ah could not help but be thrown off balance.
The line of attack that had connected until moments ago no longer connected. His sword changed from breath to breath. It was like a serpent gliding flexibly up the trunk of a tree, then striking at its target in a single heartbeat.
Had the Wudang sword always been like this? It gave off no killing intent, and yet it was uncanny.
"If you will not come to me, then this time I shall come to you."
For the first time that day, Cheongun moved first. The tip of his sword wavered. Moyong Sang-ah's blade moved to intercept the uncanny sword. Cheongun's steel flowed around it. The sword tip sought its mark.
Not a snake. Water. A raging current that moves as it pleases.
Just as water reshapes itself without effort, so did Cheongun's sword. And this time, the one driven back was not Cheongun but Moyong Sang-ah.
"So that is truly the sword of Wudang."
She had been swept away by the rapids. It felt like driving her sword into the water's course itself. Moyong Sang-ah muttered bitterly, tasting her first-ever defeat at the hands of someone her own age.
"I was merely fortunate. Your sword tip seemed heavier today than when I last saw it. Thanks to that, my own blade moved a little more freely."
Cheongun sheathed his sword and offered her the comfort.
"Now I understand why they say the Nine Great Sects stand alone."
It was a sword art whose end no one could ever see coming. However mighty a martial clan's influence might be, in pure martial learning the Nine Great Sects stood a rank apart. Moyong Sang-ah understood anew why the world called the Wudang Sect the Mount Tai and North Star of the martial world.
"It is I who now understands why they say the jianghu is vast."
Cheongun was every bit as astonished. He had gained confidence after mastering the Eight Trigrams Sword Technique. Through all his deeds of chivalry, cutting down villain after villain, he had believed there was no match for him among his peers.
With my Taiji Sword Technique alone, I would not have won.
Cheongun did manage to guard his pride as a swordsman of Wudang, but only just—he had to strain to keep his composure.
"...If it is no trouble, might I ask for your advice?"
"From me—to Lady Moyong?"
Cheongun asked back, plainly surprised.
"Anything at all will do."
There was something oddly earnest in Moyong Sang-ah's voice. The Master of Changbong Hall—would offering counsel to a woman who led an entire clan be overstepping his place? Cheongun deliberated a moment, then decided to point out what had caught his eye.
"You kept trying to dam every stream that came at you, from every direction."
"What do you mean by that?"
Moyong Sang-ah asked the swordsman who had shown her an unfamiliar defeat.
"The swift sword has its many branches, to be sure, but it seemed to me that you were trying to answer every possible situation at once."
"Answering every situation..."
"At times, one must leave a small stream alone for a while, and dam it all at once later—whether to find a way out, or to find victory."
"At times, wait quietly..."
Moyong Sang-ah murmured the words back—words that felt at once self-evident and strangely foreign.
She knew. Seen one way, it was obvious. If she answered each situation one by one, then no matter how swift her sword, she could never unleash the speed she possessed. She would lose her power.
Why had it been so today? Moyong Sang-ah found the reason without difficulty.
Because martial arts are, in the end, arts of the heart.
The Master of Changbong Hall. The seat of the lord. Having climbed to a position where every problem fell to her alone to decide, her state of mind had inevitably seeped into her swordsmanship.
She had lost her bearings before problems that could not be solved today. Her sword tip had grown heavy, and in trying to answer everything at once, she had lost her strength.
And sometimes, waiting quietly is itself a way. Moyong Sang-ah's brows trembled.
"Has it helped you find your answer?"
"May we cross swords once more?"
Wait quietly. Wait until the moment ripens, then draw out the answer. Moyong Sang-ah raised her sword again.
"It is I who should be asking that of you."
In their third bout, Moyong Sang-ah found one answer.
"What of relocating the grave?"
The next day, Moyong Sang-ah brought the answer she had found the night before to the Vice Master.
"Relocating the grave, my lady?"
"Do we not hold land already purchased in Joseon? We will move my mother-in-law's tomb to a site with favorable ground."
"My lady, I understand your heart, but this is a dangerous matter. The business of bringing the Kang women here could be waved away, since they were only very distant kin of Young Master Kang—but his mother is another matter entirely. If Young Master Kang's mother's tomb vanished overnight, Joseon would surely move heaven and earth to find it."
"I am not saying we should send men to move my mother-in-law's tomb."
Moyong Sang-ah calmly shook her head at the Vice Master's hasty reaction.
"Then what would you have us do?"
"As I understand it, Joseon is a nation that venerates Confucian propriety. Even in conducting an exhumation, they will proceed according to the proper rites."
"Yes. Most likely they will."
Traitor's tomb or no, they would not bury an exhumed body in some random hole, nor cast it aside. In a land that revered Confucian propriety, such a thing would fall short of basic human decency.
"Once the exhumation is done, few will care much what becomes of my mother-in-law's remains. It should be possible to buy off those charged with the exhumation and relocate the grave ourselves."
Ordinarily, when an exhumation took place, the remains were cremated according to procedure. But cremation was no ordinary funeral rite in a Confucian land, and so it fell to special hands—monks of a temple, and the like. Moyong Sang-ah meant to seal such men's lips with silver and carry out the relocation.
"That...! I believe it could be done."
"Good. The moment word of the exhumation arrives from Joseon, move at once. Whatever the cost, it must be carried out with nothing wanting."
Sometimes one must know to wait, and only then to block. It was the same in swordsmanship as in solving problems.
She could not stop the exhumation itself. Very well—then she need only see her mother-in-law's tomb laid to rest in a better place. That was the answer Moyong Sang-ah had realized in the midst of yesterday's bout.
Even if it did mean she had to suffer one more defeat for it.
"If you will only entrust it to me, I will see it through without fail."
"Report your progress to me at every step from here on."
"As you command!"
With the solution she had fought so hard to find, Moyong Sang-ah was able to set down a sliver of her heavy worry.
"Your sword tip seems lighter than it was a few days ago."
A few days later, Cheongun sheathed his blade and spoke in a voice of genuine surprise.
"Thanks to you, young hero Cheongun, I have been able to set down one great worry."
Moyong Sang-ah wore a faint smile as she offered her thanks to her benefactor.
"Ah... so that was what it was?"
Cheongun scratched his head, looking distinctly uncomfortable at her gratitude.
"...?"
"If it was on my account, then I owe you an apology."
Cheongun bowed his head to Moyong Sang-ah with a face of sincere remorse.
"On my account? Whatever do you mean?"
Why would young hero Cheongun be apologizing? Moyong Sang-ah asked, bewildered.
"It seems the sender of that letter from Mount Changbai has stirred your heart, Lady Moyong."
"..."
Kang Mo. The name that had already once unsettled Moyong Sang-ah's heart brushed across her mind.
"I had heard of it only in passing, yet I never fathomed why the lady beside you that day seemed so displeased. To think I would commit such a blunder."
He had made a woundingly careless mistake. Cheongun could not lift his head.
"No. That matter was not what weighed on me."
It was not young hero Cheongun's fault.
The world called her the Female Mantis, but none of them cared to learn the truth beneath. All that mattered to them was the lurid tale of a woman who had killed her husband and swallowed her husband clan's fortune whole.
What would her husband's family name matter to the people of the world? To them, it was merely the death of a barbarian. The world needed only one more morsel to gnaw and tear apart over their drinks, so their ignorance was only natural.
Moyong Sang-ah forced a look of composure and raised Cheongun back to his feet.
This is awkward.
Cheongun felt all the more wretched at the sight of Moyong Sang-ah's face, so carefully arranged to look untroubled.
When I asked the ladies of the house whether they knew a Daoist called Kang Mo, it somehow ended in a sparring match—I did wonder why at the time.
He had pressed, quite by accident, on the most tender wound his hostess possessed. What was he to do now? Even granting it a mistake, there were mistakes that could be excused and mistakes that could not.
Was there no way to make amends? Cheongun racked his brain with everything he had, and one idea came to him.
"As it happens, I have a friend in Joseon who bears the surname Kang."
A reason he could offer for having spoken of the Kang name so carelessly.