White or Black?
“Red Steel Poison Corpse…?”
Yoo Eunhyeon muttered the words under his breath, frowning at Hwajin Satae’s abrupt mention of them. He had never heard the name before, yet something dark and sinister seemed to cling to the very sound of Jeokgang-dokshi.
“The Red Steel Poison Corpse is a kind of weapon said to have been created roughly a hundred years ago by the Jahyul Sect,” Jang Deokhyeon added by way of explanation. Still, the words meant little to Yoo Eunhyeon. As an ordinary farmer, his knowledge of the Murim barely rose above that of any commoner; there was no reason he would know anything about some Jahyul Sect from a century past.
“The Jahyul Sect was a notorious order that thrived near Zhejiang and Fujian,” Hwajin Satae continued. “Their martial arts were formidable enough on their own, but they also took full advantage of their proximity to Joseon and Wa across the sea, absorbing a great many of those lands’ peculiar arts. Among the techniques and weapons they forged from those methods were no small number of things that strayed far from the path of humanity—true heresies of the demonic path.”
“I see.”
Yoo Eunhyeon gave a small nod at her explanation. Until now, everything he had learned of the Murim concerned the present day. Hearing a story from the past stirred a genuine flicker of interest.
“The Jahyul Sect was never especially large in number, yet the quality of their weapons allowed them to expand their influence at a terrifying pace. In the end the great righteous sects of the Murim were forced to unite. They founded what was then called the Murim Alliance, branded the Jahyul Sect enemies of the entire martial world, and wiped them out.”
“Hmm… But a hundred years is quite a long time ago. Why bring it up now?”
He had a point. The tale was curious enough, yet a century was long enough for the mountains and rivers to have changed ten times over.
“Surely you don’t mean remnants of the Jahyul Sect are still around?”
Yoo Eunhyeon had no clear sense of the sect’s former scale, but the fact that the great houses of the Murim had needed to band together suggested it had been anything but small. And anything that large would have been hard to eradicate completely. As a farmer, he knew well enough that people might vanish while their techniques remained. The suspicion felt entirely reasonable.
“A hundred years have passed, yet even now the name Jahyul is one the leaders of the righteous path prefer never to speak aloud. There is no one left in today’s Murim who would dare claim kinship with them.”
“Couldn’t there still be places even the righteous factions have failed to uncover?”
The remark carried a faint note of slight against the orthodox path. Jang Deokhyeon’s eyelids twitched. Remembering Hwajin Satae’s earlier warning, he closed his eyes and forced his temper back down.
In the present Murim, there was only one place the righteous path could not properly grasp.
“You mean the Demonic Cult,” Hwajin Satae said meaningfully. “It’s true—cultists who would do anything for victory might well take an interest in such things. But if they are interested, that interest itself becomes a grave problem.”
Yoo Eunhyeon understood her meaning at once. To the righteous path, something like that would be an object to be destroyed. To the demonic path, it might be something worth using—and that was precisely the situation the orthodox factions most wished to avoid.
“Still… the way you speak, it almost sounds as though the Jahyul Sect is gone, yet the Red Steel Poison Corpse remains.”
At his question both Hwajin Satae and Jang Deokhyeon fell silent for a moment. Jang Deokhyeon in particular cast a sidelong glance at the nun, but she never looked his way. Her gaze remained fixed on Yoo Eunhyeon as she spoke again.
“At the time, the Murim Alliance included not only the Nine Great Sects that now belong to the Cheonmumaeng, but also the Five Great Clans… nowadays we call them the Seven Great Clans, of course. Back then there were only five. They took part as well. And because the Red Steel Poison Corpse was, as its name suggests, a weapon bound up with poison, the Sichuan Dang Clan—the foremost house of poison arts—was the one that faced them and disposed of the remains.”
By the time she finished, Yoo Eunhyeon had begun to piece the situation together. He still could not explain it cleanly, yet something was falling into place.
“So while they were disposing of them, they quietly kept a few for themselves… is that what you’re saying?”
“It means the possibility is more than sufficient. No matter how great a dynasty or a sect may be, so long as life exists it must one day return to the wheel of rebirth. Fail to understand that, and life becomes nothing but suffering. That is why the desire to prepare for the future is part of human nature. Amitabha.”
Hwajin Satae spoke as though reciting a sutra. Yoo Eunhyeon grasped her meaning well enough. Jang Deokhyeon, however, seemed to find it insufficient, for he cut in with iron certainty.
“The Satae calls it mere suspicion, but we already hold a fair amount of circumstantial evidence. What we lack is definitive proof.”
“You’re saying the Dang Clan is researching the Red Steel Poison Corpse?”
“Anything connected to the Jahyul Sect is grounds for annihilation merely by possessing it.”
Jang Deokhyeon’s face as he spoke was the face of a man who already suspected Yoo Eunhyeon himself. From that expression, Eunhyeon finally understood what their warning truly meant.
“You’re telling me not to go to the Dang Clan? And if I do go?”
“I believe I already answered that.”
Jang Deokhyeon fixed him with a hard stare, making it clear he would not waste further words. Yoo Eunhyeon understood perfectly and showed no particular reaction. To them this was a matter of public enemies of the Murim and demonic heresy; to him it was still little more than an old story, and it simply did not land with the same weight.
Ordinarily he would have wanted nothing to do with anything so vicious and would have ignored their warning without a second thought. The problem was that Ju Yu-ryeon was currently at the Dang Clan.
I don’t know how any of this will turn out, but I at least have to go see the situation for myself before I can decide anything. Judging by Jang Deokhyeon’s current mood, however, even announcing an intention to visit the Dang Clan would be enough to make the man try to stop him by force.
“Young Hero Yoo, you said you were a farmer, did you not? Farming is the work of tending nature, managing it, and gathering its harvest, is it not?”
“That’s right.”
Yoo Eunhyeon’s ears pricked up at Hwajin Satae’s words, and he nodded. She continued smoothly.
“Then surely you would never aid any act that harms or destroys that nature?”
“That’s true enough… but how exactly is this Red Steel Poison Corpse made, and what is it that makes it so dangerous?”
Even as Hwajin Satae smiled faintly and turned the question back on him, Yoo Eunhyeon answered with a distinctly uneasy look of his own.
To him it had been a casual inquiry and nothing more. Jang Deokhyeon, however, flushed with fresh anger.
“I told you only moments ago that merely possessing information related to the Jahyul Sect is enough to warrant annihilation. I have no desire to know such filthy methods myself.”
“So in short, you don’t really understand it either, but because it’s dangerous you want to keep everyone far away from it.”
“That is what justice is! That is what chivalry is! No matter how small the threat, no matter how slight the possibility of evil, it must be eliminated if anything is to be protected. Do you understand? The moment even the smallest sacrifice appears, it is already too late—justice has failed to keep pace with evil. Therefore even the tiniest evil must always be watched and guarded against!”
Watching Jang Deokhyeon declare himself with such absolute conviction, Yoo Eunhyeon could not entirely suppress his surprise. He had taken the man for a justice-addict drunk on the prestige of a great sect, yet the insistence on preventing even the smallest sacrifice suggested a genuine personal creed.
The part where he tries to force that creed on everyone else, though—that’s the worst of it.
Objectively, Jang Deokhyeon’s conviction was admirable. But of course not every person under heaven could live that way. Not everyone walked through life with such unbending resolve. Values differed from person to person, shifted constantly, and for most people could be filled by any number of other things.
“Young Hero Yoo. There are many things one can recognize as dangerous without needing to examine them firsthand. There is also the saying about blindly following the crowd. If a great clan like the Dang Clan were to commit such an act, there is no guarantee the same thing would not erupt simultaneously all across the Murim.”
“That’s possible, I suppose. People may vanish, but knowledge does not disappear so easily—and even from something foul, there can still be lessons worth learning.”
Farming itself had advanced in much the same way, so Yoo Eunhyeon nodded… then suddenly noticed that Hwajin Satae’s manner had grown subtly different from before.
Compared to Jang Deokhyeon, she’s being strangely vague about the whole thing. Is that just my imagination? Surely they wouldn’t warn me like this while quietly keeping the same thing themselves…
He glanced sidelong at Hwajin Satae, but the eyes that looked out from her wrinkled lids were far too deep for even him to read.
“Well then. I trust you now understand why we sought you out?”
“I understand the situation. But why go out of your way to offer me this advice? There was no real need.”
He grasped the circumstances well enough, yet he still saw no reason for senior figures of the Cheonmumaeng to come all this way simply to counsel him.
“Because Young Hero Yoo already shares a bond with our alliance. All things arise and vanish in mutual dependence; an act such as this may yet become a greater bond and call forth karma. Amitabha.”
Hwajin Satae pressed her palms together and intoned the Buddha’s name, yet unlike her earlier words these left Yoo Eunhyeon thoroughly confused. That did not mean he failed to accept them. The only real connection he had with the Cheonmumaeng was his bond with So Biwon.
Yu Yeop had been the same when he meaningfully handed over the Okjukpa. Hwajin Satae, too, had almost certainly received some word or instruction from So Biwon, directly or otherwise.
What a mess… Everyone wants something different from me.
Yoo Eunhyeon recognized the truth of it and sighed inwardly, yet he had no intention of being dragged any deeper.
“I am grateful for the Satae’s counsel. I will take it carefully to heart.”
The consideration itself deserved thanks, so he bowed his head to Hwajin Satae. He was about to offer the same courtesy to Jang Deokhyeon when—
“Give me a clear answer. Are you white, or are you black?”
Jang Deokhyeon’s face had taken on the look of a judge delivering a verdict. He pressed Yoo Eunhyeon for a decision. The young man who had been about to express gratitude frowned instead.
“Whether I am white or black, even I do not yet know. But I can say with certainty that, as a human being, I will not stray from the proper path.”
If the Red Steel Poison Corpse truly was some blood-soaked weapon of horror, Yoo Eunhyeon had no desire to become involved. But there was still no hard proof, and he had never even seen the thing. This was the only answer he could give.
“Mix black into white and you get gray. And from gray, the road to black is far easier than the road back to white.”
It was true enough. Corruption was easier than redemption, and even redemption presupposed a fall.
“…That’s true.”
Yoo Eunhyeon nodded in reluctant agreement, keeping his words short and his voice low. He had little choice—terrifying killing intent was pouring off Jang Deokhyeon.
In particular, the long sword at Jang Deokhyeon’s waist rattled restlessly, though no hand had touched it, as if straining to leap free of its scabbard.
The sight made plain exactly what Jang Deokhyeon wished to do. Recognizing that will, Yoo Eunhyeon quietly began to draw up his own energy.
“Come outside. If words will not serve, then force will have to protect justice instead.”