Taking Action (3)
"When you say northern Shaanxi, you mean the sphere of influence held by Paegeommun?"
"Yes, that is correct."
Northern Shaanxi referred to the regions lying north of the provincial capital, Xi'an—among them Yulin, Yan'an, and Tongchuan as the principal ones. Of those, Yulin stood firmly as Paegeommun's domain, while Tongchuan and Yan'an had long been contested between Paegeommun and the Huashan Sect.
In recent days they had succeeded in driving Paegeommun's influence completely out of Tongchuan. After that, at most there had been skirmishes between subordinate sects—no direct clashes, and a stretch of relative quiet. Yet it seemed something had gone wrong in the north of Shaanxi after all.
"The unorthodox groups driven out of southern Shaanxi are all flooding northward."
"So they are abandoning their original strongholds and marching north."
"Yes. You have heard the reports that neighboring unorthodox factions and black-path gangs fled after word of the Nine Tiger Walkers reached them?"
"I heard it not long ago. An odd business, and I had wondered where they had gone. So they all went north."
Okwon Jinin stroked his beard, recalling the news Danwon had brought him. Murim factions were ordinarily rooted deep in their own regions, weaving influence into the soil itself. That the fleeing unorthodox groups were so openly discarding that common sense could not help but feel wrong.
"Lately, even in southern Shaanxi, incidents of unorthodox and black-path groups running wild have been on the rise."
"With Zhongnan and Huashan both stretched thin by the campaign against the Southern Barbarian Beast Palace, one might call it only natural. Even allowing for that, the talk has certainly grown loud."
Letters seeking aid had always come from time to time from the secular branch sects. Of late, though, their frequency had unmistakably increased. Worse still, these groups were no longer content merely to fight among themselves; they had begun to prey upon ordinary commoners who had nothing to do with any of it—and that was strange indeed.
"We found it suspicious as well, and when we looked into the matter, a great many of them turned out to be practicing demonic arts."
"So it has come to that after all."
Okwon Jinin's expression darkened. It had been the Zhongnan Sect that first grasped the danger of demonic arts, and they had worked with the other sects to suppress their spread as thoroughly as possible. Yet one crisis after another had inevitably thinned the watch, and the result was this: unorthodox packs running amok.
"Then the unorthodox groups that went north are also highly likely to have learned demonic arts."
"Yes. With the power of demonic arts in hand, it seems they no longer care where they plant their roots."
"In the north, where the unorthodox already hold the upper hand, that is a way of thinking that would pass well enough."
The unorthodox murim was a realm of pure strength—might made right—and the winner's right to devour everything was taken as a matter of course. Having mastered demonic arts, they would have judged that even after abandoning their homes they could still carve out a share for themselves.
"If the south, which we have at least managed to restrain, is in this state, the north must be far worse."
"Paegeommun is, true to its name, a sect that pursues the extreme of the sword along the path of hegemony. So long as they can reach that extreme, they spare neither means nor method."
"That greed is precisely what seated Paegeommun in its present place. Whether it will serve them this time as well is another question."
Where orthodox martial arts climbed step by step upon a foundation of cultivation, unorthodox arts fixated on growing strong as fast as possible by any means. That hunger gave birth to every bizarre experiment imaginable—and to demonic arts whose training methods were vicious and whose side effects were severe.
And the demonic arts leaked by the mysterious force possess power that has strayed clean off the rails.
Side effects or not, nothing matched demonic arts for rapid growth—and if strength was the only thing that mattered, unorthodox martial artists would never spare those side effects a second thought. It would not be strange, then, for demonic arts to be rife throughout northern Shaanxi.
"Northern Shaanxi is, in effect, a jar of gu poison."
"Yes. Those who already trained in unorthodox arts, those who had been secretly practicing demonic arts, and the newcomers flooding in—every sort of human scum has gathered there. It is a blood-soaked arena of contention in all but name."
Gu poison. Also called the sorcerer's curse—a form of black magic. Venomous insects and beasts were sealed together in a single jar and left to starve until they devoured one another and only one remained. That last survivor, it was said, carried a special curse. Northern Shaanxi now was no different from such a jar of gu.
"The worst of it is that it lies within Paegeommun's sphere, so there is nothing we can do from here."
"One might hope Paegeommun would settle it themselves, but they are far more likely to stir the fighting higher. They could even fatten their own power by fishing in troubled waters."
As a Peerless Expert, Okwon Jinin felt it in his bones: this board had been laid by someone's design. The hands moving the pieces from behind the curtain were almost certainly those of the mysterious force.
"There is nothing to be done about the north, so we must do what we can. That is why the Hao Clan Leader has come, I take it?"
"Yes. At the very least, the south must be put in order. Leave dangerous elements loose and Zhongnan and Huashan might both find themselves struck from two sides at once—and that would be a headache for us as well."
The stability of Shaanxi's murim rested upon the Zhongnan Sect and the Huashan Sect. If those two wavered, Shaanxi's murim would waver with them, and the unorthodox packs would find the perfect ground on which to run wild. Moreover, the groups now rampaging treated commoners as no more than ears of grain to be harvested. Left alone, the people's livelihood would collapse—that much was plain to see.
"I will provide the intelligence we hold on the unorthodox groups remaining in southern Shaanxi. For the sake of the common people, will you not take the field?"
The Hao Clan Leader bowed his head as he made the request. That the master of a great faction would lower his head was proof of how grave the matter was—and at the same time, a signal that the Zhongnan Sect could no longer afford to hold itself back.
I had hoped to keep the third-generation disciples from being sent out while the outside world was in such turmoil. But that is no longer possible.
The situation no longer allowed them the luxury of sheltering the young in the fold. If southern Shaanxi was not properly cleaned out, even the main mountain itself could be put at risk.
This may be only the beginning. If so, it is better not simply to protect them, but to give them the experience of fighting for themselves.
The mysterious force had set its hand to the north. In answer, the Zhongnan Sect laid its next piece toward the south—and that piece was none other than the third-generation disciples' departure into the Jianghu.
Okwon Jinin, Sect Leader of the Zhongnan Sect, convened a council of the elders and announced a weighty decision to every disciple presently on the main mountain: a large-scale suppression of the unorthodox groups entrenched in southern Shaanxi.
This was no operation of the Zhongnan Sect alone. The Huashan Sect, the Hao Clan, and the other orthodox factions rooted throughout Shaanxi would all take part in a joint campaign of considerable scale.
From Zhongnan, parties of as few as three and as many as five were to be dispatched to each locality. The mission being extremely dangerous, an escorting leader was mandatory for every group: one second-generation disciple as leader, paired with two to four third-generation disciples.
Cheonhwa, though a third-generation disciple, was a Peak Expert and the senior among them, and so he was placed in the position of party leader. That alone spoke to how desperately a single capable master was needed.
Cheonhwa surveyed the faces assigned to his group. Myeonghwa, Yeobhwa, Jeokhwa, Yeonhwa. Sect brothers and sisters he saw often—and at the same time, a roster drawn from the strongest among the third generation.
"This feels deliberate, doesn't it?"
"This humble one thinks so as well."
"The reason they kept us together instead of splitting us up is obvious, isn't it?"
Myeonghwa, Yeobhwa, and Jeokhwa each spoke in turn, clearly sharing the same guess. Cheonhwa nodded in agreement. At that moment Yeonhwa tugged at the hem of his robe.
"What is it, Junior Sister Yeonhwa?"
"What does that mean?"
"…"
Apparently Yeonhwa had not yet grasped the meaning of the party composition.
"It's simple. Putting us all in one group means they intend to hand us a task with that much greater risk."
"I understand."
Whether she had taken his explanation to heart or not, Yeonhwa nodded. And before long the party received their orders and confirmed that their guess had been right: their final objective was the suppression of the Red Dragon Gang, which had planted itself in Ankang—the heart of southernmost Shaanxi—and was swelling its power there.
"We're also to clear out any unorthodox groups along the road to the Red Dragon Gang."
Ankang could be reached quickly enough by water, but the purpose of this Jianghu expedition was to uproot the unorthodox as thoroughly as possible. They would travel by land, not by river.
"First priority will be settling Yukgeommun in Ningshan County."
Of late the unorthodox groups had a habit of abandoning their dens and fleeing the moment danger approached. Speed, therefore, was the life of this mission. The party descended the main mountain at once and set out for Ningshan County.
Autumn was, by rights, the season of harvest—a joyful time when a farmer might at last face the fruit of a year's labor. Yet the faces of the people of Ningshan County could not, even by the kindest stretch, be called glad. It was not as though drought had ruined the year's crop, and still their expressions were dark. The cause of that heavy atmosphere was almost certainly Yukgeommun.
"Their outrages have gone past all measure."
So said a Hao Clan agent, a local contact who had come out to meet the party. On the pretext of hunger, the gang had cut down grain that had not yet ripened and eaten it raw; then, claiming the unripe grain had given them bellyaches, they had extorted more grain from the farmers. Beyond that they had seized upon every petty excuse to plunder the common people.
"A sect that had grown up in the county itself tried to stop them, but far from holding them back, it was wiped out in return."
"At that level, one would expect the authorities to intervene, would they not?"
"Whether they have been bribed or not, the officials showed no intention of moving."
The Hao Clan agent let out a sigh. Even if the authorities had their wits about them, there was little they could actually do. At most they could send a request for aid to the orthodox sects. For the government to involve itself actively in the murim was never a simple matter.
They could mobilize the garrison, of course—but the cost of doing so cannot be ignored.
The sheer martial force of the military was a deterrent in its own right, yet the expenditure it demanded was equally vast, and so it could not be committed lightly. Against a great sect, perhaps; against a minor local faction, the ledger simply did not balance. To the people of Ningshan County it was a despairing truth, but from the broader view of the realm it was still only a disturbance in a small locality. There was a reason the imperial court permitted self-redress through martial strength.
"We beg you. Please put a stop to their tyranny!"
"Do not worry. That is exactly why we have come."
Cheonhwa raised the Hao Clan agent, who had pressed his forehead to the ground. The man's face was a wreck of mixed emotion—the helplessness of one whose own strength was too meager to do anything but plead, and the deep, raw hope that someone would at last end this. That whirl of feeling was enough to call up Cheonhwa's own vow.
Why did I set out to become a master?
To carry through his own will, and to stand against injustice. And now, before his eyes, people were suffering under that injustice. How could he simply stand and watch?
"Let's go."
At the words that left Cheonhwa's mouth, the party nodded as one. The feeling seething in his chest passed to the others with that single phrase—and the name of that feeling was righteousness.