Snow Moon Flower (3)
The Young Palace Master of the North Sea Ice Palace held a station that, in the outer martial world, corresponded to a head disciple of the Nine Great Sects or a young clan lord of the Six Tyrant Coalition.
For someone of that standing to travel so far alone, without even a single companion, was extraordinary. Unless one stood at Peak Expert or higher, leaving the protection of one’s sect’s sphere of influence as a mere First-class martial artist was an act of extreme peril.
There had to be some compelling reason.
Cheonhwa and Jeokhwa roughly grasped the circumstances and saw no need to press the question aloud. Yeonhwa, however, was another matter entirely.
“Why did you come all this way alone? And how did you end up getting ambushed?”
“……”
A crease formed between Seol Yerin’s brows at Yeonhwa’s blunt inquiry. She seemed to be weighing her answer with care. Under ordinary circumstances a cold refusal would have been perfectly natural; the difficulty was that she had already caused them trouble through a one-sided misunderstanding.
With a light sigh, Young Palace Master Seol Yerin laid her circumstances bare.
“That is bound up with the reason this lady journeyed from the palace all the way to these distant Central Plains.”
Everything had begun with the Ice Crystal—a spiritual treasure of the North Sea Ice Palace.
“The Ice Crystal allotted to this lady was stolen.”
The culprit had been a martial artist of the North Sea Ice Palace itself. He had seized the Ice Crystal and fled south at once, vanishing into the Central Plains.
“This lady pursued that thief all the way here.”
“Does that mean the thief who stole the spiritual herb is hiding on this Mount Taebaek?”
“Indeed. Those ruffians who chased this lady did so in order to snatch the herb for themselves.”
Unfamiliar with the geography of the Central Plains, Seol Yerin had inquired far and wide while tracking the thief. In the process she had inadvertently let slip information about the spiritual herb. The martial artists now thronging Mount Taebaek after hearing the rumors were the fruit of that single mistake.
Since the spiritual herbs we’re each seeking are different, parting ways now wouldn’t be a problem… but it still sits poorly with me.
Had they remained complete strangers, the matter might have ended there. Once they knew her circumstances, however, simply turning their backs was no longer the righteous course.
Cheonhwa turned to his companions.
“What should we do?”
“We’re headed the same way anyway, so it should be fine, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t mind either. Just one condition—fix Junior Brother Cheonhwa’s arm.”
Yeonhwa pointed at the arm still locked in ice. There was no internal injury, yet leaving the frost as it was risked genuine frostbite. Since the ice had been formed through ice arts, its creator could dissolve it without leaving a scar.
Hearing his martial siblings’ assent, Cheonhwa made the proposal to Seol Yerin.
“We have business at the summit of Mount Taebaek. If it is acceptable to you, Young Palace Master, would you care to accompany us part of the way?”
“It is a kind offer, yet why extend such goodwill?”
The Zhongnan Sect was a major sect with real influence even within Shaanxi. Traveling in their company would certainly make any would-be attackers think twice. Still, Seol Yerin found the group’s kindness unsettling. A misunderstanding or not, offering such consideration to someone who had struck first struck her as suspicious.
Cheonhwa answered as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Now that we know your circumstances, simply sending you off alone does not sit well with us. If the kindness truly troubles you, consider it a debt of the heart.”
“My, what a heavy price. But I like it.”
Seol Yerin’s lips curved in a faint smile. She laid her hands upon Cheonhwa’s frozen arm, and in an instant the ice melted away, the limb restored as though nothing had ever been amiss. Cheonhwa opened and closed his fist, testing it.
“Very well. Though our companionship will be brief, we look forward to traveling with you.”
“That is what this lady ought to be saying.”
The misunderstanding cleared, the party of three became four and set out toward the summit of Mount Taebaek.
A wind that sliced to the bone came howling down. Breath left their lips as pure white mist and scattered. Unmelted snow still lay in patches across the ground, preserving every track with pitiless clarity. At a certain height the weather of the upper slopes diverged utterly from the world below. Whether the cold simply became unendurable or not, the presence of other people nearby thinned with startling speed, until at last no presence remained save their own four.
We’ll arrive soon.
Cheonhwa studied the surrounding landscape, calling up the memory Wol-ak had granted him. A cave cleverly hidden, set well apart from the main path that climbed toward the summit. The Snow Moon Flower they sought lay concealed there.
Just then Seol Yerin spoke.
“It seems our companionship ends here.”
“Have you found the thief’s trail?”
“A trail, one might say… I sense the energy of the Ice Crystal.”
At the Young Palace Master’s words Cheonhwa cast his sensory perception wide, yet nowhere did he detect any foreign energy.
“Ordinary senses will not detect it. Only this lady, who is linked to the Ice Crystal, can feel it.”
“Linked to the Ice Crystal?”
“Indeed. The Ice Crystal is a spiritual herb, and at the same time a spiritual object in which a faint spiritual nature resides.”
Unlike ordinary spiritual herbs, the Ice Crystal did not increase internal energy through simple consumption. One held it or kept it near while circulating energy and regulating the breath, absorbing the power that flowed from it. The first time its energy entered the body, an invisible bond formed of its own accord.
“This is due in part to the Ice Crystal’s unique nature, but it is also deeply bound to the mind methods of the North Sea Ice Palace.”
In short, the ability to sense the Ice Crystal’s energy across distance was a function of the North Sea Ice Palace’s cultivation arts. Even that ability had limits, which was why the search had proven so difficult until now.
“I see. Understood. As it happens, we ourselves were about to leave the mountain path to attend to our own business.”
Cheonhwa pointed in the direction they meant to take. The Young Palace Master spoke in open surprise.
“The Ice Crystal’s energy is felt from that very direction as well.”
“What?”
The coincidence was so neat that the entire party could only stare. It was far too precise to dismiss as mere chance.
Could there be some connection between the Snow Moon Flower and the Ice Crystal?
The Ice Crystal was the pure essence of yin energy obtainable only in the far north. The Snow Moon Flower was a rare blossom that opened by drinking the yin of snow and moonlight. It would not have been strange if some unknown affinity bound the two.
From Seol Yerin’s perspective the situation might easily have invited suspicion. Yet she said,
“If our paths are the same, let us continue together.”
“……”
“You look surprised. The situation is peculiar, true, but it does not seem intentional. I have simply decided to trust you to the end.”
If the choice proved wrong, it would mean only that her own judgment had failed—such was Seol Yerin’s stance. Brief though their companionship had been, she trusted the character she had sensed in them. At the same time it was a quiet declaration of confidence: even if the three of them turned on her, she would survive.
“If that is the Young Palace Master’s wish, let us go together as far as the road allows.”
They shared a direction for the present; they might still part midway. The party left the mountain path and made for their destination. Until they reached the cave, they did not separate.
“This is the place we were seeking.”
“I sense the Ice Crystal’s energy here.”
“……”
“……”
Complicated feelings showed plainly on the faces of both Cheonhwa and Seol Yerin. To think their destinations had truly been the same. That meant that even if they had never met along the way, they might well have encountered each other at the cave mouth or inside it.
This cave’s location is certainly ideal for a hideout.
Cleverly concealed by pure white snow and the folds of the cliff, the cave was difficult to notice even when one stood almost upon it. As a place to hide while absorbing a spiritual herb, it could scarcely have been bettered.
“Let’s look on the bright side. Meeting early means fewer chances for misunderstandings.”
“Indeed. Had we met in front of or inside the cave, we might well have fought to the death.”
Seol Yerin nodded at Cheonhwa’s words. The four of them entered the cave.
The interior was not particularly spacious, and no human traces could be found. Even within, the cold felt little different from the air outside. At the heart of that cold energy three flowers grew from the wall. Their pure white petals, white as snow, looked as though they would melt at the lightest touch; at the same time they cast a soft, moonlight-like radiance through the cave’s darkness.
Those flowers were precisely the spiritual herb Cheonhwa’s party had sought—the Snow Moon Flower.
Yet the Ice Crystal Seol Yerin pursued was nowhere to be seen. Even when he cast his senses through the entire cavern, Cheonhwa felt only the cold energy that filled every corner.
Where is the Ice Crystal?
The question had barely formed when Seol Yerin suddenly unleashed a palm wind toward the floor. The strike, heavy with profound internal energy, gouged deep into the ground. Soil and rock flew; thick layers of snow and ice were laid bare. Buried within them lay a frozen corpse, and in its grasp something that looked like a crystal.
“Surely that corpse is…”
“Yes. The thief who stole the Ice Crystal.”
Seol Yerin confirmed the face a second time and was certain it was the man she had hunted. She recovered the ice crystal—the Ice Crystal itself—from the corpse’s stiff fingers. To have stolen the Ice Crystal and fled all the way to the Central Plains only to die so wretchedly here… it was, she thought, a fitting end for a thief.
Perhaps because snow and ice had sealed it, the corpse retained the exact appearance it had worn at the moment of death. The contorted face spoke of terrible agony in the final moments.
Yeonhwa stepped forward.
“Shall I check the cause of death?”
“Is that possible?”
“I’ve studied medicine, so to some extent.”
“I leave it to you.”
Given leave, Yeonhwa examined the body. Before long the answer came.
“The direct cause of death is freezing.”
“Thief though he was, he had trained in the martial arts of the North Sea Ice Palace. And he froze to death?”
“Probably because of the indirect cause. I examined his meridians and found traces of severe internal injury.”
“He must have attempted to absorb the Ice Crystal’s energy, failed, and fallen into such violent qi deviation that he could no longer control his body.”
Seol Yerin could picture exactly how the thief had come to such an end.
“The Ice Crystal is a treasure to those who cultivate ice arts, yet it is an equally exacting spiritual herb.”
Even the martial arts of the North Sea Ice Palace—said to be without peer in ice arts—found the Ice Crystal difficult to digest. The difficulty was so great that the palace’s own regulations forbade its absorption without the aid of a master.
“Objectively speaking, the thief’s talent and skill were not outstanding.”
He had barely reached the early stage of First-class; thereafter his growth had stalled. With that level of ability, proper absorption of the Ice Crystal was simply impossible.
“Still, considering he managed to steal a strictly guarded Ice Crystal, he seems to have possessed a surprising gift for thievery.”
Had he put that natural talent to use as a scout or similar, he might have achieved something. Instead, ignorant of his own strengths, he had acted with reckless arrogance and died in these distant Central Plains—the very height of foolishness.
“The Ice Crystal itself draws in the surrounding cold. The Snow Moon Flower likely bloomed because of the abandoned Ice Crystal.”
Seol Yerin looked from the Ice Crystal to the Snow Moon Flower and back again. In a way, the meeting with Cheonhwa’s party might itself have been a thread of fate spun by the Ice Crystal.
Just as they prepared to recover the spiritual herbs—
“So you were here.”
A voice sounded from the cave entrance.