A Decade of Fear, a Handful of Ash
The gentle mountain road wound its way toward Longzhong.
Carriage wheels rolled over the dirt path, churning out a steady, rhythmic clatter. On any other day, that noise would have been layered with Mujin's endless chatter or the sound of him snoring away.
But today the interior of the carriage was uncannily quiet.
Namgung Cheon, who had been resting with his eyes closed, cracked one open and studied Mujin. For once, Mujin was staring blankly out the window, unlike himself. An unfocused gaze. Nothing like the eyes always brimming with mischief.
It's been half a day already.
Ever since they left Wuhan, Mujin had spoken barely a word. No more tossing out jokes while chewing on jerky, no more playing pranks on Baek Heon. Zhuge Seoyeon, too, seemed to have sensed the strange mood; like Namgung Cheon, she sat in silence with her eyes closed. The air inside the carriage had grown heavy and still.
Then it happened.
"……Young Master."
Mujin broke the silence. It had been so long since he'd spoken that even Baek Heon, up on the driver's bench, flinched and leaned in to listen.
"Speak."
Mujin still hadn't taken his eyes off the window. He parted his dry lips.
"Could we, ah, stop for a moment?"
His gaze rested on a narrow side path branching off the road, leading up a low mountain spur. An utterly ordinary, unremarkable mountain.
But Namgung Cheon asked no reason.
"Halt the carriage."
Baek Heon pulled the reins at once. Creeeeak— The wheels scraped against the dirt, and the carriage rolled slowly to a stop.
Mujin let out a deep breath. It was a long, heavy exhale, like someone finally letting go of a breath held for years.
He rose from his seat and slowly opened the carriage door. The mountain wind rushing through the gap tousled his hair. But he didn't climb down right away; he hesitated for a moment, hand on the door handle, and a whole tangle of emotions read plainly across his back.
A little while later, Mujin turned his head slowly and looked at Namgung Cheon.
"Would you, ah, care to come along?"
Namgung Cheon looked him straight in the eye. Mujin's gaze was wavering. Without a word, Namgung Cheon rose from his seat and stepped over to stand beside him. A bitter yet faintly relieved smile spread across Mujin's lips.
"Truly, you never change."
His eyes flicked briefly toward Zhuge Seoyeon. She spoke up as if it were nothing at all.
"I'll wait here."
Her voice was deliberately light.
"We wiped out every last bandit in this area ages ago, so there's no one left to eye the carriage, and I'm more than capable of looking after myself."
Mujin inclined his head politely.
"Thank you, Lady Zhuge."
"Don't mention it."
Mujin turned back toward the mountain path. It was a narrow trail overgrown with weeds—hardly deserving of the name. Clearly no human foot had passed that way in a very long time. Mujin climbed the rough path with a sure, familiar stride, and Namgung Cheon followed in silence behind him.
Crunch. Crunch.
Only the sound of dry fallen leaves underfoot echoed through the desolate forest, and soon the two men disappeared into the dense green.
They walked the mountain path for a long while, until at last the thick forest gave way to an open clearing. And at the sight that spread before them, Namgung Cheon's eyes narrowed.
A village? No…… a ruin, more like.
Crumpled walls. Houses reduced to charred skeletons. Shards of broken jars strewn in chaotic heaps. As the mountain wind blew through, the weeds rippled like waves.
Mujin stood at the village entrance, staring blankly at the scene, and finally spoke.
"This was my home."
His voice was calm.
"As you can see, no one lives here anymore."
Namgung Cheon walked slowly into the ruin. Sword marks scored into the standing walls, soot blackened into the ground. Everything pointed to a single truth. Not natural decay, not abandonment.
A massacre.
Mujin followed him in and spoke.
"It used to be a fairly big village, actually. Traveling merchants would stop to rest, folk gathered herbs and cut wood—we lived in peace. And then……"
He stopped at the edge of a collapsed well.
"A long time ago, some unorthodox bastards swept through and left it like this."
Mujin's hand brushed along the well's railing, the texture of the rough stone carrying up through his fingertips.
"That day, I was hiding inside this shallow well. Like a coward, I held my breath and did nothing but listen to the screaming above me. The sound of my parents dying. The sound of my friends dying."
Namgung Cheon regarded him. This was not the cheerful, roguish Mujin of ordinary days. His eyes reflected, it seemed, a fire demon from long ago—but beneath that gaze, resignation and emptiness ran far deeper than rage or resentment.
"You took your revenge."
At Namgung Cheon's quiet words, Mujin nodded.
"Precisely. It was over ten years ago now."
He sat down in the middle of the ruin.
"I learned the sword from my master, hunted the bastards down, and cut every last one of them to pieces. Stormed their stronghold and snuffed out their line entirely."
Mujin's eyes gazed at some far-off point.
"Ah—by the way, I wasn't alone that day."
"Meaning?"
"Some lunatic was raiding the bastards' warehouse at the same time."
Mujin snorted a laugh.
"That was Jang Gwang."
"The Janggang Flood Dragon?"
"Back then he couldn't imitate so much as an iguana, let alone a dragon—just some whelp of a river bandit. I came to take their heads; he came to take their coin. Different aims, same enemy, so we ended up watching each other's backs."
A slaughterhouse slick with blood. A swordsman drunk on vengeance and a bandit blinded by greed, joining hands by pure chance to wipe a single unorthodox sect off the face of the earth. A strange and stubborn bond, and the beginning of one.
"That day, we drank over their corpses. He laughed about hitting the mother lode, but I couldn't."
Mujin drew a bottle of liquor from his coat. But instead of drinking, he slowly tipped it out onto the ground. The sharp scent of alcohol mingled with the acrid smell of dust and scattered into the empty air.
"I thought that once I stood over their corpses drenched in blood, I'd feel relieved. But I didn't."
He fiddled with the empty bottle as he went on.
"Afterward, I met my master again. He looked at me, soaked in blood, and said: you still haven't emptied your heart."
Nangwang. A retired grandmaster, and Mujin's teacher.
"No doubt my lack of talent played its part, but when my master taught me Jeokmyeol, I think what he meant was: do not take revenge. And in the end, I did anyway."
Mujin looked down at his own sword.
"That's why he left me. He told me not to come looking for him until I understood the meaning of Jeokmyeol."
His voice trembled, thin and strained.
"I drifted for ten years after that. Swung the sword countless times, thought I'd emptied everything. That's why I was afraid to come back to this place. Because if I came here, the nightmare of that day would come back to life and swallow me whole."
Mujin lifted his head and looked around. Collapsed house foundations, weed-choked courtyards, moss-eaten pillars. His gaze swept over every corner of the ruin.
After a long silence, Mujin suddenly burst into a hollow laugh.
"Ha……"
A single sigh of a word escaped his lips.
"And this is all there is."
"……"
"The place I spent ten years running from, the hell that chained me down in my dreams every single night…… and it's nothing but this pile of stones overgrown with weeds?"
Mujin rose from his seat as if he couldn't believe it and wandered the ruin. No resentment. No rage. No sorrow.
"It's empty. So terribly empty."
He thumped his own chest.
"I thought this place would hurt so much it would tear me apart, but instead it's hollow, like nothing at all. Like I'm standing in a stranger's house."
He stroked the sword at his hip.
"I suppose the emptying my master spoke of isn't something you force away. It's simply…… knowing that nothing was ever there to begin with. I suppose that's Jeokmyeol."
Namgung Cheon silently met Mujin's eyes. The gaze that had been so full of dread on the climb up had changed. A calm look—like a man who had finally set down a burden carried far too long. As Mujin looked over the ruin with those eyes, he exhaled a long, slow breath.
Hoooh……
It was as if the knot of grief lodged deep in his chest was leaving his body with that single breath.
"Let's go back, Young Master. This is enough. There's nothing more to see."
He turned away without a trace of lingering attachment. His steps going down were lighter than the ones going up.
That night, the party put up at a small inn at the foot of the mountain. Deep in the night, when everyone had gone to bed, Mujin stood alone in the inn's back garden, sword in hand, staring up blankly at the night sky for the better part of an hour.
From a second-floor window, Namgung Cheon leaned against the frame and watched that back in silence.
He could have helped. Could have casually dropped a hint toward enlightenment, or crossed blades with Mujin and forced the wall open for him. But Namgung Cheon did not.
This, too, is part of the sword.
Mujin had seen it today: that the terror which had crushed him for ten years was nothing more than a handful of ash. If so, only one thing remained. To cut down that phantom himself and step over the wall. And that was a task no one could do in his place—a debt owed by Mujin alone.
Then, sensing a presence, Mujin turned and looked up at the second floor. His eyes met Namgung Cheon's. With a wry smile, Mujin raised his sword.
"Still heavy."
"……"
"I went and looked at the ashes, and yet this damn thing weighs just as much as ever."
Namgung Cheon did not answer. Mujin went on, tonelessly.
"But now I understand. This weight—it isn't the ghosts of my dead family and friends."
He gripped the scabbard tight.
"It was only the weight of the attachment I refused to let go of."
The light in Mujin's eyes had changed.
"I know you weren't planning to interfere, but I'll ask anyway."
"Speak."
"Don't help me, Young Master."
An unyielding voice.
"This is the karma I carry. So the lightening of it must be done by my own hands as well, no? Only then can I face my master without shame."
A faint smile crossed Namgung Cheon's lips. If Mujin had realized that what had been crushing him was not the past itself, but himself—bound to the past—
Then crossing that wall is only a matter of time.
Namgung Cheon gave a small nod. Then, just as he was about to close the window, he threw out one quiet line.
"I'll look forward to it."
"……"
"To the day your sword grows light."
Thud.
The window closed. Left alone, Mujin stared at the shut window for a long moment. Then, at last, he slowly drew his sword.
Shrring—
The blade caught the moonlight and gleamed cold. The sword was still heavy. Something in the corner of his chest still felt stifled. But Mujin no longer hesitated.
I will cut it away.
Until the day this sword grew light as a feather.
Wheee—!
Under the moonlight, Mujin's sword split the empty air. His sword dance did not stop until deep into the night.
And the next morning—
"Young Master, you're not eating this? Then I'll have it."
Mujin snatched up the food set before Namgung Cheon in a flash. shamelessly devouring everything in sight. Watching the display, Namgung Cheon sighed quietly.
"I almost thought you'd turned over a new leaf yesterday."
"Aw, don't be so cold."
Mujin grinned, food smeared across his lips.
Namgung Cheonma
Author | Baek Rihaeng
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dreambooks
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