An All Too Common Thing
Gi Mong circled Yi Yeok once, light as a butterfly, then grew bored and drifted back to Hwan Mong's hair, settling once more into an ornate silver hairpin.
Yi Yeok was badly shaken. To think a thing like that could truly exist in the world.
Hwan Do laughed.
"Believe us now?"
Yi Yeok looked the three of them over in turn.
"I'm only getting more curious about who you really are."
"When the time comes, you'll know. Just don't forget how important you are to us."
"Why?"
"We're thieves. What we need is a deeper art of theft, and no one suits that better than you."
Yi Yeok frowned.
"Don't tell me you expect me to slip into some otherworld and steal something for you."
"Why? Think you can't?"
"That's absurd."
He shook his head. He had no wish to hear another word about otherworlds.
"Let's talk about what's in front of us. I already have a blood spirit. A sarira won't do me much good, and it can't fill the loss of my Silver Blood either. You've got some other aim."
Hwan Do smiled and owned it without hesitation.
"Right. The sarira is only one of the goals. You'll have to fetch the Buddha's treasure for us — the Demon-Subduing Vajra."
"You can't get it yourselves?"
"It's a rather troublesome piece of work."
Hwan Rang waved them on.
"Enough of that. Everyone up."
The four of them stepped onto the teleportation formation. Light flared, and space closed around Yi Yeok like water. A moment later the world went black, and a dreadful pull seized him, as if it meant to tear his body apart. Fortunately, some answering force was there to shield him.
When light returned, all he saw beneath his feet was yellow sand.
He lifted his head. Stone pillars stood around him, rising thirty or forty feet out of the dunes. This was not the Heaven-Center Immortal Realm. It was the vast territory of the Western Regions.
Before he could ask, Hwan Mong spoke first.
"Only a handful of the Buddhist sect's strong cultivators remain in the Heaven-Center Immortal Realm. The sect goes down into the mortal world and cultivates by feeding on people's faith."
"Faith?"
"Yes. You'll learn more later."
Hwan Rang added his piece.
"Daoist cultivators hate the bustle and seek the Dao in quiet places. The Buddhist sect is the opposite. They set store by tempering the heart in the middle of the mortal world."
Yi Yeok glanced around.
"It'll take days just to get out of this desert."
"Relax. Sixty miles north and we're clear of it."
Hwan Do went on.
"If any of the Buddhist sect are close by, they'll have felt the formation wake. We need to leave. Now."
Hwan Mong nodded and swept her hand. Sand whirled up and buried the ruins completely.
Yi Yeok followed the three across the dunes, glancing up at the western sky. A black scar hung there, stark against the blue, like a tear in cloth that someone had mended badly.
Hwan Mong said quietly,
"That is a rift into the otherworld."
Her words brought back what she and the others had told him. Long ago the people of the Buddhist sect had come into this world through that place, and it had been sealed so that nothing might pass between the two sides.
Before long the four of them left the desert behind. What opened ahead was a world of deep green, as if they had stepped into another realm entirely.
"Not bad."
Hwan Rang laughed, impressed.
"You've gotten faster."
"I could spare you a leg and still keep up."
Ever since he had obtained the Drifting Silver Flight, his speed had climbed sharply.
"There was a reason we picked you after all. That old man had an eye for people."
Hwan Mong's eyes flashed, sharp as a blade. Yi Yeok narrowed his own.
"What was that?"
Hwan Do caught the look on her face, gave an awkward laugh, and talked past it.
"Nothing. I only meant that if you've come this far, it's thanks to that old thief who taught you."
Something flickered in Yi Yeok's gaze, but he did not press.
Bong...! Bong...! Bong...!
A bell tolled and rolled out in every direction. Yi Yeok listened. From far off came the sound of sutras being chanted, and not by one voice or two.
Hwan Rang said,
"Out here in the Western Regions the Buddhist sect's reach is enormous. Nearly everyone believes."
"Then if everyone in the east believed too, there'd be nothing left to fight over, would there?"
Hwan Rang let out a booming laugh.
"Naive. So long as there's a hierarchy, conflict never goes away."
He paused, then went on.
"Resources are finite. The more cultivators there are, the less each one can claim. Climb higher and you have no choice but to grow more vicious, more cruel. Nobody wants to stay at the bottom."
They ran on for about an hour before slipping into the forest, where they could move without catching anyone's eye.
A faint roar of voices drifted from the distance. Through a gap in the trees, Yi Yeok looked out at the road.
Men in gray monastic robes were tangled together in a brawl, swinging weapons that looked strange to his eye. Corpses already lay heaped on the ground. They struck at one another without a shred of mercy.
Thud!
A young monk drove his palm down onto his opponent's crown, and the fight was over.
Looking closer, Yi Yeok saw that some of them were shaven-headed and others wore their hair long. Their ages ran wild, from white-haired elders to children of five or six. One little girl lay dead, her body cut clean in two.
Hwan Do glanced over as if it were nothing.
"People from two nearby villages, by the look of it. Common enough around here. See it a few more times and you'll get used to it."