How Many Do You Have?
The only young monk still alive sank onto the blood-soaked floor. Amid the corpses he pressed his palms together, face devout — a hush of sanctity set stark against the gore that caked him.
"Empty your mind. Focus your spirit!"
Hwan Mong seized Yi Yeok's arm and hauled him back. He turned to find the three of them already seated in a row, legs crossed in lotus position. Before he could make sense of any of it, the sky answered.
A bell tolled from the heavens, vaster than imagination. A dreadful wave of sound smothered the world. The sky flushed gold, and brilliant light poured down in sheets. From an age too distant to name, the chanting of sutras shook heaven and earth.
The monk muttered scripture Yi Yeok could not understand. Hwan Mong and the others knit their brows as if in pain, tormented by the sutras themselves. Yi Yeok felt nothing at all. It was only loud. Then, after about as long as it takes to finish a cup of tea, the light in the sky and the sound of the chanting vanished together.
He looked again at the monk half-buried in the heap of corpses. The wounds were gone. Healed clean.
"Interesting."
Genuinely impressed, Yi Yeok started toward him. The monk made to rise — and Yi Yeok was already there, crouched in front of him. The monk's face locked hard. He swung his ringed staff, still foul with blood and brains.
"Heretic!"
Yi Yeok slipped the staff with ease, stepped in behind him, and hooked an arm around his head to murmur at his ear.
"Thrash all you like. It won't help. Think about what you did. Don't tell me you actually believe you deserve to walk away from this."
The monk's face twisted. Blood spilled from his mouth, but there was no strength left in him to resist. Yi Yeok rose, unhurried. Not a drop of blood stained his fingers.
Hwan Mong's group came over.
"Oh. So the bastard had taken the precepts," Hwan Do murmured, mildly surprised, eyes on the dead monk.
Yi Yeok tilted his head. "Taken the precepts. What's that supposed to mean?"
"The scars on his head. That's what we call it. Means his faith in the Buddhist path runs deep. They usually come in one, two, six, nine, or twelve. Twelve means he's received the Bodhisattva Precepts — a serious realm to reach."
"Right. Then how did his wounds just close like that?"
"The Buddha's mercy. That light just now can cure the sicknesses of the world, and mend wounds besides."
Yi Yeok's eyes went wide. "What? If it's that incredible, shouldn't he have been playing physician?"
"Look at you, calm as anything. It isn't that simple."
"So what's the catch?"
Hwan Mong let out a sigh and explained. "Honestly? We brought you because we figured the sutras wouldn't touch you. Even so, none of us expected you to come through this clean. What the three of us just went through — you wouldn't have felt a thing."
Yi Yeok cocked his head. "It was a bit loud. Other than that, nothing happened. And you said it heals people?"
"Hear that sound when you don't follow the Buddhist path, and your mind comes unmoored. Hate the path, and it feels like tens of thousands of ants are crawling over every inch of you — pain so bad you'd rather die. We don't hate the Buddhist way, but we don't exactly believe in it either, do we? So for us the sound is agony, and it reaches all the way into the soul. Listen long enough, and in the end you'd start believing just to make it stop."
Hwan Rang took it up from there. "Believers, though — and anyone who's taken the precepts — can have nearly any illness cured under that light. Wounds close clean."
Hwan Do eyed him, curious. "You really felt nothing?"
"Nothing at all."
"No sense of peace? No sudden urge to believe?"
"No. Not even a flicker."
Hwan Do looked to Hwan Mong. "Yeah. We really couldn't have done this without Yi Yeok."
Hwan Mong nodded. Relief and a flicker of joy passed across her beautiful face.
"This is what they were after."
Hwan Rang stooped and picked something off the ground — a round bead, black dots set in even ranks across its surface.
"What is it?" Yi Yeok asked.
"A Sacred Moon Bodhi Seed. They say it helps with cultivation. There are so many kinds that just memorizing the names would eat half a day. Sun Bodhi Seed, Moonlight Bodhi Seed, Celestial Master Bodhi Seed..."
Yi Yeok took the bead and turned it over, then shook his head as if the thing refused to make sense. "So the Buddhist order cultivates with trinkets like this? Looks pretty shabby."
"Different paths, different tools. Only natural."
"All these people dead over one little bead."
No fewer than a hundred corpses lay strewn around them.
"Every last one of them, completely mad."
Dying over treasure was nothing rare. What he could not bring himself to believe was that even a five-year-old child had been dragged into the slaughter.
Hwan Mong spoke quietly. "Faith is a terrifying power. Used rightly, it leaves a righteous air behind it. Used wrong, it curdles into madness."
"Faith..."
Yi Yeok felt a thin, unfamiliar thread of fear toward the thing called faith. Not the people of the Buddhist order — the madness faith itself had made. Blind belief. Absolute obedience. They never doubted the object of their devotion. Had there been even a little doubt in them, none of this would have happened.
Hwan Rang took the lead as they walked. "Let's go. This sort of thing is common. We can't step in, and we shouldn't. To people like them, every one of us is nothing but a heretic."
"So where are we going now?"
"A place called Namyak Temple."
A cold smile touched Hwan Rang's mouth.