Dragon-Phoenix Gathering (2)
Jinmyung rose at the sound of someone calling for him outside his lodgings. Through the paper window, morning light was already opening the day.
"Who is it at this hour?"
"We've come from the Namgung Clan. Young Master Namgung Hyeon requests an audience."
"I'll make myself ready. Wait a moment."
Faster than I expected. Jinmyung was mildly surprised. He had assumed they would only reach out after Ak Jun returned.
He left a note for Ak Jun in the room and set out for the Namgung compound. On the path to Namgung Hyeon's quarters he crossed paths with Namgung Man.
Jinmyung offered a courteous bow. Namgung Man passed him with a look of open displeasure. When Jinmyung stepped into Hyeon's chambers, a gaunt-faced Namgung Hyeon rose to receive his guest.
"I heard you enjoy tea, so I prepared some."
Hyeon spoke as he poured from the waiting pot.
"At this hour I'd have expected a morning meal set out… Is eating particularly difficult for you?"
Hyeon froze, startled, the pot still in his hand. Tea spilled over the rim of the cup and ran across the table.
"How much… do you know?"
He lifted the pot again as if nothing had happened. Watching Hyeon wipe up the spill himself only confirmed what Jinmyung had already guessed.
"The first time I came to Chang'an was ten years ago. The difference between Shaanxi and Shandong cooking gave me no small amount of trouble."
Hyeon cleaned the table and listened. Jinmyung went on as if talking to himself, paying Hyeon no particular mind.
"I thought it was simply a matter of food, and the physicians around me said the same. So I adjusted my diet and took restorative herbs."
Hyeon sat down across from him and began to listen in earnest.
"But I never really improved. And those physicians were hardly quacks."
Jinmyung took a sip of tea and continued.
"It seems you suffer badly from violent retching and flux. The absence of a morning meal rather gives it away."
"You speak as if… you lived inside the clan itself."
"Do you imagine some mere merchant slipped past the Namgung Clan's guards, poisoned a young master, and brought on a case of flux?"
"I've heard merchants deal in many things… Could you not have arranged it through someone else?"
"A middleman might, yes. But if that were the case, I would have come the day before your sparring match. That's when the price would have been highest."
"Then you're saying you diagnosed my condition and symptoms from old memories alone?"
"The final champion of the last Mt. Hua Sword Conference was the Namgung Clan's eldest son, Namgung Jin — known as the Changcheon Geomryong."
Hyeon thought of his older brother. Namgung Jin was everything the heir of a great clan was supposed to be: bold, upright, forever sure of himself… a wall Hyeon could never climb.
"So I made a point of gathering information on the strongest contenders well in advance. And since Young Master Namgung inherited the title of Changcheon Geomryong, I paid particular attention."
Changcheon Geomryong. Before leaving Hefei for the Mt. Hua Sword Conference, Hyeon had sparred with Namgung Jin. He had not won — but Jin had praised him, saying he was worthy of the name. Word of that exchange had spread, and people began calling Hyeon Changcheon Geomryong as well. And yet…
"Inheriting a title is rarer than you'd think. A sobriquet is meant to name the person himself — and people are all different."
"Does my condition have some great connection to the title?"
"Not the title itself. The heart of the young master who accepted it — that is what connects to your symptoms."
"What?"
"The difference in food, Young Master Namgung's state of mind… and the pattern of every match you've fought so far. Put those together, and your condition becomes clear."
Hyeon's sparring over the past fortnight had followed the same script every time. Names exchanged, Hyeon's sword drawn — and a single form to end it. The Namgung Clan's Changcheon Muae Sword Art was not a technique that overwhelmed through raw speed. It was a sword that walked the righteous path, broad and open as a clear blue sky. Hyeon's Changcheon Muae Sword shattered an opponent's defense and subdued them in one stroke.
"I'm no martial artist, but if the Namgung sword were truly that fierce, the last Mt. Hua Sword Conference would already have set your clan's name alongside the Hebei Peng Clan."
Namgung Jin, champion of that conference, had painted a sky of piercing blue with his blade and taken the victory. It was a realm entirely apart from the single stroke Hyeon displayed.
"Neither especially fast nor especially fierce — yet it ends a fight in one form. That is a difference of resolve."
"…"
"And it seems to me that vomiting or worse, in an arena full of watching eyes, would be a profound humiliation—"
Jinmyung never finished the sentence. Namgung Hyeon had drawn up his presence. Only then did Jinmyung understand what Ak Jun had meant by aura and pressure and the rest of it.
The room seemed to shrink around him. Jinmyung spoke to break the force of it.
"Ahem. It would appear my guess was correct."
"Then… how do I stop the retching and flux?"
"Allow me to say a little more. Ten years ago, when I first came here… I was nothing but an eight-year-old child."
And that was just before the Emperor slaughtered my family. Jinmyung turned the memory over in silence.
"A child alone in a foreign place… the body suffers, but the heart suffers more. Especially for someone who has already met a wall he cannot climb past…"
The Emperor was master of all under heaven. Jinmyung had bargained with him and kept his life — but the man could change his mind at any time.
Hyeon felt as though Jinmyung had already read his heart. His brother was the wall he could not surpass. The title Namgung Jin had left behind was proof of it. From the moment the journey to Mt. Hua began, Hyeon's stomach had been unsettled. He had broken from the party under the pretense of circulating his energy alone, trying to settle himself — and failed. In the end he had stepped into the arena already sick.
"Among the information I gathered on Young Master Namgung, there was this: that you look carefully after those beneath you, and that you are thoughtful."
That had come from a storyteller who had visited the Namgung compound — a man of good repute both inside the clan and out, especially beloved by the lower ranks.
"To be called thoughtful means you care well for those around you… but it also means you take a great deal to heart. I found myself thinking that Young Master Namgung's spirit must labor harder than most martial artists'."
Hyeon studied Jinmyung carefully. He had never met anyone quite like this.
The eyes of the Zhuge Clan — said to be first in the martial world for sheer intellect — held a sharpness foreign to any fighter, a piercing insight that seemed ready to strip a man bare in a single glance.
But Jinmyung's eyes tilted gently downward, as if always on the verge of a smile.
When Hyeon had met the great masters of the previous generation, they had seemed at first glance like any village grandfather. Their soft presence invited a man to empty out whatever he carried inside.
Jinmyung simply spoke his thoughts, calm and unadorned.
It was nothing like talking with members of his own clan. Conversations with his father, Namgung Man, or his brother, Namgung Jin, usually ended the same way: do as you are told. Offer a different view, and the answer was always that they were right and he should simply obey. Yet Hyeon could see the people around him struggling. He had soothed them. He had tried to understand his father and his brother.
Jinmyung, speaking of himself, was offering Hyeon something else entirely — recognition.
"Hah… Since you seem to know everything already… can you stop my symptoms? Young Master Go is no physician."
"No. But it wasn't a physician who stopped mine, either. Have you heard the saying body and earth are not two?"
"I haven't."
"It's a Buddhist notion — that a person is not alone, but one with the land around him. It was written in a letter my grandfather sent me when I was suffering."
"A plausible idea. I believe the Confucian school has something similar."
"Yes. And with that letter came a specialty of Shandong — the flatcakes I loved as a boy."
"A man who has lived ten years in Shaanxi… intends to bring me a specialty of Anhui?"
"If the price is right, there is nothing our merchant group cannot obtain."
The Donghwa Merchant Group had sourced every kind of goods even through wartime, and built its reputation on that. Hyeon believed him.
"And what price do you want?"
"Your sparring entry token will suffice."
"What?"
The price was absurd. If his health returned, he could simply fight the match himself.
"I'm trying to recover so that I can spar — and you ask for the entry token? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?"
"As you said, I am no physician. Eating the specialty I offer will not cure the flux overnight."
"Then… do you mean to sell that token elsewhere?"
"No. I intend to enter the sparring myself."
Hyeon could find no reply. Jinmyung was clearly an exceptional man. Even a brief conversation had made plain that he was a merchant of real ability. But still…
"My opponent is a disciple of the Diancang Sect. He—"
"Has achieved the extreme speed of the Sail Sword Art. Not quite Young Master Namgung's single stroke, but he subdues opponents with swift forms and is called the Sky-Soaring Wind Dragon."
"Yes. If you spar with him, you won't be able to talk the way we are now. Don't tell me… you've already struck a deal with that side as well?"
"My only counterpart in this is Young Master Namgung."
"I don't understand. You take my entry token and enter the sparring yourself… Forgive me, but is someone threatening you? Our clan can offer protection."
"Haha — no. If you're worried I'll be hurt in the match… I'll write you a waiver. Whether I'm injured or killed in the sparring, the Namgung Clan will bear no blame."
"But…"
Hyeon wrestled with it. The Dragon-Phoenix Gathering would bring sparring of a different order from the past fortnight. Refuse this deal, and something ugly might unfold before every watching eye.
Accept it, though, and if the man who took the field in his place fell easily… the Namgung Clan's renown would suffer with him.
Grrroowl.
The deliberation did not last long. His mind wanted to refuse. His stomach would not allow it. Namgung Hyeon set the entry token on the table.
Jinmyung studied it for a moment, then turned his head toward the door. The sun was lifting over the horizon; the day was brightening.
"My steward should be outside by now. He'll have brought plums from Anhui."
Jinmyung took up the token and went on.
"If you recover before the day of the match, come deal with me again. We might even see Young Master Namgung's Changgung Muae Sword."
Hyeon understood: Jinmyung was offering to spar with him. Very well. His mind accepted the bargain at last. Recover, then seek Jinmyung out.
Outside Hyeon's quarters, Ak Jun stood utterly spent, a sack of plums slung over one shoulder. Hyeon opened it and drew one out himself.
They did not look like fine fruit — thick with dirt. He brushed some of the soil away and found yellow flesh, fully ripe.
The plums served at Mt. Hua were green — unripe green plums. But in Anhui they used yellow ones like these…
"Brew them into a honeyed plum tonic. It should help."
"Young Master Go truly seems to look straight into my heart."
"I've only heard from my sister that Anhui's honeyed plum tonic was delicious. I wish you a swift recovery."
Jinmyung and Ak Jun bowed and left the Namgung lodgings. Hyeon saw them off — then turned his own steps toward the latrine.