Punch a Hole, or Get One Punched?
Sideburns asked,
"How the hell do you even know the waterway?"
"I'm just following what I can see."
Sideburns swallowed a curse.
Bullshit.
See what? There was nothing to see. Fog hung so thick it could have been wrung out like a rag, and the rain came sideways on a wind that howled like it meant to peel the river open. A storm was gathering. You could feel it in the bones of the boat.
He had been at home in the water since he was a boy. His diving was second to none, and his read of a current would have put a fisherman of thirty years to shame. Even Sideburns, bent over the oar now, could only click his tongue.
He couldn't see an inch past the bow. Even without the sailing ban, not a single boat would have left the bank today.
And he says he can see?
He was following the directions, rowing hard, holding the course he'd been given — but he wasn't buying a word of it. They would never find him. This was a tributary of the Yangtze. How were they supposed to hunt down Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi after the man had already fled from here?
Aigoo. Of all the freaks in the world, I had to get tangled up with this one. What a goddamn mess.
The second he shook this lunatic off, he was throwing a ritual. A big one.
"B-Big bro!"
Sparrow-Eyes, who'd been rowing just as hard beside him, cried out in a shaking voice. Sideburns turned, and his face went strange.
A shape, just visible through the fog and the driving rain.
A boat.
Huh?
Was that actually Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's boat?
"Well, well. Young Master Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi."
Sun Wukong, who'd been lying down a moment ago, was already on his feet at the gunwale, arms folded. He gave Sideburns a couple of pats on the shoulder.
"Not bad. You know how to ride a current. We caught up already."
"Ahem. Well. You know."
"Didn't expect a second boat, though."
"What?"
Sideburns could only see one. But Wukong's face was serious, so he squinted hard and looked again.
"Huh?"
There was definitely another boat. A smaller craft, creeping in on Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's vessel with quiet, careful purpose. Sideburns looked at Wukong with fresh, reluctant admiration.
Thick fog. Driving rain and wind. Visibility was next to nothing. This wasn't just good eyesight.
A real master is a real master. No two ways about it.
Even Sideburns, who prided himself on keeping up with Jianghu gossip, couldn't make sense of it.
A weirdo this loud, this obvious — how has nobody heard of him until now?
The thought didn't last. His brow furrowed.
"Hss. Looks like that one's after Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi too."
"The Wulin Alliance?"
"If it were the Wulin Alliance you're thinking of, they'd come in a pack. There's only two of them."
Wait — he could see who was on board, too?
"Both of them are wearing sword scabbards. Blue field, white stripe. Same affiliation."
"Hold on. Blue field, white stripe?"
Sideburns nearly jumped out of the boat.
"You know it?"
"Know it? That's the Namgung Clan!"
The Namgung Clan. Of course he knew. During the height of the Orthodox-Unorthodox War, a rumor had gone around: if you saw a sword with a blue field and a white stripe, you ran. Orthodox or unorthodox, it didn't matter. You wanted to keep breathing, you ran.
"Hmph. They've got a different kind of presence. So that's the Namgung Clan."
"The Namgung Clan has a blood grudge against Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi. Kill one of their own and they'll hunt you to the ends of the earth. They're here to collect."
"That's a problem."
"What?"
Something in Wukong's tone sent a cold prickle down Sideburns's spine. This felt familiar. When was it...
Ah. Back when he grabbed that scrap of a sword that wasn't worth a damn and decided he was going after Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi.
The kind of thing nobody needed to do — and he'd gone and done it anyway. And Sideburns had gotten dragged right along with him.
The back of his neck went cold. The faintly troubled look on Wukong's face made his guts twist.
"If the Namgung Clan catches Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi first, I don't get to catch him. Right?"
"Well..."
"And if I snatch him after they've already got him, I make enemies of the Namgung Clan."
Which would make the whole plan of becoming a guest retainer at the Namgung Clan Estate a complete waste.
Which meant...
"I have to catch him before they do."
If the Namgung Clan got to Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi first, it was over. Wukong made up his mind.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"You any good at diving?"
"What?"
"You said you were great at it. Perfect."
"I never said that."
"Then go punch a hole in that boat."
"What? Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's boat?"
Wukong looked at him like he'd grown a second head.
"Why would it be that one? The Namgung Clan's boat, obviously."
"......"
"Just keep them busy. Don't let them get near Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi. I'll handle things in the meantime. I want to ask him a few things before I hand him over to the Namgung Clan."
"...So you're telling me to punch a hole in a boat carrying martial artists from the Namgung Clan. The Namgung Clan."
"Yep."
"By diving."
"That's the idea."
"Me?"
Wukong nodded. Sideburns was so speechless he couldn't even form a sentence.
The Namgung Clan. Blood-mad sword demons who repaid a grudge tenfold, a hundredfold — no, a thousandfold, and still came back for more. They were fiends. Nobody who got tangled up with the Namgung Clan ever walked away smiling.
Punch a hole in their boat? Right as they were about to catch their mortal enemy? What were they supposed to think? They'd take him for Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's accomplice.
"Don't worry. I'll catch Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi and clear things up."
...Had he factored in the part where I get cut down by the Namgung Clan first?
"You're just diving under and punching a hole in a boat. I'm not asking you to fight them."
"No, I — ha."
No matter how he turned it over, this was insane. Wukong was terrifying, sure — but there wasn't an idiot in all of Jianghu stupid enough to pick a direct fight with the Namgung Clan. Not unless they already had a blood feud with them.
Sideburns started scrambling for a way out. Wukong's face went flat.
"Hey."
"...Yeah."
"You wanna punch a hole in a boat? Or you want a hole punched in yours?"
Ah.
Namgung Jeok held his breath.
Namgung Seon, who'd come with him, gave a slow nod and sent a sound transmission.
"It's him. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi. Confirmed."
"We found him at last."
"Do we signal the Clan Head and the elders?"
"We take him first. Fire a signal flare now and that slippery bastard could vanish anywhere."
The moment word of Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's appearance had reached them, the Namgung Clan had mobilized in force. Those who bore the Namgung name were few. The Orthodox-Unorthodox War had only just ended. That was only natural. To hunt Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi, they had split those few numbers, then split them again.
Only Namgung Jeok and Namgung Seon had managed to get this close. They were only two. Fear never entered into it. What was a Wulin Public Enemy, no matter how infamous, to them?
We are the Namgung Clan.
They were the ones who had survived the Orthodox-Unorthodox War. That was enough to forget what fear felt like. The harder thing was keeping down the thin, rising thrill. The enemy they had failed to catch — the grudge that had festered into a wound — was about to fall to their own hands.
"The moment the boats touch, we jump and take him down."
"And if he resists?"
"The Hall Master of Discipline wanted him taken alive for a proper trial. If he fights hard, we kill him."
Namgung Jeok's eyes gleamed, cold and bleak, as he sent the transmission.
Blood for blood. It was the law of Jianghu, and even the most righteous orthodox sects treated it as a given. At the very least, that was the Namgung way.
He smothered the killing intent rising in his chest as best he could, easing their boat in toward Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's —
Krrrk—
The boat lurched, letting out a sound that set the teeth on edge. A sudden coldness touched his ankle. Namgung Jeok flinched.
"Water?"
It was already sloshing around his ankles. His face went rigid.
"The boat's taking on water."
He was so startled that Namgung Seon spoke aloud instead of sending a transmission. The wind and rain should have been enough to swallow the sound. But their quarry was Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi.
He must have caught the brief commotion. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's boat swung about and pulled away in the opposite direction.
"This hole was made on purpose. There are traces of inner energy."
They had chosen a sturdy boat on purpose. Nothing short of a serious collision should have been able to break it. The hole punched clean through the hull was someone's doing.
Namgung Jeok swallowed a low sound.
"He has an accomplice!"
Namgung Seon leaned out over the gunwale in a rush, scanning the river. His sharp gaze raked the heaving water. Waves rolled under a hard wind. Between them, Namgung Jeok spotted something. A faint trail of bubbles, rising.
"There."
He flicked a throwing dagger from his robes and sent it flying.
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi had always had sharp senses.
"The Namgung Clan?"
A scabbard with a blue field and a white stripe. It was them. No question.
"Damn it! I shake off that freak and a Namgung tiger jumps out instead?!"
Before Wukong had ever entered the picture, the thing he'd feared most wasn't the Wulin Alliance. It was the Namgung Clan. The Wulin Alliance would at least give you a proper trial. The ending was still an execution, of course. The Namgung Clan were fiends so savage that even the unorthodox sects called them barbarians.
And Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi had killed one of their blood. They wouldn't leave enough of him to bury. It would be a cruel death. The stories were everywhere — how they'd split open unorthodox martial artists' chests and kicked their hearts around like balls, just for sport.
Fortunately, something had happened to the Namgung boat. They weren't even trying to give chase. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi allowed himself a brief breath of relief and tried to stay calm.
That effort lasted about three seconds.
"Enjoying the boat ride, little snake?"
"......!"
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's body went rigid. A golden-haired man stood at the gunwale, leaning at a lazy slant, that same bright, mischievous grin plastered across his face. Sun Wukong gave a little wave.
"What, you just leave without saying goodbye? That hurts. Is that all we are to each other?"
The shameless, easy tone hit Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi like a thunderclap. He moved. He seized the trembling old fisherman by the throat and put his heavy saber to the man's neck.
"Back off. Unless you want to watch this old man's head come off."
"A hostage play?"
Wukong shrugged. He'd figured a man who could actually use a blade might at least thrash around a little, swing something, make a fight of it.
"Still as gutless as ever. Some things never change."
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes went red. He pressed the saber closer, a hair's breadth from the old man's throat. A single stroke. A master of his level could take a head in less than a blink.
Wukong looked at the shaking fisherman, a wry twist at the corner of his mouth.
"What's that got to do with me?"
"...What?"
"I said, why should I care if the old man dies?"
"......"
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes flickered.
He's not an orthodox pursuer?
He'd spent a lifetime at war with the orthodox sects, so he'd assumed Wukong was one of theirs. He hadn't expected a hostage to work easily — but he had never, not in his worst dreams, expected that.
"If the old man dies here, that's fate. It's already written in the Book of Life and Death down in the underworld. So-and-so, killed in a snake's hostage play. Such-and-such a month, such-and-such an hour."
"......"
"That's fate. Mortality. Every living thing born in the lower world is bound to it. There's no getting out."
A pressure closed around Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's chest, as if the air itself had gone thin.
What is this?
He couldn't make sense of it. Wukong wasn't pouring out killing intent the way other martial artists did. He wasn't crushing the air with his inner energy. He was just standing there, leaning at a slant. And that alone was enough to pin Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi under a weight he couldn't push back against.
"That said..."
Wukong paused mid-sentence. For a split second, his form wavered. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi moved on instinct. The saber flashed.
A spray of blood.
"Ghk!"
A death-rattle of a sound.
"How...?"
His voice shook. His right arm was gone. Just... gone. He looked down. It lay on the deck, steaming white in the cold air, as if a beast had torn it off at the shoulder.
"Ah..."
It had been an instant. There had been distance between them. How was this possible? Faster than he could close that hair's-breadth gap with his saber — this man had taken his arm? With what? His bare hands?
The thought didn't get any further. Wukong's hand closed around his throat. He lifted, easy as lifting a doll, and Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi rose into the air. The breath stopped in his chest. Below him, Wukong's face was empty of expression.
"Thing is, I never liked the Book of Life and Death."
"Ghk—"
"Dying on the day it says, for the reason it says. You know? The idea that it's all decided. I always thought that was a raw deal. So when I was a kid, I wiped every name out of the Book. Mine, and all my little monkeys' too."
Wukong smiled, faint and faraway. He glanced at the old fisherman, who had fainted dead away.
"Yeah. I figure the old man's page says something like this. So-and-so, lived out his full span, died at a hundred surrounded by his family. Such-and-such a month, such-and-such an hour."
His gaze came back to Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi. It wasn't cold. It burned, like magma under the surface. The urge to kill surged up in him. It had been a long time. This long, since he'd wanted someone dead this badly.
"Khhhk—"
The grip tightened. The man's eyes rolled back as the air left him.
Wukong remembered. He had attained Buddhahood. He was a Buddha. The title Victorious Fighting Buddha was not a rank. It was a name that proved what he was.
The Buddhist precepts.
Thou shalt not kill.
Wukong laughed, low in his throat.
"You threw me back on the road of hardship. Your will, not mine."
The hand around the throat closed tighter.
"So I'll do as I please, too."
Crrrk.
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes rolled white. His mouth fell open. His tongue lolled out.
"I will."
Crack.
The neck broke.
The body hung limp. The tongue spilled from the open mouth. The face had already gone blue, the blood cut off.
The Buddhist precepts. Thou shalt not kill.
Not as Sun Wukong the Victorious Fighting Buddha.
As the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — the one who had once turned Heaven itself upside down — Sun Wukong grinned, full of mischief.