The Last Sword Dance
The Sect Leader opened his eyes.
When Taecheong appeared at last — pale, but standing — after vanishing from sight the moment the assassination attempt had ended, the entire Wudang Sect erupted into celebration. From the reconciliation between the Mugok Hall Master and Hocheong all the way to Taecheong's return, a thread of warmth wound its way through a sect that had been simmering with unrest.
But that warmth belonged only to Wudang's younger disciples. The sect's inner circle and its aging elders kept their faces carefully, deliberately grave.
Muhwa was the one who caught the discrepancy first.
"Why, though? The Sect Leader has recovered."
Sun Wukong looked at her with genuine curiosity. He wasn't the only one. Seowol, glued to his side, wore the exact same expression.
Muhwa faltered, flustered.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason. It's just impressive how clearly you can talk with your mouth full."
"Mm. I, uh. I already swallowed."
Muhwa averted her eyes, embarrassed. An assortment of pastries filled her field of vision.
"This is all Teacher Sun's fault, you know."
"What's my fault?"
"The snacking."
Something in her voice had a distinctly horned edge. Sun Wukong shut his mouth.
Ah, this Bajie brat, I swear.
At first her temperament had been so different he'd barely believed she was Zhu Bajie at all. The one thing they shared was the appetite — and even that paled next to the Bajie of old. That insatiable hunger, the kind that ate and ate and never knew satisfaction, had been enough to make even Sun Wukong throw up his hands. Muhwa's gluttony, by comparison, was almost cute. Why else would he keep bringing her food, insisting she was far too skinny?
Lately, though, it was as if her past life's soul were seeping back into her body. The old habits that used to make his head throb would surface now and then.
"All these gifts came as thanks for Teacher Sun, and you haven't touched a single one."
"That's because they're not much use to me."
"Which makes it your fault. I guess even Taoists are human. They're a little bland, but some of these pastries are actually pretty good."
With Taecheong's recovery, Sun Wukong had become Wudang's savior overnight. This was an entirely different matter from having Hocheong and the Mugok Hall Master in the palm of his hand. He had stolen the hearts of every last member of the sect.
The illness that even Baeksu, Hubei's finest physician, had failed to cure. Given Taecheong's stature and meaning within Wudang, Sun Wukong's new standing needed no further explanation. He now commanded genuine authority within the Wudang Sect.
Returning the Taiji Sword that Wudang had safeguarded for generations as another lineage of Founder Jang Sambong. Resolving the Wudang Blood Tragedy. And now, the Sect Leader's recovery. As for the earlier matter of desecrating the sacred grounds — not a soul dared mention it.
And that wasn't all. Word had quietly leaked from the Six Harmonies Palace that Teacher Sun was so well-versed in the Tao he could discuss it with Geumgak from dawn till dusk.
Praise for Teacher Sun poured in from every corner of Wudang, along with a barrage of gifts. The gifts varied, but they were hardly conventional. A proper gift was something precious, or something laden with meaning. Gifts between sects, in particular, tended toward spiritual elixirs and the like.
Unfortunately, these were not that sort. Spiritual elixirs were rare enough that even a great sect would tremble to its foundations if it parted with them too freely. There was a reason even the major sects reserved such treasures for disciples who showed real promise.
Which meant these "gifts" were gifts only in the loosest sense.
They were pastries.
What precious offering could impoverished Wudang Taoists possibly produce? The confections they made as occasional treats were, in their own way, rather precious. They required painstaking care to prepare, which made them a sincere enough token of gratitude.
Of course, every last one of them ended up in Muhwa's mouth.
"Sister, you've gotten fat."
Even Seowol's blunt, offhand honesty no longer landed.
"Mm. Teacher Sun is still skinny, they say."
Seowol looked at Sun Wukong. There was a hint of reproach in her eyes.
"Master. Sister's going to turn into a pig at this rate."
Well. She already was one, originally.
Sun Wukong kept that thought to himself. Seowol could say what she liked — Muhwa was still a healthy beauty. She trained with a sword every day. Fat didn't stand a chance.
Still.
Her face has filled out a bit, though.
Her cheeks had gone a little rounder. That sharp jawline was starting to soften. Well, if you wanted to call it prosperous-looking, it was prosperous-looking...
She still had a long way to go before she was Zhu Bajie, though. To Sun Wukong's eyes, she was still painfully thin.
"Eat more. You're too skinny."
"Yes, yes."
"...Sister. Didn't you have something to say?"
Muhwa seemed to snap back to herself.
"Ah, right. The elders' mood is... off. The Sect Leader recovered, but they're all walking around with faces full of worry. They won't even come out, even with this festival atmosphere."
"Well, of course."
Sun Wukong answered as if it were nothing.
"Why? He lived, didn't he?"
"He lived, sure."
"And?"
"He lost his dantian."
"......!"
"As a martial artist, he's dead."
The first thing Taecheong did after his recovery was hold a memorial rite.
A Taoist requiem was a solemn affair.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
At the sound of the drums, the Taoists of the Six Harmonies Palace began burning talismans and setting the spirit tablets upright. These were the victims of the Wudang Blood Tragedy — the ones who had died on the road to the Namgung Clan. The rite should have been held long ago, but the assassination of the Sect Leader had postponed it until now.
A massacre on a scale unseen in more than a decade. The weight of it was enormous.
Pale-faced, Taecheong opened his mouth with grave formality.
O fleeting souls, faded to mist after giving all for Wudang.
As all things under heaven return to nature, so may you sleep in peace.
The martial artists drove their swords into the earth and offered a solemn salute. Muhwa and Namgung Seowol, standing off to one side, did the same. Sun Wukong's bearing lacked that crisp, practiced gravity, but he watched the rite in silence all the same.
Faint beads of sweat gathered on Taecheong's brow as he conducted the ceremony. At the altar where the spirit tablets stood, a purple-banded bamboo tablet occupied the center — the symbol of the Sect Leader's authority. Flanking it, two swords had been driven into the ground: the Songmun Ancient Sword, emblem of the Sect Leader himself, and beside it the Taiji Sword of Jang Sambong, returned after hundreds of years.
Without warning, Taecheong drew both blades and crossed them.
Wudang is a Taoist order — but it is also a jianghu sect that must survive in the martial world. The culprit behind this blood tragedy is an omen. Just as the Sama Order was defeated and vanished some ten-odd years ago, a new evil is sprouting somewhere even now. Wudang — take up your swords.
The words carried no inner energy at all. And yet the resonance that cut through the silence swept through every martial artist's chest in a single breath.
Sun Wukong let out a short breath of admiration.
Strong enough that inner energy doesn't even matter.
Humans were a race that hoarded the five desires close to the bone. They cycled through emotion after emotion, lurching through upheavals no one could predict. Which meant that one who could steal a heart was the greatest thief of all.
Taecheong seized the atmosphere of the entire Wudang Sect in a single stroke — so completely that it was almost possible to forget he had been bedridden and absent all this time.
No wonder Samcheong made that last desperate choice.
Sun Wukong smiled bitterly. For decades they had not dared to move, and the reason was Taecheong himself. However cunning Samcheong had been, however much they had Honghaea at their back, Taecheong was never an opponent to take lightly. In the end they had grown tired of waiting and gambled everything on assassination.
A man like that...
It was then that it happened.
Even as he bound the Wudang martial artists together through the requiem, Taecheong's gaze landed squarely on Sun Wukong. Since Wukong had already been watching the Sect Leader, their eyes met as if by nature.
A gaze of such purity that not a single thread of confusion clouded it. The face was exhausted, but the eyes were unshaken, and full of force.
A strong human.
Not merely a martial artist who had piled up inner energy. Simply a strong human being.
A Taoist of true spiritual attainment was something even most demons used to fear. Even the ones too frail to lift a blade. It was the nature itself that was hard and unshakable. Taecheong's eyes were like that now.
Then Taecheong spoke. His tone was quiet, but the resonance carried cleanly through the gathering.
"......!"
The Sect Leader's bow was profound, his courtesy extreme. In the very center of an assembly of every last Wudang disciple, the Sect Leader himself bent his waist to Sun Wukong.
Every gaze in the gathering turned to him at once. Sun Wukong's eyes narrowed.
This man. What is he thinking?
Even from their brief encounter, it was obvious the Sect Leader was no ordinary man. Still less some naive Taoist simpleton. If he had been, he never would have held Wudang steady through Samcheong's ceaseless, hungry circling.
Sun Wukong's read was exact.
"......"
Silence settled over the gathering. The only sound was the soft crackle of sparks from the fire.
On its face, a courteous request. But Sun Wukong felt the uncommon blade hidden inside it.
Of course.
This was a test.
The only one who can still observe the situation with any objectivity. In Wudang as it stood now, that was the Sect Leader alone.
He's suspecting me.
He knew the debt. He knew Sun Wukong had saved him, and had resolved the Wudang Blood Tragedy. But he possessed the same keen instinct that had let him hold the center of Wudang against Samcheong — and that instinct had flagged Sun Wukong as an alien variable. A man who had appeared from nowhere and, in what felt like an instant, quietly overrun the sect. Taecheong had recognized it at once, and decided it needed to be addressed.
The cold objectivity he had been able to maintain precisely because he had not watched events unfold, because he had woken and only listened — that objectivity was now showing its worth.
He may well decide I could become a threat to Wudang.
Taecheong would have grown impatient. His dantian was ruined. He was already nothing more than a receding tide, slowly giving way.
So this is what it means. He wants to test me before he goes.
This was no mere requiem sword dance.
He means to verify with his own hands whether he can trust me.
In short — the last sword dance. The inner energy that had not yet fully scattered, still lingering in his body. He intended to wring out every last drop of it to take Sun Wukong's measure. The desperate feeling of a man acting for Wudang's future was unmistakable.
Sun Wukong huffed a quiet laugh.
Well. Unfortunately.
Whether he would be a harm to Wudang or a help — that, he did not know.
A blade always wears down in the end.
Even a sword of the finest quality, once it drank blood and kept colliding, was bound to suffer. And unfortunately, to Sun Wukong, Wudang was a blade. Elevating Hocheong as his second. Drawing the Mugok Hall Master firmly onto his side. Taecheong had already sensed those things, however faintly.
Countless gazes poured over him. Among them, Taecheong's eyes flashed with a particular brilliance, and Sun Wukong met that light head-on.
"Will you join the sword dance, Teacher Sun?"
The Sect Leader pressed him again through the silence. There was something almost pleading in his voice.
If he burns through even the last of his inner energy, he'll be left a common village elder.
Sun Wukong knew the martial artist's habit well — the way they hoarded inner energy in the dantian more jealously than gold. The Sect Leader was a martial artist before he was a Taoist. He had lost his dantian, and paradoxically, that made the faint remnant of energy still scattered through his body all the more precious.
And he was prepared to throw every last shred of it away, if that was what it took to take Sun Wukong's measure.
Which was why Sun Wukong stepped forward.
Beneath a brilliant full moon, red flames burned. Beyond them, Sun Wukong's gold-red hair rolled like a wave — as if a golden halo were shattering into the firelight.
Sun Wukong bared a grin of pure white.