What Was I in My Past Life?
Ojeong's brow furrowed.
"Tch. He's not gonna chew me out over this, right?"
A sudden thread of unease needled through him, and he shook his head hard.
"Nah. It's not like I was sitting on my ass."
Sure, he'd been busy. Plenty busy.
"I kept a close eye on the Hoga Manor boys, and I, y'know. Helped out where I could."
The end of the sentence trailed off into nothing. Ojeong simply did not possess Sun Wukong's bottomless shamelessness; he couldn't talk himself any further into the lie.
"I mean, he only told me to watch them. What else was I supposed to do?"
His assignment had been simple enough. Before Sun Wukong left to settle the Wudang Blood Incident, the only task he'd handed Ojeong was to keep watch over Hoga Manor.
Ojeong had nearly cheered. The Wudang Blood Incident — even the name was vicious, a thing that sounded less like a case and more like a slaughter. How long had he spent dreading it? Sun Wukong had this persistent habit of keeping Ojeong close, and Ojeong had been quietly terrified he'd get dragged along into that nightmare. Thankfully, he hadn't. Watch Hoga Manor while I'm gone. That was all.
And Ojeong had done his job. Hoga Jangju was a genuine underworld butcher, but even he didn't dare mistreat the fox who'd borrowed a tiger's hide. Then Myodu-eung — who'd gone with Sun Wukong — came back.
"It did go from 'just keep an eye on them' to 'help Hoga Manor shove the Hao Sect out,' I'll give him that."
A letter, tied to Myodu-eung's ankle. Something about heading to Mt. Wudang after wrapping up the Wudang Blood Incident. Sun Wukong had clearly figured he wouldn't be back in Anhui for a while, and so he'd piled more work onto Ojeong's plate.
The problem was that Ojeong hadn't finished all of it.
"Hah. Like that's as easy as it sounds."
He swallowed and grumbled under his breath. Even after Hoga Manor unified the Anhui underworld, their influence hadn't swollen overnight. Anhui Province had never been a place where the unorthodox path could spread its wings. How were you supposed to expand in the Namgung Clan's own front yard — a clan that drew steel first and asked questions later?
Holding the entire Anhui underworld still meant running into a hard ceiling. The Hao Sect, on the other hand, was a nationwide operation in the truest sense. There wasn't a corner of the Central Plains without a Hao Sect operative. And not just the Central Plains — rumor had it that even the swindling water-sellers who hauled their wares by camel across the great desert, all the way out in Tibet, were Hao Sect men.
"Having a backer is a whole different animal."
If things went south, the Hao Sect could always call in support from headquarters. Telling him to beat them in a straight contest and drive them out was absurd.
"The real question is whether that Sun fellow sees it that way."
Ojeong didn't have any clever solution of his own. When it came to the underworld's nastier schemes, Hoga Jangju was far better at them anyway. The smartest thing Ojeong could do was take a step back and keep prodding the man forward.
"What's he gonna say, honestly? In a little over a month I built them up enough to actually compete with the Hao Sect. Huh? That's already incredible."
He shook the unease out of his head with more force than it deserved.
"Yeah. I've done enough. I've done plenty. Damn right I have."
A flutter of wings.
Ojeong's gaze snapped around. An owl had slipped in at some point and was staring straight at him — with a look that said, quite plainly, that he was pathetic.
"Ahem. What's with the look? Just because that lunatic Sun called you an Earth Deity, you think you're some kind of mountain spirit, you damn owl?"
He hated those round eyes. They always made him feel like he was being watched.
"What kind of owl shows up in the middle of the day every damn time…"
Sun Wukong was fond of the thing, so there was nothing Ojeong could actually do about it. He shooed Myodu-eung off with a thoroughly unsettled scowl.
"Myodu-eung!"
Muhwa called out with genuine delight. The moment they crossed into Anhui Province, a single bird had come cutting across the open sky.
"It really must be a spirit beast. How did it know to fly all the way out here in one go?"
She stroked the owl's feathers as it burrowed into her arms and nuzzled against her. Seowol tilted her head.
"Why is an owl flying around in the daytime?"
"Because it's an Earth Deity."
"This is an Earth Deity?"
Sun Wukong answered without much interest and set Myodu-eung on his hand.
"Why'd you come?"
The people around them flinched. He spoke to it the way you'd speak to a person — completely natural, no pause, no self-consciousness. Plenty of people talked to animals they were fond of, of course. But that was not the same thing as holding a conversation.
"Ah. So that's it. Ojeong's slacking off, is he?"
Sun Wukong heaved a long, theatrical sigh.
"Tch. This bastard hasn't lost his past-life personality after all."
"…Was there a letter tied to Myodu-eung's leg?"
Muhwa asked, eyes narrowing. Sun Wukong shook his head.
"It told me."
"You conversed with Myodu-eung?"
"Yeah."
"I see."
So that's the setting we're going with.
Muhwa finally understood the things Ojeong had been muttering about now and then. It's just… a slightly unique worldview, right? The kind of strange inner logic that only geniuses seemed to live inside. Didn't that happen sometimes? A born prodigy doing things ordinary people simply couldn't follow. She decided, firmly, to treat it that way.
If I want to keep Teacher Sun from leaving the Namgung Clan, I need to stay in his good graces however I can.
She resolved to play along with Sun Wukong's world as hard as she possibly could.
"Come to think of it, Teacher Sun, you mentioned we were sworn siblings, didn't you?"
"Sworn siblings?"
"You said that you and I were sworn siblings in a past life."
"That's right. That's why I'm Wukong, my little brother's Ojeong, and your childhood name was Oh Neung, wasn't it?"
Sharing the character for enlightenment as a generational name was a rather curious coincidence.
"A name is never just a coincidence."
"Pardon?"
Muhwa started. He'd spoken as if he'd reached straight into her thoughts. Sun Wukong went on, perfectly unbothered.
"You had that look. The 'well, what a curious coincidence' look. That's all."
"Honestly. I'll have to start watching my face around you, Teacher Sun."
"A name is a powerful tether of fate. Every bond, every connection, gathers beneath it. So the Law Enforcement Hall Master being Oh Neung, my being Wukong, and that Ojeong brat as well — none of it is chance. Not from the past life on down."
"A past life…"
Something shifted in Muhwa's expression. If this were nothing more than the strange furniture of Sun Wukong's imagination, it shouldn't have felt this weighty — this strangely scholarly, this heavy. Treating it as a joke, as some amusing private fantasy, suddenly didn't sit right.
Sun Wukong met her eyes.
The air around them went still.
They'd been traveling a little apart from the Wudang party, but every one of those people was a master. There was no chance Sun Wukong's voice had failed to reach their ears. Muhwa turned her face away, trying and failing to hide the color climbing into her cheeks.
"Ahem. So. What was I in my past life, then?"
"You're curious about your past life?"
"I don't put complete faith in the Buddhist cycle of rebirth, but still — anyone would wonder. What kind of person they were before."
Sun Wukong's brow pinched, as if he were genuinely weighing something. Muhwa found herself quietly expectant. In that incomprehensible world of his, what did she look like?
He answered with a faintly awkward look.
"Knowing your past life isn't always a good thing."
"…?"
"There's a reason people forget when they're reborn."
"What was I, that you're dragging it out like this?"
"…Zhu Bajie."
"Zhu Bajie?"
Muhwa tilted her head. Unfortunately, she was not well-versed in the folk tales that circulated among common people. Running the entire machinery of the Namgung Clan left no time for that kind of wild, idle gossip; she never went near it.
Seowol, unexpectedly, knew. Her eyes lit up.
"Zhu Bajie!"
"What's Zhu Bajie, Seowol?"
"A pig that walks on two legs."
"…"
Muhwa's face went rigid. Her head turned toward Sun Wukong with a sound that could almost have been a creak. He looked anywhere but at her and suddenly found the scenery extremely interesting.
"Anyway, that Ojeong brat, slacking off as usual. Can't even do the job I gave him…"
Perhaps it was simply that a little over a month had passed since he'd left. The Namgung Clan Estate that met Sun Wukong's eyes was unmistakably different from before.
Not in any dramatic sense — no walls torn down, no new halls raised. But the atmosphere had changed completely. Where a hushed stillness had once hung over the grounds, the place was now lively to the point of noise.
"Hey! You there! That's already been painted — you can't just slap another coat on it! And I asked for this collapsed section to be repaired, can you not see it? Look here, look. Weeds everywhere. What kind of garden is this supposed to be?"
Laborers clung to every corner of the estate. Among them, here and there, were men in Namgung martial uniforms. That alone wouldn't have been enough to startle the Wudang party traveling with them.
"Over there — the one with his sleeves rolled up, hauling stone himself. That couldn't possibly be… the Heavenly Edge Sword Star?"
Hall Master Mugok asked in a dazed voice. In the direction he pointed, a man who looked born to the martial path had his sleeves shoved up, scolding laborers while putting his own back into the work.
Sun Wukong snorted.
"For a clan lord, the man hasn't got a shred of dignity."
He muttered it under his breath. Hall Master Mugok's mouth fell open — and not because the lord of the Namgung Clan was laboring among common workmen.
"This presence…"
A faint tremor ran through Mugok's eyes.
The Heavenly Edge Sword Star, Namgung Jinbaek. The swordsman of the age who steered the Namgung Clan. He had always been measured against the previous lord — the Sword God — and always come out looking faded by the comparison. That had never made the title of Ten Great Masters mean any less. He was, quietly, a point of comparison for the Wudang Sect Leader as well: both swordsmen, both men who led a great power.
Hall Master Mugok was Taecheong's direct disciple, and he carried a Wudang man's pride. He had always assumed, almost without thinking, that the Wudang Sect Leader stood a cut above. Perhaps that was the martial world's fault — its habit of diminishing the Heavenly Edge Sword Star by holding him forever against the previous Sword God.
In this moment, Mugok felt that pride come apart in his hands.
"Has he… surpassed the Transcendental Realm?"
A presence you couldn't sense at all — and yet one that, without meaning to, closed around every heart and mind nearby. Beyond the Transcendental Realm lay the Absolute Realm, the height said to belong to the Three Venerables.
Has he reached it?
That was when Namgung Jinbaek, still mixed in among the laborers, spotted Sun Wukong's party and his eyes went wide.
"Well now. I was told you'd be coming with the Wudang people, so I assumed it would take time. You made excellent speed."
He approached with a face thoroughly smeared in dirt and dust. Muhwa and Seowol offered formal greetings. Sun Wukong answered with something closer to a grunt.
"What's all this, then? You've kicked up quite the fuss."
"Haha. How could I sit still? Not after realizing that a truly monstrous lot of demonic heretics have been gathering strength in the dark."
"Even so, this is a bit much."
Sun Wukong's brow furrowed. Namgung Jinbaek clapped him on the shoulder, easy and familiar — and Hall Master Mugok's eyes wavered. The complete absence of formality in the way Namgung Jinbaek treated Sun Wukong was almost unnatural. He handled him the way you'd handle a dear old friend.
Teacher Sun is this close to the Namgung Clan?
Too close, if he were merely the master of the Young Lord and Namgung Seowol. And the surprises were not finished. What Namgung Jinbaek said next left Mugok's mouth hanging open.
"This is all your doing, Brother Sun. Your enemies are Namgung's enemies — and soon enough, the enemies of all Orthodox Murim. That's simply how it is with the demonic path."
Every Wudang envoy went still.
Brother Sun?
The Heavenly Edge Sword Star addresses him as elder brother?
The lord of the Namgung Clan calls this man his elder brother!
The lord of the Namgung Clan — calling someone elder brother. And a someone who looked, to any eye, younger than he was.
Another thought surfaced in Hall Master Mugok's mind, unbidden.
Master called Teacher Sun his senior brother as well.
A stunned light filled Mugok's eyes.
Just how are we supposed to rank this man's generation?
If this fact alone got out into the martial world, Sun Wukong's standing would become something to be feared. There wouldn't be a soul left in Orthodox Murim who could straighten his back in this man's presence.
The stares pouring toward him were close to shock. Sun Wukong did not appear to notice.
"So that's why you went to the Wulin Alliance and put this together?"
"I got to put my negotiating skills to work for the first time in a while."
Sun Wukong scratched his chin.
"Eh. I'm staying out of it. I want to rest."
"Haha. It wouldn't hurt for you to show your face properly at a gathering like this, Brother Sun."
Sun Wukong's brow tightened again.
"You were the one who fought those unidentified demonic heretics operating in the shadows. This is the occasion to drag them out into the light and make them known."
Namgung Jinbaek grinned.
"Every orthodox sect in the martial world, gathered in one place."
Right here. At the Namgung Clan Estate.