So What Can You Do About It?
Sun Wukong's body launched into the air.
He needed no running start. The unprecedented yoryeok stored in his dantian did not so much as stir. It was purely the spring of muscle, running from thigh through knee to ankle — the flesh of a being who had reigned as the Monkey King from the instant of his birth. On nothing but raw strength, elasticity, and flexibility, his frame soared weightlessly through empty air.
"M-Master Sun!"
Muyoung's voice reached his ear a beat too late. By the time it arrived, Sun Wukong had already leapt in a single bound and settled at the inn's entrance.
A massive frame. Extraordinary leaping power. There should have been a thunderous crash. Dust should have billowed in a choking cloud.
None of it happened.
Sun Wukong's form landed as softly as a falling feather. Even a passerby walking past the inn failed to notice him, eyes fixed straight ahead as they went on their way.
Watching that receding back, Muyoung's mouth fell open.
What the hell kind of movement was that?
His eyelids trembled. It had lasted only an instant — a leap executed with nothing but the pure elasticity of the flesh. No internal energy. Nothing else.
How thoroughly would you have to temper muscle and bone to move like that?
More than the dark steel staff he had swung with such crushing weight. More than those dazzling golden trajectories that had danced through the air. That simple movement struck Muyoung with a far more certain shock.
The staff's path, the martial arts that had flowed with a dancer's grace — those were stars in the sky. Things you could revere, admire, look up to. Paradoxically so unreal they never quite landed. But a leap was different. Wasn't that a movement every martial artist was supposed to hone as a matter of course?
I couldn't do that.
Not without internal energy, at least. Could he do it with the body alone?
A brief sigh troubled his thoughts. But only for a moment. Muyoung moved in a hurry. Sun Wukong was heading into the inn.
What was that just now?
Sun Wukong was always smiling. Even when he looked irritated, that characteristic grinning face never changed. Hadn't the man been smiling even when he had come to rescue them, tracking down Baekgwiwang? And this was someone who had displayed martial arts of that caliber with a smile on his face.
For a man like that to go stone-faced and chase someone down as if he meant to kill them... whoever the target was, they would not be ordinary.
"Master Sun!"
Muyoung rushed into the inn and immediately sought him out. Sun Wukong stood just inside the entrance, arms folded, his face twisted in a scowl. His gaze swept the room, sharp as a blade.
Muyoung carefully scanned the surroundings as well. The inn was relatively quiet. Only six people sat eating in silence.
Muyoung was a man of keen senses. When it came to reading the flow of inner energy he fell short of Seowol, but his instinct for atmospheres that defied description was far superior.
What is this? This sense of wrongness?
It did not take him long to pinpoint the source.
These people...
Six guests inside the inn. Muyoung's face went rigid.
Nobody is looking at us.
This was not some inflated sense of self-importance. Sun Wukong had the kind of appearance that drew eyes no matter who you were. Walk down any street and countless gazes would follow him. And it was not just Sun Wukong. This was Hefei, Anhui Province — the Namgung Clan's front yard. Muyoung wore the Namgung Clan's martial uniform and carried a sword.
And still — no reaction at all. Just as Muyoung felt the dissonance, so did Sun Wukong.
"Why's the balance in here so warped?"
"The balance, sir?"
Sun Wukong's hand shot toward the wall.
Tap.
A scrap of bright scarlet cloth hung on one wall, inscribed with the character for fortune. The kind of commonplace inscription every shop put up. The moment he flicked it aside, the scenery around them began to melt away like an ink painting dissolving in water.
"Wahaha. This meat's not half bad."
"I was just going to grab a quick bite, but maybe we ought to have a drink too, eh?"
"Hey, wait. What's with that golden-haired foreigner?"
"Hush! The young man behind him is wearing a Namgung Clan uniform!"
Noise flooded in all at once, stabbing at the eardrums. Muyoung winced despite himself. His pupils shook violently. There had clearly been only six people in the inn.
"What in the..."
A good twenty guests were now chattering away at full volume. They even stole glances at Sun Wukong and Muyoung, whispering among themselves. They were unmistakably aware of the two of them. Vivid. Alive.
Of course they were. They were living people.
"Then those six from before...?!"
"An illusion."
At that blunt reply, Muyoung bit his lip.
"A formation, then."
"A formation, huh..."
"That cloth Master Sun knocked aside must have been the formation's Life Gate."
Muyoung clicked his tongue in amazement.
"Was the formation already in place, or..."
He swallowed the rest. He did not need to finish. Sun Wukong knew exactly what he had been about to say.
"It wasn't prepared in advance. There's no trace of that at all."
"You mean..."
"Someone made it just now. A moment ago."
"With a single scrap of cloth? That fast?"
Muyoung's eyes went wide, struggling to comprehend. The difficulty of Qimen formations was beyond words. Even a gathering of formation specialists needed days to produce a single decent one.
"But what we just saw was anything but simple."
A perfect illusion, conjured in the blink of an eye.
"It's different from what you Murim folk call a formation."
"It's not a formation, then?"
"No, it is a formation, but..."
Sun Wukong knew what formations were. He had seen the Qimen arrays installed throughout Changryong Chulgwan, after all.
More precisely, this is how Taoist arts evolved.
He had no trouble piercing through to the core of Qimen formations.
To wield Taoist arts, you needed a renowned Daoist who'd accumulated spiritual power, or a Buddhist monk so steeped in the Dharma he was close to enlightenment.
The first time Sun Wukong had seen a Qimen formation, he had been rather surprised. The results they produced — blinding fog, mazes you could not help but lose yourself in, even auditory and visual hallucinations. That was a far cry from martial arts powered by internal energy. It was Taoist magic, plain and simple.
Maybe people capable of accumulating spiritual power and dharma force the way those renowned Daoists and monks once did grew scarce. Formations originated from Taoist arts.
A talent only the chosen could wield. But those who were not chosen inevitably coveted it, envied it, resented it. And that led to attempts to seize it for themselves. What was born from that was the formation.
"I've never seen a formation principle like this."
"Of course you haven't. It's closer to Taoist arts than a formation."
"Taoist arts?"
"Close to Taoist arts. Not the real thing. And it's not quite a formation either. Something mixed — Taoist arts and formation blended together. Like a transitional stage, going from one to the other."
"A transitional stage?"
"Yeah, just... think of it as a primitive formation."
Sun Wukong looked frustrated, as if he could not quite find the words. Muyoung's brow furrowed. Taoist arts? There were stories that the refined Daoists of Wudang could perform such things, but were those not a bit far-fetched?
Sun Wukong paid Muyoung's skepticism no mind at all, lost in serious thought.
"The atmosphere was the same, but the face looked pretty different, so I wasn't sure at first."
A faint smile touched the corner of Sun Wukong's mouth.
He grinned, mischievous. A smile close to a child's innocence, without a shred of malice. But the red eyes above it had gone cold and still.
"What the hell is all this."
Jo Hae stared at the reports piled high across his desk and bit down hard on his lip. Countless reports were ordinarily processed below before they ever reached him as branch leader. Someone's commission, intelligence that needed confirming, the Hao Sect operatives' activities that followed. What came up to Jo Hae was the essence alone. In other words, there was no reason his table should be buried under this much paper.
Of course, the present situation was hardly ordinary. Jo Hae looked at the thickest stack of all.
"Personal records on persons of interest for the Grand Assembly of Murim. Commissions already coming in... and intelligence we need to lock down first. This is the kind of work that needs the Hao Sect headquarters throwing their full support behind us, every last person on it."
This was precisely the period they ought to have been throwing themselves at this work and nothing else. But the reports piled on either side of that stack were a problem too.
"What exactly am I supposed to do with this..."
A helpless feeling welled up in him all at once.
"Sima. How am I supposed to find this?"
Jo Hae was, relatively speaking, a refined and well-spoken man. Even he was swearing now.
SUBJECT:Commissioner of the assassination request targeting the Wudang Sect Leader
NAME:Sima (surname only)
APPEARANCE:Unknown
ORIGIN:Unknown
GIVEN NAME:Unknown
No further identifying information provided.
"The person who commissioned an assassination on the Wudang Sect Leader? That's all you've got? No description, no origin, not even a given name. You hand me a single surname — Sima — and tell me to find him. Is this a joke?"
Naturally, a request like this could not be processed. Ordinarily it would be refused. Anyone could see the money and manpower going out would far exceed whatever came in.
The problem was that he could not refuse.
"That Sun fellow just had to..."
The one who had lodged this absurd request was none other than Sun Wukong. Naturally, it had landed on Jo Hae's desk as the single most important commission he had. Everything in front of him went dark.
"I ought to just rip this damn—"
His hand, about to tear the paper in a fit of rage, stopped cold. He cut a sidelong glance at the man standing by the door, a sword scar carved across his face. A man who reeked more rawly of the unorthodox path.
"Hah."
It was the ruffian from Hoga Manor. Of course, the man's martial arts were nothing special. Jo Hae could have dealt with him in a single breath. But Jo Hae had no choice but to watch himself around him.
Nominally, Hoga Manor was a faction belonging to the Hao Sect's Anhui branch.
"Damn it. Being watched this openly..."
His fate had been sealed from the moment he bit into the poisoned apple Sun Wukong had held out. In exchange for keeping his power as branch leader, he had had to hand over the Hao Sect.
"Fine. I'll grant that much. Anyone who commissioned a hit on the Wudang Sect Leader is someone the Hao Sect would throw its full weight behind hunting down. That one's worth it."
Jo Hae barely managed to settle his nerves. But the paper Hoga Jangju had just brought over, claiming it was an urgent task from Sun Wukong — looking at that, his temper flared all over again.
"But what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"
An irritated voice burst out of him on its own.
Pale face. Strangely youthful features.
Age: Extremely advanced. Immeasurable.
Jo Hae let out a groan.
"...That's it? That's everything?"
Find this person, just like that. Urgently. Ahead of every other matter.
"Do they think the Hao Sect is some all-knowing oracle? Give it a poke and it'll spit out everything under heaven?"
He let out a hollow laugh.
"I don't know. I don't know a thing. I'm not finding this. And what are they going to do if I don't?"
Jo Hae decided to dig in his heels. Every last pair of hands the Hao Sect had was already buried in the Grand Assembly of Murim. Besides, this was an order with no clear results to show for it. He could sit on it, then go through the motions once the assembly was over.
"What can he even do about it. Nag me to find the guy faster, fret over the progress, check in on how it's going — besides that, what can he possibly do?"
Jo Hae snorted and flung the paper back over his shoulder.
Snap.
"...?"
The instant he realized that was a sound that should not have happened, a strange sensation crept over the nape of his neck. His head turned with a creak, like a broken doll.
Golden light rippled.
Sun Wukong was holding the paper Jo Hae had just flung away, grinning from ear to ear. A cheerful laugh.
Jo Hae shook his head like a man possessed.