Where Does Desire Come From?
The blade sang.
A vibration they called the Sword's Cry.
With every arc it carved—left to right, high to low, along the diagonal—a keening followed in its wake.
Ojeong's trembling gaze locked onto the tip of the sword.
Damn it.
The curse rose unbidden. His whole body was soaked through; he'd thrown off his upper robe long ago. Soft flesh still clung to his frame, but thick, heavy muscles coiled and flexed beneath it.
For all the abuse he'd taken, Ojeong had once been a river pirate of some repute, and before that a lay disciple of Shaolin. He wrung every ounce from those muscles, adding stroke after stroke to the sword's path.
How many cuts had it been now?
Until the air around him turned hazy with steam from his own sweat, Ojeong kept squeezing his muscles dry. Not a scrap of inner energy. Nothing but the spring of raw muscle.
That bastard doesn't know the meaning of "enough."
Ojeong's eyes flashed darkly.
Every evening, the sparring with Sun Wukong. It was no exaggeration to say he felt like he was going to die. Sun Wukong spent his days rushing about, endlessly busy with who-knew-what, yet he kept every word he'd spoken.
Feels like every joint in my body is snapping.
It was hell, every single day. They sparred. He opened his eyes. And it was morning. He had never once walked back to his room on his own two legs, clear-headed and intact.
I'm not even that guy's disciple. So why?
Honestly, Ojeong found the whole thing distasteful. Namgung Seowol, who had trotted after Sun Wukong like a puppy, watched Ojeong cross blades with him during their spars with eyes full of naked envy. Ojeong, meanwhile, was ready to lose his mind.
It's not that I have no desire at all.
He, too, was a martial artist of the jianghu. Captivated by the prowess Sun Wukong had shown him, he had yearned to break through the wall that had blocked his Water Transformation Qi. And he had grown, to a point.
But that was as far as it went.
Isn't this enough to live as a Peak Realm expert in the martial world?
He had no family to protect. With this one body and this one sword, even at the Peak Realm, he could live well enough in the jianghu.
A quiet life of contentment. It meant he could take things easy, enjoy his days as if he were there and not there at all.
That was the extent of Ojeong's desire.
He had been a man of little greed from birth. The saying that one lives simply because one was born fit him perfectly. He had never hungered for success, never prayed for advancement. The greediest he'd ever gotten was something as modest as taking a boat out and hauling in a net full of fish.
And yet even he had been seized by fierce desire a few times.
The sword swinging almost of its own accord. The Sword's Cry vibrating along every trajectory. Beyond the trembling blade-tip, visible through his ragged breathing, Ojeong sank deeper into thought.
It was a common enough story.
Ojeong had been born and raised in an ordinary fishing village. But in this age, an ordinary life meant living with the constant knowledge that you might die at any moment. A fishing village burning for a pirate crew's amusement was simply the way of the times.
Ojeong's family, his neighbors, his friends screaming as they died—that tragedy was hardly his alone. Somewhere on the Central Plains, somewhere in the martial world, the same massacre was happening even now.
Ojeong survived.
Not because he was especially strong. Because of the Water Transformation Qi he had learned. As a child, he hadn't even known it was a martial art. He'd thought of it as a fun little trick that let him dive well and breathe underwater.
But to the pirates' eyes, it was no mere trick.
"Hey now, look at this colt of a boy. Let's take him. He'll pull his weight well enough."
"Look at him in the water. Train him a bit and he'll be useful."
The talent to move freely in water. And, decisively, the fact that he was still just a boy. The pirates had no hesitation about kidnapping a child who showed promise. Beat them just enough and you'd have yourself a fine pirate. If that didn't work out, you could always switch trades and sell them off.
Ojeong was young, but he was sharp. He boarded his enemies' ship. Working for the men who had murdered his family, his friends, his neighbors filled him with revulsion—but he endured it for the sake of the single hunger that ruled his mind.
Ojeong burned with one desire. The most common, and the most primal.
Vengeance.
There was only one legitimate way to climb the ranks among pirates. Surpass the man above you. Naturally, Ojeong started at the very bottom. So he made up his mind. He would bring them down one by one, all the way to the top.
The brand of revenge gave him desire. From the lowest rung to the highest.
The pirates fell to Ojeong's challenges, one after another. He killed them all, using mistakes as his excuse. He slaughtered every last one of them under the pretext that he'd had no choice in the heat of a fight. And so he became the pirate chief.
What he felt afterward was a savage hollowness. Emptiness.
It was no accident that, after finishing his revenge, he wandered until he shaved his head and became a monk. By chance, he was able to become a Shaolin monk. He was already well past the usual age, but for some reason the Shaolin monks accepted him as a lay disciple.
For a man who had always lacked desire, the Buddhist life of shedding want and emptying oneself suited him surprisingly well.
But it wasn't long before a high elder of Shaolin defrocked him. The reason was simple.
"You have to fill your desires before you can learn to empty them. Wander the jianghu and fill your desires first."
Words he couldn't begin to understand. Ojeong had exploded with resentment.
Just say a pirate playing monk rubs you the wrong way.
And so Ojeong left Shaolin and wandered. Then he ran into Semo, whom he'd known from a neighboring fishing village in childhood, and they started a bandit's life together.
Calling it a bandit's life was generous. The first time they ran into Sun Wukong, they'd been chewed out—what kind of bandits were they, with only two people?
But that had been enough.
Have desire. Desire for what? Fine food, delicacies, rare flavors—just filling your belly was enough. He was a bit old to lose himself in a woman's powder, and after his time at Shaolin, his eyes didn't wander that way.
That was as far as Ojeong's desire went.
And yet Sun Wukong, too, told him to have desire. In a world where every high monk, every Daoist, every sage said to empty yourself of desire. And to Ojeong, they said the opposite: have desire.
Watching the blade-tip cut through empty air even now, without conscious thought, Ojeong suddenly muttered.
"Where else, you idiot. You don't want to die, do you?"
That familiar voice, laced with laughter. Ojeong let out a sigh.
"Who in this world wants to die?"
"That's desire right there. The desire to live."
"So, uh, really..."
"Look at you. A guy who used to be all puffed up with fat, now sweating himself dry swinging a sword. Where do you think that drive comes from? The will to live, that's what I'm telling you."
"So, no, Great Hero, even granting that, this is a bit extreme..."
Sun Wukong gripped his heavy steel staff tight. The sight of that smiling face casually swinging a monstrous steel staff like a sorghum stalk sent cold sweat beading on Ojeong's face.
Sun Wukong spoke calmly.
"..."
Where does desire come from?
The most primal instinct. Every mortal's will to survive.
A fierce hunger for life twisted in Ojeong's chest.
"That's strange."
Sun Wukong cocked his head.
"Sabu, why?"
Seowol, who had been meditating in a full lotus, cracked one eye open.
Sun Wukong sucked in a breath.
"Are you meditating, or just pretending to?"
"That obvious?"
"Good grief. At my age, I'm raising a kid. Raising a kid."
Sun Wukong shook his head.
"Why am I so busy?"
The thought drifted through his mind unbidden.
"I left finding that Sima bastard and the fellow we saw at the inn to the Hao Clan."
And that wasn't all. He pretended otherwise, but Sun Wukong was keeping an eye on the Orthodox Grand Assembly as well. He was reasonably concerned that others like Wudang's Samcheong might have been recruited by the shadow organization. But that, too, the Hao Clan was handling on its own.
Having farmed out three important jobs, Sun Wukong ought to have been at his leisure.
"Have I ever lived this hard?"
Well. Even back at Flower-Fruit Mountain's Water Curtain Cave, he'd spent his days taking long naps and picking fruit. The only time he'd been busy was when he was dragging Sanzang to India.
Last night I spent time working on Ojeong.
It was no simple matter. In his own way, Sun Wukong was watching over Ojeong with painstaking care. Like it or not, they were sworn brothers. A precious bond carried over from a previous life.
Of course, if Ojeong ever heard that, he would argue that beating a man half to death and calling it "attention" was a stretch—but Sun Wukong meant it.
Living things were peculiar that way. If you didn't swing the staff with a genuine will to kill, they sensed it, however faintly. Whether this person meant to kill them or not. There was no helping it. Sun Wukong had been conducting, quite literally, live-combat spars.
He faced Ojeong with the genuine intent to kill. So even Sun Wukong had to concentrate. One slip and Ojeong really might drop dead. How much painstaking care did that require? Even the great Sun Wukong burned through enough focus to feel fatigue.
And then, once the sparring was done and morning came—
"Is the bloodlust gone from my sword?"
Seowol would trot over like a puppy and say the exact same thing.
Sun Wukong looked at her with thoroughly unimpressed eyes.
"If you can't even focus for a tea's time, can you call that meditation?"
Seowol glanced sideways, reading the room, and looked away.
Sun Wukong sighed.
"Then again, you're no Buddha. How are you supposed to wipe the bloodlust away?"
He had caught the impatience rising in Seowol's face. Originally, that face had been utterly expressionless. These days, faintly but surely, emotion had begun to show through. Perhaps because she had never had any to begin with, Seowol had no idea how to hide what she felt. Like a child, every feeling sat right there on the surface.
"Why are you so impatient?"
"When the Grand Assembly opens there'll be a tournament too, Sabu. I have to enter."
"So you want to break through to the next realm as soon as possible?"
"Yeah."
Sun Wukong felt a quiet pride. For all the desire this little hellion was showing, she had faithfully obeyed his order not to swing a sword until the bloodlust was gone.
She doesn't feel like Sanzang. No matter how I look at her, she doesn't look like Sanzang.
Had there ever been a bond that felt like this? He thought it over carefully, then shook his head with certainty.
No. There wasn't.
To be precise, it felt like looking into a mirror. As if he were looking at himself.
The one who had talked back to Sanzang's every word and yet followed those words more faithfully than anyone—that hadn't been Ojeong, hadn't been Bajie. It had been Sun Wukong himself.
And Seowol's savage sword strikes, thick with a bloodlust she could not suppress, were much the same as the ferocious nature of the Monkey King Sun Wukong.
The Sun Wukong of now, teaching her to hold that nature down. Hadn't Sanzang been doing the same thing back then, trying to quiet the Monkey King's savagery?
I'm starting to understand how that pale, washed-out crybaby felt.
Sun Wukong smiled bitterly. How had he himself learned to hold that ferocity in check? Recalling Sanzang's teachings, he spoke.
"Seowol."
"Yeah, Sabu. Want to spar?"
"Have you ever read a Buddhist scripture?"
"A scripture?"
Seowol's face twisted in a way it rarely did.
Sun Wukong was firm.
"We're starting with scripture study. One-on-one tutoring from a sitting Buddha."
"...Ugh."
Sun Wukong looked at Seowol, who was making her dislike plainer than he'd almost ever seen, and smiled faintly.
Teaching Ojeong in the evenings, teaching Seowol in the mornings—his stamina was already draining away in sheets. That was why Sun Wukong had lately been so strangely, unaccountably busy.
No. There was one more reason.
After finishing scripture study with Seowol, Sun Wukong had been about to flop down for a late nap when someone came looking for him.
"You..."
Sun Wukong's face crumpled of its own accord.