Let's Do a Job Together
Back in his quarters, Geom Wi-hyeon sank into thought.
The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven...
It had been the briefest of collisions. They had locked eyes and traded a handful of words. That was all.
Only after returning to his rooms did Geom Wi-hyeon realize his back was soaked through with cold sweat. The cling of damp cloth against his waist was deeply unpleasant.
"We didn't even cross swords."
Sun Wukong hadn't drawn a weapon. He had simply done something outrageous — leaned his own face into the tip of a blade aimed squarely at him.
Had Geom Wi-hyeon so chosen, taking the man's head would have been no great feat. He would not even have needed the head. Driving the sword straight through and punching a hole in that face would have been easier than wringing a chicken's neck.
In a clash between masters, a sword closed a gap of a dozen paces in the space of a blink. What, then, of a blade already kissing the bridge of a man's nose?
Anyone watching would have thought the same. If a fight had broken out, its beginning would have rested solely on Geom Wi-hyeon's will, and its outcome would have been of his making. Had he resolved to do it, taking Sun Wukong's life would have been easy.
Of course, Geom Wi-hyeon was no fool. Infamous or not, the man was a guest of the Namgung Clan — master to the young clan head, sworn brother to the clan head himself. Killing him would have been an act of sheer stupidity.
"Did he calculate that far?"
The certainty that Geom Wi-hyeon would not kill him.
"Can that certainty alone explain the look in his eyes?"
Was it really nothing more than conviction?
Geom Wi-hyeon rejected the thought without a moment's hesitation.
"No man can be that bold on the mere certainty that he will not be killed."
The world was full of daring men. Masters who would not yield even in a fight that felt like hell itself were a dime a dozen. There were born martial artists who, faced with an opponent clearly stronger than themselves, still refused to despair and rose to the challenge.
"But that wasn't boldness. It wasn't guts, either."
A fierce sense of familiarity washed over him. When had he seen eyes like those?
"...The Sect Leader."
The words slipped out before he knew it, and Geom Wi-hyeon's eyes went wide.
The Sect Leader of the Mount Hua Sect. One of the Ten Great Masters, and in his youth a rival spoken of in the same breath as the Sword God — the greatest master Mount Hua had ever produced.
"It isn't a matter of martial prowess."
He had not simply felt that Sun Wukong was a master on the Sect Leader's level.
"If anything, his martial realm is..."
Geom Wi-hyeon swallowed dryly. The words were almost too presumptuous to speak aloud.
In his youth, the Sect Leader of Mount Hua had possessed such talent that he had been named among the candidates for Greatest Under Heaven, yet he had settled as one of the Ten Great Masters. The presence Geom Wi-hyeon had glimpsed from Sun Wukong, however brief, was something else entirely.
Unless he has some peculiar method of completely concealing every scrap of inner energy and presence, he has reached the state of Returning to Simplicity.
Beyond the Transcendental Realm — the Peerless Realm. The very height occupied by the Three Venerables who now ruled the martial world.
To set such a man beside the Sect Leader of Mount Hua was, for Geom Wi-hyeon, a presumption so grave he could scarcely bring himself to make it.
Then why had the Sect Leader's eyes come to mind?
"Those eyes... they weren't a master's eyes so much as..."
It did not take him long to understand.
"The certainty that he can control everything perfectly."
Geom Wi-hyeon's pupils trembled.
It was the same look that flowed from the Sect Leader, who held the entirety of Mount Hua in the palm of his hand. No matter what the disciples did, no matter what schemes the elders pursued, even if sudden disaster struck — the fierce conviction that within Mount Hua, everything would unfold according to his will.
Sun Wukong's eyes had been the same.
Geom Wi-hyeon let out a hollow laugh.
"Even in a situation so extreme that a sword-tip might snatch his life at any moment — that fierce certainty that, in the end, things will go exactly as he intends."
They had not even crossed blades in a formal bout. And yet he understood now why he had stepped back. Why tension had soaked his spine. Why he had felt so unsettled.
"He was a player watching the game unfold upon the board. And I was nothing but a stone."
A faint crease formed at the corner of Geom Wi-hyeon's eye.
"Rumors that the Namgung Clan Head has attained enlightenment have already begun to leak out, however quietly."
The Mount Hua Sect needed to keep the Namgung Clan in check. Even if that meant dirty, underhanded methods. That was precisely why Geom Wi-hyeon, of all people, had been dispatched.
"But this is too great a variable."
The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — Sun Wukong. His intimate ties to the Namgung Clan. And on top of that, a martial realm so deep it defied easy measure.
Up to that point, at least, the variables were still manageable. The addition of one more peerless master did not frighten Geom Wi-hyeon overmuch. The foundation of Mount Hua, which styled itself the foremost sword sect under heaven, was not so frail as to tremble before a single supreme expert.
"But those eyes..."
What was he supposed to do about those eyes? That look that seemed to gaze down upon all things with such arrogant composure. Eyes that did not belong to a human being — the kind of gaze, perhaps, that immortals cast down upon the earth from high above the heavens. Geom Wi-hyeon's instincts refused to step outside that field of vision.
He had kept a scrupulous line all this time — and he had just realized he was already standing on it.
Perhaps this line is the threshold of life and death itself — or something that lies even beyond it.
Geom Wi-hyeon pondered, and pondered again.
And then a visitor came to him.
His quarters. A room no one could enter without his leave. And then, all at once, a childlike face surfaced beyond the wavering candlelight.
"...Who are you?"
Geom Wi-hyeon's hand settled on his sword hilt. His low voice was thick with wariness. The body was a grown man's, but the face was a child's — a combination so uncanny that Geom Wi-hyeon felt a sharp, visceral wrongness.
"If you do not answer, I will take your head here and now."
In that instant, the childlike face's lips parted.
Sip-pal-gong believed he had the wind at his back.
"Contentment was always a hard word for a man to live by."
No one knew that better than Sip-pal-gong himself.
"I could live large in Hunan if I wanted. Contentment, a quiet life of honest poverty — I could have those things whenever I chose."
Not long ago, at Manhyangru, Sip-pal-gong had quietly stirred people up and drawn them together. The proposal was simple: the mid-sized and lesser sects and clans — those shut out of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans within the Pan-Orthodox Alliance — should join forces and speak with one voice.
The idea had spread beneath the surface with surprising speed. The sheer number of people who had already come seeking Sip-pal-gong was staggering.
"They may be mid-sized sects, but in their own regions they are local powers — landed gentry with real voices."
Sip-pal-gong himself was proof enough. He was the lord of Geumgeom Manor, seated in Yuanling of Hunan Province. He introduced himself without shame as the master of a country sect, yet in Yuanling he was every inch a local magnate.
Widen the view to the whole of the Central Plains, and his was a name so small it barely registered — a reputation of no consequence at all. But Sip-pal-gong had ambition.
"If you wear a sword, you are supposed to harbor great ambition. That is only proper."
Just beside Yuanling lay Zhangjiajie, a masterpiece of heaven-wrought wilderness. Look upon those mountains and that scenery long enough, and a vast, heroic spirit took root in a man's chest.
"This Grand Assembly is my chance to set foot in the wider world of Murim."
From Yuanling — infinitely small and tucked away when you looked at the Central Plains as a whole — into the world of the jianghu. The Grand Assembly of Murim would be his opportunity, and Sip-pal-gong had laid his ambition bare.
And things had gone well. Ambition had a way of feeding itself the moment things started going well.
In the Orthodox Alliance, the voice of a single small sect could never rise. But if the local powers all gathered and spoke as one? Sip-pal-gong would stand at the sure and certain center of it.
Things had gone well. Word had run underground so quickly that people of standing had come seeking him in numbers too great to count.
But Sip-pal-gong, for all his ambition, had been born with a keen and restless sense. A prickling unease needled at the back of his mind, and he found it hard to keep his expression easy.
It had started not long ago. In every person of standing he met, he felt something off. Not simple ambition — a look that suggested some other thought entirely.
Of course people had their own natures, their own goals, their own sizes of hunger.
"But something's wrong."
It was not merely the ambition to have a voice in the Pan-Orthodox Alliance. It was not the ordinary hunger to grow a sect or raise a name. It was something that touched a far more primal feeling.
And the men with those eyes were not one or two. From a certain point onward, people wearing the same look had come to him one after another.
The covenant roster. Sip-pal-gong went down the names of the sects and their masters who had pledged to join the cause, tapping each one in turn.
One name that had given him that uneasy feeling. Then two. Then three...
"What the hell is this?"
Sip-pal-gong's eyes twitched.
"Nearly twenty?"
And each of them a sect of no small size.
He bit down on his lip and moved at once. For a man stuck in a corner of Hunan, there was only one way to learn anything useful about people like these.
"The Hao Clan. That's the only way."
He put in a request with the Hao Clan, and the information came back before long. As he turned through what they had sent him, he found a single common thread — and his blood ran cold.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
He shot up from his seat, his cheeks trembling.
"These bastards — this — this is—!"
He was so rattled the words would not come out straight.
"Every last one of them has a grudge against the Namgung Clan!"
Every sect that had given him that uneasy, off-key feeling — every one of them, large grudge or small, carried a debt of hatred toward the Namgung Clan. Some of them were not even orthodox sects. More precisely, they sat on the border between the orthodox and the unorthodox.
"I'd heard that during the Great War, no end of people even in the orthodox martial world came to hate the Namgung Clan."
Just as the Sama Order had slipped into the Namgung Clan and tried to bring it down from within, they had seeded spies through countless orthodox sects. The Namgung sword had turned on those spies as well. But to the orthodox sects on the receiving end, Namgung had been the enemy — the ones who had harmed their own households, their disciples, their people.
"Why them?"
Why were they gathering now, of all times — and into a coalition he himself was leading?
The urge to strike those names from the roster burned hot in him. Then he found another fact, and a shudder ran through his whole body. A clammy, clinging dread crept up the back of his neck.
"These sons of bitches all came through his introduction!"
Every last one of them. As if by some cruel joke, they had all come to Sip-pal-gong on the introduction of a single man.
Sip-pal-gong felt it in his bones. That man had gathered these people for a purpose. The face was carved deep into his mind — a man's face so childlike it crossed the line into something deeply, viscerally wrong.
"They all came through that Sima fellow. Every last one of them."
Sip-pal-gong's brow furrowed. He had never dreamed of a coalition set against the Namgung Clan. All he wanted was a sliver of influence — something small, just enough to weigh a little upon the Nine Sects and One Gang, the Five Great Clans, and the Pan-Orthodox Alliance itself. Ambition of exactly that size, and no more.
"If the Namgung Clan finds out..."
His eyes shook.
"If Namgung finds out and decides to move, then I, who led this gathering..."
That was when it happened.
Clack.
A sudden rush of wind, and the door to Sip-pal-gong's room flew wide open.
"...!"
The instant he saw the golden shadow standing in the doorway, Sip-pal-gong's body locked rigid.
"You're Sip-pal-gong, right? Looks like you've been cooking something up."
The tone of a man who already knew everything. Sip-pal-gong's pupils shook hard.
N-Namgung?
He was not wearing the Namgung uniform. But the moment Sip-pal-gong saw that golden hair, the identity came to him without any trouble at all. The one who had cowed even the prestige of the Mount Hua Sect and driven them off.
The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven — Sun Wukong.
For all intents and purposes... a man of the Namgung Clan!
Sip-pal-gong's vision swam. He staggered as if struck by a sudden faint, and Sun Wukong grinned at the sight.
"Relax. I'm not gonna eat you. I never ate human flesh even before I met Sanzang."
"..."
"I did kill a few people, sure — wait. Was it a few?"
"..."
"Still, I'm a Buddha now, more or less. Can't go around killing people willy-nilly."
If those words were meant to be reassuring, they failed. Sip-pal-gong was already overwhelmed by Sun Wukong's presence alone.
Sun Wukong's voice softened, almost pitying.
"It's fine, it's fine. Not you. Him. I'm here because of that guy."
A faint smile touched Sun Wukong's mouth.