I Can Take Insults About My Parents Just Fine
Hefei was so packed with martial artists that there was scarcely room to set a foot down.
The vast Namgung Clan Estate had no shortage of empty buildings, and those had been opened to receive the visitors — but most of that space had already been claimed by the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans. The lesser sects of middling and small rank had to hunt down lodgings of their own in the surrounding streets. And even that was the better end of the bargain. Martial artists attending as unaffiliated individuals outnumbered the sect disciples two to one, and those who traveled alone or in twos and threes could barely find a place to eat and sleep. Tents had gone up on every scrap of open ground; camping in the open was commonplace.
Not everyone, however, was left to fend for themselves. Even among those who came in a personal capacity, there were personages for whom the Namgung Clan's own martial artists would bend at the waist.
"Welcome. It is an honor to meet you, venerable One Blade Shaking Heaven."
Endlessly busy, her face drawn with fatigue, Muhwa still came out in person and greeted the middle-aged man with a smile.
One Blade Shaking Heaven — Gun Wi-ryang. One of the Ten Great Masters, and a man who had attained true enlightenment in the way of the saber. His features were sharp, but the smile he offered was generous and unhurried.
"A pleasure. I trust the Heavenly Edge Sword Star is in good health?"
"Our Patriarch is so hale it's practically a problem."
"The Law Enforcement Hall Master has been working hard."
Muhwa smiled wryly and stepped aside, as if to guide him herself. Gun Wi-ryang shook his head.
"Ah, you must be terribly busy. No need for that. Just assign a servant and point me to where I'll be staying."
For all his standing as one of the Ten Great Masters, Gun Wi-ryang observed the courtesies with exact care. In both generation and ability he stood clearly above Muhwa, and yet his bearing did not slip by so much as a hair. Muhwa quietly marveled that the gentleman's reputation surrounding One Blade Shaking Heaven had not been the least bit overstated.
Admiration, however, was not the only thing in her eyes.
The young man behind Gun Wi-ryang looked five or six years older than Namgung Muyoung, and the aura rolling off him was anything but ordinary. It was a presence even Muhwa would not find easy to face.
So this is One Blade Shaking Heaven's nephew and disciple.
Muhwa's eyes narrowed. Skill enough to stand first among the rising generation was one thing — but skill alone did not make a name thunder through the martial world.
A tiger of a master and a wildcat of a disciple, as they say.
Gun Myeong-o, bearer of the grandiose title Flying Dragon Blade, was infamous for conduct that stood in particularly ugly contrast to Gun Wi-ryang's dignity. Muhwa flicked a glance at the young man, who was looking her over with a lingering, suggestive gaze, and turned her eyes away.
"Thank you for the consideration. I'll assign someone to you. The Patriarch has already heard of your arrival, so a place will be prepared shortly."
She offered a brief bow and left at once. Urgent work was stacked high; her steps were extremely hurried. Watching her go, Gun Wi-ryang murmured a short note of admiration.
"When I last saw her she still seemed half-ripe. Her martial enlightenment has deepened considerably. As expected of the Namgung Clan..."
His disciple, however, offered a rather different assessment.
"Rather than half-ripe, she struck me more as a plump, well-ripened fruit."
"...Watch your mouth. This is not a place where you may speak however you please."
"Yes, Master."
Gun Myeong-o answered in a slippery, easy tone. Gun Wi-ryang's brow furrowed.
Tsk. He still has no idea how vast the martial world is, and so he remains this insolent.
It frustrated him deeply. No matter how strict a master might be, an inborn temperament did not change easily. They were bound by blood besides, and Gun Myeong-o himself knew perfectly well how exceptional his talent was — which only made the arrogance worse with every passing day.
But once he sees the wider waters, it will be different.
The reason he had brought Gun Myeong-o here was perfectly clear. The wider waters. The Grand Assembly of Murim, where the absolute masters of the Orthodox Path would gather. He wanted his disciple to feel, in his bones, how far he still had to go.
The world was full of masters. They were as numerous as grains of sand. Ten Great Masters or not, hidden recluses of unknown power could step out of any shadow.
I hear that fool Namgung Jinbaek has taken someone as his sworn elder brother?
Namgung Jinbaek, with whom he was as close as a dear friend. They stood on the same rank among the Ten Great Masters and even shared the private understanding of being each other's worthy rivals. And yet that Namgung Jinbaek had taken a man as his sworn elder brother.
The martial world truly is vast.
He trusted Namgung Jinbaek's eye. His friend would not take an ordinary man as his sworn elder brother.
If this boy can only see this wide world and take some enlightenment from it...
Gun Wi-ryang believed it. Gun Myeong-o's talent was the real thing — real enough that the boy even dared, in his quiet way, to measure himself against Namgung Jinbaek. He was convinced his nephew possessed a far sharper martial insight than Namgung Jinbaek's own son, Namgung Muyoung.
That was when it happened.
"Master. Look over there. That yellow-haired fellow — he looks like a man of the Central Plains, but he's a bizarre one. Some half-breed of those Western barbarians, maybe? Honestly, whoever his father or mother was had some peculiar tastes. Getting it on with those sunken-eyed, disgusting Westerners and pumping out a kid..."
Gun Wi-ryang's face crumpled. The tone alone was filthy enough to hear.
"I told you to watch your words! How dare you spew that kind of filth in front of your master?"
He turned his head in a hurry.
Golden hair. Red eyes with golden pupils.
In that instant, Gun Wi-ryang's head stopped dead.
Golden hair and foreign features...
The vague rumors he had heard since coming to Anhui. The mysterious, immensely powerful master whom Namgung Jinbaek had taken as his sworn elder brother.
The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven...!
At that moment, Gun Wi-ryang's gaze met those golden pupils across empty air. A brief dizziness flashed through his mind. If this was the rumored master — then the words being muttered on this side...
The instant he saw Sun Wukong's eyes, Gun Wi-ryang's face went ice-cold.
Sun Wukong was a god.
This was no figure of speech. It was the simple truth. His standards could not help but differ from those of humankind.
What was an ant, in the eyes of a person? Nothing more than a faint presence you might crush underfoot one day without ever knowing it was there. Unless those ants gathered to dance and sing and make a spectacle of themselves, you would scarcely give them a thought. Even if they looked up and cursed you in their own tiny language, you would remain utterly unmoved.
That was how it was for Sun Wukong.
The two humans who had entered his field of vision, however, earned a different assessment.
They're strong.
A clean, unadorned judgment. They were strong humans. The middle-aged man especially.
About the level the Patriarch was at before he broke through the wall.
Even before that breakthrough, Namgung Jinbaek had been so purely strong that Sun Wukong had wondered whether the man might be some great demon in disguise. In that regard, Sun Wukong was both exacting and honest.
Masters of that caliber... the Patriarch, and the Sect Leader of Wudang, maybe.
When their eyes met, Gun Wi-ryang approached with a somewhat stiff expression. Coming right up to Sun Wukong, he swallowed a short breath.
A presence that could not be felt. Not a trace of inner energy to be seen. Eyebrows curved as if in a smile — and beneath them, those chilling eyes.
Gun Wi-ryang knew. He had wandered the martial world without a fixed home for decades and crossed paths with countless masters, but not every master was a dangerous person to be wary of. Some became dear friends. Some became brothers. Others became bitter enemies, or rivals who could only end by killing each other.
The most dangerous of them all, however, was not a fearsome foe.
The kind of person who could become a friend or an enemy at any moment — whose actions depend solely on their own will.
The type who formed relationships from nothing but their own pure inclination, independent of surroundings, connections, all of it.
This man is that kind of person.
The intuition Gun Wi-ryang had built from a lifetime of experience was razor-sharp. He understood, in this very instant, that whether he became Sun Wukong's friend for life or his enemy for life depended entirely on Sun Wukong's will.
Realization leads at once to action. He clasped his fists in a formal salute.
"Forgive the intrusion. Might you be the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, whom the Heavenly Edge Sword Star has taken as his sworn elder brother?"
A gleam flickered through Sun Wukong's eyes.
That young one was running his mouth earlier, but the one who looks like his master is a different story.
Outwardly, Sun Wukong looked far younger. And as for his martial prowess? In a martial world founded on the naked logic of strength, the stronger a man was, the more a hint of arrogance tended to show. Gun Wi-ryang showed none of it.
"That's right. I'm Teacher Sun, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven."
"I apologize. My disciple failed to recognize you and uttered harsh words. A disciple's fault is the master's crime, so I, Gun Wi-ryang, One Blade Shaking Heaven, bow my head in apology."
Sun Wukong looked down at the crown of Gun Wi-ryang's bowed head and nodded.
A decent fellow.
He clicked his tongue all the same. Unlike his master, Gun Myeong-o's face was plainly irritated, as if the whole situation sat badly with him. Sun Wukong let out a short laugh. The slander Gun Myeong-o had muttered had, of course, reached his ears with perfect clarity — ears that had long since surpassed the Six Senses and attained the Eighth Consciousness, the Alayavijnana.
But Sun Wukong truly did not care. Not because he was some easygoing, good-natured soul who laughed everything off, but because it was genuinely beneath his notice.
Then Gun Wi-ryang lifted his head, and his brow furrowed. Sun Wukong's gaze was directed past him. Gun Myeong-o's neck was still stiff; he had not bowed. Fire blazing in his eyes, Gun Wi-ryang struck out like a thunderbolt.
Pang!
Index and middle fingers extended, the rest folded. The rapidly driven fingertips struck Gun Myeong-o's chest with perfect precision.
"Guh!"
Gun Myeong-o's face went deathly pale as he twisted with a groan. A small note of admiration crossed Sun Wukong's face.
That kind of speed on pure physical strength, with no inner energy at all.
Elasticity and muscle that owed nothing to internal power.
This one is a Ten Great Master, no question.
Had those fingers been loaded with profound inner energy, it would not have ended with a man twisting in pain. His chest would have caved in and his heart would have stopped.
"He is my disciple, and my nephew besides — I raised him too softly. If you wish to punish him yourself, I will not interfere."
"U-Uncle!"
"Enough! Do you understand what you have done? You have insulted the sworn elder brother of the Heavenly Edge Sword Star, my lifelong friend! That is an insult to the Patriarch of the Namgung Clan, and a humiliation of the Namgung name on Anhui soil! Do you truly not understand?"
Under that thunderous rebuke, Gun Myeong-o, still unable to steady himself from the pain, barely managed a formal fist salute.
"I have insulted you with my worthless words. If you would punish me, I will accept it as my due."
The corner of Sun Wukong's mouth lifted faintly.
On the surface, an honest, unproblematic apology. There was not a shred of sincerity in it, and there was no way Sun Wukong would fail to notice. It was not merely that his instincts were sharp. Beyond the Fiery Golden Eyes — those eyes that saw past the surface of the heart — he read the turbulence of emotion itself. A perfunctory apology, meant only to get through the present moment.
Tsk. Born this way, I see.
Sun Wukong did not particularly care. To be honest, it was a bother. It had not even been a particularly offensive insult to begin with. When some insignificant speck of life yapped and cursed, was that really going to ruin anyone's mood? And as always, if he told them about the Fiery Golden Eyes, would they even believe him? That would leave him with nothing but his gut feeling to stand on — and if he claimed the boy was insincere on feeling alone, how wronged would the other party feel after trying to apologize? More than anything, it was an insult that inflicted not even this much damage on Sun Wukong.
Still.
A mischievous gleam suddenly filled Sun Wukong's face. The peculiar habit of someone who loved messing with people more than anyone else popped right out.
At those words, Gun Myeong-o's face stiffened. If the man had no parents, that meant he was an orphan. And he had hurled that kind of insult at such a person...
Gun Wi-ryang's face crumpled to a terrifying degree.
"This will not do. Such rudeness toward you cannot be let slide. If you will not punish him, then as his master I shall administer the punishment myself. And if you suspect I might go easy on him because he is my own blood, you are welcome to watch from the side."
Gun Myeong-o's face went deathly pale. Even a delinquent like him could not help but be terrified by Gun Wi-ryang's resolute, iron-hard voice. It was only natural. One never knew what hidden masters might come to the Grand Assembly of Murim. Among them, there was every possibility of people one absolutely must not offend. And if Gun Myeong-o behaved as insolently toward them as he just had?
Watching Gun Wi-ryang seethe with rage, Sun Wukong smiled in slow, delighted circles.
"Ah, no need. I'm sure you'll set him straight."
In that instant, the look in Gun Myeong-o's eyes as he stared at Sun Wukong turned to fire. The way the man just laughed, as if this whole situation were amusing, made Gun Myeong-o's face flush red. He was not, however, stupid enough to pull any more stunts in front of an enraged Gun Wi-ryang.
Then Gun Myeong-o's throat bobbed. It was a sound transmission.
"You're entering the martial contest, aren't you? When the time comes, I'll wipe that grin right off your face myself."
"......"
Sun Wukong laughed even harder, despite himself.
He really was an idiot.