A Scheme of Dual Gain
The Namgung Clan Estate was in an uproar.
In a single morning, the entire climate of Anhui's martial world had turned on its head.
The Azure Chivalry Guild, which had styled itself the second—even the third—power of Anhui Province, had crumbled.
Of course, in a jianghu knotted with countless grudges and old debts, the fall of a single sect was hardly a remarkable thing.
The problem was the sequence of events that had brought it down. That part was shocking.
"Hon-am-do? You're telling me one of the Sama Order's old executives showed his face?"
"And he unified the Black Path and smashed the Azure Chivalry Guild to pieces?"
"So in the end, the Namgung Clan stopped the Sama Order's claws again?"
"Ah—technically it was their guest retainer, I heard."
"A guest retainer?"
"If he's strong enough to put down Hon-am-do, it'd have to be the Black-Faced Iron Sword, right? He's been a guest there for quite a while now."
"Wrong. They say it was the Golden Young Master."
"The Golden Young Master?"
Word of Sun Wukong seeped outward in fits and starts as well.
The Namgung Clan was far too busy to spare a thought for the rumors circulating through Anhui, or for the turn of public opinion. A household that had always been overworked with too few hands now howled from top to bottom.
The one who had caused the entire mess, of course, could not have cared less.
Fingers laced behind his head, Sun Wukong lay sprawled across a boulder, savoring a midday nap.
"So his previous life was a demon, then?"
Wings beat the air. Myodu-eung came flapping in—a nuisance, frankly—but Sun Wukong answered with unexpected patience. The little owl had been the first hero of this entire affair, after all.
"Didn't he look plenty suspicious to you too?"
"I don't really know, sir. You just told me to report anyone who seemed strangely strong, Great Sage, so I figured that was why."
"An outsider that powerful crawling in out of nowhere is suspicious enough. Especially since I'd only just joined the Namgung Clan."
Myodu-eung had been circling the skies of Anhui, peering down at the earth below. For all that it was, in name, both an Earth Deity and a mountain god, it followed Sun Wukong's orders with diligent care.
It had been the same during the old pilgrimage to the West. Every Earth Deity under heaven had trembled before Sun Wukong.
At the time he had been a condemned sinner, holding no office in the Celestial Realm, and in the strict order of rank he had stood below the Earth Deities themselves. Not one of them had dared to make a peep.
Why would they? Heaven's stern hierarchy sat far away. Sun Wukong slamming the Ruyi Jingu Bang against the ground and roaring himself hoarse sat right in front of their noses.
Myodu-eung was a young mountain god, but it had never forgotten the terrible knowledge handed down from its predecessor. Sun Wukong found it almost admirably dutiful, the thoroughness with which the little owl did its work.
"One of them got away, though."
"You said there was another human hanging around with Honse-mawang."
"Yes. He seemed about as strong as the stronger ones among the people where you stay, Great Sage."
"Compared to Honse-mawang?"
"Honse-mawang looked like a grunt next to him."
"And you can't see him now?"
"No. I've been flying since morning and there's not a whisker of him. I think he ran."
"An owl mountain god's eyes aren't so easily escaped. He may already have left Anhui Province."
Sun Wukong was disappointed.
"I should've caught them both. Whether he's sharp or just lucky..."
"I remember what he looked like, though. Clearly."
"That so..."
His reaction was lukewarm. Myodu-eung, who had been hoping for a scrap of praise, blinked its great round eyes.
"He had a long neck and narrow eyes, and there was a black lump beside his nose in particular."
"I'll keep it in mind."
Sun Wukong spoke as if it were nothing of consequence. Appearance did not actually matter. What mattered was the soul inside.
"What a coincidence, though."
He had never dreamed, not even in sleep, that the one who had turned up this time would be Honse-mawang in a previous life.
A vicious entanglement. A blood-soaked bond of bad karma that made the likes of Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi look like nothing at all.
Sun Wukong clenched his teeth, holding down the urge to kill the man on the spot and tear the soul to pieces with him.
This time, I need to dig something out of him first.
He felt a grim, almost spiteful sense of inevitability. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi, and now Honse-mawang. Both of them bound to him by a thread of fate dyed entirely in blood—and both of them, as it happened, reincarnations of demons.
Two demons who had died screaming under his hand.
Isn't it convenient? Far too convenient.
By this point, the previous life of that other human who had been keeping company with Honse-mawang was not hard to guess. It would be a demon Sun Wukong had killed. Of course it would. He had no particular demon in mind—or rather, there were so many he could not begin to sort them out.
If only it had been one or two.
Sun Wukong smiled, bitter. It was not for nothing that the Celestial Realm regarded him as the Judge. The demons who had died wretchedly beneath the Ruyi Jingu Bang were not one or two.
King of the demons, and yet a paradoxical creature who slaughtered them. Rather like the internal art named Myeol-yo-gong that sat in his dantian.
When Sun Wukong stopped paying it any attention, Myodu-eung grew as restless as if its own feet had caught fire.
"I-is there anything else you'd like me to do?"
The truth was that Myodu-eung was rather lonely.
In the time of its predecessor, an Earth Deity had lived on every hill, by every lake, in every stretch of wide forest. The mountain gods had kept company with one another and passed the hours together. Not anymore. Look across the whole of Anhui Province and the only mountain god left was Myodu-eung.
And then a god of the Celestial Realm had come down—and not just any god, but a figure out of the legends it had only ever heard of in rumors. In its heart, Myodu-eung wanted to draw closer to Sun Wukong.
Mrow.
Perhaps the fuss had woken it. The cat that had been enjoying the warm sun in the folds of Sun Wukong's robes let out a sharp cry, stretched both forepaws, and hissed. Myodu-eung could hardly believe what it was seeing.
"This worthless little beast dares to bare its teeth at me? A mountain god?"
Myodu-eung did not care for the cat. It was no mountain god, and it was not even a spiritual beast—just a paltry animal. The sight of it clinging to Sun Wukong's chest without leaving his side for even a moment sat entirely wrong.
"Hey now. Play nice. This is Master Zhangjing."
"What? Taebaek Geumseong—Master Li Changjing?"
"That's right."
Myodu-eung, which had been about to peck the cat on the bridge of the nose, let its shoulders sag. So this was the spiritual form Master Zhangjing took when he manifested in the world. The spirit-body of a celestial god. How could it possibly do the thing harm?
The owl withdrew. The cat lifted its chin and coiled itself, with insufferable elegance, upon Sun Wukong's chest. The sheer hauteur of it set Myodu-eung's insides boiling.
Sun Wukong left the staring contest between mountain god and animal to play out by his head and went on with his thoughts.
Well. At least the bait was taken cleanly enough.
After confirming Honse-mawang's suspicious movements through Myodu-eung, Sun Wukong had been turning over how to catch the man. That was when the request for cooperation had arrived from the Namgung Clan.
A rather clever solution had surfaced in his mind. He had thrown out bait. It was aimed at the Azure Chivalry Guild, yes—but it was also a lure for Honse-mawang.
If he belongs to the same outfit as Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi, he has no choice but to react to a fragment of the Seven Star Sword.
Had the man not taken the bait, Sun Wukong might well have done as Muhwa expected: used Uncheol to apply a little pressure and recovered a handful of business rights, nothing more.
As for Muhwa's worry—what would become of the Namgung Clan's standing in Murim afterward—that, frankly, had not concerned him. They had asked for his cooperation in the first place. He had simply obliged.
Fortunately for the Namgung Clan, Honse-mawang had swallowed the bait.
And he had swallowed it whole.
He had unleashed the Black Path and raided the Azure Chivalry Guild. They had come within a breath of annihilation. Sun Wukong had saved them—together with the Namgung Clan.
The situation had inverted. What the Namgung Clan had feared was looking, in the public eye, as though they were pulling the same dirty tricks as the Black Path just to claw their interests back.
Not anymore. The Namgung Clan had saved the Azure Chivalry Guild in the name of Orthodox righteousness—even though that sect had stolen from their own guest retainer. What was more, they had stopped an executive of the Sama Order who had shown his face once again.
Now the Azure Chivalry Guild had only one choice left.
Rebuilding the sect was, for all practical purposes, impossible. Holding on to their many commercial rights was equally unlikely. Orthodox or not, a faction without strength was nothing but a juicy meal in the jianghu.
So what would the Azure Chivalry Guild choose? To be absorbed by Tiger Star Gate, with whom they had long exchanged favors?
A laughable idea.
They could only bargain for their own rights when the Azure Chivalry Guild still stood intact.
Could they keep those rights now?
In the end there was only one option. The Namgung Clan. The same Orthodox Path. And this time, the clan had shielded them from a surviving executive of the Sama Order. A moral justification came with it.
The Namgung Clan, contrary to the world's impression of them, handled their affairs with considerable calculation and competence. They recovered the business rights for a perfectly reasonable sum—in this jianghu, where seizing them by force would have raised no objection at all.
The result even went some way toward washing out the old whisper that had long circulated through the martial world: that the Namgung Clan was crueler than the Unorthodox Path, and more vicious than the Black Path.
The Namgung Clan had gained a great deal.
Sun Wukong, in truth, had gained still more.
This Honse-mawang was also someone who knew exactly what the Seven Star Sword was.
He had drawn a step closer to the organization in the shadows, and his conviction that they were tangled up in Sanzang's affair had only grown.
I took the business rights back from the Azure Chivalry Guild, and I even raised my name doing it.
The Namgung Clan's trust, now solid. Beyond that, he had placed them in his debt. Enough so that Namgung Jinbaek himself, the clan lord, had come in person more than once to offer his thanks, even in the midst of all this chaos.
This much is already two birds with one stone.
Sun Wukong closed both eyes and basked in the sunlight. The thoughts kept coming, and sleep came with them.
"You seem... rather free, don't you?"
An irritated voice arrived at his ear. Sun Wukong did not even open his eyes. He murmured as if talking to himself.
"You ought to be up to your neck right now. And you've got time to come looking for this Teacher Sun?"
"Of course I had to come see you. You're the first hero of this whole affair."
There was a bone in the words, somehow. Sun Wukong snickered and rolled toward Muhwa. She flinched.
A smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Eyelids drooping as if half-asleep. A face at perfect peace. Propped on one elbow, his head resting in his palm—and for an instant the image of the reclining Buddha, seen in countless temples, overlaid the man before her.
And as if that were not enough, a white owl and a cat were playing at glaring each other down beside him.
What rock was that, besides? The very boulder from which the founding ancestor of the Namgung Clan was said to have become a dragon and risen into the heavens.
It was a profoundly irreverent thing to do. She could not bring herself to point it out. Sun Wukong had become the Namgung Clan's benefactor.
Muhwa cleared her throat.
"Did you expect Hon-am-do to appear?"
"I'm no fortune-teller. How am I supposed to see the road ahead?"
"It's all far too convenient. The Azure Chivalry Guild wasn't the real target, was it? It was Hon-am-do."
Sun Wukong considered that for a moment.
It might not be a bad idea to share a certain amount of information.
He set aside anything that touched on Sanzang and told her, calmly and plainly, only the facts: the connection between Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi and Honse-mawang. Muhwa went pale as she listened.
"Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi, and now Hon-am-do as well. They're part of some shadow organization?"
Anyone of the Namgung Clan would inevitably have the revival of the fallen Sama Order rise to the front of their mind.
"Then you've been tracking them all this time, Teacher Sun."
"Well. That's not wrong."
"Why?"
"A personal grudge?"
"..."
Muhwa did not press him further. Her mind was already a tangle. With the shadow of their hated enemy, the Sama Order, fallen across them, there was no room left for any other thought.
The Namgung Clan was recovering its stability—but the matter of the Sama Order was the one thing on which there could be no compromise.
Total annihilation. They would hunt them to the ends of hell and wipe them out for good.
Sun Wukong watched her face and nodded inwardly, confirmed in his prediction.
The more help I can take, the better.
He smiled to himself. Perhaps luck had been with him. Honse-mawang had been a remnant of the Sama Order, after all.
Sun Wukong had never been shy about borrowing other people's strength. On the pilgrimage he had constantly called on the gods of the Celestial Realm for help, and he had spent his days beating Earth Deities into lending him theirs.
The Namgung Clan was a rather useful card to hold.
This way, the Namgung Clan has no choice but to get deeply tangled in the affair.
Honse-mawang had been taken by his hand and the clan's together. That organization in the shadows would now see Sun Wukong and the Namgung Clan as a single enemy.
I'll have no choice but to stay with the clan and work alongside them.
And with that, he had killed two birds with one stone—no. He had walked away from a single affair with three separate gains.
Muhwa, who had been clutching a head that throbbed as if it might split, drew a long breath and pulled herself together. Her thoughts were still a mess, but she remembered, at least, why she had come looking for him.
"Hon-am-do is asking for you in the dungeon, Teacher Sun."
"For me?"
"Yes. He won't open his mouth under any torture. He just keeps asking for you. And he's saying the strangest things."
"Strange things?"
Sun Wukong sat up from where he had been lying, and his eyes lit.
Muhwa's face was somewhat awkward as she opened her mouth.
"Well..."