If You're Going to Start a Fire, Make It a Big One
"You're saying we need to summon the Clan Lord?"
"Yes."
Namgung Cheonyeong answered without the slightest waver. Muyoung regarded him in silence — a look that said, give me a proper explanation.
Namgung Cheonyeong's account was simple.
"We caught their trail. The pursuit succeeded."
"Then those wounds..."
"It was a swift sword I couldn't stop."
Muyoung swallowed a low sound. Namgung Cheonyeong was a martial artist himself. A martial artist's pride needed no explanation — it was a given. He treated defeat as humiliation, yet he had the character to acknowledge those stronger than himself. He admitted it freely.
"I blocked the first stroke. The second blade that came pouring down — I couldn't stop it. No. Shamefully, it was so fast I couldn't even see it properly."
Namgung Cheonyeong's cultivation had reached the extreme of the Peak Realm. One more wall broken, and he would stand among the martial artists of the Transcendental Realm. Two sword strokes had put a grave wound on him.
Color rose in Namgung Cheonyeong's face.
"To my shame, I knew he was the culprit — but I had no confidence I could keep fighting."
"Mm..."
"I threw down my sword then and there, turned, and fled. Fortunately, they seemed to have something else to chase. They didn't come after me."
Muyoung swallowed another groan. He had caught the meaning buried under those words.
If they had chased him... he wouldn't be sitting here alive.
Whether from a martial artist's pride or something else, that much Cheonyeong had not been able to say aloud. Those who understood the implication felt the air in the room sink. Even Seowol, though her eyes gleamed, wore a face gone rigid.
Sun Wukong spoke up out of nowhere.
"What's he look like?"
"Pardon?"
"The bastard. What's he look like?"
"Well... he wore a mask. His face was hidden."
"If he's covering his face, that means he's a bastard who has to hide who he is."
Sun Wukong muttered it the way a man might hum a tune.
"A master of that caliber wearing a mask — he's got a name and a face people would recognize."
"...That's right."
Namgung Cheonyeong nodded slowly. It was an obvious deduction. Sun Wukong spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"If the enemy were from the unorthodox path, would he even need a mask? They're already enemies. They've already made an enemy of the Namgung Clan. And with martial arts like that, what's there to be afraid of?"
Namgung Muyoung started.
"You're saying they're not from the unorthodox path?"
"No, they might be. But at least, they might not be what they look like on the surface."
"...That does make sense."
Namgung Cheonyeong's eyes lit.
"From the old days, the unorthodox path has always slipped in deep by disguising themselves as righteous martial artists. Just as the Namgung Clan suffered in the past!"
Killing intent threaded through Namgung Cheonyeong's voice. His pupils burned like fire. The Sama Order had infiltrated the Namgung Clan over long years and brought it down from within, all at once. He had been of the junior generation then, but Namgung Cheonyeong remembered that time with perfect clarity.
"That's the viciousness of the unorthodox path. Perhaps the culprit is, as Teacher Sun says, someone of the righteous faction — or even someone known as a renowned master."
"Well, even if it's not exactly that, he's a bastard who wants his face hidden."
"His hair was white as frost. An old master."
"We'll have to rip that mask off."
Sun Wukong's tone was perfectly ordinary. It sounded like a man muttering about what to eat for dinner. The content of the words sat a considerable distance from that tone. Had Namgung Cheonyeong not just said it? Two sword strokes had reduced him to this state. And yet Sun Wukong talked about tearing the mask off such a man as if it were nothing — as if he were simply doing the obvious. Not a shred of doubt in his own words or actions.
Namgung Muyoung found himself admiring the man for an entirely different reason.
What a formidable person.
After hearing Namgung Cheonyeong's account, Muyoung had honestly felt his head spin. He had felt, keenly, that Namgung Jinbaek had to step in. But seeing Sun Wukong's unshakable composure, the urgency that had been rising in him settled all at once. Muyoung spoke with resolve.
"I'll write to Father myself. But we continue the pursuit."
"Understood. I'll send the letter at once, Young Master."
Having given the order, Muyoung turned to Sun Wukong.
"Teacher Sun. Will you help us?"
"We've come this far. Might as well see the bastard's face."
Sun Wukong laughed, easy and bright.
"Whether Father comes in person or sends a strike force, that's for him to decide. We keep tracking the culprit — and if we can, we deal with him."
"Deal with him..."
Namgung Cheonyeong murmured the words several times. He glanced at Sun Wukong, then nodded with a face gone resolute.
"As a martial artist, fleeing from an enemy was a humiliation. I'm prepared to stand again."
"Recover first. There's a great deal we need to hear about what you've tracked so far."
Namgung Cheonyeong nodded and summarized the core of his pursuit. Sun Wukong nodded as if he already had it.
"So. One mask. About ten black-clad men running with him. Every last one of them from First-class up to the threshold of the Peak Realm."
"That's right. And there seem to be more of them scattered elsewhere."
"Their target is the surviving Wudang disciple."
"It's not simply to kill him and silence him. The culprits want something from that survivor."
"Or the survivor himself, maybe."
Sun Wukong smiled, meaning layered in it. The picture was more or less clear. Then Namgung Cheonyeong brought up something none of them had expected.
"By the way — on your way here, did you happen to notice the atmosphere outside?"
"The atmosphere?"
Muyoung looked puzzled. They had moved only by mountain paths as far as the Soseon Sect. After the Soseon Sect, they had run a straight line here. There had been nothing of the surrounding mood to take in. But Sun Wukong, who seemed to have taken it in even so, spoke as if it were nothing.
"Plenty of martial artists around."
"That's right."
"Martial artists... ah."
Namgung Muyoung let out a quiet exclamation. Now that he thought about it, swordsmen had caught his eye with unusual frequency.
"Yeah. Lots of martial artists."
Namgung Seowol agreed. Given that she always showed curiosity toward strong martial artists, she had registered that the area was thick with them.
"Is this area always this packed with martial artists? Seemed like even more than around the Namgung Clan."
At Sun Wukong's words, Namgung Cheonyeong shook his head.
"There are no sects around here. No martial halls either. A few Black Path riffraff, but they're nothing more than street thugs."
Namgung Cheonyeong paused, then spoke. Something unexpected spilled from his lips.
"A kind of treasure map has appeared."
The truth of the rumor was uncertain. A great many martial artists, in particular, refused to believe it. After the fall of the Sama Order, no unorthodox power remained with the gall to turn a blade on the righteous sects. Who would dare attack the Wudang Sect?
But as time passed, the truth of the rumor began to sort itself from the noise.
These were no longer idle rumors. Word filtered through that pursuit teams had already moved out from both the Wulin Alliance and the Wudang Sect. Before long the story had swollen under a name of its own: the Wudang Bloodbath. The borderlands of Anhui Province and Hubei, where the incident had taken place, went taut as a drawn bowstring.
But one question rose above the rest.
Who were the culprits — and for what purpose had they staged a bloodbath?
Everyone had a theory. The Sama Order had returned. Those with a grudge against the Wudang Sect had made their move. It might even have been the work of another righteous sect. No precise answer emerged. An investigation had not even begun. The martial world was nothing but rumor, thick as smoke.
And then, in the middle of all that, a strange rumor slipped through.
A great many people cocked their heads. Why, all of a sudden, was a Namgung secret manual in this?
A plausible reason was tacked on.
At first it was dismissed as a wild tale. But the more flesh was added to the story, the more plausible it became.
Those well-versed in martial-world rumor all nodded along. It was a famous anecdote. Early in the Great War, the Wudang Sect had come to aid the badly wounded Namgung Clan — and a wild rumor had followed, that they had quietly lifted a few manuals. The Namgung Clan had suspected the Wudang Sect fiercely. What they found were not traces of fire, but clear evidence of theft. And, coincidentally, the Wudang Sect had in fact been caught gathering the manuals of fallen sects.
"So that the martial arts of fallen sects would not be lost, the Wudang Sect would carry on their legacy!"
At the time, the Central Plains were littered with mid-sized sects that had been wiped out. It came to light that the Wudang Sect had taken, from among them, manuals regarded as peerless treasures. The Namgung Clan could hardly have failed to grow suspicious. The Wudang Sect, for its part, felt genuinely wronged. They had gone to help, only to be treated as thieves — of course they were furious. That the two sects' relations had cooled so sharply afterward was a famous tale throughout the martial world.
This rumor struck harder than the news that the Wudang Sect had been attacked. It spread the way fire runs across a dry field.
The Namgung Clan's peerless secret manual. Barely a dozen years had passed since the Great War ended. To those who remembered that time with perfect clarity, the Namgung Clan's sword was the finest under heaven. And now a Namgung manual was in play.
Truth and falsehood, every scrap of idle talk, all of it mixed together. Like a spreading fire, the rumor grew more lurid with every lie and every scrap of nonsense folded into it — and it spread with ferocious force.
The Namgung Clan's peerless secret manual. The fierce allure of those words drew martial artists toward Anhui like a tide.
As the whole sequence spilled from Namgung Cheonyeong's mouth, Muyoung squeezed his eyes shut.
"The rumor has only spread through part of Anhui so far. Once it crosses the provincial border, it won't take long to cover the entire Central Plains."
Muyoung asked Namgung Cheonyeong,
"Does this secret manual actually exist?"
"Well... there was suspicion at the time that the Wudang Sect had taken Namgung manuals. But it wasn't some peerless treasure like the rumors claim."
Manuals practiced by Outer Hall warriors. First-class manuals by any standard of the martial world — but nowhere near the kind of treasure map the rumors made them out to be.
Sun Wukong clicked his tongue.
"Someone's spreading this rumor."
"Someone..."
"Those black-clad bastards, obviously."
Sun Wukong said it with certainty.
"They're hunting the Wudang survivor right now. And it's not going well."
They would want to finish their business and go to ground, fast.
"The longer this drags on, it won't just be the Namgung Clan on their trail. Wudang, the Wulin Alliance, the other righteous sects — pursuit teams will start sticking to them."
"Of course."
"Once the pursuit teams latch on, finishing the job gets hard, and shaking them all off isn't easy either."
"Then... ah!"
Muyoung exclaimed.
"They started a fire on purpose. They've drawn every jackal in the land with a peerless secret manual that doesn't even exist — and they mean to finish their business in the chaos."
"A treasure map will drive even a wise martial artist into a frenzy. With this many martial artists gathering..."
"It's chaos. It's loud. Finding anyone in that mess is going to be a nightmare."
"Nngh!"
Everyone groaned at Sun Wukong's words. He stood up from his seat.
"Hey. Myeong-i-dang Hall Master."
"Yes."
"Leak a rumor."
"A rumor?"
"The peerless secret manual is real — and the Namgung Clan is turning the world upside down looking for it."
"...!"
Eyes flew wide. The enemy had started a fire and were sitting back, watching it burn from the outside. But what if you made that fire stronger? Bigger?
A wicked, mischievous smile curved across Sun Wukong's mouth.