The Hainan Sect, Yingtian's Banquet (2)
It was absurd.
Of all the martial sects under heaven, why had that fool brought Hainan, of all people?
What kind of idiot eunuch had let things come to this?
This wasn't anyone's scheme — it couldn't have been. So this is what they call a fated grudge?
A few days ago, the kid had said it. There were two people he would hunt down no matter how long it took. The second and the fourth among the second-generation disciples.
Second and fourth meant the senior disciples — so unless Hainan had come to Yingtianfu on a pleasure trip, those two would be here.
Fine. All the better.
If they were going to meet anyway, now or later made no difference. He could meet them a hundred times over — so long as this side held the upper hand, not the weaker one.
Geum Jong-mu and Nam Yeonghak were faintly taken aback — and, inwardly, more than a little displeased.
Jiang Wenchen, whom they had taken for a taciturn man, had run into some young eunuch, and then the fellow had transformed. Into the most insufferable chatterbox under heaven.
"This officer was there at the greatest crisis in Jinyiwei history, when the Jeonbu appeared — bam! — and struck down that lawless traitor with a single palm! I felt a thrill just watching it. Baekho! Get over here and take the reins! Heh!"
Jiang Wenchen was so carried away he even seemed to be acting the scene out. Geum Jong-mu and Nam Yeonghak had no idea what he was talking about, but watching him now, it felt as though, only moments ago, he had been doing everything he could to avoid speaking with them at all.
"You should have seen the Nine Dragons Grand Luo formation Chiliarch Gongsun and the centurions laid out, Sogi Jiang. The golden waves of saber-qi were a true spectacle, I tell you!"
"Haha! Quite so, Jeonbu! This officer is studying it himself."
"Of course you are. If this official weren't an inner-court attendant, I'd have taken it up myself. It's a fine martial study — apply yourself. We'll have to cross hands sometime!"
"It would be my honor, Jeonbu. One of these days I'll match my blade against the Jeonbu's Sunflower Manual."
And as if that weren't enough, they had planted people in the middle of the road to swap comic banter among themselves. Worse still — waves of saber-qi?
Ripples and waves were the wellspring of Hainan's martial arts, their very ideal. To stand before the grandmaster of the South Sea's martial tradition and prattle on about waves — what kind of insult was that?
Geum Jong-mu and Nam Yeonghak even began to suspect that these young officials were openly looking down on Hainan.
"Ahem. Ahem."
Nam Yeonghak, who had been simmering the whole time, cleared his throat. The sound snapped Jiang Wenchen back from the brink of yet another round of banter.
"Ah! Introductions, then. Sect Leader — this is Jeonbu Jang, a eunuch of great promise from the Directorate of Ceremonial."
Jiang Wenchen urged Geum Jong-mu to offer his greetings. In terms of standing in the martial world, Geum Jong-mu, who represented a great sect, was the superior — but this was Yingtianfu, and more than that, Jiang Wenchen revered Jin Myeong. Jin Myeong was treated as a hero of the Jinyiwei, a comrade-in-arms. An honorary Jinyiwei centurion, one might say. The rank of centurion was sixth-grade, same as a Jeonbu.
"Geum Jong-mu of Hainan Island. The Jeonbu has a most distinguished bearing."
Geum Jong-mu, the two elders, and the first-generation disciples were inwardly offended by Jiang Wenchen's conduct. But they knew well enough how the power of the eunuchs had swollen, day by day, across the Great Ming — so they swallowed their irritation and left it at that.
Worse, this eunuch who looked no older than their second-generation disciples was a sixth-grade Jeonbu. And not just any Jeonbu — he belonged to the Directorate of Ceremonial, which oversaw the entire eunuch apparatus. That made them more cautious still. A sixth-grade Jeonbu at that age meant a man who would rise to fifth-grade Supervisor or higher before he turned thirty — a high eunuch in the making.
"Jang Jinmyeong, Jeonbu of the Directorate of Ceremonial, Sect Leader Geum. This humble official's learning is shallow, so I cannot claim to know every particular, but I have heard that the Hainan Sect's fame resounds across the Central Plains. It is a pleasure to meet you. You must be weary from the long road — please, settle in and rest."
"You have our thanks. That will be all, then. Come, let us go in."
"Yes, Sect Leader!"
Geum Jong-mu and the Hainan party, who had been waiting for exactly this, made straight for the Gong Family Inn.
A short while later, in a private annex off the rear garden of the Gong Family Inn, the Hainan Sect's disciples unpacked their traveling gear.
"Senior Sister, you heard that, didn't you? What those officials were saying."
The face flushed with fury belonged to Geum Hwayeong, fourth among the second-generation disciples. Seventeen this year, Hainan's pampered treasure. A First-Rate expert who had trained in the Twenty-Four Wave Swords. She had been born the Sect Leader's granddaughter, and Geum Jong-mu had wrapped her in cotton — which had produced a spoiled brat, wild and utterly unrestrained.
"I heard."
By contrast, the bronze-skinned beauty who looked far more mature was Seong Munjeong. Twenty-three this year. Head of the Hainan Sect's second-generation disciples, and their First Senior Sister. As a child she had been rescued from pirates along with her martial siblings. She had no parents, and in nearly every respect her background was the opposite of Geum Hwayeong's. She had the command to hold together nearly a hundred martial brothers and sisters, and her martial achievement stood highest among them.
"You're not even angry, Senior Sister?"
"I am. They were young officials — they may simply not know the codes of the Jianghu. Don't work yourself into a fury, Junior Sister."
Geum Hwayeong looked ready to start hopping in place, but Seong Munjeong remained perfectly calm.
"Not know? They didn't know a thing. If they try it again when we meet them, I'll teach them properly. Who we are."
"Junior Sister. This is not Hainan Island. This is Yingtianfu. Watch every word, every gesture. Remember — a single mistake can bring disaster down on all of us."
"I know, Senior Sister. You only ever nag when you look at me. Tch! I'm going out."
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Where else? Out to see Yingtianfu with the others. Aren't you coming, Senior Sister?"
"No, I'm fine. Go on. And remember what I said."
"I will."
Geum Hwayeong left, and Seong Munjeong, alone, let out a small sigh. She worried that her wild junior sister would go out and cause trouble — but the thread follows the needle, and Nam Geonhu, the second disciple, would tag along after her. So it would probably be all right.
There was another worry, too. A slight one, literally slight — perhaps it would be forgotten soon enough, perhaps it was nothing but an idle fear. And yet it snagged strangely in her mind.
Hostility.
She had felt it from the eunuch with the startlingly handsome face, so pale it was rare to see on Hainan Island. And she had felt it from the escorting eunuch whose face she had never properly seen, the one whose skin behind the ears was darkly tanned. From both of them, hostility had leaked through, unconcealed.
"It was hostility. I'm sure of it."
As a child she had lived by reading faces so she would not be sold as a slave. After she was sold to pirates of the western seas, she had lived by reading faces so she would not be beaten to death. After Nam Yeonghak rescued her and she became head of the second-generation disciples, she had lived by reading faces so she would not fall from the elders' favor. Those years had made Seong Munjeong more sensitive to people's unspoken feelings than anyone alive.
"But why?"
From the moment they passed through Chuibao Gate to the moment they arrived at the Gong Family Inn, every eunuch she had seen had worn a thin smile. All of them — except two.
Jang Jinmyeong and Jeong Go.
Only those two eunuchs had not smiled at them, not for a single instant. Thinking back on it now, a chill ran over her skin of its own accord.
"I'll have to be careful. Especially of the Directorate of Ceremonial's inner attendants."
Thanks to the two eunuchs who had shown that inexplicable hostility, Seong Munjeong's mood sank like a stone.
The next morning, at the Gong Family Inn.
A Jeonbu was far too high-ranked to be stuck with an escort assignment. Then again, if you counted how long Jin Myeong had actually lived in the palace, he was no different from a junior plaque-bearer — so Yun Bong had approved it, if only to let him gain the experience.
Jin Myeong took charge of guiding the Hainan party. Together with Jeong Go.
"You're coming out now? We met yesterday — Jang Jinmyeong, Jeonbu of the Directorate of Ceremonial. For the duration of the Yingtian Banquet, this official and the inner attendant here will serve as Hainan's guides. Introduce yourself, Inner Attendant Jeong."
"Jeong Go, Junior Attendant of the Directorate of Ceremonial."
Standing before the Hainan Sect that had abandoned him, Jeong Go drew a slow breath and let the end of last night's conversation with Jin Myeong rise in his mind.
"I acknowledge, ten parts in ten, your will to take revenge with your own hands. But if you held back because you were ashamed of being one of the eunuch clan — if it was that — then this elder brother is disappointed."
"Elder Brother…"
"You are a man who will command ten thousand eunuchs as a Grand Director. Are you not? The clan will keep growing until it numbers in the tens of thousands. If a man like you is ashamed to be one of his own, that doesn't add up, does it?"
Hearing those words, he had made up his mind. He would not avoid Hainan. He would face them with his head up. Meeting them would not kill him — and for this side, which had done no wrong, to be the one that hid? How craven that would be. How ridiculous.
Jeong Go lifted his head and looked the Hainan Sect in the eye.
"The Jeonbu said… this sect's Inner Attendant Jeong…? You…? Are you not Go Jeong-un?"
Nam Yeonghak's eyes flew wide as he recognized Jeong Go. He had been leading the disciples toward the barracks, where a martial stage had been raised, and the shock of it dropped through his chest like a stone — as if he had seen a ghost. The swarthy features beneath the official's cap were burned into his memory.
The second-generation disciple expelled a year ago. The one who had stood as Seong Munjeong's equal. The third: Go Jeong-un.
"Junior Brother Go?"
"Go Jeong-un?"
"What? Go Jeong-un?"
The same. Seong Munjeong, Nam Geonhu, Geum Hwayeong, and the disciples filing out behind them all froze in a single instant. Who among them could have forgotten that uproar, or the one at the center of it? And this was Go Jeong-un, who had been Hainan's rising star, a future without limit.
The air in front of the Gong Family Inn turned to ice.
The moment Jeong Go's mouth opened again, Seong Munjeong and several of the disciples standing just behind Nam Yeonghak staggered.
Set suffering right. Who among them could fail to know what that suffering meant? They understood it the instant they heard it, without any need for explanation — and in the same instant they felt a resentment rooted so deep, a hatred so vast, that they dared not even try to measure it.
Back then, as a second-generation disciple, Jeong Go had screamed his innocence until the very instant the short blade punched into his dantian. Veins had bulged across his face. Blood had burst in both eyes. He had gone on shouting that he was innocent until he finally collapsed.
Junior Brother Go became a eunuch… how could that…?
Senior Sister Seong Munjeong felt the air catch in her throat. She carried a sliver of guilt toward Jeong Go. She had known he was not that kind of man — known better than anyone that he would never have assaulted a junior sister. But the circumstances at the time had been damningly clear, and the mood of the sect had run against him. As head of the second-generation disciples, the obstacles to speaking in his defense had been too many. They would have said she was defending a criminal she had failed to see through — and with that kind of judgment, how did she propose to lead hundreds of disciples? She might well have been stripped of her place as head.
"Inner Attendant Jeong is, in private, this official's younger brother. It is true that his former name was Go Jeong-un. But he loathes that name now, so never speak it again. Come, then. We will show you to the assembly grounds. Let us go, Inner Attendant Jeong."
"Yes, Jeonbu!"
"Ah — one more thing. Among the second-generation disciples, which of you would be Young Hero Nam Geonhu and Young Heroine Geum Hwayeong?"
Jin Myeong, who had been about to stroll on ahead as if nothing in the world were the matter — the exact opposite of the Hainan disciples, who had gone rigid with shock — checked his step and looked back.
Nam Geonhu. Geum Hwayeong. Not a single Hainan disciple failed to understand why those names were being called.
"Jeonbu… why those two…?"
Nam Yeonghak asked it as if to confirm what he already knew.
Jin Myeong answered with a broad smile — and without being told, as if he already knew, his gaze landed with perfect accuracy on Nam Geonhu and Geum Hwayeong.
They flinched. Meeting that face a second time — the mouth smiling, the eyes not — Nam Geonhu and Geum Hwayeong felt a crawl of goosebumps break out across their skin.
"Go Jeong-un!"
Stung by that chill, Nam Geonhu stepped forward. In his agitation he let killing intent spill from him before he even knew it.
"How dare you show that face before the sect and your martial sister!"
A film of prickling energy swept toward Jin Myeong and Jeong Go, as if a faint lightning-qi were crawling through the air. For Jin Myeong, whose internal power was vastly superior, it was nothing. For Jeong Go, merely touching that film of killing intent could have inflicted internal injury.
In that instant—
Jin Myeong's roar cracked the air. The film of killing intent that had been about to swallow the two of them scattered — as futile as morning mist vanishing under the pouring sun.
More than a full jiazi of Isin True Qi did not stop there. Bearing its master's fury intact, it drove straight at its target.
"Nngh—!"
Struck by Jin Myeong's killing intent in turn, Nam Geonhu grasped the gravity of what he had done. Internal power that exceeded imagination in every respect — power he would never have dared to think belonged to someone of similar age.
"Ghh—!"
That killing intent, concentrated on a single precise point, drove Nam Geonhu back three full steps.
And then—
The last remnant of a smile left Jin Myeong's mouth, and he poured out a violent fury. His voice rang like a bronze bell; people passing on the main road flinched at the sound of it.
"Jeonbu! That is excessive!"
Nam Yeonghak stepped in. He took a pace forward and released his true qi, and his gaze collided with Jin Myeong's.
Nam Yeonghak's Boundless Ocean True Qi threw itself across the front of the Hainan disciples.
Jin Myeong smiled thinly and drew the Isin True Qi back in.
"Oh-ho… Boundless Ocean! Excellent, Master Nam. But that Young Hero Nam over there seems rather lacking in cultivation. Wouldn't you agree?"
The fury he had been pouring out a heartbeat before was gone without a trace; Jin Myeong spoke with a light, easy smile. It was a temperament earned over thirty-two long years of living as a eunuch. It was also an expression of confidence.
"……"
Faced with Jin Myeong's shifting, uncanny manner, Nam Yeonghak found himself, for a moment, at a loss for what to say. His son had clearly been in the wrong. Whatever the reason, the boy had ignored the Jeonbu's warning and even released killing intent. Had the Jeonbu been even a fraction slower, Jeong Go would almost certainly have taken internal injury.
And yet, simply swallowing it and moving on was hard — because the Jeonbu's counter had gone too far. He had not merely blocked the killing intent. He had sent the boy flying. Heat rose in Nam Yeonghak at that, but he had no justification to stand on, however much he wanted to speak.
And besides—
This one is a monster. He didn't become a Jeonbu for nothing.
Above all, he was stunned by how fierce the young Jeonbu's martial arts were — far beyond anything he had imagined. When that true qi he had never encountered in his life collided with Boundless Ocean True Qi, he had felt it in his bones. The other man's unidentifiable true qi was warning him. There was still one more step left. Push it, and I'll send you flying too.
"Why so silent? Don't tell me Master Nam also scorns this official for being a eunuch?"
