Jin Soya
“I am Jin Soya, Principal of Cheonmu Academy.”
The head of Cheonmu Academy.
The moment the fact sank in, Ye Hajun scrambled into an apology, flustered.
“I’m sorry for treating you like a beggar. Wait, but you were definitely asking for alms—huh?”
“When you sit high enough, you stop seeing what’s rolling around at your feet. So now and then I go out for a little almsgiving myself. And honestly, there’s no need to apologize for treating a beggar like a beggar.”
Watching the principal cheerfully claim the title of beggar for himself, a particular sect flashed through Ye Hajun’s mind.
“Ah—are you from the Beggars Sect, by any chance?”
“That’s right. I was the previous chief. Handed the seat off to the next scoundrel and now I pour my energy into raising the younger generation.”
“I see. Then why would someone like you come to me…?”
Jin Soya waved the concern away as if it were nothing.
“This particular situation was a little… irregular. I came because I wanted to hear what happened. Don’t be so tense. If anything, we are the ones who ought to be apologizing.”
He fetched a chair, settled beside Ye Hajun, and went on.
“You haven’t been enrolled long, so you still don’t know much about the Rifts in the Void, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“At present the Jianghu classifies Rifts into four grades. Jeong-grade, which stays local. Byeong-grade, which can threaten an entire village. Eul-grade, where a sect’s very survival hangs in the balance. And Gap-grade, a catastrophe for the Jianghu as a whole.”
Jin Soya folded his fingers one by one as he explained.
“A Jeong-grade Rift can be handled by disciples of even a minor sect, so long as they’ve trained a little. Byeong-grade usually calls for at least ten instructors from the Academy, or first-generation disciples of a great sect. The Rift you ran into was originally somewhere between Jeong and Byeong.”
“Which is why cadets were allowed to take part.”
“Nothing forges experience quite like a real fight. Rifts normally grow slowly, over time. The Gap-grade Rift that’s been chewing through parts of Henan and Hebei is judged to have started as Jeong-grade and taken more than two years to mature. But you see…”
Jin Soya’s voice dropped.
“The Rift you got caught in climbed to Eul-grade in a matter of hours. Grew so fast that even a great sect would have had to stake its entire fate on the fight.”
“Is that the first time something like that has happened?”
“First one we’ve ever seen. Which is exactly why our response was late. Putting a cadet in danger was my responsibility, so for that I apologize.”
He bowed his head. Ye Hajun waved both hands in frantic refusal.
“No, please. You couldn’t have known. There was nothing you could do.”
“Today we were fortunate enough that no one was hurt. But if there had been casualties, this old man would not have been able to end it with the excuse that there was nothing to be done. That is why I say it.”
“…”
“Anyway.”
Jin Soya lifted his head and lightened the air again.
“That is why I came to you. I want to hear what happened inside. It’s such an unusual case that, frankly, I want every scrap of information I can get.”
Ye Hajun hesitated.
How much do I actually tell him?
It had been the gallery spirits of Uwhadeungseon who closed the Rift. Explaining that to anyone would not be simple. And the strangeness of this particular Rift was almost certainly tied to the way it had spoken to him—Hajun could feel that much without difficulty.
The problem is I have no idea how any of this comes back on me if I spill everything.
In the end, the path he chose was partial truth.
“I ran into Jeonggoe, fought like hell just to stay alive, and at some point a tower of rotten deadwood that looked like a Heogong Jin-an appeared. Someone cut it down. When I came to, I was here.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Hrmmm…”
Jin Soya chewed on the words for a moment, then spoke again.
“That can’t be the whole of it. You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”
“…”
“I understand if you don’t trust this old man yet. But I already took your pulse. So I have a fair idea of what happened. The one who shattered the Heogong Jin-an… was almost certainly you.”
The moment Ye Hajun had broken the Rift and stumbled out, the one who saved him had been Jin Soya. The first person to check their pulses in order to grasp their exact condition had also been Jin Soya. He knew both of their physical states with perfect clarity.
“You haven’t been practicing internal arts for very long, have you? Otherwise every one of your fine meridians would never have burst like that.”
“…”
“And yet the traces of internal force that scoured through your qi meridians were… profound beyond measure.”
A deep awe colored Jin Soya’s voice.
“I have never in my life seen internal force applied with such marvelous subtlety.”
“I’m not sure what you mean…”
Jin Soya looked him straight in the eye.
“Is it because of your past?”
“My past… meaning…”
“This old man has already confirmed that you were once a slave of Heuksabang.”
Ye Hajun’s eyes went wide.
“About a month ago the Heuksabang master lost a slave he’d kept under him and loosed the Assassin’s Nest to track the boy down. Shall I go on?”
“I was told the Academy doesn’t care about a student’s origins…”
“So it is true, then.”
Jin Soya gave a short laugh, and only then did Ye Hajun realize he had been played.
“You were testing me?”
“I was already certain in my gut. Looking at the result, though, it was still hard to believe. A slave who’d never once learned martial arts, reaching this level of skill in a single month? Who would buy that?”
With that he drew a small wooden case from his robes.
“There’s an old saying in the Jianghu: always hide thirty percent of your strength. There must have been some fated opportunity behind your growth. This old man has confirmed what he needed to confirm, so I won’t dig any deeper, and I won’t speak of it to anyone else.”
“This is…?”
“The gift I mentioned earlier.”
As Ye Hajun accepted the case, Jin Soya said:
“It is called the Baekgyeol Johwadan—the Hundred-Knot Creation Pill—said to be a secret treasure of the Beggars Sect.”
The name had barely left his mouth when the gallery erupted.
Snatch and eat them…
Anyway, according to Cheonma, this was medicine that could mend his arm right now.
“Physician Sado Myeong tells me every fine meridian in your right arm has been severed. Leave it alone and you’ll never so much as hold chopsticks again for the rest of your life. Take this, though, and you’ll be able to use martial arts as before.”
“Thank you. Something this precious…”
Jin Soya’s smile turned sly and teasing.
“Precious? Oh, it’s precious all right. People across the realm call the Baekgyeol Johwadan a miracle pill you couldn’t buy for a thousand gold even if you wanted to. Plenty of them would say it’s wasted on a pup like you.”
He looked at Ye Hajun.
“But in a life that has been both short and long, this old man has learned one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Geniuses are scattered across the world, and miracle medicines can always be poured out of a cauldron… but a foolish chivalrous soul who throws his own life away to save another cannot be forged even if you pour a hundred years into the work.”
“…”
“Why did you never mention that you helped Cadet Han Yumae?”
Ye Hajun scratched the back of his head.
“Don’t people just… help each other?”
“Your answer is my answer. The simple fact that a rising talent like you is breathing in the Jianghu is far more precious and valuable to this old man than any pill.”
As though he had said everything he came to say, Jin Soya gave Ye Hajun’s shoulder a couple of solid pats and rose from his seat.
Ye Hajun muttered, half-embarrassed.
“I don’t think I did anything that great…”
“The other party doesn’t seem to agree.”
“Pardon?”
“The Baekgyeol Johwadan was a request from Hwasan. Cadet Han Yumae said she owed you her life and begged for it. She said your arm ended up like that because you were protecting her.”
“…”
“If kindness from an unorthodox background feels hard to accept, just think of it as a trade. Call it this old man’s bribe.”
Jin Soya pointed at Ye Hajun’s arm.
“If that right arm of yours heals thanks to my Baekgyeol Johwadan, and if you ever feel like repaying the favor—then someday, in whatever form you choose, practice the chivalry you believe in and help someone else. Let’s call that the deal.”
Perhaps the talk of chivalrous heroes and lofty ideals had never quite landed, but this version of it did. Ye Hajun snorted a quiet laugh.
“You really were born to be a beggar, Principal. You only ever make losing deals.”
“That’s the difference between merchants and us beggars. We don’t lose much sleep over that sort of thing.”
With a great booming laugh, Jin Soya strode out of the infirmary.
Ye Hajun… How did we ever let a boy like that slip past us?
If they had met even a little earlier, he would surely have taken the lad as a disciple. But it looked as though a fated opportunity had already found him.
Not our destiny, then. A pity, nothing more.
In that case, at least he could place the boy under his favor.
Jin Soya had once put out a request for information on Ye Hajun through the Hao Clan. The reply that came back said only that Heuksabang’s Ye Hajun was dead—an ordinary enough answer, except that it had arrived with unusual speed.
And yet the person in question was very much alive. Which meant something was being hidden.
That Heuksabang master’s nature is vicious; if you think about it rationally, he would have torn the boy to pieces. So they lost him. They must have announced him dead on purpose because of the Black Market coming up soon.
Among the hosts of the Black Market, where everything under heaven was sold, how hard could it be to produce a substitute corpse for Ye Hajun? There were any number of ways to overwrite a body’s identity. The dead, after all, tell no tales.
But since the boy himself is still breathing, the hand of that grudge could reach for him again at any time. Standing alone without a backer would be hard.
Then he would simply become that backer.
Ever since taking the principal’s seat at Cheonmu Academy I’ve tried to keep my hands off Beggars Sect business… but it seems I’ll have to step in a little more for a while.
And so the little giant of the Beggars Sect made up his mind.