The Kirin of the Hengshan Sect (1)
The Kirin of the Hengshan Sect (1)
Jjaenggeurang!
The sound of shattering dishes rang through the house. I had been lying languidly after finishing my training, but the moment I heard that noise, I grabbed my axe and rose to my feet. Seon-go, who had been writing in the account book, stopped mid-stroke and her eyes went wide. The servants glanced at me sideways, then picked up clubs and brooms and spoke.
"Sect Leader. There's a suspicious sound coming from the storehouse. Could it be a thief?"
"Get back to work. I'll go check it out."
I stretched leisurely, then whistled as I tossed my axe up into the air and caught it—*fwip fwip*. A thief breaking into the sect—now, wasn't that a delightful turn of events?
Ever since occupying the sect, my daily life had been moving along a fixed, rigid routine, just like a military recruit. Training in the morning, mental image cultivation at midday, reviewing my martial training in the evening, and in the remaining time—sharing love with Seon-go, bathing, lounging about in ease, then sleeping.
It was a pleasant time, as pleasant times go, but this comfortable pleasure lacked the thrill and satisfaction that truly sated my hunger. Whenever I reached some point of happiness and asked myself, *isn't this good enough?*, the passionate answer always came back: 'This isn't enough.'
It wasn't enough.
This modest, petty happiness couldn't satisfy me.
For any real man, greater power and authority were necessities, and he ought to desire that more and more people look up to him. I wanted to flaunt a little more power. I pursued even greater strength.
So, for someone like me, a thief who'd come to raid the sect's storehouse was a welcome guest.
Simply splitting the thief's skull open would let me spend the rest of the day with more enjoyment and vigor than usual.
Wearing a grin of pure delight, I kicked the door in with my foot and shouted.
"You picked the wrong place, bastard!"
"...Oh my. I've been caught."
The storehouse door shattered and sunlight flooded in.
Crouched in the middle of the storehouse was Sannyeo, and in front of her lay a smashed porcelain vase. It had clearly been that piece she'd mentioned before—something or other from the Qin Dynasty era. The vase, whose true value I couldn't begin to guess, had already been reduced to shards, now looking fit only for skipping across a pond.
For a moment, I couldn't parse the situation and stood there blinking in silence. Sannyeo spoke in a calm tone.
"...I was only touching it for a moment to get a better look."
"If you're a martial arts master, when a vase falls, aren't you supposed to... you know, *fwip fwip* and catch it? You know the thing. Catching the vase with the top of your foot so it doesn't break, setting it down gently."
I spoke, remembering the cartoons I'd watched as a child. It was a scene where a martial arts master caught a vase with the tips of his toes and set it down without breaking it—that elegant movement had stayed in my memory all this time.
"...I can do that sort of thing too."
Sannyeo rose to her feet as she spoke. Her hands were full of pottery shards.
"It's just, lately I've been sparring constantly and using my feet so much, and I ended up putting force into it out of habit, so..."
Sannyeo muttered something that was almost an excuse, then began fitting the shards back together.
To put it simply: she'd tried to examine the vase while wearing her manacles, the vase bumped against the manacles and got knocked off, and Sannyeo—with her hands bound and hard to use—stuck out her foot to catch it as usual, but because she'd been practicing so many kicks lately, force had gone into it unconsciously and she'd kicked the vase clean across the room, smashing it.
"Wow, still, a master's touch really is something else. You've smashed it into a work of art."
The one saving grace was that the pieces she'd shattered by kicking were clean and fairly large, so they looked easy to glue back together. Watching her fit the pottery pieces together by hand, they almost looked like puzzle pieces that had been broken into that exact shape in the first place.
"Need a hand?"
"...It's fine."
Sannyeo shook her head and picked up another shard. I watched her for a moment, then pushed the door—already half-smashed from my kick—shut again. Sannyeo gave me a puzzled look and said,
"What? You can just go."
"The master's crime is my crime too, you fool. How long do you think it'll take to piece all this back together with those manacled hands?"
Sannyeo held a shard in her hand and gazed down at me wordlessly. She did that sometimes—silently watching me like a statue or a bird. She'd stare at me in silence, then nod as if she'd figured something out on her own, and smile.
"That's right. You are my disciple, after all."
Just like now.
By now, I was used to her odd reactions, so I smiled back at her and nodded.
*******
"But is it really all right for us to just keep going on like this?"
Another two weeks passed like that. As always, after finishing my training according to the set routine and wiping the sweat from my brow, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
'But what do I do now?'
'Things have been way too leisurely lately. Is it really okay to just keep going like this?'
"What, getting impatient? If you rush, nothing gets done."
Sannyeo said it with a leisurely expression, but her words only left me feeling uneasy. And no wonder—after occupying the sect, for nearly a month, I'd done nothing but repeat the same training with no goal whatsoever.
Training to grow stronger was all well and good. But wasn't it better to know what my next target was, and which bastard I needed to crush? My goal was to grow stronger and climb to the peak of this martial world, and Sannyeo's goal was to use me to overturn the martial world.
Since our two goals aligned, wasn't I at least entitled to know the next stage of our revenge in advance?
"It's less impatience and more that my goal's starting to feel a little hazy. Just staying like this, living comfortably and safe here... a person gets too soft. Life's supposed to have a certain tension to it."
"Don't worry too much, Docheol. Soon enough, even if we do nothing, they'll come looking for us on their own."
"Come looking?"
I gave her a puzzled look. Who was coming? We'd captured and killed the Crimson Ring Sect's sect leader, after all.
"You mean the Murim Alliance's army is coming?"
"Ahahaha!"
At my question, Sannyeo burst out laughing, covering her mouth. At the bright peal of laughter, Seon-go, who had come out to see what was going on, and the servants all stared at her with bewildered expressions. Wondering if I'd said something that funny, I awkwardly fiddled with my axe, and Sannyeo finally quelled her laughter and shook her head.
"It's a decent idea, but the scale's too big. The Crimson Ring Sect is formally a sect belonging to the orthodox faction, so it does fall under the Murim Alliance, but the matter isn't serious enough to warrant leading an army here. The sect isn't even that large. Though the sect leader died under somewhat unsavory circumstances, you married his daughter and have the right of succession regardless. And you haven't openly followed the Demonic Cult or committed any blatantly evil acts. They won't attempt an outright punitive expedition."
"Still, some kind of check is coming from the Murim Alliance?"
"To be precise, rather than the Murim Alliance itself checking us, it'll be someone who runs roughshod in this region under the Murim Alliance's name, trying to keep you in check."
The Murim Alliance directly moving to check us versus someone working under the Murim Alliance doing so—those were distinctly different matters.
"Docheol. Right now, we aren't important enough people for the Murim Alliance to take an interest in."
"That stings the pride a bit."
"But it's also fortunate. It means things will blow up at a scale we can handle."
I searched my memory. The Crimson Ring Sect's sect leader had definitely said he was following the orders of someone called Venerable Geumbok. He'd said at the very end that he was going to that Venerable Geumbok person, too.
Most likely, even the founding of the Crimson Ring Sect had been part of some scheme laid by this Venerable Geumbok character. I asked Seon-go,
"Seon-go. Who exactly is this person called Venerable Geumbok?"
Seon-go lifted her head, frowned briefly as she searched her memory, then spoke.
"They say he's a person who cultivates the Dao and lives in the Zhongnan Mountain area, but I think I heard he isn't a martial artist. However, the martial artists under his command are powerful, and he's so widely connected with sects all over the place that I've heard his influence in this region is very strong."
In other words, a local power broker. Sannyeo nodded at Seon-go's words and added,
"He was originally a man who lived as a merchant in the secular world. From early on, he expanded his influence into the martial world by lending money to sects and collecting interest—a moneylender. As he aged, he apparently wanted to act like some kind of... sect master himself, so he kept poking around here and there, trying to establish sects under his own name or attempting to swallow up smaller sects."
Sannyeo paused there and took a breath. Then she narrowed her eyes and smiled. Unlike before, this smile carried a hint of something forced, an awkwardness I could feel.
"Sannyeo Valley was also one of the places Venerable Geumbok wanted to build a sect on. So he cooperated with the Murim Alliance and helped them wipe out Sannyeo Valley."
Sannyeo didn't elaborate any further.
But even from just what she'd said, I could tell that Venerable Geumbok was our top-priority target.
Plenty of money, and plenty of sins.
A man truly well-matched for my axe.
Seon-go looked around at us with an awkward expression and hunched her shoulders. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and said,
"So, how exactly do you think Venerable Geumbok's going to come hassle us?"
Sannyeo spoke.
"In my opinion..."
"Sect Leader! Sect Leader! Someone's come from outside!"
Cutting off Sannyeo's words, a servant came bursting in, gasping for breath. He was dripping with cold sweat and looked genuinely frantic. I asked,
"What's going on?"
"Fro-from the Murim Alliance, an in-investigator has arrived, they said...! Wh-what should we do?"
And then, as if even the time it took the servant to call out was too precious to waste, a woman's sharp voice rang out from the direction of the main gate.
"New Sect Leader of the Crimson Ring Sect, open the door at once! Having learned that the Crimson Ring Sect's corrupt practices are grave, I, Im Seo-ryeon, the Kirin of Hengshan Sect, have come to investigate in the name of the Murim Alliance!"
"...Where's Hengshan Sect?"
Sannyeo spoke.
"It's a sect that only accepts women."
"Oh."