Winter Journey - 7
With our late lunch behind us, we made our way to the Murim Alliance.
Once inside, we asked around at the Inspection Department and learned the meeting was still in session. Well, they would come out when it ended — no sense standing around idle, so we might as well see to our own errand first.
"Where does one take the grade examination?"
Sayun's voice carried the faintest edge of nerves, and Chaeryeon answered it with a bright grin before leading us toward one corner of the Alliance grounds.
For all that the building looked quiet from without, sparring was clearly in full swing within — the air rang with shouts of ki and the bite of weapons meeting weapons.
"Here we are. Barely anyone about at the moment, so you can get started right away."
"...Oh ho. Now, who do we have here."
An unfamiliar voice cut in. I turned to find a girl bearing down on us — tall for her age, late teens at a guess, with the flat, vicious stare of someone long accustomed to looking down her nose at the world.
Chaeryeon's brows knitted the instant she laid eyes on them.
"And who might you be, exactly?"
"Well, you see—"
I couldn't speak for the rest of them, but I knew exactly who the girl leading the charge was.
Namgung Jeyeon. A swordswoman of the Namgung Clan, one of the minor antagonists who cropped up briefly in Chaeryeon's main story. She was hardly a figure of any real importance — she picked a quarrel with Chaeryeon, got herself thoroughly thrashed, and the whole affair ended up serving as the very pretext for Chaeryeon's later ties to the Namgung Clan, after which she quietly vanished from the script.
"Still surrounding yourself with such odd company, I see."
Chaeryeon let out a long, weary sigh at the woman's self-satisfied drawl.
"Why not skip the pointless provocation and simply move along?"
"I'm afraid I can't. I still have a debt to repay from last time."
Namgung Jeyeon raised her fist, smiling. A debt, was it. So she'd lost a spar?
"You did lose. To me."
Just as I thought.
"And yet your dear sister there throws herself at it every single time regardless, doesn't she? Losing and lunging, over and over."
Chaeryeon shrugged. Well, Chae Jin certainly had done exactly that.
"From the look of things, you enjoy parading about with warriors beneath your own level so you can be treated as the superior one. How about we test that again, right here?"
Namgung Jeyeon dangled the bait with an oily smirk. Chaeryeon weighed it for a moment, then shook her head.
"Fighting you just isn't any fun."
"...What?"
"You're weak. Eul Grade, at that."
"...Grrh!!"
Namgung Jeyeon's face went rigid. The moment her hand drifted toward the sword at her waist, I stepped in with an easy smile.
"I am called Yu Wol, of Seomhwachon. Whatever ill blood stands between the two of you, would it not be a problem for a bearer of the Namgung name to simply draw steel without warning? So perhaps a little restraint is in order..."
She stared hard at me for a long beat, then spoke.
"And who might you be?"
"I did tell you. Yu Wol, of Seomhwachon."
"...Tch. A country bumpkin without so much as an epithet dares bar my path?!"
Gritting her teeth, she lashed a hand out at me — a shallow palm technique, less a strike than a shove meant to brush me aside.
Credit where due for not reaching straight for a killing technique, but turning openly to martial arts was rather hasty for the daughter of a storied clan.
I caught her palm with Chae Family Tai Chi — easing the back of her hand aside, seizing the instant her line of force shifted, then taking her shoulder and giving it a gentle push.
She was every inch a daughter of the Namgung; her palm was heavy enough that I came within a hair of failing to deflect it. But deflected it I did, and with her momentum twisted askew, Namgung Jeyeon staggered and slashed clumsily at empty air. I smiled.
"I'd advise against letting hot blood commit your mistakes for you. Shall we leave it at that?"
"...You call that a cheap trick?!"
"...No, that would be the Chae Family Tai Chi of the venerable Moon Lotus Pavilion. You were saying, about tricks?"
I caught myself glancing at Chaeryeon, and she grinned back at me.
Smiling, yes — but anyone with eyes could see she was fuming.
"Chae Family Tai Chi?! So you're with Moon Lotus Pavilion!! Excellent!! I am the next young family head of the Namgung Clan—!!"
"The young family headship hasn't been decided yet."
Chaeryeon said it with a derisive sniff, and Namgung Jeyeon flinched before rallying.
"...First among the candidates, then!!"
"First among the candidates is Namgung Yeonhu."
"...I! Am! Namgung Jeyeon!! My art is the Thousand Wind Fist! Since you carry no blade, I'll not draw mine!!"
"...Namgung Hwa was a chivalrous one. You're nothing of the sort."
Good grief, that startled me.
I had been about to answer Namgung Jeyeon when a voice cold as a frozen lake made me jump and glance aside — and the others turned too, all of them toward Sayun.
Her usual softly smiling face was gone without a trace.
Expressionless, she was stepping out in front of me.
"Sayun of Hongseong Gate. I will fight in the Innkeeper's stead."
With that, she slowly raised her fist. And Namgung Jeyeon was not the only one to startle at the words Hongseong Gate.
Whispers began to ripple through the onlookers as well, and Namgung Jeyeon ground her teeth. Did she think that backing down here, before all these eyes, would wound her pride beyond mending?
"Damn it all! The illustrious Hongseong Gate, brawling with the Namgung Clan over that bumpkin?!"
"I am not fighting the Namgung Clan."
Extending her lightly clenched fist, Sayun spoke with a frost that could crack stone.
"Only punishing the one who sought to harm a benefactor of Hongseong Gate."
"Grrh...!!"
"And the Innkeeper is not a man who must hear the word 'that bumpkin' from your lips. Offer a sincere apology this instant, and I will forgive you."
At Sayun's emotionless voice, Chaeryeon startled and leaned toward me.
"Sayun looks absolutely furious, huh."
"You're telling me."
I'd never seen her wear such a face either. All the same — wasn't someone supposed to be stopping this?
"Sayun, I'm fine, so that's enou—"
"Had Sayun not stepped forward, I would have. Sayun speaks true — the Innkeeper is a benefactor of our Hongseong Gate. To lay hands on him is as good as laying hands on Hongseong Gate itself. So please, watch, and let this be."
I looked to Hyeon Hwi, who had answered me. The one person who should have been reining this in stood with her arms crossed, merely observing.
"When martial artists clash, settling it by force is the old way, you know."
When even Chaeryeon was saying that, what could I possibly say?
Fine. I'd just watch. It wasn't as if Sayun looked in any danger of losing.
"There happens to be a sparring platform right here. Come on up, then."
No sooner had Sayun spoken than Chaeryeon murmured something to a Murim Alliance martial artist standing nearby. A short while later, Sayun and Namgung Jeyeon mounted the platform.
"Begin."
A martial artist ascended as referee, took both their weapons into his care, and handed each of them a wooden sword.
The moment Namgung Jeyeon spared him a glance, drew, and leveled her blade — Sayun returned a light fist salute and shot forward.
To Sayun, Yuwol was a most extraordinary person.
From the very first day they met, he had helped her. And he had never once stopped since.
He was always there with an outstretched hand, and even when she smiled and refused, he found some way to look after her all the same.
And more than anything, he was the man to whom her precious Hongseong Gate owed so very much.
As dear to her, as precious to her, as her own 'Uncle'.
And this man — this man, they had called 'that country bumpkin.' And struck at him out of turn, without leave.
True, Yuwol had turned the blow aside beautifully. But not even that could excuse her from wringing out an apology.
And a cheap trick, was it?
Sayun knew better than anyone how hard he labored. Keeping the inn running, tending to half the people of Seomhwachon, and doing so very much besides for Hongseong Gate's sake — and through all of it, never once slackening.
To see that effort dismissed with a single contemptuous remark — that, Sayun could never forgive. Not ever.
And so her mind went colder than cold.
The Hongseong Divine Art grows mightier with every stir of the heart.
But let rage carry you away, and it becomes nothing more than the art of the Ominous Star.
The Sword Saint and Hong Ryeon had drilled that truth into her time and again — and so Sayun could swing her sword in perfect, level calm.
"Ugh! Uuugh!"
The Namgung Clan's swordsmanship resembles the heavens themselves.
It is why the world calls them the 'Azure Sky.'
But the Hongseong Divine Art is the star that cleaves the heavens. However vast the sky may be, no sky can halt a star in its course.
"Haaaaap!!"
Namgung Jeyeon threw everything into stemming Sayun's strikes — dizzyingly fast, impossibly seamless — unspooling the Thousand Wind Sword and the Azure Sky Boundless Sword for all she was worth.
The sword art of the Azure Sky, which ought to be boundlessly free and boundlessly vast, could not lay hands upon a blade as free and fierce as a falling star.
"Damn it!! I am Namgung Jeyeon!! Candidate to be the next young family head of the Namgung Clan—!!"
Teeth bared, she swung her sword harder, faster. Her blade wove the blue sky in sweeping arcs across the platform.
But it could not last. Strike by strike, exchange by exchange, that blue sky was split apart and slowly drowned in red.
The domain woven by the Azure Sky Boundless Sword was being trampled flat beneath the Hongseong Divine Art.
"Graaagh!!"
—CRAAACK!!
And the strike that ended it all came down upon her arm. The impact to her blade-bearing right arm crashed through her entire body.
Her frame curled inward of its own accord, and the sword art meant to paint a boundless sky lost all its momentum.
—Crack! Crack!
Two more blows hammered into her left arm and right shoulder.
Perhaps I should commend her for not screaming.
When Namgung Jeyeon, jaw clenched, wrenched up her wounded left arm to unfold the Namgung Clan's palm barrier — the Heavenly Thunder Triple Palm — Sayun's hand was already moving.
Star Breaking Palm crashed headlong into the Heavenly Thunder Triple Palm in a detonation of empty air — and the victor was Sayun's Star Breaking Palm.
"Guh-hurk!!"
Flung back by the collision of inner force against inner force, Namgung Jeyeon staggered. But it was not yet over.
—WHAM!!
Sayun's pursuing fist slammed into her belly. The Meteor Fist. And as the woman buckled under the falling star's bombardment, Sayun's knee drove up into Namgung Jeyeon's face.
"Guhaaaagh!!"
Over the girl sent sprawling across the platform, Sayun bared her teeth and growled.
"Apologize."
—Shff.
Watching the fallen Namgung Jeyeon haul herself unsteadily upright, Sayun said, flat and even:
"For the discourtesy shown to Innkeeper Yuwol."
"...Ptoo. And why would I?"
To the girl who spat blood from her split lip and bristled like a drawn blade, Sayun smiled.
With a coldness past all measure.
Yes, Sayun had eaten a few of Namgung Jeyeon's counterblows — but even those had been deliberate lures, thrown to pry open her guard, and every last one slipped away leaving barely a scratch to show for it.
Rolling across the boards, dragging herself up, only to be hammered flying yet again — Namgung Jeyeon looked ready to burst into tears, and I was just beginning to wonder whether I ought to step in when—
—a whole crowd of people came streaming toward us.
"Huh...?"
Among them was a face I knew.
Namgung Hwa. The young daughter of the Namgung Clan we had met back at Changungwan.
Had word of how thoroughly Namgung Jeyeon was being thrashed brought them running from inside the Alliance?
"Oh my? Aren't you the Innkeeper?!"
Startled, she looked back and forth between us and the platform. She pressed Chaeryeon for the story, listened to the explanation — and broke into a beaming smile.
One that said she found this deeply satisfying.
"That little witch. Learned the Azure Sky Boundless Sword, got herself named a successor candidate, and ever since she's had no clue of her own place — strutting and posturing day in, day out. Good grief. Well, today she's met her match. Beat her well. Beat her hard. Sayun! Beat her half to death!!"
Namgung Hwa cheered Sayun on without the thinnest veil of discretion.
And that was when it happened.
"...Lord Vice-Head of Law Enforcement!"
A middle-aged man with a wintry cast to his face entered the hall.
The Alliance martial artists bowed to him as one; he answered with an easy wave of his hand and made his way over to our group.
Then, taking in the sight of Namgung Jeyeon — quite literally being pummeled on the platform — he turned to us and cupped his fist in salute.
"Namgung Seongyul. Sword Master of the Azure Heavens of the Namgung Clan, and Vice-Head of the Murim Alliance's Law Enforcement Department."
"Yu Wol, of Seomhwachon."
"Ah. So you're that man. I've heard tell of you from the Poison-Eyed Dragon, the Sun-Falling Sword, and the Moonlight Blade. They should be joining us here before long."
"Ah — yes. A pleasure."
Brief courtesies exchanged, he turned his gaze back to the platform.
He watched Sayun's one-sided dominion over Namgung Jeyeon without so much as a flicker, heard from Namgung Hwa what had transpired earlier, and then said, blunt as a hammer:
"I knew it from the moment that child began strutting about as a successor candidate with neither the skill nor the character to back it. It's precisely why I declared her unfit... But who might that young lady be? From her swordwork, I'd say the Hongseong Divine Art."
"Sayun. The youngest of Hongseong Gate."
"I see. The last disciple the Sword Saint ever took."
And then he said it in perfect earnest:
"Well then — since she's being beaten regardless, I do hope the young lady beats her soundly enough to keep her bedridden for a good year. Best she learn, once and properly, just how fearsome the world can be. That is the only way she won't go and get herself cut down in some godforsaken corner of it later on."
What in the world had that girl been doing all this time, that her own flesh and blood were this eager to eat her alive?