The Wish of Fifty Million - 2
The world of Cheonsang Myeongwol followed a wuxia style.
Yes. Wuxia-style. Not wuxia itself.
Which was precisely why, the moment I laid eyes on the scene before me, I could be certain I had stepped into Cheonsang Myeongwol's one-of-a-kind world.
The architecture was steeped, unmistakably, in the flavor of the East. The inn visible through the window to my right, laid out in the courtyard style; the houses seen past yet another window; the ornaments hung with such elegance from the tiled roofs — all of them markedly different from anything built on Western lines.
And yet — the people were different. To begin with, their hair colors were a world away from any Eastern palette. Not that there was no black hair to be seen. But red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet — no, this wasn't some rainbow-hued socialist utopia either, but one look at the crowd made it plain that this world's colors didn't begin and end with the East.
Then there were the clothes. And the bodies, all striking curves in contrast to those ageless, boyish Eastern faces. Outfits, figures, and beauty that seemed to blend East and West — the kind whose roots you couldn't say had been pawned off to whom.
Not that any of it was actually a problem.
After all, what I like is justice.
"Mm...."
From my seat by the second-floor window, my gaze drifted to one of the passersby below: a woman with a long, slender sword at her hip, swaying her broad hips with a seductive roll as she walked.
The clothes alone told the story. A skirt that short! And a garter belt! A top clinging to every line of her! That outfit — I was almost certain it was the one from Cheonsang Myeongwol called Proof of Fury. The one you could only get by clearing a particular secret realm, a genuinely brutal one, at that...
Then the woman stole a glance back over her shoulder. Had she noticed me at the second-floor window, watching her? Her black eyes seemed to angle my way, and I gave her a wink.
Softly, a crescent moon drew itself across her full red lips. Eyes crinkling in a gentle smile, she blew me a kiss from a hand wrapped in black gauntlets, gave those splendid hips one last sway, and melted back into the crowd.
Hm...
A woman dressed to make the purists cough up blood on sight, that one.
But hey — who says wuxia can't have garter belts! If it's sexy, isn't that enough?!
In any case, it was now all but certain: this was the world of Cheonsang Myeongwol.
I rose from my seat, left the room, and started up the stairs. The building stood four stories in all. Half the ground floor was given over to the trading house; the other half and the second floor were arranged as an inn and kitchen; the third and fourth held rooms where guests could rest.
Partway up, I crossed paths with someone who was clearly on staff here — a shop clerk, most likely — a young-looking fellow who jolted in surprise and dropped his head the instant he saw me.
"Innkeeper, sir. Were you coughing?"
An innkeeper, then.
I stole a glance at the mirror in the corridor. What looked back at me was a hulking, muscle-bound giant of a man, thick-bearded, with a face that read as more than a little rough and weathered.
"Mm."
At my light nod, he bowed once more and headed back down. I passed him, and climbed higher, and higher still.
At the topmost floor, I stepped out onto the roof and looked around. Perhaps it was simply the height, but the whole village spread out beneath my eyes.
And then I turned my gaze toward the mountain — the one with the truly lovely scenery.
The Thousand-Day Plum Blossoms. Thanks to those strange plum blossoms that bloomed through every season without pause, the mountain looked for all the world like a red star. And upon that red star, one sect had made its home since long ago. Hongseong Gate — the women-only sect with the Sword Saint Na Yerin as its leader — sat there in proud splendor.
So the timing is before the Prologue.
Hongseong Gate standing whole, this village still on its feet — that would be proof enough of it.
I made my way back to the room I'd started in, sat down, and faced the mirror.
One of the countless extras who had lived in this village. The village that took in Sa Yun, left all alone, when the Iron Blood Dan attacked and burned Hongseong Gate in the Prologue. The village massacred around the middle of Chapter 1 — the very event that drove her out into the murim. By the original script, people fated to die before long.
I smiled at the man in the mirror.
A face I didn't know. But I knew this man's name.
The owner of Seomhwachon's only trading house and inn — a name and nothing more, appearing in Sa Yun's Prologue and Chapter 1. The extra 'Yu Wol', who in the game never once shows his face, getting no more than a passing name-drop.
If that man's role had fallen to me, there was only one thing to be done.
"Seomhwachon? Oh, please. Don't get me started. There's no better place to live in the whole wide world."
"Bandits sneaking in? Wicked monsters creeping close?"
"Under the sacred mountain's protection, monsters can't come anywhere near, and with the Sword Saint in residence, not a bandit or thug alive would dare show their faces here."
"The merchants who pass through now and then complain the towns outside are a noisy mess, but for us? We live without a single real problem, don't we?"
The weight of the name "Sword Saint" was never a light one. She was one of the mightiest under heaven, counted among the world's ten finest.
The pillar of a greatsword she swung — for all its overwhelming size and heft, in the Sword Saint's hands it swayed light as a ribbon of silk. No one who stood before that greatsword ever remained standing, and no one who witnessed that beautiful, dance-like swordsmanship ever failed to sing its praises.
That was the Sword Saint, Na Yerin.
Of course, she dies in the Prologue.
Yes. That indomitable Sword Saint Na Yerin dies in the Prologue.
Poisoned, blinded, she fights off dozens of Iron Blood Dan masters armed with nothing but her qi sense. Badly wounded in the struggle, she finally loses her life at the hands of the Iron Blood Water Emperor, one of the Dan's five leaders.
And yet even then she deals the Water Emperor a grievous wound and drives him into retreat — and she succeeds in saving Sa Yun, the youngest of Hongseong Gate and its only surviving disciple.
The reason Hongseong Gate falls to annihilation is that Na Yerin dies.
Even if the sect's halls are smashed to rubble and Mount Hongseong burns to ash, so long as she and a handful of her disciples draw breath, Hongseong Gate can rise again as many times as it needs to.
And Sa Yun — who in the original loses her master and her sect elders armed with only the first half of the Hongseong Divine Art — would never have to despair over, or be broken by, her half-finished martial arts.
Most characters in Cheonsang Myeongwol had more than enough masters, senior brothers and sisters, and elders to teach them.
And Sa Yun — who, with nothing but those half-baked techniques, had somehow kept pace with the titans all on her own — if she were taught properly, she could without question grow stronger than any of them. Overwhelmingly so.
Right. Good. Then my task was decided.
Whatever it took, I was keeping Na Yerin alive.
Not that the plan was without risk. There's a thing called the butterfly effect. I knew perfectly well that whatever I changed would send ripples through the story to come.
But.
If the main story could only unfold through her suffering —
"Then it's better off not existing at all."
Starting now, I'm changing the genre — no longer human drama, but wholesome head-pat fluff.
With the wishes of the fifty-million-strong Sayun Dan weighing on my back, this was something I simply had to do.
For all that it sat near the sacred mountain of Hongseong, Seomhwachon was a small village with nothing particularly special about it. Taoists and shamans drifting in now and then on pilgrimage to the sacred mountain, and murim folk on their way to call at Hongseong Gate — those made up the great majority of everyone who ever set foot here.
But even a village that small had a magistrate's office, and people living out their lives in it.
Step into the market district and the smell of everyday living grew thick enough to taste. What, in a village this tiny, was there to sell and buy in such abundance? Even as the sun began its slow slide down the sky, a fair number of people were still combing the market for clearance goods at knockdown prices.
At the end of my wandering thoughts, my gaze snagged on a stall laid out with Dang-gwa sweets in every color under the sun.
"Hmmmmmm...."
Unlike the other Hongseong Gate disciples, Sa Yun had been an orphan, taken in as a disciple by Na Yerin. Which meant that, unlike the rest, she received no family patronage whatsoever and had almost no money of her own to spend. If she'd at least had some other sponsor it might have been different, but she didn't even have that — so much as carelessly buying herself Dang-gwa that cost next to nothing was out of the question.
She could nibble at scraps whenever the other disciples bought some, granted. But even then, you could bet she'd be minding everyone's moods the whole while.
"Mmmmh..."
"Oh dear, oh dear... whatever am I to do..."
Of course, with Na Yerin alive and teaching her properly, Sa Yun would master the Hongseong Divine Art in full and grow more than strong enough.
But having come all this way, I found myself wanting to reach a little further. What I wanted to see — what we wanted to see — was that kid becoming happy.
She may wear a sharp face and show strangers a prickly temper, but at her core, Sa Yun was a girl hopelessly devoted to anything sweet. I wanted her to live a life where she could feel happiness in her own way.
With the knowledge I carried, I could see to it that she learned without a single gap, and experienced everything there was to experience.
The problem was how to get close to her.
Hongseong Gate was, beyond all argument, forbidden ground to men.
No man alive could step past its gates. Even letters, even the food and necessities the sect used, only ever made it as far as the entrance — the disciples carried everything the rest of the way in themselves.
Which meant that to approach her, I would have to lie in wait for the rare days she came down to the market.
Arms crossed, I turned the problem over and over.
"Hoo hoo... W-Wanna be ajussi's secret friend? Ajussi will buy you tasty things, and give you allowance money too."
"What's a secret friend?"
"Well, we talk like this, and sneak off together to eat yummy things (Dang-gwa) where the sect can't see.... Fun, right? You'd even get to try thrilling experiences (hidden secret-realm walkthroughs) the other disciples never get to...."
No. Absolutely not. One witness, and I'd be dragged straight to the magistrate's office down the road.
Right now, Sa Yun wouldn't even be fifteen yet, and this body of mine was, at a generous estimate, early-to-mid thirties... To any onlooker, that was a dangerous relationship.
I hastily rewrote the plan I'd hatched not thirty seconds prior.
Yeah. A direct approach was a nonstarter.
Which left exactly one way to do this.
I walked the market. As the crimson afterglow of the slowly sinking sun unfurled across the sky in a blaze of color, the stalls of vendors closing up shop were being carried indoors one by one.
I stopped at one of those stalls.
A junk stall. Conical straw hats, tobacco, ornamental hairpins, trinkets, strips of dried jerky, and much else besides. A dizzying clutter of miscellaneous goods every bit as rootless and uncategorizable as this world itself, with nothing before it but a single man who looked like he couldn't care less about making a sale.
In other words: selling things was not this man's purpose. If it were, there was no way he'd pay no mind to a customer rooting through his wares the way I was.
"This one, and this one. And this one. And this."
What I picked out was a straw hat, the tobacco, a hairpin, and a little wooden bracelet.
The man, who had been regarding my choices with perfect indifference, held out a hand.
"One nyang of silver."
I took the hat, settled it on my head, and lit the paper-rolled tobacco. As pale smoke curled upward, I pocketed the wooden trinket and spoke.
"Be at the inn by midnight."
There was no answer. But I was certain he would come.
And why wouldn't he? He belonged to the game systems of Cheonsang Myeongwol itself. He was a courier of the Courier Gate — the one organization every character meets in the Prologue, bound to deliver letters and parcels to any corner of the continent.
Back at the inn, I waited in my room with tobacco smoldering. The sun went down, the moon rose, and around the time that moon began its climb toward the crown of the black sky, I sat down at the desk.
And, calm and unhurried, I ground the ink.
Marching up to meet her cold was a problem. Forcing my way into the forbidden-to-men zone was an even bigger one.
So I took up the brush and wrote the whole thing in a single sitting. Once the ink-soaked paper had dried completely, I slid it into an envelope. Then, packed together with one nyang of silver into a small box — and sealed it shut.
All that remained was to wait.
Seated in the chair, puffing tobacco down to the ember — how long did I wait?
"Delivery from the Courier Gate."
The moon that had been climbing the heavens reached its summit — and there, waiting at my window, stood a figure clad in black, a hood drawn low over his head. A touch taller than me, with shoulders spread wide as a doorframe. The hood hid his face, but even the sliver of visible silhouette spoke of iron resolve and quiet pride in his own skill. The two uncovered eyes made no effort to conceal their fierce gleam.
Every inch the Courier Gate courier who sees the mission through, come what may.
I handed him the box.
"Express delivery. And see that the sender stays unknown."
He answered in the same grave tone he'd arrived with.
"That will be one nyang of silver, valued customer."
I held out one nyang of silver without a word, and he gave a short nod.
Sender unknown. Destination: a sect right next door. A man might well wonder why anyone would call on the Courier Gate for a distance you could walk — but this one had the look of a man who carried the Courier Gate's policy and creed exactly as I remembered them.
No questions asked. No curiosity entertained.
As if his only duty in this world was to see this one letter delivered, he wheeled about and vaulted clean off the four-story building, off and running into the night.
Truly — for deliveries, nothing beats the Courier Gate.
Through the thin veil of tobacco smoke drifting from my lips, I watched him go, and smiled.
I could not hold back the joy. Could not withstand the excitement. Could not stop the heat.
And so, on behalf of everyone, I made my declaration to this world:
Because I was going to make it so.
Because we were.