Someday Soon - 6
I'd considered bringing her inside to a room, but decided it would be better to stay right here, so I left her where she was and stepped indoors. What I came back out with was a pot of warm tea and some pastries Yohwan had baked, and I set them down before the Sword Saint, who sat waiting on the long bench.
"This conversation may run long, so why not enjoy these while we talk?"
"You are always so considerate. My thanks — I shall drink it gladly."
Cradling the cup in both hands, she sipped delicately, then cut into one of the soft pastries and took a bite. The way she nibbled made her look like some small animal, though the woman before me was counted among the ten mightiest in the world.
And one who carried a deep wound in her heart, at that.
I gazed at her a while, took a slow sip of my own tea, and spoke. "You said you had something you wished to discuss. What would that be?"
"How did you do it?"
How did I do what? Not a shred of context.
When I gave her a questioning look, she held my gaze with those deep eyes and went on. "Seomhwachon is flourishing, is it not?"
"Ah. Well... I didn't do all that much."
I truly hadn't. I had simply built the place up into a stronghold the way anyone who played Cheonsang Myeongwol would know to do. Raise public order. Raise the quality of the goods the village produced. Work hand in hand with the officials while increasing both the number and quality of its soldiers. Nothing more than the base-development strategies for beginners posted on the Cheonsang Myeongwol forums, followed to the letter.
"It cannot have been easy..."
"It wasn't so hard I couldn't manage."
"How, though? The expense alone must have been considerable..."
"Money can always be earned."
Honestly, earning money itself had never been the hard part — all the more so with a healthy pool of starting capital and the information and knowledge I carried in my head. Knowing the secrets of places that had yet to be discovered made money a trivial concern. If only my reach weren't confined to this region, that is. Come Part 3, once trade with the Empire's northern territories opened up, there would be no reason I couldn't lay my hands on far greater wealth and goods.
"...Impressive."
"In my eyes, it is you who are impressive, Sword Saint. If you were to put the power you possess to use, anything I manage would amount to nothing at all."
"Haha. It does not work that way, I'm afraid. However great one's strength, what a single person can accomplish is limited. Especially someone like me..." She raised a hand. Small, pale fingers. "The only thing I know how to do is swing a sword."
Silence settled between us. I watched her for a moment, then took another sip of tea.
"That is right. That is all I can do. Beyond it, I can do nothing, and I know nothing." Her voice trembled. The Sword Saint was speaking to my face, but where her gaze ultimately came to rest was not me. "Do you know what abilities are indispensable to the one who must lead a sect?"
"Wouldn't that be great strength?"
"Correct. But that is not all. An eye that reads the currents of the age. Leadership enough to guide every last follower. A coldness ruthless enough to earn the recognition of the many. The judgment to know what must be cast aside for the sect's sake. The practical cunning to keep fed all those who look to you and you alone. And..."
The Sword Saint reeled off the qualities of an ideal leader as though it were nothing. Apparently her standard of leadership was benchmarked against the Celestial Realm itself.
By the time I had listened through it all and drained my cup, she had clenched the fist resting on the table. "Of all of those, I possess but one."
"I know."
The Sword Saint's face fell.
We're not done talking yet — please stop moping.
"But so what if that's true? No one can be perfect. The reason people band together in the first place is that no one can save the world alone. Isn't holding Hongseong Gate together and helping it grow the very same? Especially the Hongseong Gate of today — does it not have exceptional disciples?"
"...That it does."
For the first time, a faint smile touched the Sword Saint's stiff face. Bitterness was steeped into it in full, but what shone through plainly was pride — pride in the disciples she had gathered and brought in, in those who had chosen her.
"Gathering them and winning them over was no small feat either."
"...Toward my disciples... toward all of them... I have always felt sorry. That someone like me should stand as Sect Leader..."
"Sword Saint. That is arrogance, and it exists nowhere but in your own head."
"..."
"The disciples of Hongseong Gate I know would never think such a thing. To someone, you were salvation. You were light. You were a miracle."
That was the truth of it. To Sa Yun, the Sword Saint had been salvation, light, and miracle alike. After Hongseong Gate fell in the original story, Sa Yun had endured every hardship and trial by following the light you had shown her back then. I had bent the course of the story to keep that destruction from ever happening — but that never changed how much the Sword Saint meant to her.
I said it point-blank, and the Sword Saint looked at me with wide, round eyes. "...Ha. Is that so?"
A thread of strength had returned to her voice. Perhaps she had been turning that very thought over in her own mind as well. And so, to the woman drooping before me, I could say it plainly. "Yes. That is so."
"Hmm. It seems you have grown rather close with our disciples."
"I've been doing my best, in my own way. We're all in the same boat, after all."
"Haha... I hear it every time, you know — how much they owe you."
The Sword Saint chuckled low and sipped her tea, moistening her dry lips.
A brief silence. I was starting to think it was about time to steer us off this heavy topic. "So then... is that why you came? To tell me I did well, developing Seomhwachon?"
"That is part of it... but I was merely curious how you managed to take it so far. Once, I tried my hand at the same..."
Most of what she had ever attempted for Hongseong Gate's sake had ended in failure. She had wanted to follow the sect's will and lend her strength where she could, but thanks to Mount Hongseong, no monsters ever emerged; the area held nothing worth plundering, so bandits rarely came, and when they did, the officials turned back nearly all of them. Murim folk gave the region a wide berth precisely because Hongseong Gate stood there. In the end, there had been nothing for the Sword Saint herself to do — not of the things her master had planned and her senior sister had declared feasible. Not one of them had she brought to fruition. Then everything broke apart. Because of the senior sister who had slaughtered the whole of the sect. Because of herself, the one who had put that senior sister down. Every hope her master had placed in Hongseong Gate had burst like foam on the water.
"Have you considered going out into the world, as Hong Ryeon does?"
The Sword Saint shook her head. "The greater my name grows, the heavier it will weigh upon Ryeon."
Fair enough — there was a reason people said the old guard cast the longest shadow. In raw martial arts alone, the Sword Saint might well be called the finest Sect Leader in Hongseong Gate's entire history. The more someone like that went out and piled up renown, the more certain it became that Hong Ryeon would be measured against her when she took the leader's seat in turn. And that could easily become a burden too heavy for Hong Ryeon to bear. Had she been living in seclusion all this time with even that in mind?
"Of course, if it were ever truly unavoidable, I would go out without hesitation. If there is something I can do, I would do anything. But... that would only ever be as Na Yerin, disciple of Hongseong Gate — never as its Sect Leader." She hung her head, dispirited. Shoulders sagging, presence shrunk to almost nothing. Who, looking at that diminished woman, would ever guess she was the Sword Saint?
"A-and I intend to give everything I have until Ryeon comes to grasp Astral Energy and steps into the Transcendent realm. And once Ryeon understands it and possesses strength worthy of the leader's seat — from that day on, I intend to fight for Hongseong Gate as its disciple."
Now that was welcome news. If a master of the Sword Saint's caliber took the field, my own goals would come that much easier. One thing nagged at me, though. "I've heard that Transcendents who grasp Astral Energy set their sights one step higher still — on ascending to become Immortals. Is that not your wish as well, Sword Saint?"
It was somewhere around Yura's main event in Part 3, if I recalled right. There was a scene where you spoke with the Old Man of the South Sea — the man who had grasped Astral Energy and channeled it down his fishing line to drag the sea's monsters from the deep. Invited to come along, he had answered thus: what Transcendents desire above all is to sever their ties with the mortal world and climb to heaven as divine Immortals. That, he said, was why they refused to entangle themselves with the world at all. And so the Old Man of the South Sea had offered only a few teachings, some equipment, and elixirs — but had never joined them.
When I asked with that knowledge in hand, the Sword Saint shook her head. "Not all of us are like that. Besides, I bear far too many ties to this mortal world. How could I cast them aside and ascend to heaven alone? And... no. There is no need to speak of that." Having answered shortly, she slowly lifted her head. "In any case. I am not one who holds the right to such a thing."
Her smile in the light of the setting sun was nothing but desolate.
So I spoke. "Hmm. If you were forsaking Immortality because you cherished the ties you hold, that would be one thing... but on the matter of qualification, I'd have to shake my head."
"...And yet."
"As Sect Leader, you have done everything within your power — you are doing it still, are you not? As I said before, no one person can do everything alone. Thanks to your efforts, Hongseong Gate has grown to this size, and you have laid the groundwork for it to grow further."
"..."
"The way I see it, you are more than qualified. You have borne so much, for so long."
The Sword Saint simply looked at me with wide eyes and did not say a word — not until her disciples, their patrol finished, came to find her.
Trudging up the path, the Sword Saint let her thoughts drift. The words she had heard from him kept blooming over and over in her mind. Not once since she had earned the title of Sword Saint had anyone consoled her like that — acknowledged her like that. And it had been the man who accomplished what she never could, telling her she had been through so much.
"Master?"
"...Ah."
The moment her eyes met Sa Yun's, the Sword Saint broke into a soft smile. Sa Yun tilted her head at the sight. "Did something good happen?"
"Mm... yes. A good thing. Yes. It truly was not bad at all." To be comforted by someone she had assumed could not care less about such things. To be comforted by someone who was, step by steady step, accomplishing the very things her master had once spoken of. "...Yes. More than I expected, that is."
Compared to when she had descended to the village, the Sword Saint's face held a little more life in it.