Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 00
Chapter Title: In the Beginning, There Was a Meeting
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Jaeam Jincheonkyung - Volume 1
“Exit light, Enter night.”
Metallica, Enter Sandman.
Part 1 Prologue
The pitch-black space devoid of even a single point of light gave the illusion of stretching out infinitely.
The scholar dimly knew that the space was not actually that vast, but it did not matter.
He could not move anyway.
[Are you well?]
A voice suddenly emerged from the darkness.
There could not possibly be another person here.
Yet the scholar tried to respond. He was not in his right mind at present.
His reason had been lost.
Maintaining a faint consciousness was the extent of what he could manage.
“Cough, cough.”
He wanted to ask who it was. But that was physically impossible. There was no way he could speak.
The scholar gave a bitter smile.
[It's fine. I can hear your voice.]
'How?'
The scholar tried to produce a sound, but his tongue, reduced to a mere stump, regrettably could not form words with satisfactory clarity.
Only incomprehensible groans leaked out painfully.
[No need to force out sounds like that. I've been watching over you ever since they tore out your tongue.]
He did not even wonder how the voice could read his mind.
He was too broken for such thoughts, both mentally and physically.
[Hmm, it was hardly a pleasant sight. Red-hot tongs plunged in and yanked out your tongue. You let out some monstrous scream before passing out.]
Contrary to those words, the unidentified voice was light and cheerful.
It did not sound as if it were reveling in the scholar's pain.
It simply seemed to be its natural tone.
'I can't... I can't see.'
The scholar glanced around toward the direction of the voice, then realized he could not see.
In truth, he had probably realized this several times before.
And several times, he had forgotten it again.
The place where he was—a deep cave—did have enough light filtering in. Only...
[Have you forgotten? Those eyes of yours, once brimming with profound insight, were pierced through with a fire-heated iron rod.]
'Was... that how it was?'
The scholar tried to raise his hand to touch around his eyes.
But he had no fingers.
His left hand was gone even up to the wrist.
Puzzled, he asked the voice.
'Did you perhaps see where my hands went?'
The voice replied in its deep yet jovial timbre.
[Those fine fingers of yours, unaccustomed to rough work, were snipped away bit by bit with scissors. Don't worry. For your sake, they used scissors glowing red-hot.]
What was there not to worry about? He could not tell.
'Thank you for answering.'
The scholar tried to stagger to his feet.
But he had no legs.
He tilted his head with difficulty and asked the voice.
'What took my legs?'
[Those slender legs of yours were carried off by an executioner's blade. Since you don't remember, I'll tell you: they sliced from the toes one by one, meticulously. Three days to the ankles. Ten days to the knees. Half a month to the thighs.]
'Is that so?'
The scholar tried to recall the past, feeling a headache pounding as if his skull might split.
Yet fortunately, he could vaguely resurrect the memories.
'...It seems like I remember now. Then, do you know what became of my family?'
[My, you were so busy enduring torture that you never heard about your family. Come to think of it, it's been quite a while since you've been rotting in this prison.]
Now that he thought about it, he faintly recalled having been imprisoned here for an incredibly long time.
As the scholar quietly rummaged through his thoughts, the voice continued.
[Your eldest sister was beaten to death by her husband's fists until that lovely face was turned to pulp.]
'Such...?!'
The scholar was utterly shocked.
'My brother-in-law is infamous for his fierce temper, but he is the head of a righteous and renowned clan. How could he brutally beat his own wife to death like that?'
The voice clicked its tongue.
[How obtuse. If even you, the eldest son of the clan, didn't know, who would know the affairs of your family?]
The scholar hurriedly asked.
'Then, what of my younger sister? What happened to her?'
[She was raped by bandits and bit off her own tongue to end her life.]
'What are you saying?'
The scholar could not comprehend.
'My second sister was a swordswoman second to none among her generation. How could she fall to mere bandits?'
[How obtuse. When did her dantian become ruined? What use were her decades of inner energy and honed sword skills?]
The scholar shook his head violently once more.
'Moreover, what of my clan? Even if my second sister lost her inner energy, the clan would never have failed to protect her.'
He grasped at the arduously surfacing memories.
'My clan was one without rival across these Central Plains. How could the second daughter of such a clan fall to mere bandits?'
The voice did not budge.
[How obtuse. Did you not even know that? When did your clan get utterly destroyed? Where would there be a clan left to protect her?]
'...Exterminated?'
What did that mean? The scholar tried to clutch his head as dizziness overwhelmed him.
But he had no hands.
'I may be merely a scholar who shut myself in a study, finding joy day by day in reading books, but my clan had younger brothers whose intellect and martial prowess shook the entire continent. And elite warriors followed those brothers like a folding screen—how in the world did this happen?'
[How frustrating, truly frustrating. How can you, the eldest son of the clan, pretend not to know what happened after you left as a son-in-law?]
The voice harshly scolded the scholar.
[Do you truly not know that those brothers you praised engaged in fratricidal strife to seize the position of family head?]
'I didn't know. I truly didn't know at all.'
The scholar shook his head fiercely.
[Is that true? You truly didn't know?]
The voice asked the scholar again in a meaningful tone.
The scholar could not understand.
He was nothing more than an ordinary scholar.
His life consisted solely of passing days reading books in a small room.
Occasionally tending the garden, painting, or playing an instrument—that was the extent of his joys.
[Is that true?]
The voice asked again, its tone showing no agreement with the scholar's thoughts.
'...Of course.'
He could not fathom why such a benevolent life had led him to be imprisoned here.
And subjected to such torture?
He had simply lived taking peace as his virtue.
[For a genius of your caliber, did you not know what was happening in the clan while you were there, what would happen after you left, and what the ultimate outcome would be?]
The voice now openly mocked the scholar.
The scholar protested his innocence.
'I truly didn't know. It's true. How could an ordinary man like me possibly know such things?'
Something seemed on the verge of surfacing in his mind, but it did not.
Who was he?
What had his life been?
Faint memories flitted by, but they vanished like illusions whenever he tried to grasp them.
His mind, with death permeating to the marrow, no longer turned as keenly as before.
[Is that so?]
The voice grew low and chilling.
As if peering through all of the scholar's lies, scrutinizing his life in every detail, the voice relentlessly cornered him.
[Is that truly so? You who foresaw a thousand li without clairvoyance, who peered a thousand days ahead without supernatural powers—did you truly not know?]
'I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know, I say!'
The scholar was confused.
Who could possibly possess such abilities?
To know the workings of the world as clearly as one's palm from one's seat.
An absurd power.
It was a talent possessed only by the greatest geniuses of antiquity, with divine calculation and extraordinary intellect.
The voice murmured lowly once more.
[That is you.]
'No, it can't be. Have you mistaken me for someone like Zizhang or Changqing?'
Zizhang and Changqing were none other than the courtesy names of Sima Qian and Sun Tzu.
[Zizhang and Changqing?]
The voice burst into hearty laughter.
[Do you not know that compared to you, Sima Qian and Sun Tzu were mere historians and strategists?]
Hearing those words, the scholar felt his mind reel momentarily.
Sima Qian was the man who left behind the Records of the Grand Historian, known as the father of history in this Central Plains.
Sun Tzu dominated the Spring and Autumn period, crushing the mighty state of Chu and elevating the vision of strategists to new heights.
Was it because it had been so long since he had conversed?
'You rank me, a mere nobody, higher than such great figures?'
The scholar's mind was slowly clearing.
[I ask you.]
With each exchange, bit by bit.
[When was it that you helped your mother organize and condense hundreds of medical texts, publishing them at age twenty-five?]
The scholar calmly recalled.
'...That was probably when I was four years old.'
[When was it that you remonstrated the emperor with brush and ink, leading to the promulgation of new farming methods?]
'That was when I was five.'
[When was it that you read the stars and observed the weather to predict a great drought, stockpiling grain for relief in advance and preventing the starvation of millions?]
'That was when I was six.'
As the conversation continued, the scholar's hazy memories began to revive, growing clearer with each passing moment.
After a while, the voice asked pointedly.
[Do you remember now?]
The scholar admitted it.
'Yes.'
In truth, he
had known everything.
After leaving the main family as a son-in-law, he had never once paid attention to news of the family.
Yet he had known it all as clearly as his own palm.
Ordinary men might foresee fratricidal strife but not its outcome.
But he had known the outcome entirely.
Every detail.
Without missing a single one.
That everyone would meet a miserable end.
That the once mighty and grand clan would collapse.
He had known all of it,
yet he had let it all be.