Movement Within Stillness
“Then, General Yeom. I can only hope fortune grants us another meeting.”
Jeong Ryung, his wind-cloak drawn about him once more, and the Silk Road Guerrilla Unit bowed with solemn respect toward Elder Yeom.
They had spoken lightly of chasing the elder all the way to Luoyang, yet in truth they had to return to Xi’an without delay and hand over the watch to the next shift.
In the years since the Port Opening Decree, maritime trade had swollen to vast proportions. Even so, the volume of goods that still moved along the Silk Road continued its steady annual climb. Xi’an remained the gateway city linking the great metropolis of Luoyang to that ancient artery of commerce, and it shouldered every duty that role demanded. The Silk Road Guerrilla Unit was one of those duties.
“Very well. Convey my regards to your mother…”
Elder Yeom hesitated a moment, then finished with a parent’s concern.
“For her sake, if nothing else, is it not time you settled into a proper post?”
The man who was the family’s eldest son, yet loved desert and wasteland more than any hall of power, only smiled.
“My elder sister would make a far finer Prefect of Xi’an than I ever could. My presence there would do nothing but stir up trouble.”
“…Take care of yourself.”
Jeong Ryung clasped his fists in a formal salute.
“We merely deal with bands of brigands. You, General, seem to stand before far greater enemies. May victory go with you.”
“Ah, as expected! The name of the Sword Family—first under heaven—is no empty boast!”
Tang Go-gyu, the esteemed elder of the Tang Family, cried out with genuine exuberance. Yeon Ha-eung waved both hands in equally theatrical denial.
“Aigoo, not at all, not at all! Had this been Sichuan, the Tang Clan would have shown us something greater still, would they not?”
“Aigoo, what talk is that? If that were true, you would be calling the Tang Clan first under heaven as well!”
“Oh? Is that not the case?”
“Eh? Is it?”
A moment later the two of them burst into shared laughter.
True to their callings as the diplomatic and social faces of their respective houses, they painted each other’s cheeks with gold and found perfect rhythm in the flattery. The rest of the investment delegation shared the buoyant mood. Being attacked in the wilds was a nightmare; help was rarely near, and connections seldom reached so far. Often, as now, one could not even guess the reason for the assault. Yet every enemy had fallen, and their own side had not suffered a single loss. Traveling under the protection of the Luoyang Sword Family’s armed force—and with the famed Geomakpasan himself among them—meant something more than mere safety.
The investment procession began to move again. Not everyone, however, shared the rising spirits.
The Emei Sect walked as though defeated.
To any outsider who did not know the circumstances, they might have looked like a routed army. Combatants and non-combatants alike had witnessed the Luoyang Sword Family’s power; none could remain unshaken.
They too had once stood among the Nine Great Sects, and their pride in their own martial arts ran bottomless. Even now, if challenged to match blades with a warrior of the Sword Family, any of their martial nuns would gladly roll up her sleeves and step forward.
And yet…
The Luoyang Sword Family is of a different order from even the Sichuan Tang Clan. They have already stepped beyond the measure of mere house or sect.
No one answered the transmitted thought. Even with eyes open, the scene they had just watched replayed itself with merciless clarity.
First, the armored transport carriages. Even now they rattled onward, bristling with the assassins’ arrows like so many medals of honor; the sight alone invited hollow laughter. The bizarre, perfectly drilled responses of the drivers alone would have been shock enough. The sword companies, who kept their cool amid the heat of battle and toyed with the enemy through collective tactics rather than individual prowess, were terrifying in their own right. And then there was the ironclad cavalry—what else could one call it? Warriors in full heavy plate astride armored mounts were a sight reserved for the border armies of the realm. Yet a single family trained such troops in formation and fielded them as a unit. On top of everything, they even possessed a true military strategist—not the courtesy title bookish advisors once bestowed upon one another in the days before the Martial Alliance’s fall, but a genuine master of war and battle.
The great houses once called the “old families” now mostly held far greater power than in former ages. Even so, this single engagement had forced the Emei nuns to feel, in their bones, what it truly meant to be first under heaven.
Geomakpasan… that bastard’s realm has grown still deeper.
Crunch.
The carriage had once been lavishly appointed. Did he grasp something during the northern war? Now, after the long road’s dust and the arrows hideous in their shafts, it looked more like a rolling monstrosity. Crunch. The Emei banner itself had been ruined; the carriage that bore the old woman raced without so much as a flag. Crunch.
Inside the carriage, its curtains drawn tight against the light, a white-haired crone ground her teeth.
Why have they and we grown so far apart?
How many times—dozens, hundreds, thousands—had she chewed over that question? When had it begun? At what moment had the gold and power that the great martial sects once mocked overtaken traditions and histories of a thousand, two thousand years?
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold!
She who had once been called the Divine Nun of Self-Nature had become the Lonely Old Ghost of White Hair, grinding everything she possessed and pouring it into Emei, again and again. Sacrifice upon sacrifice. She had traded her own infamous name for the myth of Emei’s success. And still the gap that history itself had opened would not narrow by so much as a hair. It only widened. It only receded farther and farther.
Crunch.
Her gums tore; bright scarlet blood welled. Even a body that had crossed the wall into the realm of the iron-hard took a wound. Yet the heart that had nothing left but wounds no longer felt pain; it rested upon hatred grown old across generations.
Daseonrang is a treasure we of Emei raised in our own bosom. It belongs to Emei!
The old woman’s eyes seemed to blaze. In a mind so filled with rancor, any scrap of Buddha-nature had long since guttered out. Or perhaps, looking back now, she could no longer tell whether such a thing had ever truly been there—lost somewhere between delusion and forgetting.
Daseonrang is a once-in-a-thousand-years chance to make my Emei the overlord of Sichuan.
Veins stood out on her brow.
Do not imagine for a moment that this humble nun will hand such people over lightly.
The carriage of vanity and hatred, carrying a woman who had spent her life as a dog of gold and power, raced on toward Luoyang.
Elder Yeom sat with a calm face inside the armored transport carriage, tending his greatsword. Even in the rocking vehicle, not the slightest tremor marred his hands. Within, however, the long-absent scent of war was heating him by degrees.
The battle is finished, yet the war has only begun.
He quieted the fighting will that boiled softly inside him. He was Geomakpasan—the man who had once broken the Sword Lord of Mount Hua and driven the prestige of the orthodox path, then waiting for its revival, into the dirt.
Wongak Pavilion of the Luoyang Sword Family.
“Amitabha. Our thanks again this day.”
“Heh heh. The bodhisattvas’ warm hearts are no different from the Buddha’s own.”
As ever, the ragged old monks received alms in the kitchens of Wongak Pavilion. They had been absent for some time; with the pavilion lately so unsettled, they seemed to have chosen a quieter interval to appear. I-ryeong still watched them with open suspicion.
“Venerable masters. Did you truly come from Shaolin Temple?”
The old monks visibly flustered.
“Hmm? This humble monk grows old; my ears are not what they were…”
“Heh heh. Amitabha. Amitabha.”
Sam-ryeong’s eyes narrowed to sharp triangles.
“Earlier I clearly saw you come out through the Demon Mirror Forest. Does that forest not lead to Mount Song?”
Another monk hastily waved his hands.
“We humble monks merely… that is… we come from another temple on Mount Song.”
Il-ryeong sighed.
“Apart from Shaolin, which remains under sealed-gate confinement on Mount Song, what other temple is there?”
There was none.
“I-is that so? In truth it is not M-Mount Song, but…”
Their lies were so clumsy that the desire to press them further simply evaporated.
“Aigoo.”
Il-ryeong sighed again and pressed a cloth bundle of tea leaves into their hands.
“I was not trying to interrogate you. I only asked out of curiosity.”
They were no doubt afraid word would spread that they had left sealed Shaolin and come down the mountain. The old monks exhaled in open relief.
“Amitabha. Amitabha.”
“These precious tea leaves… our deepest thanks.”
The triplet maids made to see them off as usual, yet today the monks lingered and shuffled.
“Ahem… Amitabha. That is…”
“Hrm, hrm.”
Ordinarily they vanished as if using shrinking-earth arts; their hesitation was so unusual that Il-ryeong asked,
“Is there something further you need?”
The old monks smiled with awkward embarrassment.
“Might we be permitted a brief audience with the young master?”
A short while later, Yeon So-hyeon and the two old monks exchanged respectful greetings with joined palms. A gentle smile touched their faces. For some reason the triplet maids caught the faint fragrance of lotus in that smile.
“Mahamaudgalyayana… in the end your divine eye could not bear to turn away from the suffering beings of this sahā world…”
“Subhuti… in the end your wisdom and compassion lead you down into the abyss of the eight sufferings…”
Mahamaudgalyayana and Subhuti were names of the Buddha’s ten great disciples. Yeon So-hyeon slowly shook his head.
“I am only now shouldering the responsibility I have carried since the day I was born.”
The two old monks smiled with serene compassion.
“You yourself are a bodhisattva. Do not regard your suffering as the price of sin. In the end it is nothing more than the noble truth of suffering.”
Yeon So-hyeon smiled faintly.
“…The noble truth of suffering. Can one such as I dare walk the path of the Four Noble Truths?”
The other monk soothed him.
“Though the darkness that binds you is endlessly deep, do not believe it has no end. Even if it last a nayuta of ages, can it truly be without end?”
“…”
The words of the two Chan masters brought Yeon So-hyeon no small measure of comfort.
“Do not forget liberation.”
“Do not forget nirvana.”
Gazing upon him, the two old monks held a long, joined-palm salute.
“This is but a small gift we may offer upon your path.”
“May it be of even the slightest help.”
The triplet maids, briefly stunned by some irresistible, vast presence, recovered their wits—only to find the old monks already gone without a trace.
“Young Master, this is…?!”
Yeon So-hyeon picked up the worn volume that lay upon the floor.
“…I have received a gift whose worth I dare not measure.”