Crisis and Opportunity
"Spare us, Great Hero!"
It wasn't one corner of the room that emptied, nor even half of it—every last ruffian in the establishment had dropped to his knees. This was no figure of speech; it was the scene described exactly as it happened. For the thugs, having grasped that Ma Sok's martial might was nothing to trifle with, had not scrambled up the moment the beating paused to tend their wounds. They had knelt instead, demure and docile as well-bred young ladies.
"Uuurgh……"
"We yield! Just let us live!"
"You wretches! What discourtesy have you shown the Great Hero?!"
Moaners writhing in pain, meek surrenderers, treacherous curs already scurrying over to Ma Sok's side—the mixed rabble of thugs looked for all the world like a marketplace crowd.
"All of you, quiet. Before I end up killing you."
"Gulp!"
At Ma Sok's low words, the grumbling thugs hurriedly sewed their own mouths shut.
After a brief silence—
"…Might I ask what business brings your gracious self to this place?"
One of the thugs, ever attuned to the winds, ventured the question with care. Thugs were, after all, living specimens of the world's oldest law: cruel to the weak, meek before the strong. Facing Ma Sok—certified the stronger—his voice had gone sweet as syrup. That Ma Sok had come on so uncharacteristically brutal was purely for the sake of a quick resolution.
"Where is Geom Bigak?"
"We don't know."
BOOM!
"Hiiiiek!"
Frowning at the answer, Ma Sok drove down a fierce quaking stomp. The floor beneath it caved in past all recognition, and it took little imagination to guess what would have become of a man standing there.
"We truly don't know! Please, spare us!"
"Spare us, I beg you!"
As one thug wailed this and flung himself flat, the rest followed suit. Their talent for self-preservation was remarkable, I had to admit—the first to grovel seemed to be the head of the pack.
Ma Sok, standing solitary above them, cut the figure of a hero striding through a fallen age, every step quelling chaos—though his expression told another story. He had realized they genuinely knew nothing. In his heart he would doubtless have loved to thrash Geom Bigak's underlings soundly, but that option was closed to him. No doubt because Ma Sok knew full well that they, too, were Haomun's own—people Yeo Wol held dear. In truth, what guilt could the lowest rung of the ladder carry?
"Hoo—"
Ma Sok exhaled a long breath. A situation like this was nothing new to him.
"We must move on to the next one."
It was already the seventh. We had torn through establishment after establishment that Geom Bigak ran or frequented, and still found no trace of the man.
"How many more bases are there?"
"…Thirty or so more, by my count."
"Mm."
It did not bode well.
"Spare us, Great Hero!"
"Where is Geom Bigak?"
"…We don't know."
CRUNCH!
"Eek! It's the honest truth! Just let us live! We'll hand over everything we own!"
The sight of thugs, pale with terror at their first glimpse of a stomp that cratered a hall floor, was stamped from the same mold every single time.
"Geom Bigak?"
Ma Sok pressed again, his voice gone bleak.
"B-but how are we to tell you what we truly do not know? Please, don't do this to lowly underlings like us—"
Their answers never varied.
"You dogs—"
"Great Hero! Please, spare us!"
A thug's lofty pride only ever showed itself against the weak, and so before Ma Sok, proven the stronger, their knees folded their bodies down faster than reeds bow in the wind.
This was the twelfth time the scene had replayed. The twelfth time Ma Sok had thrashed a pack of thugs, and the twelfth time his fierce stomps had caved in a floor. Through it all he had taken not a single life, pounding only the innocent floorboards—I could do nothing but salute my Ma Sok's patience.
His hands were swift and vicious, and those who barred his way were, for the most part, no more than third-rate thugs, so clearing a single establishment never took long. But the salient fact was that we had already come up empty at twelve places. It meant there was no way to stop the hours bleeding away.
As if to prove the point, the sun was cresting the mountain ridge, powerless to defy its course. The crimson afterglow that on any ordinary evening I would have called beautiful pressed in instead like an omen.
"…"
On Ma Sok's face, drawn and quiet as he watched the sunset, impatience and dread flickered together. He believed firmly that Geom Bigak would not harm Yeo Wol, yet with every passing hour the anxiety climbing up through his chest refused to be shaken off. After all, there was no telling what means might be employed beyond simply killing her. Had anxiety been an emotion anyone could cast off at will, the Great Patriarch Bodhidharma would never have spent nine long years sealed in wall-facing meditation—Ma Sok's feeling was only natural.
"What of your other men?" I asked Ma Sok. I knew the network Yeo Wol and he had cultivated was by no means small. Had I not witnessed their prowess with my own eyes when Cheolsanmagun led the demonic cultists over the Dancheon Clan's walls?
"…Command authority rests with the Lou Mistress alone. She ordered us to hold our foundations for the time being."
"Mm."
Only now, in this situation, did it feel like a loss—yet I could guess why they had built their system that way. Weighing the rights and wrongs of the structure at this point was pointless, and I knew all too well how formidable Yeo Wol's power base was.
"What if we split up?"
It was Ma Sok's suggestion. Both he and I were peak masters, neither with any grounds to complain of the other.
"…"
But I could not readily agree—partly because I knew Ma Sok was far from his full strength, and partly because…
"Wouldn't it be dangerous, if that man were with them?"
It was because of the nameless master who had ambushed Ma Sok and drained him of qi and blood. A sneak attack it may have been, but this was a man who had neutralized a master of Ma Sok's caliber in a single exchange—my worry was no idle fear. In truth, I had just implied that even now, Ma Sok would not beat him in a second meeting. I knew such words could land as the bitterest insult a peak master could receive.
"I won't overextend myself."
Fortunately, Ma Sok did not let his pride speak for him. Yeo Wol's safety simply weighed more than his self-regard.
"Let's finish clearing this place, then decide."
"Thank you."
To fret over Ma Sok any further would be discourtesy itself; making the call was the right thing to do. And so we set foot in Geom Bigak's thirteenth establishment.
SLAM!
"Geom Bigak! Show yourself!"
It came together with Ma Sok's thunderous roar.
"Who the hell—"
CRACK!
"Kghak!"
"Where's Geom Bigak?"
"Do you have any idea whose turf you've barged into!"
CRACK—!
"Kehk!"
"You truly don't know?"
"We don—"
CRACK—!
"Kraaagh!"
"Really?"
"Yessir……"
Geom Bigak was not here either. And as if it were only natural, there was not a soul who even knew his whereabouts. Given that all thirteen places we had visited belonged to Geom Bigak, the conclusion drew itself: he had vanished the moment he took Yeo Wol, leaving no shadow behind.
BOOM—!
"Eek!"
The thugs quaked at Ma Sok's majesty. Only this time, the stomp was not meant to frighten them.
"Damn it……"
It was nearer to Ma Sok losing his grip on the fury boiling up inside him and simply lashing out. When I walked over, he gave me an apologetic look. He must have taken me for reacting to his lapse in composure, but that was not why I had come.
"Shh."
I raised my index finger to the tip of my nose, easing him into stillness. Barely had bewilderment settled onto Ma Sok's face—
"Outside."
"…Mm."
Ma Sok grasped my clipped word at once. He, too, was a peak master whose qi perception ranged wide.
"We appear to be surrounded."
Furtive movement on every side—by my rough count, some fifty figures had ringed Geom Bigak's thirteenth establishment.
"What do you make of them?"
"Not bad."
Ma Sok's face was brighter as he answered than it had been all day. Ordinarily, to be surrounded is to stand at the edge of ruin. Yet color bloomed again on his features for the first time in an age, and as if in answer, the corner of my own mouth curled faintly upward. The reason was simple: this thirteenth establishment was the first place where a variable had finally appeared. In the murim, "crisis" and "opportunity" are all but the same word. Ma Sok and I were murim men to the marrow, and we knew this truth well. Truthfully, the greatest enemy we had faced was time slipping through our fingers to no purpose—this change could only be welcome. There was also the small matter of our confidence: fifty Haomun men, however well drilled, would not put us in any true peril.
"I'll take the lead."
Judging by circumstance, they had encircled us deliberately. A trap built with such care would be a different breed entirely from third-rate thugs—so with Ma Sok short of his best, it was right that I step forward.
But—
"Young Master, please step back."
Ma Sok would not be moved. In truth, he looked to have no intention of leaning on my help. I suspected that had it not been for the nameless master he had spoken of, he might never have called on me at all. Which was itself a measure of how heavily Yeo Wol's abduction weighed on him.
"Be careful."
I had swept the surroundings with my qi perception and sensed no hidden master who could truly threaten him, so I chose to yield. The instant I dipped my head in a nod—
SLAM!
Ma Sok's legwork hammered into the hall's wall.
Rumble-crash—
It unleashed power beyond even the stomps that had been caving in floors, and one entire wall of the hall simply ceased to exist.
"…!"
The enemies, who had never dreamed of such conduct, were still reeling when Ma Sok swept the field with a hawk's eyes.
Whish!
He shot forward, his movement blinding. At the end of his course stood a warrior of towering frame. Ma Sok's eye, I had to concede, was sound—even by my own reading, the man looked to be the commander of the encirclement. It is the way of peak masters to show aptitude in unarmed combat as well, and though he carried no weapon, nothing slowed Ma Sok's hands.
Whuumm—
His heel, whipping a spinning kick with his whole body coiled into it, bit sharper than any blade. But their leader was no easy mark.
THOK!
For the first time, Ma Sok's legwork was stopped cold. Ma Sok was not at his peak, and this was bare-handed combat rather than his beloved weapons—even so, the feat was not to be sneered at. It meant the man, too, was a peak master who had trained real martial arts of his own. A single blocked kick was nothing to fluster Ma Sok; he flowed straight into his next attack. Hear the term Unbroken Continuity, and the devotees of the jianghu will think of the Wudang sword—but they would do well to remember that even that is unbroken only among swords. True unbroken continuity lives in unarmed combat, and within it, one might call leg technique its crowning art.
Whish—
Riding the rebound of the blocked kick, Ma Sok's body spun the opposite way.
Whuumm—
A breathtaking reverse spinning kick.
"Hah!"
BANG!
The man was no slouch either. Perhaps he judged there would be no end to blocking; crossing his forearms into an X, he swept Ma Sok's kick upward. But Ma Sok made use of even that force. Riding the lift, his legwork found its balance in a breath—then dropped.
Whum—
A savage heel drop plunged for the space between the man's brows.
"Tch!"
BAM!
Clicking his tongue, the man crossed his arms in that same X and stopped the heel drop dead.
Screeeech—
"Kgh!"
True, his feet were driven back more than ten feet in a scrape of dragging soles, but the grit with which he held his center and refused to fall was superb. And his finisher—flipping his whole body up in the Iron Bridge technique to bleed off the force—was striking in its own right. This was no warrior who had merely memorized forms and patterns; he was a combat artist tempered in live battle.
"You bastard!"
Shing-shing-shing!
The exchange had flashed past faster than a heartbeat, but it was long enough for the surrounding warriors to come back to themselves.
"How dare you lay hands on our boss!"
The warriors who had ringed the building closed on Ma Sok in an eyeblink, as if to shield their leader.
"Cut him down!"
The order fell, and just as the grim, disciplined warriors gathered to hurl themselves at him—
"Halt!"
Every one of them, murder in their eyes mid-charge, snapped to a stop. Because the command had come from their leader, who had just gathered his footing. Their iron bearing put one in mind of an imperial army, and yet it was somehow different. If pressed for words, it felt less like military discipline than the pecking order of the streets.
Thud. Thud.
Their leader, having calmed his men, took a single step forward and offered Ma Sok a cupped-fist salute.
"Brother Ma Sok, calm yourself. It's me."
"You're……"
Only when Ma Sok confirmed the man's face did relief finally settle over his features.