The Gate of the Lowly Five
Haomun has five Young Sect Masters.
In truth, it is the sort of thing one might accept with an offhand is that so — but think it through, and it is a genuinely strange arrangement. Rare indeed is the organization that keeps five successors at once.
To borrow comparisons from other sects, Haomun's situation is as if the Beggar Sect had five chiefs-in-waiting, or the Abbot of Shaolin five successors. Exaggerate a little, and it is as if the empire had five crown princes.
As I said, such cases are hardly ever seen. Keeping multiple successors can plant the seeds of schism, and it is a breeding ground for every manner of absurdity and inefficiency besides.
Even the great clans, who pride themselves on succession by the legitimate heir, do not keep several young masters at once. They rear a number of "heir candidates," set them competing against one another, and elevate a single young master from among them. Everyone knows that method is the efficient one.
And yet Haomun has five Young Sect Masters.
The reason, if you look for it, lies in Haomun's founding. Haomun — the Gate of the Lowly Five. Ha for the lowly of the world. O for the five who gathered. Mun for the gate they raised together. That is the wellspring of Haomun, and in it you will find your answer.
Of late, I am told, people have taken to writing the o of Haomun with the character for filth rather than the character for five, sneering at it as "a pack of dirty things gathered under one roof" — but its true origin is beyond doubt the Gate of the Lowly Five. It is a truth I unearthed in the Beggar Sect's oldest records, so I will not be wrong.
In any case...
That o — the five — spoke of the five powers that formed Haomun's bedrock: the courtesans, the Walpae, the loan sharks, the gamblers, and the fortune-tellers. In time, pickpockets, shamans, confidence men, coachmen, and boatmen joined as well, and the "five" became a name without substance — but the fact that Haomun's roots lie in those five powers cannot be denied.
Haomun keeps its five Young Sect Masters out of respect for its founding powers. Call it, if you like, a kind of legitimacy.
As you may have guessed, the one who represents the courtesans is none other than Yeo Wol, the Mistress of Hwawollu. And Geom Bigak is the man who represents the loan sharks.
The establishments we had been shutting down all this while — Geom Bigak's businesses — were, to put it precisely, loan shops. That was why we had crossed nothing but vicious-looking degenerates along the way.
The older and larger an organization grows, the more inevitably its factions multiply. Gambling and loan-sharking have propped each other up since time immemorial, so I understand the Young Sect Master who represents the gamblers to be backing Geom Bigak.
And inseparable from the courtesans are the Walpae. The Walpae as a faction grew up guarding the courtesans like their own hands and feet — hence it.
"Brother Ma Sok, calm yourself. It's me."
"You're—"
The man, having confirmed that Ma Sok had settled, introduced himself.
"That's right, Brother Ma Sok. Gang Pae. Seems there's been a misunderstanding, so do lower your hands."
The name was familiar to me as well — because I had seen it in the Register of Jianghu Names: One Thousand Chosen, the book I had memorized from cover to cover.
Gang Pae. The man who represented the Walpae, one of Haomun's five powers. In other words, he too was one of the five Young Sect Masters. He was also, as it happened, the man the future Matriarch of Haomun, Yeo Wol, would one day marry.
In truth, the Walpae are a strange breed. Their fate is to live by force, and they devote themselves to the honing of it with utter sincerity — and yet they do not follow the code of chivalry that is the martial artist's root. That, you might say, is what makes them strange.
The value they hold sacred, I am told, is not chivalry but something called loyalty. I am a martial artist, not a Walpae, so I cannot claim to know exactly what their loyalty entails — but I do know that men who live by loyalty and die by it are romantics of a rare stripe.
"What brings you here?" Ma Sok asked.
"I came to keep the code. Turning your back on a brother in his hour of crisis — that's no loyalty at all, is it?"
Gang Pae replied. An unflinching answer, worthy of the chief of the Walpae. But it did not satisfy; Ma Sok's eyes narrowed into sharp angles.
"How do you know of it?"
"How could I not know what concerns Lady Wol?"
"Are you telling me you've had a watcher on her?"
"Aw, come off it. What's a watcher between the two of us? I was worried about Lady Wol, so I put a bodyguard on her. That's all it was."
"I never gave permission for any such thing."
"Since when do we need permission between us?"
"Since always."
"Eh, honestly. There you go again."
Even under Ma Sok's frosty stare, Gang Pae did not yield. He took the full force of that cold gaze without blinking — audacity truly befitting one of Haomun's Young Sect Masters and the chief of the Walpae. The epitome of a real man, I would have called it.
But Ma Sok's offensive was not yet over.
"I'll remember this. The Mistress of Hwawollu will hear of it — that much is certain."
Thump.
The moment the words left Ma Sok's mouth, the proud Gang Pae dropped abruptly to his knees. The hearty man who had not yielded an inch to intimidation vanished without a trace in an instant.
"Brother Ma Sok, I have adored Lady Wol from afar, trailing wordless at her heels for nigh on five years now. Attaching one of my men to her out of worry for her safety was clearly wrong of me, I admit — but just this once, let it pass. It's a crisis, no?"
Even groveling on his knees, his voice did not waver by a hair — you might call it a truly majestic brand of pettiness.
Ma Sok looked well used to Gang Pae's antics; my own heart, alas, could not manage the same.
"Hmm."
Before I knew it, I was swallowing a groan. I must revise my assessment: planting his own hands and feet to keep watch on the woman he loves — the Walpae chief Gang Pae was better described as the epitome of a pathetic man.
Quite apart from my impressions, the exchange between Gang Pae and Ma Sok carried on.
"You did all this because you're in love with the Mistress?"
"That's right."
"I cannot allow it. Fold that love of yours away."
"Ugh. That I cannot do."
Ma Sok's stubbornness was the very picture of a father refusing to marry his daughter off to an idle wastrel.
"Brother Ma Sok, what must I do to make my apology?"
Ma Sok gave no answer, but Gang Pae found it on his own.
"Bring me a dagger."
"Boss!"
"Don't do it, Boss!"
His men, divining what he intended, rushed to dissuade him—
"Shut up and bring it!"
"Boss!"
—but they could not bend his will.
"Ugh... Boss..."
Crying "Boss!" over and over, they still did not defy the order. Gang Pae accepted the dagger that one of them reluctantly held out.
"Brother Ma Sok, as a token of my apology, I offer up my little finger. Ah — forgive me, but the ring finger won't do. I'll be needing that one for the jade ring I mean to slip onto Lady Wol as a betrothal token."
"Hmm."
I would have to revise my assessment once more. Gang Pae really was a real man, it seemed.
"What would I do with your finger? I have no use for it."
Ma Sok's reply was ice-cold, and—
"Hahahah! Then I'll take that as forgiveness."
Gang Pae sprang up at once. All trace of his earlier resolve had vanished; what remained was a man the very picture of nonchalance.
"Hmm."
Now I was starting to understand. There could be no better way to describe the man called Gang Pae.
"You, too, are a Young Sect Master. Step back. We were close once, but now that the contest has begun, distance is the proper course."
Ma Sok rebuked him in a stern voice.
"Hahahaha! That's our Brother Ma Sok for you."
But Gang Pae had caught the tell that the chill had drained out of Ma Sok's voice, and he laughed instead. Laughing his great laugh, he crooked a finger at his men.
"Here you are, Boss."
One of them set a cigarette between Gang Pae's lips. Fwoosh — another lit it in a flash with a small pair of fire tongs. Flap — the last of them draped a long dark-red robe across Gang Pae's shoulders. Their movements meshed like the strokes of an intricate martial form; anyone could see how many hundreds of times they had drilled it.
Gang Pae took one long stride forward. Though his arms were not in the sleeves, the robe did not slide — his broad shoulders, apparently, were enough to hold it. I hated to admit it, but set against Gang Pae's burly frame, the look was undeniably, infuriatingly cool.
"There's something you don't know, Brother Ma Sok."
"And what is that?"
"That Young Sect Master seat? Throw it away, and there's no problem at all."
"..."
As if to plumb the sincerity beneath the words, Ma Sok held his silence. But there was no need for him to peer into Gang Pae's heart.
"For Gang Pae, chief of the Walpae, hereby withdraws from the contest for Sect Master, effective this day."
Gang Pae had spat the words out like a proclamation.
"You mean it?"
"I already have the Sect Master's sanction."
"Have you taken leave of your senses?"
Gang Pae caught the worry threaded through that voice and boomed with laughter.
"A Haomun without Lady Wol means nothing to me."
"This could become a problem."
Ma Sok fretted, but Gang Pae did not seem to agree.
"Geom Bigak is the one who crossed the line first."
For the first time since he had faced Ma Sok, the eyes that had never once lost their glint of humor sank into something savage.
"Laying a coward's hand on Lady Wol — Geom Bigak will not be leaving a corpse behind in this world."
Only when Gang Pae finished did the stern mask Ma Sok had been holding finally crumble.
"...I am begging you. Help her."
Glimpsing the heart of a man terrified for Yeo Wol's safety, I could see how bitterly he had been struggling.
"Don't fret, Brother Ma Sok. Lady Wol is strong."
Gang Pae steadied the bowed Ma Sok with a hand flat against his back.
"Hmm."
With a regressor's knowledge in hand, I understood the situation at last. How Yeo Wol, so badly outmatched by Geom Bigak, had ever managed to ascend to Matriarch of Haomun. And how the woman called Yeo Wol had climbed to Matriarch and then, almost in the same breath, entered a betrothal. At the crucial link in that chain, I would wager, stood this man — Gang Pae.
"Boys!"
Gang Pae's voice rolled out like thunder. In the Walpae chief I saw the bearing of a general on a battlefield.
"Sir!"
The answer that rose to meet him was louder still. Military discipline — or, to put it in Walpae terms, a hierarchy carved in stone.
The encirclement I had pegged at fifty had swollen tenfold in the meantime. Nearly five hundred Walpae now ringed us where we stood.
"Turn over every last establishment Geom Bigak has touched! And to whoever finds Geom Bigak, I'll pay a grand reward!"
"Sir!"
Like a tide going out, the five hundred Walpae broke apart and fanned out in clusters. However vicious the loan-shark degenerates might be, it looked all but certain they would be brought to their knees before the Walpae, masters of the shadow world.
"Hoo—"
Gang Pae drew deep on his cigarette. A truly manly man, conjuring his own clouds in the red light of the dying sun — the sight was damnably stylish.
"Every last establishment will have been searched within two hours."
His words did not sound like an empty boast. Set against the pace of Ma Sok and me — thirteen places in a good four hours and more — it was remarkably fast.
"Brother Ma Sok, see to your condition this instant."
Saying so, Gang Pae took up position with his back to Ma Sok. I understood the meaning at once: Gang Pae had just appointed himself Ma Sok's guardian. He had crossed hands with Ma Sok, however briefly, and must have sensed that his injuries were anything but ordinary.
"My thanks."
Ma Sok folded straight into the lotus position and sank into qi circulation. From that alone, I could tell exactly how Ma Sok judged the man called Gang Pae.
Somehow I felt I couldn't let him have this to himself, so I claimed the spot at Gang Pae's side and stood. One guardian is fine; two are better, no?
"Ahem."
Gang Pae cleared his throat, and a crooked gaze swung my way.
"And what relation might you bear to Lady Wol, young hero?"
I couldn't say precisely what he was driving at.
"A friend."
I answered on instinct. It was the honest truth, yet somehow it came out sounding like an excuse. Either way, a fervent hope welled up in me that Gang Pae would not misunderstand — for a powerful instinct warned me that nothing good could come of being tangled with a man like Gang Pae in a jealous rivalry.
"Hahahaha!"
Fortunately, my answer seemed to please him; a rosy glow spread across Gang Pae's whole face.
"Then I'm glad. I believe you and I could come to be friends."
"...How wonderful."
I felt as though ten years had just been added to my lifespan.