Chapter 107
Geom Bigak.
The head of the loan sharks.
Ma Pyeong-sam knew exactly how sinister a nature lurked behind that grinning face. He could not help knowing — Eunyeong's intelligence network had already picked the man's entire life down to the bone.
In truth, it was precisely because he was that sinister that Eunyeong had chosen him in the first place. Even so, Ma Pyeong-sam could not deny that the man repulsed him.
What irritated him now was not the fact that Geom Bigak was such a schemer, but the reality that he himself was being toyed with by a sinister, thoroughly insignificant creature of a man.
"If you wish to avoid friction with our sect, then kill that woman."
"I cannot kill her."
At that answer, Geom Bigak flashed a sly smile.
"She is hardly a card I can afford to discard just yet, is she not?"
Creak.
Rarely, for once, Ma Pyeong-sam's usually flat emotions lurched. How could he have known that Haomun had a law forbidding successors from killing one another? Perhaps even Wi Su had been unaware of it. And since strength being supreme was simply a given among the warriors of the Heavenly Demon Cult, it was a problem no one could have predicted.
What do I do now.
Ma Pyeong-sam was the hidden blade of the Demonic Cult, one who did whatever he was ordered to do — but that did not mean he was dull. It meant he grasped, with perfect clarity, just how hopelessly tangled the current situation had become.
And so Ma Pyeong-sam was in a thoroughly foul mood. For once in a very long while, a chill crept into his voice.
"Then you should have destroyed the evidence."
Ma Sok, was it? The leader of the Lu Province branch — the man they had let live. Had they killed him, they might have severed the thread after killing the Mistress of Hwawollu. It would not have been easy, but Eunyeong's capabilities could have thrown Haomun's intelligence network into confusion at least once. That was why the order had been given.
"Did I not tell you? That man is property of the sect."
Geom Bigak answered without a shred of hesitation.
"Oh dear! It seems I completely forgot about that law at the time. Just a mistake on my part. Haha."
Tacking on those words at the end could only be a deliberate attempt to play him for a fool.
"……"
Ma Pyeong-sam's expression did not stir in the slightest, but deep inside him a tiny sprout of irritation was germinating. If only things had not unfolded this way — if only they had not needed to push Geom Bigak into eliminating the Mistress of Hwawollu — there would have been no reason for such complexity. Wi Su's orders were orders, and he had followed them, but nothing about it sat well with him.
"So you will not kill her, then?"
"It is not that I won't kill her — it is that I can't. One should at least use words correctly."
Grind.
Ma Pyeong-sam quietly clenched his teeth. That thundering half-wit Geom Bigak had surely orchestrated this entire situation.
A man ignorant of any cause greater than himself, obsessed with petty gain — precisely the breed of human Ma Pyeong-sam despised.
Shall I kill him?
The urge to kill rose within him. All he had to do was tear the irksome Geom Bigak apart on the spot, and kill Yeo Wol as well. Given his martial prowess, it would be no harder than flipping a hand over.
"What? Are you thinking of killing me?"
Perhaps he had sensed the shift in Ma Pyeong-sam's mood, for Geom Bigak smirked and scraped at his temper once more. That he would behave this way even knowing Ma Pyeong-sam had come out of Eunyeong, the Heavenly Demon Cult's espionage organization, made it abundantly clear that Geom Bigak was no ordinary specimen of humanity either.
"……No. How could I possibly harm my honored patron?"
Ma Pyeong-sam recovered his stillness. He, too, could not afford the folly of sacrificing the great for the small. Considering the effort Eunyeong had poured into raising Geom Bigak to the seat of Haomun's Matriarch, the man was not a card he could easily throw away.
"Then let us set this matter aside."
"Mm."
When multiple orders came down, conflicts inevitably arose once the work began. The cardinal rule in such cases was that the higher-order command took precedence. By Ma Pyeong-sam's judgment, the goal of making Geom Bigak the Matriarch of Haomun and seizing the organization from within the shadows was a far more elevated objective than the order to kill the Mistress of Hwawollu.
And so, for now, he intended to let both of them live.
For now, that is.
Tat!
With a fluid movement technique, the Vagabond Yi Chun-baek, who had crossed the vast Yangtze River, finally set foot on solid ground. Having departed from Anhui and crossed to the southern bank of the Yangtze, the land beneath his feet was Jiangnan — the domain of the Sword Dao Alliance.
"Mm."
Save for the time spent with his master, his life as a vagabond had always been one of drifting like duckweed, utterly alone — yet the sight of himself unfurling the Gyeongsin Art by his lonesome felt oddly strange. The mark that a junior named Dancheon Myeong had left on his life was deeper than he had realized.
Yi Chun-baek recalled why he had set foot in this distant southern land at all.
"Chun-baek, I have a favor to ask."
"What is it?"
"Bring the Alliance Leader of the Sword Dao Alliance to Anhui."
"……How, exactly?"
"Honestly, I haven't the faintest idea."
"Hm."
"There's no one else I could ask, Chun-baek."
"Is it urgent?"
"A friend's life hangs on it."
"I'll see what I can do."
In truth, it was the first time his junior had ever made such an impossible-sounding request. But with a friend's life at stake — he could not bring himself to refuse. Partly because a friend of Dancheon Myeong was a friend of Chun-baek's as well, and partly because of his simple faith that if their positions had been reversed, Dancheon Myeong would have done the same.
"I'd best hurry."
When Yi Chun-baek, a disciple of a mysterious sect, fully unfurled his sect's secret Gyeongsin Art, his silhouette began to cross the land of Hunan faster than the wind.
Surviving to old age amid the storms and dust of the rivers and lakes of the Way of the Mountain Sword Forest meant one thing: strength. And not merely strength of martial skill — such a man could rightly be called a master of the art of survival itself.
By that measure, the old beggar Chwipung-gae was the very archetype of the aged survivor.
"Hide thirty percent of whatever skill you actually have."
"Why so?"
"Because one day, that hidden truth may be the blade that cuts your throat loose in a crisis."
"So that's how it is."
Concealing one's true strength, for instance.
"And likewise, whatever good fortune comes to you alone, you should mostly keep from even those closest to you."
"If it's good fortune only for me?"
"A fortuitous encounter, say."
"You'd have me hide it even from my own people?"
"Human jealousy is an emotion you dare not take lightly."
"Hm."
Lessons on how to move through the world, for one.
"Above all — if there is a secret that belongs to you and you alone, do not breathe a word of it. Not for anything."
"Because it's a secret?"
"Every secret has a reason it's a secret. Reveal one carelessly, and you may find yourself in dire straits for it."
"I see."
Even the weight of secrets.
I learned from Chwipung-gae the philosophy of begging, the philosophy of an informant, and the value of a keen eye. I never learned martial arts from him, yet that was why I regarded him as my master.
And I learned from Chwipung-gae the art of living well in this world. I never inherited his blood, yet that was why I regarded him as a parent.
Whatever else may be said, Chwipung-gae's teachings on navigating the world became flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. To an observer they might have seemed like plain common sense, but to me they were strangely novel. Until I met Chwipung-gae, I had never had a teacher or elder to teach me such things — I had never even had the chance to learn them.
"Even I can't say for certain what it is, but you seem to be carrying some great secret, boy. Whatever it may be, make every effort to guard it. Always."
Those parting words, left behind like a farewell on the day I left the beggars' den for the inconspicuous shack, surfaced hazily in my memory.
I believed he was right. The fact of my regression ought rightly to be classified as a secret among secrets — the most classified of them all. It was a mystery whose very mechanism even I could not fathom.
Following Chwipung-gae's advice, it was something that must never be spoken aloud.
"Chwipung-gae. You were right."
Since my regression, I had practiced his teachings. Not merely because they were an elder's wisdom — they were also the outcome of thought experiments I had run on my own terms.
"I have regressed!"
"Are you mad?"
That was the most common outcome if I revealed the truth. At best, the listener would dismiss me as a fool; at worst, they might judge me a swindler or a raving lunatic.
"I have regressed!"
"Oh-ho! A walking fortuitous encounter, alive and well!"
And if they believed me, that was a problem too. It was not hard to guess how I would look in their eyes.
Either way, it was settled. I had lived a lifetime as Myeong-gae, a seasoned information broker — I had no reason whatsoever to speak of my regression. I could not deny, either, that a powerful instinct warned me it was something best left unsaid.
Still, for someone who had regressed as I had and meant to keep that secret, there was one crucial point.
Plausibility. That was the context that mattered.
"Myeong."
"Yes."
"About that — the Empty Blue Stone Milk."
"Yes."
"Might I ask how you came by it?"
One day, after deliberating for a long while, my great-uncle Yeo Baek had asked so carefully.
"Fortune favored me."
"So you were born under a lucky star, I see."
"I suppose I was."
And so it was passed over.
"There is something I wish to ask you."
"Speak."
Singija had once asked me just as cautiously.
"How did you become the successor of the Medicine Immortal?"
"Fortune found me, it seems."
"Well, the Yakseon Heart Decision was scattered to every corner of the jianghu… I suppose with luck enough, one could stumble upon it."
"So it would seem."
"Lucky you."
"Lucky indeed."
And so it was passed over.
"How did you find the Garden of Delight?"
"Fortune favored me."
"I see."
Dragon Head Sect Leader Musan-gae's question, too, was passed over in the same way.
Because my thread of formal learning was short, my understanding of the discipline of probability and statistics is lacking — but I know at least this much: how astronomically unlikely it is for every single one of these coincidences to befall one and the same person.
Yet it is also true that all of those things fell within the bounds of "it just happened to work out that way." As I said — the jianghu is a world of mystery where fortuitous encounters run riot. That must be why.
'He tumbled off a mountain path, fell down a cliff, somehow survived unscathed, chanced upon a hidden grotto in which he discovered the legacy of a grandmaster of a past age, absorbed that legacy, and became an absolute master' — that sort of arc is simply common sense in the jianghu, is it not?
Coincidences stacked this deep are called destiny, and in the murim such things are hardly rare. Common sense is simply another name for plausibility — which is to say, coincidences of this degree count as plausible. That is not my argument; it is simply how the jianghu sees the world.
"Dancheon Myeong may well be a man born under destiny's star."
Every one of those who had questioned me with suspicion arrived at that same conclusion.
But the present case was a little different.
Take, for instance — an unknown, nameless master single-handedly noticing that a certain man belonged to Eunyeong, the Heavenly Demon Cult's espionage division. Knowing the exact location of Eunyeong's safehouse hidden in Anhui. Even being able to decode Eunyeong's cipher.
I knew full well that these were matters no amount of pleading could stretch into "it just happened that way." That was precisely why I had kept this last resort in reserve. Because I knew it would shatter the plausibility I had worked so hard to preserve.
And yet, in the end, I had spoken — because Yeo Wol, the Mistress of Hwawollu, was my friend.
"I know where the Lu Province branch leader is."
At my calm confession, Ma Sok's eyes widened. Unable to make sense of the situation, Gang Pae wore a look of puzzled suspicion.
"Where should we go?"
Ma Sok asked.
"Follow me."
So saying, I unfurled the Gyeongsin Art. We had already lost a great deal of time — there was no delaying further. Our destination was the hidden underground grotto that Eunyeong's cipher pointed to.
"Are you certain?"
Ma Sok asked carefully.
"Trust me."
"Yes."
Then it was my turn to ask.
"Anything else you're curious about?"
"No."
I only nodded at Ma Sok's answer.
Information is the handling of context. A man of Ma Sok's caliber could not possibly have missed the fact that my recent conduct had been stripped of all context and plausibility.
Yet Ma Sok did not ask me why. He did not even harbor doubt. He simply trusted me.
That, too, was why Ma Sok was my friend.