Ten Days of Silence
It was right, now, to clear the air over the misunderstanding the rigged brackets had stirred up.
No — to be precise, it had never truly been a misunderstanding. But with a fitting apology and fitting measures taken, there was no reason to let any bitterness take root.
The spirit of Grand Elder Sambong Jinin still flowed on unbroken along Wudang's path, which was reason enough to say they remained, as the old saying goes, the Wudang venerated by the South.
"I apologize."
Beside Mugeuk Jinin, who bowed low at the waist, Cheon-am Jinin pressed himself flat to the ground.
Conduct that paid no heed to the illustrious names he bore — foremost disciple of the Grand Daoist, Master of the Martial Scripture Pavilion — ended up guarding Wudang's honor all the more.
"……"
No one in the arena rushed forward to accept Mugeuk Jinin's apology. Nor did anyone denounce Cheon-am Jinin. And yet, at the same time, it was plain to see that everyone had accepted the sincerity of Wudang's contrition.
Mugeuk Jinin, no doubt, understood that as well.
Having settled matters in the arena, he came to me once more.
"You will come with me."
"Where might that be?"
"Did I not say I would pass my teachings on to you?"
Taecheong Jinin watched with a conflicted expression, but he did not hold the Sword Emperor back.
In the murim, the word retirement is reserved for one thing alone: a great master turning his back on the mundane world. At least, that is how it is in the jianghu.
And so, when a nobody with not so much as an epithet to his name buried himself in some remote mountain valley, the proper words were seclusion, reclusion, or fleeing the world.
Truthfully, those terms aren't universal either. The vast Central Plains hold far more people who are born in a remote valley, live out their whole lives in that valley, and draw their last breath there.
But the point that matters is this: retirement is a word reserved for the great masters of the murim. Which is to say, the jianghu is a world that shows its generosity to one kind of person only — those who have mastered the martial arts.
"Where are we going?"
"To this old Daoist's place of retirement."
I was now on my way to Mugeuk Jinin's retirement abode in his company.
"How far is it from here?"
"Not far at all. We will arrive shortly."
When people hear the word retirement, they inevitably picture some aging veteran of the jianghu severing all ties with the mundane world and building a dwelling deep in the mountains to live out his remaining years. But that is a piece of common wisdom gone wrong. I have never retired myself, yet from the sheer volume of information I have handled, I know that retirement takes a truly varied array of forms.
The first form is to conceal one's martial arts and identity, and live out one's remaining days blended in among ordinary folk. The reasons are many. Some choose it when looking back on a life devoted to nothing but the blade leaves nothing behind but regret; others go searching among the lives of common people for the path they could never find in the jianghu. This, in fact, is also why one would be a fool to run rampant with villainy in the murim — that the old scholar at the village school might be a great master of a past generation, or that the hunchbacked old man who whiled away his afternoons handing sweets to the children might be a former expert concealing his arts, is well within the realm of common knowledge.
The second form is simply to keep house in one's own clan or residence. Martial artists, as a breed, have nearly all roamed the Central Plains in their youth — and rightly so, for one who never leaves his clan's gates has no chance whatsoever of earning an epithet, the great aspiration of every warrior. And warriors who roamed the Central Plains young come home with an enlightenment. Nothing grand — merely the small, everyday truth that life away from home is hardship. Masters with no desire to keep suffering that hardship into old age almost invariably retire to their clans on the pretext of age or illness and spend what remains of their lives there.
Then there is the final form: those who raise a hermitage deep in the mountains and devote the rest of their lives, wholly and utterly, to the pursuit of immortality. This is the image of the retired master that most people hold. And the reason such men stand as the very emblem of retirement is nothing more than this — they are famous, and they are many. The jianghu has always been a treacherous world; surviving to an age where retirement is even possible, without once feeling a blade's kiss, is a feat of near-impossible difficulty. Those who most often live to see old age are the Daoist adepts of the Nine Great Sects, men with the sects at their backs and the arts of nourishing life in their keeping — so it was only inevitable that their way of retiring became the byword for all retirement.
"This is my dwelling."
Sword Emperor Mugeuk's residence was a small hermitage tucked into a quiet corner of Nogun-dang, deep in the heart of Mount Wudang. Plain and unadorned, nothing like the fame of a man who reigned as one of the foremost under heaven — and from that alone, one could tell that the Sword Emperor Mugeuk was a Daoist who sought, and lived, the ascension to immortality.
"A fine place."
"I think so as well."
It was no empty compliment. The ground the hermitage stood upon was propitious in the extreme, drawing fully upon the numinous energy of sacred Mount Wudang. He had not simply settled where he pleased — he had read the flow of the mountain's spirit and taken his seat upon the finest spot of all.
"For a retirement abode, it sits rather close to the mundane world."
"Hmm. If one must be particular, 'training ground' is the proper name for it."
"So it would seem."
I agreed with Mugeuk Jinin. For all that the forms of retirement vary, there is one rite that all who would be called retired masters must pass through in common.
It is called the Golden Basin Hand-washing. A kind of formal retirement from the jianghu — the occasion on which one declares before all that one is withdrawing from that world, severing every grudge and every debt accumulated over a lifetime in it. As a rule, the warrior who performs the Hand-washing lays down his epithet with it, for the epithet is nothing less than the sum of everything he built in the jianghu.
But Mugeuk Jinin was still the Sword Emperor. In other words, he had yet to declare the Hand-washing — he remained a warrior in active service. And so Mugeuk Jinin still held his seat among the One Emperor and Three Sovereigns.
Truthfully, an uncommon case. For the Daoists of the Nine Great Sects, performing the Hand-washing and retiring the moment a sect's leadership passes to the generation below is both custom and cherished wish alike.
"Might I ask why you have not performed the Hand-washing, Venerable One?"
Right up until the very moment the Great Righteous-Demonic War broke out, Mugeuk Jinin never performed the Hand-washing. Yet at the same time, like a true retired master, the Sword Emperor never once showed himself in that war either. With no information to go on, I could not know the reason — but it was hardly ordinary behavior.
"Hmm."
The Sword Emperor Mugeuk met my eyes as I asked.
"It would seem I stayed for the sake of meeting you."
"……?"
The words of an old Daoist wearing a young man's face were not easily understood.
Seven days and nights had passed in the Sword Emperor's company. It had not been part of any plan, but it posed no great hardship. From the outset, my aim had never been mere attendance at the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe — I was waiting for the incident that would let me claim Wudang's treasured heirloom, the Taecheong-dan. The incident would not come until a fortnight after the convention opened, so there was time enough yet. I had always intended to petition for a separate stay at Wudang regardless, so one could even say Mugeuk Jinin had spared me the trouble.
"The ones who came with you are training here at Wudang, so give them no further thought."
"I am grateful for your consideration."
Mugeuk Jinin had seemed to drag me off without rhyme or reason, but he had also looked after Chun-baek and my brother Dancheon Hak. In truth, a long stay at Wudang — room, board, and an exchange of martial arts — was a far greater school than any single day of the convention could be. And the two of them were not sitting there as mere guests; their place had come by the invitation of Mugeuk Jinin, the great elder of Wudang itself, so the sect would never dream of slighting them. A chance to learn from the Grand Daoist's majestic bearing — it deserved to be called a rare fortune.
And now, that same Mugeuk Jinin was chattering away at my side without pause.
"I'll grant that you're something special, but those two are no slouches either. They'll be the first spark of enlightenment for the ones here who quietly looked down on warriors of the mundane world."
"……"
If it turned into the mutual benefit Mugeuk described, so much the better. The growing strength of the orthodox murim was something I never ceased to wish for.
"Ah — and Cheon-am went straight into wall-facing seclusion. Do not hate the boy. Affection, you see, always arrives with a twist or two attached. It means his heart for Wudang burned to its very limit — so I find I cannot simply condemn him."
"……"
Mugeuk was wrong. I did not hate Cheon-am Jinin. But there was no way for me to correct him.
"Cheon-am was always exceptional, even among the Heaven-class. How else would he have come to master the Martial Scripture Pavilion? Now that he has recognized his fault, late though it was, and entered seclusion, he will return a true Daoist. You may take the credit for that."
"……"
"Ah, yes — and Jinsu asked me to be sure to thank you. He swore that if only to avoid disappointing you, he would fill Cheon-am's vacancy splendidly. So watch over him, and trust him."
"……"
It had become known that Mugeuk Jinin's intervention in the bracket affair had come about because of me. The world believed that I had passed word of my displeasure to him mid-duel, and that the enraged Sword Emperor had thereupon rebuked Cheon-am Jinin. It was not the shape I would have chosen — but good was good, and I had decided there was no need to set the record straight.
"See Nogun-dang there? That place did not simply come to be, you know. It has quite a history—"
Like a man with time on his hands, Mugeuk Jinin kept striking up rambling conversations with me. And I did not answer.
"……"
Not that I was slighting a great senior of the jianghu merely because he wore a face about my own age. The blame lay with the training he had assigned me.
"What teaching is it you intend to impart?"
"Will you attempt ten days of silent wall-facing meditation here?"
It is said a master's every deed has its reason, so I resolved not to question it.
"Will it bear fruit?"
"That I can guarantee."
"Then I shall do it."
That's right. I was in the midst of a silent wall-facing meditation. Seven days and nights of the allotted ten had passed — time I could fairly judge to have been survived without mishap.
For the most part, anyway. Setting aside Mugeuk Jinin, who muttered away at my side at every hour.
After rattling on alone for a good long while, he cast me a reproachful glance.
"Boo-hoo. The venerable elder of the school deigns to speak, and you will not meet my eyes nor give me an answer. What a heartless whelp you are."
"……"
I had plenty to say. I simply could not say it — for this was no ordinary seclusion, but a silent one.
You ordered me into a vow of silence, so what in the world is all this, exactly? Or: I am no Daoist of Wudang, so you are no venerable elder of my school. Or: The heartless one is you, who for seven days and nights has not given me so much as a drop of water. I wanted to argue each and every point. But it was better that I didn't. Because the moment I gave in to those urges, I could picture it all too vividly — Mugeuk Jinin, thoroughly delighted at my failure.
At least one thing had become perfectly clear. Those who bore the name of supreme master were all, every last one of them, not quite right somewhere.
"Boo-hoo. I've run clean out of things to talk about today. I shall come again tomorrow."
With that, Mugeuk Jinin rose to his feet.
"Aigoo..."
Thanks to the Youthful Reversion, his body had been reborn as that of a man in his flawless prime — yet every time he stood, out came an old man's groan. Habit, apparently.
"This old Daoist suffers in his twilight years on your account."
You hardly look to be in your twilight years, I wanted to say. Or: You needn't come at all. But I could not. Forget words — I could not so much as cast him a glance. I was, after all, in the middle of a silent wall-facing meditation.
…Goddammit.
Truly, the training of Wudang, a prestigious Great Sect, was no joke.