Beginner's Luck and a Beggar's Bet
"To believe in what cannot be seen, in what is unknown—that is faith. And that conviction, I say, is the very beginning of spirit-sense."
Round and round we had gone, only to arrive back at first principles.
I knew full well that old men tended to talk in exactly this manner. The old beggars of the Union spoke in a way that resembled the Sword Emperor to a remarkable degree.
"Mm."
I nodded along and listened attentively, but honestly, I hadn't the faintest idea what the hell he was going on about.
"Please, grant me your teaching."
The hierarchy between us had long since been settled, and I could hardly come out with what kind of dog-chewing-grass nonsense is that? So I bowed my head and begged for instruction.
It wasn't mere social graces, either; the Sword Emperor's Zen riddles stirred something faint and distant deep in my intuition.
"Do you believe in what you know? In what you have seen with your own eyes? No. That is not believing—that is merely knowing. Any common man can do as much. One who acts only upon what he knows remains a common man, and such a one will never pass beyond his limits."
Glancing sidelong to confirm that I was listening as I ought, the Sword Emperor asked again.
"Do you know righteous intent and spirit-sense?"
"Not well."
There had been a time when I believed that upon reaching the Five Qi Returning to the Origin, I would come to understand righteous intent and spirit-sense.
But answering no was the right call.
It was something like the curse of knowledge—the more one comes to know, the more one realizes how much remains unknown.
Precisely because I had glimpsed righteous intent and spirit-sense, I had no choice but to answer that I did not know them.
For what I had grasped of them was so slight that, set against the whole, calling it a mere fragment would have been generosity itself.
"And how much do you know of the relationship between the two?"
"...Nothing at all."
I had yet to fully awaken even to righteous intent, and spirit-sense lay further beyond me still—how was I to know how the two entwined?
"Because you know nothing, you must believe in yourself. You tried to believe only in what you knew, and so while your righteous intent ran true and upright, its form was wanting. One might even say you drew your own limits around yourself."
I found myself recalling the image of the Sword Emperor's willow leaf, which had once rendered all my martial skill utterly useless.
Clap—
Just as I began sinking into thought, the Sword Emperor clapped his hands.
"Enlightenment, by its nature, does not arrive through words. I was left with no choice but to unfold everything for you in language, but you may forget it all freely for all the good it will do."
Having said his piece, the Sword Emperor bade me:
"Look once more."
There, the fragment of spirit-sense again shone with a brilliant light.
The Heart Sword, having taken a form firmer than before, sat waiting in that place.
"Try to seize it."
"Yes."
Sorting through my memory of the Yeongseong Gamgakdo, I reached out my hand once more.
But...
Whoosh—
My hand touched nothing at all.
As though raking through mere air, my hand wandered the void to no purpose whatsoever.
"Hm?"
I could not fathom the reason.
"It is because your faith is lacking."
"Did I not touch it only moments ago?"
"Heh heh heh. The luck of a beginner, that was."
The Sword Emperor laughed as though thoroughly delighted.
Infuriating as the sight was, I knew that this lesson was a moment more precious to me than any other.
My guess was that the ten days of silent, wall-facing meditation, too, had had its own firm reason—one difficult to put into words.
"The martial arts, it has been said, are not learned with the head but awakened through the body. Fortunately, you carry the experience of the Yeongseong Gamgakdo within you; from here on, you have no choice but to advance under your own power."
"Yes."
Once again, a new world blossomed open before me.
That the paths of the martial arts and of self-cultivation were so utterly without end reminded me, once more, of how lacking a man I was.
The seclusion had ended, yet I remained in the Sword Emperor's hermitage at Nogun-dang.
For nowhere else was so rich in spirit-sense and the power of the land as this place.
In truth I no longer faced the wall, but my days still passed with me facing it all the same.
Four more days slipped by, and the Sword Emperor, who had vanished somewhere without a word, drew near me once more.
"How long do you mean to stay?"
After that lesson, the Sword Emperor had granted me no further teaching.
However I pressed him with questions, he would only smile and leave me with the words, My path and yours are not the same.
The feeling of having earned a great martial artist's acknowledgment gladdened me—and yet, that there was nothing more to learn from him came to me as a quiet regret.
"I will leave this place tomorrow."
"Hm? So soon?"
He had urged me to leave, yet now that I said I would, he seemed quietly put out—a look, I thought, much like a parent's.
"I won't be leaving for good. I mean to pay a visit to the Wudang main sect."
"Off to see your friends, are you?"
Perhaps he took me for one who would return in no time, for color came back into the Sword Emperor's expression.
"I'll be back before long."
"Hm. Your path is yours alone to walk."
Leaving those words behind yet again, the Sword Emperor withdrew into the distance.
From the way he unfolded into a cross-legged seat, he too must have sunk back into his meditations.
Tomorrow, I would go to the Wudang main sect.
Not, as the Sword Emperor guessed, to meet Chun-baek hyung and Dancheon Hak, but to see an incident resolved.
I spoke of the great calamity that would strike a fortnight after the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe convened—the scandal of the age in which Wudang's treasured heirloom, the Taecheong-dan, would be stolen.
And that day was tomorrow.
"Hm."
My original plan had been to catch the thief in secret and reclaim the stolen Taecheong-dan into my own keeping, but it would be right to give other avenues their due consideration as well.
The debt I owed Wudang—to Sword Emperor Mugeuk—was by no means a small one.
The days of Beggar Myeong.
I remember it as a day sometime after I had finished my survey of the Hwanragwon and returned to Kaifeng.
It was the day Kwak Mo-hyung the gossip connoisseur appeared before me, his face flushed to the ears with excitement.
A flushed face on Kwak Mo-hyung meant one thing and one thing only: he had laid hands on something interesting. Naturally, my own expression soon came to mirror his.
For Kwak Mo-hyung had been the chief architect of Beggar Myeong's information-gathering prowess in those days.
"Beggar Myeong! Heard the news?"
"Ahem. Kwak Mo-hyung, have you forgotten? I am, as it happens, a duly appointed Third-Rank Branch Master of the Union. Any news worth the name has brushed past these very ears of Beggar Myeong. Speak, whatever it may be. No doubt it is something I learned days ago, but given the friendship between us, I suppose I must lend your story an ear."
A first-rate information-broker beggar could hardly afford to enter a conversation at a disadvantage, and so I blustered.
"Oh ho."
I could see Kwak Mo-hyung's eyes gleam sharp. Call it the competitive pride peculiar to his breed of gossip connoisseur.
"If my guess serves, this bit of news has not yet brushed past your ears. It is a story that has spread only in whispers, through the back channels of the gossip connoisseurs."
"It wouldn't do to underestimate the Union's reach, would it? Unrivaled in intelligence—that is the one boast we beggars have to our name, no?"
"I'll grant that the Union's intelligence is second to none, but you would be wrong to dismiss the back channels of the gossip connoisseurs all the same."
"The moment you unfold what 'that news' may be, Kwak Mo-hyung, the truth will out."
My refusal to yield seemed to please him; Kwak Mo-hyung blew a satisfied snort through his nose.
With eyes sparkling bright in a face that promised nothing of the sort, his thoughts were plain enough to read.
"Say, will you make a wager of it with me?"
"Hm."
Truthfully, it was a turn I should have seen coming from a mile off.
If what gossip connoisseurs love most is a juicy affair, then what they love nearly as much is a wager.
That the breed called gossip connoisseur is steeped to the bone in the scent of the idle loafer—of that, even I could not pretend innocence.
"And what would you stake on this wager?"
By rights, the one who proposes the bet stakes the terms first. Such was the code and unwritten custom of the gangho and murim.
Kwak Mo-hyung was a man of abundant common sense, as expected, and promptly laid out his terms.
He was, after all, a capable gossip connoisseur and a seasoned gambler both.
"If I lose, then for a month I will fill your begging bowl to the brim, every single day. How does that strike you?"
"Oh ho."
A month's exemption from begging—any beggar with his wits about him ought to be drooling at such an offer.
There was just one flaw: it was an offer suited only to the Beggar Myeong of before—before I became the great Union's Third-Rank Branch Master.
"Tsk, tsk. Kwak Mo-hyung, you should spend less time lending your ear to rumor and more time studying the Union's hierarchy. This Beggar Myeong is a Third-Rank Branch Master now—begging for food is long behind me."
"But if you came home with a full begging bowl, could not the branch members fill their bellies well and good?"
"I know your heart is generous, Kwak Mo-hyung, but us beggars of shallow purse ought to suffer a little, by rights."
Let it be known that this was no mischief of mine, contrived to make the beggars under me suffer.
It was simply that one must never forget: only beggars who grow step by careful step through hardship truly earn their keep.
"Then how about a jug of takju a day, for a month?"
"Now that is the Kwak Mo-hyung I know."
He had made an offer no man alive could refuse; to pull out now would hardly be honorable conduct.
How could a beggar of the Union, having tucked his tail in a wager over information, ever show his face before the Dragon Head Gang Leader again? That was what it came down to.
It went without saying that I was not accepting the bet because I craved the takju—absolutely not—but for the honor of the Union's beggars.
To this, Kwak Mo-hyung said, oh so casually:
"And what will you stake?"
"Hold on, now."
Was I not a Branch Master these days?
Meaning: unlike the old days, there now always sat tucked into my waistband a ball of rice, steaming warm.
"I won't be taking the rice ball from your waistband."
"Kgh."
My shallow trick had not worked; Kwak Mo-hyung, it seemed, had grown right alongside me.
"A wager, by rights, should be matched in rank. If you wish to bet against me, you will have to stake something precious."
From the imperious air with which he presided over the negotiation, I could tell there would be no compromise.
"Sucking the marrow from a beggar's spine, are you?"
"Giving up, then?"
I had gone and seen that insufferable grin of his into the bargain—there was truly no backing out now.
"Hold on, I said. I am Beggar Myeong, Branch Master of the Union."
With a resolute face, I drew out not the rice ball hidden in my waistband, but something far more precious.
Being the more precious of the two, it naturally resided in the deeper recesses of my waistband.
"...And what might that be?"
"Ahem. Candied sweets."
That's right. Candied sweets.
If you ask whether candied sweets are not the province of little children, I would call that a misunderstanding.
The reason being: if the rice ball is a necessity to a beggar of the Union, then candied sweets are, without a shred of exaggeration, a luxury.
A luxury good.
The name alone tells you, does it not? It means a thing of rare and precious value.
To stake candied sweets—a luxury—on a gambling wager: had the Union's founding Dragon Head, who bade us exalt righteousness and chivalry, heard of it, he might well have beaten his breast in lament. But as the sin sprang from a yearning for information, surely the old Patriarch would have forgiven me that, too.
"...Very well. That will do nicely."
Kwak Mo-hyung, sure enough, knew the worth of a luxury good when he saw one.
"Out with it, then."
I had always called Kwak Mo-hyung a gossip connoisseur, but in truth, every capable beggar of the Union deserved the title.
Meaning: I could not hide my own curiosity about 'that news' he was about to unfold.
Kwak Mo-hyung glanced this way and that, then carefully opened his mouth.
"They say the Taecheong-dan—Wudang's treasured heirloom—has been stolen."
"...!"
The news Kwak Mo-hyung brought was, in a word, staggering.
So much so that I, Beggar Myeong, a seasoned information-broker, failed at the elementary task of managing my own face.
Perhaps he read his victory written in my expression, for joy settled onto Kwak Mo-hyung's face.
"Are you certain?"
"Nine parts in ten, it is true."
Knowing Kwak Mo-hyung's temperament, that was as good as a synonym for certain.
"Did they identify the beast?"
"They say it was the Shadowless Divine Thief."
"So much as a trace of the beast slipped through their fingers, then."
Kwak Mo-hyung nodded quietly.
Had the beast been identified, it would have been top-grade, ultra-classified intelligence; because it was not, the story had been free to reach the gossip connoisseurs' ears.
"Astonishing, is it not? At the great Wudang, of all places."
"Indeed it is."
I resolved to accept my defeat.
For all my bluster before Kwak Mo-hyung about being a Third-Rank Branch Master, I knew full well that this was information that would never so much as brush the ears of a mere third-rank beggar.
I squeezed my eyes shut and held out the candied sweets to him.
"I concede my defeat, so the sweets are yours, Kwak Mo-hyung. Treasure them well."
"...Just keep them yourself."
Kwak Mo-hyung was a truly seasoned gambler—one ought to call him a great soul who savored the wager itself, not a petty man coveting the spoils it might yield.
"You truly are Kwak Mo-hyung."
Before he could change his mind, I hastily shoved the candied sweets back into my waistband.
"My thanks, as ever."
"It is I who thanks you, for lending an ear."
That day, too, Kwak Mo-hyung and I achieved our mutual aid—kindred spirits, one might fairly call us.
I had obtained information even the Union's intelligence network could not reach. I had lost the wager, yes—but in the end, it was I who had won.