Finders Keepers
The senses are many. Was there not the old term, the five senses? Even setting aside the sixth sense—that realm of the unknowable—there were said to be five kinds in all. As everyone knows: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
Then let us consider. The secret art the Sword Emperor Mugeuk Jinin had passed down to me was called the Yeongseong Gamgakdo. It could hardly be called a martial art, yet as an inquiry into how one might sense the mystery called spirituality, none could deny it was a truly great esoteric teaching. No—nor could I even claim it stood apart from the martial arts.
Beyond the Profound Realm's stage of Five Qi Returning to the Origin lies the realm of Feathered Ascension, also called the Life-and-Death Realm, where the way is perfected at its utmost summit. And it was in the Sword Emperor's Yeongseong Gamgakdo that I had found the first seed of the Heart Sword—that blade of intent which is itself but a fragment of that supreme realm.
In any case... what the Sword Emperor bestowed on me was not an art of touching spirituality. It was an art of sensing it. Which is to say, the Yeongseong Gamgakdo does not consist merely of laying hands upon the spiritual.
Looking back, so it was. Ten days of seclusion had brought me to the point of touching the Heart Sword of spirituality, but long before that, I had seen the Sword Emperor's Heart Sword. The very moment I faced him upon the dueling stage.
My guess was that the enlightenment I came by while combing through nameless mountains in the guise of a herb gatherer—the day I unearthed the Heavenly Lingzhi—had reached all the way to that place. Perhaps I would not be wrong to believe that among the senses, I was gifted above all in sight. Befitting the heir of Yakseon, who was born with his spiritual eyes already open.
Sight. To see is to cognize through the eyes. And to cognize is to know. Put another way: what one does not know, one cannot see.
Does not the common man, lacking a dantian, see nothing and feel nothing of the qi of nature that floods the world? To borrow Mugeuk Jinin's phrasing: because he has no belief.
"This is where the Taecheong-dan was kept."
"My thanks."
Thanks to Cheonsu Jinin's guidance, I had been able to walk into the depths of Yeongeun-gung, the sanctuary where the Taecheong-dan had been kept.
"You cannot stay long. See to it quickly."
Beside me stood Cheonsu Jinin, his expression as displeased as ever, and the Sword Emperor Mugeuk Jinin, quite unable to hide his interest.
"What do you see?"
"A moment."
With only those words, I closed my eyes and sank within. I cast off prejudice. I cast off delusion. I cast off the craving to know. Eyes shut, I cast off even sight itself, if only for an instant.
I simply believed: that I possessed the unclouded gift of seeing spirituality, and that there, in that place, lay the answer that would unravel the Shadowless Divine Thief's mystery.
—To believe in what cannot be seen, in what is not known—that is conviction.
I simply trusted my Yeongseong Gamgakdo.
Shrrk—
I opened my eyes again. In that sliver of time, the shape of the world I beheld had changed.
"I know where the Taecheong-dan has gone."
Before me lay a path, stark and vivid, spun from the lingering traces of spirituality.
The multitudes of the world call the murim jianghu the wind-and-dust jianghu. Wind and dust—a phrase for a world that knows neither ease nor order. And in truth, no words could better describe a jianghu where the righteous and the wicked mingle and vie, where blades and cunning war-engines whirl in wild confusion, and where every manner of scheme and bloodshed runs rampant.
Is not the murim jianghu precisely such a world—a place where force lies closer than authority, and fists closer than law?
"Say, Myeong-gae."
"What is it?"
One day Gwak Mo, that storyteller, called over to me in his casual way, and I answered with a certain lack of enthusiasm. If you ask the reason, it must be credited to my uncommonly sharp instincts. The days Gwak Mo called my name with an ahem were days he had useful information to hand. When he merely called out to me in passing, I knew from experience, there was nothing nourishing in it—he simply meant to parade his knowledge.
"In the wind-and-dust jianghu—that mountain of blades, that forest of swords—do you know how the powerless common folk survive?"
"Under persecution, I'd imagine."
I humored him all the same; though I disliked admitting it, I had often gone looking for learning in Gwak Mo's erudition and found it.
"You're not wrong. That, too, is one face of the truth. But tell me—do you know how they manage to wear such smiles?"
"Hm?"
Gwak Mo's words were indeed no lie. We always traded our banter on the main thoroughfare, so it cost nothing to spot the common folk drifting past with smiles on their faces.
"As you know well, the murim jianghu is a world of rogues."
"True enough."
"It crawls with scoundrels who think nothing of breaking the imperial law."
"That too is true."
Having lived years as a beggar of the Beggars' Sect myself, I could vouch that not a word of it was wrong.
"And yet even those rogues keep one law above most others."
"And what might that be?"
"Ownership."
Raised as I had been in a renowned house, and steeped by a beggar's life in enough information to make me widely learned, I still had to admit I was no master of law or administration. I knew what ownership meant; I had simply never pursued the study of it.
"Unpack it for me, if you would."
Storytellers, as a breed, are creatures stuffed to bursting with the hunger for recognition. The moment I asked to be taught, Gwak Mo continued, a smile spread across his whole face.
"Ownership means the coin pouch in my sleeve is mine, and the coin pouch in yours is yours. You might call it the common-sense, proper law of the murim jianghu."
"Who doesn't know that?"
"Then how does ownership come into being?"
"How would I know? Do go on."
An objective eye, a supple mind, and a talent for conceding a point quickly—these, one might say, were Myeong-gae's distinguishing virtues.
"Ownership springs from possession. What I hold is mine—that is the root of it."
"Indeed."
"Then how does the transfer of ownership come about?"
"One need only pass the possession along."
"Clever as ever, I see."
"Hahahaha... hm..."
I had barely finished preening at his praise before the laughter died in my throat. For I had just grasped an uncomfortable truth: for transferring possession, nothing in this world outperformed violence, theft, and plunder.
"I see you understand. None of that face, now. Did I not say ownership was one of the few cases where the imperial law reaches into the murim jianghu?"
"And why is that?"
"Because to break it is to have one's name entered in the murim's own criminal record."
"So that's how it is."
A man of learning—or, in coarser speech, an ink-belly. And among ink-bellies, Gwak Mo was a storyteller who knew how to season a tale.
"Say, Myeong-gae. You are a proud beggar of the Beggars' Sect, so you know full well how vital the common folk are."
"Of course."
The righteousness and chivalry of the Beggars' Sect have ever been turned toward the common people. To put it in Gwak Mo's style, that was why beggars renounced ownership, clothed themselves in nothing but woven straw, and made for the lowest place of all.
"Consider the breed called murim folk. No people under heaven are less productive than they. Enlightenment won through meditation, the qi of nature drawn in with every breath, blades sent whirling, men floating on empty air—none of it milled a single grain of rice or forged a single tool, did it? And yet they are human still, and so they gobble up food and demand materials all the same."
"It is the common folk who produce the food and the materials."
"Just so. And so murim folk ought to protect them. That is why I hold the Beggars' Sect in respect."
What Gwak Mo had shown me deserved the name of insight. It was, moreover, the day a new epoch opened for Myeong-gae, who until then had done nothing but gather information and file it away.
"In any event, that is why even the murim honors the law of ownership. See it as a self-regulating mechanism for survival."
Was not the storyteller, after all, a creature who made of talk both his trade and his amusement? To compress the lecture that ran on long after this, it came to the following:
To transfer possession 'by coercion' or 'by force' is a grave crime.
By Gwak Mo's account, in the murim jianghu at least, it was treated more severely than murder. For much of the murder committed in the murim jianghu was no crime at all.
In any case: whoever committed such a grave crime became, under the name of that murim criminal record, a target of the crowd's justice, and so even the dregs of the unorthodox sects hardly ever broke the rules of ownership. They worked every crooked scheme under the sun, of course—but was that not at least better than tearing things away by naked force?
Having listened to Gwak Mo's lecture for a good long while, I found a question forming of its own accord.
"Suppose a departed hermit sage left an estate behind. Whose property would it be?"
"Oho—"
Gwak Mo's eyes gleamed. Judging by my own discerning eye, he had just marveled once more at this Myeong-gae's cleverness.
"Under imperial law, such a thing is called lost property."
I gave a nod, meaning for him to continue.
"By the letter of the law, one who takes it without right commits the crime of embezzling lost property—but the murim jianghu recognizes ownership alone."
In short: to the one who picks it up, the prize.
"So that is how it is."
Playing along, I found I could smile. I had just confirmed the legality of my own design.
That was it. The Taecheong-dan, stolen by the Shadowless Divine Thief, surely fell under lost property—which meant the one who picked it up became its rightful owner. Such was the culture of the murim jianghu, and such was its common understanding.
Which is to say, I was not some conscienceless wretch scheming to overpower the Shadowless Divine Thief and spirit the Taecheong-dan away in secret.
Granted, the questions of duty and conscience still wanted weighing—but perhaps, half without knowing it, I had set the great cause of halting the Great Righteous-Demonic War before them.
"I know where the Taecheong-dan has gone."
"Oh-ho."
Mugeuk Jinin did not dismiss my words. Whether drawn into his gravity or not, Cheonsu Jinin too had turned grave.
"You see something?"
"Yes."
For reasons I could not guess, the path woven of lingering spirituality appeared to be invisible even to Mugeuk Jinin. My guess was that when it came to sight within the Yeongseong Gamgakdo, I might stand ahead of even the Sword Emperor.
Savoring the mystery of unknowable spirituality could wait; ordering the situation at hand came first.
"I believe I can follow the Taecheong-dan's trail."
"I ask this of you, Great Hero."
Cheonsu Jinin spoke in a grave voice and lowered his head. The man who had long watched me with a displeased eye was nowhere to be found. In truth, his displeasure had stemmed not from private feeling or impression but from the prudence his office required of him, and one had to call his conduct blameless.
"Follow me."
As my steps pursued the lingering traces of spirituality, Mugeuk Jinin and Cheonsu Jinin fell in behind me.
In truth, part of the reason I could even entertain quietly taking the lost Taecheong-dan was that I had no particular bond with Wudang. But I had already accepted a debt of gratitude from Mugeuk Jinin deep as rivers and seas, and to betray conscience and duty on top of it was not the way of a martial artist who walks the upright path. For now, the proper course was to recover the Taecheong-dan together with Wudang and return that treasure to Wudang's keeping.
Of course, I had by no means given up the Taecheong-dan. I would see my duty through to the end—and find a way to take the Taecheong-dan besides.
"This is the right way?"
"It is."
I understood Cheonsu Jinin's doubt. The steps that led our party were not carrying us out of Wudang but climbing ever deeper into its rugged heights.
I could not make sense of it either—but the path of spirituality before my eyes went that way, so I simply followed.
"Myeong-i doesn't talk nonsense. Trust him and keep up; that is all there is to it."
Chun-baek, who had caught up at some point, was sending me a look of trust. He had witnessed my eccentricities more than anyone alive, so perhaps he had simply built up an immunity.
"Hm..."
My elder brother Dancheon Hak, meanwhile, was studying me with an expression that plainly asked, What on earth is that rascal up to now? Had Cheonsu Jinin and Mugeuk Jinin not been present, that thought would have found his mouth. He had never been one to mind my feelings.
Hm.
I resolved to ignore him.
We ran a long while on lightfoot technique, and at last we arrived at the highest place on Wudang. Our destination still lay beyond, but there was one spot that seized the eye.
"That place over there..."
"The Upper Clarity Rock Shrine."
Mugeuk Jinin let the end of his sentence trail off, and Cheonsu Jinin caught the cue and finished for him.
"Ah, of course."
Mugeuk Jinin seemed to have grasped it, but for me and my two elder brothers it remained a fog.
"What is the Upper Clarity Rock Shrine?"
"A mountain shrine that stands upon Wudang's highest peak."
True to its name as a shrine, a single small hall stood there. Mugeuk Jinin added the rest.
"It enshrines Sambong Jinin. As the lore handed down at Wudang has it, the shrine was raised because Sambong Jinin achieved Feathered Ascension atop the Upper Clarity Rock."
"I see."
We passed the Upper Clarity Rock Shrine—which had caught the eye for reasons none of us could name—and pressed on for a long while yet into the depths of Mount Wudang. Chasing the ever-denser traces of spirituality, we came at last to a place where nothing existed but a single great mountain of bare rock.
"I believe this is the place."
When my steps finally halted, Mugeuk Jinin and Cheonsu Jinin scanned our surroundings.
"There was a rock mountain like this on Wudang?"
"This is the first I have heard of it."
Call it Mount Wudang all you like; this was wilderness pure and simple, untouched by human feet, so it was entirely possible.
Then—
—Squeak?
A presence entered my sight: luminous and yet pale, and wholly unknown. It was a being that held, entire and undiluted, the lingering traces of spirituality I had been seeing all this while.
"Hm?"
As I gathered my focus, the presence took on form.
"A hon?"
The hon. In the speech of the common folk, it was the shape of the beast known among rodents as the squirrel.