Hide a Man in a City
"I'll show you around the village."
"Shouldn't we present ourselves to your master first?"
"It's a necessary step."
"Understood."
Chun-baek hyeong did have a habit of spinning the occasional idle joke, but I knew him for no man of empty substance. Whatever he intended to do, there would be a reason behind it, and so following him was the right course. All the more so given that this region, at least, was unknown territory to me — Chun-baek hyeong's domain.
"This way, then."
"So you do know the way now?"
"Haha. I'm hardly an idiot."
Following Chun-baek hyeong's guidance, I took in the peaceful village of Sinhaenggol with my own eyes. These were paths he seemed to have walked beyond counting, and the last hesitation in his steps as he led me had only now fallen away.
"Hey there, Chun-baek! It's been ages!"
A middle-aged fellow with blood smeared on his cheek and a butcher's cleaver the size of a man's thigh came ambling over to greet us like an old friend. Had Chun-baek hyeong not welcomed him warmly, I might well have found myself flaunting my fist-and-foot arts unbidden — the man's savage visage was simply a bonus.
"Oh! Jang hyeong! Have you been well?"
"Pahahaha! How long has it been?"
I had taken him for a grim sort at first glance, but the hearty, open way he laughed made his face seem positively warm.
"I stopped by briefly last time, so I'd say it's been three years."
"And who's this beside you?"
"A friend of mine."
"Oho. So you're of an age to be making friends now, are you? Well, well."
Only then did Chun-baek hyeong introduce me.
"Go on, say your greetings. This is Jang hyeong — he runs the butcher shop here in the village."
"A pleasure. Myeong, of the Dancheon Sword Clan."
"Pahahaha! Just call me Jang hyeong."
"Yes, Jang hyeong."
"Good. And I'll call you Myeong."
It seemed the renown of the Dancheon Sword Clan had never reached Sinhaenggol, this remote mountain hollow of Jilin Province, for Jang hyeong took me in stride, exactly as he would any stranger.
"Have you been to see your master yet?"
"We're on our way now."
"Oh dear. Then it's no business of mine to hold you up. Off you go, see to your errand."
"We'll look in on you again later, Jang hyeong."
"That we will. Later, then..."
"Sounds good."
Counting off on their fingers, the two pledged the jar of Jiannanchun they would share another day. But no sooner had the butcher Jang hyeong receded into the distance than another burly fellow came approaching.
He was a man of towering bulk, most striking for his hard-tempered muscle. What truly demanded note, though, was the great saber in his hand — an enormous thing, its blade as wide as the torso of an average grown man.
Hm.
A blade an ordinary man could scarcely have lifted with both hands, and the fellow gripped it lightly in one.
"Hey there, Chun-baek!"
Had he not come ambling up, calling Chun-baek hyeong's name so fondly, I would certainly have been steadying my qi channels, prepared to make my move at a moment's notice.
"Mok hyeong, why must you haul that grisly thing around? You'll have the whole village on edge."
"Huh?"
Heavy as the saber plainly was, the man seemed only then to register that he was carrying it at all.
"Kwahahaha! I was tempering it and stepped outside with the thing — clean forgot it was in my hand."
His shoulders heaved mightily, as though his own antics were the finest joke in the world. Never before had I met a man whose threshold for laughter sat lower than Chun-baek hyeong's, and the sight was genuinely novel.
"Say your greetings. This is Mok hyeong — he runs the village smithy."
"Myeong, of the Dancheon Sword Clan."
"Hm? You don't carry a sword? I could fetch you one, if you've need."
"I'm quite fine."
"Any friend of Chun-baek's, I'll hand over a good blade for the cost of materials alone. If you find yourself needing one, come by anytime."
"My thanks."
Whether it was the ways of the countryside, or the store of goodwill Chun-baek hyeong had built over the years, this was a village of remarkably open hearts.
We had taken our leave of Mok hyeong and set walking again when—
"You rascal. Why have you come crawling back into the village?"
"My master makes his home here — surely I ought to look in on him from time to time?"
This time, a white-haired old man of Seonpungdogol stepped squarely into our path, memorable for the long-stemmed pipe clenched between his teeth, its stem as long as a grown man's arm.
"So that master of yours still lives, does he?"
"He is the sort who would chase off the underworld's envoy even if the man came knocking with the register of the dead in hand — so how could he not still be living?"
"Wahahaha! You're not wrong."
With that, the old man went on his way without so much as a parting word. Or, to put it precisely, he vanished without a trace.
"The village chief of Sinhaenggol."
"Ah."
We exchanged greetings with a great many more souls after that.
"They're all good folk, it seems."
"I think so too."
It was a warm, welcoming village. Of course, for the present it was best not to act as though I had seen through anything.
"Here we are."
At Chun-baek hyeong's guiding hand, we at last arrived at the school of his master — though in truth, I wasn't sure 'school' was the proper word for it. Before us stood a humble thatched cottage, no different from any commoner's dwelling.
"So that's how it is."
"What is?"
"Nothing at all."
To hide a tree, the saying goes, take it to the forest; to hide a man, take him to Beijing. This, too, might be counted among life's small lessons. Why is it that mysterious sects and hidden masters are so hard to find? Because they dissolve seamlessly into the murim of the jianghu, wearing ordinary faces and living ordinary lives, no different from any common fellow. Those who stake their claim atop some numinous peak beyond human reach, or in a mystic grotto buried deep in some hidden valley, and then announce to the world 'Behold, a mysterious sect!' — those are the ones whose whereabouts the information sects catalogued long ago.
One look at that utterly unremarkable thatched cottage, and I knew: Chun-baek hyeong was, in truth, the heir to a mysterious sect.
"Master, I have come."
Setting my reflections aside, Chun-baek hyeong announced our arrival.
Creeeak—
"Chun-baek, is that you?"
The door swung open on protesting hinges, and an old man with a stern, upright face appeared in the doorway.
"Yes, Master. It is Chun-baek."
The old man's gaze shifted to me.
"And this would be?"
"The friend I spoke of the other day."
"Myeong of the Dancheon Sword Clan."
As I offered my greeting, I folded my hands in a fist-palm salute. I did so because Chun-baek hyeong had told me this master was to him no different from a parent — not the old doctrine that lord, master, and father are one, but a man who truly stood in a parent's place. Stingy with honorifics I may be, but I am not so graceless a scoundrel as to withhold courtesy from a friend's parent.
"Well met."
The moment I lifted my head and met Chun-baek hyeong's master's eyes once more, a memory long sunk beneath consciousness rose to the surface.
Ah.
I believe I know who that old man is.
The five powers that had long formed the pillars of the Heavenly Demon Cult were known as the Five Great Demonic Clans. Naturally, everything in the Cult belonged to Seol Cheon-sang, the Heavenly Demon, sole sovereign of ten thousand demons — but no one man, however transcendent, could carry the Cult's vast enterprise alone. He needed fitting hands and feet, did he not? The Five Great Demonic Clans were precisely those who served faithfully in that role beneath the Heavenly Demon.
The Ghostly Spirit Seol Clan.The Daeryeok Jang family.The Poxian Noh Clan.The Biyeong Ma Clan.The Eumhyeol Goru family.
One could safely assume that everyone holding a venerable seat in the Heavenly Demon Cult carried one of those five surnames — save for Wi Su, the Demonic Divine Conduit, who had climbed by his own strength alone to a station beneath one and above all others. Put differently, it meant the present mission — to exterminate the mysterious sect, mounted on the back of this rift in the celestial order — would fall to one of the Five Great Demonic Clans.
"Which clan do you think would serve best?"
At Seol Cheon-sang's question, Wi Su fell to weighing the matter. Erasing the mysterious sect was a great enterprise — it would become the spark that toppled the taut balance between the Central Plains and the Cult. This was a design aimed through a rift in the heavens' workings that had come only after a long absence, not a thing to be handled carelessly. It was a task no band of pawns could ever achieve, so it was only proper that one of the Five Great Demonic Clans step forward in full.
"We will exclude the Ghostly Spirit Seol Clan."
"That seems wise."
The Ghostly Spirit Seol Clan, from which the great Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang himself had sprung, was devoted to attending the Heavenly Demon and pouring its strength into the Cult's internal governance. Casting it outward would not do — at the very least, not until the Great War of Righteousness and Evil broke out in earnest.
"Nor would the Eumhyeol Goru family serve."
"I suppose not."
The Goru family had welcomed a new Eumhyeol Sinma only recently. The fevers of its internal succession struggle had yet to run their course, making it ill-suited to a great charge. In truth, for work like this — extermination — there was no family quite like the Eumhyeol Goru, which made the omission a point of genuine regret.
"The Biyeong Ma Clan, then?"
A clan that resembled assassins incarnate would want for nothing against a mysterious sect, but—
"We will exclude them."
Wi Su refused. He had taken Ma Pyeong-sam, born of the Biyeong Ma Clan, under his own wing, and for that reason his relations with the reigning Biyeong Sinma were anything but smooth. He did not doubt the clan's devotion to the Heavenly Demon and the Cult, but in an enterprise of this scale, prudence against even the unlikeliest variable was right.
"Well. Do as you please."
Whether he had fathomed Wi Su's mind or simply saw no need, the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang did not trouble himself to object.
"That leaves the Daeryeok Jang family and the Poxian Noh Clan."
After a brief deliberation, Wi Su made his decision.
"The Poxian Noh Clan would be best."
"That seems best."
A Daeryeok Sinma whose temperament ill-befitted a demonic master — and a Poxian Sinma vicious even among the demonic. That the Poxian Noh Clan was chosen for the mission to annihilate the mysterious sect was a thing close to inevitability.
The Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, home to the Heavenly Demon Cult, stood at the far western end of the Central Plains. The folk known as the mysterious sect, only now identified by the Cult, were said to have rooted themselves in Jilin Province, hard against the continent's eastern edge. To the tempered demonic warriors of the Heavenly Demon Cult, crossing the Central Plains was no feat at all — and yet neither was it as easy as it sounded, for the murim of the Central Plains sat squarely in between.
"We could simply smash straight through."
"And those who stand in our way?"
"Kill every last one of them, no?"
"So they outnumber us like ants. Keep killing and it ends soon enough — might even be entertaining to see which side runs out of bodies first."
"That will not do."
The unrestrained Poxian Sinma had made his case with something like rapture on his face, but from where Wi Su stood, it was a proposal he could not accept.
"To stir up strife in the Central Plains at this juncture would not do. You will travel by the northern steppe route."
"Tch."
"The Sovereign has so commanded."
"...Then I suppose we follow."
Even the willful Poxian Sinma had never once defied the Heavenly Demon's command. He remained visibly displeased, but he had no choice but to accept Wi Su's counsel.
"Be off, then."
"I will pray for your fortune in battle."
"Hmph. Even without it, they will be exterminated."
And so one pillar of the Five Great Demonic Clans — the Poxian Noh Clan — set out for the great northern steppe. Wi Su knew well that the steppe road beyond the Central Plains' northern border, the land of the barbarians in other words, would carry them all the way to Jilin Province without ever catching the eye of the Central Plains' people. And so the Poxian Sinma and the elite of the Poxian Noh Clan took to the long road. The northern steppe route was merely more convenient than cutting across the Central Plains — peaceful it was not.
"Have you dealt with them all?"
"Yes."
His subordinates answered the Poxian Sinma's question. Their expressions and their bearing were as they always were — but the scenery around them was not.
Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.
The low grasses of the great steppe had lost their natural hue, dyed a red deeper than any sunset.
Crunch.
The Poxian Sinma, Noh Du-hyeong, stomped down and shattered the skull of the warrior sprawled before him — a deed steeped in a thick, lingering displeasure.
"Tsk."
By repute the man had been a Great Warrior, foremost among his tribe's fighters — yet he had perished without so much as stirring Noh Du-hyeong's fighting spirit, and that was what had drawn the click of the tongue. The warriors of the northern steppe, risen to defend their homelands, had all died hollow, meaningless deaths. Brave they surely were, yet they amounted to nothing. At least, such was the view from where Noh Du-hyeong stood.
"We move."
"Yes."
Even in the direct aftermath of a battle of such magnitude, the host of the Poxian Noh Clan advanced again without a hint of disorder. If the Eumhyeol Goru family resembled evil itself, and the Biyeong Ma Clan resembled assassins, then the Poxian Noh Clan could only be called an army in the truest sense. The clan's iron internal discipline made it so, as did the conduct they showed in executing the Heavenly Demon's commands.
"These bastards ought to have been tougher than this."
The great host of the Poxian Noh Clan scorched the northern steppe route as it marched on Jilin.