Where the Dragons and Phoenixes Gather
There is likely no corner of this world where such things are not so, but the murim of the jianghu must be the most unreasonable world of them all.
It is a place where some spend an entire lifetime cutting and polishing themselves and still only brush against the miraculous threshold known as the Peak Realm—while others attain it before they have even reached their twentieth year.
I know that, on rare occasion, there are those born with exceptional talent and bone structure who raise themselves to the Peak Realm by their own strength alone before the age of thirty. But such beings amount to a probability so cruelly low that they hardly make a meaningful sample.
The vast majority who attain the Peak Realm at a tender age owe it to the circumstances of their birth. They receive from the cradle the fortuitous blessing of Marrow Cleansing, and the aid of countless elixirs besides. They are schooled in superior martial manuals handed down through their clans for generations, and given systematic training to walk that road aright.
That is how the rising stars of the jianghu—those styled Dragons and Phoenixes—are made. And thus, I would say, the prestige of the great martial clans endures unbroken, generation after generation.
To earn the right to participate in the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly, one had to touch the Peak before thirty. The Assembly, in the end, was a gathering of the rising stars who lived at the very summit of the jianghu.
"Dancheon Myeong of the Dancheon Sword Clan. Yi Chun-baek the Vagabond. Welcome to the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly."
Once the prescribed verification was complete, the Arhat monk of Shaolin charged with stewarding the Assembly greeted us so.
Within the great hall—vast enough to swallow the Dancheon clan's training yard whole—several dozen of the jianghu's rising stars already stood gathered in clusters. Their faces, every one, still bore the unshed softness of youth, yet the fact that all of them were Peak Realm masters was astonishing in itself.
And more astonishing still: every last one of them, without a single exception, hailed from a prestigious sect or great martial clan of the jianghu—save, that is, for Yi Chun-baek standing beside me now.
"Let's stay out of it, Brother Chun-baek."
He and I had grown close over the road we shared, and somewhere along the way had come to call each other sworn brothers.
"Myeong, shouldn't you be heading over there yourself?"
As if to say I shouldn't mind him and should go where I belonged, he spoke without a flicker of reluctance.
I shook my head, smiling. "That place and I share little affinity, I'm afraid."
True enough. In reality, my standing as a direct descendant of the Dancheon clan was a hollow facade; my circumstances were not so different from Yi Chun-baek's.
Mine was, on paper, the birth the murim calls a 'golden cord'—but the truth had never matched it. The label of bastard had cost me the Marrow Cleansing blessing, the one fortune whose effects are greatest in childhood. No elixir ever came my way either, thanks to the frost-cold glare of the woman Baek Yeo-hae. And the master who should have trained me systematically was the Third Elder, a man utterly indifferent to my progress or achievements.
Even so, I had reached First-Rate at seventeen. For that much, I could thank the superior martial manual granted me for being born clutching the golden cord—the first half of the Dancheon Sword Formula—together with my own innate talent and bone structure.
Perhaps the reason the woman Baek Yeo-hae had guarded against me so keenly was precisely that: the fact that I had made First-Rate at seventeen with none of that support behind me.
"Coming here makes me feel like a stranger."
Yi Chun-baek, silent until then, remarked.
"My sentiments exactly."
Looking rather glad to find at least one soul who felt the same, Chun-baek flashed me a grin.
Just then—
"So you finally show up?"
I turned toward the familiar voice. It was Dancheon Hak, arrived early and already deep in friendly commerce with the influential rising stars of Anhui Province. With him was Namgung Tan, scion of the Namgung clan, one of Anhui's illustrious families.
"You arrived before me, I see."
The moment he took in my face, Dancheon Hak flinched.
"Y-you. What have you done to yourself?"
"Whatever do you mean?"
For a heartbeat I wondered what the man was on about—then the reason dawned on me at once. It was thanks to the young ladies behind Dancheon Hak, cheeks gone pink, unable to tear their eyes from my face.
"I suppose every man in the Dancheon clan is a beauty."
"I think that Young Master Myeong over there might be even handsomer than Young Master Hak, don't you? Since when did he turn out like that?"
Whispers to all appearances, yet they reached my ears with perfect vividness.
Grit. The grind of Namgung Tan's teeth reached me as well.
They were hot-blooded youths before ever they were Dragons and Phoenixes; hardly a surprising turn, I would say.
Heartened by the young ladies' admiration, I sent Dancheon Hak a dazzling smile.
"Have you forgotten your little brother's face in the meantime, Elder Brother?"
There was a time I envied that handsome face and fresh smile of his. It seemed I no longer had to.
Dancheon Hak, who had long fed his sense of superiority through me, found the situation turning sour and cast about for another lever.
"Running with a vagabond. How perfectly it suits your level."
He looked Yi Chun-baek—clad in a vagabond's travel-worn garb—up and down with undisguised contempt. Perhaps because he was away from home, the old mask had thinned from his face, leaving a sneer that looked down on all others.
"Elder Brother."
I called to him. Whether it was the form of address he disliked, his brow knotted.
But I had not even begun, I would say.
"Is that any way to speak? Just which household taught you such manners, I wonder?"
"Pfft."
"Heh."
Suppressed laughter burst from several quarters behind Dancheon Hak—for every one of them knew he and I were of the same house.
Dancheon Hak, who had never seen my counter coming, flushed scarlet.
"Insolent to the bone. Do not forget—there is no father here to shield you."
"Ah, I've learned something new today. My thanks for the instruction. You are every inch the elder brother."
With that, I offered Dancheon Hak a proper fist-and-palm salute. Laughter broke out around us once more.
"Ha! You're an amusing one."
But one could hardly bare a blade at one's own flesh and blood in such company, so Dancheon Hak forced a laugh of his own.
There had been a time when that Dancheon Hak looked to me like a great wall I could never surmount. The Dancheon Myeong of those days, I reflected, had been very young indeed.
"Keep quiet and stay out of the way, lest you stain the family's honor."
With that, Dancheon Hak seized my shoulder in a crushing grip. But mine was a body long since arrived at the state where neither blade nor sword could invade; I felt nothing at all.
"I shall bear it in mind."
Dancheon Hak glared at me with murder in his eyes at that reply, then shortly moved off. Namgung Tan trailed after him, glaring daggers and grinding his teeth, but I played the innocent.
Seen from where I stood, Namgung Tan might as well have been Dancheon Hak's henchman. Considering that the Namgung clan's prestige ran a step ahead of the Dancheon clan's, it meant Dancheon Hak's deftness was no ordinary thing.
Whether by fortune, Yeon Se-hwa—Namgung Tan's betrothed—was nowhere in sight. I could only hope she had chosen well.
"You take care as well, Elder Brother—not to bring disgrace upon the family!"
I saw Dancheon Hak off at the top of my lungs. He must have heard every word, yet he walked on, feigning deafness.
Honor.
Merely qualifying for the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly would already be counted as exalting the family name—but that was not the end of it.
Though the jianghu's influential rising stars were collectively styled Dragons and Phoenixes, the true Dragons and Phoenixes were another matter entirely. In all things under heaven, there is ever a heaven beyond heaven.
The orthodox murim of the present day had adopted the system of the Five Dragons and Five Phoenixes. It meant this: of the dozens of rising stars gathered here, only five men could claim the true title of 'Dragon,' and only five women the title of 'Phoenix.'
The next Assembly would not convene for three years, and until then, those ten would be acknowledged as the true pillars of the jianghu.
Everyone in this hall had grown up being called a genius. Nearly all had been born the treasured jewels of illustrious clans; not one could have escaped the word. To reach the Peak Realm before one's thirtieth year meant exactly that.
To sift five men and five women from this company—the supreme ten—the fierceness of the contest was a foregone conclusion.
In my life before regression, Dancheon Hak had become the foremost of those Five Dragons and truly exalted the family name. Even now I could see it: his proud face as he returned home like a triumphant general once the Assembly ended. The title he had seized there was the Sundering Dragon.
He was one walking the road to Clan Head, and once he claimed the Dragon's title, his stride toward that seat went without saying. Between me and him—already worlds apart—he had torn open a gulf all the more vast, I would judge.
But this life would be different.
I would never be the one to stain the family's honor.
And neither would Dancheon Hak be the one to exalt it.
And Dancheon Hak would never sit as Clan Head.
I would make certain of it.
The seats of true glory numbered no more than ten.
And by what method would the true Dragons and Phoenixes be chosen?
The simplest way to measure rising stars against one another was, of course, a tournament or a sparring match—but one could hardly escort such precious personages all this way and then set them brawling on the spot. They were not mad dogs in a fighting pit.
There were plenty of reasons a tournament could not stand in for everything. One of them: when martial artists of the Peak Realm fought in earnest, a limb or two taking flight was an everyday occurrence.
One could hardly assemble the scions of great clans for a tournament, sever an arm or a leg, say 'So it happened. My regrets,' and adjourn the Assembly.
Every participant here was a Peak Realm master—every one capable of taking an opponent's life with a single stroke. And competition, as a rule, breeds fever.
To hope for no accidents while hot-blooded masters at the Peak gave their all in combat—that hope, I would say, had to be called foolish.
Even a mediator of the most sublime attainment had limits. For whenever a referee wedged himself in mid-fight, someone always emerged who could not accept the outcome.
And so the orthodox murim had devised a plan: to contest footwork, swordplay, and internal power—the very essence of the martial arts—and select those who stood out in the aggregate.
In truth, few would dispute that a martial artist excelling in those three was genuinely formidable. At the very least, such was the 'official' method of choosing the Dragons and Phoenixes.
"This humble monk shall preside over the first test of the Dragon and Phoenix verification."
With Beomgak Daesa, the reigning Abbot of Shaolin, coming forward, few would find it easy to dispute the 'official' verdict.
Befitting a monk of lofty dharma repute, the eminent master—magnificent in his snow-white brows and beard, his countenance aglow with benevolence—swept his gaze across the rising stars of the murim.
"I shall now set the first test."
His voice, laden with majestic internal power, rolled out pure and unbroken across the hall.
"As you all know, the first test is footwork. A novice monk will be waiting at the entrance of Shaolin's mountain gate. I have entrusted the child with a password; hear it from him and return to this place."
Even the arrangement to forestall any unseen trickery was admirable, I would say.
"Let me see... The distance comes to some two hundred li round trip, so an hour should be plenty, no?"
Not a single rising star answered.
"Good. I have no intention of granting the name of Dragon or Phoenix to anyone who cannot cover two hundred li within the hour. Those who fail to return in time shall receive a zero on the first test, by this examiner's authority."
Though Beomgak spoke as if murmuring to himself, his voice, steeped in majestic internal power, carried to every rising star present.
"Take a zero on the first test, and the title of Dragon or Phoenix will not come easily to you."
The brows of Beomgak, Abbot of Shaolin—until then chuckling away to himself—stirred.
"Why do you stand about instead of setting off? The test has already begun."
Clatter and crash—the hall erupted before his words had even finished falling, for every rising star was bolting from the great hall, lightfoot arts blazing at full tilt.
"Hah hah hah!" Beomgak Daesa laughed heartily, plainly delighted by the sight.
But.
His gaze was not on the rising stars scrambling away, but on those who still held their ground where they stood.
On me, and Yi Chun-baek.