The Trouble With Treasure
I have mentioned before that Yakseon is a man difficult to understand through the eyes of an ordinary person. In other words, he is strange.
I know it is not right to pass such judgment on Yakseon, my master and my benefactor, but what can one do when it happens to be the truth?
Which means this remark of his, too, must not be taken at face value. Having demonstrated the merits of the Yakseon Heart Decision with my own body, I cannot dismiss the man as a madman, yet neither is it right to believe his every word. The claim that ten-thousand-year elixirs are plentiful lies far beyond the border of common sense.
Be that as it may. If one were asked to name the elixir found most often among those exceedingly rare ten-thousand-year treasures, nine out of ten would think first of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root. The fleeceflower is a weed of tenacious vitality that grows wild in every corner of the Central Plains, and it is far more plausible that one plant in ten thousand should endure ten millennia than one in ten.
Even the eccentric Yakseon speaks true in one respect: an elixir steeped in long years becomes precious, whatever it may be. The seasons an elixir ages turn directly into rarity and spirituality, and that is what grants a martial artist great power. The fleeceflower may be an ordinary herb, but aged a mere hundred years it is treated as a spiritual elixir, and at a thousand it brushes against the high grade. For that reason, no one could be blamed for regarding a Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root as a martial clan's greatest treasure.
But did you know this? Such treasures have, generation after generation, been the cause of bloody death and downfall.
"Myeong-gae, have you heard the news?"
"What is it this time?"
"They say the Jeong Family Manor of Jiangxi was wiped out overnight."
"The Jeong manor? They were no small name in Jiangxi. Why?"
"It seems they came into a Golden Spirit Fruit by chance. But word of it leaked, you see. In the dead of night, villains came swarming through their gates."
"Tsk. So that is the end of those who obtain a treasure beyond their means to bear."
The Golden Spirit Fruit is indeed a high-grade elixir, though it falls short of the ten-thousand-year kind, and even so it can wipe a renowned martial clan clean off the map.
There are perhaps three ways to prevent such misfortune before it strikes. The first is to possess strength enough to defend it. Yet one cannot escape the contradiction of seeking an elixir in order to gain strength, only to find that strength is needed to keep the elixir.
The second is to keep one's possession of the elixir an absolute secret, rather than bungle it as the Jeongs did. But an uncomfortable truth I learned in my beggar days is that a perfect secret is a truly difficult task.
The last way is to swallow the elixir the moment it is in hand. Aside from arts like the Star-Absorbing Great Method, there is no way to draw an elixir back out once it has melted into a martial artist's body.
But even this way is not easy. One who gulps down a supreme elixir is more likely to fail to withstand its energy and fall into qi deviation than to break through into the ranks of elevated masters. After all, one cannot simply gobble elixirs and expect martial arts to rise with every swallow. Of course, the Yakseon Heart Decision makes it possible, which is precisely why it deserves to be called a divine art.
Be that as it may. My point was that coming to possess an elixir like the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root is a more thorny problem than one might think. All the more so for those with neither the strength to guard it, the discretion to keep it hidden, nor the capacity to consume it. One might sell it for coin, of course, but finding a magnate willing to buy an elixir of that caliber outright is no simple feat either.
The situation of those I have my eye on now was exactly this.
"So what you are saying, Myeong, is that you mean to take the elixir from them by force?"
Yi Chun-baek asked me back, his face dumbfounded. These were words that should have shattered his trust in me, and yet he kept his composure because he had not abandoned his faith in me.
"That's right. Exactly that."
"What could you possibly lack?"
I lacked plenty, but there was no need to recite my grievances. Before that, I needed to clear away the misunderstanding.
"There will be no repercussions."
"Do you intend to kill them all and bury the secret?"
"Oh, come now. Surely not."
As the heir of a great house like the Dancheon Clan, I had no wish to be mistaken for a scoundrel who would butcher households for the sake of a treasure. With accurate information about them, the misunderstanding would dissolve on its own.
"Those men are spies of the Demonic Cult."
"...!"
The Demonic Cult, and spies at that. At those words, Yi Chun-baek's breath caught and his eyes flew wide.
Ah, one thing deserved correction, though. There would be killing, unavoidably. But it would not be killing for the sake of silencing a household.
Even without bearing the name ten-thousand-year or supreme, elixirs are, as a rule, a martial clan's greatest treasure. In the world of the rivers and lakes, the most important thing is martial arts, and few are those who would sell away the treasures that advance it for money. When demand outstrips supply by a mile, is it not inevitable that a price becomes impossible to set?
Even so, various circumstances do lead some to sell elixirs for coin. An herb gatherer with no ties whatsoever to martial arts might dig one up, or someone might need ready cash more than immediate power. Among such sellers, one class stood out: the Demonic Cultists.
"Brother Chun-baek. Did you know this?"
"Know what?"
"Demonic Cultists cannot consume spiritual elixirs."
"Hm?"
"No, to put it precisely, they can consume them, but the effects must be counted as nil."
With the Great Righteous-Demonic War yet to come, information on the Demonic Cult and its arts remains scarce, so most people do not know this.
"Myeong. It is common knowledge that a person who consumes an elixir absorbs at least some of its energy."
"But they walk the Heaven-Defying path, do they not?"
"Oh ho..."
Judging my words sound, Yi Chun-baek offered no rebuttal. My words were the truth.
Demonic Cultists run Heaven-Defying heart methods built for rapid advancement. Most assume the greatest side effect they suffer is something like madness, but that is not the truth. The side effect that truly burdens them is the drastic collapse of an elixir's efficacy.
Since elixirs yield them no benefit, they inevitably hit a wall in the end. Their inner power may pile up quickly through Heaven-Defying methods, but with the avenues to bloom spirituality narrowed, the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown remains beyond their reach.
"Not everyone who sells elixirs is a Demonic Cult spy, but it is also true that Cultists number among those who would turn elixirs into coin."
Be that as it may. Since elixirs are useless to Demonic Cultists, most of those found in the Tianshan Mountains reach the Central Plains through the Cult's spies. The Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root I had set out to find this time could be counted among them.
"Are you certain?"
"These ones are Demonic Cult spies beyond doubt."
"Where are they? Lead the way."
Yi Chun-baek's interest turned not to the elixir but to the Cult's spies. On his face, for an instant, I glimpsed a remnant of the King of Vagabonds I had once seen by chance in the Myeong-gae days. As expected, it seemed I had done well to seek him out.
It goes without saying, but flushing out the Demonic Cult's spies is no easy task. Those who would announce I am a spy had long since all died under the executioner's blade; only those who could thoroughly conceal themselves remained to operate within the martial world of the Central Plains.
One method, for instance, would be to channel inner qi into their pulse gates. Even a sliver of the pathways along which their energy circulated would make recognizing the Heaven-Defying arts no difficult matter. But in the culture of the rivers and lakes, built as it is on the rule that one's arts are never taught to outsiders, how could seizing another's pulse gates ever be easy?
"You are suspected of being a Demonic Cultist, so I shall seize your pulse gates to verify it."
"What did you say?"
"Hold out your hand."
"I hereby challenge you, who have insulted me, to a duel of life and death!"
Is this not a scene one can imagine without witnessing it firsthand? Unless one is a martial maniac who relishes unlimited life-and-death duels, it is a method that can never be recommended.
Thus, identifying the Demonic Cult's spies is truly no easy matter. In truth, was it not the frenzied activity of these spies that left the Martial Alliance staggering in the early days of the Great Righteous-Demonic War yet to come?
A mid-tier sect turned wholesale into a den of Cult spies is, comparatively, the better case, for then they can be swept out in a single stroke. The real problem lies with the high-ranking spies who have seeped into each sect. How could anyone suspect that a man who entered the sect as a child alongside his peers, trained under the same masters, and rose to elder in his twilight years was in truth a Demonic Cultist? That is what I mean. I have heard that the Heavenly Demon Cult's peculiar fanaticism for the Heavenly Demon is what makes such long concealment possible.
"Can we not simply kill them all?"
Yi Chun-baek said it plainly. I could hardly miss the killing intent blended into that plainness. In the days of the Great Righteous-Demonic War, the Demonic Cultists who perished on the King of Vagabonds' blade numbered in the thousands. That temperament, it seemed, still lived in him.
In truth, I knew that the hidden sect whose line he carried on had existed to check the Heavenly Demon Cult's rampages, so one might call it only right and fitting. It was also the reason the vagabond Yi Chun-baek, who had never once proclaimed his own name, rose and made himself known as the King of Vagabonds the moment the Great Righteous-Demonic War broke out.
But for now, I could not simply follow his words.
"And what would you do if they turned out not to be Demonic Cultists?"
"Did you not say they were the Cult's spies?"
"I did."
"Then they must be the Cult's spies."
I could not fathom why he extended such unshakable trust to me. No, perhaps I understood a little. For I, too, trusted him with all sincerity.
"It cannot be done so simply. We need proof. There is such a thing as procedure, is there not?"
"...On that, your words hold true."
Yi Chun-baek was a vagabond. If one insisted on classifying a vagabond's standing, it would fall somewhere between righteous and wicked, but I knew that among them he was a martial artist who leaned toward the righteous. Was that not why he cast his lot with the Martial Alliance when the Great Righteous-Demonic War came? Being the man he was, he did not dispute my insistence that we verify everything thoroughly before opening the field of slaughter. Of course, in my own case, since I was perfectly certain they were Demonic Cultists, my reasoning rested on somewhat different grounds.
Once Yi Chun-baek and I had swept away the Cult's spies, the matter would reach the ears of the Martial Alliance.
"How did you catch them?"
"They seemed to be Demonic Cult spies, so I killed every last one."
"And how did you know that?"
"It simply seemed likely."
"..."
Gazing ahead with my brilliant mind, I could hardly call that an excellent approach. If I carried out the deed without securing clear evidence, it would surely cast a shadow over my path from then on.
But let me turn the thought around. If I could expose them as the Cult's spies first and seize them after, it would work strongly in my favor, a stepping stone carrying me one pace closer to leadership of the Martial Alliance. I would gain the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root and renown besides. Truly, two birds with one stone.
"Is there a way to secure proof that they are the Cult's spies? As I understand it, they are cunning indeed and never reveal what they truly are."
Yi Chun-baek asked. I understood his longing to cut down the Cult's spies even a day sooner.
"I have a method in mind."
Naturally, I had a method. Had I not already drawn up the plans back in my Myeong-gae days? The easiest way to confirm whether a man was a Demonic Cultist was, in truth, not to seize his pulse gates, for there was a way to verify it with the naked eye alone.
"Though it will call for a bit of play-acting."
Namely, catching them in the very act of wielding demonic arts.