Chapter 34
It was the season when Third Elder had first taught Dancheon Myeong. Myeong had been exactly ten years old at the time, so this was a story from some ten years past.
Hwoong!
"Third Elder, am I doing it like this?"
"……Yes. Just like that."
Teach him one thing, and he would set out in search of the answer himself and awaken to two. Seeing this, Third Elder recognized in Dancheon Myeong a talent for the martial arts that was anything but ordinary.
"My lady, come and watch this young master at his training sometime."
"Must I really go?"
"……It is a matter of some importance."
"I suppose I could pay a visit."
It was the first time she had graced the second son's training with her presence. That day, Baek Yeo-hae glimpsed the edge of genius. So exceptional was Dancheon Myeong's aptitude that even her untrained eye—knowing nothing of the martial arts—could recognize it at a glance.
"Third Elder, I'm asking a favor of you. You understand what I mean, don't you?"
"If the Patriarch were ever to find out……"
"That won't happen."
Whether that counted as glad tidings, I couldn't say—but her eye had not been wrong. Even under the deliberately shoddy instruction of Third Elder, training undertaken at her special request, the second son set foot in the realm of first-class masters at the age of seventeen. Calling that talent radiant would scarcely have been an overstatement.
"You should begin thinking about driving the second son out."
That was what Third Elder said to Baek Yeo-hae one day. The First Elder had been present as well, if I remembered right. What had she answered back then?
"Give me just a little more time to think."
That was how she had answered, I believed. To give the conclusion first: she never made the choice to drive out the second son. Though the second son had displayed a shining talent, the eldest son had, fortunately, achieved far superior results.
"Which is why I said from the very start that the second son ought to be cast out of the clan."
Baek Yeo-hae listened in silence to Third Elder's remark, which carried an odd echo of déjà vu. At a flick of First Elder's eyes, Third Elder prudently shut his mouth.
"The Patriarch's seat must belong to our Hak. He is the eldest son of the direct line, a child who lacks for nothing, isn't he?"
"You're right, my lady."
"But I'm anxious. No—I've grown anxious. Are you aware that Captain Bang has taken Myeong's side? That man was a stone—no matter how much effort I poured into him, he never so much as stirred—and now he's sided with Myeong."
Though they were in the middle of a conversation, Baek Yeo-hae carried on as though talking to herself, like someone chanting an incantation.
"Bang Yeo-baek! If only it weren't for that man……!"
She seemed to seethe for a moment, then steadied her breathing and spoke on.
"That boy has claimed a Dragon's epithet. It's hushed up, but everyone says it. Hak won a Dragon's epithet too, but they say the one Myeong holds sits above it."
She had pretended to close her ears to it, yet no one knew the truth of the matter better than she did. She was hardly dull.
"And now that boy has taken the epithet Dancheon Divine Dragon. They say he crushed the Demonic Cult's spies on his very first journey through the jianghu."
At those words, First Elder Cheon Il-san's expression flinched, just slightly. Dancheon Hak, too, had only just returned from his journey through the jianghu. As befitted a first outing, he had performed all manner of chivalrous deeds, yet everyone knew they could only pale beside Dancheon Myeong's feat of unearthing and destroying the Demonic Cult's agents.
"Even so—do you believe the Patriarch will judge Hak, and not Myeong, fit to be Young Patriarch?"
When Baek Yeo-hae's confession-like words ended, a brief silence settled in. The woman's words were, one might say, a lament—a process of unwinding the anxieties and grudges piled up in her chest by pouring them out to First Elder, her partner in all this.
But First Elder's thoughts ran along quite different lines.
"Well, my lady? Do you wish me to step forward, even now?"
Baek Yeo-hae gave no answer.
"With the Patriarch absent, this moment may be your last chance. Weigh it carefully."
First Elder Cheon Il-san, stepping forward. Baek Yeo-hae understood full well the implication hidden within those words.
"My lady, you still haven't decided?"
"……Just leave him be. I don't think he's a threat to Hak."
A familiar shred of the past flickered past.
"……"
After holding her silence for a long while, she shook her head.
"No. That won't do. I don't think I can. That boy is also my……"
Baek Yeo-hae could not finish the sentence. She only looked into Cheon Il-san's eyes, as if to confirm her resolve once more. Cheon Il-san made no effort to hide his displeasure.
"My lady, you still deliberate, even now, with things as they are?"
Baek Yeo-hae lowered her gaze.
"Pretend you heard nothing today. Hak—my son—will do well."
Baek Yeo-hae, the woman. For the sake of her son Dancheon Hak she had made herself hard, even cruel, yet she could never quite bring herself to become wicked—here stood an ordinary woman.
"I'll be going. No need to see me out."
With that, Baek Yeo-hae hurried from her seat. Her departure, however, did not end the conversation in the council of elders.
"Third Elder, what is your thinking?"
"I have been saying since long ago that the second son must be cast out of the clan."
By his station as master, he should have stood closer to Dancheon Myeong than anyone—yet the man who had argued hardest of all for Myeong's exclusion was none other than Third Elder.
Leaving Third Elder's resolute answer behind, First Elder posed another question.
"Young Master Hak, and what say you?"
Behind the pillar Baek Yeo-hae had never thought to check, Dancheon Hak stood at a slant, his back against the stone.
"……"
Dancheon Hak gave no answer. Paying it no mind, First Elder went on as though talking to himself.
"The second son has grown too big. Simply casting him out will be difficult now, I fear……"
First Elder Cheon Il-san let a pause hang, then continued.
"The time has come to play some subtler move."
He gave a dry chuckle.
"This decides the Patriarch's seat, after all—nothing matters more than making absolutely certain of everything, wouldn't you say?"
He finished with a face of perfect calm. To weave a conspiracy and receive it as one more ordinary day—this, too, was one face of the old jianghu veterans who had survived long years in the murim.
It was a scheme to bring harm to the Patriarch's own bloodline, illegitimate or not. Were word ever to leak, it was talk that could shake the council of elders to its very foundations—but leak it would not. Third Elder was as First Elder's own hands and feet, and Dancheon Hak was the disciple First Elder had raised with his own two hands his whole life long.
Third Elder asked First Elder in a low, careful voice.
"Is there truly a way?"
"I happen to have something good in hand, so worry not."
To keep a trump card or two tucked away up one's sleeve—was that not also one face of the old jianghu?
"……"
Dancheon Hak never opened his mouth, not to the very end.
The lesser training yard on the outskirts of the Dancheon estate. I was alone in the place where I had always trained beside my uncle Yeo-baek.
Hoo—
Since returning to the clan, I had seen neither my father, Dancheon Gang, nor my uncle Yeo-baek—for my father had gone to the Murim Alliance. The same had happened in my past life. The succession of a famed clan was never a matter for the clan alone, so my father would return having arranged a great many things there. And with Patriarch Dancheon Gang leaving the estate, it went without saying that the escort captain, my uncle Bang Yeo-baek, would accompany him—so being unable to see him either was a small regret.
At the center of the training yard, I sat with my legs folded in the lotus position, eyes closed. In truth, one could say the stage of forging the body had long since reached its end back when I trained with my uncle Yeo-baek, and storing qi through circulating breathwork had grown pointless at this stage as well. I could scarcely recall ever feeling my inner qi run short, even from the first stage of my training—that was thanks to the Empty Blue Stone Milk, which had flowed into every meridian of my body. With the internal energy of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root layered on top of that, my internal energy alone might well stand comparison with the supreme masters who had ascended to the Absolute Realm.
Even so, here I was at the training yard. It would be more correct to say that I was training. If one had to name it: mental imagery training. Of course, even counting my life as Myeong-gae, I had never once been taught mental imagery training while I lived. But I would say the long dream I dreamed upon entering the fourth stage opened the horizon of mental imagery training to me. There, I swung the sword, and swung, and swung again. For what was whittled away inside that mindscape was not the path of the sword, but my afflictions and my delusions. One might call it the flowering of the spirit. In truth, even now I was ceaselessly probing, through mental imagery training, a new horizon—the unity of essence, qi, and spirit.
Tap.
Perhaps because I had sunk so deep into mental imagery training. My senses, sharpened to an extreme edge, took in the presence around me whole, and I knew that one presence, approaching from far away, had at last reached me.
"What business brings you all the way out here, elder brother?"
My eyes stayed shut, but my keen sense for qi and the mindscape alone told me all I needed. The one now approaching me was Dancheon Hak. Though I could hardly claim to be on good terms with him, I did know that remaining seated in lotus position with a guest arrived would be discourteous. I dusted off my seat, rose, and faced Dancheon Hak.
"You've changed again."
"Have I?"
By this stage of training, this body had long since achieved banbak-gwijin—the return to uncarved simplicity. Dancheon Hak, it seemed, could spot the changes in me that no one else ever noticed with an almost ghostly precision.
"We seem to be meeting rather often these days?"
In my past life, I had lived in such a way that I rarely crossed paths with Baek Yeo-hae or Dancheon Hak.
"Do you dislike it?"
"Well, I can't say I'm fond of it."
"Nor am I."
Dancheon Hak let out a short laugh. Thinking back to the days when the words someone like you would have sprung straight off his tongue, he too had changed a very great deal.
"So—what brings you here?"
We were hardly so warm that he would seek me out without a purpose; there had to be business. Dancheon Hak let a moment pass, then said:
"Run."
His words were truly startling—and yet they did not startle me. Perhaps I had foreseen this situation, too.
"May I ask the reason?"
I looked at Dancheon Hak with level eyes. His pupils were swaying like a ferry that had lost its mooring buoy.
"……Someone means to do you harm."
He gathered his breath for a moment.
"I'm not telling you to run forever. Just keep out of sight somewhere for the seven days and nights Father is away. Once he returns, no one will dare move rashly."
Why was that, I wondered. Why, at the very moment I heard that someone meant to do me harm, did my heart feel—of all things—glad?
"Is First Elder scheming something?"
"……!"
"Am I right?"
Dancheon Hak, who had hidden the truth behind that word someone, shut his eyes briefly and nodded. Truthfully, it was no surprise. It had never happened in my past life, so I had no certainty—but I had vaguely suspected that in this life, with me now a leading candidate for Young Patriarch, something like this might come to pass.
What I wondered at was not the fact that First Elder was planning something.
"What is your reason for telling me this?"
My question was why Dancheon Hak had come scurrying all this way to confess such a thing. Was it my unruffled manner? Dancheon Hak's wavering eyes went still—and there, once more, sat the eldest young master of a famed clan, wound tight with confidence.
"Don't misunderstand. It isn't that I think of you as a little brother or anything of the sort."
As if pledging it to himself, Dancheon Hak clenched his fist and pressed on.
"I simply could not stand by and let such cowardly business happen inside the Dancheon Clan."
Sreeuk— and the strength drained back out of Dancheon Hak's fist.
"It's only…… I don't yet have the courage to stop it myself."
Self-reproach, of all things. It was a sight I had never seen from Dancheon Hak before. I had always taken him for a man who stood tall and sure of himself. I gave a small shake of my head.
"You've done all you can, elder brother."
How was it that I only understood this now? That Dancheon Hak had never been my enemy.
"So don't worry. Leave it to me from here."
Now it was my turn—my time to turn back the things that had been made wrong.
"Elder brother."
I called to Dancheon Hak, who still had not found his footing.
"Why do you call me that?"
The retort—don't you dare call me elder brother, someone like you—never came. Truthfully, when I thought about it, that was only natural. Dancheon Hak had never once said such a thing to me. Not in the past, and not now.
"Won't you join hands with me for a while?"
What settled over Dancheon Hak's face was pure puzzlement.
"Why would I?"
"It's for the clan."
The words and for you as well, elder brother, I swallowed.
"Will you?"
He had been the one to reach out his hand to me first—so this time, it was my turn to reach out mine to him.