The Ice-White Snow Flower
The northernmost tip of Shanxi Province.
There lay a city called Yanggo, its border facing the nation of barbarians known as Mongol. True to its name, Yanggo was the northernmost region where warm sunlight poured down.
The Mongol lands north of Yanggo were already cold, barren fields where the sun was a rarity, and far farther north still lay the North Sea—a land, so it was said, steeped in a chill so bitter that even sunlight lost its majesty there.
And I was passing my time in this very Yanggo.
The reason was simple: thanks to the intelligence I had obtained from Ma Sok, I already knew in advance that the Ice Palace delegation would pass through Yanggo on its way into the Central Plains.
Slurp, slurp, slurp.
Gulp.
"Ahh—"
I sipped at Geomnamchun in a fine tavern. Perhaps because this was a cold country, the liquor tasted all the sweeter—a delicacy in its own right. It would have been better with Chunbaek beside me, but I would say drinking alone had a charm of its own as well.
"Young hero, might I share your table...?"
"My apologies. I already have company, you see."
"Young hero, this humble girl has watched you for some time now, and you appear to be alone..."
"I have company."
That is—if only I had been willing to put up with such nuisances.
It was both the benefit and the side effect of the Vermilion Fruit. Well, since it did not put me in a bad mood, calling it a benefit was the correct assessment.
For passing the endless hours of waiting, my options were training or drink.
If I trained and lost myself in it, I might miss the Ice Palace delegation entirely, so my choice of drink was simple necessity.
In other words, let it not be said that I was basking in the admiring stares of the fair sex or idling my time away.
Slurp, slurp, slurp.
Gulp.
"Ahh—"
Every wait, after all, must come to an end.
At the end of my gaze, as I savored Geomnamchun alone, figures appeared in dress and features foreign to the Central Plains.
Skin as white as fresh snow, finely wrought features, and hair shaded close to silver-grey. The classic appearance of the North Sea people.
The timing was right, which meant that, thankfully, I had not been lying to the woman who had just asked to share my table.
There was, however, someone standing in the North Sea people's way.
"Barbarians are not permitted entry."
The tavern servant, making no effort to hide his displeasure, said flatly.
"We said we would pay a fair price. What seems to be the problem?" The middle-aged North Sea man who appeared to be their spokesman asked in return.
"If it is not allowed, then it is not allowed. Why do you keep pressing?"
It was a rude attitude one would never expect from a man in the hospitality trade.
But such things were common in border regions. A shameful thing, to be sure—yet was discrimination that refused to acknowledge difference not one of the venerable traditions of the murim world?
"Are you discriminating against us right now?" asked the North Sea man, unable to hide the anger beneath his courteous tone.
Most martial artists who lived the jianghu knew one truth: cold fury was far more terrifying than hot fury.
Hot fury generally bred quarrels; cold fury, as a rule, bred killing.
Whether the servant did not know this, what had settled on his face was scorn.
"Is there some law that says one must not discriminate against barbarians?"
There was. Such was the law of the imperial court. Though I was a man of the murim, I knew at least that much.
I would judge the servant simply ignorant—which meant that surviving this long had made him a capable fellow, in his way.
"Then there is nothing to be done."
I could feel ice-essence qi gathering in the North Sea man's right hand. The ice arts of the North Sea truly lived up to their name; in an instant, the temperature of the tavern plunged.
Refusing to endure insult was the foundation of every martial artist—one more breath, and the servant's life would be cut short.
"We North Sea people do not endure insults."
The instant the North Sea man's decisive hand moved to strike, I swiftly set my feet in motion. I had judged there was no need to go to the trouble of clearing away a corpse.
Whoosh.
My form, unfolding the Cloud-Treading Steps with effortless speed, came to rest at the very center of the exchange—where the North Sea man's palm art would have reached the tavern servant.
"...!"
Having marked my presence, the North Sea man swiftly drew back his strike.
"Hnk."
I had barged in to stop his technique—and fearing that I, an uninvolved stranger, might come to harm, the North Sea man took the disadvantage upon himself and retracted his strike in full.
It was proof that his training was not lacking, and a glimpse that let me roughly gauge his character.
"Thank you for your consideration."
"Ah... yes."
When I performed a proper fist-and-palm salute, the middle-aged North Sea man bowed his head along with me, as if in a daze.
I could read his temperament now. The problem was the tavern servant, who had driven a man like this to the verge of slaughter.
"Wait a moment, if you would."
"...?"
With those words, I turned to face the servant.
That I felt no worry despite showing my back completely to strangers owed partly to confidence in my own martial skill, and partly to the good faith I had seen in the North Sea man's conduct.
As I approached the servant with measured steps, I saw him flinch.
The money I had spent at this tavern during my wait came to several dozen pieces of gold, so I guessed he took me for a man of no ordinary standing.
Smack.
My palm, released without hesitation, met the servant's cheek.
Some might call the treatment excessive at a glance, but it was right to regard it as the price of his life.
"..."
Whether he agreed with my reasoning or not, even with his cheek swollen red, the servant did not press me.
"Do you have a complaint?"
I asked while donning the air of a proud noble house. Meaning I had put on an insolent tone and expression.
My bearing and my spending thus far lent weight to my present conduct, after all.
"...No, sir."
The servant submitted at once.
I knew well the truth that those who practice discrimination are the most vulnerable to the discrimination they receive. I could hardly fail to know it, having learned through practice the attitude of a beggar of the Beggars' Gang who lived proudly in the face of it.
"My apologies for the trouble. Please, come in."
Paying the servant no further mind, I welcomed the Ice Palace delegation with a bright face.
"...Why do you help us, young hero?"
It was a question laced with a measure of wariness, and an entirely reasonable one. In the treacherous murim world, kindness without reason was a rare thing indeed.
"I am an envoy dispatched by the Murim Alliance to receive the Ice Palace delegation. I have walked all this way to serve as your guide."
"Ah."
I could feel the wariness of the middle-aged North Sea man and his companions thinning.
"My lateness is what put you through such an ordeal. I apologize."
My apologies, but that was a lie.
Still, it was a lie with theft and robbery left out, so I figured this much was acceptable. It was not as if I meant them harm.
"Introductions are late. I am Myeong, second son of the Dancheon Clan."
Well. Since the Dancheon Sword Clan did belong to the Murim Alliance, it might not be an outright lie at that.
"Please, be seated."
I guided the Ice Palace delegation to the seat where I had been staying.
Waiting for the delegation had made me the tavern's biggest spender, and so I had claimed the best seat in the house—room enough for all of the leading figures to sit.
"Thank you."
Once they were seated, a woman whose face was veiled in silk greeted me.
"My lady."
"It's all right, Baek-rim."
When the middle-aged North Sea man moved to step forward, she gave a slight shake of her head. I stored the name Baek-rim away in my head, as was my habit.
"We are in your debt. Thank you."
"Think nothing of it. What is there to be indebted for?"
I could tell without difficulty that she was the head of the Ice Palace delegation.
Partly because I had committed the delegation's information to memory, but mostly because the dignity her presence exuded was of a different order from the others'.
The woman possessed a nobility that no mere veil could hide.
"Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Dancheon Myeong, dispatched by the Murim Alliance as your guide."
"I am Han Baek-rim, leader of this delegation."
If his family name was Han—the character for cold—then he belonged to a vassal family sworn to the Bukgung clan, the direct bloodline of the North Sea Ice Palace. In other words, the identity of the woman he called my lady was not difficult to guess.
Even so, my gaze went to the woman. A greeting was something one offered of one's own accord, was it not?
Those who concealed their faces with something could be divided into two categories.
Either they had extraordinary circumstances that required keeping their very existence a secret, or they possessed looks that drew the eye altogether too much.
For reference, Yeo Wol, the young mistress of Haomun, happened to fall into both categories.
That said, it was a rule of human affairs that wearing a veil before someone you had just met was generally a discourtesy.
"Ah, I should take this off."
Thankfully, the woman was possessed of ample common sense, and she lifted her veil before the introductions.
Swish.
In that instant, I knew. It would be right to judge that her case was, unmistakably, the latter.
It would be right to say that even her noble station paled before her appearance.
"A pleasure to meet you. I am Bukgung Seol-ah."
As Bukgung Seol-ah smiled faintly, a warm breeze swept across the face of the cold beauty in the space of a breath.
Perhaps I was not the only one who felt it—a hushed silence settled over the tavern, which had been quite lively until then.
Without so much as a glance around me, I could tell that every gaze in the room was fixed on Bukgung Seol-ah's face.
"Ah..."
Perhaps because she sensed the sudden shift in the air, Bukgung Seol-ah scratched at the hair by her ear and hastily donned her veil again, but the silence of the room did not easily break.
That was how stunning her beauty was, I would judge.
"...The pleasure is mine. Welcome to the Central Plains."
Thankfully, I took the lead in breaking that silence, so I figured I had done my part for the sake of appearances.
I will honestly admit it.
Thanks to Yang Su-rin—my fiancée in my past life, and something close to a business partner in this one—my eye for women had grown rather discerning.
Yang Su-rin's epithet was one of the Five Flowers of Anhui, so this was only to be expected.
Was she not, after all, a peerless beauty praised as one of the five finest in all the vast province of Anhui?
But looking at Bukgung Seol-ah, I finally understood what it meant for one's eyes to truly be opened.
The rumors of the Ice-White Snow Flower, one of the Three Flowers Under Heaven—rumors I had taken for wild exaggeration—were, I would judge, the truth without a shred of embellishment.
Right.
The head of this Ice Palace delegation was Bukgung Seol-ah, the Young Palace Master who might be called the treasure of the Ice Palace—and she was the one to whom I would soon be extending the grace of a saved life.
This did not, of course, mean that I intended to spare their lives just once and leave it at that.
I, who had lived my days as Myeong-gae and returned, knew.
I knew that not a single member of this Ice Palace delegation would return to the North Sea alive on their own two feet.
They would lose their lives in the Central Plains. At least, such had it been in my past life.
But their fate had not escaped the information network of Myeong-gae, who had lived with every nerve strung tight to the currents of the jianghu.
The reason I had gone so far as to approach them under the false pretense of being a Murim Alliance envoy was greed—the desire to prepare my arrangements as solidly as possible. Arrangements to bend the stream of history and save their lives.
"I will see you safely to the Murim Alliance."
My plan was to change these people's fate and take the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng for my own.
"Trust in me alone."
If it bought the lives of the Ice Palace's Young Palace Master and every member of the delegation, I thought it a price well worth the Snow Ginseng.
"Thank you."
Hiding those inner thoughts, I gave only a light nod in answer to Han Baek-rim's reply.
Having met the Ice Palace's people sooner than expected, I could say the first button had been fastened quite neatly.
The reason I still could not loosen the string of tension, however, lay in the identity of the fierce beast—one powerful enough to slaughter the elite Ice Palace delegation to the last man.
When I slipped a hand into my breast pocket, the biting chill of the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Lingzhi seeped through my protective treasure.
It was all right.
I had made ample arrangements, so if they worked as they should, there would be no great calamity.
And I would make certain they did.