A Bargain and a Blade
There is a point at which records exist. From that point — the point we call history — three kinds of power have stood within the jianghu, each holding the others in check.
Those who pursued the Dao of the world beyond in hopes of ascending to immortality, and those who tempered their martial arts in order to practice righteousness and goodness, had gathered beneath a single banner: xia, the way of the chivalrous.
These are the ones who, to this day, are called the orthodox sects of the murim, and together they form the Murim Alliance.
At the opposite pole stand others: those who chase the heaven-defying Dao in hopes of becoming demonic immortals, and those who probe the root of the evil seeded in every human heart. In a word, seekers of a Dao that lies beyond the human.
They gathered in the belief that the demonic is man's true essence. They are the power known as the Demonic Cult — or the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
As is always the way of the world, the space between those extremes was no empty void. Those who made their home in the gap between righteous and demonic were called the Unorthodox.
The force commonly known as the unorthodox sects: a gathering of those who pursue the Dao of the present world, in the names of profit, efficiency, and desire.
In truth, the righteous and the demonic stand at opposite poles, so the line between them can be drawn cleanly. The righteous and the unorthodox, however, often found themselves at subtle forks in the road, and there were many cases where no clean division was possible.
It happened because profit and efficiency sometimes run flush with righteousness and goodness. That is why there exist forces as well that maintain an identity caught between the two — between the righteous and the unorthodox.
In any case...
Those who defined themselves as the Unorthodox likewise built organizations to rival the Nine Great Sects and One Union and the Murim Alliance, all for the preservation and safety of their own kind — the Eleven Unorthodox Factions, and the Sado League.
The Sado League's headquarters stood in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, south of the Yangtze. And there, an unexpected visitor arrived.
"Speak."
The chill voice of Wiji Han, League Master of the Sado League and the Overlord Martial Emperor, rang through the League Master's Hall. Befitting the man who reigned at the apex of so vast an organization, the majesty carried in his voice was like a sudden frost.
Before him, a figure with distinctive silver-grey hair bowed his head.
"I know you have need of an elixir of extreme yin."
Whether he had investigated the Overlord's temperament thoroughly or not, the figure swept away every word of preamble and drove straight to the point. It was, perhaps, a little too little to catch the Overlord Martial Emperor's interest.
"Do I look so base that I cannot procure a single elixir?"
Even under the absolute sovereign's languid question, the silver-grey figure did not lose his composure.
"The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng is another matter entirely, is it not?"
Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. At those words, the languor drained from the Overlord Martial Emperor's face. The figure was not wrong. Even the sovereign of the unorthodox could not lay hands on the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. It was not a treasure that power or gold could reach; it belonged to the realm of heaven's own providence.
"By now, I imagine most any elixir is of no use to you at all."
The silver-grey figure, believing he had seized the initiative, pressed on.
"You know even that much?"
"I came to know it by chance."
"How interesting."
As if something amusing had crossed his path for the first time in an age, life stirred in the Overlord Martial Emperor's expression. Though that life did not necessarily mean joy.
"You there. Are you threatening This Sovereign?"
Crack.
"Ugh."
The vitality of wrath manifested, in the next breath, as a monstrous pressure filling the heart of the League Master's Hall. The force bearing down on the silver-grey figure was already splitting the floor beneath him.
Groans escaped him, yet the fact that he endured it at all was proof in itself that this was no ordinary man.
"...How could I dare. I have come to propose a transaction."
The instant the words left his mouth, Wiji Han's violent aura vanished as though washed away.
"A transaction, is it..."
The rage was gone, but the interest remained. One could call the silver-grey figure's gamble a success.
"Speak."
At the Overlord Martial Emperor's leave, the silver-grey figure unfolded his information in detail: that a delegation from the North Sea Ice Palace had entered the Central Plains; that they carried the very Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng; and even the route they would travel on their way to the Murim Alliance. As if he had been waiting for precisely this moment, the neatly ordered intelligence flowed smoothly from his lips.
"The details are all here."
Not content with words alone, he laid a missive before the League Master, its contents arranged in full — a sign of a scheme prepared to the last detail in advance. When the Overlord Martial Emperor Wiji Han reached out his hand, the letter fluttered lightly as a butterfly and settled into his palm. It was only a sheet of paper, yet it had crossed a good thirty feet of air — a terrifying feat of drawing objects through the void. Worthy of the Sado League's seat of power, Wiji Han was a supreme master who wielded intent itself.
"And what would you have This Sovereign trade?"
When Wiji Han showed his curiosity, the silver-grey figure bowed his head as though in obeisance and answered.
"Cut down the Ice Palace's delegation."
At that, Wiji Han's blade-like brows shifted. A mark of displeasure.
"You would make This Sovereign a mad dog who sticks his nose in other men's family feuds."
But that Wiji Han was interested — the silver-grey figure knew it, and so did Wiji Han himself. Breaking a short silence, the Overlord Martial Emperor spoke again.
"Very well. You called it a transaction. Then what will you give This Sovereign?"
"The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. And the Ice Palace will hold the Sado League entirely blameless in this affair."
Wiji Han laughed, hollow and disbelieving.
"So in the end, you are telling This Sovereign to become a robber."
Behind the laughter came a vicious fury.
"You. Do you find This Sovereign amusing?"
Taut killing intent refilled the League Master's Hall — if only for a moment.
"Do you not have a son to save?"
At that single sentence from the silver-grey figure, stillness and silence settled over the hall once more.
"Tsk."
What broke the silence was not the League Master's majesty, but a father's lament.
"Begone."
"As you command."
At the order, given in a voice somewhat drained of force, the silver-grey figure turned without a trace of regret and left the hall. He already knew the transaction was concluded. Upon his face sat the particular satisfaction of a man who had won his gamble.
"Hah..."
An old man's sigh filled the hall where majesty had faded.
"I will go in your stead."
The one who stepped forward to ease Wiji Han's worry was the Sado League's Chief Strategist — Sama Ui, the Heavenly Brain. Had a strategist who could stand beside the Murim Alliance's Singija taken up the task, the affair would surely have been settled cleanly, without a ripple. But the Overlord Martial Emperor Wiji Han shook his head.
"This is my personal affair. It is right that I go myself."
The moment he said it, Wiji Han's figure vanished from the hall. Sama Ui's eyes caught the sight of the League Master's form kicking off empty air, already clearing the Sado League's headquarters in a few strides. It was air-stepping that verged on the divine, yet watching him go did not set the Chief Strategist's heart at ease.
"Hah..."
Only the Sado League's Chief Strategist sigh remained in the League Master's Hall.
"This is the way?"
Han Baek-rim, head guard to Bukgung Seol-ah, asked me. Blunt face, blunter speech — and yet I could tell he bore me goodwill. That much I owed to the eye I had honed back in my Beggar's Sect days.
"We're making good time, so don't fret."
I had falsely announced myself as an envoy of the Murim Alliance, but the part about being a guide was no lie. Back in my singing-beggar days, I had worn the soles of my feet slick with sweat roaming the jianghu, and hunting out the sorriest haunts of the world had been my daily bread. Which is why I was confident that finding a better pathfinder in the Central Plains than me would be no easy task.
But I knew full well, too, that this peace could not last. Not that I meant the atrocity looming in the near future, either.
"Now, let's stop a moment, shall we?"
The third most quarrel-provoking breed in all the jianghu had appeared in the flesh: the lords of the mountain pass, the Green Forest Bandits. For all the name, they were clearly no part of the Green Forest's Seventy-Two Stockades, one of the Eleven Unorthodox Factions — their bearing was pathetic beyond words. In truth, that was only natural. Any Green Forest man who could properly read an opponent's strength would never have barred our road in the first place.
"Ahem."
Traveling the jianghu in company, an encounter with Green Forest bandits was all but inevitable; still, having volunteered as guide, I will admit it stung a little to be facing them now. There was no real problem, though. I could see at a glance that these were the sort to tuck tail and run at the first glimmer of sword qi.
"You snotty little punk, your elders are calling you and you're clearing your throat at them? You want to die?"
Hm. A touch of discipline would not be amiss, I thought.
"I'll take this one."
But as I moved to step forward—
"Stand back. I will handle it."
Han Baek-rim held me back. What sat on his face was displeasure. If I had to guess the reason: a few of the bandits' eyes were crawling over Bukgung Seol-ah with naked rudeness. Her dignity was not the sort of thing a traveling veil could smother, so it was inevitable. Come to think of it, the fact that these low-grade bandits — men who rarely trouble travelers at all — had blocked our path in the first place might have been her doing, too. Reading that much in his heart, I could not bring myself to restrain him. A pity, for those bandits.
"...As you say."
"My thanks."
Han Baek-rim stepped forward alone.
"What? You there, you want to di—"
Thud.
The bandit who had been winding up to bluster left his unfinished sentence behind as his last words. The Ice Essence Qi finger-strike Han Baek-rim had loosed pierced the man's forehead in an instant. I suspected it was the Shadowless Finger — the Ice Palace's supreme art, which I had known only as rumor.
So this is the Ice Palace's martial learning.
It was a stealthy, lethal technique — had I not known of it beforehand and guarded against it, I would have been struck down helpless all the same. I reminded myself, once more, never to let the thread of tension slacken against a master of the Creation Realm or beyond.
Shing.
"Come at me."
Han Baek-rim, having opened hostilities in grand fashion, raised his drawn sword — and along its edge a biting sword qi rippled like the cold wave of the North Sea. Only then did the bandits grasp what they had stepped into.
"Boss, he's a master!"
"Run!"
The bandit chief ordered his men without a hair's breadth of hesitation. Their instinct for survival, at least, was dependable: one of their own lay dead, and vengeance was nowhere in their eyes as the Green Forest men scattered in every direction. But perhaps he had no wish for the matter to end there — Han Baek-rim shot toward the nape of the man who seemed to be their leader.
Clang!
My sword stopped Han Baek-rim's blade. The rebound was considerable; it told me he was a warrior with genuine depth in the sword as well. And it told me something more — that this time, Han Baek-rim had deliberately not pulled his strike, meeting my blade head-on. I guessed he was curious about my measure, too.
"Why did you stop me?"
A question as cold as his face.
"Would it not be better to forgo pointless slaughter against men who are running for their lives?"
"Pointless..."
He turned the word over for a moment. Then, with a soft shk, Han Baek-rim slid his sword back into the sheath at his waist.
"If that is the way of the Central Plains, I shall respect it."
In that brief span, the bandits had all vanished into cover; only then did I sheathe my own sword as well. But Han Baek-rim was not finished.
"In the North Sea, one does not survive on such soft-hearted thinking."
Was that truly a thing of the North Sea alone? His gaze seemed to put the question to me directly.
"To take up the sword means you may kill someone at any moment — and that someday, someone will kill you. Is it not so?"
Words I agreed with — and yet could not agree with.
"Is it not because I took up the sword and trained without pause that I can overcome the moment of my death by my own strength?"
You could say that was the very point of my regression.
"And is it not because I took up the sword and grew strong that I can save those standing at death's door — and choose, when I wish, not to deal out pointless slaughter?"
That is why I set my goal at being the best under heaven. But if a man's values could be turned by a few exchanged words, why would the world know conflict at all?
"Do you think death is far from you?"
...
Han Baek-rim asked, and I did not answer. Part of me simply had no wish to argue the point with him to no end — but I knew, too, that it was because I could not bring myself to deny what he had said.