The Seventh Knot
Kaifeng, in Cheonjin County of Henan Province — there stood the General Altar of the Beggars' Gang. It was from this place that the branch altars scattered across the whole of the Jianghu were coordinated and commanded, and so a vast scale was a necessity. Inevitably, it had been raised as an enormous, many-storied complex of halls — a remarkably tidy and prosperous-looking building for a den of beggars.
For all that it was a gathering of beggars, the Beggars' Gang was also a seat of honor and symbolism among the Nine Great Sects and One Gang; they could hardly put up a single shabby hovel and call it the General Altar.
The only reason I have bothered to enumerate these facts is that the General Altar of the Beggars' Gang was not, in the beginning, a building at all.
There had been a time when the General Altar was simply wherever the Gang Leader resided — the one known in another breath as the Dragon Head Sect Leader. An era, it is said, a little more generous with romance than the present one.
In any case, the Beggars' Gang of today possesses a symbolic building called the General Altar. Many assumed that the Gang Leader's dwelling sat on the topmost floor of that great hall.
Leader of one hundred thousand beggars. The gang's one and only Nine-Knot Beggar. A man hailed as the Jianghu's foremost master of movement arts, even if he had yet to set foot in the Profound Realm. The residence, they assumed, of Dragon Head Sect Leader Musan-gae.
Trudge. Trudge.
Chwipung-gae, master of the Eight Drunken Immortals Steps — a movement art counted among the very finest the Jianghu had to offer — was moving with legs uncharacteristically heavy. The reason was none other than the road he walked: the road to see the Sect Leader. The weight of a man's steps, so it is said, hangs upon the heart, and his steps at present were anything but light. He had a sin to answer for.
"Hoo—"
Chwipung-gae's steps toward the leader of the Beggars' Gang went down, and down again. To reach the top floor of the towering hall called the General Altar, one's steps ought to climb — yet there was no hesitation in the steps that carried him downward. Chwipung-gae knew the truth, after all.
Only when he reached the lowest ground in Kaifeng, the haunt of the destitute, did his steps at last come to a stop. There sat a single wretched beggar's hovel that even a white-robed beggar would have thought twice about dwelling in.
"Sect Leader, I've come," said Chwipung-gae.
"You rascal! How many times have I told you not to call me that here!"
A gruff voice welcomed Chwipung-gae's visit. Its owner was the Sect Leader himself — the pinnacle of the gang's hundred thousand, Dragon Head Sect Leader Musan-gae. He dwelt in this lowest of places, leaving the comfortable top floor of the General Altar standing empty above.
"A man living in a place like that — how could you call him a beggar?"
So saying, he had planted his own ground at the very bottom. Musan-gae was a man who might truly be called the finest of beggars — a beggar above beggars. And naturally, this shabby space where that finest of beggars kept his residence had become the true General Altar of the Beggars' Gang.
"If I'm not to call the Sect Leader 'Sect Leader,' what am I to call him?"
"What does a title matter between beggars?"
"Good to see you, Musan-gae."
"You little punk! Who goes about flinging the Sect Leader's name about so carelessly, to his very face?"
"Have you lost your mind?"
The Beggars' Gang, it seemed, still lived in its age of romance.
This is the story of before Chwipung-gae sought out the Dragon Head Sect Leader's dwelling.
"Are you serious?"
"I am."
"And my taking the seventh knot would be of help to you?"
"It would."
"Hmm..."
Chwipung-gae was no fool. It would be more accurate to call him sharp. If one had to split hairs, he leaned less toward clever than toward seasoned. A beggar who handled a great flow of information inevitably grew worldly, and Chwipung-gae could be called exceptional even among such men.
Twenty years he had walked with the Beggars' Gang. He was now at an age when the word "old man" was no understatement, and the cunning that had ripened with the years left him lacking nothing when it came to playing the old serpent. That was why Chwipung-gae could grasp Dancheon Myeong's request at once.
What Dancheon Myeong had meant by asking him to tie seven knots was no simple plea of "I should like you to become an elder." The correct reading was: "I intend to ask something so difficult that only a Seven-Knot Elder could grant it." Carry the inference a step further, and it became: "I shall make use of the Beggars' Gang through you." For that was precisely where the greatest privilege of a gang elder lay.
In truth, Dancheon Myeong had delivered the Divine Demon of the Heavenly Demon Cult into Chwipung-gae's hands for the sake of his revenge — the Eumhyeol Sinma, a vicious master of the Demon-Transcending Realm and head of the Five Great Houses of the Demonic Path. Considering the information network that had hunted the man down and the martial might that had taken him captive, it was plain that Chwipung-gae owed a debt no sum of gold could reckon. Weighed fairly, Dancheon Myeong's request was neither unreasonable nor discourteous. And yet there was a part of it his heart did not consent to...
"It's not as if just anyone may tie on the seventh knot. It will take quite some time."
Chwipung-gae deployed the artful dodge of a seasoned beggar — along with a faint pang of guilt that pricked at the conscience of any righteous-blooded beggar of the gang.
"Oh, come now. No need to play the innocent between old hands."
"Caught, have I?"
"Long since."
"Tsk."
Not that it did him any good. The business with the Eumhyeol Sinma, too — there was nothing that fellow did not know. That Chwipung-gae had been deliberately refusing ascension to Seven-Knot Elder was no secret, but neither was it the sort of information an outsider to the gang ought to possess. And yet he clearly knew that as well. Chwipung-gae's control of his own face was flawless, after all.
What am I to do...
He owed a debt deep as rivers and seas to the man who had resolved what might be called his lifelong wish. Chwipung-gae was prepared to lay down his very body to repay Dancheon Myeong. But honestly speaking, he was reluctant to have the gang used. To him, the Beggars' Gang did not fall within the bounds of "his own body." It was not that he kept his distance from the gang — it was that he loved it more than anyone. For what one loves is a thing to protect, not a thing to use.
"There will be nothing that brings harm to the Beggars' Gang."
Perhaps sensing the depths of Chwipung-gae's heart, Dancheon Myeong had said this. The fellow's perceptiveness, too, was breathtaking. And still Chwipung-gae could not readily answer, and so—
"If you don't want to, then there's nothing to be done."
Dancheon Myeong said, as though giving up.
"Who ever said I didn't want to!"
Having received such a debt, how could he afford to lose face? One of Chwipung-gae's pet doctrines held that a man who wears one face going into the privy and another coming out is beneath even a beggar. Chwipung-gae was a proud beggar, and so he could not become a man beneath beggars. He could not be so shameless a beggar as that.
"You don't want to, then?"
"I do not."
"You'll do it?"
"Of course."
"Then I'll trust you."
"As you should."
Having declared it so roundly, he was now left with no ground to retreat.
"...I'll go and tie on one more knot, then."
"Two days should do it?"
"That quickly?"
"I know it can be done in one. I left room to spare, just in case."
"Ugh."
Truly an unfathomable fellow. A man who was no beggar, yet read the currents like one. A man who was no beggar, yet held more information than any beggar alive. A man who was no beggar, yet could play the innocent as well as any. The real problem was that he was so very beggar-like that it endeared him. He felt as genuine, front and back, as any of the beggar brethren — so much so that even had Chwipung-gae owed him nothing, he would have wanted to grant the man's request.
Just as Chwipung-gae moved to take his leave—
"Shouldn't you hear the favor before you go?"
Dancheon Myeong's words stopped his feet.
"Was I not to hear it only after I tied the seventh knot?"
"Must it be?"
"I see."
This sort of efficiency, too, one might call truly beggar-like.
"Very well. What is the real favor?"
"I want the Chwigu-hwan."
"The Chwigu-hwan?"
"That's right."
"The one I know of?"
"Are there other Chwigu-hwans?"
"There are not."
"Then it must be that one."
A name he had never once imagined had left the young man's mouth. And the thought that rose in its wake was...
"That was all?"
"Wait for me. I'll be off and back."
Chwipung-gae's heart grew light, and his steps lightened with it. For a true-blooded beggar like him, the thing held in lowest regard was worldly wealth. Even the Chwigu-hwan, treasure of the Beggars' Gang, was no exception. It was a mercy that this was a favor he could grant. Not that the road to see the Sect Leader promised to be a pleasant one, of course.
"What brings you here, of all people?"
Sect Leader Musan-gae asked Chwipung-gae. His voice was distinctly curt; he seemed to harbor no small displeasure toward the man.
"Must one have business to visit?"
"One must. What is this place — your own bedroom?"
"Hmph."
Chwipung-gae tried to lighten the atmosphere and got nothing for his trouble.
"Spare me the nonsense and state your business."
Ordinarily, an audience with the head of a great organization demanded proper procedure, formality, and etiquette. But the Beggars' Gang had never been that sort of organization, and Chwipung-gae had never been that sort of man.
"I've come to tie on the seventh knot."
Meaning he had thrust the heart of the matter forward without a shred of preamble.
"Hey, you damned punk! Do you take the seventh knot for the boss's seat of some neighborhood thug gang? You think I'll simply hand it over because you ask?"
"They don't simply hand over a thug gang's boss seat because you ask, either."
"And you know that, do you?"
"Heh heh."
"Tch. You cursed beggar of a man."
Chwipung-gae was past his sixtieth year. By the decorum of the Jianghu, that meant he was long past the age to be swallowing such insults. And yet he went on, smiling.
"What else would a beggar do but beg for his keep, rather than earn it?"
"Don't you laugh, you plague of a man."
"Heh heh heh heh."
"Damned rascal."
Even beneath Musan-gae's stream of curses, Chwipung-gae's mood did not sour. Making an insult land without any sting — that, too, was among the charms of Dragon Head Sect Leader Musan-gae. In truth, there was also the sin he had committed.
"Back when I offered to tie the seventh knot for you, you ran from me at every turn — and now you come asking, thinking I'll hand it straight over?"
This was precisely it. The sin of refusing, time and again, the Sect Leader's request that he ascend to the seventh knot and become a pillar to lead the gang. But was not atonement the very spirit of the Beggars' Gang?
"So you won't give it, then?"
He need only tie on the seventh knot now, and the sin would be absolved.
"Tch."
For the first time, Chwipung-gae's retort sealed Musan-gae's lips. The Sect Leader, who had been eyeing him sidelong as if to dress him down, opened his mouth.
"The man who swore he could not take the seventh knot until his revenge was done — what's brought this on, at your age?"
At the question, Chwipung-gae smiled.
"You already know the answer. Would you play the sly one with me, too?"
Chwipung-gae had not forgotten: that that foul-mouthed old beggar was the Sect Leader of the Beggars' Gang. Information is like water; it gathers in the lowest places. Chwipung-gae knew full well that this old beggar, dwelling at the very bottom of Kaifeng, possessed more eyes and ears than any man under heaven. Thanks to its rather covert movements, the affair might not be on every tongue in the Jianghu — but there was no way the Sect Leader of the Beggars' Gang could be ignorant of the great event of the Heavenly Demon Cult's Divine Demon being struck down.
"Tsk."
At Chwipung-gae's dull reply, Musan-gae clicked his tongue.
"Fine, then. How is he?"
Chwipung-gae knew this was a question concerning his benefactor, Dancheon Myeong. And he fell into brief thought. The second son of the Dancheon Sword Clan — Myeong. What manner of man was he? The conclusion came more easily than he expected.
"I don't know."
At that answer, Musan-gae's sidelong glare gave way to widened eyes. Chwipung-gae understood why. His own discernment was renowned even within the gang — something Musan-gae himself acknowledged. Chwipung-gae also knew that what Musan-gae rated highest in him was not his martial arts, which had reached the Harmony Realm, but that discernment. For such a man to say he could not read someone even after days at his side could only astonish. All the more so when the subject was no hoary old serpent of the Jianghu, but a youth barely past his twentieth year.
And Chwipung-gae's words were not yet finished.
"But I have resolved to give that man my life."
In the eyes of Chwipung-gae as he spoke lay a resolve set firm.
"Hah—"
Musan-gae let out a long sigh. This, too, was because the Sect Leader knew Chwipung-gae well. Those who truly understand righteousness know the weight of their own word better than anyone. In that sense, Chwipung-gae was a man who did not break his word. Ever.
"You trust a man outright after only a few days? Have your eyes turned to knotholes in your old age?"
"Clearer than yours, old man."
So saying, Chwipung-gae laughed. It was perhaps the brightest smile he had worn since becoming a beggar. Musan-gae, whose discernment was worthy of his seat, could infer a great deal from that smile.
"A good man, is he?"
"That much is certain."
"Tsk. Then it's settled."
Saying so, Musan-gae tossed a single knot to Chwipung-gae. To tie that on was to ascend to Seven-Knot Elder. Ordinarily, the appointment of a gang elder involved procedure far less simple than this — but that knot had long since been Chwipung-gae's, and so there was no obstacle. Tying it on with careful hands, Seven-Knot Elder Chwipung-gae spoke.
"Sect Leader — and on that note."
"Now what?"
"Just give me one Chwigu-hwan."
"Are you out of your mind?!"
Musan-gae's face crumpled at once.