A Herb Hunter's Pastime
Hwanragwon — the Garden of Delight — is a hidden vale where spiritual herbs grow in wild, self-seeding profusion.
Spiritual herbs, after all, come into being only by receiving the grace of heaven, and it would be no exaggeration to call Hwanragwon a place where that grace poured down like a waterfall. The point worth noting here is the sheer scale of the place. Over three hundred species of spiritual herbs were found within it alone — what more is there to say? Which is to say that swallowing Hwanragwon down single-handed would be a tall order indeed.
The situation was different from the Empty Blue Stone Milk, the Vermilion Fruit, and the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root I had claimed long ago. I never let those leak out into the world; I took them into my own body, every one, to further the Yakseon Heart Decision. At most, I divided the seven surplus drops of Empty Blue Stone Milk — the one elixir I had secured in any real quantity — among those around me, and the remaining three I keep in my possession still.
In truth, ten drops of Empty Blue Stone Milk amount to little more than the volume of a thumb's joint, so even that I could have taken alone, so long as it never went up for trade. But as I said before, Hwanragwon is far too vast for one man to monopolize. To begin with, I have neither the means nor the excuse to stuff that many spiritual herbs into my own belly. Some must serve as ingredients for the Chwigu-hwan, and the rest ought to return to the Murim Alliance.
Not out of any sense of justice — no notion that Hwanragwon must return to its rightful masters — but because the mighty Murim Alliance, too, needed groundwork laid against the possibility of a Jeongma War breaking out. And that, too, was not to be done carelessly.
Either way, it inevitably meant that Hwanragwon's existence would have to be made known to the world. And if even the smallest mistake crept into that process, I dared guess the result would take the shape of bloodshed. I know how bloodshed erupts when men cannot hide their greed over a single spiritual herb, a single treasure map. At Hwanragwon's scale, a war between sects would surprise no one. I had to make certain such a thing never came to pass.
In my past life, Hwanragwon gave rise to no bloodshed. The reason was simple: the Murim Alliance had stepped into the open faster than anyone else. But this time, I had to be the front line myself. The Murim Alliance ought to stand behind me as the following wave. There was no other way to hand the Chwigu-hwan's ingredients over to the Beggars' Gang free of charge. Chief Strategist Singija and the Sovereign of Destruction, Yeom Gi-ha, were both faces as trustworthy as Chwipung-gae's, so there would be no trouble there.
But before any of that— I would first need to manufacture the plausibility of my finding Hwanragwon at all.
I was no longer the illegitimate second son of the Dancheon Clan, the boy nobody had deigned to notice. I had long since taken for myself the epithet of Dancheon Divine Dragon, and in martial prowess I stood as a master of the Hyeon Realm — a level rivaling the Ten Greatest Masters Under Heaven. Nor could I be unaware that the Eumhyeol Sinma affair had fixed the Beggars' Gang's every eye squarely upon me. I had already bound myself to Haomun and to the Murim Alliance's Special Operations Unit alike. Which is to say: I was a man who had drawn the gaze of all three of the world's great intelligence organizations.
I knew that if I once again stumbled upon Hwanragwon out of thin air, brushing aside every thread of cause and effect, my excuses would ring hollow. I could simply play dumb — but I would hardly welcome a situation where I had to weave lies and recite them to the likes of Chwipung-gae, or Ma Sok and Yeo Wol, or Singija and Yeom Gi-ha. The best method was to lay bare the very process of my searching for Hwanragwon.
"Brother Chun-baek, are you busy?"
"Me? Same as ever."
Which meant he wasn't busy, I took it.
"Care to join me in a bit of work, then?"
"If it's with you — anything."
Though I suspect that even had he been busy, he would have granted the request all the same.
"My thanks."
"What's thanks between the two of us?"
To start, then, Brother Chun-baek and I would have to play at being herb hunters. Two seasons remained until Hwanragwon's natural discovery, so a single season of feigned wandering in search of spiritual herbs would be plenty. True, finding it after only one season of searching was a stretch as well. Well — call it coincidence, and they would have no way to argue the point.
Time flows forward. I know better than to call that an eternal, unchanging truth — I am myself the counterexample, a man regressed by no cause he can name — but in the great majority of cases, time does flow forward.
The winter solstice. The day when daylight is shortest. The sun's time upon the world has grown short, which is to say the cold deepens — which is to say winter had well and truly arrived.
Crunch. Crunch.
Snow had chosen the solstice itself to fall, and it had piled deep, so that with every step Brother Chun-baek and I took through the mountains, the sound of it giving way underfoot rang in our ears. There was no reason to squander true qi unfurling Snow-Treading Without Trace, so the two of us climbed the steep slopes to the music of our own crunching steps.
We ascended as placidly as men out on a stroll — but that the Central Plains' mountains are dangerous lies squarely within the realm of common sense. Jagged crags and sheer cliffs, sky-piercing precipices and knife-steep ridges do not welcome the human foot. One misstep, and you might drop off a cliff a thousand zhang high. With snow burying every trace of footing, as it did now, all the more so.
Nor did the danger end with the terrain. One might cross paths with a ferocious tiger capable of taking the life of any but the finest first-rate masters, or a wild boar big as a house. One might take a venomous insect's or serpent's strike and be left writhing in agony. And by vanishing odds, one might even meet a spirit creature or monster that had bloomed into true sentience. Human convention sorts them, for its own convenience, into spirit creatures and monsters — but met as enemies, both are no different from any fiend of monstrous power in the matter of taking human lives.
Of all those many hazards, the greatest by far was this: there were no roads. In mountains that vast, anyone short of a native's familiarity was all but certain to lose his way. And since there was no road to lose in the first place, it would be more accurate to say one loses one's direction than one's way. Hence, unless one is a herb hunter, no one ventures into the deep mountains at all.
This, at root, is why the Green Forest can make its living. True, they extort their passage tolls — but they also cut roads through treacherous mountains and keep them safe, and viewed from another angle, that makes them something like a civilian self-defense corps. One might even call them righteous folk standing in for the government's duties. Because they chase money — the Dao of this present world — they are filed among the Unorthodox, yet they are existences the Central Plains' prosperity cannot spare. Of course, it is equally the truth of things that a man who takes only a fair toll is Green Forest, while one who demands more is a bandit bastard.
Crunch. Crunch.
Winter solstice. Less bitter than the Minor Cold soon to come, but winter was in full swing all the same, and with our breath embroidering the empty air, we blazed our trail up the mountain. So we climbed, for quite a while.
"This spot will do."
Brother Chun-baek said it, taking in our surroundings.
The scene spread before us was wondrously strange. A vast bamboo grove lay across the heart of the deep mountains, untouched by any human foot. If the power of nature is truly great, here was its proof: the bamboos stood at even intervals, as though a great garden had been tended, stitching order into the wild. Snow lay thick upon the ground, upon the bamboo joints, upon the smallest leaves. Snowflakes catching the faintly spreading sunlight and scattering it back — the sight was a masterwork painting.
And the finishing touch upon that painting: two warriors, the bamboo grove for a backdrop, about to cross blades.
Shring.
"Here I come."
Brother Chun-baek drew his cherished blade.
"Come."
The senior seat was mine, so the opening strike belonged to Brother Chun-baek.
Shff-shff- What Brother Chun-baek unfurled was a movement art of truly startling swiftness — yet even it could not slip past every one of nature's snares. Fwshh. The bamboo his body grazed shook loose the snow heaped upon its leaves. And before that snow could so much as touch the ground—
KRAAANG!
Brother Chun-baek's blade had already reached me.
I had not drawn the Dancheon Sword. Not out of any disdain for Brother Chun-baek — it was that my hand already held a radiant Formless Sword, one that outstripped even the Dancheon Sword's keen edge.
From the Start of Winter to the solstice is a span well past a month. Across that span, Brother Chun-baek and I had crossed blades at least once every two days. In some twenty bouts, I had not once drawn the Dancheon Sword. Thanks to that, my Formless Sword had, before I knew it, begun to build a form all its own — familiarity, I supposed, bred by endless repetition. This sparring was no lecture of mine to Brother Chun-baek; it was ground where the two of us grew together.
CLANG!
KRAAANG!
Exchanging with Brother Chun-baek blows numbering past a hundred took no great length of time — he, after all, was a warrior whose sense of tempo left ordinary men far behind.
"Hah!"
KRAAANG-!
The Formless Sword is a marvel that forges a blade's shape from pure intent — but it is no art wielding violence to overwhelm a sword gang. And so Brother Chun-baek's sword gang and my Formless Sword wove together again and again amid the bamboo. He, too, was a Harmony Realm master who had fully achieved the Three Flowers Gathered at the Crown — no man to be subdued by swordsmanship alone, short of unleashing my intent at full power. And in hard-won experience, Brother Chun-baek, who had roamed the jianghu as a masterless blade, stood a step ahead.
"That form of yours is growing familiar to my eye."
Flick!
Shrrt-
"Oh, dear."
I let out a groan — Brother Chun-baek's ambush had sheared the front clean off my robe.
"Reach whatever realm you please — keep flogging the same form, and even a lesser hand will read it."
"So it is."
It was true: my growth had its warped edges. And these bouts with Brother Chun-baek were the very process of closing that gap.
"Brace yourself."
I granted Brother Chun-baek all due respect — but to have reached the Five Qi Returning to the Origin, only to have my lapel sliced by a master still at the Three Flowers, was no pleasure. I could hardly let it pass.
"Come, then."
Brother Chun-baek beckoned with two fingers, as though the senior seat were his this time.
At a gesture so like my own, I bit back the laugh that threatened to escape and gathered my true qi.
Vwooom-
The Formless Sword in my grip took on a further strain.
Fwip! That strain shot forth at Brother Chun-baek — the art of the Formless Flying Sword.
"Hk—!"
Steadying my mind, I poured everything into intent. The aim was to bend, ever so slightly, the trajectory of the Formless Flying Sword as it flew a perfectly straight line at Brother Chun-baek's heart. That was it. Inadequate though the attempt was, I had just tried my hand at the art of Steering the Sword with Qi.
Whoooosh-
But, faithless thing that it was, the flying Formless Sword refused to bend its course. My intent, it seemed, had not yet reached true steering by qi. I felt anew just how far off was the realm of Cheonma, who had worked that marvel with no sword at all — only a formless orb of gang energy. And regrettably, my shortcomings did not end there.
Shuuu-
The onrushing Formless Sword began to spend itself before Brother Chun-baek could even move to block it. I had completed its shape, but keeping the form of my intent intact once it left the frame of my own body was still beyond me. It was the same reason my empty-air footwork remained so crude. That the reach of my intent — once unable to carry past five paces — had stretched to five zhang was welcome news, but completion still eluded me.
Yet neither could it be written off as failure. I had foreseen the failure from the very start — which is why, with Brother Chun-baek's eyes stolen by the Formless Flying Sword, I could take his back with the Cloud-Treading Steps at their absolute peak.
Clack.
Before he knew it, I had claimed the ground behind him, a radiant Formless Sword once more in my hand, its destructive edge settling above his shoulder.
"Oh, dear."
Brother Chun-baek let out the very same groan I had.
"Today's victory is mine."
At my satisfied grin—
"A cheat, that's what you are."
Brother Chun-baek grumbled, but—
"It's called skill."
"Can't argue with that."
He conceded before long.
After one hundred and thirty-seven exchanges in all, the victory was mine. A herb hunter's pastime, played out deep in mountains where no human soul stirred.