10. Yeongsan Sect (2)
Yeongsan Sect (2)
10. Yeongsan Sect (2)
I'd heard it was a poor little sect, so I'd figured it would be tucked deep in the mountains, a good ten days from the nearest village, but surprisingly, Yeongsan Sect turned out to be only half a day's walk from the village. Come to think of it, I suppose that makes sense. Unlike Baek Clan Estate, whose main income came from hunting bandits, Yeongsan Sect presumably made its living by conducting rituals, and without being closely tied to the locals, earning a livelihood would have been difficult.
"Young Master Baek. Are you truly all right?"
"This much is no trouble at all."
Son Yeong looked worried, but I genuinely felt fine. I was climbing the mountain with an eighty-kilogram sack of rice on a sturdy steel A-frame that itself weighed about ten kilograms. No matter how poor my aptitude, I was still a martial artist, and that burden was not especially difficult. At the inn the previous night, I'd considered what life would be like in the impoverished Yeongsan Sect. I could hardly ask for a second bowl without shame while my future senior sisters rationed even thin gruel. Nor did I intend to join them on a Beggars' Sect-style diet. I had therefore bought the steel carrier and a sack of rice in the village and was hauling them up the trail.
"I envy you. One must have a sturdy body and profound, arcane internal energy to manage that, surely?"
Son Yeong gazed at me in sincere admiration and described my internal energy with absurd modifiers such as 'arcane' and 'profound.' Traces of cultivated energy usually appeared once someone possessed about five years' worth, then vanished completely upon reaching the first class. She had little physical strength and less than five years of internal energy, so I must have looked impressive to her.
"Last time I saw Young Lady Murong Rin, she smashed a boulder with one hand. If I ever go around calling my internal energy 'profound,' I might just die of embarrassment."
"Good heavens! But Young Lady Murong Rin is barely twenty-three!"
Son Yeong was taken aback. As a martial artist from Liaoning Province herself, she must have been thoroughly familiar with the Murong Clan, at the very least.
"Even Young Lady Murong Rin is said to be ordinary among the rising generation. I heard she would be no match for members of the Eight Dragons and Four Peaks."
In the martial world, the absolute bottom—the dregs, groups like Yeongsan Sect—could probably be found fairly easily, but toward the top, there truly was no end. The Eight Dragons and Four Peaks. Although they comprised an elite new generation of martial artists selected every few years, considering their young age, they were still only second-rate masters on the level of my father. Against a first-class master from a major sect who had trained for decades, they were child's play. Back in my past life, when I used to read martial arts tales, the phrase "The Top Hundred Masters" had never struck me as particularly impressive. After all, you needed four whole verses of a song just to memorize a hundred great figures who had shone in Korea—how ordinary could a ranking of a hundred masters possibly be?
But now that I'd come here, the Top Hundred Masters in reality were martial giants beyond anything I'd imagined. It was commonly said that the balance of power in the martial world stood at four parts the Orthodox Faction, three parts the Unorthodox Faction, and two parts the Demonic Cult. The remaining one part would be the small and medium sects that carried no weight in the greater scheme, like Yeongsan Sect, or forces leaning toward neutrality. At any rate, as a simple matter of arithmetic, out of the Top Hundred Masters, roughly forty would be orthodox martial artists. The pinnacle of that Orthodox Faction was the Nine Great Sects and the Beggars' Sect, together with the Five Great Clans. Even this so-called summit already numbered fifteen separate entities. And given that the composition of the Nine Great Sects, the Beggars' Sect, and the Five Great Clans shifted slightly with each selection, even if you limited it to the Orthodox Faction alone, there were around twenty major sects and clans.
Even a top-tier sect or clan therefore possessed only about two of the Top Hundred Masters. A place among that hundred belonged to someone like a Grand Elder or Sect Leader of Mount Hua—or simply the sect's strongest expert. I'd learned that during the annual courtesy visits to the Murong Clan. Its head, Murong Hyeok-jung, had hardly seemed human, yet the Central Plains contained a hundred people of comparable stature. Abandoning my dream of martial greatness had truly been the right choice.
"That's really something."
Son Yeong's voice was a little somber.
"Even so, Yeongsan Sect is remarkable. Wudang, Mount Hua, and Shaolin were all helpless before the Blood Cult's jiangshi during the last war. It was the Maoshan Sect, the source of Yeongsan Sect's lineage, that dealt with them."
At that, Son Yeong cracked a smile. Women really did become prettier when they smiled.
"Right now, we have neither the Taoist arts to deal with jiangshi, nor the Taoist arts to bring rain."
"That's perfectly fine. I have no intention of dealing with jiangshi or conducting rain rituals either."
"Instead, our sect has one truly wonderful advantage. Yeongsan Sect has a hot spring."
"A hot spring? That's genuinely impressive. Not even the Murong Clan estate had a hot spring."
At last, Son Yeong's face brightened, and so did my mood. By now, like a proper Chinese bastard, I'd grown accustomed to living filthy. Even after spending more than twenty days pressed beside Son Yeong in a cramped luggage cart, neither of us had been bothered by the other's unwashed stench. Bathing was a considerable luxury even at the Jilin Baek Clan Estate. Water had to be drawn, precious firewood burned beneath the kitchen's great cauldron, and the heated water thrown away after merely washing a body. It could not be done whenever one pleased. I had grown used to the filth, but my desire for a bath hadn't disappeared. Yeongsan Sect sounded like paradise—a place with everything except money and martial arts. Perhaps, when I left in three years, I would feel genuine regret.
There were no escorts now, only the two of us in the mountains. We ate the jerky bought in the village for lunch: foul-smelling, rock-hard stuff that shared nothing with the jerky of my past life but its name. Even so, Son Yeong took only the tiniest bite before carefully tucking it into her pack. She probably wanted her starving junior sisters to taste the rare meat.
"Young Lady Son, are you not uncomfortable?"
"I'm well used to this mountain."
"That isn't what I meant. We're alone, you and I."
"Young Master Baek, you are a good person. I'm not uncomfortable in the slightest."
"You've been in an all-woman sect. Being alone with a man in a deserted place—does that really not trouble you at all?"
"Of course. I'm not Senior Sister Jeong. If I were as beautiful as she is, perhaps even your heart would race, Young Master Baek. But what lust could a plain woman like me possibly stir?"
Son Yeong spoke with a light laugh. Having spent all her time among women, she really didn't seem to know men at all. Frankly, despite being rail-thin, her face was clearly that of a beauty, and a man's sexual desire was far more persistent and base than she seemed to think. Right now, as an outsider to her, I wasn't in a position to offer advice, but should she become a cherished senior sister of mine, I would have to caution her someday.
Fortunately, the mountain path wasn't steep. It was worlds apart from a maintained twenty-first-century hiking trail, but Yeongsan itself was only a gentle mountain behind the village. In an age without tunnels, mountain roads were essential thoroughfares. We followed a narrow trail worn smooth by countless feet and at last reached our destination.
Yeongsan Sect.
The name was remarkably apt: an impoverished sect in the mountains. I'd prepared myself, yet the branch fence before me looked less like the stone wall of a martial sect than a secret fort built by village children. The reality I'd tried to ignore was finally taking shape before my eyes.
"Senior Sister Son? Senior Sister Son!!"
A child's high-pitched voice suddenly rang out. A tiny girl darted from the space that might have been a training ground or merely a yard and hurled herself into Son Yeong's arms like a wild animal. She was probably Cho-ryeong, Yeongsan Sect's youngest.
"Senior Sister Son! Why did you take so long? I cried so much while you were gone. Don't leave again. Stay with me forever."
Cho-ryeong was wailing, smearing tears and snot all over Son Yeong's worn martial uniform. Whoa. Son Yeong hadn't been exaggerating. The girl Cho-ryeong was genuinely cute. She really had an adorable face. Patting Cho-ryeong gently, Son Yeong's own eyes brimmed with tears. She must have traveled comfortably enough with me on the return trip, but only now did I begin to picture the grueling journey to Baek Clan Estate and her anxious fretting over whether we'd be able to secure any monetary support.
"Junior Sister. You're back?"
A woman ran from the dilapidated building after the child. Son Yeong had only one senior sister, so this had to be Jeong-hyang, the head disciple. Son Yeong had described my paltry internal energy with every grand adjective imaginable, so I'd assumed she wasn't exactly a liar, merely a sheltered country girl. The moment I saw Jeong-hyang's face, I admitted I'd been wrong. She was a beautiful woman absurdly out of place in this collapsing sect. When Son Yeong first praised her, I'd wondered why desperate Yeongsan Sect had sent Son Yeong to beg rather than the far more beautiful Jeong-hyang. One look at Jeong-hyang's face told me why.
Jeong-hyang was beautiful enough to provoke base desire in any sect from which she sought help. Son Yeong was beautiful as well, and Cho-ryeong was an adorable girl, but their skeletal thinness diminished their charms. In Jeong-hyang's case, her frailty only heightened her pitiful, forlorn beauty. Her unfairly beautiful face made even shabby rags look elegant. Yeongsan Sect might have been poor, but it was already hiding a great treasure.
"I've returned. Senior Sister Jeong. I missed you dearly."
"You've been through a great deal, Junior Sister. And who is this?"
Jeong-hyang embraced and patted Son Yeong just as Son Yeong had comforted Cho-ryeong, though she watched me with a guarded expression. Only then did the child notice me; Cho-ryeong flinched and hid behind Son Yeong.
"This is the eldest son of Baek Clan Estate, Young Master Baek Eun-hyeok. He is our benefactor, who has graciously agreed to aid our Yeongsan Sect in its current hardship."
"I see. Truly, thank you."
Bowing her head deeply, Jeong-hyang expressed her gratitude to me. Seeing this, the girl Cho-ryeong also gave me a bobbing bow.
"Not at all. I came to your sect because I also have a favor to ask."
"Young Master, you are our sect's benefactor. Whatever the request, please tell us."
Jeong-hyang spoke in a gentle, tender voice.
"Senior Sister, don't be alarmed. Young Master Baek wishes to become a disciple of our sect." Son Yeong spoke calmly, but Jeong-hyang was understandably stunned.
"A... a disciple? A disciple of our Yeongsan Sect?"
"Yes. That's correct."
As I answered calmly, the third of the four martial sisters emerged from the building after hearing the commotion.
"Senior Sister Son, did your journey go well? You must be so worn out, in body and heart."
Hmm. The third disciple was a rather attractive woman too. She fell somewhat short of the peerlessly beautiful Jeong-hyang, but her face was still lovely, and even her skeletal frame could not hide her unusually large breasts and hips beneath the worn martial uniform. Like Cho-ryeong, she greeted Son Yeong with an embrace. Come to think of it, I'd heard that the third disciple's surname was Lee, but not her given name.
"You must have had a hard time while I was gone, Junior Sister. Thanks to Young Master Baek's help, we can survive the spring."
Son Yeong gently stroked her junior sister's hair and spoke with a warm expression. Before I knew it, all four women were embracing one another, making for a heartwarming sight.
"I heard what happened as I was coming outside. Young Master, thank you sincerely."
The third disciple greeted me in a soft, gentle voice. Perhaps because this was an all-female sect, all of them spoke in distinctly feminine tones.
"And you've surely endured so much hardship getting here. Our situation makes a grand reception impossible, but I'll at least brew some tea, so please quench your thirst."
The third disciple spoke in a mild, kindly tone, yet something felt strangely off. Jeong-hyang, the oldest and a stunning beauty, was one thing. But I sensed the same faint, peculiar sensuality in the pretty yet gaunt Son Yeong, in the third disciple, and even in the child Cho-ryeong, where it had no business existing.
"Oh dear, that load on your back looks dreadfully heavy. Please set it down quickly and make yourself comfortable!"
Ah, right. I'd forgotten the sack of rice on my back. This wouldn't be the last, but I hoped my lovely future senior sisters would appreciate my first bribe. As I began lowering the A-frame, the friendly third disciple moved to help. The sack was obviously far too heavy for her, so I declined and set it carefully in one corner of the yard—or should I have called it the training ground?
"You said you wish to be admitted, correct? Master will make the decision, so please come inside."
The third disciple wore a perpetually cheerful smile. When she beamed like that, her face was every bit as pretty as the other sisters' aside from Jeong-hyang's. Saying she'd brew tea, she walked ahead toward a small building that seemed to be the kitchen. Several paces separated us, and she whispered under her breath, but my hearing—sharpened by even my mere ten years of internal energy—caught every word.
[Ugh. How annoying. Who the hell is that man, and what does he want?]
The woman who'd been smiling so sweetly had unmistakably spoken in the Joseon tongue.