8. 15th-Century Joseonjok
15th-Century Joseonjok
8. 15th-Century Joseonjok
For the first time in a long while, all four members of our family ate breakfast together. It might have been the first time all of us had smiled like that. Father had watched me with regret, but seeing the other three of us laughing so brightly seemed to help him finally let go.
Now that I had relinquished the position of Young Clan Head, I would also hand the guest-hall duties over to Dan-yeong. There was little to teach him; apparently, he'd long coveted the reception work traditionally handled by the eldest son.
"Jang Chung. What about the young lady from Yeongsan Sect?"
"She is in the VIP room at the moment. She seemed rather restless."
"Huh? Why? I told you to make sure she was comfortable."
"We have been treating her with the utmost hospitality. That may be precisely what's making her uneasy."
"Well. That figures, doesn't it?"
I had finished all my affairs at the Baek Clan Estate and summoned Son Yeong to the inner reception room reserved for important guests rather than the ordinary guest hall. As I'd heard, she looked anxious, fidgeting and glancing around as she approached. By features alone, she was beautiful enough to surpass even Gyeong Su-yeon, reputedly Jilin's greatest beauty. Yet her gaunt face and shabby appearance placed her in an entirely different world from that wealthy young lady. Strangely, the very contrast gave Son Yeong a subtle allure.
"I pay my respects, Young Master."
"Have you recovered from the journey?"
"I feel ashamed to have received such generous hospitality. Thank you sincerely."
At least her face looked noticeably brighter than the day before. No wonder. A sect poor enough to send her out begging could hardly have provided generous travel expenses. Liaoning lay directly below Jilin, but I could easily imagine how harsh her journey had been.
"Have you considered my proposal?"
"I was too flustered yesterday to mention it, but accepting someone into our sect is solely my master's decision. I cannot give you a definite answer."
"That is true. Then I will seek out the Sect Leader and ask her permission myself."
"What?"
This woman really did startle easily.
"Shall we depart tomorrow?"
"No, I... that is..."
"You said matters were urgent at your sect. You should return as soon as possible; every day matters. Don't worry. I'll bring the silver. If I'm admitted, I'll donate it to the sect. Even if I'm refused, I'll still leave the money with your sect to help."
At those words, Son Yeong's face instantly brightened. Come what may, Yeongsan Sect would now be able to get through this spring. The joy that fact brought her reached me through her expression.
"If there is anything making your stay uncomfortable, please let me know."
"Oh... there's nothing. Truly, not a single thing. The Baek Clan Estate is a wonderful place. I don't know what to do with myself, being treated to soft, warm blankets and such delicious food."
"I'm glad. When the time comes to ask permission for my admission, please put in a good word for me."
"Well... that much I can do, but the decision will still be made by my master personally."
"There's no helping that."
If I couldn't even get permission to join from a shabby fifth-rate sect like that, it would really mean there was something wrong with me. If they genuinely turned me down there, I'd just give up on being a martial artist entirely, enroll in a decent academy, and kill time until I had to come back.
"I'm embarrassed to impose further, but might I be permitted to see the Baek Clan Estate's training ground?"
She asked in a trembling voice, watching my reaction with extreme caution. Ah, she was a martial artist too, wasn't she?
"Of course. Training begins in the afternoon, after all."
"Th... thank you."
She was practically jumping for joy. Our training ground wasn't even paved with stone—it was just a wide open field, so what was making her so happy? When I guided her there, she stood before it with a deeply moved expression.
"It's enormous. The valiant White Horse Unit soldiers must practice high-level martial arts here every day, sweating through their training."
High-level martial arts? That was a stretch, honestly. Though I was sure it looked that way through her eyes.
"Would... would it be all right if I swung a sword once?"
"If you intend to train, shall I show you to a different place?"
Watching another sect's training was an absolute taboo in the martial world. No matter how humble Yeongsan Sect's martial arts were, this was a matter of a martial artist's pride.
"No, it's fine. At best, our martial arts are barely at the level of a modified Three Talents Sword. Still, I've always wanted to swing a sword just once on a proper training ground like this."
Her face full of emotion, she stepped onto the training ground and began to swing her sword. Just as she'd said, it was the Three Talents Sword. Could this really be called martial arts? Countless martial arts existed under heaven—techniques found only in legends, and mighty arts passed down as secret traditions of first-rate sects. There was no end to what lay above, but I knew the bottom well enough.
In the wuxia novels I'd read in my past life, a martial artist's realm was complicatedly divided into things like peak-level, transcendent, absolute, transformation realm, profound realm, and nature realm, but this world was exceedingly simple. If you could use Martial Aura, you were first-class. If you could use Sword Qi, you were second-class. Everyone below that was third-class.
The Baek Clan Estate's martial arts were second-class arts organized by my genius great-grandfather, and naturally, not everyone could learn them. The White Shadow Hard Sword, which contained their very core, was a supreme secret known only to Father, the Clan Head. One level below it lay the art reserved for the Young Clan Head, which Dan-yeong would learn. Beneath that were the techniques for direct family members that Dan-yeong and I currently practiced, followed by the advanced retainer arts taught to the steward and unit commander. Everything down to that point still counted as second-class martial arts. The term might sound unimpressive, but I'd heard that fewer than a thousand first-class martial artists existed in the entire martial world. I was nowhere close now, yet the estate's second-class arts were advanced methods that, with enough persistent training, would one day allow a practitioner to form Sword Qi.
The techniques taught to ordinary White Horse Unit members fell into the third class, though they were respectable by third-class standards. The Baek Clan Estate also operated a martial academy for outsiders. Like a neighborhood school, it charged ordinary people to teach rudimentary self-defense and health exercises—something between a taekwondo studio and a gym by twenty-first-century standards. Just as its trainees were not considered martial artists, what they learned was scarcely worthy of being called martial arts.
There were scraps of martial arts even below that. Major sects such as Wudang sometimes gathered commoners and taught them sample health exercises. Like free samples at a grocery store, those widely distributed movements raised the sect's prestige. Occasionally, someone who achieved a little with those scraps would aspire to learn genuine martial arts and come seeking admission—the exercises served as bait. The Three Talents Sword belonged to that level. Anyone could buy it from a marketplace bookshop for one or two taels of silver.
And yet Son Yeong's sword path looked strangely beautiful as she sweated on the training ground and performed the Three Talents Sword with inexperienced hands. The form itself was crude, but she executed it close to perfection, leaving clean arcs through the air—the crystallization of all the effort she had accumulated.
What a waste—for both of us. She possessed dazzling talent but lacked the environment to nurture it. I had enjoyed that environment but lacked her talent. Neither of us could make proper use of what we possessed. We would both end up in the fifth-rate Yeongsan Sect as mediocre martial artists.
"Thank you, truly, for granting me the use of the training ground."
Before I knew it, she had stepped down from the training ground and was offering a respectful cupped-fist salute. Her expression was so very bright and happy. Yes. What did such martial arts matter, anyway? Even without that sort of thing, both she and I could smile so joyfully like this.
Like the night before my military enlistment, now hazy in memory, I packed alone in my room: several changes of clothing, fifty silver taels, and ten gold taels. Five of the gold taels had been a generous gift from my second mother. From her perspective, the last thing she wanted was to send me away with too little money, only for me to fail at enduring the hardship and return after one month instead of three years. Yeongsan Sect had asked for only ten silver taels to survive the spring. I considered taking only a modest amount, but with no banks in this world and no way to know what lay ahead, more money was always better. I decided to take my entire fortune. I packed my sword as well. My martial arts were too embarrassing to wear it proudly at my waist like Son Yeong, so I placed it in my bundle. Anything else I needed could be bought along the way.
My preparations were now complete. Tonight was my last night at the Baek Clan Estate. I spent the time quietly alone before going to bed.
"Y-Young Master, is that truly all the luggage you are taking?"
Dressed in the same beggarly martial uniform she'd worn when she first arrived, Son Yeong looked at me and asked.
"I plan to buy what I need there. Liaoning Province is right below Jilin—couldn't we just go lightly?"
"No matter how close it is, it still takes three months!"
"What? Three months?"
Could the Liaoning in my head and the Liaoning she was thinking of be completely different places that just happened to share the same name?
"One pair of shoes won't be enough, either."
At those words, my eyes fell on her old, hole-ridden shoes. Well, three months was a long way, and my shoes were simple leather ones, not Air Max sneakers, but unlike her cloth-scrap shoes, mine would hold up for a few months just fine.
"Is Yeongsan Sect by any chance deep in the mountains, far from the village?"
"Not that, but simply leaving a single province is a far longer journey than you might think."
Son Yeong advised me kindly, like a seasoned traveler. Then again, she really would soon become my senior sister.
"If the village is nearby, that'll be fine. I'm planning to go by cart."
"A... a cart?"
"The road is dangerous and difficult, and you said your fellow disciples were starving. We should arrive as quickly as possible. I'll pay a few silver taels to an escort agency traveling that way so we can go safely and quickly."
At those words, she stared at my face, blinking. It seemed the idea of traveling by escort agency had never even entered her imagination.
"Let's go. I heard that the escort agency departing for Liaoning leaves this morning. We'll ask them to take us to the nearest village and walk to Yeongsan Sect from there."
I'd prepared myself for military life, but even after learning martial arts, I still hated the idea of a thousand-li march. I rode in the carriage driven by Jang Chung to the neighboring village, where we boarded a Yongrim Escort Agency cart bound for Liaoning. I offered to pay the escort captain, but every escort in the agency had trained under the Baek Clan Estate, and they flatly refused to take my money. I therefore settled quietly into a corner of the luggage cart. I could hardly remember a novel protagonist setting out into the martial world by cart, but nearly eighteen hundred years had passed since Qin Shi Huang unified China. Roads suitable for carts reached everywhere, and with such convenient transportation available, there was no reason to volunteer for a march.
Traveling by escort agency was comfortable. For an ordinary person without connections, it would be impossible even with money, and even for a person of some means, it would cost a considerable fortune, but in any case, it really was comfortable. The journey to Liaoning Province wasn't my first. It was a familiar road I'd traveled every year to pay my respects to the Murong Clan. Using an escort agency was a choice born of experience.
At mealtimes, the escorts stopped and took care of the food. When we camped, the professionals built the fire and prepared our sleeping places. Son Yeong had needed three months to reach the Baek Clan Estate because she detoured around dangerous roads, whereas the armed escorts traveled hazardous routes freely and knew every shortcut. Once we reached Liaoning, that would be another matter, but within Jilin, we could travel quickly and safely without worrying about bandits.
Unlike Son Yeong, who sat curled up tensely beside me, I watched the scenery recede behind the slowly moving cart. Like the day I entered the military, the departure filled me with faint nostalgia. Jilin—the land where I'd lived my entire second life.
In my past life, Jilin Province had a Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, making it a region that evoked Joseonjok. I suddenly found myself laughable. Joseonjok. Those off-putting people, Jilin-born Chinese bastards who insisted they were Korean compatriots. Yet looking at myself now, that was exactly what I was. A Jilin-born Chinese bastard, a time-warped Joseonjok under the delusion that he was somehow Korean.
I was now the one and only fifteenth-century Joseonjok in the Central Plains—no, in the entire world.