What to Beware of Most in Murim
At the completely unforeseen turn of events, every soul in the inn's common room wore a dumbfounded expression for one long heartbeat...
"AAAAAARGH!"
Eyes rolled back into his skull, the Dang Clan's Green Heaven Squad leader had whipped his dagger out once more and hurled himself at the Diancang warrior.
The people around him flinched in fright, stumbling back with shrieks as they scrambled into defensive stances.
Shreeee—
He came charging in with his killing intent doing the talking where I swear I will kill that bastard should have been, and I opened my mouth to rein him in before things got worse...
"Whoa! Dushik, sto—"
But I'd been too busy mournfully pining over Byeolho, who had vanished like a puff of smoke right in front of me, so my reaction came a beat too late. The instant the word sto left my lips, the dagger was already closing on its target — and one look told me I wouldn't make it in time. Just then—
Crack—
"That's enough."
The Execution Hall Master had somehow wedged himself between the two of them, catching Dang Giyeong's dagger in his bare hand.
While I was still patting down my startled chest, someone nearby murmured in open astonishment.
"Bare-Handed Blade Catching..."
Truth be told, blade-catching wasn't some rare, wondrous art that murim folk seldom got the chance to witness live, like fencing at empty air or bringing a sword to a cockfight. If anything, Bare-Handed Blade Catching was the textbook technique for despising inferiors — most often deployed with a healthy dose of mockery against an opponent of lower rank.
Not that it was easy, mind you. Peak Realm fighters who tried to copy the trick and lost a finger or two in the attempt were more common than you'd think. Why else would one sect have gone so far as to paste a notice on its wall?
Bare-Handed Blade Catching Prohibited Below the Transcendent Realm
So I could understand why people marveled at the sight. Still...
"Sis, doesn't Uncle look like he caught that one wrong?"
"I know... the moment he lets go, that hand is going to spray blood everywhere."
What Hawun had pulled off was not Bare-Handed Blade Catching so much as blocking a blade with his hand because there was no time for anything else. Blade-catching is for snatching a swinging strike mid-arc. What kind of lunatic decides to stop a thrusting dagger with his palm?
And even granting, with a hundred concessions' worth of charity, that you could block a thrust that way — why on earth would the master of an entire hall be the one doing it? Transcendent Realm or no, Dushik was himself a warrior with the Transcendent Realm within arm's reach.
"And now he's squeezing the blade for all he's worth?"
"Muyeong, watch that bastard for me so he can't run. I'm off to buy some bandages."
Look closely, and Uncle Hawun was gripping the blade the way one wrings out wet laundry. That was no single-edged saber — it was a double-edged dagger. Squeeze it like that and there would be nothing left of his hand...
Which is how my sister Mulin marched out of the inn to hunt for bandages, though the sun was all but gone. Watching the sorry spectacle, I facepalmed with a smack loud enough to sting.
"Hall Master..."
Giyeong was directing a look at the Execution Hall Master that I couldn't decide was anxiety or concern.
Ugh... what is this torment, at my age.
Hawun shoved his groan back down his throat and sighed inwardly. And no wonder — his hand was on fire and his back was screaming. He was no twenty-year-old sprout; sixty was breathing down his neck. Warrior or not, abuse the body that roughly and every bone and joint was bound to ache.
Besides, he hadn't charged out to stop Giyeong in the first place. He'd been shooting the breeze with Muyeong about Byeolho while keeping one eye on the situation across the room...
'Careful as can be with his own skin — no wonder he failed to protect the previous Young Clan Head...'
That Diancang whelp had dared spew such lunacy — in front of whom, exactly? In Sichuan those words were all but taboo. Yunnan or not, there was no way they didn't know what went on in the province right next door.
So the moment Hawun heard it, he had lunged out to cave in the lunatic's skull. But Giyeong had already beaten him to the draw—
Thwack—
A fist sank into that smirking face, and then, as if to finish the job, the dagger came stabbing in again. Hawun had no choice but to wrench his torso aside in a hurry.
Krrrk—
Yanking his half-extended fist back toward Giyeong, his twisted spine let out a distinctly ominous sound.
Hrrgh...
Lightning seemed to strike straight down his spine, a searing jolt that made him flinch — and his hand stopped short of full extension. Which meant that instead of seizing the wrist as he'd intended, he caught the oncoming blade with his bare palm...
"W...whoa!!"
And with some oblivious fool gasping in admiration at the worst possible moment, all he could do was grit his teeth, put on his calmest face, and speak.
"That's enough."
"Hall Master!"
How much face would he lose, fussing over things and blowing on his hand like a boy here? Worse still, by sheer accident he had been reborn as something like a venerable old master — the sage elder who stopped a Peak Realm expert's blade with his bare hand in one sublime, effortless feat.
Perhaps I should have just let it be...
Hawun regretted it inwardly, but what could anyone do about spilled water? He would simply have to live hugging his back for a while. Worse, the hand the dagger had skewered was his right — at this rate he couldn't even hold a spoon. At least his dignity had survived; that much was a mercy. If, after wrecking his back and flaying his palm for the effort, he had failed to even catch the thing properly...
Hawun hurled that skin-crawling hypothetical to the far corner of his mind and spoke.
"Your head must have gotten a little too hot. Go and cool it. Leave the matter of this one to me."
"Hall Master..."
"I understand how you feel, truly. But right now you're being swept along by your emotions. Revenge or righteous retribution alike — none of it can be done properly with a boiling head."
Not as a patriarch of the Dang Clan, but as one old warrior offering his heart to a young one — and whether that sincerity reached him or not...
".........."
Giyeong said nothing, only sent him a look brimming with worry. So the boy had found his senses after all — concerned for an old man's hand, no less. Hawun was just about to nod when—
"Please let go now."
"Yes, I see you understand exactly what I'm say—"
"No, not me — HIM! He's about to stop breathing!"
Hawun was still puzzling over what the slippery brat meant by that when—
"Ah!"
With that exclamation he turned his head — and there, in his other hand, the Diancang man was rasping and rattling on the very edge of suffocation. His face had gone past white into a purpling blue; his lips had taken on the violet of a corpse. Hawun hastily released the throat he'd been holding.
Thud—
"Khagh... hah... hah..."
The Diancang man wore the face of someone who had walked halfway across the Sandu River — the river of the dead — and clawed his way back.
As for how such a thing had come to pass... when Hawun had barged between the two of them earlier, he had simply forgotten that his left hand was wrapped around the man's neck. Well... with his sixtieth birthday due the day after tomorrow, a man was entitled to forget a thing or two — so Hawun was rationalizing to himself, when—
"Dushik, step aside."
A familiar voice drifted in from behind him, and then—
Whack—
"Quit milking it and get up already, quick-quick, hm?"
Muyeong had gone and kicked the fallen Diancang man square in the face. At the sight, the other Diancang daoists wore expressions that said they were about to come flying at him then and there — until—
"Ha... what? Angry because your senior brother — or whatever he is to you — got smacked? Then come hit my face too, why don't you."
Before Dang Muyeong, both hands sheathed in hard qi so dark a red it looked black, killing intent rolling off him in waves, every last one of them curled his tail and dropped his gaze.
At the abrupt swerve of events, the Execution Hall Master could only ask, bewildered.
"Muyeong, what in the world is—"
"Aw, come on... you thought I might actually kill him? Don't worry yourself sick, Uncle."
That breezy, easy grin only made the unease in Hawun's chest swell another size.
"I'm telling you, really not. What do you take me for..."
Dang Muyeong said it with practiced innocence as he strolled over to the fallen Diancang man — then took a fistful of his hair and struck up a conversation.
"Hey... do you know what you should beware of in murim even more than children, women, and old men?"
Confronted with this sudden cloud-chasing nonsense, the Diancang man just blinked stupidly, so I heaved a deep sigh and carried on.
"Haah... Your mouth. It's your mouth you should guard above all else."
WHAM—
One punch, and the Diancang man's teeth went clattering down in a shower.
"Wag that mouth well, and the dead can live. Wag it wrong, and the living die. I take it they don't teach you that at Diancang?"
I was speaking in the gentlest of tones, so why exactly was this man trembling all over like a leaf in a gale?
"See, me... the first person I ever killed was probably a Zhongnan daoist. You know why he died?"
A full-grown man, his face gone blue as though he'd seen a ghost, shook his head again and again and again.
"What did he say, again... ah, right. He cursed my mother. In front of me."
Had he finally glimpsed his own future at this point?
"S...spare me..."
And so the begging began.
"I told you — I'm not going to kill you. I was young back then, see... you only have to pay a simple price for a slip of the tongue."
I smiled brightly and took hold of his shoulder.
"GRAAAAAAAGH!!!"
His left arm burst apart in an instant, as though a bomb had gone off inside the flesh, and a hideous scream tore through the inn. In the end the Diancang daoist passed out cold, unable to bear the pain, and I flung his body at the remaining daoists.
"Take him and go."
At that, a few of them shot me glares of open hostility as they filed toward the door, so I added a word of caution.
"Look, rant and rave about this to whomever you like — it's nothing to me... but if my father ends up hearing about what happened here, then whatever comes after that, I can't guarantee."
Whether they ran to their own sect leader or to the Murim Alliance made no difference to me. An arm for words like those was, by any objective measure, the Dang Clan showing mercy.
"Uncle, shall we finish our meal?"
At my breezy nothing-happened-here act, Hawun looked ready to expire from sheer exasperation.
"Ha... did you really have to go sticking your nose in?"
I answered with the expression of a man stating the obvious.
"Either way, someone was going to catch hell for this no matter what — and if hell's getting served, isn't it best that I swallow the whole portion myself?"
"Gah, you rotten brat. If curses have to be eaten anyway, they should be eaten by an old man who hasn't many days left."
"And about that back of yours — the way you wrenched it earlier, I honestly don't know if you'll live to see your sons—"
Whack—
Judging by the strength he still had left to kick my shin that damned hard, the Execution Hall Master looked set to remain hale and hearty for a good long while yet.