Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
"Ha... what a headache."
Whoosh... thwump... whoosh... thwump...
Sprawled across my bed, I kept tossing my identity plaque into the air and snatching it back out with my hand, muttering all the while.
"I mean... I always figured the Young Clan Head seat would come to me eventually, but I never imagined they'd just hand it over this slapdash."
The truth was, as the current Clan Head's one and only son, the position of next Clan Head would land on me someday barring some catastrophic upset—and I knew that with my martial prowess, the one real stumbling block, having in just a few months leapt high enough to startle the Namgung Clan and stun the Hebei Paeng Clan, the appointment was only a matter of time anyway.
"But seriously, since when does naming the successor to the Central Plains' answer to a chaebol dynasty get handled more carelessly than some neighborhood diner owner passing the shop down to his kid?"
Charitably, the Young Clan Head appointment had been refreshingly brisk; less charitably, it was a botched rush job. So there I lay, doing nothing for no good reason but flipping my plaque into the air over and over.
"Ha... though man, things really did get dangerous yesterday. If that blade had cut through my heart instead of my throat, I might actually have died."
Letting out a long sigh as I replayed the previous day's events, I groaned, torn, at the realization that with only slightly worse luck, the whole situation could have turned truly ugly.
"Mmmngh....."
Tk—
It let out a little wheeze like air escaping before I flicked my wrist and plucked the plaque back out of the sky.
Swish...
All that arm-swinging from flat on my back had sent my sleeve sliding down, and as I gazed at the forearm now gently bared to the open air, I murmured:
"Thirty percent? No... barely a fifth of it used, and it's already wound up in this sorry state. Honestly..."
My right arm, the one clutching the plaque, was cracked and fissured below the wrist like earth stricken by a years-long drought...
Something dark red glinted faintly in the gaps between the cracks, and the worst of the fissures gaped open to roughly the width of a finger joint.
"An arm for one Transcendent Realm... did I come out ahead?"
With a bitter smile, I ran a hasty profit-and-loss calculation through my head...
"No. There are hundreds of Transcendent Realm martial artists out there. Trading an arm for that is a loss..."
Once the numbers roughly settled, I huffed in irritation, pushed myself upright, and perched on the edge of the bed.
I braced both elbows on my knees, propped my chin on my laced fingers, and after some serious thought...
"In a world with nearly thirty Profound Realm masters alone, one Transcendent Realm—the sort of thing any Tom, Dick, or Harry attains—for one whole arm?"
"Haaa....."
Reminding myself, once again, just what sort of world this was, I muttered:
"Setting aside whether I ever get to see the ending—can I actually stop the Heavenly Demon who'll come crawling down once he's brought the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to perfection?"
Through those few frantic months of training I hadn't felt it, but after what happened yesterday, this world's godawful difficulty had suddenly begun to hit home.
"Even setting martial arts aside entirely, my body couldn't endure a serious head-on fight—so realistically I'd need to break through to Profound Realm at the very least..."
Starting with the reasons I needed to learn martial arts at all...
"Wait, hold on—now that I think about it, even if I slay the Heavenly Demon, tear the Imperial Palace down, and unify all under heaven, there's no guarantee I ever make it back home, is there?"
...right down to the fundamental questions.
As pointless thoughts began tangling in my head like a snarled ball of string, I flopped back onto the bed and flailed all four limbs, throwing a proper fit.
"AAAAAAARGH! What the hell am I even supposed to do?!"
Creeeak... creak...
Only once the bed itself had screamed for mercy did I stop thrashing, squeeze my eyes shut, and murmur quietly:
"For now... let's just take things one step at a time. There's still plenty of time before the Demonic Cult's grand offensive anyway..."
Having somehow wrestled a rough conclusion out of myself, I promptly drifted back to sleep.
Around that same hour, in a room where a single small candle glowed faintly against the dark, came the ceaseless rustle of turning pages.
Rustle... rustle... rustle...
How much time had passed, I wonder...
The room's occupant closed the book she had been reading, then slowly brought her lips toward the candle flame.
Fwoo—
Her breath snuffed out the flame, and she tottered over to the window and pushed it open.
The icy winter wind sent a chill through her, but gazing up at the moon hanging in that sky, she murmured with the face of someone longing for another:
"We'll be seeing each other again before long..."
Her skin was pale past the point of white, like an albino patient's, and her eyes were red. Clasping her hands together as if in prayer to the moon and stars in that sky, she closed her eyes and whispered:
"This time... I'm not letting you go..."
With those final words, the window that had let in the cold wind swung shut once more, and the room sank into darkness.
"GYAAH!"
Whether from a nightmare or not, I bolted upright in bed, drowning in a terror I couldn't begin to describe.
Both my hands were clammy-damp, and the bed—soaked with however much sweat I'd poured out—was wet enough that anyone might have sworn I'd pissed it.
"Hah... hah... what the hell is this..."
Still gulping air, I patted over my drenched clothes and sheets—as if someone had dumped a bucket of water over me—gave them a sniff, and let out a long, deep breath.
"Geez... there for a second I honestly thought I'd wet the bed in my sleep at my age."
Thankfully, I confirmed that nothing humiliating had occurred. I clambered up and opened the window—
Whooo—
"Ugh... it's freezing... the sun's not even up yet."
With the cold wind in my face and a sky still black as ink overhead, the last of my drowsiness scattered; I sagged into the chair and gazed out the window.
Perhaps it was the fresh air, but the tumult in my chest gradually settled, and I found myself straining to recall the dream I'd just had.
"Ah... what was it again? A white snake? No... was it a white eel?"
Unfortunately, the dream had all but evaporated the instant I woke, and I gave up on ransacking my skull and muttered with a hollow expression:
"Fuck... I don't think I've had a dream like that since that day..."
I kept a gloomy face for a while as old memories replayed, then headed out of my room to air out the inside of my head.
Trudge... trudge...
Wandering without any destination through the pre-dawn air, I somehow found myself standing in front of the Medicine Hall.
"Hmm... is someone in there?"
I cocked my head and mulled it over for a moment—then, wearing a distinctly sneaky grin, I doubled around to the side of the building instead of using the Medicine Hall's front door.
Hup—
To peek inside through the high-set window along the Medicine Hall's side, I hung off the windowsill, slid the window open, and hauled myself up as though doing pull-ups—
"And what might you be doing there?"
"GYAAH! Fuck!"
At the sight of Dang Giyeong's face poking out of the window and staring down at me, I screamed bloody murder, startled clean out of my skin.
THUD—
"Ha... ha... haaah... huk... ha... haaah..."
Because the shock had knocked my grip wide open, I was now sitting flat on my rump in the dirt, wheezing like a beached fish—and watching me, Giyeong broke into a pleasant smile.
"Whatever is the matter?"
"Why, you son of a—!"
Cursing with my eyes and my mouth while my trembling arms and legs betrayed exactly how badly I'd been frightened, I must have been quite the sight, because he said quietly:
"Now, now, no need for that. Do come inside. It's only me here at the moment."
I pressed a hand to my chest and waited for my heart to come down.
A short while later...
Still clutching a heart that was beating a touch too fast, I crept into the Medicine Hall.
"So? What on earth brings you here in the dead of night?"
The moment I stepped into the treatment room and was greeted by that sly, slit-eyed face, I jabbed a trembling finger at him and hissed under my breath:
"What kind of lunatic... sticks his head out of a window that high without so much as a warning?!"
"Me? I simply assumed a cat shivering in the cold out there was about to leap in through the window. In any case—what business brings you here at this hour?"
Faced, as ever, with Giyeong's boundless shamelessness, I briefly wondered whether the acting Clan Head felt like this in the daytime, then shoved the thought aside and spoke.
"I must've gone to bed too early yesterday—my eyes were open before I knew it, so I dropped by while I was up. Why, got a problem with that?"
"Ah! You came because you were worried about me, of course! I heard you're leaving for Hubei this morning, and yet you carved time out of your busy schedule just to come see me..."
He covered his mouth with one hand, his face the very picture of a man moved to tears. As I stared at him, dumbfounded...
"This unworthy Dang Giyeong... I know not how to express a heart so very overcome with gratitude."
Watching him deliver such absurd lines with gestures and a voice theatrical enough that anyone could see it was pure stagecraft, I gave him a look gone sour and said:
"Give it a rest already... it's not funny."
At that, Giyeong dropped the act in an instant, as though he'd never been performing at all, and...
"If you insist?"
—he replied, with truly impressive shamelessness. I settled onto a chair and asked:
"So... how's the body? Holding up all right?"
"Yes!"
"You're really all right?"
"Yes!"
"You burned your innate true qi, didn't you... no regrets?"
"Yes!"
Watching him rattle off yes after yes without a moment's hesitation, I scratched my head and pressed on:
"I hear the wall into the Transcendent Realm has gotten a lot harder for you to cross now... and here I am, fit as a fiddle. You truly have no regrets?"
"Yes!"
"You're a spy for the Demonic Cult, aren't you?"
"Hahahaha..."
Perhaps he wasn't entirely checked out after all—for that last question, Giyeong did not answer yes.
Of course, he didn't deny it either. He simply laughed and let it slide...
After a brief stretch of silence...
Giyeong turned a smile on me and spoke slowly.
"If it truly weighs on your heart, then... do go and find me a human-shaped Snow Ginseng. They say a single one of those would set me right."
"Sure, sure. If I happen to stumble across one, I'll bring it back."
At Giyeong's request for a miraculous elixir that would be nearly impossible to find even if I turned the entire Central Plains upside down, I gave a wry snort and a vague reply.
"By the way, if this gathering is being held in Hubei, you'll be seeing her for the first time in quite a while, won't you?"
This came out of nowhere while he snickered at me, and I answered with a puzzled look on my face.
"Huh? Who?"
"Pardon? You know... the treasured jewel of the Zhuge Clan?"
"Who's that supposed to be?"
When I shot back with a blank look, Giyeong's eyes went wide for the first time in ages, and he hurriedly caught himself.
"Ah... your fiancée, Young Master."
"That... Jegal Baeklily, was it? Her?"
"Jegal Baekhwa."
Giyeong shook his head slowly at the sight of me renaming my own fiancée after some lookalike flower.
"In any case... do be careful."
This bolt-from-the-blue warning left me utterly lost, and he opened his mouth once more.
"How should I put it... the first time I laid eyes on her, something about her felt... off."
Listening to him opine away like a stranger remarking on somebody else's future in-laws, I sighed and answered.
"Ha... and here I thought it was something. Look, if all you've got is pointless drivel, I'd better get going."
"No... truly, she gave off a very bad feeling indeed."
"I'm heading out, all right? We're due to depart within four hours, so I should get back and prepare."
Leaving behind Giyeong—who still wore the face of a man brooding over something grave—I stepped out of the treatment room, and Giyeong, left alone, let a low hum escape him.
"Hmmm....."
I, back in that moment, had no way of knowing.
"Y-you... you trash..."
"No, wait, that's not what I meant..."
...that before long, I would find myself being called a piece of goddamn trash, a good-for-nothing, a lowlife, and the dregs of humanity.