The Mount Hua Sect's Secret Weapon
What is a sonic art, exactly?
Strictly speaking, the term is a blanket name for any martial art that uses sound as its medium. Techniques that torment an opponent with an ear-splitting roar — or even level the landscape around them — count as sonic arts...
...and so does voice transmission, the art of carrying one's words to a single chosen listener. But then, what about shattering a person's mind with nothing but words? Would that, too, count as a sonic art?
"Why, that reminds me of the time I stepped up onto the deck, drew my sword with all the pomp befitting my station, and bellowed at them to be gone while I still had breath in me. I swear it on my honor — the water bandits were so struck by my majesty that they toppled backward and tumbled straight into the Yangtze. There were even some who..."
How a story that had begun as an idle remark over breakfast was somehow still going with the sun riding at high noon, I couldn't have told you. Faced with a war tale showing not the faintest sign of ending, Dang Giyeong, seated across from me, had long since let his sanity slip its leash and now wore the placid expression of a man who had attained enlightenment.
Lunchtime was nearly upon us and still the man's mouth would not close, so I carefully ventured a word...
"Um... Great Hero Jinchol?"
"Hmm? What is it? If something puzzled you along the way, ask freely at any time..."
"It's not that — it's nearly time for lunch, and I was wondering how much of your story is left to go."
"Tsk... what a shame. We'd only just reached the truly thrilling part, you know. Very well, let's see to the meal first, and I shall pick up where I left off after."
At the sight of Jinchol smacking his lips and mourning with perfect sincerity, I sank into a long, inward lament...
Wow... I really am a lunatic. What possessed me to open my mouth and say something pointless, and cook up this entire catastrophe?
It had not been long after we set out from the inn.
"Aigoo, my back... aigoo..."
Despite the windows being shut tight, the wailing had crept in all the same, and when I slid one open to look outside, there was Jinchol riding directly beside the carriage, groaning at the top of his lungs.
If Myeongwol, whom everyone addressed as Eldest Brother, was entering the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament, he could only be around twenty-three — which meant Jinchol, called Fourth Uncle by the juniors, had to be hovering somewhere near forty...
"Aigoooo... I've grown so old that merely mounting a horse near kills me."
Like some eighty-year-old, he was carrying on at full volume as if begging someone — anyone — to overhear. Whether from embarrassment at their Fourth Uncle's transparent ploy or plain secondhand shame, the Mount Hua disciples were straining with all their might to avoid meeting my eyes...
"Great Hero Falling Sword, why don't you simply ride along in our carriage?"
"Hmm... would that truly be all right?"
The moment the carriage's owner — that is to say, I — granted permission, the man who'd been knocking on death's door a breath ago went scampering aboard as though nothing had ever happened.
And the very first words out of him once he'd climbed up were:
"Incidentally... my title is not the Falling Sword but the Falling Blossom Sword. Anyone overhearing might take it for a sword that drops out of the sky, you see. Pahahahaha!"
For some reason, an inexplicable current of dread ran through me at that moment — but I chalked it up to nerves and offered a polite laugh.
"Ahahaha... my memory's been getting so spotty these days, you see..."
That was the last moment I could have thrown him out of the carriage, rudeness be damned — though I, poor fool, had no way of knowing it.
Jinchol's apocalyptic mouth had, to his credit, stayed quiet right up until he boarded. But when an idle remark about plum blossoms slipped out during our slapdash breakfast inside the carriage, it must have pressed his story button, for from that point on the man talked for nearly half a day without a single pause...
Had Mount Hua, then, devised a sonic art that ages a man in the blink of an eye? By lunchtime, Dang Giyeong and I staggered down from the carriage wearing faces aged the better part of a decade.
However slapdash our breakfasts might be, even we could hardly skip lunch as well, so we had pulled over at the roadside, and everyone was busy eating.
"Dushik... there isn't some way to deal with that, is there? Keep listening and I swear I'll go on a stabbing spree."
When I asked Dang Giyeong with a haggard face, he answered me with a face even closer to death.
"I'll hold him down — will you do the stabbing, Young Master? Ah... no, wait. I have a dagger, so you hold him down, Young Master."
"Should we, though?"
"What sort of lunacy are the two of you discussing so calmly?"
Just as Dang Giyeong and I were hatching our conspiracy, the Vice Squad Leader apparently caught wind of it and came walking over.
"Haa... riding a horse over must have been lovely for you, Vice Squad Leader. Trade places with me for a single day, and you'll sympathize with exactly why I'm saying all this."
"Young Master, the Vice Squad Leader ought to be trading places with me, the Squad Leader."
"Then you go grab some poor soul and stick him in your seat. If you won't, shall I pick one out and force him in for you?"
"Oh... as ever, Young Master, your brilliance dazzles. I shall hurry off and fetch a body to board in my stead at once."
Watching his own Squad Leader — ordinarily the laziest, most unhurried of men — move with such startling speed, the Vice Squad Leader laughed in something like awe and turned to me.
"Heh heh... just how bad could it possibly be? I shall ride in your place this afternoon, Young Master."
"Good. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten."
Watching him march willingly into the pit in my stead, I patted him on the shoulder.
"If anyone asks where the Green Heaven Squad Leader and I went, just tell them we go riding in the afternoons to catch a bit of fresh air."
"Well... understood."
And so the Vice Squad Leader and the Green Heaven Squad's youngest boarded the carriage...
That evening, when we reached yet another inn and the carriage door swung open—
"Aw, what a shame. I'll tell you the rest of my stories tomorrow, then."
Apparently he still had plenty left unsaid, judging by the look of disappointment on his face as he stepped down — and behind him, abandoned in the carriage, sat a Vice Squad Leader aged a decade in an instant, exactly as I had been, and a youngest whose eyes had lost all focus.
"Aigoo... there he goes. Dushik, why did you have to drag the kid aboard just to turn him into that?"
"Uh... um... Kid! Come on, snap out of it!"
At the sight of his subordinate's condition, Dang Giyeong went speechless for a moment before seizing him by the shoulders and shouting for him to come back to his senses — but...
"Eheheheheh."
All the youngest had left was a pair of glazed, rolling pupils, a slack-open mouth, and a thin line of drool sliding down his chin.
It was when the moon hung at its highest point in the sky.
From inside the carriage parked neatly in front of the inn, small, furtive voices were leaking out.
"So your plan is for me to ride the carriage on the way back? I can't do it. You all sort out a rotation among yourselves."
"Are you trying to weasel your way out, Young Master?"
"If we lock you in there and set up a rotation for the rest, the pool of sacrifices shrinks dramatically, no? What do you think?"
"If the two of you could both calm down first, please."
Dang Giyeong and I, along with the Vice Squad Leader and a handful of Green Heaven Squad members, were huddled together inside the carriage, holding an emergency strategy meeting...
"Why is Young Master so mercilessly strict with me and me alone!"
"Strict, my ass....."
"Shh... and what will you do if he overhears you? However much that old man scrambles people's brains by monologuing from dawn to dusk, he is still a Plum Blossom Swordsman."
"Vice Squad Leader... could this actually be a ploy by the Nine Sects and One Union, planted to keep the Five Great Clans in check?"
"Surely not... In any case, the reason we've gathered in the dead of night is to find a way out of this mess, is it not? Then kindly confine the discussion to that."
We wracked our brains for a good long while, but no promising solution presented itself.
"Everyone out of the carriage. I'll just smash the damn thing, and we'll go by horseback."
"Shall we, then? Truthfully, only you and I ever ride this carriage anyway, so if just the two of us suffer, everyone else gets to be happy."
Just as we were finally settling on the smash-the-carriage plan—
"If suffering is unavoidable either way, why not call it training and simply run there on your own two legs?"
"Oh? Kid, go on — explain that one in detail."
"Um... well... even if we smash the carriage, if he rides alongside us chattering away, there'd be no way to stop him, would there..."
"Right...? So what do you propose?"
"I was thinking that rather than that, we could simply walk, under the banner of physical conditioning... Who in their right mind would dare strike up a conversation with someone openly in the middle of training?"
"And if he starts lecturing us from alongside anyway? Because I think that would genuinely send me over the edge."
"Then we simply insist this is how the Dang Clan's training has always been done. If he's that put out, he's welcome to take it up with the Clan Head, no?"
"Kid, do you honestly think that makes any sense?"
The Vice Squad Leader chided him in a scolding tone, but—
"That's... actually surprisingly airtight?"
"No — why are you like this too, Young Master... Granting a hundred concessions, I could just barely understand the Young Clan Head and the chief of the escort suddenly taking to horses, but do you truly believe it makes sense for the two of you to suddenly run all the way to Hebei?"
"Why do you assume it would only be the two of us running?"
"Pardon?"
"It's nothing but martial artists in this company anyway. Everyone runs."
"What in the world is that supposed to..."
"One man doing something insane alone is just a lunatic — but a whole crowd doing it together? Why, that's called a trend."
"Oh... that is... surprisingly sound."
"Why is even the Squad Leader like this!"
The Vice Squad Leader tried to rein in his Young Clan Head and Squad Leader, who both seemed to be sliding into open nonsense...
"Vice Squad Leader. Pick one."
"Pick between what, exactly..."
"Option one: we smash the carriage to splinters."
".........."
"Option two: everyone walks."
"Let's just go with the second option. If word that we smashed the carriage reaches the Financial Hall Master, he'll collapse on the spot all over again."
And so it was decided: we would run to Hebei.
Morning came around once more...
"Might I ask what, precisely, it is you are all doing?"
"Ah... we have decided to run the remaining distance, for the sake of physical conditioning."
"Well now... you young folk certainly have your minds set dead on it, don't you."
We broke into a run, leaving that accursed grandmaster of sonic arts alone in the carriage.
And so Dang Giyeong, the Green Heaven Squad, and I ran our hearts out, drunk on the taste of liberation...
Unfortunately, our happiness was another man's misfortune.
Rrrrrkk—
"Myeongwol!"
Jinchol, who had been perfectly serene whenever left to his own devices, abruptly flung open the carriage window and bellowed Myeongwol's name out of nowhere — and Myeongwol guided his horse alongside to answer.
"You called, Fourth Uncle?"
"You lot could use some conditioning as well — run along like the Dang Clan folk there, reins in hand."
"Pardon...?"
"With the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament right around the corner, wouldn't a little extra training do you good?"
"Yes... understood, Fourth Uncle."
And so the third-generation disciples of Mount Hua joined the jogging as well.
Even though we were all, technically, running together...
"Dushik, the breeze is cool today. What a beautiful day this is."
"Aren't they, though. If only every day on the road to Hebei could be like this one."
Thus did some of us run, drunk on happiness.
"Eldest Brother... are we... really running?"
"Fourth Uncle says we run... what can we do. We run."
"Are those lunatics actually insane? What is wrong with their heads, abandoning a perfectly good carriage and horses to run like that, of all things?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
"They do say the Dang Clan is crawling with lunatics....."
And so someone ran on, wheezing and gasping, a heart brimming over with misery at this bolt from the blue.