The Blood Demon Pagoda (2)
The next morning, Seok Dae-ryong came back with the training schedule. The Twin-Ten Squad's education consisted almost entirely of physical conditioning.
"So what exactly is it our squad actually does?" Jin Yigang asked, looking at Seok Dae-ryong.
Going by his face alone, Seok Dae-ryong wasn't the sort of man who belonged with the Twin-Ten Squad. He seemed better suited to some other department than this place, which was practically a gutter. Jin Yigang wondered why he was here, but he didn't ask.
"Our job is supply," Seok Dae-ryong answered.
"Supply — so hauling food around?"
"That's right."
"That woman's dead serious about eating, isn't she."
Cheol Ran's remark that the Twin-Ten Squad was the most important resource finally made sense. It was because they were the supply unit — the ones who brought everyone their food.
"Which woman?" Seok Dae-ryong asked.
"The commander. She said we were the most important resource, remember?"
"No matter how formidable a martial artist you are, you can't fight on an empty stomach."
"Then physical training alone isn't going to cut it, is it?"
"What else would we need?"
"If a resource that important falls behind, that's a disaster. Shouldn't we at least learn how to read a map?"
"You will."
The answer came from the doorway. The group turned their heads. Commander Cheol Ran was standing at the door, and beside her stood a masked woman with a pair of swords strapped to her back. Where a woman radiating such a bleak, harsh aura should have shown some trace of humanity, there was none at all. This was Cheol Ran's bodyguard, the Heartless Demon Sword Queen, Dokgo Jin-yeong.
"Learning what, exactly?" Jin Yigang asked.
"How to drive a cart, how to handle camels, how to read maps, how to descend safely when you're lost in the mountains. That sort of thing."
"Is there a library here?"
"A library?"
"Yeah."
"You don't mean a place that collects martial arts manuals, do you?"
"I'm talking about a library of miscellaneous books."
"Then we've got the Miscellaneous Studies Library."
"Where is it?"
"The first floor of the Blood Demon Pagoda."
"Can anyone go in?"
"The first floor, yes."
"Checking books out too?"
"Probably."
"Thanks. Mind if I head out?" Jin Yigang asked, rising from his seat.
"Did five people happen to come by?" Cheol Ran asked. She had been told that five men had been assigned to the Twin-Ten Squad on Sagong Pyo's recommendation.
"Five people?"
"The ones who were admitted on the Southern Vanguard Commissioner's recommendation…"
"Haven't seen them."
"That's odd?" Cheol Ran tilted her head.
"I'm sure they'll turn up sooner or later. I can go, right?"
"Go ahead." Cheol Ran nodded.
"Old man, want to come along?" Jin Yigang asked, looking at Ji Gon.
"Might as well." Ji Gon stood up, and at that Ju Chuchu rose and followed him.
"You're coming too?" Jin Yigang asked her.
Ju Chuchu nodded without a word. The three of them headed outside.
The tower was tall enough to be visible from the barracks.
"I suppose the Blood Demon Pagoda was built by the Blood Demon Sect too?"
"Not the Blood Demon Sect — it was built back in the Blood Sect days."
"It's a thousand years old, you say?"
"That's right."
"I wonder what it looks like inside. By the way, how long is the training period?" Jin Yigang asked, glancing back at Ju Chuchu, who was following along in silence. It was just talk for the sake of talking — he hadn't asked out of any real curiosity.
But Ju Chuchu gave no answer.
"Fifteen days," said Ji Gon.
"So besides what the commander mentioned earlier, there's nothing else for us to do?"
"Doesn't look like it." Ji Gon nodded.
Geumcheon Manor was staggeringly vast. It had taken them nearly an hour on foot to get from the barracks to the Blood Demon Pagoda.
"It's huge."
Jin Yigang's jaw dropped as he stood before the Blood Demon Pagoda. The first floor of the square tower measured some sixty feet on a side. Each floor was roughly ten feet tall, and the tower rose ten stories in all.
"Fall from the top of that and you're a dead man."
Guards stood at the entrance to the first floor.
"Register in the visitor's log," one of them said when Jin Yigang announced he wanted to go inside.
Jin Yigang wrote down his number.
"Go on in." The guard opened the door for him.
The three of them entered. But the entry procedure wasn't over yet. A short way in, they came upon another door and a staircase. Above the door hung a plaque reading Miscellaneous Studies Library. Two armed men stood before the stairs, and beside them was a small room, in which sat an old man whose hair had gone completely white.
"Where might you be headed?" the old man asked.
"I was told Number 997's only allowed in the Miscellaneous Studies Library?"
"Correct." The old man nodded.
"Old sir, you'd know about the books in there, I take it?"
"I haven't read every last one of them, but…"
"You haven't read them?"
"Do you know how many books there are?"
"However many books there may be, that's going too far. You work here and you haven't read the books? Does that make any sense? Reading is such a joy, and… ah, you were starved for books, weren't you? Starved, poor soul."
The old man stared at Ji Gon, utterly dumbfounded. His face plainly said, somebody shut this fool up.
"We can go in, right?"
"Go on in." The guard opened the door, and Jin Yigang hurried inside.
"Whoa—! That new-book smell."
Jin Yigang broke into a wide grin. Twelve enormous bookshelves stood there, crammed full of books. He walked over to the wall directly in front of him. Written on it was an explanation of the Miscellaneous Studies Library.
"Geography… so this is number twelve here."
Jin Yigang headed straight for it.
"What are you looking for?" Ji Gon asked, following him.
"We're supposed to cross the Taprimok Basin, right? And in that basin sits the Taklamakan Desert — the harshest one in the world."
"So books about the desert…"
"It'll be worlds apart from experiencing it firsthand, but I figure we should at least know what kind of place it is before we go."
Before long, the three of them stood before the twelfth bookshelf.
"Now for Xinjiang."
Jin Yigang slowly scanned the shelf. A smile spread across his face — there was a section on Xinjiang. Only twenty-odd books, fewer than in the other sections.
"I'll go browse somewhere else," Ji Gon said, wandering off to another shelf.
Jin Yigang pulled out a book, settled into a spot, and sat down. Ju Chuchu took out a book of her own and sat down across from him.
The two read in silence.
When Jin Yigang finished one book and reached for another, he glanced at Ju Chuchu. She was still absorbed in her book. Absent the wrecked face, she would have been quite the beauty — large eyes, a high straight nose, red, full lips. The scar that must have begun at her forehead ran across her eyes, nose, and mouth, spreading over her whole face. Whoever had done it had clearly gone at her with a mirror in hand, determined to ruin her.
As if she'd felt his gaze, Ju Chuchu looked up. Their eyes met in the air between them.
She didn't look away. They held each other's gaze for a while, then both returned to their books. A stack of finished volumes grew at Jin Yigang's side.
How much time had passed?
He had the sensation of someone looking down at him and raised his head. It was the old man from the library entrance.
"Enjoying the books?" the old man asked.
"Immensely." Jin Yigang nodded.
"Countless people have trained here, but you're the first ever to come looking for geography books."
"They're all strong enough not to need to know any geography."
"And you…?"
"You've probably noticed already, but I'm weak. Weak men have to do this sort of thing if they want to keep living."
"Books can't stand in for experience."
"Of course not. But before I came here, I didn't even know that 'Taklamakan' means a place you can enter but never leave. I didn't know there are wells in the desert called cheonji — heaven and earth springs. I learned today that a camel has two eyelids and a mechanism to open and close its nostrils so it can block the sand blowing in on the wind, and that the soles of its feet are flat like a serving tray so it doesn't sink into the sand. Not everything, certainly, but there's a great deal packed inside these."
Jin Yigang held up a book and smiled broadly.
"It's about time to close up."
"Can't I keep reading?"
"Keep reading?"
"If you'll allow it, old sir."
"You really do find this fascinating, don't you."
"I may lie about other things, but never about books."
"…"
"Since you're being generous anyway, recommend me one book before you go — something that can teach me the Barhu language."
"The Barhu language?"
"Yeah."
"Why on earth…"
"I'm a Grade 5 proxy. Since I've got time to spare, I figure I'll give Barhu a try."
"It's possible to learn a language from a book?" the old man asked, looking startled.
"Being able to exchange simple greetings ought to be enough, no?"
"I suppose so. Very well, I'll find you one." The old man went to the section where books on language were gathered and brought back one on the Barhu tongue. It was enormously thick.
"Wow—! Look at the size of this thing."
"No need to be frightened already. It's only this thick because it records every word of the language used in Barhu."
"I'm not frightened, I'm delighted."
"Delighted?"
"Thin books are the thing I hate most in this world. A book must be thick, no exceptions. In my opinion, anyone who writes a thin book ought to have his head taken off."
"I see…"
"Anyway, thank you. Where's the privy?"
"Out in the rear garden. And take this as an old man's warning: if you have no wish to fall into obsession, never — never — go up above this floor."
"I never go anywhere I've got nothing to gain."
"Good luck to you." The old man left.
Jin Yigang buried himself in his books again.
"Not leaving?" Around midnight, Ji Gon came over and said.
"If you're tired, go sleep."
"And you?"
"They said I can stay here."
"You're planning to read through the night?"
"Only a few books left."
"…"
"If you've got nothing pressing, fetch a few Jiyangdan pills out of my crate."
"Those poison pills?"
"To anyone else, maybe. To me they're a tonic."
"Why not just ask me to bring you food?"
"One mustn't eat in a sacred library. But tell me — did you find what you were looking for?"
"…You knew I was searching for something?"
"You weren't reading — you were wandering around in circles everywhere. I'll have a think about it myself while you're gone, so hurry back. I'd go myself, but I can't use lightness arts."
"All right."
"If you're going, go now." Jin Yigang said, looking at Ju Chuchu.
She shook her head.
"Careful. While that old man's gone, I might just pounce on you."
Ju Chuchu stared at him steadily. Then she shook her head again.
"Still not going?"
This time she nodded.
"Tagging along after that old man at least guarantees you won't die. So if you want to live, chase after him diligently."
Ju Chuchu smiled faintly, rose, and followed Ji Gon out.
"So what's the secret hidden in here?"
Jin Yigang stood, lifted a lamp, and carried it around as he examined the interior. Aside from the sheer number of books, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
No — there was something special: the unusual lamps. Every wall except the one with the door held oil lamps set at intervals of about a foot and a half.
And they weren't just one per spot — they were embedded from the ceiling all the way down to the floor, spaced a foot apart. Since each wall rose ten feet to the ceiling, that made nine lamps in a single vertical line.
"One line, two lines, three lines…" He counted the rows of lamps. "Forty — and five more. So three hundred sixty-five in all, and three hundred sixty-five stands for one year. There are twelve bookshelves, so each shelf must represent a month. Surely lighting the lamp that matches today's date won't just unravel the whole secret…"
Jin Yigang walked to the first bookshelf.
The shelf had fifteen compartments in all.
"Counting front and back, thirty books. Perfectly ordinary."
He moved to the next shelf. It was the same as the first. He kept circling the shelves, one after another.
"This is it."
Before him stood a shelf unlike all the rest — the eighth bookshelf, which in Jin Yigang's reckoning represented the eighth month. Now he examined each compartment.
"The eleventh compartment, so the eleventh day of the eighth month. Whose birthday might that be? If the one who built this Blood Demon Pagoda was Xuehuang, then it'd be his daughter's, or perhaps his wife's. Which means now…"
He went over to the wall studded with the three hundred sixty-five lamps, first found the eighth month, then the eleventh lamp in its line.
"There."
He set a red tinder on the lamp, snuffed out every other flame in the room, then returned to his original spot and lit the wick.