Drunken Training by Moonlight
Past the clustered guest halls, across the open ground where the grand banquet had been held, and over the stone bridge spanning a moonlit pond—
Two on the right… now!
Gwak Yeon never let his guard down. Pang Family martial artists were posted throughout the estate to keep the night, so caution was only natural.
Some made their rounds with torches. Others stood watch in pairs before buildings that looked important—and there were more than a few of those.
Pushing his already keen vampire senses to their limit, Gwak Yeon slipped just beyond their line of sight as he moved through the grounds of the Hubei Pang Family.
He skimmed the rooftops of the great stables where dozens of fine horses slept, vaulted the outer walls of a garden arranged into a miniature mountain range of strange stones, and cut swiftly through a kitchen corridor where something still simmered in a pot—
Racing from one corner of the estate to another, he found himself thinking of an old friend from his previous life.
I never thought I’d put your goodwill to a use like this.
Pang So-ho. Thanks to that close friendship, Gwak Yeon had been invited to this Hubei Pang Family estate more than once. He still had a fair measure of familiar memory.
Decades had passed since the moment he’d spent his last life’s breath—yet for him, the time that had truly elapsed was short. Of course it was. He had been awake in this body for less than a year, and the memory of dying beside the Shadowless Old Monster still felt near enough to touch. Remembering what he’d lived through around that same time was nothing strange.
Around here… there should have been a pavilion with a great drum…
He rounded a corner and looked up. His memory was right. A high platform with an enormous drum. Beyond it, a long stretch of storehouses, and the wooden fence that had always stood in front of them.
A tea room, is it… The Pang Family must have grown more refined. And this—an apothecary?
Plenty of things had changed. But the broad layout was much the same. The quarters for martial artists, laborers, and household dependents; the watchtowers and guard posts rising from the high walls like battlements; and hall after hall after hall—buildings devoted to clan rules and discipline, to the study of martial arts, to stores and warehouses, to the management of personnel, and to every other ordinary task of a great house.
What Gwak Yeon was hunting, though, was the smell of blood. Blood-scent.
The Blood Cult’s very name was blunt enough, and only recently, in the underground chamber of that thatched house, the villain’s reaction to a blood-born ability had been far too telling.
Those two are connected. They have to be.
And then there were the jiangshi that the man called Lord Goechok had supposedly made, and the faint, uncanny blood-smell that had clung to the formation laid out in that basement…
It might only be other people’s blood…
But if this Lord Goechok belonged to the Blood Cult—if those grotesque methods had come from the Cult—then following blood-scent was not a bad lead at all.
Now and then Gwak Yeon stood still, testing for hidden underground spaces beneath his feet, or checking a building for something sealed away. A vampire’s senses were convenient for work like this.
His nose, stretched to its keenest edge; the feel of the ground through his soles; the sounds that rang from every direction—
As he searched, the presence of the estate’s patrolling guards registered easily enough.
He ranged through the grounds a while longer.
Nothing… Nothing that stands out.
Nothing truly suspicious. The Hubei Pang Family he knew—like the friend he’d met in his past life—was not a house that hid much.
Still, he had to allow for the unknown. And earlier, in the look that had passed between Pang Mu-gwang and the family head, Gwak Yeon had been certain there was something.
Maybe I should go deeper.
He lifted his head and cast his gaze into the distance—toward the heart of the estate, where the direct and collateral lines of the Pang Family lived, including the family head himself.
And then—
…!!!
From somewhere behind him, a thin thread of blood-scent.
Gwak Yeon launched himself into the air. How long he ran, honing his vampire senses to a razor’s edge and tracking that faint smell of blood in reverse, he could not have said.
A long, raised viewing platform. He lifted his head above it, and with vision sharpened to its absolute limit, he saw.
What… is that…!
Far beyond the platform lay the sparring grounds. And on them, under the moon, Pang Mu-gwang was holding a thoroughly drunken sparring match.
…Am I dreaming?
It was the kind of grotesque spectacle some people would only ever see in a dream.
Pang Mu-gwang staggered along in a drunken zigzag, facing perfectly sound Pang Family martial artists with nothing but a blunt wooden club.
"Again! You have to do it again!"
"Uwaaah!"
"…Brother! Over here!"
With a wet crack, Pang Mu-gwang stumbled back. He pinched his nose with one hand and blew—and a stream of bright red blood spattered out.
"Goo—ha! Good!"
"Coming again!"
"Again!"
Pang Family warriors swung heavy sabers at the reeling figure. He looked barely conscious—yet an instant before a blow could land on his head or shoulder, Pang Mu-gwang bent his body backward with uncanny timing, spun with a roaring shout, and—
"…Ghk!"
"…Hup!"
A short cry, and a warrior toppled. One clutched his gut and groaned; another bled from the nose exactly as Pang Mu-gwang had a moment before.
And he was not the only one bleeding. Across the sparring grounds, blood—Pang Mu-gwang’s and someone else’s—was smeared in patches.
"Come on! Again! More!"
"Brother."
"Mm?"
"Your drunkenness seems to be wearing off."
"Ah—i-is it?!"
"You didn’t push the liquor out of your system, did you? You know the training doesn’t work if you do that."
"Sorry. I’ll go drink more right away."
Pang Mu-gwang and another young man—most likely a cousin—exchanged a conversation that made no earthly sense.
And then the truly strange part: under the moon, with Pang Family martial artists still standing ready on the grounds, Pang Mu-gwang tipped a bottle and drank himself back into a stupor for the sake of training.
"You could have sparred with Young Master Gwak earlier, though."
"Father’s decision was right. We couldn’t very well impose on a guest who’d only just arrived today. And I couldn’t skip today’s training either."
"That’s… fair enough, Brother."
Bizarre as it was, they were training. A form of training so outlandish that ordinary people—and even veterans of a stormy life in the martial world—would never have seen its like.
Training…? That?
From the viewing platform, Gwak Yeon watched in secret. Once he saw what the blood-scent actually was, the sheer absurdity of it drained the strength from his limbs.
For the briefest instant, the senses he had honed to a knife’s edge dulled—just a fraction.
"…And you are?"
A voice from behind him.
Startled, Gwak Yeon turned—and found Pang Chi-ung standing right there.
Damn!
Pang Chi-ung, current Family Head of the Hubei Pang Family. Of all times, he had appeared in the one moment Gwak Yeon had let his senses slip. Gwak Yeon wrenched those senses back to full sharpness at once.
A gosu.
He recognized it immediately. The man was deliberately holding his own aura in check.
"Young Master Gwak, is it not?"
"Family Head!"
Gwak Yeon’s mind raced. He met the curious eyes of the man studying him and invented a reason for being here at all.
"What brings you out here in the dead of night?"
Thinking of the Pang Family friend he had known, and of answers that would land if their natures hadn’t changed, Gwak Yeon answered with a calm face.
"I simply couldn’t sleep tonight. I was walking here and there when I heard a racket, and somehow I ended up this far."
"Oh-ho! Is that so?"
The mouth smiled. The eyes did not. Something still hadn’t convinced him, so Gwak Yeon pressed on.
"I’ll be honest with you."
"I’m listening."
"My body has been itching for the sparring match I didn’t get to have."
"Spar…ring?"
"Yes. At the banquet earlier, there was a chance to cross hands with Young Master Pang Mu-gwang. Ever since then, this body of mine has been thumping away without the least sense of tact. I thought someone might still be awake on the sparring grounds, so I came looking."
"Oh—!"
Only then did Pang Chi-ung’s face break into a broad grin. He must have released the aura he’d been holding; across the web of Gwak Yeon’s keen vampire senses, a dozen small physical responses began to register.
"Is that so—? Well then, this is perfect!"
A heartbeat that quickened with genuine pleasure. A faint flush rising in the face. Even if the man stood above Gwak Yeon’s present level, he did not seem to be lying.
Whew.
Good.
"As it happens, Mu-gwang is training right now! The boy was disappointed he couldn’t spar with you either—so this works out splendidly!"
"Training… you say?"
"Hahaha! What else would it be? Come closer and look, Young Master Gwak!"
Turning his back, Pang Chi-ung strode ahead. Only then did Gwak Yeon notice—
In both of the man’s hands were wine jars.
He had approached Gwak Yeon with his presence so thoroughly suppressed that even the liquid inside those jars had not been allowed to slosh.
The gap between Gwak Yeon and a family head of one of the Seven Great Families was still considerable. He felt it keenly.
Damn it.
He would have to climb back to his past life’s strength faster. Pang Chi-ung’s explanation was already pouring into his ears.
"You see? He deliberately gets drunk, then trains."
Pang Chi-ung was describing a scene Gwak Yeon had already expanded his vision to watch from far away. Gwak Yeon put on a startled face as if seeing it for the first time.
"He trains… drunk?"
"How does it look to you?"
"I… don’t really know. Is there a reason he has to drink for it?"
"Hahaha! It looks strange the first time you see it!"
Pang Chi-ung laughed and lifted a finger from the jar, pointing at Pang Mu-gwang as the young man lurched left and right.
"But when you’re in real danger and have to recover a body thrown off balance—or when you need to launch a technique in a moment of life and death—this kind of training helps!"
"And it has to be under this moonlight?"
"There’s a reason for the moonlight too! When fighters of roughly equal strength tangle, there always comes a moment when stars explode behind your eyes, or your body spins and the world goes black. This training is for that one moment. Too bright is no good, too dark is no good—just about this light is perfect. Hahaha!"
The reasoning held together. Even so… it was an awfully crude method.
"Is this… really the only way? There must be other methods."
"…Truth is, the boy likes his drink."
"Ah."
Looking faintly embarrassed, Pang Chi-ung scratched his cheek and muttered,
"If I made him prepare for the Azure Cloud Gathering stone-cold sober—aiya, just thinking about it makes my head hurt."
"The Azure Cloud Gathering?"
"Ah! The meeting of rising stars from the Seven Great Families, a few months from now. Until then, as long as he’s at the estate, he’s to keep up this training every day."
"I see."
"…Hm?"
"…Yes?"
Pang Chi-ung looked at Gwak Yeon as if expecting something. Then his face lit up with an ah!, and he laughed again as he spoke.
"Oh dear! I never mentioned it. If luck holds, Young Master Gwak may be able to take part in this Azure Cloud Gathering as well."
"What… do you mean by that?"
"Because—"
Just as his old friend from a past life had been, Pang Chi-ung showed neither a scrap of evidence linking him to the Blood Cult nor any sign of hiding anything. And from his mouth came words Gwak Yeon had not expected.
"—for the empty seat among the Seven Great Families, I mean to recommend the Seoho Gwak Family, just as Elder Moyong has."
"…!"
Gwak Yeon was mildly startled. If that happened, the odds of the Seoho Gwak Family joining the Seven Great Families would leap. At the same time, the possibility of a Blood Cult connection was being quietly erased.
These bastards… they haven’t changed at all.
More and more, Pang Chi-ung was starting to overlap with the friend from Gwak Yeon’s past life. That same odd smile the hopeless martial arts fanatic used to wear was settling at the corners of this man’s mouth.
Gwak Yeon smiled too, and murmured as he met Pang Chi-ung’s eyes.
"You don’t mean to recommend us for free, I take it."
"Hahaha! Is that how it looked?"
"You want me to help Young Master Pang with his training."
"…How did you know?"
"One look was enough."
The man had been telegraphing it inside and out, and even his surprise looked just like that old friend’s. The more familiar he felt, the less formal his speech became—that, too, was the same.
No matter how much time passes, the Pang Family is still the Pang Family.
In the end, it didn’t matter either way.
Besides—
"Well. That’s fine with me."
—he had been unable to stop thinking about the ancestral martial arts these people had forgotten.
"Then… would now be all right?"