KABOOM!
A large inn burned fiercely. Blackened wooden pillars collapsed, sending ash billowing into the air. The face of the fiend who emerged through it all was so familiar it came as a shock.
“What the hell are you all doing?”
“…”
That’s what I wanted to ask.
Silence fell. Unnamed stared at me, his gaze shaking as though an earthquake had struck. Sound Transmission slipped through his barely moving lips and reached my ears.
Why—why is Benefactor Jeok coming out of there?
How should I know?
Wasn’t he Dark Heaven?
That’s what I want to ask.
Amitabha1. Could you be Dark Heaven?
What kind of crazy question is that?
If we’re Dark Heaven, does that make you a member of the Vatican?
I wasn’t the only one dumbfounded by Unnamed’s words. Jeok Cheongang, who was exceptionally skilled at eavesdropping on Sound Transmission, already had a face twisted like an evil spirit.
“What? This old man is Dark Heaven?”
“N-no, that’s not what I meant. There’s been a small misunderstanding…”
My attempt to clear up that misunderstanding went nowhere. More precisely, our proud Murim Crusade—already burning with fighting spirit ahead of the Murim Alliance’s founding—wouldn’t let it.
“Dark Heaven!”
“The fiend just declared himself Dark Heaven!”
Keyword entered.
“Wait. He seems to know the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon.”
“Of course he knows him! How many times has the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon fought Dark Heaven?”
“I see. He’s a Dark Heaven fiend!”
Miraculous logic.
“You fiend! You look like a demon straight out of hell!”
“And that hair, all bright red! He looks like he’ll dye the world in blood!”
Attacking his appearance.
“Kill him first!”
“Capture him and you’ll become a hero!”
Medieval Crusader-style conclusion.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. Faced with the collective madness of some thousand Murim Crusaders, Unnamed and I snapped out of our daze and waved our hands frantically.
“No! That’s not it!”
“Amitabha1! Everyone, stop! That man is my master, Master Hong Dao’s…”
At Unnamed’s shout, the martial artists nearest us widened their eyes.
“Oh!”
“Is that true?”
Finally. They’re listening.
Unnamed glanced at me as if he thought the same thing, then nodded.
“It is.”
“Good heavens. Not just any fiend, but the villain who harmed Master Hong Dao!”
“What?”
“What an unforgivable fiend! Tear him limb from limb!”
“…”
Fuck. I can’t do this.
Would these martial artists suffer qi deviation if they listened to someone finish a sentence? They refused to understand a damn word.
The grand finale of this collective madness came courtesy of a stranger emerging from the wreckage of the collapsed building.
“Stop, you wicked fiend! How dare you commit such a heinous crime in Henan!”
Jeok Cheongang, who had been staring at this insanity with his mouth open, muttered with a pained expression.
“Not one of these people is in his right mind. Listen to this old man first…”
“Enough talk! This Moon Beauty Saber will not forgive you!”
“…Then you can take a beating first.”
Fair enough. For Jeok Cheongang, he’d held back a long time.
Whoosh. Fwoom!
Bye-bye, Moon Beauty Saber. Enjoy the Disco Pang Pang.2
Moon Beauty Saber rushed forward like a streak of light, then shot backward like a cannonball and slammed deep into the wreckage.
None of the martial artists gathered there had seen the punch. None of them could have. The sheer force of it froze the air around them.
“M-Moon Beauty Saber, down in a single blow…!”
“Aaah! The fiend’s martial arts have reached the heavens!”
Forget his martial arts. His anger looks like it’s reached the heavens.
Everyone seemed to understand that provoking Jeok Cheongang right now would be a bad idea. They wanted to defeat a fiend and make a name for themselves, sure. They just didn’t want to be the ones getting defeated.
Finally, some quiet.
With everyone silent, I had one chance to clear up the misunderstanding. I cleared my throat and opened my mouth.
Or rather, I was about to.
“There’s been a serious misunderstanding. The man over there isn’t a fiend, he’s—”
“Halt! Make way!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
I’m going to lose my mind. Who is it this time?
But the man who appeared as the crowd parted like the Red Sea was not someone I could simply call a bastard.
“The Thunderbolt Saber King has arrived!”
“Great Hero Peng has come to punish the fiend himself!”
Thud. Thud.
An enormous old man strode forward as the crowd’s courage surged anew. He had broad shoulders, fierce eyes, and a massive saber slung over one shoulder.
At the sight of the Thunderbolt Saber King, Jeok Cheongang sighed.
“Finally, someone I can talk to.”
Agreed.
The Thunderbolt Saber King and Jeok Cheongang bickered constantly, but they were quite close. Longtime rivals who were, for all practical purposes, friends. He would recognize Jeok without any trouble.
Sure enough, the Thunderbolt Saber King looked him up and down, then opened his eyes wide.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story. Send these people away first.”
“Answer my question first.”
“Hm?”
“I asked what a bastard fiend who deserves to be torn limb from limb is doing here.”
“…”
“…”
Jeok Cheongang’s eyelids began to twitch.
Clip-clop. Clip-clop.
Hooves sounded through the silence. The enormous old man gazing out of the carriage window suddenly spoke.
“The truth is, I recognized you the moment I saw you. How could I not?”
With everyone watching, the Thunderbolt Saber King continued in a solemn voice.
“Red hair, red beard. Anyone would know you were the Fire King. The others couldn’t have dreamed you’d Returned to Youth, but I knew.”
“I see.”
I nodded, then asked, “So why did you start swinging your saber?”
“That was…”
“Oh, and while you’re at it, explain why you ordered an all-out attack after one exchange left you shaking in your boots.”
“Shaking in my boots? Ha ha ha.”
A heavy silence settled over the carriage. Faced with everyone’s distrustful stares, the Thunderbolt Saber King stiffened.
“I wanted to give them some real combat experience.”
“Ah. Combat experience.”
“Think of it as preparation for the coming fight against Dark Heaven. Facing the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang, would be valuable experience for all of them.”
I asked seriously,
“By ‘experience,’ do you mean experience of the afterlife?”
“…”
That shut him up. If he had a conscience, it had to: twenty people had been carried to the medical clinic. Most were Third Rate martial artists caught in the aftermath of blows exchanged between two of the Ten Kings—the Fire King and the Thunderbolt Saber King.
We’re lucky it stopped there.
If the poet Yun Dong-ju3 suffered at even the wind stirring a leaf, they suffered like hell in the howling blade wind.
“Still… I heard they’re all safe.”
“They are. They’ll be safe for at least the next fifteen days, since they’ll spend them lying in the medical clinic.”
Their taste of the afterlife had left its mark.
Martial artists might live on the edge of a blade, but PTSD was no joke. I’d visited the victims. Their faces were pale, and they couldn’t even speak.
The worst of all was the wandering martial artist called Moon Beauty Saber. He was trembling so violently that I almost mistook Henan for Antarctica’s King Sejong Station.4
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t ordered that all-out attack, Great Hero Peng.”
The Thunderbolt Saber King’s round eyes widened at my continued criticism.
“And what about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you! Weren’t you the one who rounded up every martial artist nearby and brought them here?”
“I admit that part. But given the circumstances, it was unavoidable. Isn’t that right?”
At my question, Unnamed, my accomplice in the corner, ran his fingers over his prayer beads.
“Benefactor Jin is correct. Even if Shakyamuni5 had been in my position, he would have rushed forward crying out for the destruction of demons.”
“Could you uproot a bodhi tree6 and crush a fiend’s skull with it?”
“Amitabha1. I could.”
“…”
The Thunderbolt Saber King had a temper to match Jeok Cheongang’s, but he couldn’t openly pick on Unnamed. The only Disciple left behind by his dear friend, the Dharma King Hong Dao, was a sore spot for him.
“Urgh.”
He glared at me.
“And you’ve been at it this whole time!”
“What? Why?”
“Are you and I friends?”
“No.”
“Then do you think the Hebei Peng Family is a joke?”
“How did you get from one to the other? You’re changing the subject because you’ve run out of things to say.”
“You little brat. The blood on your head hasn’t even dried, and you keep talking back…”
“Oof. Clack, clack. Dentures.”
I didn’t know exactly what dentures had to do with anything, but the feeling behind it clearly got through.
“How dare you!”
The Thunderbolt Saber King’s face flushed red. He was about to leap to his feet when the two men who had been silent all along spoke almost at once.
“Calm yourself, Sir Peng.”
“Quiet. All of you, shut your mouths.”
The voices and moods could hardly have been more different. Perhaps the only thing connecting the two men was the two characters in their title: Ten Kings.
“I was rash,” the Azure Sky Sword King said plainly. “It had been so long since I last felt my blood stir. I let it get the better of me.”
Jeok Cheongang spoke next.
“This old man did nothing wrong. You were the rash ones.”
“…”
That’s our Old Master.
An evergreen if ever there was one. The Thunderbolt Saber King stared at Jeok as if wondering whether he was human.
“Jeok, don’t you feel even a little guilty?”
“Why should I? Martial artists can have a little scrap when they meet. There were people fighting in the inn before I even went in.”
“What would have happened if Great Hero Namgung hadn’t stepped in when he did?”
The Thunderbolt Saber King was right about that much. The dove of peace who’d brought the situation under control was the Azure Sky Sword King.
After a brief exchange with Jeok Cheongang, he’d suffered a minor Internal Injury. He appeared only after settling his internal energy, and one of the Namgung Family members among the crowd recognized him.
Whoa, whoa, whoaaa! Grand Family Head!
He’d screamed like he’d seen a ghost.
The other martial artists, who’d lost their heads at the words Dark Heaven, finally came to their senses. One lunatic did ask whether the Namgung Family was part of Dark Heaven too, but fortunately, our proud Murim Crusaders regained their reason.
If Jeok Cheongang hadn’t Returned to Youth, a few of them probably would have recognized him in the first place.
“That was almost a catastrophe!”
“I could have explained everything. And it happened because your eyes are as bad as a dog’s, you Peng bastard.”
“The inn collapsed! People got hurt!”
“Ahem.”
Perhaps he felt a bit guilty himself. Jeok Cheongang cleared his throat, then opened his mouth with a shameless expression.
“Given the location, I held back. At worst, they got bumped by a little falling debris. Put some spit on it and they’ll be fine. I’ll compensate the innkeeper properly. Even I could see the place burned quite badly.”
“…Is that really coming from the man who killed a thousand members of the Demonic Cult for burning Mount Jiuhua? The more I hear, the more my chest swells.”
“Of course they had to die. Those bastards never intended to pay compensation.”
“…”
What is this?
It was utter nonsense, yet somehow it had a logic of its own.
Momentarily at a loss for words, the Thunderbolt Saber King muttered,
“Returned to Youth only changed the skin you’re wearing. The contents are still the same. Your personality is still completely fucked.”
“You ought to do something about the skin on your face, Peng. All you’ve done is get old without Returning to Youth.”
“What did you say?”
“Ho. They say a man who failed to Return to Youth gets angry when reminded of it. You’re a perfect example.”
“How dare you, Jeok!”
“Hm? What did you say? I can’t hear you. The words of an insignificant nobody who couldn’t even Return to Youth are hard to make out.”
Would you look at him dishing out area-of-effect damage.
I couldn’t speak for anyone else, but I saw the Azure Sky Sword King’s shoulders twitch in his seat by the window. He quietly avoided my gaze, looked outside, and spoke.
“You two should stop now.”
At first I thought he was only trying to change the subject. Then I followed his gaze.
“Yeah. You definitely should.”
Ahead of us stood a long stretch of city wall and a vast crowd. Above the iron gates, a huge sign bore three characters in bold, soaring strokes.
Murim Alliance.
Footnotes
-
Amitabha is the name of a Buddha, spoken here as a Buddhist invocation. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
Disco Pang Pang is a Korean amusement ride that spins and jolts its riders. ↩
-
Yun Dong-ju was a Korean poet of the Japanese colonial period, known for poetry marked by intense sensitivity and introspection. ↩
-
King Sejong Station is a South Korean research station in Antarctica. ↩
-
Shakyamuni is the historical Buddha. ↩
-
The bodhi tree is the tree under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. ↩
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