The young man’s brown skin was handsomely tanned, and fine muscles stood out across his lean frame. At a glance, his features marked him as different from the Han Chinese of the Central Plains.
He looked down the hill and wondered,
…What happened here?
It was a reasonable question. A vast pasture was burning before his eyes.
Even now, the rapidly spreading flames were belching endless clouds of black smoke, while cows, sheep, horses, and other livestock fled frantically through the chaos.
Grrrr.
A low growl and tremor suddenly reached him from below. The young man gently stroked the snow-white mane of the white tiger beneath him.
“It’s all right. It’s okay.”
Grrk.
“You’re really angry, aren’t you?”
Feelings were not conveyed through words alone.
Though one was human and the other a beast, they had spent enough years together to understand each other from the slightest gesture or change in a growl.
The young man met the white tiger’s blue gaze and nodded.
“That’s right. We’ll put out the fire first. We can punish the intruders afterward.”
Left alone, the flames would spread beyond control and reduce the entire pasture to ash.
The land could be restored, of course, but they still had to save the livestock that would otherwise be swallowed by the flames and die.
After that…
How dare they?
It was bad enough that the intruders had entered the Nanman Beast Palace’s territory without permission. They had set it on fire, too. They would answer for that.
The young man glared at the indistinct figures beyond the distant, acrid smoke and stroked the white tiger’s mane.
The white beast understood and shot forward like the wind.
Kraaaar!
Its thunderous roar carried through the flames.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
A white tiger and a non-Han young man had suddenly appeared on the hill, then began rushing about in every direction as though they had become one body.
Whoosh—roar!
I think I saw this in an educational comic when I was little.
Was this what they called a backfire?
Fire met fire. They devoured each other until one went out. The backfire the young man had skillfully set worked remarkably well.
As the flames quickly died down as if nothing had happened, I stepped forward to lend a hand out of sheer conscience.
Boom!
I threw a short, sharp punch. The flames wavered like a candle in the wind…
…and then grew even larger.
ROOOOAR!
“Good grief.”
What the hell?
Namho shouted at me, his voice rising almost to a scream.
“You lunatic! What did you do?”
“…Are you really one to talk, Old Man Nam? The man who farted is getting angry. You set the fire, and now you’re complaining to me?”
“I didn’t know that would happen!”
“Neither did I.”
“Is that what matters? Put the fire out first… Oh! Oh, oh! Behind you! Behind you!”
ROOOOAR!
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s still fine.”
The flames had not grown that much stronger, but we did need to put them out quickly.
In my haste, I struck again and again with my palms at the swelling fire, without stopping to think.
A moment later, it came to me.
Oh, right.
The palm technique I had just used was called the Flame Divine Palm.
Fwoooooosh!
A moment ago, I could not have said the flames had grown that much stronger. Now I could say it with confidence.
They had grown a hell of a lot stronger.
In a way, it was almost miraculous. Flames that had been on the verge of dying were now roaring several times larger than before.
To the livestock fleeing in every direction, of course, it must have looked like hell.
“…Uh.”
I stared from the near-inferno around me to my palms and back. Then I looked up and met two pairs of eyes glaring at me through the flames.
They belonged to the white tiger from the hill and the young man riding it. Their eyes were different colors, and they were different species, but they had one thing in common.
They were both pissed as hell.
“You bastard! What do you think you’re doing?”
Kraaaar!
The kid looked young, yet he was speaking casually to me on our first meeting.
He had crossed a line, certainly. Then again, I had burned the line down. As a civilized man of the twenty-first century, I calmly and politely reassured them.
“I don’t know who you are, but don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
Of course, there was no guarantee they would feel reassured just because I said so. As demonstrated by the immediate response.
“No! Don’t!”
Kraaaar!
I gently reasoned with the man and tiger shouting in unison.
“It’s okay. I can do this. More importantly, could you quiet the tiger down a little?”
“No, you bastard!”
Kraaaar!
“Don’t do it?”
“Don’t do it!”
KRAAAAR!
Hmm. Opposition as fierce as the fire itself. But I shook my head.
“No. I’m doing it. I believe in myself.”
“You crazy Han Chinese bas—!”
Kraaaar…!
Before either of them could finish, I struck with both palms at lightning speed.
Whoooosh—boom!
Two streams of mighty palm force shot through the air, splitting apart and bursting through the rolling waves of fire.
But if I stopped there, the flames would only surge higher. I would be repeating the same mistake.
Without hesitation, I fired off one palm force after another.
Boom! Boom!
The reason people had trouble putting out fires was simple.
They either lacked enough water, or they lacked wind strong enough to snuff the flames out like candles.
So all you needed was more water or stronger wind. In this case, I went with the latter.
Boom!
The final palm force I sent out was especially powerful.
A typhoon-like wind swept across the pasture. The fleeing livestock lifted briefly off the ground, and grass and trees alike were flattened.
And then…
Whoosh.
The flames spreading in every direction died down in an instant.
All that remained were small embers burning like a campfire and patches of pasture reduced to black ash.
A young man and a snow-white tiger stared at it all in a daze.
“What… What is this?”
Grrrr?
Two pairs of eyes turned to me in disbelief.
I walked over to the last ember nearby, ground it out beneath my foot, and shrugged.
“I told you. I can do it.”
……!
……!
The young man stared at me in pure astonishment. Then he aimed the spear in his hand at me.
“I am Yayul Mok of the Nanman Beast Palace. Who are you?”
So he was from the Nanman Beast Palace. No surprise there.
I nodded and was just about to answer when an elderly voice suddenly rang out from behind me.
“He is Jin Taekyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.”
I turned. The members of the Fire Dragon Pavilion had come up behind me, with Namho at their head.
“In the Central Plains, they call him the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon, the foremost young prodigy of his generation. He is also the Pavilion Master of the Fire Dragon Pavilion, which belongs to the Murim Alliance.”
I did not know whether my name and sobriquet had reached Nanman.
But at the very least, the non-Han young man in front of me—Yayul Mok—seemed to understand the words Namho had added perfectly.
“The Murim Alliance…”
He murmured the words and stroked the white tiger’s mane. After watching its growls subside, he lowered his spear and turned away.
“Follow me. Since the Murim Alliance has been mentioned, I will let this go for now. But don’t do anything as foolish as that again.”
Namho shrugged.
“It was an accident. But I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You had better, unless you want to die a sudden death.”
I watched Yayul Mok ride ahead on the white tiger, then gave Namho a sour look.
“That kid’s rude. I know setting the fire was wrong, but still.”
“Hey, Han Chinese. I can hear you.”
Grrrr.
“I meant for you to hear me, punk.”
“What?”
“Is that any way to speak to an elder? Don’t you have a grandfather?”
For a moment, anger flashed across his face. He glared at me, then turned away again. Walking behind me, Namho gave me a flat, unimpressed look and said,
“Watch your tongue.”
“I was taking your side, Old Man Nam. Telling someone who could drop dead any day that he might ‘die a sudden death’? Who says that?”
“Since when could I drop dead any day…? Forget it. I should never have expected anything from you. Do you have some illness that’ll kill you on the spot if you go even one day without stirring up trouble?”
“Do you have a disease that’ll make you senile if you don’t set fire to a pasture owned by the Nanman Beast Palace?”
“……”
“Take a good look at yourself before I confiscate your walking stick for three months.”
Namho sighed, having come off much worse in that exchange.
“All right. I admit it. This was clearly my mistake. It was something I had kept for more than fifty years, so I should have been more careful handling it.”
“Nice to see you admit it so readily. The pasture’s still nice and hot, though.”
“…My bones ache every time you speak. Still, be a little more careful with that young man.”
“Why?”
“Why else? You heard his name. Yayul Mok.”
“Yayul Mok, Yayul Mosquito—what am I supposed to…?”
I trailed off. Something I had forgotten was hovering just out of reach.
Yayul Mok. Yayul Mok…
After thinking it over carefully, I turned to Ju Hwaran and asked,
“Excuse me, Young Lady Ju.”
“Yes?”
“What was the name of the lord of the Nanman Beast Palace again?”
“You mean the Beast Miao King?”
“Yes.”
The Beast Miao King, lord of the Nanman Beast Palace, led the Miao people, one of Nanman’s most powerful tribes. Despite his non-Han origins, he also held a place among the Ten Kings, albeit the lowest.
Hwaran smiled and answered kindly.
“Yayul Cheok.”
“Ah. Right.”
“Yes. Yayul is his family name. It’s a rare surname that you don’t often encounter even in Nanman.”
“Then that rude friend of ours must have the surname Ya. And his given name is Yulmok.”
“Forgive me, but are you hoping that’s true?”
“Hmm. What if I am?”
Hwaran was about to answer when the forest blocking Yayul Mok’s path far ahead began to shake.
Rustle. Crackle!
I swear I had not seen so many different animals gathered in one place since I went to the zoo at seven years old.
Jaguars and tigers covered in black fur, leopards, even elephants.
The non-Han men and women riding the beasts spotted Yayul Mok. They hurriedly dismounted and prostrated themselves.
“Young Palace Lord!”
“Are you unharmed?”
“We received an urgent report that a fire had broken out. If Young Palace Lord continues acting so recklessly, the Palace Lord will be terribly worried… But who are these people?”
Dozens of pairs of eyes, human and beast alike, turned toward us.
I quietly considered what they had called him. Then I recalled asking him whether he had a grandfather.
I edged up beside Yayul Mok, draped an arm over his shoulders, and said,
“We’re friends. Right, Mok?”
“……”
“Hey. Smile.”
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