When the Divine Sword burst onto the top floor of the Clear Wind Inn, a young man sat there cross-legged, training in the inner-school qi arts.
It had been a long time, but thanks to his distinctive air, the Divine Sword recognized him at once.
“Ho-won. Where have your brother and sister gone?”
Namgung Ho-won, the Sword Star's second son, opened his eyes.
“Is that not Elder Divine Sword? What brings you here?”
“Good. It seems you know nothing either.”
“If you would tell me, I will listen.”
The Divine Sword clicked his tongue inwardly.
The second son's character was practically the Namgung Clan itself.
Upright, composed, and orderly.
His mental cultivation ran deep as well. Even in a situation that should startle him, was he not calmly observing proper courtesy?
So the Divine Sword expected that Namgung Ho-won would not be terribly shaken even by what he was about to say.
“Your father is dead. The Alliance's Life-Death Lamp went out, so a letter came to me. That was yesterday.”
There was a tremor in Ho-won's eyes. But it never became more than a ripple.
The breath he had been drawing as he circulated his qi was lightly inhaled, then released along with that tremor.
“May I hear more details?”
As expected, he tried to grasp the situation soberly first.
He had already accepted it. He understood that he was in danger and that the Divine Sword had come to save him.
It was innate composure. A temperament like Mount Tai. That was why, personally, the Divine Sword liked him best of the Sword Star's three children.
But even so, this child would never achieve greatness as a Namgung.
Because of an innate flaw.
“Regrettably, I know no more than that. Even on my way here, I could not understand why Lizhou is intact. Have you sensed any qi waves……”
He was about to say it, then caught himself.
The Namgung were a renowned house of the inner-school qi arts.
But the second son, Namgung Ho-won, had a strangely poor aptitude for inner arts.
He could barely accumulate qi, so he had to rely entirely on outer arts, and for a member of the direct line of a renowned sword clan, that was a great flaw.
And as a martial artist, he was defective too.
If one could not properly sense qi waves or a Qi Field, one was less a martial artist than merely a healthy commoner.
It might be a wound the boy would carry his whole life.
The Divine Sword knew that, yet it had slipped out from habit, so he smiled bitterly and changed his words.
“Have your siblings sensed anything?”
Even so, Namgung Ho-won was a boy who accepted that fact and worked hard.
So he was not hurt by every little thing in the Divine Sword's manner. Or perhaps he simply did not show it.
“No, they have not. Right now, Ran has disappeared, so my elder brother had just set out to look for her.”
“We crossed paths, then. Is her disappearance perhaps something dangerous?”
Ho-won thought for a moment. But in his view, it was by no means anything like that.
Still, it would be more proper to leave the judgment to the Divine Sword.
“In my view, it was just Ran sneaking out. My brother went out to rein her in as her Instructor. It has happened now and then. Ran used to find home stifling.”
“It seems your father did not allow you to leave this room here either.”
“That is right. So we spent all our time training.”
It was true. The only time they had gone out was on their father's errand to clear away a body.
And even that had happened only a few times.
The Divine Sword tilted his brows. How should he judge this?
But no matter how positively he tried to see it, Lizhou was the land where the star of the sword had fallen.
Then there was no telling what might happen to children who had gone outside.
To begin with, if the Demonic Cult was the culprit, why on earth would they leave the Sword Star's three children alone?
“Be ready to leave Lizhou at any moment and wait here. I will go find them quickly and come back.”
“Understood. My brother is probably wandering the market streets. If Ran sneaks out, it is to buy snacks.”
After nodding back at the obediently nodding Ho-won, the Divine Sword kicked off from the window and soared into the air.
The vast cultivated power of an Absolute Master shot the Divine Sword's weight upward.
Almost in an instant, the grand open sky welcomed him.
What symbolized the Namgung was the Azure Heaven. The wide blue sky.
It was a sword clan whose domain, too, painted a clear sky as if to embody it.
“Hyeon-ri……. I must at least save your children.”
It might be nothing, yet it might also be a race against time.
The Divine Sword thought calmly in the air.
Lizhou was now a den of demons.
The moment he soared up and showed himself like this, he would have been exposed in one way or another.
That was intended.
Even if they had captured the Namgung Clan's daughter, it could not be more important than the appearance of the Qingcheng Divine Sword.
While he drew their eyes and the other side tried to respond, he had to find Namgung Ran.
Qingcheng's Daoists have especially good eyes.
Because they often fly and look down upon the land.
Sharpening his eyesight, he swept over every place that looked like a market.
Namgung Ran was nowhere to be seen.
But a tall, handsome young master mixed in among the common folk was bound to stand out.
In a small city like Lizhou, there were not many places that could be called markets.
Spotting a young man who was surely Namgung Ho-cheon, the Divine Sword descended straight to the ground.
It was a small market street near the mountain pass connecting Lizhou with the Sichuan interior.
“Ho-cheon.”
Not as unflappable as his brother, he hid his startled face and bowed his head.
“Is that not Elder Divine Sword? What brings you here? If it is Father, he has not shown himself these past few days.”
The Divine Sword briefly repeated the conversation he had had with the younger brother.
Ho-cheon's expression changed moment by moment.
Certainly, Namgung Ho-cheon was more emotional and easygoing than his brother.
To put it more bluntly, he deviated slightly from the image of the martial artist the Namgung desired.
He had something more of a Mount Hua Daoist about him, the air of a loose-limbed young dandy, so Hyeon-ri had always worried about his children.
Barely suppressing a passion far fiercer than his brother's, he answered.
“But it will not be Ran. I had just found her trail by asking around here.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. They said she bought food and left with a certain scholar.”
“A scholar?”
In a small city, those who could be called scholars were common.
But the Divine Sword's mind suddenly recalled the Jeong Manor the Governor had mentioned.
“Is that scholar perhaps a retainer at Jeong Manor?”
“That I……”
Namgung Ho-cheon hurried back to the merchant and asked something.
Even among martial artists who wore the same swords, expression and manner could make a great difference.
Even to the Divine Sword's eyes, the Sword Star's eldest seemed better suited to some other clan than the Namgung.
“They say he is a scholar staying as a retainer at Jeong Manor. Apparently he recently passed the Youth Examination and became a Licentiate.”
The Divine Sword thought it remarkable that he had gleaned this much in so short a time.
The three siblings truly were three people of three colors.
And because of that information, the Divine Sword's expression could only harden further.
“Where is that? Let us go at once.”
“I will go ask where it is.”
Though the Divine Sword had not yet fully explained the situation, Namgung Ho-cheon quickly got directions from the mill owner and returned.
He hurriedly began to lead the way.
In a different sense, he was a talent wasted on the Namgung.
***
Sometimes it happens.
You meet someone purely by chance, yet your hearts just click.
Meeting by chance at a time when we each needed an outlet to pour out our grievances must have been like that.
Our respective statuses were reasonably assured, and at the same time, we'd never meet again.
A conversation that starts like that tends to run a little long.
We talked about all sorts of things. I talked about why I wanted to enter officialdom and what kind of place Jeong Manor was, and she did the same.
Namgung Ran, who had been sniffling a little, soon became absorbed in the conversation.
Then she smiled faintly and said.
“But I do not hate my family. Thanks to being born there, I live in comfort.”
However harsh life in a clan may be, this is a world full of people who truly starve to death or die by stray blades.
“If I train my martial arts even harder, will I be recognized someday?”
“Wouldn't you? In the end, strength is the very essence of a martial artist.”
“Then I would like to change things someday.”
“Do that. If you climb your way up and change it someday, you'll have become the Peng and reached the Northern Darkness, and that can become your sword's intent, Miss. No one will be able to point at it and call it murderous intent. Cultivating the Dao through the sword, what's so special about that?”
Then, suddenly, I just knew.
It was about time to head back.
About an hour seemed to have passed.
I'd been held up against my will, then heard what was in her heart against my will.
Right now we'd shared all this on a wave of momentum, but in a little while I might be kicking my blankets in embarrassment.
Wondering if I'd overstepped, I still got up from my seat.
“With this, you've fully paid for the food. That was a secret history I could never have heard if not for you, Miss. Assassins won't come after me for hearing this, will they?”
“Absolutely not. Because I am a Namgung.”
What her expression revealed was pride.
Even though she'd been pouring out her grievances just moments ago, she had no intention of throwing that away.
It seemed the girl named Namgung Ran, whatever else, was proud to be a Namgung.
It's probably a common kind of love-hate. In the end, she was born and raised in the Namgung and learned there.
Most of the years she's lived must have been spent being educated within the clan.
So she couldn't easily turn her back on it.
On top of that, it may sound like brainwashing when I put it this way, but isn't that pride wholly this girl's own as well?
It was a hardship of a different kind from living with your life hanging on a blade.
As expected, nothing in this world comes easy.
I stood and respectfully gave the clasped hands greeting.
For a person of the martial world, the martial world's etiquette would be fitting.
“I pray for your fortune in battle in the days ahead, Miss.”
“And I pray that you quickly take office and enjoy peace, Licentiate.”
My life probably won't cross paths with this pitiful martial artist again.
Things will go just as the words we're exchanging now.
Perhaps further in the future, I might run into Miss Ran at a government office, having finally abandoned the Namgung surname to become a military officer.
If that happens, she'll at least be able to buy and eat chicken skewers freely, so would that be happiness too?
The way back along the forest path wasn't very far.
This place was near Jeong Manor to begin with, so few people came around.
Jeong Manor was the largest estate in Lizhou, so it had been built apart on the outskirts.
The gatekeepers only exchanged a nod with me this time and didn't strike up further conversation.
I bowed lightly and went to the garden.
It was still cold. Even the dilettante young masters who'd played around so happily in the dead of winter weren't at the pavilion for once.
“It really is grim.”
Instead, I perched on that pavilion and looked around Jeong Manor.
It's a deeply familiar place, but since the day before yesterday it had somehow become strange.
After talking with Miss Namgung, I felt unsettled all over again.
What on earth is this murim?
There'd been signs of it in Hong-hyung's passionate lecture too.
An ominous feeling that everything I know is twisted, little by little.
“This isn't just twisted.”
Which Namgung Clan anywhere under heaven stamps out Namgung martial artists like a military academy?
Mount Hua and the other famous sects might be different in some way too.
All I gained was the conviction that I should keep even more distance from the murim.
Because it's a story from a realm I don't know.
Still, I'd better at least know about it.
As Hong-hyung said, I can't get hurt just because I didn't know.
I'll keep my physical distance, but my mental distance needs to get a bit closer.
Hong-hyung must know a lot about the world.
I thought that once this matter passed, I should hear more stories of the murim.
Sorting out the days ahead in a sunken mood amid all the chaos and complexity, I began to feel wronged all over again.
Why on earth did I come here only to get kicked around like this?
If I at least had real talent for martial arts, maybe.
But seeing even a talented girl like that persecuted for political reasons in the end, I wonder how I'd have survived even if I'd had talent.
My conclusions always circle back to where they started.
What I'm best at is studying, and if I can survive by using my head, there's no need to stake my life on what I'm bad at.
Suddenly, I noticed there were no battle cries from the training ground today.
The guest in the annex was giving off such a heavy presence that everyone seemed to be lying low.
The scholars seemed to have shut themselves in their rooms too, since no one was wandering about at all.
That's how frightening this man called the Captain of the Blood Heaven Unit seemed to be, even to those who didn't know who he was.
“Strength, huh…….”
They said I simply didn't have the bones to begin training, so there was nothing for it.
But could there be a more direct way to protect yourself?
Should I someday get hold of at least a simple breathing-cultivation method and give it a try?
That would have to wait until after I take office.
Right now I have no strength to speak of.
The book inside my robes is surely a miraculous encounter as mysterious as can be, but in the end, it's just a tool for finding a way to survive.
Feeling pathetic all over again, a sigh slipped out of me.
“Heo Saeng, you call yourself a man, and not one thing goes the way you want.”
In my previous world and in this one, it's always been a life of getting knocked around and knocked around again.
I'm studying because I don't want it to be like that to the very end, but is this something I'm doing because I have a will of my own?
The unease in my heart grows stronger by the day. Nothing goes as I wish, and the things that toss me around only increase.
Actually, even if I become an official serving the court, there will be His Majesty above me.
I felt a creeping anxiety that there might be no such thing as true freedom after all.
The way I live my life now is, in the end, nothing more than trying to survive by somehow leaning on other people's goodwill and power.
I'll seldom get to stand tall in the world on my own.
Maybe for the rest of my life.
This helplessness is about to turn into rage.
This trash heap of a place that's sort of like medieval China.
Why is the country called Yin, and why does the murim have to exist……. It's not like I can make use of knowing history roughly, either.
I have to start dodging the sword-swingers whenever I see them.
Even a high office might be the perfect place to give me a rage-induced illness.
“Ahem. Khm.”
Whether from the weather or my thoughts, a sudden chill made me cough lightly.
It was about time to go in and study.
Just as I thought that and tried to stand.
CRASH!
With an ear-numbing sound, someone kicked the gate open and came in.
I turned my head to see a Daoist wearing shabby straw-mat rags and a familiar young master.
The gatekeepers stood behind them, at a loss.
“Chairman of Jeong Manor, hear me!”
And a deep, dignified voice that seemed to stab into the ears rang throughout the estate.
Even without knowing martial arts, I could feel how profound the inner arts behind it were.
An ominous name came to mind.
A Daoist carrying a sword in Sichuan.
‘The Qingcheng Sect……?’
And who's at Jeong Manor right now?
‘An Elder of the Demonic Cult.’
Wait a minute. Is this really okay?