TL/ED – Miso
Yeon So-wol thought.
'I'm not afraid.'
Six months ago. Back when he was still going to school, there had been plenty of things that frightened him.
Even a classmate who just looked a little like a delinquent had been pretty frightening.
If that kid had scowled the way this man was scowling, he would have looked away. Out of fear.
But.
'Now it doesn't scare me at all.'
Training the Internal cultivation method had been far more terrifying.
The way his mind kept scattering was terrifying, the endless doubt he aimed at himself was terrifying, the exhaustion that felt like it would drive him mad was terrifying.'Some lowlife piece of trash serial killer glaring at me doesn't scare me one bit anymore.'
He had no desire to lower his eyes for a bastard like that.
Hoooo.......
Hot white smoke billowed up in thick puffs between Yeon So-wol's lips.
A rich, nutty fragrance, like barley being roasted, like Job's tears being toasted.
"You little shit....... I'll have those eyeballs!"
By then Mad Dog had already kicked off the ground. Between his lips, too, a thin gray smoke rose, murky.
A scorched reek that stung, Sting!, at the nose and hung shivering in the air.
Whsh!
Yeon So-wol dodged Mad Dog's hand by throwing himself backward with everything he had.
The memory of being beaten half to death by Mo Cheong and Yi Yu-baek was still vivid, even though nearly half a year had passed.
What was more, his Qi sense was far keener now than it had been then.
Thanks to training the Willow Haze Art, which was a moving art, his body had grown incomparably supple and strong, and it moved exactly as he willed it.
Even if Mad Dog was a young expert with a certain reputation in Xinxing County, So-wol could evade him fairly well when he set his mind on nothing but evasion.
Not gracefully, perhaps, but well enough to time it and hop back or slip aside.
'Still, winning would be hard. But since things have come to this.......'
The only martial art Yeon So-wol had learned so far was the Willow Haze Art, an Internal cultivation method.
He didn't know a single actual fighting technique.
Mad Dog, on the other hand, might have learned in the back alleys, but he was a real martial artist all the same, one who had trained for over ten years.
If anything, because he had learned it through real fights in the back alleys, his fist and kick art was savage.
But.
Right now, Yeon So-wol had no intention of fighting Mad Dog.
'Kill him in one stroke. Make it look like an accident.'
Dodge as long as he could, watch for the angle, then get in close somehow and kill him instantly. The power of the Star of Thousand Deaths could be set off as long as he made contact.
Whoooosh-
The wind blew.
The power of the Star of Thousand Deaths, brought out in earnest for the first time in a long while.
Yeon So-wol had the thought that the world had somehow gone flat.
They fluttered. From every direction. Over the sky and the earth. Everywhere. Threads.
"You little shit....... You're dodging?"
Mad Dog grew more worked up. He drove off the ground even harder to catch Yeon So-wol as he retreated.
The moment Yeon So-wol had been waiting for.
He pulled his upper body, which had been tilted back, forward, stretched his leg, and kicked off the ground.
Whoosh!
Mad Dog couldn't believe it.
'......He's closing in? On me?'
The sudden closing did throw off his striking point. But that was no problem.
If there was no clean room to throw a punch, he could grab the kid with his hands first and beat him afterward.
For Mad Dog, who had learned his fist and kick art in the back alleys, the methods available once someone pressed up against him were all but endless.
'Acting big because you've got Yi Yu-baek behind you. You're dead today.'
He recalled the look in Yeon So-wol's eyes.
With the Resentful Dog and the Laughing Dog standing right there, those eyes had looked at him and only him. Looked at him the way a man looks at an insect.
'Motherfucking piece of shit.......'
For a man who already felt inferior to the Resentful Dog and the Laughing Dog, it was an unbearable insult.
'An arm or some ribs won't cut it. Yi Yu-baek will just patch him right up.'
Mad Dog hardened his heart.
'I'll give him an internal injury.'
He would have liked to kill the boy, but Yi Yu-baek would never let that pass.
And so, an internal injury.
'You're supposed to be some genius? Let's see how well you overcome an internal injury. I'll strike deep and twist your qi and blood for you.'
An internal injury suffered at a young age was fatal.
If the qi and blood were twisted during the very period when a person should be training hard, growing fast, and burning off turbid qi, the turbid qi would only pile up faster instead. Worse, with the pathways injured, one couldn't burn off turbid qi at all and had to waste years just setting them straight. Cultivation would be pushed back by years.
On top of that, pain and terror in youth made a person timid and bred bad habits. That, too, was a fatal loss.
Enough that a genius who could easily have reached the First-rate would spend the rest of his life scraping along, all from a single internal injury.
Mad Dog resolved to carve exactly that kind of internal injury into Yeon So-wol.
Sszzzzzzt!
The sound of something burning.
The smoke forcing its way out between Mad Dog's lips darkened a shade,
Ghost Wailing Hand
Crrrrack!
The muscles of Mad Dog's arm writhed. The joints buckled.
It was this sound of bone and muscle twisting that had given it the name 'the hand of the wailing ghost'. One of the fist and kick arts most beloved by the Black Path of the back alleys.
Fifth form. Like a hundred snakes searching out burrows. (Hundred Snakes Probing Burrows).
Crrrrrunch!
Because the essence of the arm had been heated to an extreme, even the muscle and the elbow joint, which ought to have held fast, partly melted away into raw essence.
It forced out a movement that would otherwise have been impossible.
Mad Dog's forearm undulated. As if countless snakes were swarming inside the muscle.
When power beyond the body's limits was drawn out this way and lashed out as supple as a heavy water sack, that force spread deep inside, crushing the organs and overturning the qi and blood.
'You've reached Exhaled Smoke and Cloud too, so you won't die, but you'll suffer for years.'
In the instant Mad Dog's eyes flashed a livid blue.
"That's enough, don't you think?"
Whoosh!
On a single gust of wind, a man dropped down between Mad Dog and Yeon So-wol.
Tap!
Tap!
Both hands out, fingertips settling on Mad Dog's forehead and Yeon So-wol's forehead, pushing them apart.
"......Jeon Tae-gwang?"
Mad Dog's face twisted.
At first he had assumed one of the Three Young masters of Refined Arts had stepped in to help Yeon So-wol.
But the one blocking him was the man who was supposed to be his friend.
Yeon So-wol was startled too.
'Whoa. Shit. I almost killed him.'
This was nothing like Mad Dog, a murderer with no one at his back. The Resentful Dog, Jeon Tae-gwang, was the youngest disciple of the Severing Sword Sect's Sect Master.
If he killed him, even by accident, there was no telling what kind of storm would follow.
'The Severing Sword Sect is a distinguished house of Xinxing County, on a level with our own Hall of Refined Arts. Father said to be especially courteous when dealing with their people.'
Killing three thieves had cost a tael of gold. What would killing the youngest disciple of the Severing Sword Sect's Sect Master cost?
'Gold might not be enough.'
So he really was startled.
He had been concentrating with everything he had on severing the thread, and for someone to cut in like that.
"Hey."
The Resentful Dog, Jeon Tae-gwang, looked at Yeon So-wol with a frown.
When Yeon So-wol only stared back blankly, he furrowed his brow and said,
"Me. I'm Jeon Tae-gwang of the Severing Sword Sect, all right?"
Only then, as though he had finally recognized the man, Yeon So-wol raised a fist-palm salute in greeting.
"Yes, Senior. I'm Yeon So-wol of the Hall of Refined Arts. My apologies for the late greeting."
A display of courtesy utterly unlike the way he had treated Mad Dog.
Yeon So-wol had meant to do this from the start.
Even if he killed Mad Dog, he intended to be polite to the Laughing Dog and the Resentful Dog.
'A Man in the Jianghu Has No Control Over His Own Fate.'
Once a person stood in the Jianghu, his fate was no longer his own.
'I'm the adopted son of the master of the Hall of Refined Arts.'
If he didn't conduct himself accordingly, he could bring serious trouble down on Yi Yu-baek, who had shown him such kindness.
"This little bastard......."
The look in Jeon Tae-gwang's eyes as he watched Yeon So-wol grew even more troubled.
He waved a hand at him.
"Go. For today. ......But remember this. Today. You were rude to me."
"Hey! Jeon Tae-gwang! The hell are you doing?"
Mad Dog protested, but Jeon Tae-gwang just kept waving him off like it was all a nuisance.
"Get lost. Now."
"......."
Yeon So-wol felt the loss. It seemed like it would have been better to kill Mad Dog here and now. Somehow he had the feeling a chance like this wouldn't come around again.
Even in 21st-century Korea, wasn't the sentence completely different between killing someone in a chance first encounter and killing someone he already knew and already held a grudge against?
'......But there's nothing to be done about it.'
Because as long as the Resentful Dog stood in the way, killing Mad Dog didn't look possible.
"Yes. I'll pay my respects again next time, Senior."
Yeon So-wol gave another fist-palm salute. Then he offered one in greeting to the Laughing Dog behind him as well.
He knew they were all trash, but they weren't serial killers like Mad Dog, so he could bend this far easily enough. If only for the sake of Yi Yu-baek's face.
"Hey. Hey! What are you doing? Where do you think you're going! Hey!"
Mad Dog threw a fit behind them, but with his level of martial arts he couldn't break through the Resentful Dog's hold.
"Hey. What the hell are you doing! Why are you stopping me!"
Jeon Tae-gwang snapped at the thrashing Mad Dog.
"I save your life and you're still bitching."
"What?"
"You almost died just now, idiot."
Mad Dog couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Are you out of your mind? Why would I die? You saw him move. The little shit doesn't know a thing except his Internal cultivation method."
"That's true, but......."
The Resentful Dog felt stifled.
His so-called friend's Qi sense was too dull to have felt it, apparently. Explaining it to a man who couldn't feel it for himself was no small headache.
Just then the Laughing Dog cut in, grinning.
"Heh. Mad dog, mad dog. You didn't feel his killing intent?"
"Killing intent?"
"Yeah. That was the killing intent of a man dead certain he could kill you. He was just waiting for you to come in close."
"......Don't talk shit."
"But it's truue? Isn't that right, resentful little doggy?"
"......I told you not to call me that."
"Ah. Sorry, sorry. Tae-gwang. Hee hee."
"Anyway, So Cheong's right. The killing intent was vicious. He had a way to kill you if you came close. Poison, a hidden weapon, I don't know which. That Annam bastard....... he's got a move hidden somewhere."
"Ha? Haa? Ha?"
Mad Dog burst out in a disbelieving laugh.
Die? He'd almost died? Him? To that kid?
"Ha!"
To the trembling Mad Dog, the Resentful Dog said,
"Just hold it in a while. We built our justification today anyway. Next time we'll stomp him properly. And if he's got any sense, he won't be able to use a deadly hand the next time we meet. Because we greeted each other. Today. Us."
Watching Yeon So-wol's back as it disappeared far off around the corner of the street, the Resentful Dog's under-eye twitched.
Back at the Hall of Refined Arts, Yeon So-wol went straight to Yi Yu-baek and told him the whole story.
"A Man in the Jianghu Has No Control Over His Own Fate. Once you're in the Jianghu, nobody lets your body rest. You end up in quarrels with all sorts of bastards."
Yi Yu-baek laughed as though he found it entertaining.
Yeon So-wol read his mood, then asked carefully.
"But. If a quarrel starts and I kill someone in the fight, what happens? Ah. I mean Mad Dog. I know the other two are off limits......."
Yi Yu-baek looked at him, amused.
"Can you even kill him?"
"Ah....... Well."
Yeon So-wol, who had been keeping the power of the Star of Thousand Deaths a secret, realized his slip. But Yi Yu-baek laughed out loud.
"I know, you sly little thing. I already know you've got some killing method of your own. Some secret art handed down in Annam, is it?"
'He knew?'
Yeon So-wol flinched.
"Look at this boy's reaction. How could I not have known? From the marks on those thieves who died, it looked like they just stood there and let you run them through the throat."
"......."
Yeon So-wol was stunned.
'He can read that much?'
Since he had in fact killed them with the power of the Star of Thousand Deaths first and stabbed them afterward, it amounted to exactly that, men standing still and taking a blade to the throat.
"Don't worry. I won't ask. If anything, I'm impressed. Son. You're doing it right. In this Jianghu it's good to keep a few coins' worth of your skill tucked out of sight."
Yi Yu-baek gazed at Yeon So-wol with satisfaction.
Thanks to that, Yeon So-wol could relax a little.
"So then. May I kill him?"
Even as he said it, Yeon So-wol nearly laughed at himself.
Six months ago he had been preparing for the college entrance exam, and now the sentence 'May I kill him?' was coming out of his own mouth.
But there was no helping it.
He had already earned a serial killer's grudge.......
It seemed he wouldn't be able to sleep with his legs stretched out until he did something about that man.
"No. You may not."
"Why not?"
"You greeted each other, didn't you."
"......That was the Resentful Dog and the Laughing Dog."
"If you greeted the Resentful Dog and the Laughing Dog, then you knew the other one was Mad Dog."
"Does that matter?"
"It does. If you kill a man knowing who he is, there's room to read it as the will of the Hall of Refined Arts."
"I heard Mad Dog has nobody backing him......."
"The Black Path crowd pay each other no mind most of the time, but the moment one of them dies under murky circumstances, they carry on like they've lost family."
"Is that......so?"
"Mm. Because they figure they could die the same way. So they band together and make an awful nuisance of themselves. And that would be inconvenient just now. I've got something big in the works. I can't afford to humor tantrums from the Black Path."
"......I'll keep that in mind."
"Good. I told you, didn't I. A martial artist has to know when to bare his teeth and when to bend. Be patient a while. The chance will come again, for certain."
"Yes."
Yeon So-wol nodded, but inwardly he clicked his tongue.
His guess had been right.
'I knew it. If I couldn't kill him today, it'd be hard to ever kill him.'
Yi Yu-baek gazed at him for a moment, then said,
"By the way, So-wol. Things are going to get rough for you."
"Sorry?"
"You said Jeon Tae-gwang pointed out your rudeness."
"Yes."
"That means he intends to beat you the next time he lays eyes on you. Now that the two of you know each other he can't beat you too badly, but he'll make it hurt all the same. Over and over. Every time he sees you."
"......."
"Want me to help?"
"No, thank you."
"Why not? I could help."
"......I don't think it's good for a grown man to step into a fight between boys."
Yi Yu-baek laughed.
"Then shall I have Mo Cheong help you?"
"I'll decline that as well."
"And why is that?"
"If I took that kind of help, I think I'd never hear the end of it."
To Yeon So-wol's mind, a Jianghu practitioner was a thug.
Someone who hid behind another man's back because he was a little scared didn't seem likely to earn respect among thugs.
Yi Yu-baek's smile deepened.
"You understand well."
Then he added,
"Still, if it truly becomes unbearable, say so. What of it. I'll just butt into a boys' fight a little."
Looking at Yi Yu-baek's face, a man in his late thirties smiling like a child, Yeon So-wol thought.
'Right. I really can't cause trouble for a man like this.'
He let go of the little regret he had left over Mad Dog.
"Anyway, you say you'll settle it with your own strength. Fine, for now. Tell me if you change your mind. All I can do is help you train. The month we talked about is nearly up, so let's start your training again tomorrow."
"Yes."
"......And. That. Don't take it too hard."
"Take what too hard?"
"That bastard, I mean. Mad Dog. Wait long enough and the chance will come, without fail. The chance to kill a man who deserves killing."
Yeon So-wol smiled bitterly.
So this was what a conversation between father and son looked like.
Jianghu practitioners. Thugs really were a different breed.
'And yet, strangely, it's a comfort.'
Yeon So-wol bowed his head.
"Thank you."
"Of course. You must be tired. Rest now and I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Ah. Well. Would it be all right if I asked you one thing?"
"Ask freely."
"Thank you."
Yeon So-wol drew a booklet out of his robes.
<Xinxing Peril-Avoidance Manual> "They say it's a manual the merchants carry around, and it's full of strange stories. Are there really such things as monsters in this world? I haven't seen one yet."
Yi Yu-baek answered at once.
"Of course there are."
!!
Yeon So-wol's eyes went wide.
"The Master did not speak of uncanny forces and spirits. But that only means he didn't speak of them, not that they don't exist. There are already feats of strength and disorder standing right here, so how could the uncanny and ghosts not exist?" [TL: From the Analects, which records that Confucius did not discuss the uncanny, feats of strength, disorder, or spirits.]
When he spoke of feats of strength and disorder, what Yi Yu-baek was pointing at was himself and Yeon So-wol.
Feats of strength meant superhuman power and disorder meant violent conduct, so of the four things in uncanny forces and spirits, the strength and the disorder were expressions that referred to martial artists.
"Ah."
Understanding, Yeon So-wol asked again.
"Father, have you seen the uncanny and ghosts yourself?"
"No?"
......?
"No. I mean, they must exist, but they aren't exactly common......."
"......."
Yi Yu-baek cleared his throat.
"Hand that over a moment. Let me see if there's anything in it I know."
He took the <Xinxing Peril-Avoidance Manual>.
Then he sighed.
"So this existed. So the merchants put together things like this."
"Is this your first time seeing it too, Father?"
"First time. It's a merchants' manual to begin with. They don't hand it over to anyone who isn't a merchant."
Yi Yu-baek looked at Yeon So-wol with warm eyes.
"I can see how upright your conduct must have been."
Then he flipped through the pages.
"There are several stories in here I know."
"Really?"
Yeon So-wol pricked up his ears.
"The one about fog suddenly rolling in with the smell of liquor, and the one about not touching food left in the street, those I don't know, but the rest I do."
"But you said you'd never seen the uncanny or ghosts......."
"Right. Everything I said I know is the work of people. Even the things that look like the work of the uncanny and ghosts turn out, more often than not, to be the work of people."
Yeon So-wol blinked.
'The work of people?'
They had looked far too much like ghost stories for that.
Yeon So-wol pointed to one.
The rule about never earning the resentment of a courtesan or a server at the Azure Cloud Pavilion.
"Is this the work of people too?"
A warm smile touched the corner of Yi Yu-baek's mouth. Familiar, and full of affection.
"It's the work of people."
"How so?"
"That's a secret. Passing along another person's story carelessly isn't good manners."
"......."
Yeon So-wol was terribly curious.
But since Yi Yu-baek clearly wasn't going to tell him, he didn't press and changed the subject.
"Then what is this?"
Two.
If you see a small child in silk clothing weeping in the street, do not be hasty to help.
If the child's body is strangely hot, flee that very instant.
While fleeing, no matter what strange sounds you hear, you must never look back.
Though the child wears silk, it is by no means the child of a wealthy house, so do not let needless greed take hold of you.
Yeon So-wol saw it.
The way the corners of Yi Yu-baek's eyes drooped.
He was grieving.
"This. This is the business of the Blazing Cauldron Gate. So this is how the merchants remembered it......."
'The Blazing Cauldron Gate?'
Yeon So-wol was puzzled.
He had the major factions of Xinxing County committed to memory from the moment he first arrived here. He had looked into where he ought to learn martial arts, after all.
But the name Blazing Cauldron Gate was one he was hearing for the first time.
"You wouldn't know it. About 5 years ago, was it. I killed them all. Every last one."
A flinch.
All at once, Yeon So-wol thought he caught the smell of blood.
A thick reek of blood that even the sweet scent of lemon couldn't entirely cover.