In the region of Mount Daeung in Gangryu Province stood a great sect called the Grand Heaven Sect.
Its history alone made it the greatest power to have reigned over the region for decades, and so among the surrounding towns, whenever some quarrel or trouble arose, people would sooner seek out the Grand Heaven Sect's disciples than the soldiers of the magistrate's office.
In any case, since it was so large in scale, so powerful in influence, and inclined toward the orthodox sects besides, it was hard to find the unorthodox sects running rampant anywhere near Mount Daeung.
The Grand Heaven Sect's disciples each trained in a variety of martial arts — the sword, the blade, the spear, fist and foot techniques, and so on — but the most common among them was the sword.
It was therefore somewhat ambiguous to call it a sword sect, yet since there was no other sword sect in Gangryu Province with greater standing than the Grand Heaven Sect, it was in fact sometimes called the First Sword Sect of Gangryu.
In any case, Mount Daeung was the home mountain of this great sect, and the Grand Heaven Sect's main headquarters sat about halfway up the slope.
And So Hyeok, a Grade 2 disciple standing guard at the sect's main gate, blinked at the visitor who had just arrived.
[I have come to see Junior Uncle Do Hyeon-gu. Tell him that I am the disciple of Elder Do Hyeon-jo.]
The visitor was, strangely enough, a hunchbacked old man sitting calmly atop an enormous black spider; his whole body was covered by a black training robe and a woven hat was pulled low over his head, making his features rather hard to make out.
Moreover, the way he dismounted from the spider was quick and without waste, giving the impression of a formidable master; and since he said not a single word and instead conversed in writing on a small leather board, that peculiar behavior alone was enough to raise suspicion.
But there was indeed a guest elder by the name of Do Hyeon-gu within the sect, so for the disciple So Hyeok, dubious as he felt, passing word inside came first.
“Please wait a moment.”
With that request for indulgence, So Hyeok disappeared inside the gate, and the hunchbacked old man's gaze followed his retreating back naturally.
...Or so it would have appeared. On the surface, at least. Black Spider was acting so that it would look like a natural human reaction.
Three years of puppet training in the Eight Peaks Forest.
Added to that, over the past three years of being taught puppet arts by Elder Do in Yulu County, it was no exaggeration to say that Black Spider's puppeteering had now reached a certain level of attainment.
In fact, he could now control Gok Hon with thirty-six strands of thread while operating all five Wood Spiders at once without the slightest trouble.
In particular, imitating a living person with a puppet had become so natural that, in truth, not a single person on the journey to the Grand Heaven Sect had noticed that Gok Hon was a puppet.
In any case, after a short wait the main gate opened again, and the disciple So Hyeok who had received him earlier came out together with a lean-looking man who appeared to be in his middle years.
The lean man stared at Gok Hon at first, then turned his gaze to Black Spider, and at that moment Black Spider too rolled his eyes and stared straight back at him.
So the divine awareness of the two beings recognized each other. The divine awareness extending from between the man's brows probed the divine awareness flowing from Black Spider's brainstem.
Astonishingly, the middle-aged man was a human who had awakened divine awareness.
In scale, however, it did not match Black Spider's. Confirming this, the man showed a faint trace of surprise.
“...Hm. You said you are my elder brother's disciple?”
[Yes. I am called Gok Hon. I studied puppet arts in Yulu County.]
“Mm.”
The middle-aged man — Do Hyeon-gu — calmly exchanged a few more words with Gok Hon. In the meantime his divine awareness traced here and there over Gok Hon and confirmed once more that he was a puppet.
“...Let us finish this talk inside.”
So Black Spider followed Do Hyeon-gu into the Grand Heaven Sect and soon arrived at the reception room of the annex where the guest elder resided.
“Then I shall return to my post.”
The disciple So Hyeok bowed crisply and withdrew, leaving in the reception room only a spider, a stooped old man, and a man of middle years.
Only then did Do Hyeon-gu lightly rub his forehead and look, not at Gok Hon, but at Black Spider.
“Now that it is quiet around us, take your time and tell me how things stand. I have a great deal I wish to ask about my brother Hyeon-jo as well. So, is my brother keeping well?”
***
“...I see. So that is how it ended.”
Do Hyeon-gu, having heard the whole story from Black Spider, murmured bitterly. He had long known what circumstances his brother had been in.
In fact, when he had sent word to his brother a few years ago that he was staying at the Grand Heaven Sect, he had done so in the hope that his brother would stop suffering in the mundane world and spend the rest of his days in comfort at the sect where he lived.
But in the end the old man had departed on the long road, and in his place this enormous spider cursed fiend had come calling, declaring itself his disciple.
In any case, it seemed certain that the enormous spider before him was his brother's disciple. Nothing in the account he had heard failed to fit, and above all, the puppet called Gok Hon that the spider handled carried his brother's distinctive style.
This hunchback puppet, which must originally have been a combat puppet, now looked, from the outside, little different from a human.
Such minute imitation of the human, verging on obsession, had long been Do Hyeon-jo's chief style.
In any case, with matters as they stood, Do Hyeon-gu could not simply leave Black Spider to his own devices.
Whatever else, was this not the only successor his brother had left behind? Setting aside for the moment that it was not human.
So Do Hyeon-gu registered Black Spider as his guest for the time being.
Although Do Hyeon-gu was not formally a member of the Grand Heaven Sect but a guest elder on assignment, the authority granted him was equal to that of the sect's elders.
And so Black Spider was given a large room in the annex and settled there. Publicly, of course, it was the puppet Gok Hon rather than Black Spider who was said to be staying, so in effect Black Spider was treated as nothing more than a cursed beast the old man kept.
In any case, though Do Hyeon-gu had decided to see to Black Spider's comfort, even he could not procure thunderstruck jujube wood right away.
That was only natural: the special material called thunderstruck jujube wood was an item not commonly traded even among cultivators like him, and its price was by no means trifling.
He did promise, however, that if any news concerning thunderstruck jujube wood reached him, he would pass it on to Black Spider, and that alone was a great help to Black Spider.
In any case, Black Spider's life at the Grand Heaven Sect began in this way.
Ordinarily Gok Hon shut himself away in his room in the annex and never went out, and since he always gave off a strange, gloomy air, even the servants working there did not call on him carelessly.
The great spider called Black Spider that he kept, on the other hand, was oddly lively and sociable, and astonishingly could understand human speech, so it quickly drew people's interest.
The spider would stroll placidly around the annex, and whenever it found something of interest it would observe it at length; at times it would set its small spider dolls rolling about and have them perform all sorts of acrobatics.
In reality it was nothing more than cleaning, just as in the days at the cobbler's shop, whenever it saw the ground was dirty; but to those watching, it looked less like cleaning than like some marvelous puppet play.
The spider would also stare now and then at the clothes or shoes the servants wore, and at times it would mend a worn spot on the spot in an instant.
So the workers of the annex quickly grew fond of the spider called Black Spider, and now and then they would bring it raw chicken and the like.
With Black Spider adapting so well to life at the Grand Heaven Sect, Do Hyeon-gu was relieved for the time being.
No — more than that, Do Hyeon-gu himself came by often to talk with Black Spider. That was only natural, for life at the Grand Heaven Sect was thoroughly lukewarm and dull for him as well.
In truth, Do Hyeon-gu did not originally belong to the Grand Heaven Sect but to a cultivation sect called the Azure Heaven Sect, the organization above it.
Do Hyeon-gu had entered the cultivation world early, when a spirit root was confirmed in him as a child, yet even now, past forty, he remained at no more than the third level of the Qi Refinement stage; so he was not held in any particular regard back at the Azure Heaven Sect's main house, and had been posted out to the Grand Heaven Sect, its subordinate power, like this.
So Do Hyeon-gu drifted among ordinary folk like a borrowed sack of barley left standing in a corner, and just then someone worth talking to had appeared — a cursed fiend though it was.
Through Do Hyeon-gu, Black Spider came to understand the situation at the Grand Heaven Sect and the state of affairs around it well enough, and things seemed less peaceful than he had thought.
Throughout Gangryu Province the orthodox sects had long held the upper hand thanks to the Grand Heaven Sect's presence, and the unorthodox sects had been hard to find; but recently the unorthodox sects had begun to show themselves little by little around the province's outskirts.
“...And so the main house dispatched me to the Grand Heaven Sect with orders to respond should anything happen. Which is to say, the main house anticipates that a great war may break out in this region.”
Do Hyeon-gu's complaints were rather long and persistent. He had many grievances about his position and seemed sick of life at the Grand Heaven Sect, which lacked even a proper training environment.
Yet weighing it out, even if he were given a proper training environment, whether he could truly reach a higher stage was an unknown; and since Do Hyeon-gu himself knew that it was the low likelihood of it that had earned him such treatment, his complaints always ended in lamentation over himself.
In any case, that was Do Hyeon-gu's private affair; the Grand Heaven Sect's disciples spent their days training diligently.
Beyond the annex grounds, on Training Peak where the inner-gate disciples lived, countless disciples trained in martial arts under the shouted commands of their masters and instructors, and some among them handled the formless energy Black Spider had witnessed before.
Having received a simple explanation from Do Hyeon-gu, Black Spider now knew that this formless energy was called inner arts, or qi.
Black Spider's eyeballs rolled about. Watching the Grand Heaven Sect disciples training in the distance, he recalled the miraculous skill Elder Gok had shown against the assassins who attacked the Gok Family Clinic.
At that time, Elder Gok had certainly poured that energy into his puppet and used it in battle.
The scene of the puppet swinging a blade wrapped in a faint glow and slicing the opposing assassin's blade like bean curd still remained vivid in Black Spider's mind.
If he learns this thing called inner arts, can he work such miracles too?
Black Spider pondered. The answer to such ponderings was generally always decided in advance.
Black Spider always moved wherever curiosity led him. So it had been when he left the Eight Peaks Forest and headed east, and so it had been when he first discovered a settlement of humans.
He is curious. He wants to learn. Black Spider can't overcome that desire.
But how?
Do Hyeon-gu, always wearing a woeful face because his own training alone overtaxed him, was hardly the right person to ask about such a matter. Besides, he was not a martial artist.
And what would the annex servants who were fond of him know about martial arts?
Black Spider pondered. And while he pondered, an entirely unexpected scene came into view.
WHACK! WHACK-WHACK!
“Urgh!”
He saw some small boy being beaten this way and that by other boys of about the same age.
By his clothing — a training robe with a yellow sash — he was a Grade 4 disciple, the lowest grade of all. In truth it was less a stage at which one learned proper martial arts than the grade that generally applied to children who had only just entered the sect.
The boys surrounding and beating him were Grade 4 disciples as well, but they looked a full head taller than he was.
Rather than those boys being large for their age, it seemed the boy taking the beating was an unusually small specimen.
In any case, they were giving the boy a thorough thrashing under the pretext of training, and since they were doing it in a deserted, quiet spot, there was no senior or instructor in sight to stop them.
Being a fight between young specimens, it was clumsy and disorderly at a glance. Yet the cruelty underlying it was not unfamiliar even to Black Spider.
Humans are, at times, fierce and cruel.
By now Black Spider understood humans fairly well. Living in Yulu County, he had learned that human society was not wholly peaceful either, and that within it humans competed with, fought, despised, and ruled over one another.
This was human nature, a tendency to be found without fail in any social group humans formed.
“…….”
SLIDE.
A quiet corner of an alley.
Behind the children doing the beating and the children being beaten, an enormous shadow fell.
Sensing the presence, the children turned around.
There stood a monstrous spider. As it rolled its eyeballs about and examined each of their faces one by one, the children were already shrieking and scattering in all directions, like kittens crawling under a wall to hide.
All that remained was one small boy with blood streaming from both nostrils.