Chapter 193: Perilous Road (4)

At the wooden palisade outside the village, Soyak exchanged a final farewell with the traveling peddler.

The woman was still looking at her with worried, pitying eyes.

Soyak could not understand why.

She had a sword.

She had martial arts.

If one had to choose which of them was more vulnerable and in greater danger, surely it was the traveling peddler.

But apparently, the woman did not see it that way.

“Be careful, sweetheart.”

“I’m not a child. Please don’t worry.”

“...All right.”

Then again, with her martial uniform folded away in a bundle and a simple, frayed outfit on her body, Soyak looked like nothing more than a wandering girl.

Of course, the woman had at least caught a glimpse of the strength within her.

She was no child who could be preyed upon by common street thugs.

“You really must go straight to Mount Hua. Show them the letter I gave you.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“When I’ve finished what I need to do and return to Mount Hua, I’ll see you again.”

Soyak gave her a cupped-fist salute, then took the eastern road at the fork.

From here on, she was alone again.

Fortunately, Mount Song was visible in the distance.

One of Henan’s famous mountains.

Shaolin had stood there since ages long past.

“...I wonder how they’re doing.”

It was a place tied to quite a few memories.

She had not stayed there long.

But after Mount Hua, it had been the warmest place she knew.

And the bonds she had formed there ran surprisingly deep.

She had saved someone.

Someone had thanked her.

Even back then, Gong-eop, the Little Divine Monk, had stood on the very brink of exhausting everything Transcendent Apex could offer.

Had he become Shaolin’s newest Transformation Realm master by now?

Was the Radiant Maitreya, who had been Abbot then, still hale and healthy?

And then there were the two who had traveled all the way from the Northern Sea Ice Palace to distant Mount Song in the Central Plains.

Were Seol Yegang and Seol Yehwa doing well?

One by one, Soyak revisited the people whose paths had once crossed hers.

Three years of closed-door training was a long time.

She had not so much as shown her face beyond Mount Hua during all that time, so she could hardly complain if their memories of her had faded.

But Soyak remembered.

Everything.

Seol Yehwa, held hostage by Night-Heaven Hall.

And Seol Yegang, who had dirtied his hands to keep supplying her with spirit medicine so she could survive.

Both the Hall Lord and Deputy Hall Lord of Night-Heaven Hall were dead now, so there was no longer anyone there who could keep them captive.

More importantly, the two were under Shaolin’s protection.

Night-Heaven Hall was officially a shadow organization that did not exist. Even the Namgung Household would have difficulty moving openly against them.

They lacked the justification.

Still, being able to see Mount Song in the distance did not mean it was close.

Even using Lightness Arts, the journey would take a good three days.

Soyak drew up the internal energy in her dantian and lightened her body.

*****

Nearly three years had passed.

Seol Yegang and Seol Yehwa were still under Shaolin’s protection.

Though both were now over twenty, the Abbot had never driven them away.

Yegang had asked him about it once.

The answer had been the same as ever.

“You saved lives here. Shaolin is not so miserly a place that feeding two more mouths would be beyond us.”

Only after hearing that had Yegang and Yehwa finally been able to remain at Shaolin without feeling that they were imposing.

In truth, considering their cultivation, they might have been able to live outside without much trouble.

If they had been people with no history attached to them.

But they were illegitimate children of the Northern Sea Ice Palace.

That bloodline alone carried far too much potential for trouble.

And they were burdened by an even darker, more terrible connection.

Seol Yegang had once been a Night-Heaven Wanderer.

The world might not know of Night-Heaven Hall, but the Namgung Household would not have forgotten it.

His and his sister’s names and personal details were almost certainly still recorded on Night-Heaven Hall’s roster within the Namgung Household.

If, by some chance, they encountered someone who had once belonged to Night-Heaven Hall...

Or crossed paths with one of the Namgung Household’s powerful figures...

They might be killed on the spot or hunted down afterward.

Compared to that, remaining on Mount Song was the wiser choice.

They had nowhere else to go anyway.

It was not as though they could return to the Northern Sea Ice Palace that had cast them out and beg to be taken back.

That morning was no different from any other.

They lived at Shaolin, but they were not Shaolin disciples, so they were bound by none of its duties.

Even so, when the monks rose at dawn, struck their wooden percussion blocks, and began chanting sutras, Seol Yegang would fold his bedding and get up as well.

He went out to sweep the yard.

“...You’re going out again today?”

Seol Yehwa sat up, rubbing her eyes.

Yegang nodded and pulled the blanket back up beneath her chin.

“Sleep some more.”

“Brother. You really do keep forgetting that I’m better now.”

Yehwa blinked up at him as she pointed it out.

Her brother gave a quiet laugh and stroked her hair.

Then he slowly shook his head.

“How could I ever forget what happened back then?”

“And yet you still fuss over me every day like I’m some fragile porcelain doll. I can help sweep the yard too.”

“And you don’t understand that your brother would rather not make you do things like that?”

Yehwa frowned slightly.

It did her no good.

Her brother simply pressed a finger between her brows and smoothed the crease away.

“You’ll get wrinkles. And if you keep gripping a broom, you’ll get calluses.”

“...There you go again. You say that every time.”

“Because it matters.”

Seol Yegang had no intention of putting his sister back onto the brutal stage of the martial world.

It would be better for her to sever her ties with that world entirely and live as an ordinary woman.

That was the conclusion he had reached.

And Yehwa had long since realized how her brother felt.

“Fine. I’ll sleep some more.”

“Good choice.”

Yehwa lowered her head back onto the pillow.

She had already seen and endured more than enough to know how cruel and exhausting the martial world could be.

Because she had been held hostage, her brother had spent years trapped in Night-Heaven Hall and forced into a miserable life.

Even his name had been erased as he was raised into an assassin.

That was what the world outside was like.

It offered no compassionate hand to a young orphan.

Nor to a pitiful illegitimate child who had nowhere to belong.

Perhaps that was why the kindness Shaolin showed them felt all the warmer.

Seol Yegang slowly rose and began sweeping the yard.

At first, the monks had tried to stop him, telling him there was no need.

Now they simply let him be.

This, too, was a kind of atonement.

A way of repaying, however slightly, the debt he felt he carried.

“You’re sweeping the yard again today?”

Whenever he was out there long enough, Gong-eop would eventually appear and greet him first.

The Little Divine Monk.

A martial prodigy who had already drawn out every last achievement available to him at the extreme end of Transcendent Apex.

No one would have found it strange to say that the Transformation Realm lay just before him.

Of course, every martial artist who had actually reached the Transformation Realm already knew better.

There was no such thing as being “just before” it.

The gulf between reaching that realm and failing to reach it was immense.

Only those who had yet to cross it could not truly tell the difference.

“You’re up early as well, Little Divine Monk.”

“Well, I follow the teachings of Buddhism, so that much is only natural, but...”

Yegang waved a hand dismissively and lowered his head.

Then he resumed slowly sweeping the fallen leaves with his twig broom.

“Autumn is coming around again.”

The Little Divine Monk smiled as he looked up at the enormous ginkgo tree, its leaves beginning to turn yellow.

Soon, the ginkgo fruit would begin to fall.

If they did not shake it down and gather it beforehand, everyone passing beneath the tree would soon be clutching their noses.

“It’s been about three years since you came to Shaolin, hasn’t it?”

“Yes. It has.”

“I have some good news.”

*****

After changing clothes, Soyak encountered no further trouble.

More precisely, she left before any trouble could begin.

Her clothes were now indistinguishable from those of the other drifters in the area.

All she had to do was disappear into a crowd, and most people could no longer pick her out as an outsider.

Of course, some had sharper eyes.

They noticed things like the smooth backs of her hands, which did not match the rough, frayed clothes she wore, or the soft gleam of her hair as it swayed lightly behind her.

Her slender, upright posture alone clearly distinguished her from ordinary beggars.

But those observant enough to notice such things deliberately kept their distance instead of bothering her.

And for good reason.

This was the area surrounding Mount Song, home of Shaolin.

Across the region were reclusive masters connected to Shaolin by one bond or another.

There was a saying in the martial world:

Beware the old, women, and children.

Soyak fit two of those categories.

And if someone like that was walking around near Mount Song in shabby clothes far beneath what seemed appropriate for her...

To anyone with real discernment, it only made her more conspicuous.

...I should probably let Shaolin know I’m coming.

Someone like, for example, the Beggar Union beggar who just happened to be sitting against a nearby wall looking like an absolute wreck.