Dropped Into the Murim with an Instant-Kill Skill - Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Across the World This June, the Petals All Have Fallen (3)

TL/ED – Miso

The waves, ablaze with lantern light, lapped against the boat with a slap, slap.

Standing atop it with his back held straight, Yeon So-wol slowly set his disheveled clothes back in order.

Tugging his clothes into place, setting the creases of his robe anew. Checking the red silk cord.

The sight of him was as poised as a crane standing in shallow water.

Mobile Corps Commander Seol Cheong could hold back no longer, and a lament escaped him.

“Why……. How……. How can you be so exceptional?”

Yeon So-wol slowly turned to look at him.

‘……How am I supposed to answer that?’

Whatever he said would sound like mockery or boasting, so Yeon So-wol quietly kept his mouth shut.

Mobile Corps Commander Seol Cheong continued, his lips trembling.

“That was not refined force strength that the stage of Exhaled Smoke and Cloud should have been able to receive…….”

Refined force meant power.

But it did not mean just any power.

It was not the strength that muscles produce, but power raised through inner and outer cultivation, and only when that power was properly aligned could it at last be called refined force.

Just as the same force, loaded into the tip of a club, could not pierce an iron plate, yet loaded into the point of an awl, could.

However strong the power of one’s inner and outer cultivation, if that power was not aligned but scattered, it could not dare be called refined force.

“……You praise me too much.”

Yeon So-wol put on a show of modesty to hide the guilty prickle in his chest.

Because Seol Cheong was right. It truly had not been refined force strength that the stage of Exhaled Smoke and Cloud could receive, so he had used the power of the Star of Thousand Deaths to receive it.

‘……Does he find something suspicious?’

As a bead of cold sweat trickled down, Seol Cheong went on, his eyes wavering.

“All this time, however many times I was told never to look down on the methods of Murim men, I never believed it. But now my mind is changing……. At the stage of Exhaled Smoke and Cloud, to receive my spear throw, a throw that has reached Fierce Fire Piercing Heaven, with such ease. That must be what they call higher learning. The martial arts of the Refined Arts Sect are truly remarkable!”

“…….Thank you.”

“But however remarkable a martial art may be, making it real falls to the martial artist. At that age, how deep must one’s fire stage be to display such subtlety at the stage of Exhaled Smoke and Cloud? I cannot even begin to guess. My eyes have been opened wide today. Thank you, lad. No. Thank you, Young hero Yeon.”

Seol Cheong gave a fist-palm salute and bowed deeply at the waist.

Yeon So-wol hurriedly bowed along with him.

‘Thank goodness, that went over smoothly.’

“Go in this way. I pray that you, and your adoptive father as well, achieve what you seek.”

Guided by Seol Cheong, Yeon So-wol made his way toward the center of the boat.

After Yeon So-wol had gone, Seol Cheong was silent for a moment, then turned to his subordinates.

Wavering eyes.

Seol Cheong hung his head low.

“That……. Sorry. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him…….”

His subordinates all clutched their faces at once.

“We’re so screwed…….”

Army officers who had been picked from every corner of the country and had even passed the military examination had lost to wild men of the Jianghu.

And not once, but twice.

What would the generals, men who had passed the military examination long ago and had since risen to exalted station, think of that fact?

“Aaaaah…….”

The eighth day of the fourth month, Buddha’s Birthday. Spring, with flowers in bloom.

Aboard the night pleasure boat, splendid lanterns, the scent of wine, and the sound of music filled the air, and yet the military officials’ sorrows only deepened.

**

‘Still, thank goodness that general wasn’t watching. The Governor-General is a civil official anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether he saw or not.’

The Governor-General of Liangguang, a civil official of Junior First Rank.

The Commander-in-Chief of Liangguang, a military official of Senior Second Rank.

They were both drinking in the two-story pavilion set up at the center of the boat.

Being up so high, they would have been able to watch the overall shape of things, but they had not seen Yeon So-wol leap up from directly below the boat.

When Yeon So-wol used the power of the Star of Thousand Deaths, he had been in their blind spot.

Relieved at that fact, Yeon So-wol walked toward the two-story pavilion.

“…….”

As he walked,

“……?”

he suddenly,

“…….!!?”

realized.

‘What. Is this?’

That across this entire area, the qi of nature was moving in a deeply strange way.

This was something only Yeon So-wol, whose qi sense was keener than anyone’s, could have noticed.

Viewed piece by piece, the qi of nature held nothing strange at all.

It simply drifted this way and that, like flowing air, quivering faintly only when a person’s mind turned toward it.

But when he held this entire area within his qi sense and quietly watched, it was different.

Each movement, taken alone, was a subtle, unassuming motion that could happen by chance; but taken all together, there emerged a highly structured regularity that was utterly impossible in nature.

It was like watching grains of sand, dropped at random, pile up and scatter this way and that, drawing a landscape painting all on their own, erasing it, and drawing it again.

Yeon So-wol shuddered.

It was perhaps a greater shock than when he had first laid eyes on General Chu Seong-ho, the Commander-in-Chief of Liangguang.

Because it was a tremor spread across so vast a range.

Because it was a tremor that, though not fine-grained, missed nothing at all.

A person could not do that.

There was no way a person’s mind could feel out so wide a range, all at once, without leaving out a single spot.

Let alone the mind reaching even to places one was neither seeing nor hearing?

It made even less sense considering the age-old truth that what falls out of sight naturally falls out of mind as well.

‘It can’t be a person’s mind. It’s impossible for a person.’

Reflexively, he recalled it. The words he had heard from Yi Yu-baek.

The words that in this world, there truly were uncanny things and ghosts.

Was he finally about to meet one in the flesh?

‘What on earth is up there……?’

Tense to the bone, Yeon So-wol set his foot on the stairs leading up to the second floor of the pavilion.

Suddenly, a voice reached his ears.

“General Chu. Shall we make a game of it? Guessing who the victor of tonight’s entertainment will be.”

“Hmm……. I couldn’t begin to guess. I don’t know the names of Guangdong’s young Murim men.”

“I think it will be that fellow. Yeon So-wol, adopted son of the Wind Flow Sword here.”

“……Isn’t he a bit young?”

“Young, yes. Young. But if he breaks through every obstacle and stands here, wouldn’t that do great credit to the face of the Wind Flow Sword sitting with us?”

“I suppose it would.”

“So his disciples will use whatever means they must to set Yeon So-wol before me.”

Yeon So-wol’s skin crawled all over.

‘What? Who is that man?’

Was he not seeing straight through the whole situation, as if he had heard every word of the conversation between him and the Three Young Masters of Refined Arts?

“And the thing is, this Yeon So-wol fellow, it seemed to me he surely had some talent hidden from others. Otherwise, however much backbone he had, could he have stood so boldly before the Commander-in-Chief? That was the spirit of a man who had faced an enemy beyond his power to handle, and survived.”

By now, Yeon So-wol’s back was damp.

Did it not seem the man was even reading out the moment Yeon So-wol had first fallen into this world?

That time when, tormented by the Killing Demon, he had barely survived through the power of the Star of Thousand Deaths.

“There’s something, without question. An exceptional art of concealment? Or a life-saving trump technique he can use at a moment of mortal peril? Whatever it is, he has it. And he looked to have the wisdom to use it well, too. So I say he’ll appear on those stairs any moment now.”

“Hmm. Whether it will really be Yeon So-wol, I can’t say, but the victor clearly has something. By my qi sense, Mobile Corps Commander Seol Cheong threw his spear with everything he had, and yet the man erased that force wave with ease. What subtle principle it was, I don’t know…….”

Creak.

Creak.

Why did the sound of feet on the wooden stairs seem so loud today of all days?

Yeon So-wol swallowed, gulp after gulp.

‘Monsters. They know all this without even having seen it?’

Could they really be not people at all, but uncanny things or ghosts?

Straining not to tremble, Yeon So-wol at last stepped up past the top of the stairs.

“Well? Was I right? That looks to me like the young man called Yeon So-wol.”

“……You are right. Your Excellency the Governor-General’s discernment never fails to amaze me. I have devoted my whole life to martial learning, yet before the loftiness of Nature Learning, my head bows of its own accord.”

“If you gild me like that, General, I’ll hardly be able to lift my face.”

Fwoooooo-

The first thing to catch the eye was the thin smoke coiling above the pavilion.

The smoke rising in delicate wisps from the Governor-General’s long pipe spread through every corner of the pavilion, as though it were a long trailing bolt of silk.

Yet its smell was not so much acrid as like charcoal burning in winter.

And incense burned here and there.

A rich scent of wood that cleared the head mingled with something sweet and light, and at its tail end, something like the smell of a crisp autumn wind flicked past.

It was a strange fragrance Yeon So-wol had never once smelled in his life. A sacred fragrance he had never encountered even in the 21st century, which had been full of every scent imaginable.

But more dizzying still than that fragrance was the presence of an old man seated in the pavilion’s highest seat of honor.

No power of any kind could be felt from the old man, who sat smiling gently.

His muscles were withered, his bones looked thin. His breathing was not deep like a martial artist’s, and the hand gripping the long pipe was aged and frail.

And yet, even so, Yeon So-wol felt from that old man a pressure that was difficult to defy.

He knew it by instinct.

‘All of this……. is that old man’s mind?’

That vast mind he had seen on the way up here, holding the entire area completely in its grasp. He realized that mind belonged to that old man.

The old man’s five senses would be ordinary, unable to cover even the whole of the small pavilion; but his mind stretched out beyond the five senses, seeing and foretelling a thousand li from where he sat.

‘So it wasn’t…… an uncanny thing or a ghost?’

Yeon So-wol reasoned from the words of Commander-in-Chief General Chu Seong-ho.

‘Nature Learning, he said?’

Most likely a new way of cultivation, different again from martial arts.

‘Martial learning and Nature Learning…….’

The notion that a civil official was just an ordinary person vanished clean away.

Suddenly, a story Yi Yu-baek had once told him came to mind.

‘Confucius taught that one first sets the mind right, and only then comes Body Refinement. We martial artists, on the other hand, carry out Body Refinement first, and only then polish the mind.’

Nature Learning.

A study that polished not the body but the mind first.

‘And it’s said the mind is spirit itself…….’

A person was made up of essence, qi, and spirit.

If martial artists polished essence and qi first,

then perhaps Nature Learning scholars polished spirit itself from the very start.

Yeon So-wol shuddered at the subtle principle by which this world turned.

“You’ve had a hard road getting here. Our talk isn’t finished yet, so let us speak later. A seat has been prepared over there; go and sit.”

Governor-General Seo Myeong-eum lifted his long pipe and pointed to an empty seat.

Yeon So-wol respectfully clasped his hands, bowed low in greeting, then carefully went over and took the seat.

“Hoho. The father moved by the rules of propriety in a way most unlike a Jianghu practitioner, and the son goes further still. His dress, his bearing, not a single flaw to be found. Right and proper. Proper indeed. This is propriety itself!”

At Seo Myeong-eum’s praise, he bowed his head.

Only after the man’s attention had moved on did Yeon So-wol slowly look around him.

All the while, of course, never forgetting the fact that the man’s mind was feeling out the entire space without a single gap.

The pavilion was full of potted miniature trees.

Small trees of every shape, raised to fit their pots, stood lined up lush and green, adorning every corner.

And there were dozens of people.

In the highest seat was the great lord Seo Myeong-eum, the Governor-General, and beside him sat General Chu Seong-ho, the Commander-in-Chief.

Yi Yu-baek sat close by them, and beyond him, young Confucian scholars sat in long rows to the left and right.

The seat Yeon So-wol now occupied was at the very end of the rows where the Confucian scholars sat.

‘……Looks like this was originally a gathering to encourage the young Confucian scholars.’

The mood was good, and wine and kind words passed back and forth often.

It was just as Yeon So-wol’s tightly wound nerves were beginning to loosen a little.

⌜Be on your guard⌟

Yeon So-wol fought not to flinch.

No one had come anywhere near him, and yet the voice he had just heard was as clear as if lips had been pressed right against his ear, whispering.

‘A ghost……?’

Yeon So-wol recalled the day he had first arrived in this place.

⌜It’s a minor trick called Secret Voice Transmission, so don’t be too alarmed. It’s me, beside you.’

Secret voice……? Transmission……?

Puzzling over a term he had never heard in his life, he turned his gaze, and saw a young man sending him a subtle nod of greeting.

He looked to be about the same age.

He seemed to be a Confucian scholar, and a very poor one at that, for his clothes bore patch marks here and there, and the cap on his head was slightly dented.

Without moving his lips, without even looking Yeon So-wol’s way, the young man sent only his voice.

⌜At any rate, stay on your toes. The mood may look good now, but there’s no telling when or where it may turn. You and your adoptive father are standing on a blade’s edge right now. Everyone here is a scholar-official trained in Nature Learning, and in their eyes, a Jianghu practitioner is, in the end, nothing more than a petty man.⌟

Yeon So-wol bristled before he could stop himself.

‘Petty men? We’re petty men?’

⌜Ahh. I don’t mean you truly are a petty man. I mean that’s how it looks to them⌟

The young man explained himself, but Yeon So-wol still found it hard to accept.

‘That can’t be. Our Refined Arts Sect is a legitimate school that inherits the teachings of the orthodox lineage…….’

⌜You can’t accept it, I see? Hmm. Well, Jianghu practitioners might not know. But in the eyes of those Nature Learning scholars, just about everyone is a petty man. Do you know what they call even the teachings of Buddhism and Daoism when they’re among themselves?⌟

‘No way. They’d run down even the teachings of Buddhism and Daoism? This isn’t Joseon or something.’

Yeon So-wol could not readily believe it.

He knew well enough that the Confucian scholars of the Joseon era had burned temples, beheaded Buddha statues, and done grave harm.

But this was not Joseon, and it was not even Earth, was it?

Historically speaking, there was no telling whether this was supposed to be Tang, or Song, or Ming.

To begin with, offices like Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief themselves seemed like some blend of the Ming dynasty’s viceroys and regional commanders with the Tang dynasty’s military commissioners and army commissioners.

The same went for this so-called Nature Learning.

It might resemble Neo-Confucianism, but there was no knowing how far the resemblance actually went, and it certainly could not be the same as the Neo-Confucianism of Joseon, which was not even China.

Even on Earth, China had never pushed Revere Confucianism, suppress Buddhism as far as Joseon had. If anything, it had elevated things like Daoism all the more.

To say nothing of this otherworld China, where there were Living Buddhas and Immortals to whom even the Emperor offered his respects first…….

A world where, if one grabbed any ten passing commoners, three followed Buddhism, three followed Daoism, and the remaining four followed both.

Where even people of high station went to Guo’en Temple to make the most devout of offerings, and Daoist temples overflowed in every quarter.

And yet the very rulers of that world ran it all down? Did that make any sense?

⌜For the sake of the people’s hearts, they don’t show it outwardly, but inwardly, that’s how they think. Among themselves, the Nature Learning scholars call the teachings of Daoism and Buddhism seemingly right but wrong. Written with the character for seeming alike and the character for is-not. It means something that at a glance looks the same as the Dao, but in truth is not the Dao; something false. For short, they also call it pseudo-doctrine.⌟

Pseudo-doctrine!  [Saibii!]

Contrary to its English-sounding ring, pseudo-doctrine was a word that appeared in <Mencius>. [TL: The Korean word here, “sa-i-bii”, sounds to modern ears like a foreign loanword, but it actually derives from a classical Chinese phrase recorded in Mencius.]

To Yeon So-wol, who had come from the 21st century, that combination of words felt thoroughly strange.

‘Buddhism is……. a pseudo-doctrine?’

Daoism too?

⌜So in their eyes, how could you be anything but petty men? The only two pseudo-doctrines present at this gathering. That would be you and your adoptive father.⌟

The young man turned his head slightly, met Yeon So-wol’s eyes, and grinned.

⌜Ah. Counting me, that makes three⌟

* * *

Author’s Note

I was puzzled to see so many comments citing Joseon’s policy of Revere Confucianism, suppress Buddhism to fault Yeon So-wol’s judgment.

Wondering how this had come about, I realized the confusion likely arose because I had not sufficiently conveyed this story’s setting to you, my readers.

While keeping the broad frame intact, I have added description of what kind of world this is, and how it differs from the real Joseon in ways that led Yeon So-wol to judge as he did.

I apologize for the confusion my lacking skill has caused.