Dropped Into the Murim with an Instant-Kill Skill - Chapter 33
Chapter 33: Across the World This June, the Petals All Have Fallen (4)
TL/ED – Miso
「I go by Jin Geol.」
The poor Confucian scholar in his patched-up clothes was named Jin Geol.
「What you said earlier left quite an impression on me. Self-interest is no sin. If one’s thoughts hold no wickedness, private interests can gather to form a great good. Ahh……. I consider those words nearly as precious as the teachings of Confucius and Mencius.」
Comparable to the teachings of Confucius and Mencius.
That was an impossible compliment.
In twenty-first-century terms, it was no different from saying, ‘Whoa, you’re on the level of Jesus.’
But Yeon So-wol was not particularly surprised.
‘Of course it is. I was quoting Adam Smith.’
A legendary passage that could be called the starting point of modern economics.
By Yeon So-wol’s reckoning, it was only natural that it ranked with Confucius and Mencius. If anything, it ranked even higher.
「My, my. So calm even after praise like that……? I like you even more now!」
Only after hearing that follow-up voice transmission did he belatedly reflect, ‘Ah, was I thinking too much like a modern person?’ But there seemed no need to explain himself.
「This is the only kind of help I can offer.」
He abruptly whispered a couplet of poetry.
Taoli chunfeng yibei jiu
Jianghu yeyu shinian deng
Amid peach and plum blossoms in the spring breeze, we shared a single cup of wine,
While in the Jianghu’s night rain, for ten long years, I have faced only a lamp.
?
‘What’s this supposed to be?’
Jin Geol’s voice transmission clung to the ear of the puzzled Yeon So-wol.
「Remember it. It is the favorite poem of the honored elder, the Governor-General of Liangguang. It may well come in handy.」
Yeon So-wol swiftly analyzed the poem.
‘Spring breeze and blossoms versus night rain in the Jianghu. So it sets the flowering spring breeze against the rainy nights of the Jianghu. In the spring breeze, we were happy sharing a cup of wine; in the Jianghu, I was lonely, facing only a lamp for ten years? And there’s a contrast between one and ten worked in, too. So this is how classical poetry is written.’
With the skills he had honed solving Korean-language exam questions, he finished analyzing the piece in an instant and committed the poem to memory.
「Being a Jianghu practitioner, no one will expect much of you. The mere fact that you know this poem should score you points. If the chance ever comes.」
Yeon So-wol gave a slight nod of thanks. Jin Geol grinned and sent no further voice transmissions.
**
Seo Myeong-eum, Governor-General of Liangguang, spoke.
“Do you know why I love bonsai?”
Small potted trees, filling the pavilion almost to bursting.
Seo Myeong-eum gazed at them with a satisfied look and continued.
“Because raising people is exactly like tending those bonsai. Cutting away the branches that grow wrong, protecting the ones that grow well, watching that they never exceed their station, and repotting them into a suitable vessel at just the right time.”
At a gesture behind him, the page boys standing in attendance stacked small one-tael gold ingots and silver ingots neatly before Seo Myeong-eum.
The Confucian scholars watching swallowed hard.
“People are the same. One must check their progress without pause, praising them when they do well and punishing them when they do not.”
Seo Myeong-eum swept his gaze across the scholars.
“Today I will judge you, praising what deserves praise and rebuking what deserves rebuke. Now, come forward one at a time and receive my wine.”
The first scholar stepped forward. Filling his cup to the brim, Seo Myeong-eum recited a line of poetry.
“Taohua liushui yaoran qu ”
A poem by Li Bai.
Peach blossoms drift far, far away on the flowing water.
The line that originally follows is ‘bieyou tiandi fei renjian’, meaning there lies another world, one that is not the realm of men.
But the scholar, receiving the cup, answered with a line of his own composition.
“Yipian danxin queran cun”
A single crimson heart (loyalty) remains clear and true within me.
Seo Myeong-eum’s face twisted into a scowl.
“Wrong!”
Who knew such volume could come from that aged body?
Every scholar in his seat gulped.
“You utterly ignored the sentiment held in ‘Taohua liushui yaoran qu’! Boasting of your own loyalty out of nowhere, with no regard for context, what is that if not the conduct of a fawning traitor! How wretched must your cultivation be, that this is the best meaning you can draw from a poem!”
The scholar’s face went white.
His hands trembled violently. Spilled wine spattered down.
“Get out of my sight!”
Trembling, the scholar set his cup on the table and fled down the stairs.
“Next.”
One by one, the exchanges continued.
When an answer pleased him, Seo Myeong-eum said,
“Correct!”
And he plunked down silver ingots then and there.
But when an answer was wrong, he showed no mercy.
“Wrong!”
Many scholars left the pavilion trembling.
On Seo Myeong-eum’s table the silver dwindled, while the cups of wine left undrunk only multiplied. The gold sat piled exactly as before, untouched.
Then came the turn of Jin Geol, seated beside Yeon So-wol.
Once again Seo Myeong-eum poured a full cup and recited a line of verse.
“Yipian huafei jianque chun”
A poem by Du Fu.
With every petal that flies away, spring diminishes.
Before even answering, Jin Geol drained the cup he had received in one go, then exhaled contentedly and replied.
“Banpian xindan gan zhuo jun”
Half a heart turns crimson, and I dare raise this cup to you.
“Oh-ho, look at this one.”
The wrinkled corners of Seo Myeong-eum’s mouth twitched upward.
“I distinctly scolded a single crimson heart at the start, and now you bring me half a crimson heart.”
Jin Geol was smiling calmly.
Seo Myeong-eum smiled along with him.
“Very correct. To the sentiment of mourning spring’s passing, you answer that half your heart has turned crimson as you raise a cup. It can be read as a cup raised to a friend or to a lover, and at the same time as loyalty offered up to one’s sovereign. Very fine indeed.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Using half a heart rather than a whole one was apt as well. It seems to reveal the heart of a practitioner still short of completion, and also the heart of an old minister whose spring is all but gone, with barely half remaining. Exquisite.”
“You honor me too much.”
“The rhyme you matched with ‘chun’ and ‘jun’ was excellent too. Take it.”
For the first time that day, Seo Myeong-eum handed out a gold ingot.
Jin Geol bowed deeply and returned to his seat. Meeting Yeon So-wol’s eyes, he winked.
Now it was Yeon So-wol’s turn, and he was tense.
At the same time, he felt a certain exhilaration.
‘This atmosphere……. I know it well.’
The ice-cold life of an exam student, where right and wrong were divided with absolute clarity.
Yeon So-wol had been a predator in that jungle made of paper.
Cult ritual this, cult ritual that, Jin Geol had tried to spook him, but.
‘If it’s this kind of thing. I’ve got this.’
Heart pounding, he waited to be called.
“Next.”
Yeon So-wol stepped forward with confidence.
Trrrickle-
Seo Myeong-eum filled his cup to the brim.
“Taoli chunfeng yibei jiu”
‘There it is!’
Huang Tingjian’s poem.
Peach blossoms red, plum blossoms white. A line about how, in a spring breeze with flowers in full bloom, you and I shared a cup of wine.
The line that originally follows tells how, for ten years afterward, they never met again and could only long for each other.
Reading between those lines, the scholars gulped.
‘Would a mere martial brute of the Jianghu even know that poem?’
‘He bestowed a verse of friendship and longing between people……. The great lord has taken a liking to that Jianghu practitioner.’
‘It’s more than a liking. Isn’t that an outright invitation to sit the civil examination and enter office? It could mean that you will long for this day all your life, so leave the lonely Jianghu behind, take office, and spend every day like today.’
‘He’s saying the boy will long remember the wine being poured for him now. An invitation to office!’
But inside Yeon So-wol’s head there were none of the complicated calculations the scholars imagined.
Wrapping one’s heart in a poem and speaking in circles?
There was no way a twenty-first-century person could instantly parse something even trickier than Kyoto-style innuendo. [TL: Kyoto natives are famous in East Asia for extremely indirect speech, where a pointed real meaning hides beneath polite surface remarks.]
And so, just as he always had, he simply fixated single-mindedly on getting the ‘right answer’, as if solving a Korean-language exam question.
‘It actually came up. A question I knew in advance. No need to be nervous.’
Feeling grateful to Jin Geol for slipping him the answer sheet, he reviewed the line he had prepared in advance.
‘The parallel structure is perfect. It shows off the source text, so it pays respect too. And the meaning fits this moment exactly!’
Yeon So-wol answered.
“Jianghu yeyou shiwan deng”
In the Jianghu’s night revels, a hundred thousand lanterns rise.
“…….”
“…….”
“Gah…….”
One of the scholars audibly sucked in a breath.
‘Is he insane? He completely flipped the original meaning! It’s a poem steeped in loneliness, and suddenly it’s all feasting and merrymaking……!’
‘No. That’s a highly calculated move. He caught on that Great Lord Seo Myeong-eum was subtly urging him toward office.’
‘One cup of wine in your flower-scented breeze? Well, the Jianghu has a hundred thousand lanterns? ……Is that what he just said? To Great Lord Seo Myeong-eum’s face?’
‘He rammed him head-on! What kind of nerve is that!’
‘And besides, it’s not like you people lit those hundred thousand lanterns……?’
‘He’s a madman!’
As everyone reeled in shock,
“Hah. Ha-hah?”
Seo Myeong-eum let out a hollow laugh.
Yeon So-wol was simply baffled.
‘Why’s the mood like this……?’
Seo Myeong-eum narrowed his eyes at Yeon So-wol.
“Earlier the father landed a blow on me, and now the son does the same.”
Yeon So-wol only widened his eyes.
“Hah. You say a thing like that and still look me straight in the eye? Your mettle truly is out of the ordinary.”
With a snort of laughter, Seo Myeong-eum asked him,
“Very well. I had meant to hand you a gold ingot no matter how you answered, and give you the promised treasured sword besides, but since you have come at me like this, I must test you a little further.
‘What did I……. do?’
To the flustered Yeon So-wol, Seo Myeong-eum posed his question.
“Your father told me he intends to subjugate the bandits of Cheonro Mountain himself.”
“Yes.”
“But it is said, junjun chenchen, fufu zizi.”
The ruler must be a ruler,
the minister a minister,
the father a father,
and the son a son.
“And the people must be the people. But. The people’s proper station is not to take up the sword. Yet your father, one of the people, comes to me saying he will take up the sword and asks for my help. How should I answer him? If the people take up swords, is that truly any different from banditry?”
A cold sweat broke out on Yeon So-wol.
‘This is……. the problem of vigilante justice……?’
It was a problem that could not be called solved even in twenty-first-century South Korea.
Endless noise about self-defense laws and whatnot,
about the law being too soft,
about how a person wronged could hardly go on living like this; a perpetually noisy issue.
Legally, vigilante justice was forbidden, but the human heart did not work that way.
People devoured webtoons, web novels, dramas, all manner of content, and cheered wildly for vigilantes.
In short, a hard question.
Even a Seoul National University student would struggle to answer it, and it was harder still for a student who had merely been preparing to get into Seoul National University. Worse, he had to answer according to this world’s common sense and scholarly principles…….
It was simply impossible.
A twenty-first-century high schooler knew next to nothing about Confucianism.
In the end, Yeon So-wol thought,
‘Okay. Let’s just admit I don’t know.’
Yeon So-wol knew a thing or two about teachers.
Teachers absolutely hated students who pretended to know what they did not.
‘But if I only say I don’t know, they hate that too.’
They would take it as a lack of will to learn.
So,
‘First admit I don’t know, then throw out follow-up questions about the thing I don’t know. That’s the way.’
The posture of a picture-perfect model student.
Whoo…….
Yeon So-wol took a short, deep breath and squeezed out a question.
“I am too dull to find the answer. To answer that, I would first need to know what Nature Learning calls the people. But my learning is still shallow, and I have not yet been taught about the people.”
At that, the scholars frowned.
‘He doesn’t know the people?’
‘When the people are the very root.’
‘That’s rather more than shallow learning, isn’t it?’
‘He managed a passable poem somehow, but in the end he shows the bottom of his barrel.’
Small sneers scattering through the crowd.
Amid them, Yeon So-wol continued.
“I have read this and that classic under my father in my own way, but they were all about the Way and Principle. In the books I read, I never once heard the People and their Livelihood treated in any detail. But since the people are called the root, surely there must be detailed study and teaching on the People and their Livelihood as well. For only when the root (the base) is sturdy can the extremities (the branches) stand upright.”
All at once, the air atop the pavilion changed.
“Huh……?”
One scholar made a sound like air leaking out of him.
The same question bloomed in every mind.
‘Come to think of it. A book that treats the People and Livelihood in detail……. have I ever……seen one?’
‘No. This one is a book on the Way and Principle. That one, too, discourses on the Way and Principle. The People and Livelihood are…….’
‘They’re not entirely absent. But they’re hardly the books in fashion these days.’
‘There are none. There are books that touch on the People and Livelihood, but none that dig into them as thoroughly as the Way and Principle. Even while we call them the root…….’
In that strange silence, Yeon So-wol went on.
“All this dull, wanting fellow knows is that the people grieve, and rage, and beat their own bodies, and sometimes take up the sword. What my father means to do is, in the end, exactly that. Surely Nature Learning has already made detailed study of this as well. For if the only answer it gives to people who weep, wound themselves, and take up swords is to simply endure, then it could hardly be called a great teaching.”
“…….”
Now the silence atop the pavilion was frighteningly heavy.
“Why the people do such things at all, how their hearts might be consoled, how those who weep and take up swords should be governed so that no injustice remains in the world. No, what measures might prevent such a state of affairs in the first place. Even if it has not been put into practice, surely the research exists. If you would teach me, I will engrave it on my heart.”
“…….”
Seo Myeong-eum could say nothing.
He was different from the scholars of shallow learning.
His head was filled not only with books and theories but with administrative records. What should the law be, for the people’s sake? How should it be enforced? What of the economy? What of the people who take up swords? What of the people starving to death this very moment?
He had agonized countless times.
Debated countless times.
And yet he could not open his mouth.
‘In the end, didn’t we only fret amongst ourselves and fail to set it right in the world? Did we truly make the People and Livelihood our root? Isn’t it because we could not, because we fell short and failed, that there is a Yi Yu-baek today, and a Yeon So-wol today?’
While Seo Myeong-eum stayed silent,
the scholars sighed in lament.
‘What a scathing critique.’
‘He knows everything. He’s saying it knowing full well.’
‘Frightening. The words sting terribly, yet not one of them defies reason.’
‘A book that closely considers each and every weeping commoner who takes up the sword, I’ve never so much as imagined such a thing…….’
After a long silence, Seo Myeong-eum barely managed to part his lips.
“I am……. ashamed.”
Not correct.
Nor wrong.
But the word ashamed.
He looked from Yi Yu-baek to Yeon So-wol in turn, then muttered bitterly.
“You two truly are Jianghu practitioners.”
Turning to the bonsai that filled the pavilion, he murmured.
“Some trees grow straight on their own, and stay green on their own as well.”
He turned to the page boys behind him and said,
“Bring what we prepared.”
Soon a chest was set before Yi Yu-baek.
Inside the chest, one-tael gold ingots were piled high. Gold so vast that even the wealthy Yi Yu-baek’s breath caught for a moment.
“However, as circumstances do not allow us to mobilize troops to help you directly, I will help you from my own private coffers. Scatter that gold, and rallying the willing chivalrous warriors of the Jianghu will come all the easier.”
“Thank you, Great lord.”
Yi Yu-baek clasped his hands together and bowed deeply.
“And this is a tally.”
Seo Myeong-eum held out a pouch containing one half of a wooden token.
“This is military authority that I, Governor-General of Liangguang, temporarily confer upon Yi Yu-baek of Xinxing County. Your gathering of men to strike Cheonro Mountain is now no private matter, but the business of the state, and this official’s responsibility.”
“Th-thank you.”
Now Yi Yu-baek’s lips trembled.
He had never expected support to this degree.
Seo Myeong-eum nodded deeply, then turned to Yeon So-wol.
At that, a page boy came pattering over and held out a treasured sword to Yeon So-wol. The treasured sword that had been promised as his reward upon reaching the boat.
But.
“Take it away!”
Seo Myeong-eum waved his hand.
He spoke to the page boy behind him.
“Bring my Demon-Slaying Sword.”
Moments later, a page boy came running with a large sword cradled in his arms.
“I may be no martial artist, but fine swords come to me as gifts from all over. Of them all, this is the finest.”
A snow-white scabbard and a jet-black hilt.
Seo Myeong-eum held it out to Yeon So-wol.
“With talent and wisdom like yours, you are bound to face a true demon one day. When that day comes, this sword will serve you.”
Dazed, Yeon So-wol accepted the sword.
Dimly sensing that he had struck some sore spot of theirs.
‘No way. Did they really never do much research on the people’s livelihood?’
If that was really true…….
‘So it’s not just the Jianghu that’s insane. Politics too…….’
They had carried themselves with such gravitas that he had assumed they would be different.
The fierce kick of the medieval world left the tip of his tongue tingling.
And then,
“Live well in that Jianghu where a hundred thousand lanterns burn. Still. If the chance comes, I would like to see you once more. Thanks to you, I have been greatly awakened. Thank you. Young Jianghu practitioner.”
At Seo Myeong-eum’s parting words,
Yeon So-wol, for some reason,
‘A Jianghu practitioner.’
felt a pride he could not explain.
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