Chapter 247: You Can Avoid a Passing Shower, But Not a Storm (1)

The Northern Army held a feast.

Ma Do-Gwang had insisted that the Lord and the Strategist taking disciples on the same day deserved celebrating, and Jin Mu-Won and Ha Jin-Wol accepted the idea readily.

Besides, the celebration was not only for the disciples. A gathering like this was overdue for the sake of morale.

Pigs and cows were slaughtered. The women prepared the food while the men grilled the meat. The training ground, which had been used for martial arts practice until midday, was covered with broad wooden platforms and stalls until it resembled a market street.

The people laughed and talked and enjoyed the night. Grueling drills should have left them exhausted, yet a smile adorned every face.

These were people who had walked separate roads after the Northern Army fell. Some had turned bandit. Others had shut themselves away, living as mountain hermits. Some had drifted through the jianghu with nowhere to go, and some had lost the will to live and gone into hiding.

Now, they were gathered in one place again under the name of the Northern Army. Every day was hard with punishing training, but not one of them thought of it as hardship.

The Northern Army would rise again. Its fame would spread across the world, and they would stand at the center of it. The thought alone set their hearts burning.

The martial artists’ eyes turned to the central platform, where Jin Mu-Won sat tipping a cup.

Jin Kwan-Ho, the former Lord of the Northern Army, known by the great alias the Northern Wall, was the man they respected above all others. And Jin Mu-Won was his son.

A decade ago, Jin Mu-Won had been a powerless boy. Ten years on, he had grown into an absolute master known as the Northern Blade, and he had walked a thorny road of hardship to earn a reputation that fell no way short of the Nine Skies.

When Jin Mu-Won said he would rebuild the Northern Army, they had doubted him. Although he was a famous martial artist, it was another thing entirely to prove that someone so young understood the banner of the Northern Army and could carry it. As a result, some looked down on him at first and refused to follow him.

Three years later, no one thought that way anymore. Jin Mu-Won was the spitting image of Jin Kwan-Ho. He walked the same hard road his father had walked. He never dodged a difficulty or pushed a responsibility onto anyone else. He went first down the hardest path, and the men had no choice but to follow.

The other leaders, Ma Do-Gwang, Tang Gi-Mun, Kyung Mu-Saeng, Seo Mu-Sang and Hwang Cheol sat beside Jin Mu-Won. Like everyone else, they arrived at the platform and were drinking.

“Gahaha! This is good. Take this, my Lord.” Ma Do-Gwang drained a porcelain bowl brimming with wine in one go and held the empty bowl out to Jin Mu-Won.

Jin Mu-Won smiled and took it, and Ma Do-Gwang filled it to the brim.

“You’ve worked hard, my Lord.”

“It was nothing worth calling hard.”

“Jae Hyuk-Shim, that bat of a man. I should have torn him apart with my own hands. I think you let him die too comfortably.”

Ma Do-Gwang’s fists trembled with regret.

“......” Jin Mu-Won drained his cup in silence.

As though he had been waiting, Kyung Mu-Saeng muttered, “So Hyuk-Shim died like that in the end.”

A great many feelings crossed his face.

Jae Hyuk-Shim had been one of the Four Pillars of the Northern Army, the same as him. There had been a time when they called each other brother, and a time when they hated each other.

All of it was the past now. Jae Hyuk-Shim was dead, and his was a face Kyung Mu-Saeng would never see again.

Suddenly, he realized that his mouth had gone dry and emptied his cup in one big gulp.

He was not the only one who felt melancholic. Hwang Cheol seemed to feel the same, and emptied his own drink.

By now, three of the Four Northern Pillars had lost their lives at Jin Mu-Won’s hands.

The Phantom Sword Yeon Cheon-Hwa, Fist Demon Jo Cheon-Woo, Ironblood Martial Emperor Jae Hyuk-Shim and Wind Emperor Kyung Mu-Saeng had been the Four Pillars that held the Northern Army up once, ambitious heroes who dreamed of supremacy.

Of them, only Kyung Mu-Saeng had survived to share a cup with Jin Mu-Won.

An era is drawing to a close.

Kyung Mu-Saeng felt by instinct that his own age was ending. Just as the trailing waves of the Yangtze push the waves ahead of them, the time had come for him to be pushed along and vanish.

This was the age of young martial artists, beginning with Jin Mu-Won. His own role was to stand at the man’s side and raise up the martial artists who would help him.

It was then that Jin Mu-Won held out his cup to him.

“My Lord?”

“Take my cup.”

Jin Mu-Won filled Kyung Mu-Saeng’s cup to the brim.

Kyung Mu-Saeng held it and stared blankly at the younger man. For a moment, he saw Jin Kwan-Ho’s face overlapped with his son’s.

The man he had respected most in his life had left behind a successor cut in his own image. His eyes reddened for no reason he could name.

Jin Mu-Won said politely, “I am still lacking in a great many ways. I will be in your care going forward as well, Uncle.”

Kyung Mu-Saeng forced himself toward coldness. This was no time to show weakness. Jin Mu-Won was still young and needed more goading, not less.

“I am glad you know it, my Lord. Remember that wound. The moment you let your guard down, another one just like it will open.”

Kyung Mu-Saeng pointed at the scar on the nape of Jin Mu-Won’s neck, left by their duel. A larger scar remained branded on his own body, of course, but that was besides the point.

“Of course.”

“Then that is enough.”

Kyung Mu-Saeng drained the wine in one go.

Watching him, Ha Jin-Wol smiled faintly. The old man grumbled a lot, but he knew that Kyung Mu-Saeng was the Northern Army’s truest loyalist.

He turned to Tang Gi-Mun. “By the way, Hyung-nim, how is the Hall of Living Poison coming along?”

“They have finally reached a usable level. They will not be a burden wherever we take them.”

Ha Jin-Wol’s expression turned pitying for a moment.

The guilt of failing to protect Myeong Ryu-San had changed a great deal in Tang Gi-Mun. His temperament had turned somewhat gloomy, and he no longer hesitated over using poison.

He had selected martial artists with constitutions sensitive to poison and begun feeding it to them in earnest. He fed them even the precious poisons he had never managed to give Myeong Ryu-San, and the martial artists of the Hall of Living Poison grew stronger by leaps and bounds.

The Tang Gi-Mun of before would have been satisfied with that. Now, he drove them to their limits day after day, and the men of the Hall of Living Poison walked the line between life and death without pause, poison qi accumulating in them all the while.

“You’ve worked hard, Hyung-nim. Ryu-San would have been glad to see this.”

“I truly wish that were so,” Tang Gi-Mun muttered bitterly, draining his cup.

A heavy mood settled over them, and everyone fell solemn. Those who knew Myeong Ryu-San reminisced about him.

After a while, the noise and the life came back.

Jin Mu-Won rose from his place and began making his way among the other platforms.

“My Lord.”

The faces of his men lit up.

A good many of them remembered the moment Jin Kwan-Ho took his own life, and the sight of Jin Mu-Won watching it happen.

The image of those small shoulders carrying the weight of the whole world was still vivid to them. That was why they felt all the sorrier and all the more grateful. They had not been at his side when he needed them most.

A martial artist shot to his feet. “My Lord, let this Jang-Chun pour you a cup.”

The man, Gu Jang-Chun, wore a simple smile that did not match his size. He had turned bandit following Ma Do-Gwang after the fall of the Northern Army. He looked gentle enough from the outside, but he had the strength to move mountains, which made him an object of fear to everyone.

Jin Mu-Won did not refuse the cup. “Thank you.”

At that, others scrambled to offer their own.

“Let me pour you one too.”

“Take mine as well, my Lord.”

Jin Mu-Won smiled and accepted them all.

Hwang Cheol’s eyes reddened.

Are you watching, my Lord? The Young Master has grown up so splendidly. The Northern Army will spread its wings wide again because of him. I think you can close your eyes in peace now.

It was not what it had been, yet the Northern Army was building a clear structure again. It could not stand against Heaven’s Summit or the Silent Night for now, but time would take care of the rest.

Jin Mu-Won was young still, with unlimited potential. He was strong now, and he would only grow stronger as the years went. Time was wholly on his side.

The mood ripened, and the night deepened. The voices never stopped, and laughter broke out in every corner.

While this was an ease they had not felt in a very long time, the people knew it would not last long. Perhaps that was why they worked so hard at enjoying today.

The feast finally ended at dawn. Most of them lay sprawled on the ground drunk, and only a few were still fully conscious.

“Hoo!” Jin Mu-Won let out a great breath.

The scent of wine came out with it. He had no idea how much he had drunk, since he had refused no cup offered to him.

A man who rarely felt drink at all was unsteady on his feet, but he did not mind the feeling.

Jin Mu-Won climbed to a mountainside that looked down over the whole Northern Army. The wind was cold. It was high summer below, and here in the western highlands the air was cool enough to suggest early autumn.

He forgot the cold and looked down for a long while. They had set their ground in the west, closest to the sky, rather than in the north, and he felt the will and the spirit of the place carried on unbroken all the same.

A voice full of longing worked its way past his lips.

“Father.”

His father’s face was an old memory, faint by now.

He had been left alone far too young to have time for remembering him. Or perhaps he had deliberately worked at not remembering. The memory hurt that much, and his father’s last moments in particular stayed so devastating that he did not want to call them up.

Now that he had rebuilt the Northern Army like this, though, he missed his father bitterly. He missed him until tears came.

“Is it comfortable? Is it peaceful where you are?”

He imagined his father smiling and saying that it was. Still, Jin Mu-Won could not smile back.

“You really are cruel. Here I am suffering, while you are living so comfortably.”

He lay back on the grass and looked up at the dark sky. The dazzling sea of stars filled his eyes. The drink had worn off long ago.

“Hyung!” a voice called out to him.

“Hm?”bJin Mu-Won turned his head where he lay and saw a familiar boy. A smile touched his lips. “It’s you, Moon-Jung.”

“So this is where you were. I looked everywhere.”

“You were looking for me?”

Kwak Moon-Jung nodded without a word.

Jin Mu-Won unfolded his arms from behind his head and sat up, and Kwak Moon-Jung came and sat beside him.

“What about Geon-Yeop and Seon-Woo?”

“Asleep.”

“Are they settling in?”

“Well enough.”

“That’s a relief.”

While the feast was at its height, Kwak Moon-Jung had been looking after Yu Geon-Yeop and Han Seon-Woo. He had become sworn brothers with Han Seon-Woo and had taken to Yu Geon-Yeop just as quickly.

Kwak Moon-Jung grinned. “Hehe!”

A moment ago he had seemed quite mature, yet in an instant, he turned back into a child. Kwak Moon-Jung always became a child in front of Jin Mu-Won.

“Have you made any progress in your martial arts?”

“Just the same. It feels like there’s a little stone in my head blocking my thoughts.” Kwak Moon-Jung held up the tip of one finger to show the size of the stone.

“I can hear that stone rolling around from over here,” Jin Mu-Won joked.

“Hehe!”

Now Jin Mu-Won understood what had brought Kwak Moon-Jung out. He got to his feet. “Shall we have a round?”

“Hehe!”

Kwak Moon-Jung brightened and rose with him. Blue Lotus, his beloved sword, was already in his hand.

Jin Mu-Won beckoned. “Come at me.”

“Here I come.”

SWISH!

Blue Lotus cut the night air.

Under the brilliant starlight, two shadows tangled together in a wild dance.