Chapter 357

“Martial Nephew Cheongsu...?”

Taoist Hyeonam flinched in surprise. Hu Gae answered in Kwak Yeon’s place.

“I heard Cheongsu suddenly showed up before the Eye at the Beggar Clan branch in Shiquan County and asked for a favor. He wanted an urgent dispatch sent to me. Cheongsu knew I was traveling with Brother Kwak, so that must have been why.”

Hu Gae’s explanation filled Hyeonam in on what had happened. But that only raised an even bigger question.

“How did Martial Nephew Cheongsu know the Gathering Demons Division would be lying in ambush?”

Kwak Yeon answered as though he had been waiting for the question.

“The dispatch didn’t say. That’s why I was hoping you could summon Cheongsu, Senior Brother Hyeonam. I wanted to ask him myself.”

Hyeonam’s expression turned troubled.

“Cheongsu isn’t here.”

“...?”

“He left yesterday evening for the Zhongnan Sect, accompanying his master, Taoist Hyeongong.”

Hyeonam briefly explained why Hyeongong had been sent to request aid from their fellow martial artists of the Zhongnan Sect.

Hu Gae listened in silence, then tilted his head.

“That’s strange.”

When everyone looked at him, he continued.

“Ganggok County is only a day from Mount Zhongnan. Shouldn’t they have been back long ago?”

“...!”

Hyeonam thought for a moment at Hu Gae’s question, then spoke.

“I suppose I should tell Junior Brother Kwak everything. You must be wondering about all that has happened as well.”

He turned to Hu Gae.

“Hu Gae, this may take quite some time. I fear you’ll find it tedious.”

It was a tactful way of saying that what followed concerned only members of Wudang and asking him to give them some privacy.

“Understood.”

Hu Gae readily nodded and walked away.

He was intensely curious, but these were another sect’s internal affairs. He could hardly stay and eavesdrop.

With nothing else to do, Hu Gae headed toward Taoist Cheongmu, who was sitting off to one side of the official road.

The way his feet seemed to carry him there of their own accord made him think there might be something to the saying that even irritation could turn into attachment.

He remembered the warm satisfaction he had felt when Cheongmu told him that from now on, he would dig up wild ginseng for Hu Gae’s share as well.

STOMP. STOMP.

Hu Gae deliberately made his footsteps loud as he approached, but Cheongmu never lifted his bowed head.

“...?”

Cheongmu was crouching on the ground, drawing something in the dirt with a tree branch.

Hu Gae sat down beside him.

“Taoist Cheongmu, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“...”

The curt answer left Hu Gae with nowhere to take the conversation.

What a troublesome burden.

Conversations with Cheongmu were always disjointed.

More often than not, they ended with a single, “I don’t know.”

Unless Hu Gae handled him with the same care he might use with a six- or seven-year-old child, it was almost impossible to keep anything resembling a conversation going.

SCRATCH. SCRATCH. SCRATCH.

Hu Gae listened to the branch scraping across the road for a while before speaking quietly.

“Taoist Cheongmu, why not pay your respects before Uncheon Zhenren’s spirit tablet, even now?”

He had only brought it up because he could think of nothing else to say.

“I’m not going to.”

“...!”

The stubborn answer stirred a touch of obstinacy in Hu Gae.

“Taoist Cheongmu, why are you being so stubborn? He was still a senior of your sect. Isn’t it only proper to at least bow your head in mourning?”

“Why should I? The coffin’s empty.”

Hu Gae found himself at a slight loss.

Because strictly speaking, Cheongmu was right.

To someone as guileless as Cheongmu, they were simply paying respects to an empty coffin.

Hu Gae patiently answered the childlike question.

“It isn’t completely empty. Uncheon Zhenren’s Taoist robes and Songmun Sword are inside.”

The world was vast, and affairs in the martial world were unpredictable. It was common for a martial artist’s body never to be recovered.

In such cases, the fate of a martial artist was often confirmed through the recovery of the signature weapon they had left behind.

Bodies decayed and vanished, but weapons endured. For a martial artist to have been separated from a signature weapon that never left their side usually meant death.

That was why it was customary in the martial world to recover such a weapon and hold a funeral with it, just as they were doing now for Uncheon Zhenren.

“It’s still just a shell!”

Cheongmu shook his head firmly.

“When the Palace Lord, my Grand-Master, died, my master told me something. He said that as long as you don’t forget someone in your heart, they’re still alive.”

“...!”

Hu Gae had no answer to that.

In truth, there was nothing wrong with it.

If you had never seen the body yourself, how could you be absolutely certain someone was dead?

Hu Gae began to wonder whether Cheongmu might actually be dealing with his grief in the wisest way of all.

“That, too, is a way of mourning.”

He remembered what Hyeonam had said while looking at Cheongmu not long ago and fell silent.

SCRATCH. SCRATCH.

Cheongmu’s hand, which had paused for a moment, resumed moving. Hu Gae’s gaze naturally dropped to the ground.

He had been wondering for some time what Cheongmu kept drawing.

Hm?

It was a human face.

“Taoist Cheongmu, were you drawing Uncheon Zhenren?”

“No!”

“Ah. Then it must be your Grand-Master, Palace Lord Unseon?”

“It’s not Grand-Master Unseon either!”

“Then who are you drawing?”

“I don’t know!”

Hu Gae was genuinely baffled.

“How can you draw someone you don’t even know?”

“I don’t know who it is, but I remember the face.”

“...?”

“But whenever I try to draw it, I can’t get it right.”

Hu Gae still found the whole thing absurd, but he knew Cheongmu had lost his memories of the past, so he accepted the explanation.

It was entirely possible that the identity had vanished from his memory while the face itself remained engraved somewhere in his mind.

“Then that person must have been very important to you.”

“I don’t know that either.”

After that merciless reply, Cheongmu returned his full attention to the drawing.

“...!”

Exhausted from trying to force a conversation out of him, Hu Gae shut his mouth.

“Ah, this isn’t right either.”

Cheongmu rubbed the drawing out with the sole of his foot and started over.

SCRATCH. SCRATCH. SCRATCH.

As Hu Gae watched the rough, uneven lines the branch left in the dirt, a thought occurred to him.

For Cheongmu, who had forgotten his entire past, to remember a face at all, the person had to have been extraordinarily important to him.

That face had been etched deeply enough into his mind to surface unconsciously even after everything else was gone.

Who could it be?

For Hu Gae, that person would be his old master.

If that old man dies, will I end up sitting around drawing his face like Taoist Cheongmu?

He could not confidently say he would never do the same if darker days came for him.

At any rate, he certainly didn’t trust himself to reproduce his master’s face properly.

Maybe I ought to hire a painter to make a portrait of him while I still can.

But if he actually tried, Hu Gae would probably end up having his own funeral before the portrait was finished.

“You little bastard. Drawing my memorial portrait already? Looks like you’ve been praying for me to hurry up and croak.”

His master was not a reasonable man.

Besides, portraits hardly suited beggars in the first place. Their way was to empty their pockets until all beneath heaven belonged to them.

Whew.

Hu Gae was inwardly sighing at the thought of his old master when Cheongmu suddenly exclaimed.

“Ah! This one looks a little closer.”

Hu Gae turned his eyes to the drawing.

“...?”

It looked just as crude and disorderly as the one before it.

Cheongmu tilted his head.

“Or... maybe not?”

Hu Gae watched him stare at the dirt with his brow deeply furrowed and thought what a pointless exercise this was.

A painstaking portrait on proper paper might still fail to capture a person’s likeness. A crude sketch scratched into the road with a branch had no chance at all.

Hu Gae shook his head and was about to look away when he stopped.

Hm?

The drawing was clumsy, yet something about it seemed strangely familiar.

An angular face. A high nose. Deep-set eyes...

Wait. That’s Taoist Cheongmu’s face!

Hu Gae was dumbfounded.

Don’t tell me he remembers his own reflection from a mirror or the water and is drawing that.

But Cheongmu was not that foolish.

His heart was merely as simple and innocent as that of a six- or seven-year-old.

Then...

It must be someone from Taoist Cheongmu’s family.

Blood relatives usually resembled one another in some way.

And Hu Gae had the nagging feeling that he had seen a face like this somewhere other than on Cheongmu himself. He focused more closely on the drawing.

I’m sure I’ve seen someone who looked like this...

Just then, Cheongmu scraped the drawing away with his foot.

“Ah, this one’s wrong too.”

The glimpse had been too brief for Hu Gae to remember who the face belonged to.

Well, there are plenty of people in the world who look alike.

Hu Gae turned away from Cheongmu, who was already absorbed in drawing again.

Hyeonam and Kwak Yeon were still talking beside the funeral carriage.

They were too far away for Hu Gae to hear, but their expressions made it clear that the conversation was extremely serious.

NEIGH! NEIGH!

Hu Gae turned at the sudden sound of horses.

The drivers who had gone to search for the animals they had released were returning with them in tow.

Well-trained horses rarely wandered far even when turned loose, so the drivers seemed to have found them without much trouble.

Thanks to those drivers, I won’t have to pull the carriage myself.

So few able-bodied Wudang disciples remained that Hu Gae could hardly have pretended not to notice if there were no one left to pull it.

“Whew!”

He was just breathing a considerable sigh of relief at having escaped the role of a draft horse when—

“Brother.”

At Kwak Yeon’s voice, Hu Gae immediately turned toward the funeral carriage.

“Could you come over here?”

“Hm?”

“I have a favor to ask.”

Hu Gae’s face brightened as he sprang to his feet.

“Name it. Anything.”

As long as it wasn’t pulling a carriage, there was little he wouldn’t do.

*******

“Martial Uncle Jong! There’s smoke rising from the official road ahead!”

At the shout from the front of the column, Zhongnan Sect elder Jong Unseong focused his vision on the distant sky.

A dark plume hung against the western sky, where the sun was already sinking toward the horizon.

“Damn it!”

Elder Jong Unseong let out a frustrated exclamation and turned to Taoist Hyeongong beside him.

“Taoist Hyeongong, it seems something has happened to Wudang’s expedition force.”

“Ah!”

A dark look crossed Hyeongong’s face as he groaned and staggered slightly.

“I prayed it wouldn’t come to this...”

“Damn. Had I known, I would have pushed the march harder.”

Jong Unseong looked at Hyeongong with regret and continued.

“It may not be too late yet. We’ll hurry from here.”

When smoke rose from the site of a battle between martial artists, it generally meant everything was already over.

The simplest way to clear a battlefield was to put it to the torch.

Jong Unseong knew that perfectly well. He had spoken only to offer some comfort to Hyeongong, whose face looked stricken.

“I would be deeply grateful if you would make the effort, Elder Jong.”

At Hyeongong’s respectful salute, Jong Unseong urgently shouted to the Zhongnan disciples.

“Everyone, full speed!”

The Zhongnan disciples surged forward.

Jong Unseong turned back to Hyeongong.

“You’re still injured, Taoist Hyeongong. Don’t push yourself. Follow at your own pace.”

“My fellow disciples may be in mortal danger. How could I leisurely concern myself with my own condition? I’ll do everything I can to keep up.”

“Very well. I’ll go on ahead.”

Jong Unseong raced down the official road.

WHOOSH!

As Jong Unseong disappeared into the distance, the dark expression on Hyeongong’s face gradually faded as well.

Smoke meant the fighting was over.

Only corpses would be left by now, so there was no real reason to hurry.

But if he wanted the Zhongnan people to believe that he too had done everything in his power, he would have to run after them.

Hyeongong was drawing up his true qi in preparation to move when he noticed Cheongsu standing there with a blank expression.

“Why are you standing there dazed?”

At Hyeongong’s shout, Cheongsu jolted and quickly lowered his head.

“Th-this disciple... I just can’t believe something really happened to them...”

Hyeongong’s brow knotted sharply.

“We’ll know once we get there. Hurry and follow.”

“...Understood.”

As Cheongsu ran after him, Hyeongong could not shake the uneasy feeling the young man gave him.

There was something about his expression that went beyond simple shock.

He looked frozen stiff with fear.

Hyeongong had already found Cheongsu’s behavior strange lately.

Even being called was enough to make him flinch, which was nothing like his usual self.

Does this bastard know something?

They were together almost constantly. Cheongsu must have noticed something.

If so...

Hyeongong felt killing intent begin to creep up from his dantian.

The Zhongnan martial artists had already rounded the valley and vanished from sight.

Now, on the official road, there was no one left but the two of them.