Chapter 45 - Returnees II

4

The Sword Marquis was insane, but his ability was extraordinary. So extraordinary, in fact, that a little explanation is needed to give you an intuitive grasp of its greatness.

This world hates humanity.

Children in the throes of adolescent angst often mutter, "I guess the world hates me." As they grow older, they learn that, surprisingly (though not really), the world has no interest in their existence.

Honestly, the world has quite a lot to worry about besides you. Turtles that have swallowed plastic, for instance. Or quantum entanglement.

But not anymore. Something changed decisively the moment the gate crisis began. Changed irrevocably.

From that day on, the world decided to dislike humanity a little.

The void.

A phenomenon also called the chasm, the abyss, or hell. Previously, people had used the term "gate," but "void" gradually became more widespread.

["W-what is that?"]

["Huh? What?"]

["That flower. Why does it have teeth?"]

In the void, shark teeth sprout on rafflesia petals. Spiders grow thirteen legs. Dragonflies develop six compound eyes. Headless elephants roam about.

When monsters and anomalies are left alone rather than eliminated, large-scale genetic mutations occur in the surrounding land. The number of malformed organisms skyrockets.

Its name: void poison.

The chief culprit that reduces all the civilization and knowledge humanity has painstakingly built to an empty shell in an instant.

Have you ever seen a rice paddy stained blood-red? Rice plants whose grains look exactly like aphids and flies? Tiger lilies bloom in place of ears of rice. There was even a report of a farmer digging up a paddy and discovering that all the rice plants were connected underground by their roots, like a bamboo grove.

Despite being grown in the very same field, from the same variety, with the same water and sunlight, the rice on the left looked different, and every plant on the right was different too.

Human civilization was founded on repeatability. However much everything in the world might change, spring would return after a year, and winter would come again. When humanity realized that truth, it built a monumental pyramid. At its pointed summit, time finally became history.

That tower has now collapsed.

Time flows. Unpredictably. Like a desert storm, it buries the surface of the once-brilliant tower beneath sand.

What is humanity? What are "we"? Does that being with flowers growing from its head and fish gills sprouting from its tongue belong among us too?

A newborn baby's cries emerge from those gills. Eventually, they speak and communicate solely through babies' cries, but we cannot understand what those sounds mean.

Sometimes time flows quickly near Incheon and slowly around Seoul. Nothing repeats. Nothing can be reproduced. It only flows.

"We will connect the cities..."

That was why I, the Saintess, and Noh Doha—our three-way blood alliance—declared war on the void eating away at our world.

"Humanity must return to the days when nature overwhelmed us."

Asked whether that amounted to regression, Noh Doha shook her head.

"Just as evolution and degeneration are merely distinctions made by humans, this is not civilization regressing, but simply adapting to its environment... We abandon control of areas in favor of control of lines."

From areas to lines.

From lines to areas.

That was the motto of the National Road Management Corps.

"Then we can escape the isolation the void has imposed on each of us and preserve the community we call 'us'..."

Just as an assistive-device technician fits a disabled person with a brace, the National Road Management Corps opened paths for humanity.

It laid "rails" across the world.

At last, the isolated points—the cities—became stations where people could pause to rest.

["I'll keep moving forward, repairing the broken railways of this world one by one."]

I had been able to honor Dang Seorin's last wish.

Though it had taken many years.

Though it would take many more.

["From station to station, from history to history. Forever."]

The National Road Management Corps did not represent Busan. It could not symbolize Seoul. It was simply humanity's last cradle, its last unit, and its front line.

"We can do it. No, we must..."

Every time the Corps' patrols set out, there was no guarantee they would survive.

A patrol that departed for Gangneung never returned. A patrol sent to explore North Korea returned two years later, all thirteen members transformed into walking sunflowers. The sunflowers turned their heads not toward the sun, but toward the flag they had carried when they set out.

Even so, we did not hesitate to stand on the front line.

"Ho! Another bountiful harvest this season!"

The Sword Marquis could be called the support unit for that front line.

"With this much grain, we could feed all the Three Han and still have some to spare! Truly, Heaven watches over us!"

No matter how many paths we opened, people still needed to eat. Three meals a day, two meals, even one—the need to eat was my body's urgent destiny, was it not?

I did not regard that hunger as hardship or sorrow.

By becoming infected with the virus of New Buddha, Udumbara, one could escape the destiny of hunger at any time. That meant shedding one's humanity and descending into a being of the void. Hunger was wretched, but it was human wretchedness, the wretchedness of a being still born and raised upon this earth.

But I was not living in order to regard human misery as human beauty. We had to eat.

The chef responsible for keeping the Korean Peninsula fueled with food was the Sword Marquis.

"Therefore, would it not be all right for me to spend this summer traveling as I please?"

And as I have stressed several times, our chef was a lunatic.

"Uh. Lord Sword Marquis. Traveling?"

"Just as I said. A journey through the martial world, my young fellow martial artist. You must never reveal what I am about to tell you to anyone. I have kept it secret all this time, but in truth..."

The Sword Marquis carefully surveyed his surroundings. Even a Corps patrol searching for nearby monsters could not have looked so keenly alert.

Once he had confirmed that no one but me was nearby, he whispered in my ear.

"I am the direct disciple of the Mount Hua Sect's 260th sect leader."

"..."

"In my hands is a secret martial arts manual containing the full essence of the Mount Hua Sect's three-thousand-year history."

In other words, he was claiming to be a marquis of Yuldoguk, the Sword Marquis of the martial world, and, to top it all off, the next leader of the Mount Hua Sect.

He also had an aluminum practice sword at his waist.

By this point, my head was spinning.

"Well... I don't know if I should ask, but if you're the future of the Mount Hua Sect, sir, why are you here on the Korean Peninsula?"

"Why, to hide from the eyes of those despicable fiends of the Demonic Cult, of course. As the rightful inheritor of the Twenty-Four-Move Plum Blossom Sword Art, I cannot help attracting the glares of those villains. Look! Even now, the supernatural creatures commanded by the Heavenly Demon are shaking the world, are they not?"

"Oh God."

"Indeed. I feel like calling upon God himself! I was once a master at the supreme pinnacle, but while fleeing the Demonic Cult's followers, I suffered a grave internal injury to my dantian. Yet I have restored my body and mind here in this land east of the sea. Is it not time I returned to our home mountain and fulfilled my duties as a disciple?"

"... Are you saying you intend to go to Mount Hua in China? Now?"

"Precisely."

I looked up at the sky and let out a long sigh.

"Lord Sword Marquis. Are you insane?"

As I briefly hinted while telling the story of Kim Jucheol and his son Kim Sieun, in this era, "traveling abroad" was merely a fancier way of saying "suicide."

At my blunt question, the Sword Marquis merely tilted his head.

"I am perfectly sane."

Well, asking a lunatic whether he was a lunatic was hardly going to get me a meaningful answer. Why bother asking a dolphin whether it was a dolphin? Unless your eyes were fucked, the truth was self-evident.

I changed strategies.

"The Twenty-Four-Move Plum Blossom Sword Art—is that the one where, if you master it completely, the scent of plum blossoms rises from your sword and travels ten thousand li?"

"Oh, so my fellow martial artist has heard of our sect's illustrious reputation. Precisely."

"Does the Mount Hua you know happen to be covered in plum blossoms?"

"Of course."

"... That detail was invented in Korea."

At the time, my knowledge of martial arts fiction amounted to a few novels I had read as a child. But even I knew this much.

Mount Hua was not particularly famous for its plum blossoms.

You could guess that just by looking at photographs. Mount Hua had as much bare rock on display as foliage, which presented plenty of obstacles to luxuriant fields of plum blossoms.

The floral scent was no different. Unless one developed an olfactory system that perceived the smell of stone as plum blossoms, the Mount Hua Sect's swords giving off an overpowering floral fragrance was an evolutionary impossibility.

What am I getting at?

That the self-proclaimed Sword Marquis, prospective 261st leader of the Mount Hua Sect, practice-sword owner, native Korean from Ulleungdo, and non-speaker of conversational Chinese standing before me was spouting bullshit. This old geezer was a lie from head to toe.

"INSOLENCE!"

The Sword Marquis unleashed a lion's roar.

"How dare you mock your senior, fellow martial artist! The scent of plum blossoms I suddenly caught while receiving my master's teachings in childhood still lingers in my nose! If you dare insult my master and my sect, I will no longer stand idly by!"

"Then perhaps you, the Sword Marquis and inheritor of the Plum Blossom Sword Art, could personally demonstrate it for this ignorant junior."

"Had I not fallen victim to the Demonic Cult's treachery, and were my dantian intact, I would show you this instant."

"I'm going to lose my mind."

Hey. You're a sixty-year-old man, but you're younger than me. Besides, back when civilization was still intact, sixty didn't even count as old.

As for how old I am this year... No. Let's abandon that strategy.

I had a feeling I might win the battle only to lose the war.

In any case, the Sword Marquis was the sort of person I found difficult to handle.

Fortunately, we possessed an ultimate weapon designed specifically for dealing with the elderly.

"Noh Doha. Help."

"A sixty-year-old man? Heh. Piece of cake..."

Noh Doha—the woman most beloved by the Korean Peninsula's elderly, the greatest assistive-device technician in history, and commander of the National Road Management Corps—gave a sinister smile.

"Sir... Does that feel good...?"

"Oh my, oh myyy. Every ache in my body is melting away."

Noh Doha gave the Sword Marquis a shoulder massage. Her hands were so skilled that I would have believed she had been a masseuse rather than a civil servant, and his expression melted.

"A plum blossom is a plum blossom whether it blooms on a mountaintop or beside a road. Then surely one that blooms in a person's heart is a plum blossom too? Now that the Mount Hua Sect's tradition has passed to you, what does it matter whether you are here east of the sea or in Chang'an...?"

"Hmm, but my fellow disciples..."

"No, no... Your master has already passed away, hasn't he? That makes you the most senior member of the Mount Hua Sect. There is a custom of juniors visiting their seniors, but I have never heard of seniors going to visit their juniors. They should come here. Why should you trouble yourself to travel...?"

"Oh? Your words are most sound."

"If you give me a letter, I will personally see to it that a courier is sent to China. If they understand the duties of juniors toward their seniors, they will naturally come here to pay their respects..."

"Aha! The escort agency master's counsel is right a hundred, a thousand times over!"

"Then I shall look forward to the autumn harvest as well..."

"Hmm! Leave it to me!"

So the National Road Management Corps was an escort agency, and its commander was the agency master.

Having finished her divine display of dexterity and eloquence, Noh Doha returned to me with a low chuckle.

"This is why I prefer older people to youngsters... You can reason with them, can't you...?"

I would not go out of my way to challenge that claim.

But even Noh Doha's all-out performance had its limits. The Sword Marquis was a lunatic, and lunacy was incurable.

"Still, I must visit Mount Hua at least once before I die."

Whenever the seasons changed and the rice was harvested, the Sword Marquis would mutter endlessly, like a man suffering from homesickness.

"I must go before I die..."

Ever since the National Road Management Corps was founded, he muttered those words every season—in the fifty-fourth run, the fifty-fifth, the fifty-sixth, and the fifty-seventh.

Time passed.

At last, the 108th run.

With vacation season upon me, I went to visit the Sword Marquis. It was very early in the run, before even the first year had ended. He was still living in his hometown of Ulleungdo. (Yes, this man had absolutely no reason to be homesick.)

"Lord Sword Marquis."

"Hmm?"

The old man, who had been watering flowers in the front yard of a shabby house, turned toward me. Water trickled from his watering can.

"Who are you, young man?"

"I am one who has been granted a knighthood by Yuldoguk."

"What?"

If a stranger walked into an ordinary person's front yard and abruptly claimed a title from a micronation, they would have called the police, or at least swung a broom at him.

"Why, you are my countryman! Welcome!"

But the Sword Marquis was extraordinary indeed. I had privately suspected that his aristocratic cosplay began after he left Ulleungdo, but apparently he had already lost his mind back home.

"But your form of address is peculiar, sir knight. I am the Sword Baron, not the Sword Marquis. What brings you here?"

I put on the saddest expression I could. Method acting was not particularly difficult. All I had to do was recall the scene of Dang Seorin's death.

"It grieves me beyond words to report this, but Yuldoguk has fallen."

"What?"

"The wicked hand of the Demonic Cult has reached even England, far across the sea. Not only Yuldoguk, but the eastern reaches of England have been laid waste, and His Highness the Grand Duke did not escape the calamity."

"No...! How could such a thing...!"

"Lord Sword Marquis."

I dropped to my knees in the yard. Then I cried out with a solemn resolve unmatched anywhere in the world.

"Though Yuldoguk's court has fallen, how can it be right for its people to accept the grief of a lost nation as their lot? Is rebuilding a nation with its remaining people not the very essence of loyalty?"

"...!"

"As you are now the only noble remaining in Yuldoguk, it falls to you to establish a new court upon this land. Yet our duty as human beings forbids us from forgetting His Highness the Grand Duke's benevolence. I therefore beseech you to assume the rank of marquis and restore the Marquisate of Yuldo!"

For the record, the Sword Marquis's house was shabby.

And that shabby house stood in a shabby neighborhood.

One characteristic of shabby neighborhoods is that, when something odd happens next door, it is quite easy to peek over the gate. Everyone in the neighborhood was looking our way.

To describe their looks—uh. Basically, they were looking at us the way you would look at a dick.

"Heaven has not yet forsaken me!"

The Sword Marquis did not give a flying fuck what the neighbors thought.

"Rise at once! How do you understand my wishes so perfectly?"

"You honor me."

"You are truly my Zhang Zifang!"

That basically meant best friend.

The 108th run.

That day, I became besties with the prospective leader of the Mount Hua Sect.