Chapter 35 - Gosangong

Afterward, Dong Bongsu drunkenly went belowdecks and fell asleep with his head stuck through an oar port in one of the compartments.

And so their nighttime boat outing came to an end.

Clouds still hung over the moon. Even so, it was so large that its light shone brightly over the world.

The full moon was not far off.

It was halfway between the first quarter and the full moon.

Knowing nothing, Tang Hwa and Namgung Hye gazed up at the moon with smiles on their faces as they returned to the Namgung Clan. Standing beside them, Do Heo-ok looked up at it too, a satisfied smile on his lips.

But there was one thing they did not know.

Someone else was looking at that same moon.

With his head stuck through the oar port and the stench of shit and piss in his nostrils, Dong Bongsu calmly watched the distorted moon reflected on Soho Lake.

It was not as bright as the moon seen directly in the sky, but it flowed over Soho Lake with the rippling water, more secretly, more quietly, and more beautifully.

Dong Bongsu, Do Heo-ok, Tang Hwa, and Namgung Hye finished their boat outing just as the second watch (9–11 p.m.) gave way to the third (11 p.m.–1 a.m.). This was also when the clan warriors on guard duty made their first change of watch.

Their boat soon moored in Soho Bay, and Do Heo-ok and the two women disembarked first. Dong Bongsu followed, carried ashore on a boat hand’s back.

Do Heo-ok ordered the clan warriors being relieved to wash Dong Bongsu and put him to bed in any vacant room in Heaven Guest Hall, then returned to the King’s Hall with Namgung Hye. Along his route, the changing of the watch created gaps in the guard, and four stealthy shadows followed him through them.

Forgetting Tang Wu’s insistence that she not leave Dong Bongsu alone, Tang Hwa abandoned him, reeking of excrement, and went into the eastern Heaven Guest Hall by herself. It was a trivial incident, but it had made her even more disgusted with him. She believed a spirited martial artist ought to be able to hold his liquor. By her standards, Dong Bongsu was not even a man if a few cups of Geumaju could leave him sprawled out like that. And he was supposed to be a once-in-an-age genius? She was certain her grandfather had misjudged him.

To her, Dong Bongsu was nothing more than a loser lucky enough to have caught Tang Wu’s fancy.

Once Tang Hwa was gone, the Namgung Clan warriors took Dong Bongsu from the boat hands and carried him to a bathing room in Heaven Guest Hall, where they washed him thoroughly.

Even when cold water touched his body, he did not come to.

Or rather, he pretended not to.

His efforts paid off. A short while later, he was left alone in the vacant room at the far end of the West Guest Hall, part of Heaven Guest Hall. The warriors who had washed him on Do Heo-ok’s orders had brought him there and left. They should have been able to go straight back and rest after being relieved, so having to wash the stinking Dong Bongsu could hardly have pleased them. Yet, true to their standing as Namgung Clan warriors, they had seen their duty through properly to the end.

The West Guest Hall stood on the western island across Soho Bay and housed male guests. Conversely, the East Guest Hall, built on the island to the east of the bay, housed women. Tang Hwa was probably fast asleep there by now.

Even after the warriors left, Dong Bongsu remained in exactly the same position on the bed. There was still one more person who would come to see him.

Sure enough, before long the door opened and someone appeared. Unexpectedly, there were two visitors rather than one.

They were Tang Wu and Danri Ganghae.

Tang Wu entered, confirmed that Dong Bongsu was asleep, and clicked his tongue softly.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. I told her over and over not to leave him alone.”

After this mild rebuke of the absent Tang Hwa, he left the room again with Danri Ganghae.

RATTLE. CLACK.

The door closed, and at last Dong Bongsu’s “time” had come.

His eyes slowly opened.

(Revised) Seventh Law of New Murim Online: The passive Skill Spirit Eye identifies and alerts Dong Bongsu to threats approaching within a twenty-meter radius. The criterion is a level difference of ten.

Addition: Spirit Eye targets only the single closest person whose level differs from Dong Bongsu’s by at least ten. If one such person is ten meters away and another is five meters away, Spirit Eye can detect only the person five meters away.

Would it not have been simpler for God to create a world without evil than to strive to turn evil into good? Was he incapable of creating a world without evil? If so, he is not omniscient and omnipotent, and thus contradicts his own claim to omniscience and omnipotence. Therefore, God is either not God or does not exist.

—Michelle Lacroix, from Evil (Le Mal)

Gosangong was the squad leader of Third Squad in the Namgung Clan’s Cheonpung Unit.

A warrior from the countryside, he had earned his living by the sword in the Namgung Clan and risen to squad leader in the Cheonpung Unit. In a way, he had done quite well for himself.

But he was always bored. Even his current yawn came from the tedium of everyday life.

Today, as always, he had brought Third Squad’s ten members out in front of the eastern Heaven Guest Hall at the third watch to relieve Second Squad of the Cheonpung Unit. Gosangong was sick and tired of these monotonous days.

He had entered the Namgung Clan as an outside-surname disciple over ten years ago. Back then, his heart had always raced with excitement, and he had looked forward to each new day. It was the sense of accomplishment that came from finally realizing a cherished dream.

It was the story he had heard, the dream he had held, ever since learning martial arts under his first master at a rural martial school.

Become a warrior of Murim. Stride freely through the world.

When he entered the Namgung Clan, Gosangong believed he had fulfilled that dream. Then he began to dream of greater things.

Now that he had set foot in Murim, he would become a hero.

That was his resolve.

Victory in bloody battles against the Heavenly Demon Castle’s demonic soldiers.

Beheading the evil troops of the Hall of Gathered Evil and conquering the lands south of the Yangtze.

Crushing the schemes of unknown forces lurking in the darkness and saving Murim.

Back then, he had felt he could accomplish those things at any moment. But dreams were only dreams. Reality was nothing like what he had imagined.

The Cheonpung Unit’s original duties were to pursue and annihilate enemies, scout enemy positions, and gather intelligence.

Its main duty now, however...

Was nothing more than standing guard, just as Gosangong was doing.

The long peace meant few occasions to fight. This was especially true for a great martial power like the Namgung Clan, which ruled its region. Moreover, the Namgung Clan was the only major Murim force in all of Anhui Province.

Someone had to pick a fight before he could win victories, conquer territory, or become a hero, but that had happened only once in more than ten years. And ten years ago, he had been such a low-ranking warrior that he had not even had a chance to distinguish himself in battle.

Things were different now. That was what he believed.

He was confident he could defeat anyone he faced, and he resented a reality that would not even give him a chance to become a hero.

“They say a real man should cut off his enemies’ heads on the battlefield, drink their blood, and sing. What the hell am I doing here? Damn it. If only those bastards from the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River would attack us again, at least. But even they’ve been quiet lately. Honestly. To think I, Gosangong, would end up rotting away on guard duty like this.”

The Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River.

The Central Plains might now be called the realm of the Three Hegemons, but they were not the only powers in Murim. Countless lesser sects and gangs were scattered throughout the martial world. Among them were several forces that, while falling short of the Three Hegemons, were far stronger than the other minor factions.

The so-called “Third Forces.”

Among these, the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds of the Yangtze River were a great power that, together with the Thirty-Two Green Forest Mountain Strongholds, styled themselves the Blue and Green Twin Heroes. Neither orthodox, unorthodox, nor demonic, the Yangtze Waterway Strongholds and the Green Forest wielded a might that no one could disregard on the rivers or in the mountains. Though the public called them the Blue and Green Twin Bandits instead, referring to them as river pirates and mountain bandits, their influence was so great that no one in Murim could ignore it.

“Blue upon the waters, green amid the mountains.”

The waters were blue; the mountains were green.

With this short phrase, the people of Murim described their dominion over the waterways and mountains. In just six characters, it expressed the might of the Yangtze Waterway Strongholds, which controlled the Yangtze River, the lifeline of the Central Plains, and the Green Forest, which held sway over mountains where no great martial sects were established.

By their nature, they were not tightly unified organizations, but were linked, like the Murim Alliance, into nominally vast federations. Thus, although they were divided into eighteen waterway strongholds and thirty-two mountain strongholds respectively, they were broadly considered to be in league with their fellows and called the Yangtze Waterway Strongholds and the Green Forest.

Gosangong was talking about the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds because they had been the Namgung Clan’s opponent in its most recent major armed conflict. The two powers had clashed in the very year he joined the clan as an outside-surname disciple.

The Namgung Clan was commonly called the greatest power in Anhui not because the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds were weaker, but because only one of the eighteen was based in Anhui Province. If all eighteen had been gathered there, even the Namgung Clan would have struggled to maintain its dominance.

They were spread along the entire Yangtze, and naturally appeared frequently along the waterways of Anhui Province, through which the great river ran. True to their nature as pirates, the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds had persistently sought to expand their influence in Anhui, while the Namgung Clan had sought to stop them. A clash between the two was inevitable.

Ten years ago.

Sa Saho, the Supreme Stronghold Chief of the Eighteen Waterway Strongholds, known as the Yangtze Dragon Champion, had ignored Namgung Byeok’s warning and attempted to expand toward Soho Lake. Feeling his supremacy over Anhui Province threatened, Namgung Byeok, patriarch of the Namgung Clan, had immediately mobilized nearly all the clan’s fighting units and marched on the lake.

The two sides had faced each other across Soho Lake in bitter confrontation, eventually coming to blows. The fighting had been fierce, but it had not lasted long.