Chapter 93 - Dong Gwangcheon

One could take another branch of the Yellow River to the south, but that route was far more roundabout than passing through Sanmen Gorge. People therefore often braved the danger and traveled through here anyway.

SHHHHH!

Even now, a small boat carrying three people was speeding through Sanmen Gorge by way of the Divine Gate between Shenmen Island and Guimen Island.

One man worked a pair of oars this way and that, riding the current: the boatman. The other two merely watched with their arms folded, clearly passengers aboard the little ferry.

One was a cold-looking, middle-aged man in gray robes.

The other had bangs hanging all the way to his chin, making his appearance difficult to discern. His slender build and the occasional glimpse of a smooth, sharply defined jaw, however, marked him as a young man.

The middle-aged man in gray stared at the young man's back as the boat rocked mercilessly. With the boatman at the stern and the youth at the bow, he occupied the middle.

Eulji Tae, the man in gray, was curious about the young man seated before him.

The young man was extraordinarily taciturn.

There were two kinds of silent people in Murim.

The strong and the weak.

The strong were silent because they were strong, and the weak because they were weak. Not because they could not speak, but because they had no need to.

The strong had little need for words, since those around them handled everything without being told. The weak had no need for words either, since all they had to do was follow orders.

Yet he could not begin to tell which category the young man before him belonged to.

Was he strong? Or weak?

To fulfill the Weapon Monster's request, he had waited for the young man at the Eight Directions Armory for over a month. Even when Northern Yuan forces invaded and threw the entire Datong General Administration into turmoil, Eulji Tae had remained in the open, waiting for him.

Some time afterward, the young man had finally arrived, and they had met.

Since their conversation then, the young man had not spoken a word.

["Where is he?"]

["If you mean the old gentleman, he's in Zhengzhou."]

["Zhengzhou?"]

["He is currently at the Murim Alliance. If you wish to see him, you must go to Zhengzhou."]

["Understood."]

That had been all.

The young man had said nothing on the journey from Datong to Hejin, nor during the boat ride from Hejin to Sanmen Gorge. Who exactly was this "old gentleman"? Why had he gone to Zhengzhou? Why did Eulji Tae have to accompany him?

Eulji Tae had explained none of it, yet the young man remained silent.

Judging by his bearing alone, the young man clearly belonged among the strong. Yet the qi emanating from his body was negligible, and his Taiyang points—the hollows where the ends of the eyebrows met the outer corners of the eyes—were flat. In other words, he had almost no internal power and had never learned a mental cultivation method.

Under those circumstances, he could not possibly be strong. There was a limit to what external training alone could achieve.

In all likelihood, the young man was weak. Otherwise, he was either a master of some other field, strong in a different sense, or a hidden extraordinary figure who had reached the realm of Returning to Simplicity and Truth.

Beside them, the mighty Yangtze surged onward, its following waves driving those ahead of them forward and scattering spray in every direction, even onto his knees. Eulji Tae thought the possibility remote, yet it suddenly occurred to him that he hoped the young man before him might be like those following waves.

Murim was in turmoil, beset by difficulties. The Heavenly Demon Castle had risen aggressively, while the Hall of Gathered Evil was using its immense financial resources to expand throughout the Central Plains. Meanwhile, the Murim Alliance and the Orthodox Faction had done nothing but suffer blows and retreat into themselves.

Fresh young blood. That was what they needed. Besides, although few knew it yet, someone born under the full-star Extreme Yin Cursed Killing Star was surely operating in the shadows somewhere.

Much blood had been shed over the past few years, but far more would have to flow before peace returned to Murim.

After they traveled a little farther, Sanmen Gorge came to an end, and a fairly large wharf appeared beside a village. It was not an ideal place to live, but its advantageous position along the grain-transport route had made it quite prosperous. It could not compare to a large city, but it offered more than enough to soothe weary boatmen and travelers in both body and mind.

Now they only had to transfer to a larger boat and continue straight to Zhengzhou, and their journey would be over.

Eulji Tae paid the boatman and led the way into the village. The long-haired young man followed him.

The village was never quiet, but it was far more crowded now than it had been before.

Judging by the many people wandering about in martial attire with blades at their waists, most of the newcomers were martial artists. Young ones, at that.

Eulji Tae knew exactly why so many young martial artists had suddenly flocked here.

'Candidates, then.'

Murmuring those words under his breath, he passed through the crowd toward the nearest inn. The young man followed close behind.

"Welcome! A table for two?"

A youthful-looking waiter greeted them loudly. Behind him, a large sign bearing the words Clear Waters Pavilion also beckoned them inside.

Without another word, Eulji Tae entered the inn.

It was already bustling inside. The first floor was full, so the waiter led them upstairs. Plenty of tables for two remained on the second floor.

The waiter seated them by a window overlooking the busy scene outside, but Eulji Tae was not the sort to mind such things. The young man appeared much the same to him, though he could not be certain.

Eulji Tae simply ordered five-spice braised pork.

"Another of the same, please."

The young man spoke indifferently, his voice devoid of inflection.

It had been a long time since Eulji Tae had heard that voice.

Was it because he had heard the voice of someone who had not uttered a single word during their previous visits to inns? Eulji Tae chuckled. What on earth was it about this young man that had made the Weapon Monster laugh so much? The absurd notion briefly crossed his mind that perhaps it was this very taciturnity.

'Come to think of it, he's made me laugh now, after the Weapon Monster.'

In some respects, he laughed even less than the Weapon Monster. Given how little he spoke to begin with, that was only natural. Yet whatever the reason, the young man had made him laugh.

He found it amusing.

It was just as a rare smile formed on Eulji Tae's lips.

"Dong Gwangcheon."

The young man's flat voice caught Eulji Tae's ear just as he was about to turn toward the window to conceal his awkward smile.

"That's my name. You seemed curious."

At last, he knew the young man's name.

The lower half of the young man's face, glimpsed as he spoke, was long and smooth. He was clearly handsome. Why, then, did he grow his bangs so long and hide behind them?

Now that the mystery of his name was solved, something else aroused Eulji Tae's curiosity. He was an enigmatic man who inspired such questions. Frustrating, but intriguing.

"Eulji Tae," he said.

"That is my name."

Exchanging names only after a week together might have been awkward, but neither of them felt that way. Their belated introductions ended as though nothing could have been more natural.

Afterward, they silently admired the view outside the window.

Most of the young warriors passing to and fro belonged to obscure sects no one would recognize. Among them, however, were disciples of major sects such as the Mount Hua Sect, Kunlun, and the Kongtong Sect. Presumably, the disciples of the Nine Great Sects and the scions of the Five Great Families had all turned out to attend this sparring tournament.

Eulji Tae, however, was not particularly interested. He would see more than enough of them once he returned to the Alliance.

Dong Gwangcheon apparently felt differently, for he was studying the passing warriors with keen interest. It was probably an interest in martial artists his own age.

After a short wait, their five-spice braised pork arrived: pork simmered in soy sauce and flavored with spices such as fennel and cinnamon. Its wonderful aroma suggested that the cook here was quite skilled.

Saliva gathered beneath his tongue. Even as Eulji Tae picked up his chopsticks and took a slice of meat, Dong Gwangcheon was still looking out the window.

"Is there something interesting outside? Come, pick up your chopsticks. The sooner we eat, the sooner we can reach Zhengzhou, wouldn't you say?"

Perhaps because they had finally broken the silence, speaking came a little more easily now.

It happened just as Eulji Tae asked his question. As though his words had summoned it, some "entertainment" appeared outside the window.

CRASH!

The inn's first-floor wall collapsed, and something shot out into the street like a thunderbolt. Several tables and a scattering of broken branches from a flowering shrub beside the wall came tumbling out with it.

It was a person.

'Has a fight broken out?'

With so many hot-blooded young men gathered together, trouble was apparently inevitable. And when the place was teeming with fiercely competitive young martial artists, that hardly needed saying.

The young man who had come crashing through the wall of Clear Waters Pavilion was a handsome Kunlun Sect disciple in his twenties, dressed in white. The cloud-shaped embroidery on the shoulder of his robe proved it.

He whirled through the air.

Despite having struck hard enough to break through a wall, he casually flipped over and landed upright. Not bad.

"That's the fellow they call the Kunlun White Dragon."

Eulji Tae recognized the young man at a glance.

Woo Shimgi, the Hundred-Shattering Sword, the Kunlun White Dragon.

He was one of the Three Stars, Five Phoenixes, and Nine Dragons, a designation invented by Murim's loose-tongued gossips and their love of rankings. The Three Stars, Five Phoenixes, and Nine Dragons were seventeen outstanding rising young talents of Murim.

Eulji Tae did not put much stock in such things. He was not particularly pleased to be counted among the Twenty Great Masters under Heaven himself. The Two Gods and Three Monsters might be another matter, but the Five Elders and Ten Greats below them were hardly convincing. There were plenty of people in Murim stronger than they were.

Murim was truly vast. There was no telling what sort of master might be hidden where. Naturally, countless extraordinary figures existed whose true martial prowess was difficult to gauge. How could anyone rank such people so casually? Even the elders' halls of the major sects might each contain one or two masters on par with the Ten Greats among the Five Elders and Ten Greats.

Besides, these rankings were largely composed of Orthodox Faction members and did not accurately reflect Murim as a whole.

What did being orthodox, unorthodox, or demonic have to do with the level of one's martial arts?