"Are you talking about those venomous snakes from Sichuan?"
"Is there another Tang Clan in Sichuan?"
Hong Hee was calm, but I could not be.
"Are you reluctant?"
"It's because I've heard many things. They say getting involved with the Tang Clan rarely ends well."
Won Seo-gang, who was listening, let out a chuckle.
"What are you afraid of? That they'll kill you to silence you?"
Hong Hee continued with a smile.
"Don't worry. Even the great Tang Clan would not dare to make an enemy of the Underworld Information Clan. The Tang Clan's influence is great, but its power is all confined to Sichuan. They are like vipers trapped in a jar." ......
This was all common knowledge. The Sichuan Tang Clan was a martial family that had built its notoriety with poison and hidden weapons in a region dominated by the Qingcheng and Emei sects.
They were extremely wary of their family's secret arts leaking to the outside, so they did not establish separate branches, not even within Sichuan, let alone in other regions. Like a snake hiding its body in a burrow, they created a large clan village called the Tang Family Village and holed themselves up there.
They were so reclusive that they would not even marry off their daughters, instead taking in sons-in-law.
"That is why, for a long time, the Tang Clan has obtained information about the Central Plains outside of Sichuan through our clan. If they were to harm us and sour the relationship, the Tang Clan's eyes and ears toward the Central Plains would all be closed."
"If they don't know what's happening in the world, they'll be helpless until their enemies are holding daggers to their throats. For all their notoriety, they have also accumulated a great deal of resentment, so the Tang Clan will not make such a self-destructive move."
The Underworld Information Clan's intelligence network was formidable, but it wasn't as if the Tang Clan had no other options.
"Isn't there the Beggars' Sect? Since they belong to the same righteous sect, they could very well join hands."
"The Beggars' Sect has a very deep friendship with the Nine Sects. The current master is an elder of the Alliance, so whatever the Tang Clan requests will be reported directly to the Alliance leadership. Do you know about the relationship between the Alliance and the Tang Clan?"
"I've heard it's not good."
Won Seo-gang, who was listening, smirked.
"Kekeke, it's not just 'not good.' Is there any sect in the world that is on good terms with the Tang Clan? It's fine to call them a member of the Five Great Families and a part of the righteous sect, but they're the kind of bastards who wouldn't be out of place if they were branded as a dark path and put on the most wanted list tomorrow."
With Won Seo-gang's support, Hong Hee's voice gained strength.
"That is why the Tang Clan is all the more desperate for the eyes and ears of the Underworld Information Clan. For the past several decades, our clan has taken on countless requests from the Tang Clan. There have been occasional instances of bungling a job, but we have never been stabbed in the back."
"How long do I have to be a guard?"
"For now, it is five days. You can decide then whether to extend it further."
"What is the pay?"
"It is three silver taels a day."
"Who am I guarding that you're paying so much? Is the fiend they're chasing some Great Demon from the Heavenly Mountains?"
"You'll know when you meet them."
"Will it be the three of us here who are being hired this time?"
"That's right. It seems Great Hero Won has already accepted..."
As the pavilion master turned her head and gave him a look, the monk rose from his seat.
"Call for me when it's time to leave. I will be waiting in my quarters."
The pavilion master's gaze, which had been fixed on the departing monk, turned to me.
"Great Hero Jeong?"
"... I'll think about it."
"Please do. There is still plenty of time."
As promised before, the pavilion master did not force me to take the job. If I refused, she would probably call another one of the house guests from the detached houses. When I came outside, Won Seo-gang walked up beside me and spoke.
"Why don't you come with us? Isn't it a good opportunity to get acquainted with the Tang Clan?"
"What's the point of knowing them?"
"Don't you know that connections are more frightening and useful than some world-shaking divine art? If you have the Underworld Information Clan at your back and get to know some Tang Clan members, you'll be safe even if you happen to clash with them later. And who knows, you might even get your hands on a useful hidden weapon."
"Are you saying this because you're scared to go alone?"
"Scared? It's just that I feel uneasy going with only that damn monk."
"Is that monk also a house guest?"
"So I've heard."
"You two don't seem very close."
"I don't even know his name."
Getting acquainted with members of the Tang Clan... I had seen members of the Tang Clan a few times when I went to the capital of Sichuan before. They were perfectly normal humans with eyes, noses, and mouths, but fights between martial artists could break out in an instant, so I stayed far away from them.
If the Underworld Information Clan was guaranteeing it, I was a little curious to see for myself what kind of people these infamous human vipers were. Perhaps they would be less impressive than the rumors once I met them. After all, many martial artists were often overestimated, but rarely were they underestimated.
"Let's go together."
"A good decision."
"But I have one condition."
"What is it?"
"Let's have a sparring session."
"Are you trying to kick the groin you couldn't last time?"
"You'll just dodge it again anyway. Have you found the man you were looking for?"
Won Seo-gang shook his head, his face grim.
"He's hiding deep within the Black Night Gang and won't even show his face. Tsk, I was too hasty. It was a mistake to rush in as soon as I found him. Have you thought about the offer I made before?"
"Forget it. If you want to take the Black Night Gang down with you, do it alone."
The detached house where Won Seo-gang was staying was at the very end of the right wall. The inside was not as large as I had thought. A two-room house with a decent tiled roof, a small backyard, and a separate room.
A training ground about five paces wide, paved with stones. That was all. Compared to the pavilion master's tastefully decorated residence, it was so simple it was almost shabby.
I imagined this was what the home of a martial artist living in seclusion in a deep mountain valley would look like. While Won Seo-gang rummaged through a pile of junk next to the house, I looked around. My eyes were drawn to the wooden Buddha statues, each about a handspan tall, packed tightly on the floor and windowsill.
The dozens of statues, all standing and smiling benevolently, were in the exact same pose. The right palm was raised to shoulder height, and the lowered left hand also had its palm facing outward, smiling gently. In that pose, they looked as if they were seeing off someone embarking on a long journey.
It also seemed to say, don't worry, there are no weapons in my hands.
"Is this Maitreya Buddha?"
Won Seo-gang looked back at me with a strange expression.
"You know of him?"
"Is there anyone who doesn't know of Maitreya Buddha?"
I thought the monk had made them, but then a half-carved Buddha statue caught my eye. Wood shavings were scattered around it, and several daggers of various sizes were neatly arranged.
"These statues, did you make them yourself?"
"I carved them."
"All of these?"
Won Seo-gang continued to rummage through the junk and answered nonchalantly.
"When my mind is muddled with worldly thoughts, it helps to focus on something simple. You never know where a person's talents lie. You have to try everything that comes your way to find at least one thing you're good at. If I had known I had a talent for woodworking before I picked up a sword, perhaps I would have gone down that path. Here, catch this."
What he tossed me was a wooden sword made to look quite similar to a real one.
"I made this a while ago to teach someone, and now I'm using it like this again. To show your true skill, you should use a weapon you're accustomed to, but that would surely lead to trouble, so let's use these."
As we faced each other in the middle of the training ground, Won Seo-gang spoke nonsense with a serious face.
"You're not going to kick my groin today, are you? Please, give me a break. Aren't I too old to become a eunuch and enter the palace?"
My kick before hadn't even come close to his groin, but Won Seo-gang had been harping on about it ever since we met. As expected of a fussy swordsman, this man held a grudge.
"Let's not use fists or feet, only the wooden swords."
"That's what I was hoping for."
Raising the wooden sword above my head, I slowly assumed the starting stance of the Nameless Saber Technique. Won Seo-gang also adjusted his grip on the wooden sword and raised it to eye level. After picturing the forms of the Nameless Saber Technique in my mind, I kicked off the ground and charged.
In a real fight, I would have unleashed the form I was most confident in, a series of slashes that best suited the saber art. But since this was a chance to learn, the form I chose was a thrust. As I lunged at a swordsman with a thrust, Won Seo-gang's eyes twitched.
Clack!
Won Seo-gang smoothly deflected the tip of my sword and countered at a strange, bending angle. I had felt it during our brief clash in the alley, but Won Seo-gang's sword technique was truly difficult to deal with. When I sparred with Pung Kang-ik, there was a thrilling excitement as saber art clashed with saber art, making my blood boil.
Won Seo-gang, true to being a swordsman, had techniques that were devious beyond compare. He would parry and deflect my saber strikes, then thrust in from my blind spots with terrifying precision. It was like cutting a path through dense undergrowth with a blade, only to have venomous snakes leap out from all directions with terrifying thrusts.
Even with a wooden sword, all his forms were aimed at vital points and pressure points; if I showed the slightest opening, it would be over in one blow. This was why you couldn't let your guard down for even a moment when fighting a true swordsman.
The hair on my neck stood on end, and my breathing grew slightly ragged. Suppressing the survival instinct that made me want to throw in an unorthodox punch or kick here and there, I fought using only the wooden sword. Thirty painstaking exchanges, each one feeling like my nerves were being shredded, slowly passed.
As if that were enough, Won Seo-gang swung his wooden sword to create distance and stopped the spar.
"Let's stop here."
As the taut tension released, the breath I had been holding rushed out in a sigh.
"I was in a hurry last time and couldn't observe properly, but seeing it today, your saber art is quite peculiar."
I nodded, wiping the sweat from my face. Most of the masters who had fought me and survived said something similar. Even Pung Kang-ik, who had been pushed into a corner to the point of having to use his hidden spearman techniques, had marveled that my saber art had a solid foundation.
But Won Seo-gang mentioned something completely different.
"To graft the principles of a sword technique onto a saber art... It doesn't seem like your own idea. Your school must be quite a strange place."
"A sword technique?"
I blinked in bewilderment at the words I'd never heard before, and Won Seo-gang clicked his tongue as if he had expected it.
"Tsk, tsk, you didn't know? Well, I suppose your thrusts only mimic a sword path without properly manifesting it."
"What do you mean by the principles of a sword technique?"
Won Seo-gang raised his wooden sword and lightly thrust into the air. It was a casual strike, but everything about it was different from the thrusts of my saber art. From the movement of his elbow to the trajectory of the sword's tip.
"The thrusting forms in a saber art are mostly simple attacks that rely on power or speed. You slash, block, slash, and if you see an opening, you just thrust. In contrast, the essence of a sword technique lies in its thrusts. It's about concentrating on a single point, like a judge's brush striking a pressure point the size of a pinky nail. The saber art I just faced seems to have melted a sword path into its thrusts after clashing with a sword technique for a long time."
"Do you happen to know which school's saber art it is?"
Won Seo-gang let out a hollow laugh.
"That's what I should be asking you... You don't know your own school? Are you the successor of a school that was destroyed?"
"He never told me."
"Hmm."
Won Seo-gang stroked his beard in thought before speaking.
"I have no way of knowing the inside story, but to use my imagination... I don't know what saber school it was, but it seems they had a deep grudge with a prominent sword school. Perhaps they acquired it in the process of trying to overcome the sword technique."
"Couldn't they have developed it through exchanges with a sword school?"
The possibility was low, but it didn't seem impossible.
"There's a limit to that. The martial arts passed down in most schools are improved and developed by talented disciples in later generations. In that process, forms may be altered, but the fundamental truth of the art never changes. It's almost a taboo. A saber art grows within the truth of a saber art, and a sword technique within the truth of a sword technique."
"Isn't it a good thing to take only the strengths of both sides?"
Won Seo-gang shook his head.
"Trying to overcome your weaknesses, or maximizing your strengths. Which do you think makes one stronger?"
"Probably the latter."
I had survived in that way too. I found what I was good at and did my best.
"Correct. The reason a weakness is a weakness is because you have no talent for it. No matter how hard you try, you'll only approach the average level of others. In that process, it's easy to lose the strengths you had. You become something that's neither here nor there, something in-between. All of one's natural talent lies in their strengths. You have to focus on that to achieve anything. Be it in martial arts or in life."
Won Seo-gang lightly swung the wooden sword, demonstrating a slash and a thrust.
"Just because a saber art's thrust is weak, if you clumsily graft the principles of a sword technique and focus on thrusting, the saber art's strength, slashing, will become weak. The reverse is also true. No matter which sword school you go to, you'll never find a case where they graft the principles of a saber art into their slashes."
I thought back on the life-and-death struggles with the countless martial artists I had fought until now. Saber wielders used saber arts, swordsmen used sword techniques, and scoundrels used whatever they could. Just as Won Seo-gang said, I had never seen a martial art that mixed saber and sword techniques.
"You can forcibly combine two disparate principles, but it's difficult for anyone without extraordinary talent to become a master with it. It's no wonder you can't properly bring out the sword path within that saber art's thrust. This is... at best, it's a gamble, and at worst, it feels like a final act of desperation. If done wrong, the saber art itself could collapse."
Despite these problems, why did the nameless school insert a sword path into the Nameless Saber Technique? If they developed it by accepting even the principles of a sword technique in order to win at all costs, their situation must have been extremely desperate. I remembered the one-armed saber wielder I met in Zhejiang.
We never formally established a master-disciple relationship, and he always just called me Great Hero. Still, he was the only master who had ever taught me a saber art. Was he expelled from his school?
Or did he lose his left arm when his school was destroyed and became a one-armed man? Did he survive by a hair's breadth, but chose not to establish a formal relationship or tell me the name of his school for fear that I would suffer the same fate? Was this it.........
That nagging feeling of something more, that subtle sense of incompleteness I felt whenever I used the Nameless Saber Technique. The vague feeling of having hit a wall. I could perform the thrusting forms of the Nameless Saber Technique with my eyes closed.
I had practiced them hundreds, thousands of times, but I had never dreamed that a sword path was hidden within them. None of the masters I had fought had ever mentioned such a thing. Then again, where was the time in a real battle to analyze, admire, or evaluate an opponent's forms?
We were too busy trying to kill each other. I was once again keenly aware of how deep Won Seo-gang's martial ability was. I felt a sense of emptiness.
Fighting in real battles for ages only increased your cheap tricks and soured your disposition. To truly improve one's martial ability, you needed to learn even a single move from masters like him. This must be why the young disciples raised in famous martial families could cut down swordsmen who had been rolling around for decades.
I lowered my wooden sword, made a formal fist-and-palm salute, and bowed my waist.
"Thank you for your teachings."
Won Seo-gang nodded with a somehow pleased expression.
"Then will you go with me to take down the Black Night Gang?"
"Stop with the nonsense and let's go a few more rounds."
"Let's rest a bit. The sun is too strong."
Won Seo-gang wiped his sweat and plopped down on the shaded wooden floor. I had no choice but to sit down on one side as well. After a short rest while drinking cold tea, we picked up our wooden swords again and went out to the training ground.
The afternoon sun beat down fiercely, but I didn't know when I would have another chance to learn from Won Seo-gang. I performed the saber art with all my might. With Won Seo-gang's guidance, I felt as if the true nature of the sword path within my thrusts was faintly within my grasp.
As the sun began to set, the sound of someone knocking on the door regretfully brought our training to a halt. When I opened the door, a servant employed by Geuk-hwan bowed his head.
"The pavilion master is looking for you. He says the guests have arrived."
My clothes, soaked with sweat as if I'd been caught in the rain, clung to my body, but I had no fresh clothes to change into. I just quickly washed my face with cold water and went outside with Won Seo-gang. The place the servant led us to was not the pavilion master's residence.
It was another detached house, as spacious and well-decorated as the one the pavilion master stayed in. Three houses were appropriately spaced to the left, right, and back, and there was even a small pond in the center so it could be appreciated from anywhere. I saw unfamiliar martial artists loitering around the pond.
"So that's them."
At Won Seo-gang's words, I quietly nodded. They wore ordinary martial arts uniforms and had swords at their waists, but the aura they exuded was quite different. It became more certain as we got closer.
The clients the pavilion master had mentioned. They were members of the Tang Clan.