Wudang Sacred Scriptures

“It was true, then.”

Clan Master Jegal Jin tossed the words as he looked at Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok’s stiffened face.

“I had hoped it was not...”

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok sprang to his feet.

“Clan Master, are you toying with me?”

“Uncle, sit.”

About to storm out, Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok flinched and froze.

Not because of the Clan Master’s chilly single word, but because he had called him “uncle.”

“Did it startle you to hear me call you uncle?”

“......!”

“I wanted to call you that one last time.”

On the face of Clan Master Jegal Jin—ever expressionless till now—a bitter feeling showed through.

“Once, you patted my head, even held me. Of course, it’s so long ago I don’t know if you remember.”

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok’s face twisted.

“One last time, you say? Do you mean to kill me, your uncle?”

“Had I meant that, why would I have cleared the surroundings?”

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok dimly understood why the Hall of the Coiled Dragon had been empty within and without.

—Thunk.

He sat back down as the Clan Master bade him.

“Today, Elder Council Lord is suddenly stricken with a strange malady, and so lays down his office. Of course, with that illness he also loses his dantian.”

“I lose my dantian...?”

“As a nephew, it seemed wrong to lay hands on your body, Uncle. So I intend to use a relic my father left me—from the Poison King.”

“Your elder brother had a relic of the Poison King put by?”

Clan Master Jegal Jin nodded.

“Father hoped I would never use it. Still, he told me that since he could not bear to shed the blood of his own, I should use it only if there were no other choice.”

“Did he truly worry for me, his younger brother?”

“Father allowed you to come and go from the Clan Lord’s Hall as you pleased. You were his own brother, and his affection ran deep. But think—if he believed you would continue to do so even when he was no longer here, how do you think he felt?”

“......!”

“He said it was his fault for not being stricter. If a clan master loses his majesty, his command carries no weight. He told me, as clan master, to set human feeling at a distance.”

“So that is why the Clan Master was so cold to this old man that day.”

Without a word, Jegal Jin drew a small green wooden box from his sleeve and set it on the table.

“It is the Poison King’s Heaven-Severing Life-Saving Pill. You know that if you take it, only the dantian will be shattered and there will be no other harm to the body.”

The pill had been specially made by the Poison King during the Great Upheaval of the Eight Desolations, to restrain demonic captives.

The Poison King, who had lived by his pride in poisons—even though the pill shattered the dantian—could not bear the self-contempt of making a poison to save lives, and withdrew from the world; the tale was well known.

Jegal Deok, who had even taken part in that upheaval, of course knew its effects.

What shocked him was that his elder brother, the late clan master, had procured one—and with him in mind.

Elder Brother truly...!

As if to cool the inferno in his chest, Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok lifted his cup and asked in an icy voice:

“Is an old man hiring killers against the clan master’s order to avenge his son such a capital sin?”

“Defiance is a grave sin, but not to that degree.”

“Then why...?”

“Uncle, do you truly not know the real reason I cleared the surroundings?”

At the Clan Master’s counter-question, Jegal Deok’s face contorted further.

“If you insist on hearing an ugly truth to the end, I will say it.”

“......”

“If I were to speak, before the household gods, of the treason of plotting to assassinate the clan master, then as clan master I could not help but punish not only you but your direct line.”

In great martial families, treason against the clan master was without exception dealt with as a warning to all.

“So, right now, Uncle should not be clutching that teacup—but my trouser hem.”

“Clan Master...?”

Jegal Deok’s hand shook; tea slopped over the rim and spilled.

Perhaps discomfited by his once-proud uncle’s disordered state, Jegal Jin gave a wry smile and spoke.

“Uncle, did you covet this seat so badly?”

“A clan master who has always sat in the foremost place cannot know. To be ever in the second seat, then pushed lower, and finally outside—what that feels like.”

“Do you think there is no hardship in this seat?”

“......?”

“Father would think a thousand times to make a single decision. I know you grumbled that he was a stifling man.”

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok realized the clan master had watched him since childhood.

“I think a hundred times, then decide. Partly because I lack Father’s patience—but mostly because I do not wish to hear your grumbling. In any case, before I invited you here, I thought a hundred times.”

“......”

“Drink. Then your grandsons will be safe. The size of the Hidden ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) Dragon Command will be greatly reduced, and most of its property will revert to the Main House, but the Branch House will keep its standing.”

For Clan Master Jegal Jin, it was, as he said, a hard decision reached after a hundred ponderings.

A part of him wanted to cleanly sweep away the ones who had plotted in secret to kill the clan master—himself—and their descendants.

Had he not been the clan master of the Jegal Family, he would not have thought twice.

Had this not been a grave time when winds and clouds were gathering in the rivers and lakes, he might not have taken his weighing even to ten.

Knowing the inside story of the All-Under-Heaven Heroes Assembly to be held by the Martial Alliance, he pondered a hundred times and reached a cold conclusion.

At a time of great shift in the order of the martial world, even a single point of strength had to be preserved.

At the very least, the Jegal Family must not fall from its place among the Five Great Families.

With his eyes, Jegal Jin told his uncle he hoped for no further resistance.

Uncle, you will never know that beneath this seat are dozens of awls, all points up. Nor do I not know that you lack the patience to sit here. For the Jegal Family’s future, I could not feign ignorance. So now lay down your excess desire and clutch my trouser hem.

Did Clan Master Jegal Jin’s wish—to spill no blood between kin—reach him?

—Tok.

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok set down his teacup.

“How did you learn of it?”

Knowing his uncle had set down his desire with the cup, Jegal Jin answered readily.

“I could not wait vaguely for the right time, so I set a man to watch the Dark Cavern Taoist. Of course, I did not mean to have him killed at once.”

“Did you.”

Jegal Jin nodded.

“In any case, the lord of the Hidden Dragon Command is my cousin. But the Dark Cavern Taoist used the man I sent as a messenger and sent word back.”

“That cave-dwelling Taoist cur...”

With bloodshot eyes bulging, Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok asked:

“What word did he send?”

“That the knife Uncle had prepared for slaughtering an ox was used to kill a chicken.”

“......!”

“I thought I had better confirm it, so I summoned Waryong Command’s strategist, Jegal Seungsu. He confessed that, at Uncle’s command, there had been a contract with the Four Evils of Heaven. He also said he himself wondered how Uncle knew the way to make contact with them.”

“So that is how you confirmed it.”

With a slackened look, Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok nodded and went on:

“My elder brother’s eye was true. He said that as timber for clan master, the elder son, Coiled Dragon, was the very one; and as the Main House’s blade, the second son, Fire Dragon, was the best. The family’s prospects are truly to be looked forward to.”

“Your words make it the more regrettable. Had Hidden Dragon been able to take a share with us brothers, our expectations would be higher still.”

At the mention of Hidden Dragon, one of the Three New Dragons of Jegal—his dead son—Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok stared at the clan master with bloodshot eyes.

“Clan Master, now I have but a single wish.”

“......”

“Avenge Hidden Dragon.”

Jegal Jin dipped his head in silence.

“Uncle, does the Jegal Family not carve its grudges into stone? And is not the clan master the one who keeps that pledge?”

Elder Council Lord Jegal Deok opened the green wooden box and took out a dark-green pellet.

“We shall see whether you keep it.”

He swallowed the green pellet in one gulp, then lifted the cup and drained the tea.

“Perhaps because it is dear—the tea does taste fine.”

He took comfort in thinking that, in all the world, he alone had drunk tea worth ten thousand gold taels, and endured the pain of his dantian shattering.

****

Mount Wuyi was not a mere mountain.

Only by experiencing it did Kwak Yeon learn that it also meant a vast range slanting north–south between Jiangxi and Fujian.

He half thought someone had gathered every mountain under heaven and piled them here.

Behind him stretched peaks without end; before him, mountains; to left and right, nothing but peaks. A mountain beyond a mountain, then another ridge, and beyond that a summit craned its head up again.

The rugged peaks all but threatened: So you’re the Taoist brat who dared say he would pass straight through us, the mountain gods’ brethren.

Kwak Yeon felt like Zhao Zilong, trapped alone amid Cao Cao’s million on the fields of Changban.

越地如蜀道難—the roughness of Yue is like the hardship of the Shu Road. He felt the saying anew.

In that hardship march of toppling the mountain gods barring his way one by one, a large town appeared—and naturally drew his steps.

He had not imagined such a bustling town upon the highland hills in the midst of the range.

Seizing the chance, he meant to lodge at an inn, wash away the grime of his long mountain trek, and set his kit in order, so he hurried into Seonyang County.

With Great King Peak, home of the Wuyi Sect, not far off, he also wished to meet the hermit Taoist in clean attire.

On Seonyang’s streets there were notably many donkeys and wooden handcarts pulled by men.

And men with grim faces stalked the roads in droves—each of them armed.

I thought it odd because we’re deep in the mountains—indeed, not an ordinary town.

Ignoring the rough men’s looks, Kwak Yeon walked on.

Unless they picked a quarrel first, he had no wish to know who they were or what they did.

Therefore, amidst those grim men, he had no inkling that a pair of burning eyes was fixed upon him.