Jegal Geon, the Jegal Family’s Fire Dragon, whose face had been impassive from start to finish, let his expression ease at last.
“Clan Master, have you been in untroubled health during our separation?”
“In a place with just the two of us, didn’t I tell you to call me ‘Elder Brother’?”
At Clan Master Jegal Jin’s gentle reproof, Jegal Geon smiled.
“It’s so fixed to my tongue it isn’t easy to change. And what’s in a form of address?”
Jegal Jin felt a sting at the heart.
He was remembering his younger brother as a boy, insisting that since he had resolved to become the Jegal Family’s Sword, he could never call him Elder Brother.
Before the eyes of the household, the brothers had to keep their distance. Yet brotherly affection hadn’t thinned. No, it had grown warmer.
Both had waited for the moment their father turned his back; at the same time they’d meet eyes and wink.
Back then, they thought they were playing at a game—tricking the world the adults had set in place. And they did not yet know that to become the Jegal Family’s Sword, the younger would have to accept one thing.
When he came of age and learned that truth, Jegal Jin resented a father who could make so merciless a decision, and toward his brother he felt boundless remorse.
“In any case, you’ve borne a great deal.”
Jegal Jin turned his gaze aside, lest the heaviness inside show.
“This closed-door training was not so grueling as I expected.”
As Clan Master, Jegal Jin knew well the harshness of Waryong-dong, the Hidden Dragon Cave—the family’s secret place forged to temper the Jegal Family’s Sword—so his chest ached all the more.
“And thanks to the spiritual creatures you procured for me this time, I achieved my aim.”
“Ah!”
Clan Master Jegal Jin’s eyes flashed to his younger brother.
“You actually touched Mid-Subjugation!”
Across the whole history of the Jegal Family, those who had risen to Mid-Subjugation within the Fire Realm were few indeed.
“Clan Master, thank you.”
“It’s I who should thank you. Do you know how great a burden was laid on you...?”
Heat welled up; Jegal Jin halted, then went on.
“You have become the Jegal Family’s true Sword.”
He could not add the words that would scrape his brother’s pain: “as Father so longed to see.”
“It will prove quite usable to Clan Master.”
“More than merely usable. Our Jegal Family’s aspiration is no longer far off.”
The Greatest House Under Heaven!
It was the Jegal Family’s aspiration and dream.
Among the great houses of the realm, the Jegal Family was always one of those counted without fail. Yet never once had it been called the Greatest House Under Heaven.
For one reason only: it had never produced an absolute master who overawed the age.
Thus, the provision prepared over long years was Waryong-dong, the Hidden Dragon Cave; and the one who entered there as the Jegal Family’s Sword was required to be specially prepared.
“More than that, I’m glad you returned at a most fitting moment.”
At the Clan Master’s words, color rose slowly in Jegal Geon’s face.
“I heard, as well, that Hidden Dragon has died.”
At his younger brother’s suddenly shifting complexion, Clan Master Jegal Jin started.
It was that the sole side effect attached to the conditions for becoming the Jegal Family’s Sword was showing itself.
“Even after reaching Mid-Subjugation of the Fire Realm, does he still not fully govern his Fire?”
Since the day he entered the path to become the Jegal Family’s Sword, his younger brother had often failed to endure anger and would blaze up like fire.
It would cause no trouble in real combat at the Fire Realm’s Mid-Subjugation, but the world’s opinion would not be kind.
The world is ever fearful of a sword without mercy.
Yet his brother would go on to higher realms still; such glares would not matter.
But for now, that fire needed to be soothed.
“From whom did you hear it?”
“I first paid my respects to our uncle.”
Jegal Jin reproached himself for not foreseeing that his brother would go to their uncle first.
He had not prepared, thinking his brother would not exit seclusion so soon.
“And I found that Uncle, stricken in spirit, had let his body fail and even stepped down from the Elder Council Lord’s seat. The weight of his grief must have been that great.”
Watching his brother’s face redden further, Jegal Jin thought it most fortunate that the truth—that their uncle and Hidden Dragon had hatched a vile scheme—had been kept secret.
Had his brother learned it, the Fire Dragon within him would have awakened.
Quietly relieved, Jegal Jin nodded.
“Uncle’s heartbreak would indeed be heavy.”
“Clan Master, I will deal with that Dark Cavern Taoist at once, so do not be concerned. If that man is said to be of the Fire Realm, it would not be so bad to make his head the notice that the Jegal Family’s Sword has come into the # Nоvеlight # rivers and lakes.”
“Younger Brother, that is not a matter we need hurry.”
This was truly Jegal Jin’s heart.
He was in turmoil over the Dark Cavern Taoist. As Clan Master he must keep his obligations and had pledged to his uncle as well, yet someone within his breast was whispering that as a man of arms this was not the way.
“Clan Master—did you not just say you were glad I returned at the very time needed?”
Jegal Jin answered his brother, who had twisted his word “time” into something else, in a steady voice.
“There is a matter of greater importance to the family.”
“Clan Master, what could be more urgent and important than taking the blood-price for the family’s blood?”
“You must go to the All-Under-Heaven Heroes Assembly the Martial Alliance is about to convene.”
At the Clan Master’s words, Jegal Geon’s face flushed deeper.
“To a children’s game? Do we truly lack people so badly?”
“It is not a mere heroes’ meet.”
At his elder brother’s firm tone, Jegal Geon at last let the fire ebb.
“Speak.”
“The true substance of this Heroes Assembly is a conclave to set the martial world’s balance for the next hundred years.”
“So the Assembly has another purpose. And if we are to send the Jegal Family’s Sword, whom we ought to husband, this is no ordinary affair.”
Jegal Geon’s eyes sharpened.
“Clan Master, what is the task?”
“The subjugation of the Demonic Eight Divisions.”
A brief silence flowed through the Hall of the Coiled Dragon.
Such was the weight the Demonic Eight Divisions—eight great demonic forces—cast.
Presently, a slow smile clung to Jegal Geon’s lips.
“In that case, there’s nothing for it but to spare the Dark Cavern Taoist’s life a little longer.”
****
“Damn it!”
Shaking water from his wet hair as he grumbled into the detached quarter’s main hall, Chwi Dugae stared, dumbstruck, at the table piled high with dishes and wine jars.
“Son of a—!”
How had he not thought of this and crawled straight into the bath tub?
Sitting in hot water, he had felt like a yellow dog being boiled alive—an awful feeling. And a past he hated to recall had surfaced.
When his master had shoved him into the pot meant for boiling a yellow dog, as a child he thought the old beggar meant to boil and eat him.
It was the third year of unbroken drought, and rumors were rife that people were eating children.
“I was trying to scrub off with hot water—why the fits!”
Only after a slap to the head did he learn it wasn’t that. But the memory from then was so vivid he still flinched at the sight of a bath tub.
Anyway, he had never so much as set foot in, let alone lodged in, a detached suite this fine. It was only natural he hadn’t thought to order food up here.
“That’s why people need a range of experience.”
Consoling himself that he now had something new to gripe to his master about, Chwi Dugae plopped down before the laden table.
“Brother Kwak, if this was the plan, why make me wash?”
He grumbled at Kwak Yeon, seated across from him.
“Isn’t it refreshing?”
“Refresh my—”
A habit is hard to break; he carped, but his mood wasn’t bad.
It wasn’t as if he’d scraped off a year’s grime in the tub. He had heard insights a Fire Realm master had earned in real combat.
Of course, he had only grasped them in his head; his heart had not yet awakened.
Chwi Dugae was grateful to Kwak Yeon for straining to help a dull sworn brother over the wall beyond.
He just couldn’t show it; hence the surliness.
“Anyway, enough steaming—ask already.”
“......”
“You didn’t set a spread like this just because you missed me, did you?”
“As expected of you, Brother.”
Kwak Yeon nodded readily and countered.
“Since you see straight through me, couldn’t you just say it first?”
“Well, now, you take a beggar for an easy mark.”
Chwi Dugae lifted a wine jar and took a long pull before continuing.
“Kaah! In the Beggar Clan, whatever the information is, the iron rule is to squeeze every last bit of credit out of it.”
—Thok!
Kwak Yeon caught the wine jar.
“Even between you and me, Brother?”
Chwi Dugae wasn’t the least afraid of that gently menacing line from Kwak Yeon. He could brazen it out even with his master.
But he could not help but fear that hand of Kwak Yeon’s holding the wine jar.
He had already had the priming sip—the priming wine. That made it all the more a living death.
The wine worms in his gut were rioting.
“Urgh...”
Letting out a low groan, Chwi Dugae said:
“Fine. I’ll tell you right now, so first take that hand away. My throat’s raw, maybe from bathing, and it’s awfully dry.”
Only then did Kwak Yeon release the wine jar.
Chwi Dugae had planned to eat and drink his fill and wait for Kwak Yeon to plead, “Brother, please, tell me now,” and then tell him.
Instead, he was the one doing the asking.
“Damn it!”
Be that as it may, he couldn’t go back on his word. He drained half the jar in one go and opened his mouth.
“Buurp! Master says that if the Supreme Patriarch has a Beggar Clan friend, it would be Elder Begs-for-All.”
“......”
“Elder Begs-for-All was our clan’s former Guardian and a tremendous broker of information. So his sobriquet was ‘All-Miracle,’ and people called him ‘Begs-for-All.’ Most of all, Master said the elder assisted the Supreme Patriarch during the Great Upheaval of the Eight Desolations.”
If those two had such a bond, Kwak Yeon thought, it made sense that the Supreme Patriarch would ask him to look into affairs of the martial world.
“Thank you.”
“What’s that worth a thanks? I only asked Master a question.”
“Then Elder Begs-for-All will be at the Beggar Clan headquarters in Kaifeng, yes?”
Kwak Yeon assumed that since Elder Begs-for-All had been a former Guardian and was a clan elder, of course he would be at the Beggar Clan’s headquarters.
“No.”
“...?”
“And he isn’t even of the Beggar Clan now.”
“Ah! You mean he performed the Golden Basin Hand-Washing?”
In the martial world, elders often retired as they aged.
Formally washing one’s hands in a golden basin to wipe away the debts and enmities of the past was called the Golden Basin Hand-Washing.
“I’ve not heard that Elder Begs-for-All has performed the Golden Basin Hand-Washing.”
“Pardon? Then...?”
“Elder Begs-for-All withdrew from the Beggar Clan long ago.”
Chwi Dugae’s expression turned a shade uncomfortable.
“There was some history inside our main hall.”
“...?”
“Our Beggar Clan does not join the Martial Alliance. We’re on the orthodox side, yes, but we’re beggars who live by alms. ‘Martial Alliance’—fine words; but isn’t it a consortium for the orthodox sects’ interests? We’ve no profit to weigh, so for us there’s simply no reason to take part.”
“I understand.”
“But it seems Elder Begs-for-All thought our Beggar Clan, too, should join the Martial Alliance. When the former Clan Leader would not grant it, he withdrew.”
“...?”
“Unlike other sects, our Beggar Clan places no constraints on withdrawing. If a man says he’ll quit being a beggar, isn’t that cause for congratulations? Trying to stop him would be ridiculous. Of course, he must lay down any office he holds.”
“Then Elder Begs-for-All is with the Martial Alliance now?”
