Chapter 1019: The World Is a Kaleidoscope (1)

In the current martial world, there existed the greatest secret social club, the one every young person longed for.

The Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society!

Exactly why it was called a secret social club when there was not a soul in the Central Plains who did not know of it was unclear, but since everyone called it a secret social club and it was famous for being a secret social club, one could simply count it as secret.

In any case, every young martial artist dreamed of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society.

Even those Evil Path youths did, going on about friendship transcending righteous and evil, imagining things like, My martial arts are so strong the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society invited me, or I only gave one word of advice and became the next Society Leader of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society.

It was all fantasies like that.

In fact, even people who were not young dreamed of it.

I became a respected elder of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society. The Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society likes old people. I joined the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society after my divorce. And so on....

Well, they did say dreams were free.

Then what exactly did these members of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society—the people called the future masters of the martial world—actually do in their daily lives?

The Society Leader of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society, for one, was said to spend about half the year wandering around outside getting up to all sorts of nonsense, but then what about the rest of the members?

First, Tang Nanna, the physician Qing acknowledged as the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society’s greatest intellect, had only now begun to focus seriously on martial arts.

Partly because she had been upset by how little help she had been while following along all this time, and partly because she had come to think that if she wanted to secretly dispose of the gnats that kept buzzing around, she would need stronger poison arts, and subtler poison arts.

So now she was fully engrossed in a new task—separate containment of poison cores—and spent every day lost in the ecstasy of training.

Thanks to that, within the Tang Family, the evaluation of the Heavenly Flower Sword, which had already been high, was said to have shot even more vertically upward, practically piercing the heavens.

Our girl started seeing the Heavenly Flower Sword, [N O V E L I G H T] and now she’s studying! Our girl is studying!

Of course, even before that, Tang Nanna had been a proud physician in her own right, learning medicine and poison lore as a hobby.

But the “studying” meant here was not that studying. It meant the studying of a martial artist—what, in Central Plains pronunciation, one read as kung fu.

Likewise, the Moyong Family’s evaluation of Qing was also in an extremely favorable state.

After all, Moyong Juhee, the one in the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society who handled being small and having nothing, had suddenly matured a great deal after starting to date the Heavenly Flower Sword.

They did miss that childish daughter of theirs from time to time, but children were meant to grow up, and since she had grown in a good direction, it was deeply gratifying for the family.

Besides, if the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society was the secret social club of the future ruling class, of future power, then surely Moyong Jun, the next Family Head, would also join it in time.

The Moyong Family was therefore in a state where they could grant anything the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society asked of them....

Then again, there were families where Qing’s evaluation was gradually declining instead.

The Namgoong Family, the swordsmanship house recognized by the whole Central Plains, was exactly such a case.

Namgoong Shinjae had always been a training fanatic in the first place. His hobby was training, his special skill was training, the thing he had to do was training. He was the perfect completed form of what Qing’s homeland called making one’s hobby and career one and the same.

So even now, every day, he swung a sword and then swung a sword again. It was, truly, eat sword, poop sword, infinite repetition.

Except.

Ever since joining the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society, had he not suddenly decided he wanted to use dual swords and started training in dual swords?

What was better than a sword was more swords!

Thanks to that, the elders of the family, who had walked only the single road of orthodox swordsmanship, were clutching the backs of their necks.

If more swords were such a wonderful thing, then why not hold one in his mouth too and do a three-sword style?

No, why stop there—why not stick two swords together top and bottom and make a double-edged sword, then use two in the left hand, two in the right hand, and two in the mouth for a full six-sword style? What in the world was he even saying?

But if they said that out loud, that sword-crazed young lord looked like the kind of person who would say, “Ah, that’s an excellent idea! Let’s do it at once!” and really go through with it, so they could only swallow their misery in silence.

Meanwhile, even within the same righteous martial world, there was no choice but for the Nine Great Sects and the Ten Great Houses to divide into subtle camps.

Naturally, from the perspective of the Nine Great Sects, the situation was somewhat concerning.

At present, the membership of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society leaned overwhelmingly toward the Ten Great Houses side. At least the Society Leader was one of their own orthodox Taoists, but aside from that, there was only one member from the Nine Great Sects at all—Daoist Changbin.

So countless requests came flying to Changbin as well.

“Ah, Fellow Daoist Ximen? Why, since we discuss the Dao together, ‘fellow Daoist’ is exactly the word meant for times like that.”

“Ah, don’t worry. I’ll speak well on your behalf.”

“Then just trust me!”

“I am Changbin!”

Only, for some reason, alcohol always tasted especially good whenever Changbin stood in front of the Society Leader.

He was so focused on the liquor, so busy savoring the taste, that he could not think of anything else at all, so why was he forcing people to place such pointless trust in him?

In truth, Changbin held a very large share of the blame for why there were so few members from the Nine Great Sects in the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society.

If someone simply handed Qing an application form, she would hire them on the spot. What application form—she would probably say, “Start coming to work from now on,” even if they only applied verbally.

So what chance was there that anything would come of poking Changbin, the one who handled being the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society’s little wretch?

Thus, the activities Changbin actually carried out within the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society amounted only to things like these.

Desperately trying to wedge himself in among the male members.

Wanting to lead a topic with some witty remark, but not being able to think of anything, and even when he sometimes did think of something, lacking the courage to say it, so merely watching everyone’s mood and in the end only drinking.

Avoiding people from the start because they were too burdensome.

If Qing had known, that ghost-member bastard Changbin would really have died.

Next time, she would arrange a drinking party for the female members and seat him right in the dead center of one of those huge round tables that spun in circles.

Fortunately, Changbin’s presence was not all that great, so he had not yet suffered such excessively cruel bullying.

And then there was the one who handled the face of the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society.

The one responsible for about half the popularity behind all the young people of the martial world dreaming of joining the Half-Sword Twin-Blade Society—in precise terms, the reason women dreamed of joining—

The most handsome man in all ages, surpassing even the most handsome man under heaven: the Jade Qilin, Peng Daesan.

Peng Daesan simply liked traveling.

In the past, he had wandered because he hated staying cooped up at home, and when he did, women swarmed around him in a manner so disgusting it bordered on repulsive, and so he would think, Fine, waste your lives away, and keep wandering even more pointedly, trapped in an endless vicious cycle.

But now that disgust had thinned quite a bit, and traveling with his face covered while enjoying the sights of a world he had never seen before turned out to suit his tastes rather well.

So now Peng Daesan liked traveling in a pure way.

Truly, genuinely, as a real traveler who simply enjoyed the many landscapes of the Central Plains, with absolutely no ulterior motive whatsoever!

And for such a real traveler, the scenery of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze in late autumn and early winter was, naturally, the sort of scenery one simply had to take in.

So he came to enjoy the scenery of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze. There was absolutely no other reason. He had merely heard that the scenery of the Three Gorges at that time of year was especially good, peaceful and all that.

Thus he arrived in Jagwi County, and since they were not exactly strangers, he also dropped by the Seol Family Trading House to say hello.

And then?

“What is it with you this time, sniffing around again? Hmph. Stop lurking around for no reason and get out at once.”

The old man Qing called the old geezer—though no one knew what exactly their relationship was—coldly answered him like that and issued an order to throw him out.

And because he was, more or less, on familiar terms with the strange person who was supposedly Qing’s friend, that suspicious Trading House Master whose face alone was that of a beauty, he naturally stopped by to say hello there as well.

Only for the Seol Family Trading House Master to tell him something he had neither asked nor particularly wanted to know.

“My, the Heavenly Flower Sword has left, saying she wanted to see Changbai Mountain. How unfortunate for Brother Peng, truly.”

“What is there to regret? I came only because I heard the Yangtze, beginning its preparations for winter, was beautiful.”

At that, Trading House Master Seol smiled in a way that was somehow slippery and nauseating.

Although only his face was beautiful, it was as if a scheming middle-aged man overlapped over it.

“Well, if that’s what Brother Peng says. Well then, if you’d like to ride a flower boat, go to the Trading House dock and give my name. Hm. I haven’t lived here that long myself, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone say the Yangtze is beautiful in this awkward in-between season.”

To say he had never heard such an obvious thing for a traveler? Brother Seol was surely a man of remarkably shallow experience.

Still, the kindness of lending him a flower boat was something to be sufficiently grateful for.

So Peng Daesan boarded the flower boat and leisurely enjoyed himself drifting up and down the Yangtze, taking in the sights, when suddenly another thought occurred to him.

Come to think of it, it felt like quite a long time since he had last seen Brother Jo.

Granted, the man was crazed over women, so much so that his eyes had practically rolled back in his head, but aside from that, he was rather straightforward and decent, was he not?

Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to look him up and see his face while he was at it.

Was not the charm of traveling alone that one could wander freely wherever one’s heart led and wherever one’s feet happened to go?

And so Peng Daesan, without a trace of lingering attachment, set off northward—

To Liaodong!

Because Brother Jo lived all the way up there, beyond even Liaodong, in the even more remote backwater frontier of Heilongjiang.

And so, from Jagwi County to Heilongjiang once again.

Only, after that long journey, when he arrived at the Black Dragon Jo Family?

Jo Hakche was absent, and instead an elderly steward greeted him with a regretful look.

“My, if only you had come a few days earlier. The young master has gone to the Martial Alliance. Mm, though I suppose Young Master Peng will learn of it soon enough anyway. The movements of those northern barbarians have been suspicious of late, so both the young master and the young lady have decided to stay at the Martial Alliance for the time being.”

“The northern barbarians? You mean the Tatar bastards?”

“Ah, don’t even speak of it. Apparently those northern bastards have joined hands with the Blood Cult bastards. We would never even have known this if not for the Heavenly Flower Sword, but those Blood Cult bastards were said to have targeted Her Highness the Princess during the peace mission....”

From the sound of it, it seemed the friend who had gone off to sightsee around Changbai had once again gotten entangled in trouble.

She was a friend who got caught up in trouble wherever she went. Whether the world simply refused to leave her in peace, without the slightest thought for the people who worried about her—though of course he was not worried or anything—well, anyway.

Originally, he had thought he would see Brother Jo, and while he was there also take a look at the famous beauty of Changbai.

After all, what sort of mountain was Changbai?

A famous mountain of stunning vistas that changed with every season, so much so that it was called by different names depending on the time of year.

Changbai in spring was Geumgang Mountain. Changbai in summer was Bongrae Mountain. Changbai in autumn was Pungak Mountain. Changbai in winter was Gaegol Mountain. When snow covered Changbai, it was called Seolbong Mountain or Sangak Mountain.

For a true traveler, it was naturally the sacred mountain of travel, one that should be visited once in each season—for a total of four times.

But if the movements of the northern barbarians were suspicious, and the matter was connected to the Blood Cult?

This was no time to idly enjoy sightseeing.

Should he not return to his family, convey this information, and discuss preparations?

And so, from Heilongjiang to Hebei, back home.

Only, when he got home?

After finally returning home for the first time in ages, instead of being welcomed, his mothers and his older sisters all started smacking him hard on the back and scolding him.

“Oh, you wretch. Where have you been wandering before crawling back now? Qing came to see you and just left, you know? Ah, this is so frustrating, so frustrating. Is this how your sister raised you?”

“Our dear son is never home when he ought to be, is he? Haah, how much longer must this mother keep worrying? Truly, there is no unfilial child quite like you, none at all.”

And of all times, that was when she had come by while he was away. And if she had come all the way there, she could at least have stayed awhile.

In any case, it was true that the heir of the family kept leaving home at the drop of a hat, so even if he had ten mouths, he would have nothing to say.

So he had intended to stay home for a while, settle down, and spend his time training diligently, but then—

“Hey. Son. My baby.”

“...Older Sister.”

“It sounds like some strange rumors are going around lately about Qing. Something about her having learned seed-extraction demonic arts?”

“Well, she does seem like someone who could have learned them and then some. Isn’t it simply the way of the world to slander those who stand above others?”

“You frustrating little brat. Who said I don’t know that? But once rumors start going around, all sorts of trash come clinging on and making a person’s life annoying, and you know that better than anyone, don’t you? At times like this, shouldn’t you at least stay by her side and comfort her? Hm? Don’t tell me you don’t understand what I mean.”

“She is not the sort to be hurt by something like that.”

“This brat. Hey, are you not going right now? When you were little, you used to trail after your big sister calling, ‘Sister, sister,’ and you were so adorable. But now your head’s grown a little and all you do is talk back. They say raising children is useless, and now I see it really is.”

Peng Daesan’s eyebrow twitched.

But it was also true that Peng Chor-yeo had doted on him and raised him dearly in place of his frail mother, and there was no way he could dare forget the grace of having been carried and raised like a child.

So what could he do? In front of his older sister, this younger brother had no choice but to yield.

It was absolutely not because he was worried, and of course she was a friend who would handle something like that just fine on her own, so there was no need to worry in the first place, but still. Since his older sister was telling him to go, he supposed he might as well at least pretend to.

Thus, from Hebei back to Jagwi County again.

And then, once more?

“What is with this brat, acting like this place is your home and coming and going so shamelessly? Can’t you get out at once? With nothing but that pretty face of yours—truly, there’s no bastard more brazen than you!”

There was Elder Choi again, still flying into a rage as before, and Brother Seol again wearing that bizarre, irritating smile.

“That matter has already been resolved well enough. But once again, little brother, you were one step too late, weren’t you? The Heavenly Flower Sword has already departed for the Gongsun Gong Clan in Nanjing. If only you had come a little sooner.”

“Hmph.”

Just as expected, it had all been resolved without issue.

He had worried for nothing. No, since he had not worried, there had been no loss, but anyway, still, it was fortunate that things had been resolved well.

Making a show of himself over something like this would be ridiculous, so it would be better to quietly return home.

Still, Nanjing, was it?

Since he had to head home anyway, would it not be comfortable to take a boat down to Nanjing first, then head north again?

Absolutely not because he had any other motive. No, truly—did they not say that the Yangtze’s waves flowed vast and unending without ever ceasing? Was this not a perfect opportunity to ride a boat and experience those very words firsthand?

The Yangtze in late spring had its own late-spring charm as well, so this would be a fine chance to engrave the sight of that broad, flowing river upon his eyes from aboard a boat.

Yes, if he was going all the way to Nanjing, then as the eldest son of the Peng Family, should he not at least belatedly congratulate the Gongsun Gong Clan on entering the Ten Great Houses, and perhaps cultivate relations with that accursed eldest young master...?

Thinking that, the corners of Peng Daesan’s mouth rose all on their own.

Peng Daesan simply liked traveling.

How much so?

Enough that after traveling 2,800 li from the Peng Family to Jagwi, then 5,800 li to Heilongjiang, and from there another 5,800 li back down to the Yangtze, which in the units of Qing’s homeland amounted to making the Seoul-Busan round trip eight times over, he was still not tired and was now heading for Nanjing.

Truly. Genuinely. Purely. He simply liked traveling....