Chapter 439: Journey to Taewon (10)

The great sayings of the Central Plains mostly came from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras.

That was because those centuries of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States were the harshest in all the history of the Central Plains—an age when the world was steeped in nothing but evil.

Precisely because it was such an age, the desperate cry, We must not live like this! If you are human, live like a human! gave rise to the words of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

In that age, there was a thief named Dao Zhi.

The greatest of thieves, the ultimate bandit—Dao Zhi, Dao Zhi.

He led nine thousand bandit followers and did nothing but plunder, which alone says enough about his character.

Why?

Because in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, an army of nine thousand strong soldiers was enough to vie for hegemony, to challenge a regional lord, a marquis, even aim for the throne.

But what did Dao Zhi do with nine thousand men?

He merely swept across the realm, stealing.

He killed people when bored, forced brothers and sisters, parents and spouses to fight each other to the death and cackled while watching.

And every meal, he had to eat human liver—a grotesque appetite.

What thief’s cruelty could compare with Dao Zhi’s?

Thus Sima Qian cried out in the Records of the Grand Historian with indignation.

(It must have hurt terribly, being wrongfully accused and castrated.)

And how did Dao Zhi die?

After a lifetime of killing people for fun, gouging out livers and eating them, he passed away peacefully of old age, lulled by the wailing of his followers as though it were a lullaby.

If Heaven truly hated evil and punished evil deeds, then why did Dao Zhi live such a life of endless blood-soaked amusement, only to die peacefully?

What exactly is Heaven’s will? Does Heaven’s will even exist?

If it exists, where is it?

“Hmph. Bastard.”

If you argued it that way, Heaven does nothing at all.

The numbers Qing saw floating before her eyes—those were just numbers.

They didn’t order her, Fill in such-and-such score, or Round up the wicked and ship them express to hellfire.

They just showed up as numbers, nothing more.

Why?

Hm. She didn’t know either.

“Lady Seo Mun?”

“Eh.”

“What are you pondering so deeply?”

“Nothing much. What, the lecture’s over? Then?”

Qing mimed raising a cup.

Well, if class is over, time to drink. It’s hot, let’s have one cold.

They had arrived in Taewon in mid-May. Now it was late July, the air heavy and muggy, sweat pouring down at the slightest lapse.

Of course, Qing wasn’t hot.

Using Guardian Qi, she was completely free from the summer heat.

To others, with her sleeves closed and her collar fastened tight even in summer, it looked suffocating, as though she’d turned her outfit into a steam bath.

But beneath, the cold qi flowed, letting her enjoy a smug, private coolness.

The Hanlin scholars would say: just looking at that peerless beauty made their insides turn cold, and if by rare luck they got a seat beside her (competition fierce), they actually felt a chill.

And indeed, it was true.

Qing blended into the Hanlin Academy surprisingly well.

By nature, she was sociable, never hesitating to strike up conversation.

Put kindly, she was affable; put less kindly, she was an annoying pest who would never leave people alone when bored.

With a face so breathtaking it seemed she’d never spare even a glance for men, she was oddly without distinctions of gender.

Very much so.

She loved to eat and play, but when doing something, she also threw herself into it wholeheartedly.

Summed up, it looked like this:

“Cheers! Survived another day!”

“Survived!”

The Hanlin scholars raised their cups and echoed her.

When a scholar, mustering every ounce of courage, asked, Would you like to have a meal together...? Qing would casually say yes.

His heart would pound, his face burn with triumph—only for lunchtime to come, and a whole pack of scholars trailing after Qing in a mob.

Sorry, but she hadn’t said it would be just the two of them.

“Ah, sitting still half a day is killing me. Don’t you agree? Got to stand up and stretch once in a while. Ahhh, that’s the stuff.”

She jabbed the scholar beside her lightly in the arm with her elbow.

His face instantly flamed red.

Elbow! Her elbow touched me!

“Scholar Yang, Scholar Yang, today’s lecture was about... Mozi, was it? Hm? Careful pronunciation there. Anyway—universal love versus partial love, what’s that about?”

“Ahem. Universal love means loving without distinction; partial love means showing affection in degrees, beginning with those closest to oneself.”

“And? Why universal love?”

Qing leaned close as she asked.

A pleasant fragrance—he was dizzy.

“Which king is more benevolent, one who cherishes those closest to him or one who cherishes all equally?”

“Shouldn’t you first know whether you’re counted among the close ones?”

Another scholar hurried to cut in.

“Lady Seo Mun, loyal ministers are not like thorns in the mouth to trip one up, and treacherous ministers are not the ones with painted faces whispering sweet words into the ear? So though every ruler proclaims he loves the loyal and shuns the treacherous, in his heart it goes the other way, favor falling inevitably on the treacherous. Thus, the king’s partial love ends up wasted on worthless ministers.”

“Is that so?”

“But Scholar, to cite kings as an example for universal love is not apt. Universal love means this: to love another’s child as your own, and not to love your own child more than another’s. Thus the family of universal love is a great household in which many couples gather and share all children together.”

Thus the birth of a shared-child great family.

Such a great family would then join with others by marriage, two families merging into one community.

When such universal-love communities covered the realm, then all under heaven would live in great peace.

And one peculiarity of such communities:

Property was distributed according to need, surplus resources not held as private wealth, but reclaimed for the community and redistributed again...

“Wait, that sounds kind of red, doesn’t it?”

“The interesting thing is that Mozi’s disciples were all masters of defensive warfare. So despite drawing the ire of many rulers, they safeguarded their strange communities well.”

The Hundred Schools were not just bookish scholars.

Each was also a formidable general, commander of armed forces.

The Mohists especially claimed that the ultimate means of stopping war was defensive warfare.

It’s said the earthen communal fortresses of the Central Plains came from Mohist tradition.

Ban on private property, ban on favoritism, communities built on shared children and resources, ever-expanding...

And cosmic defense.

It all felt suspiciously subversive.

In truth, Qing was a youth of Korea with higher education.

Studying Central Plains philosophy?

She once thought, I’ll pit Western philosophers against them!

But in the collection of the Hundred Schools alone, there were over two hundred philosophers.

So if she tried to counter by saying, Well, in the West someone once said this... they would only reply, Ah yes, Sage So-and-So said that long ago, and her one point would be answered with three or four of theirs.

Three or four responses from each meant hundreds in total.

She had to admit: numbers were power.

The thoughts of men really did circle around the same paths, so that what some Westerner thought on the far side of the earth had already been thought here long ago.

Look only at Daoism.

Pure Dao meant a state devoid of all artificiality—nearly identical to Plato’s “Idea.”

The Dao of wu wei, of effortless naturalness, was simply so.

It aligned with “the Good.”

Therefore the politics of the Philosopher King were natural, so natural one might not even know one was governed.

After getting bitten once, Qing no longer carelessly brought up Westerners.

What’s that, Nietzsche’s Übermensch? A pure childlike self? Ah, virtue, of course. Laozi said the one of deep virtue is like a child. So this Nietzsche fellow must have read the Dao De Jing. But “individual completion”? If your Übermensch transcends alone, what meaning is there? If enlightenment does not bring benefit to the world, why is such a being needed? If the world does not transcend together, why await a lone transcendent?

What could Qing say to that?

Why are you grilling me? Nietzsche said it, not me! Go yell at him, not me!

Utter nonsense.

Truly, Westerners’ reflections were too mired in the individual.

She remembered a professor’s half-joke, half-truth: that whenever Western thought tried to move beyond the individual and influence society, the Inquisition would hang the whole family and burn them at the stake.

The corruption of a “real god,” he’d said.

Qing was far from able to explain all that.

Most of all, being Korean, she couldn’t relate emotionally to a society centered on the sovereign individual.

So all she could do was stammer, Ah, I only heard that in passing, I don’t really know,

and regret that her professor hadn’t joined the martial world—since she’d been a poor student, she had no arguments.

Still, she was piling up knowledge.

“Ah, whatever. Drink, drink!”

Of course, knowledge wasn’t being refined into wisdom.

She was just shoving priceless goods into a warehouse without order, not knowing what they were or how to use them.

The sorting of that warehouse—always “later, later, much later.”

Anyway, after another round of drinking and eating, she returned to find Cheon Yuhak still groaning over the map in the cellar.

“Master, I’m back.”

“You’re back? Get in the medicated bath.”

He didn’t even look around as he answered.

Two months had passed, and he was still deciphering the Treasure Map.

Not that the deciphering was so lofty.

At first, yes—codes, overlays, drawing maps.

But the problem came after.

The fragments without place names, drawn so narrowly—he had to identify where in all the Central Plains they matched.

How?

By comparison. One by one.

Detailed maps of the Central Plains were state secrets.

But Cheon Yuhak, as a Divine Thief, and Qing, a thief-in-training, cared nothing for state law.

The sheer number of maps plastered on the cellar wall alone would be enough to damn the Cheon clan as capital criminals.

So with the odd scraps of the Treasure Map, they compared them across the entire realm, this way and that, trying to locate the site by hand.

Meanwhile—

Qing, soaking in the medicinal bath, noticed the water had grown clear. She called out:

“Master? The medicine seems used up.”

“Already? Impossible, not so fast.”

Qing was not just fast at eating.

Since their arrival in Taewon, she had been undergoing the Bone-Joint Tempering training once every half month.

Now, two months on, she was already on her fifth round.

The orthodox method was to stretch the joints past their limits, grueling for the Master, agonizing to the point of death for the disciple.

But with Qing’s cleverness, she made use of the parasite inside her mind to endure the pain on her behalf.

She still held to her respect for her Master.

“Damn it, I’m dying.”

Finished with the torture, Cheon Yuhak collapsed, panting, inside the stone chamber.

Qing’s eyes, until then glazed with drool dripping from her mouth, suddenly focused and darted around.

Ah—the training was done.

Her whole body ached with heavy soreness, no part unscathed, but compared to torture, a quick dip under and back up was manageable.

Bound to the training rack, she wriggled a bit, then slipped free by herself with surprising agility.

From the sixth session onward, once her joints had been tempered enough, as long as the rack wasn’t locked too tight, she could wriggle out.

Now she no longer had to plead desperately between human dignity and the limits of her bladder, begging to be let out to the privy.

“How goes the map?”

“Ah, almost done. Just a few more days. By the eighth month, I must have all the candidate sites identified so we can visit them all without missing one.”

In August, the Grand Academy would recess.

That was why Cheon Yuhak poured every spare moment into this map-matching game.

By then, they had to mark all candidate sites, ready to set out in search of the Treasure Map’s hidden troves.