Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Taoist and the Boy

The mountains stretched endlessly, their peaks rising and falling like waves upon a restless sea. Along a narrow path that wound between these stone surges, twenty Taoists made their way forward.

It was early spring, and the cold wind still bit at their flesh, cutting through their robes like invisible blades. Shivering, the Taoists drew their Daoist robes tighter about their shoulders and tucked their chins against the chill.

At the head of the procession, a middle-aged Taoist suddenly raised his head. He appeared to be in his late forties, his jaw clenched tight as iron.

His eyes were red and bloodshot, and his shoulders trembled with ceaseless tremors.

"Mount Hua sacrificed so much in the war against the Demonic Cult, and this is our reward—nothing but the world's cold shoulders? How fickle the hearts of men truly are."

"Senior Brother."

"We shall grow strong. So strong that no one under heaven will ever dare look down upon Mount Hua again."

The middle-aged Taoist's mutter carried a fierce, resonant weight. The disciples who followed behind him hung their heads and clenched their fists until their knuckles cracked.

They felt the same as he did.

But there was one exception—a slender, refined-looking middle-aged Taoist who simply closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Amitabha! Senior Brother has swallowed poison."

The Taoist at the head of the group, who radiated an unsettling aura, bore the Taoist name Hyeon-cheon. He held the exalted position of Grandmaster of the Great Mount Hua Sect, one of the Nine Great Sects.

And Sage Hyeon-cheon was wrathful. Where his fury pointed, Mount Hua would follow.

"Where will Mount Hua go from here?"

As the refined-looking Taoist, Sage Hyeon-so, let out a quiet sigh—

"There is smoke ahead."

A voice suddenly broke through, pulling both Sage Hyeon-cheon and Sage Hyeon-so from their thoughts.

Beyond the hill just ahead, smoke was rising into the sky. The acrid, coppery smell carried on the wind made the Taoists' faces contort instinctively.

"The scent of blood?"

"Let us investigate."

Sage Hyeon-cheon shook off his fury, stimulated by the metallic odor, and spoke.

The Taoists hurried over the crest of the hill. What they found was a scene beyond comprehension.

A small village lay engulfed in flames. Roughly thirty houses had been burned or reduced to rubble, and the bodies of men, women, and children lay scattered across the streets like discarded dolls.

"Amitabha! What in heaven's name—"

"It appears to be a bandit raid. I had heard rumors that bandits had been running rampant everywhere of late."

"How can this be!"

Sage Hyeon-so's expression turned ghastly pale.

"Amitabha! The Demonic Cult falls, and now bandits run amok. What is to become of this world?"

The Taoists spread out and searched the village thoroughly, but they found no survivors. From the youngest to the eldest, over a hundred souls from thirty-odd households had been massacred.

"Barbaric wretches. How could they slaughter innocent villagers down to the last child?"

"Primordial Celestial Lord, please watch over these departed souls."

As the Taoists murmured prayers for the dead, Sage Hyeon-so heard a faint moan. The sound was so weak that at first he thought he had imagined it.

"Mmm!"

But the instant he heard it again, Sage Hyeon-so realized it was no hallucination.

"Where?"

Sage Hyeon-so turned, searching for the source of the sound.

From within the ruins of what had once been a family's cherished home—now nothing but charred beams and ash—came the faintest sound of moaning.

Sage Hyeon-so hurriedly began pulling at the debris. He shoved aside a half-burned pillar and dug through the ashes with his bare hands.

"Junior Brother, what are you doing?"

"Martial Uncle! There is—"

"Someone is alive in here."

At Sage Hyeon-so's words, the younger Taoists joined in to clear the wreckage.

When they had cleared perhaps half the debris, the body of a man, half-burned, emerged from the ashes.

The man wore a sword at his hip and a tunic of animal hide—garments that did not belong in this village. The calluses on his knuckles told the rest of the story.

"A bandit?"

The man's attire and bearing were wholly out of place here. Sage Hyeon-so frowned and reached out to touch the body. There was no warmth of life left.

"It seems the Junior Brother was mistaken. This man has been dead for some time."

"But why would a bandit be dead? Was there someone in the village who knew martial arts?"

Sage Hyeon-cheon and the other senior brothers each offered a word, but no one could solve the puzzle.

Then—

"Mmm!"

Once more, the faint moan sounded. This time, not only Sage Hyeon-so but everyone present heard it.

"Could it be—?"

Sage Hyeon-so hastily flipped the bandit's body over.

Unlike the back, which had been exposed to the flames and burned, the bandit's front was relatively intact. The eyes of the surrounding Taoists wavered.

The bandit's throat had been torn open as though by a wild beast, the flesh ripped away to expose the windpipe. The wound to his neck appeared to be the cause of death. But what shocked the Taoists was not the bandit's wound.

Beneath where the bandit had been lying, a small, thin boy lay pinned. He had been hidden from view by the bandit's massive body.

Whether the boy had been born that way or whether the bandits had done it to him, his arms and legs were twisted at grotesque angles. The horrific injuries spoke volumes about the nightmare the boy had endured.

"Amitabha!"

The Taoists averted their eyes or coughed into their fists, unable to bear the sight.

The boy, who had lain as though dead with eyes closed, suddenly snapped them open.

"…"

His eyes were hollow—all that he had lost reflected in their depths—and within them burned a savage, desperate killing intent that made even Sage Hyeon-so flinch.

"Child!"

Sage Hyeon-so reached out with a compassionate heart, but the boy painfully turned his head and spat out the object he had been clutching between his teeth.

Thud!

Something the size of a fist tumbled across the ground. The crimson, crushed object was unmistakably a piece of human flesh.

"Th-that—?"

A terrible silence descended upon the Mount Hua disciples.

***

A boy who appeared to be sixteen or seventeen years old was laboriously climbing the mountain. Beneath the cloth tied tightly across his forehead lay thick eyebrows, and beneath those, cold, piercing eyes and firmly set lips that spoke of an iron will.

The boy raised his head to gaze at the mountain's summit.

Rising toward the heavens like swords thrust point-down into the earth, the rocky peaks came into view. They spread outward like a lotus in full bloom—and it was for this shape that the highest peak had been named Lotus Peak.

Lotus Peak—this was where the Mount Hua Sect, one of the Nine Great Sects, had established itself. More precisely, it was where the sect's symbolic sites, the Jade Spring and the Upper Palace, could be found, though the common folk identified Lotus Peak with the Mount Hua Sect as a whole.

Unlike the Wudang Sect, which was concentrated at the summit of Wudang Mountain, the Mount Hua Sect was spread across the entirety of Mount Hua.

True Martial Palace, the symbol of Mount Hua's martial might, sat upon the summit of Cloud Peak, while Golden Heaven Palace, Manifest Treasure Palace, and Spirit Treasure Palace—their locations hidden from the outside world—nested in places unseen.

The sites most widely known to the world were Jade Spring Garden at the foot of Mount Hua and Peace Palace halfway up. Even Jade Spring Garden was the limit of where common folk could approach. For this reason, the world never knew the true face of the Mount Hua Sect.

"Hah!"

A harsh breath escaped the boy's lips.

The stone stairway he was climbing was a narrow path carved into the cliff face known as Hundred Fathom Cliff. So narrow that only a single adult could squeeze through at a time, and nearly vertical, the cliff was perilously dangerous. And the path extended for nearly a hundred fathoms—hence its name.

To ascend Hundred Fathom Cliff, one first had to climb the three hundred and seventy stone steps known as Thousand Fathom Hall. This near-vertical passage was infamous throughout the world for its brutal difficulty.

Even martial artists who had cultivated their skills to the peak found this path agonizing, yet the boy climbed with his teeth clenched, step by agonizing step. His legs felt as though they were bound to iron weights.

Sweat poured down his body as though from a downpour, his face had long since gone pale, and his heart hammered so wildly it seemed it might burst from his chest.

Each step felt more painful than death itself. Yet the boy never complained of exhaustion, never once stopped to rest.

In the midst of that stubborn ascent, his left leg suddenly seized with a cramp.

The boy paused and looked down at his left leg. It was thinner than his right, slightly bent where the knee should have been straight. Below the knee, the deformity rendered the leg nearly useless—he could neither put proper weight on it nor walk normally.

And so the boy was forced to limp. In common parlance, he was a cripple.

For everyday life, it was no great hindrance. But for a martial artist, it was a fatal flaw.

Yet despite this缺陷, the boy climbed the path between the foot of Mount Hua and its summit every single day.

A path that even masters found exhausting.

'You can do this. I can do this.'

The boy clenched his teeth and resumed his climb.

His body was spent, his legs trembling without end, but his gaze remained fixed upon the summit of Mount Hua.

Step by step, the boy continued upward. And so, one painstaking step at a time, he finally cleared Hundred Fathom Cliff.

But clearing the cliff did not mean he had reached the summit. He was, at best, only halfway to his destination.

The boy paused to catch his breath and looked around. In the far distance, beyond Dragon Ridge, Lotus Peak was visible—the symbolic heart of the Mount Hua Sect where the Jade Spring and Upper Palace stood. But that was not his destination.

The boy turned and headed toward Cloud Peak on the opposite side. Lotus Peak to the west, along with Dawn Cliff to the east and Peace Peak to the south, clustered together—but Cloud Peak stood alone, isolated from the rest. Perhaps because of this, it gave him a sense of solitude.

Sweat dripped ceaselessly from the boy's forehead. His legs felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds. His left leg, the one that was not right, especially ached.

The muscles in his waist and thighs swelled as though they might burst, and his joints screamed as though being driven by chisel. His lungs expanded to their limit in a desperate bid for more air, and his heart pounded furiously to pump fresh blood through his veins.

After what felt like an eternity, the boy entered a thicket near Cloud Peak. Beyond the undergrowth lay a narrow footpath—so concealed that anyone passing by on the outside would never have noticed it.

He followed the path for some time before a small pavilion came into view, perched precariously at the edge of a cliff. Before the weathered pavilion sat a simple wooden platform, and upon it sat a middle-aged Taoist.

The Taoist wore a Daoist robe so tattered it appeared to have been mended countless times beyond counting.

The Taoist had been gazing at the scenery of Mount Hua for some time when he seemed to sense a presence and turned to look toward the boy.

A deep furrow carved itself between the Taoist's brows.

"Have you been down the mountain again?"

"Master."

"It will not heal your leg properly, so why do you persist? No—I need not ask, for you would not listen even if I spoke. If you would, you would have stopped long ago."

For the past five years, the boy had climbed Mount Hua every single day without exception. For a healthy person, the climb alone took the better part of a day.

The boy, moreover, had a damaged leg. He could only move more slowly than ordinary people.

Everyone said he was mad. Yet the boy kept climbing.

At first, the climb had taken him three full days. His heart had already reached the summit, but his legs refused to follow his will.

His left leg, twisted and damaged, caused him even greater pain. Yet the boy never once complained, never once stopped to rest.

One step at a time, without pause, he climbed slowly—and when at last he reached the summit, he was on the verge of death.

Had the Taoist not administered emergency treatment, the boy would have lost his life. His condition had been that precarious.

An ordinary person would have stopped there. But the moment his body recovered, the boy climbed again. His will was so unyielding that the Taoist could do nothing but watch.

Through the daily climb, the boy gradually recovered his vitality. Muscles began to form upon his once-emaciated frame. After five years, he now possessed the leg strength and cardiovascular endurance to climb Mount Hua at a reasonable pace.

"Come here, boy."

"Master, I am fine now."

"I am not fine. Come here."

At the Taoist's words, the boy sat on the platform with a resigned expression. The Taoist then extended his thin, bony hands and began to massage both of the boy's legs.

"Mmm!"

A groan escaped the boy's lips unbidden.

The Taoist's hands were relentless. Under that rough, firm pressure, the boy's legs ached.

But the pain passed in an instant. In its place came a cool, soothing sensation.

"How reckless you are. Is it truly worth it to push yourself this hard for the sake of higher martial arts?"

"I am sorry, Master."

"Amitabha! What have you to be sorry for? It is this useless master who should apologize to you."

"No."

At the Taoist's self-reproach, the boy waved his hands in hasty denial.

To the boy, the Taoist was his savior. He had rescued him from the brink of death, nursed him back to health, and taken him as a disciple. Without the Taoist, the boy could not exist.

"Ho-ya!"

"Yes!"

"You are… No, never mind."

The Taoist trailed off.

The Taoist's name was Hyeon-so, and he was one of the Elders of the Mount Hua Sect. The boy he was massaging was named Dam Ho—the sole survivor he had rescued five years ago from a village destroyed by bandits.

Everyone had taken one look at Dam Ho's injuries and given up. But Sage Hyeon-so was different.

He had never abandoned Dam Ho, whose limbs were shattered and whose life hung by a thread. Though he was no physician, he had done everything in his power to save the boy.

Whether by heaven's grace or by fortune, Dam Ho had survived. But as a result of his injuries, he now limped on his left leg. That, at least, was beyond even Sage Hyeon-so's ability to remedy.

'Our poor Ho-ya… what am I to do about you?'

As Sage Hyeon-so massaged Dam Ho's legs, a look of anguish flickered across his eyes.

The talent he had seen in Dam Ho was extraordinary. But what surpassed even that talent was his will.

Whether it was because of the great tragedy he had suffered at such a young age, Dam Ho possessed a will far firmer than any boy his age.

Had his body been whole, he would surely have become a formidable martial artist.

But Dam Ho's left leg was crippled. It posed no problem in daily life, but for a martial artist, it was a fatal weakness.

In any sect, footwork was paramount—and for the Mount Hua Sect above all. When a disciple became a Main Mountain Disciple and received the Lesser Clarity Heart Method, they were required to master the Nine Palace Step as well.

The Nine Palace Step, with its dazzling array of variations, was a supreme footwork technique so demanding that even geniuses of extraordinary talent struggled to learn it. For Dam Ho, with his crippled leg, it was far too intricate. It would have been understandable if he had given up—yet Dam Ho climbed the mountain daily to strengthen his leg muscles.

Whether such effort would ever enable him to master the Nine Palace Step remained uncertain, but Dam Ho never missed a single day of training. Before such devotion, Sage Hyeon-so could only redden at the eyes.

"Master, I am fine now. You can stop."

"Let me do a little more."

"But—"

"I want to do this. A little more."

"Master."

Dam Ho lowered his gaze.

For the past five years, Sage Hyeon-so had been utterly consistent. As though possessed by the desperate need to give the boy everything he could, he had cared for Dam Ho with tireless devotion.

Without that care, the Dam Ho who existed today would not be here. Sage Hyeon-so carefully massaged Dam Ho's foot and spoke.

"The only thing a man needs is an unyielding heart. If your heart is firm and unshaken, heaven will open the way for the rest. So do not be too impatient, Ho-ya."

The words were quintessentially those of Sage Hyeon-so—a Taoist to his very roots.

'Master, I do not believe in heaven.'

Dam Ho's reply echoed only within the silent chambers of his heart.