With a body neither yang person nor yin person, the very act of lying together to receive his spouse’s yang energy was unbearably humiliating, and with his spouse being of unsound body, he felt he would fall into an even stranger beast than now. Seeing Hae-gang standing before him looking outwardly so composed, his heart fluttered for a moment, but Mok-young somehow gripped the reins tight and endured.
Moreover… moreover, at the thought that he might conceive this yang man’s child before his very eyes, a faint, aching sensation seemed to claw at one side of his head. Hae-gang was, undeniably, the prince of a whole nation. What was more, he had recently been entered into the Empress’s register as her son, gaining even the status of a legitimate heir — so it was only natural he might one day want an heir of his own. But was such a thing even possible? No matter that he had become a yin-bodied man, he was still a man as well, and there was no knowing whether the line could be carried on. With not even a precedent to go by, it was all the more uncertain. In the entire history of the sect, Mok-young was the first in six or seven hundred years to cultivate the longevity arts to the point of reaching the state of absolute yin. The records from seven hundred years ago spoke of another supreme master, but nowhere was there any tale of who had become a body that was neither yin nor yang.
“I don’t want it… like this.”
Between Hae-gang’s words there had lain just such complicated, tangled difficulty. He could never bring himself to say it to Hae-gang.
*I don’t want to become a beast that lusts after even your wounded manhood, never knowing how deeply it may have festered.*
*I’m afraid of bearing your child.*
For Mok-young — for Dan Mok-young, who threw his weight about as the Ghost King and made the soldiers of the world tremble — these were words he could not have spat out even with a blade in his gut. He had never imagined, before he set eyes on Hae-gang, that he would suffer such torment, which made it all the harder.
Perhaps he had been too complacent. Mok-young thought so now. Perhaps, when it came to this marriage, he himself had been the one who had taken it most lightly — and a belated regret followed on the thought.
—
“If this way won’t do, then I suppose I’ll simply have to find another way.”
Hae-gang spoke as he set his clothes to rights with practiced ease, as though hiding something. A smile still played at his lips, and the look he turned on Mok-young held a surprising gentleness. But somehow, to Mok-young, Hae-gang’s teasing gaze felt heavy.
The bond between husband and wife. No matter how it had been forged, it was never a thing to take lightly. At least, not until Hae-gang’s life ran its course — there would be no slipping free of it.
“You may yet come to regret having laid me so low today.”
Mok-young gave no answer to Hae-gang’s words. He turned, opened the door, and walked out. Hae-gang made no move to hold him back. No one knew better than he that Mok-young could never truly run away before his own life ended. But then — what was the hurry?
Whoever had said a year or two would see it through — life’s passions never flowed past so easily as that.
***
The day was brilliantly clear. The sky was a piercing blue without a single cloud, and the sunlight poured down whole onto the earth. For those holding their weddings at the wedding grounds, there could be no finer day. In high summer the heat would have been grueling, but for a wedding held amid the cutting cold of midwinter on Bukhansan, a day when only sunlight streamed down, without a flake of snow, was at least one a person could endure.
Moving in perfect unison to the commands of the officer ahead of them, the soldiers’ movements showed how much peacetime …
It showed how well the training was coming along. Among the central army under his direct command — Hae-gang’s too — the 1st Legion of the Black Dragon Army, the foremost fighting force of the entire system, was the finest of all Northern Wei’s armies put together. Built around cavalry yet superb as infantry besides, the 1st Legion’s might was formidable, and the one responsible for that legion was none other than Dan Mok-young. And it was no exaggeration to say that the sight of these gallant soldiers now going through their wedding rites was all Mok-young’s making.
Today too, Mok-young was overseeing the soldiers’ wedding ceremony. Then, lifting his head, he gauged how far the sun had sunk in the sky and reckoned the hour. Just as he judged it was about time to bring the ceremony to a close —
Mok-young’s right eye twitched faintly. In that instant came a sensation like a joint snapping — *crack* — and a wave of dizzying vertigo. Perhaps the sun had been too bright. As the white light blurred and spread past the fortress walls, a voice from beside him jerked him back to his senses.
“Are you all right, General?”
The voice belonged to Baek Dae-ho, the adjutant standing beside Mok-young. Though it lasted only a moment, he had sensed Mok-young’s body sway, and with a soldier’s quickness he had caught the change in his general and asked after him. Mok-young was not a man who ever showed disarray, not even when he stepped forward among the men with no great movement — so Dae-ho’s open worry only grew in private.
“I’m fine.”
Mok-young cut it off with a single word of reply. His voice was so firm that further questions seemed out of the question.
“We’ll bring today’s ceremony to a close here.”
—
Having even issued the order to wrap up the training, Mok-young turned and left the grounds. Behind him, as he headed for his office, Dae-ho bowed his head in salute with a “Yes, sir!”
“According to the report from the southern gate, the bandit band settled at Yoran seems to be growing in size.”
“Even as we’re planning measures to deal with them, far from being brought to heel they’re only swelling their ranks… Shouldn’t we mount a large-scale extermination soon?”
“Their main targets are said to be merchant caravans carrying vulnerable merchants.”
“So they prey on the weak.”
“Honestly, those bandit bastards sniff out the smell of money like ghosts.”
“They didn’t become bandits to chase money in the first place.”
Mok-young’s office. In the center of a space as broad as a great hall stood a long rectangular table, and gathered around it his adjutants were discussing the matters at hand. Now and then they exchanged words comfortably with one another — which only meant they had been working together as one for a good many years.
Every adjutant here, young or old, was someone Mok-young had personally selected. Their ties had begun seven years ago, when Mok-young first came to the Black Dragon Legion as its vice commander. At the time, the commander of the 1st Legion had been Mok-young’s father, General Dan Hu-an. Though the son’s skill was said to be outstanding, there were many within the unit who did not look on him with kindly eyes. Naturally there were those who pulled rank, and in fact many of the officers seated here had been among the worst of the territorial ones.
All of it had been possible because every one of them had yielded to Mok-young and sworn him their loyalty. Seven years ago he had not yet perfected the Hyeoneum Divine Art, yet even then Dan Mok-young had been extraordinary. His skill was, of course, outstanding beyond compare, and as a soldier his conduct was flawless beyond reproach. Dan Hu-an never once shielded his son for being his son — on the contrary, he drove him so hard that onlookers wondered whether it wasn’t too harsh. Perhaps it was because he didn’t yet understand what the legion meant to him, but thanks to that, Mok-young won over not only the hearts of the stubborn old veterans but also the hot-blooded young officers, and three years later he was able to rise to the post of legion commander, no distant seat at all.
Five years ago, he had perfected the strange Hyeoneum Divine Art. Since the art was passed down as the foremost martial tradition of Northern Wei, every warrior looked up to him, and the soldiers of the legion gladly bent the knee before their new commander. Their loyalty might be pledged to the Emperor, but they all swore that their bodies would move at their commander’s word.
Five years on, that bond could only have grown closer. They were on terms to trade jokes even with their revered commander.
“Looks like even our commander fears his new bride. Did you not sleep peacefully last night?” said one of them, a rather elderly veteran, eyeing Mok-young. He’d been watching Mok-young’s state since a while ago, while Mok-young stayed silent throughout. He was taciturn by nature and rarely joined the officers’ idle chatter, but today he was quieter than usual. He seemed unable to focus. Since he was normally a commander without a single gap, the subtle difference was palpable.
“What good would telling you do, General Yi. It hasn’t even been seven full days since the wedding.”
“Then work a little harder for knowing that, General No. Our commander’s homecomings keep getting later and later. How anxious that must make her.”
“Ha — are you blaming me now? Yesterday you sat there listening to this general’s boasting with your own ears .”
“Boasting, the both of you.” Mok-young cut in. “To think you’d be trading idle gossip during duty hours — when did the discipline of our 1st Legion grow so lax?”
“No, it was only for a moment, General.”
“Weren’t you just now speaking down to this general as you pleased? “
“Oh, come now, man. Why so stiff?”
One of them had tossed out a remark — wondering whether their commander, drunk on the sweetness of newlywed life, had grown uncharacteristically careless — but the talk had veered in an odd direction, and now they were trading barbs with the general who was scolding them all for lax discipline. When it came to real work, every one of them was dependable; this was merely a slice of daily life. The sun was beginning to sink and quitting time was drawing near, so a certain looseness was creeping in as well.
“I’ll pair up with the officer on quarters duty and make a round of inspection. “
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