His feet were heavy.
It was not because his baggage was heavy.
Even carrying the bundle on his back and the load he had taken from a staggering middle-aged new member, a portion for two men, his legs were fine.
What was heavy was not his feet, but his heart.
Trudge, trudge.
Had it been about a meal's time since they left the gates of the River Capital?
An unpaved road snaked on, and on both sides, tall silver grass swayed in the morning breeze.
The dust rising from the front of the column glittered like gold powder in the morning sunlight.
Seok Gyeong walked, watching the back of a man beyond that dust.
Kim Rae-won.
The Sect Leader of the Hero's Sect.
He had not once looked back.
Yet, the pace was mysteriously being controlled.
If the rear fell behind, it slowed minutely, and when the column closed in, it quickened again.
It was as if he had eyes on the back of his head.
Whether that was martial arts or a sense, Seok Gyeong had no way of knowing.
The procession of several dozen people was crossing the plains.
Twenty new members.
More than half of them were already gasping for breath.
Though it had only been two hours since they set out, two were already panting to an extreme degree, and one was barely moving, holding onto the shoulder of the person next to him.
Seok Gyeong was different.
His breathing was even, and his steps were steady.
He had never formally learned martial arts.
He had only been carrying loads, pulling carts, and digging soil since he was twelve.
There were things his body remembered.
That he could go longer if he shortened his stride.
That his chest would not burn if he breathed in through his nose.
That he should put all his weight on one foot, but relax his ankle.
This was not martial arts.
Just the habit of a survivor.
The wind blew.
The silver grass leaned to one side in unison, making a rustling sound.
That sound felt like the wind rustling through young Seok Ran's hair. …Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
When that name came to mind, a bitter taste rose from the depths of his throat.
Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
It was a small to medium-sized power located on the street called the Western Road, in the west of the River Capital.
The Western Road was a mixture of large and small martial halls, merchant guilds, escort agencies, and brothels.
All of them had impressive signboards, but their insides were mostly shabby.
The signboard was their face, and their face was their survival.
The Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion was one of them.
It presented itself as a martial hall.
The name made it sound like a grand sect where ten thousand nyang of gold was exchanged, but the reality was different.
Its main business was cargo transport, escort services, and… running a gambling den.
The name 'martial hall' was merely a pretense to list its name in the hierarchy of the Western Road.
Sixth in rank.
There were five above it and dozens below.
But that ranking, in reality, held little meaning.
Only one thing had meaning.
The Iron God Gang.
The massive power that dominated the west of the River Capital.
Every martial hall and merchant guild on the Western Road had to pay tribute to the Iron God Gang.
If they were short on silver, they paid with goods.
If they were short on goods, they paid with people.
Seok Gyeong's father was a low-ranking warrior of the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
His skills did not even reach the third-rate.
Still, he was a diligent man.
He swept the training ground at dawn, carried goods during the day, and guarded the gate at night.
He was more like a handyman than a low-ranking member of a martial hall, but his father was not ashamed of it.
"I earn the money for your food. You earn what you need to move forward."
It was something his father often said.
His mother was a servant at the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
She was in charge of laundry and cooking.
She was a small, thin woman, but her hands were large and rough.
The memory of her stroking Seok Gyeong's hair with those hands and smiling was still vivid.
His father collapsed while carrying goods.
It must have been from accumulated fatigue.
His mother did not survive that winter.
It was unclear if it was an illness or if her will had been broken.
It happened when Seok Gyeong was fourteen, and Seok Ran was ten.
Seok Ran.
His sister, four years younger.
Her name contained the character for orchid, Ran.
It was said his mother had given her the name.
She was sometimes teased that her name was too pretty for her family's situation, but Seok Ran liked her name.
The Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion did not kick out the orphaned siblings.
Instead, they put them to work.
Seok Gyeong became a porter, and Seok Ran went to the kitchen.
They had simply inherited the work their father and mother used to do.
He could endure it up to that point.
No. He had to endure it.
When you carry a load, you either endure or collapse.
There was no third option for a porter.
The Jianghu was said to be such a place.
It was not a place where sympathy was given to a child who had lost their parents.
If you could earn your keep, you could live; if not, you had to leave.
And.
At that time, in the River Capital, it was impossible for orphans to survive without at least the shelter of a place like the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
Seok Gyeong worked hard enough for his sister's share as well.
Two years passed like that.
The year Seok Ran turned twelve.
The season of tribute returned.
They were short even after offering up all their silver and goods.
"We'll have to send a person."
That one sentence from the Pavilion Master split Seok Gyeong's life in two.
A 'person' that the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion could offer as tribute to the Iron God Gang meant a young girl or someone with a body suitable for use as a servant.
It was Seok Ran.
She was young, accustomed to kitchen work, and above all, had no parents.
Seok Gyeong begged the Pavilion Master.
He knelt and struck his forehead on the floor until it bled.
The reply that came back was a single sentence.
"Do you wish to add your own life to the tribute?"
"It's okay, brother. They said it's just kitchen work."
Seok Ran's last words.
It was not okay.
Seok Gyeong knew that people sent to the Iron God Gang for kitchen work rarely ended up working in the kitchen.
But he could do nothing.
Seok Ran was dragged away.
She did not look back.
A month later, news arrived.
She had died.
Her body was not returned.
What kind of death it was that not even a body was returned.
Seok Gyeong did not imagine it.
It was not that he could not imagine it, but that he chose not to.
From that day on, something inside Seok Gyeong died.
Not anger, not sadness, but something deeper.
An arrow aimed at himself became lodged within him and could not be pulled out.
He did nothing.
When his sister was being dragged away.
Nothing.
The wind blew.
Seok Gyeong raised his head and looked up.
The sky is so high it feels like it might pour down.
A blue sky without a single cloud.
Beneath it, about thirty people were marching, kicking up dust.
The scent of dry grass and earth mixed on the breeze and brushed past his nose.
The Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion suddenly crumbled into disarray.
It happened on the night the man with the seemingly strongest back in the world unified the River Capital.
The night everyone in the River Capital called the 'Night of the Long Sword.'
— Are you going to kill us all, too?
— Have you done something bad enough to deserve death?
— N-no. I… I haven't done anything to deserve death.
— Then what are you afraid of? I do not kill those whose lives have value.
Perhaps the conversation that person had with someone from the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion at that time was what led him here.
After that day, he simply passed the time before leaving the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
He had come out after seeing the notice for the Hero's Sect's interview.
He did not say anything to the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
Who would care if one porter was gone?
It had already become a pathetic group just living because they couldn't die.
He wondered if he was much different, but at least this body of his remained strong.
The reason he had not left was not that he had something to hold onto.
It was that he had forgotten how to take a step.
In fact, at that time, he had not expected to be able to join the Hero's Sect at all.
The events of the interview naturally came to mind.
He was the two hundred and fifteenth, the very last in line.
He waited for a long time.
Hundreds had gone before him, and most left the training ground with their heads bowed.
By the time it was Seok Gyeong's turn, the sun had already set.
Only Sect Leader Kim Rae-won remained in front of him.
His face was expressionless.
It was not so much cold as it was empty.
Eyes devoid of emotion.
Like a well full of water, deep, but with nothing reflected on its surface.
But the moment those empty eyes looked at him, an unknown weight settled upon his entire body.
It was not hard to breathe, but his back strangely straightened.
"What is righteousness?"
The moment he received that question, something… he found himself ridiculous.
What was he, a porter who couldn't even be called the son of a third-rate martial artist, doing here?
So he thought for a long time.
In the end, the only answer he could come up with was…
"I do not know what righteousness is."
Seok Gyeong bowed his head.
"However."
He clenched his teeth.
"However, I do know that doing nothing when my sister was dragged away to the Iron God Gang was not righteousness."
A silence fell.
But it was not very long.
"That sister is?"
"Dead."
Another short silence.
"Your name."
"It is Seok Gyeong."
"No, your sister's name."
Seok Gyeong, slightly puzzled, looked straight at Kim Rae-won.
But his eyes were still like a deep, deep abyss, impossible to read.
"It is Seok… Ran."
His voice trembled slightly.
The Sect Leader nodded after a beat.
"I will remember it."
That was all.
But that one phrase changed something.
An unknowable ripple was spreading in Seok Gyeong's heart.
What meaning it held, what kind of seed it was, Seok Gyeong still could not explain.
Just one thing.
That name, his sister's, for whom no body had returned, and no grave existed, a name no one at the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion ever uttered.
He said he would remember it.
The man who had turned the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion that abandoned Seok Ran into an empty shell.
The man who had erased the Iron God Gang that swallowed Seok Ran from this world.
It was certain that he had shattered a stone-like gate that had been closed for five years.
Around the time it passed noon, the Sect Leader stopped for the first time.
"Rest."
At that single word, the column sat down in unison.
At the rear of the column, there were two people who were particularly at ease.
A woman with a sword on her back and a man holding a fan.
They were said to be Trigram Masters of the Formation Tower.
Since they were called Formation experts, it was ambiguous how to describe them, but they were surely masters who had reached a level unimaginable for an ignorant person like himself.
The woman leaned against a tree, her expression unchanging as she looked ahead, while the man slowly fanned himself, his eyes scanning the column.
Despite having walked at a near-running pace for half a day, not a single speck of dust was on his clothes.
Why such people were in a place like the River Capital, and in the Hero's Sect no less, was something Seok Gyeong could not understand.
But that fact alone allowed him to guess that the Sect Leader of this Hero's Sect was no ordinary person.
Seok Gyeong sat on the grass, drinking water and watching the Sect Leader at the front.
Just then, a commotion arose at the front.
One of the members had collapsed.
The moment Seok Gyeong was about to move, the child called the Instructor was already running.
He grabbed the fallen member's arm, helped him up, and handed him water.
He said something.
It was too far to hear, but the fallen member nodded and began to walk again.
It was fast.
It was over before Seok Gyeong could even move.
He was called the Instructor.
A child who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen at most.
When he first heard it, he did not think much of it.
A Murim sect was not a place where hierarchy was decided by age, but he had heard that the Hero's Sect was a completely new sect.
He had heard that when Sect Leader Kim Rae-won took down the Iron God Gang, he had done it alone and established the sect alone.
That meant the child must have joined after that, so his martial arts skills must be shallow… But.
Watching him now, he could not help but admit his judgment was wrong.
That child was the first to spot anyone falling behind.
The fact that the children were divided into front and rear groups, with the front group responding to the Sect Leader's pace and the rear group catching those who fell behind, had all been calculated before they even set out.
It was not the perspective of a porter.
It must be something like the perspective of a commander.
The rest lasted for less than a meal's time.
The child called the Instructor personally went around, checking each person's feet and legs.
Then he went to a woman with a lean build and reported something in a low voice.
The woman standing right next to the Sect Leader.
She was the one carrying the register.
The woman nodded, gave the Instructor some instructions, and the Instructor returned to the column and rearranged the children's positions.
He moved two children from the front group to the rear and brought one child with better stamina from the rear to the front.
Seok Gyeong just drank his water and watched.
That woman seemed to be the Sect Leader's subordinate.
But not a simple subordinate.
Seeing her give instructions to the Instructor, it seemed she was in charge of the actual management.
The Sect Leader set the direction, the woman handled the details.
The Instructor moved the field.
The three people were holding this column together from different levels.
It was a structure he had never seen at the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion.
The Pavilion Master of the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion only gave orders.
The details were handled by the Pavilion Master, and the field was also handled by the Pavilion Master.
The rest just moved as they were told.
That was why when the Pavilion Master collapsed, everything fell apart.
Since there was no one to share the load, one person carried everything, and when that one person fell, the load and all spilled onto the ground.
It was different here.
It was more than just their actions being different; even though they must have joined after the Hero's Sect was established… they 'had' martial arts.
That woman and the children were strong.
He, a low-level practitioner, could not guess how strong, but the demeanor of the masters was clearly visible.
He did not know if that was possible in such a short period.
At the Ten Thousand Gold Pavilion, no one had properly taught him martial arts.
"Let's go."
The Sect Leader stood up.
One word.
That was it.
At that one word, everyone was seen getting up at once.
Even those who had collapsed gritted their teeth and forced themselves up.
No one said, 'Let's rest a bit more.'
That was strange.
Seok Gyeong also hoisted the baggage onto his back.
A portion for two men.
The walking began.
And.
It had changed.