Narrating: The village of Sobaek sat at the edge of the Chunhwa Mountains, small enough to be forgotten by the sects and important enough to be taxed by them. Three hundred and forty people. A blacksmith, two healers, a grain merchant who cheated on his weights, and one very old man who claimed he had once been a Second Rate warrior and would prove it to anyone who bought him wine. The mountains kept the winters brutal. The passes kept the Jianghu close. And that proximity — that slow, grinding closeness to a world that devoured the weak — was the single most defining force in the childhood of Baek Hwang.
Narrating: He was nine years old on the morning that story really began. Skinny, dark-haired, and quiet in the way that made adults either ignore him or feel vaguely uneasy. He was sitting outside the grain merchant's storehouse, eating a cold dumpling, when the riders came.
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Baek Hwang: (thinking) Four horses. Blue and white banner. Iron Willow Sect.
Narrating: He had seen that banner before. The Iron Willow Sect collected "road dues" from Sobaek twice a year. His father always paid. Everyone always paid. He had never thought much about it until his friend Dohwa's father had explained it to him with a kind of exhausted bitterness that still sat in Baek's chest like a splinter.
Dohwa's Father (Memory): You know why we pay, boy? Because the alternative is that they take it anyway, and burn something on the way out just to remind you of your place.
Baek Hwang (Memory): But that's... isn't that wrong?
Dohwa's Father (Memory): (laughing, not kindly) Wrong. Sure. It's wrong. And the Iron Willow Sect is First Rate warriors and we're farmers. So how far does "wrong" get you?
Narrating: The riders dismounted near the village square. Four men in blue and white. The one in the lead was broad-shouldered with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. He looked bored in the way that men with power over others often look bored — a practiced, performative indifference that was really just contempt wearing a calmer mask.
Scarred Rider: Village head. Out here, now.
Narrating: Village Head Choi was a round man in his fifties who had the particular gift of making himself seem even smaller than he was when powerful people were nearby. He scurried out of his home with both hands already pressed together in a bow.
Village Head Choi: Elder Brother from the Iron Willow, welcome, welcome. We weren't expecting the collection until—
Scarred Rider: Rates went up.
Village Head Choi: (faltering) I... forgive me?
Scarred Rider: The mountain passes have been dangerous this season. More bandits. Our sect has been spending resources keeping the roads safe. Those resources cost silver. The rates went up. Double this collection.
Village Head Choi: Elder Brother, please understand, after the harvest tax and last winter's losses, the village simply does not have—
Scarred Rider: (cutting him off, voice flat) Then you have two weeks to get it. We'll be back.
Narrating: He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and remounted his horse like the conversation had already bored him past his limit. The four riders turned and rode back down the mountain road. The entire exchange had taken less than three minutes.
Narrating: Baek Hwang watched the village head stand in the square afterward, alone, staring at the road. The man looked like something had been taken from him that he hadn't even known he could lose. His shoulders were curved inward. His hands hung at his sides.
Baek Hwang: (thinking) He's not angry. He's just... tired.
Narrating: That bothered Baek more than the riders had.
---
Narrating: He found Dohwa by the creek that afternoon, throwing flat stones into the water. Dohwa was a year older than Baek and had the broad face and loud laugh of someone who hadn't yet been worn down enough to stop enjoying things.
Dohwa: Did you see the Iron Willow guys come through?
Baek Hwang: I saw.
Dohwa: My dad looked like he was going to be sick at dinner. My mom was crying after she thought we were asleep. (throws a stone hard) I hate them.
Baek Hwang: Hating them doesn't do anything.
Dohwa: (snorting) So what, you don't hate them?
Baek Hwang: (quiet for a moment) I'm thinking about them.
Dohwa: What's the difference?
Baek Hwang: When you hate something you just want it to stop. When you think about something... you're figuring out what it actually is.
Dohwa: (frowning) You're nine years old, Baek. You don't have to figure out what everything is.
Baek Hwang: (watching the water) What are they, actually? The Iron Willow. Are they evil?
Dohwa: Obviously.
Baek Hwang: The bandits in the eastern pass are evil too, right?
Dohwa: Yes?
Baek Hwang: But the Iron Willow kills those bandits. So they do something useful. They just also take our money by threatening us. So are they evil, or are they just... stronger than us? And doing what stronger people do?
Dohwa: (long pause) That's a horrible thing to say.
Baek Hwang: I didn't say it was fine. I just said I'm trying to understand what it actually is.
Narrating: Dohwa threw another stone. It skipped four times before sinking.
Dohwa: My dad says the Righteous Alliance is supposed to stop this kind of thing. Police the sects. Keep the Jianghu honorable.
Baek Hwang: Does it?
Dohwa: (quietly) ...Not really.
Baek Hwang: Then what's the Righteous Alliance for?
Narrating: Dohwa didn't answer that. Baek didn't push him. He already suspected the answer, anyway. He just didn't have the language for it yet. Give him a few more years. He would.
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Narrating: That night, Baek sat on the roof of his family's home — a habit his mother had long since given up trying to break him of — and looked at the lights of the village below. Someone was playing a string instrument somewhere. The smell of firewood. Normal sounds. Safe sounds, as long as you didn't listen past them.
Baek Hwang: (to himself, very quietly) If the strong just do whatever they want... and the rules only protect the strong... then the rules are just a story the strong tell to make themselves feel righteous.
Narrating: He sat with that thought for a long time. It was not a comfortable thought. He was nine. Part of him wanted to reject it, to find the hole in the logic, to be wrong. But he turned it over and over the way a river turns over a stone — smoothing it, testing it — and it didn't break.
Baek Hwang: (thinking) So if the rules are a story... and power is the only real thing... then what do you do with that?
Narrating: He didn't have an answer yet. He would spend the next decade and a half finding one. And the answer he eventually arrived at would leave rivers red and mountains renamed.
Narrating: But tonight he was just a skinny nine-year-old on a rooftop in a village no one important had ever heard of, and the string instrument was still playing, and it almost sounded like peace.
Narrating: Almost.