TSBIRBV Ch 54

Chapter 54 The Beast-Faced Tiger (4)

It was impossible to tell whether it was a sob, drunken rambling, or hollow laughter.

“Pardon?”

Yegyeol barely kept his head from snapping toward Samrang as he asked again.

“What do you mean—died?”

Senior Brother is alive and well, he thought. With no time even to rub his stiff neck, he stared at the Beast-Faced Tiger in taut silence.

It wasn’t Je Haryang who had died back then—it was this side. And unless resurrection had become the new fashion in Jianghu, how could Je Haryang still live?

“There was a calamity. A truly dreadful one.”

Whether anyone else sobered at his words or not, the Tiger-Freak pressed on, drunk and relentless.

“Do you mean the Kunlun Massacre?”

Anxious, Yegyeol asked bluntly.

“You look young, but it seems you know of those days.”

Even drunk, his gaze was sharp as it raked Yegyeol’s face. Having spoken more boldly than intended, Yegyeol let a rueful smile serve as his patch.

“I’m a trader out of Qinghai. A Kunlun knight-errant saved our village—it’s only natural people there worried for him after the Kunlun Massacre.”

The chivalrous past of Senior Brother made a perfect excuse anywhere.

“Ah. Yes, yes… That’s right.”

Peng Munhyeong nodded slowly.

“As you guessed, he fell during the Kunlun Massacre. The Demonic Sect rose, and Kunlun clipped their heels. But the orthodox wanted to postpone an all-out war at any cost—so they turned their backs on Kunlun.”

“A dangerous thing to say.”

Yegyeol lowered his eyelids and whispered. The Tiger-Freak chuckled.

“Dangerous indeed. That’s why they call me ‘Rabid Tiger,’ isn’t it? No one heeds the raving of a madman.”

So he knew the name they gave him.

Was all that reckless rampaging Samrang had recounted actually calculated? He didn’t seem a crafty sort, but his depths might be surprising—or perhaps that clever younger brother of his did the thinking.

“Abandoned by the orthodox, Kunlun stood alone to the end. The ‘Kunlun Cloud-Dragon,’ master of the Yongbong Gathering, led at the front.”

Up to this point, what he said matched what Yegyeol knew.

“Thanks to him, the Kunlun sect leader survived and claimed afterward that his disciple yet lived. He begged the Martial Alliance repeatedly to send men to rescue the Cloud-Dragon, kidnapped by the Demonic Sect.”

“Such… secret history.”

Stunned, Yegyeol murmured. If true, how had the Demonic Sect treated the young hero—heart and new pillar of Kunlun?

No. He yanked his thoughts back from the brink.

Senior Brother is alive. And even if…

But is mere survival truly life? His hand clenched into a fist beneath the table.

“In his twilight years, the Kunlun leader finally admitted the disciple was dead. No matter how strong a warrior, at that age—when the sect he bore collapsed and his dearest disciple was lost—he would want to deny reality.”

Kunlun’s current leader, Baekun Zhenren, was Baekyang Zhenren’s senior martial brother. He had recognized Je Haryang’s talent despite his relatively late entry and treasured him as a disciple. As Yegyeol recalled, he was a man of lofty virtue—warrior and Daoist both, widely respected.

Then… did Baekun Zhenren knowingly declare him dead? Why?

Baekyang had said Je Haryang was expelled. But this outsider, Peng Munhyeong, said he was dead.

There was only one reason to let the world believe that a talent who could have set Kunlun’s future on a rock had died.

He had become the sect’s shame.

How could the man once venerated by all Kunlun fall to someone all must hide?

The Demonic Sect.

The trail led again to the Hundred-Thousand Grand Mountains of Xinjiang.

Dizziness threatened as Yegyeol gripped his cup too tight. Should he, back then, have done more than throw himself to save Senior Brother—should he have slit that demon’s throat?

Even so, it would not change Je Haryang’s past. It was only his own selfish wish for retroactive satisfaction.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Peng said softly. “The Kunlun Cloud-Dragon was a truly good man. As a boy, I picked fights—dreaming of beating the greatest prodigy even just once. He made me ashamed of that. Had I had the chance, I would have spoken more, learned more—but before I could, the man I most respected died.”

Now Yegyeol could no longer be sure his face was steady. He only prayed the mask he had honed would hold.

Since rebirth, all who met him felt something uncanny. The endings were always the same: rejection, or retreat.

To avoid being cast away, he had to deceive those around him—and to do that, he had to deceive even himself.

“The Kunlun Cloud-Dragon,” he said, evenly. “He must have been a great knight-errant.”

As always, he whispered to himself:

You were born in a village saved by the Cloud-Dragon’s hand, raised on the tales of Je Haryang the hero.

Slowly, he blinked and called up the countless lines of wuxia he had devoured in his first life—born into Jianghu, trained in arts, rose high, suffered betrayal and defeat, then at last overcame, took revenge, won love, and found happiness.

All those false stories in which Je Haryang alone was never the protagonist.

“Yes. He was,” Peng murmured.

A dream-bright light warmed his face; there was not a trace of falsehood in it.

“A great knight-errant—and more than that, a good man. Such people all leave early. He should have lived longer.”

To see a stalwart middle-aged warrior’s eyes redden made Yegyeol’s heart roil.

“He was the kind of talent who could have breathed new winds into a long-stagnant Jianghu—and yet he left so soon. Heaven is heartless.”

Peng drained his jug and tossed it aside. The waiter scowled; Yegyeol set a silver ingot on the table. Enough to make even a crawling cur seem a cute pup.

Startled, the waiter slipped to the kitchen and returned with fresh dishes and another full jar, presenting them to Peng.

The arrival of new wine after the last was emptied seemed not to surprise him; he simply lifted it to his lips again.

“You too, Senior Peng, are a fine knight-errant,” Yegyeol said.

“I only chase another’s shadow,” Peng replied—too bitter for mere modesty.

Yegyeol slid him a plate heavy with meat.

“Please eat. Even the greatest warrior will come to harm if he drinks on an empty stomach.”

Anyone who praised Senior Brother would find their table piled high with meat.

“Ha. Never thought I’d be fed by a young master young enough to be my son.”

“Think of it as payment for your stories. You’ve told secrets no one else in the Central Plains would share today.”

“Did I?”

Peng frowned at his cup, pained.

“That’s the trouble with drink—it makes men sentimental.”

He glanced at Yegyeol and asked,

“Is it that your village was too remote to hear of his death?”

“Jianghu has knights like grains of sand in the Yangtze,” Yegyeol said. “Our elders likely thought his name may not spread so far.”

He narrowed his brow, murmuring as if to himself:

“Or perhaps, spooked by news of the Kunlun Massacre, they chose not to know.”

A bitter silence followed.

“Still—there is a place that remembers a hero whom the Central Plains forgot. That gladdens me,” Peng said.

“How could a person easily forget a kindness?”

That would be the way of beasts.

“Jianghu forgot Kunlun’s sacrifice,” he said quietly. “Forgot the lives that fell there.”

“…”

Yegyeol held his tongue.

Sacrifice.

He had never expected his own death to bear any great weight in martial history. He only wanted Je Haryang to survive—to shine in times to come.

But the man’s name had been buried under Kunlun’s eternal snows, never to rise.

An unnameable feeling surged and ebbed, again and again.

“That is why I’m glad of you,” Peng said. “It’s hard to find anyone, anywhere, with whom to speak of this.”

So his tongue was not simply loose; he felt a comradeship like Yegyeol’s own.

“Are there none who remember Senior Brother? Did you not say he was active in your era?”

Yegyeol thought of the many who had adored Je Haryang. He was not just Kunlun’s idol; as many envied him as admired him.

“They avoid mentioning it because it hurts—or call it bygone—and some grow angry,” Peng said, desolate. “As children they knew no better, but now they know the orthodox turned away, and feel the shame.”

“Aye,” he said. “Shame indeed.”