TSBIRBV Ch 104

Chapter 104 Heaven above, Suzhou–Hangzhou below (16)

“Why did you…?”

Ripples spread in Haryang’s voice.

“Why wonder about something like that? You already know the outcome.”

Haryang was right. Yegyeol already knew the answer; had he not seen him active as a chivalrous swordsman?

“I couldn’t ask then.”

But back then—the child Yegyeol, upon reaching Kunlun, had learned how one fretted; he had learned that when injured young, an arm might set crooked forever.

If the arm of Haryang, who would one day be a swordmaster, had been ruined by that incident—what then? The boy, who had fretted and fretted, would have wanted to know.

“Whether it hurt a lot, whether it’s all right now. I crossed the Central Plains for that silly reason.”

Yegyeol gave a bitter smile.

“Pretty foolish, no?”

“Impossible…”

Haryang’s face crumpled wretchedly; a gale rose within him.

“Impossible for you.”

He rolled up his sleeve and showed his arm. Smooth, unscarred—hardly what one thought a martial man’s arms should look like.

“See? Perfectly fine.”

Yegyeol’s hands stroked over them.

“…Truly.”

To say there was no self‑interest would be a lie. Yet even in doing something so meaningless as checking a wound that would have fully healed after decades, his heart thudded strangely.

“I left you without a word then because of the assassins.”

Softly, Haryang began.

“You must have thought me a young master from a fine house, but the truth of my birth was hardly proper.”

As he began, readily, to bare the past, Yegyeol pressed his lips together.

No one knew Kunlun’s Cloud‑Dragon Je Haryang’s past. Even Yegyeol only guessed, vaguely, from their meeting in Hangzhou.

“My mother, who was to be wed into a great clan, already had a beloved; they tried to flee before the marriage, but were caught. Her clan covered it up and proceeded with the wedding as planned—but by then I had been conceived.”

Recounting what could only be called a family disgrace, Haryang’s face remained even—

As if it were truly all long past.

“Fortunately, the man who took my mother as wife was good. He learned she had once had a beloved, that she had been caught after trying to flee; he supported her in bearing me. After I was born he spared no expense to help raise and educate me, and so…”

Haryang smiled awkwardly.

“Until my head had thickened a little, I grew believing the clan head was my father. But before long a younger sister was born; she took the clan head’s surname, while I was called only by my given name. Later I learned he had tried to register me as his son, but the elders opposed it strongly. Even so, he did not give up.”

He lowered his eyes.

“And so, from childhood, assassins paid visits. My mother’s clan wanted to erase a stigma; the clan where I had been born and raised could not break the clan head’s stubbornness, yet would not register a child with no drop of their blood as a legitimate son. Even without succession rights, to bear the name alone meant sharing in the clan’s vast wealth and power…”

No. However that may be—how could they send assassins after a child?

Yegyeol felt his head boil.

“What greed could senior brother have had for that…”

“I grew weary of all that surrounded me and decided to give up everything. I asked to go to Hangzhou, once, for the last time, and…”

Haryang lowered his eyes.

“In my selfishness, I dragged you into it.”

“Selfishness? I recall nothing but receiving help from senior brother.”

Frowning, Yegyeol retorted. Had it not been for Haryang, he would have frozen to death in high summer.

“…You met assassins.”

“So that’s why you left Hangzhou.”

“You nearly died. If I had been even a little late, so it would have been. The nurse did not return, and when I went to look for her—she was already a corpse. In a flash I remembered how I had insisted on giving you the finest room.”

After a pause, Haryang whispered,

“They must have come for you.”

That constricting chill in his chest—he still remembered it. That tooth‑gnashing helpless boy had cursed himself, thinking their claws would rake only him.

“The nurse was the type to say things that would make them mistake you for me. So I ran straight to the guards the clan head had attached for protection.”

“Then senior brother didn’t face the assassins.”

Thinking that, at least, a small mercy, Yegyeol was about to relax—then froze.

“Hold on—then how did your arm get hurt…?”

“I cut it myself.”

Haryang averted his eyes, unable, it seemed, to look him in the face.

“I was in no position to command those guards. So I lied—that I had been wounded by assassins, and that while I, with a child in my care, bought time, the child escaped.”

Yegyeol’s hand gripped his arm of itself.

So—that wound had been self‑inflicted? To move the guards?

“Had I not done so, they wouldn’t have moved in time… and there was no time to argue.”

Yegyeol could not keep his expression from twisting harshly.

Guards who moved only when Haryang was harmed? Wasn’t that like protecting a treasure, not a person?

“So… you had no reason to worry, from the start. I did not save your life. Rather—I am only a man who dragged others into my misfortune.”

Having finished, Haryang bowed his eyes like a sinner awaiting judgment.

Yegyeol noted that, in his tale, Haryang had deliberately omitted his biological parents.

“Senior brother’s birth father?”

“…Beaten to death before my mother’s eyes.”

“Then your mother…?”

“She still lives.”

Dizziness.

Yegyeol lay his head on Haryang’s knee. Looking down at his ailing disciple, Haryang’s face was oddly unfeeling—like a man telling someone else’s story.

“And pretending not to know me at Kunlun?”

“At the time, I was under watch. There were those keeping an eye, to see if I would return to the clan. If it became known that I had attachment to you, I thought it would be used as a weakness next.”

“What kind of clan is this…”

Yegyeol was about to demand answers—then clamped his mouth shut.

Kunlun was small in influence among the Nine Great Sects, but still a pillar of the orthodox way. If eyes had been set even there, then at least a Great House of the Five Regions, surely.

To young Yegyeol, Haryang had been a young lord of means, a great figure; yet he himself had not even been free to command his own guards.

To think that Haryang, who had cast aside even the shell of rights and entered Kunlun alone, had struggled to keep watch not only over himself but over Yegyeol—it was bitter.

“Without knowing any of that.”

A terrible bitterness filled his mouth.

“When I turned up at Kunlun, it must have been very awkward for you.”

“More than that.”

Haryang knit his brows in discomfiture.

“Even as I thought this must not be, I was glad. I hadn’t thought I’d see you again.”

A faint smile hovered at his lips—then vanished like a mirage.

Yegyeol nearly clutched the thigh he was using as a pillow.

“While I kept my distance, fearing you’d be dragged into my troubles again—how selfish, no?”

“What of it.”

Cutting off his self‑mockery, Yegyeol said,

“Though it comes over twenty years late, it’s still good to know senior brother’s true heart.”

As his head was stroked, whisper‑soft, he closed his eyes in contentment.

“Then… since we have each saved the other once, we can call it even.”

With that, he meant to cancel the life‑debt Haryang felt toward him, making it the foundation for moving their bond forward.

A Great Wall now stood between him and the Black Ghost; it was time to move the relationship with Je Haryang to the next stage.

“That’s a problem.”

Eyes flying open, he saw Haryang wrinkle his nose slightly.

“Why?”

With a troubled face, Haryang smiled.

“Then the account wouldn’t balance.”

Wouldn’t balance?

He didn’t understand.

“Aren’t you taking too lightly the fact that senior brother saved a beggar boy lying in Hangzhou’s streets?”

And now, he was a guide‑dependent esper relying one‑sidedly on Haryang for survival.

“No. In truth, we met even earlier than that.”

“…What?”

A tremor ran at the corner of Yegyeol’s eyes. Haryang kindly explained,

“What you did was save me—not once.”

“I’ve never left Hangzhou in my life.”

“We did meet in Hangzhou.”

An answer vague to a fault.

Sitting bolt upright, Yegyeol ransacked his past—then clawed at his hair.

“I don’t remember.”

As it was, the unhappy childhood before he met senior brother was hazy; then he died and was reborn and lived twenty years more. No matter how he tried, not recalling was natural.

“It was searing for me—perhaps not for you.”

Calmly, Haryang took his disciple’s wrist and drew it down.

He had only worried his hair a little; yet even that the senior brother would not permit, and Yegyeol yielded his hand meekly, stammering,

“No—truly, you don’t know how it is. Of all things to forget, how could I forget you?”

Unusually forthright for one who usually hid his heart, it was still how flustered he was.

“Think carefully.”

Seating the disciple on his thigh, Haryang drew him in from behind and whispered,

“If you can recall that day yourself, it would be a great gift to me.”