TSBIRBV Ch 53

Chapter 53 The Beast-Faced Tiger (3)

At the mischievous whisper, Samrang asked back.

“You say you know him…?”

“He was one of the Five Great Houses’ prodigies in the same era as Senior Brother.”

Samrang blinked. It was true Je Haryang and Peng Munhyeong were contemporaries, yet hearing it from Yegyeol’s own mouth made something feel off-kilter.

“Come to think of it, Young Master Mun ought to be about Peng Munhyeong’s age…”

It struck her anew that Mun’s time had stopped.

“The Peng Munhyeong I knew was the ‘Hebei Fist-Tiger.’ How on earth did he become the ‘Beast-Faced Tiger’?”

“You said you’ve seen the world again after twenty years, didn’t you? Then you won’t know what the Tiger-Freak is like now.”

“If you don’t mind, a hint or two.”

At Yegyeol’s request, Samrang began.

“‘Tiger-Freak’—or ‘Freak-Knight’ Peng Munhyeong—is a polite way of saying the ‘Mad White Tiger of the Hebei Peng Clan.’ Those from the unorthodox who’ve suffered at his hands call him outright the ‘Rabid Tiger.’”

“Rabid Tiger.” Yegyeol’s eyes rounded.

“How did he earn that?”

Too unorthodox a title for a scion of the orthodox, let alone of the Five Great Houses. In modern terms, it was like a magical-girl heroine being nicknamed ‘Lord Darkness of the Void.’

“While roaming the Central Plains, whenever he spotted evil he wouldn’t stop until the root was torn out. He once tracked a thug who robbed a child’s panhandling money all the way up the chain to the unorthodox crew behind him and smashed the lot. For that, he was hunted by the Unorthodox Alliance—fought until both arms were broken. Even then, they say, he bit with his teeth and kicked with his feet, intent on taking one more down—until the unorthodox themselves fled.”

“So that’s how he got ‘Rabid Tiger.’” Yegyeol nodded.

“No. Strictly speaking, he earned it when he stripped a corrupt magistrate—who’d taken bribes from a Green Forest chief to overlook bandit crimes—then hung him naked from the city wall. As you know, the martial world and officialdom adhere to a strict noninterference. He crossed that line.”

“How is he even alive?”

The noninterference pact between government and Jianghu was an ancient, unwritten law.

“They say the current Peng clan head—Peng Munhyeong’s younger brother—ran himself ragged to contain it. Years ago, Munhyeong turned in salt smugglers; because of that precedent it never escalated to a full wanted posting.”

Samrang shook her head.

“Salt smuggling? What was that about?”

“There are many such stories—but another time. One day won’t be enough to tell all of Peng Munhyeong.”

“Tch. He’s waiting outside; no helping it.”

“In brief: because of the hair—half white, half black—he’s easy to spot, so anyone with a guilty conscience avoids him. No one knows why it turned that way, and he won’t say. Some claim he botched a potent elixir; others say he practiced a secret manual backward.”

“What a storied life. Back then he was just a hearty, boisterous prodigy from Hebei—never heard he walked chivalry this fiercely.”

More drink than deeds, typical of Hebei Peng—so the joke went. Supposedly he once won a sobriquet over a drinking bet.

“Something must have changed his heart.”

“Twenty years… is a very long time.”

Yegyeol murmured, then realized with genuine respect that Samrang still kept the inner-force sound barrier raised. It drained profound energy, yet she held it like it was nothing.

He set Baembeam on the table from his sleeve.

“Rest a bit.”

He rubbed the little serpent’s brow—perhaps it was just a feeling, but today the scales felt slightly uneven.

He withdrew his hand; Baembeam yawned, tiny mouth stretching wide, unbearably cute.

“Sleepy, hmm.”

“Overworked from making lightning-struck wood?” Samrang asked.

“Mmm.”

Strictly speaking, the opposite. Baembeam had gorged on all the charge Yegyeol discharged—overfull, not exhausted. He decided to keep that to himself.

“Grow strong.”

He draped a strip of cloth over Baembeam; the golden snake coiled into a neat circle. Pleased, Yegyeol urged,

“Come on. Senior Peng is waiting.”

With a soft sigh, Samrang dispelled the barrier.

Downstairs, Peng Munhyeong had already started the drinking.

“Pour me one too,” Yegyeol said, cheerfully sliding into the seat opposite, proffering a cup. Peng, chugging straight from the jug, waved at the waiter.

“Bring a fresh bottle!”

“What kind?”

With the hawk’s eye of a professional, the waiter recognized a live-wire drinker; his eyes lit.

“Anything good!”

Wiping foam from his beard, Peng stared at Yegyeol with reddened eyes.

“There’s something on my mind.”

After a breath’s pause, he asked,

“May I ask… who gave you your name?”

“I was told I was named after a knight-errant who once saved our village.”

“A knight-errant.”

“Yes. Our village is remote, even for Qinghai—no hope for government aid. An unorthodox fighter invaded, exploiting the people each day. He was said to be a man who lost a life-and-death duel to a demon, and fled to survive—then hid in our village to heal.”

Yegyeol plucked one of Je Haryang’s many deeds. The “One-Slash Soul-Chaser at Talbi Ridge” incident.

“One-Slash Soul-Chaser at Talbi Ridge,” Peng echoed softly—he knew it.

“They said he took the newborns as hostages—including me—to control the villagers. Then a hero named Je Haryang saved us. My parents dared give me his name.”

“Ah… so it was,” Peng murmured, eyes misting—more than even Yegyeol had hoped.

“So your parents sent you to Kunlun for that reason?”

“Of a sort,” Yegyeol nodded gently. “Thought it a kind of bond.”

“Heh. Same name, but you’re small—very small. That fellow was… big,” Peng’s booming voice drifted down to a hush, like talking to himself. Yegyeol widened his eyes innocently.

“That fellow… you mean…?”

“Yes. Likely what you think. He was a good one.” Peng clicked his tongue, took the bottle the waiter returned with, and poured until Yegyeol’s cup overflowed.

“Je Haryang—the Kunlun Cloud-Dragon—was a man who forged the heart of chivalry into flesh.”

Yegyeol only wet his lips, smiling faintly.

“That’s it.”

At last—a contemporary who knew Senior Brother. The air in his chest cleared.

Shouting from a mountaintop that “Senior Brother is the greatest!” brought back only echoes. Here, someone sat who knew how great he had been.

He had planned to coax details from Peng. This was a windfall beyond hope.

“I was a child, so I don’t remember receiving help—but if the Beast-Faced Tiger praises him so, he must truly have been extraordinary.”

He had meant to humor any nonsense with polite warmth—but now he found himself agreeing from the heart.

“Of course! Not of the Five Great Houses, but the greatest prodigy of the Nine Great Sects in his day. Never passed by a child or a woman; risked his life to save even an old man with days left.”

“My goodness—such a man indeed?”

Say more. Tell everything.

Yegyeol lifted his cup to hide the smile tugging his lips.

“When folk said ‘Kunlun’s young dragon,’ they thought of my Brother. He carried our sect’s name across not just Qinghai, but the entire Central Plains.”

Praise for Senior Brother—nothing sweeter. He drank greedily; somehow, tonight the wine tasted particularly sweet.

“Come to think, Lady Huangbo trailed after him often…”

Yegyeol froze. In those days, a certain prodigy often crossed paths with Je Haryang—a brilliant fighter from the Huangbo Clan, one of the ‘Three Dragons, Three Tigers, Four Phoenixes.’ The name escaped him, but her epithet had been “Plum Blossom Peak.” She often accompanied his chivalry; once, it was said, she even saved his life from a grave wound.

“‘A fair lady is the good match of a gentleman’—” 窈窕淑女 君子好逑 (Yǎotiǎo shūnǚ, jūnzǐ hàoqiú) — people used to say Je Haryang had given her his heart. Some claimed, had he not been a Kunlun Daoist, he would have married her.

“I completely forgot…!”

He had been too reassured that Senior Brother had no wife now.

Yegyeol squeezed his eyes shut and prayed:

“O Heaven and Earth spirits, please grant Lady Plum Peak a rabbit-cute husband, a fox-alluring lover, and a deer-pure suitor.”

Since Senior Brother was rabbit-cute, fox-alluring, and deer-pure himself, that meant at least three men elsewhere.

“When I was that age, my only ambition was to roam the plains and taste every wine…” Peng said wistfully, then dropped a bomb.

“But my Brother—he died. Heh… he died.”

Footnotes:

1. “A fair lady is the good match of a gentleman” — line from the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), Guofeng: Zhou Nan, “Guan Ju,” commonly quoted to signify an ideal pairing.