The Sect Leader's Heavy Ink Scent

The ink scent in the sect leader's chamber was thicker and heavier than usual. The lamp flame guttered dangerously, its wick pulled taut. Jin Mugyeol sat leaning against the wall, the head seat left empty, his sleeves drawn tight. When Cha Yeonho opened the door and stepped in, Jin Mugyeol did not lift his eyes to meet his disciple's. Instead he pointed a finger at the thick envelope resting on the desk.

"Sit. Disciplinary Scribe."

Cha Yeonho bent his knees and knelt. The moment he sat, the ligament in his left wrist pulled taut. Ever since he had forced the Reversal Stone's power through his body at yesterday's settlement ceremony, a twisting pain had climbed up the nerves from the joints inside his wrist. He hid his left hand in his sleeve and calmly opened the envelope. Inside was a list of some twenty disciples, written on thin silk.

"What is this."

"These are the children who will carry Hoeryumun forward. Yeonho, if you push through a public accusation within the audit deadline, the Lineage Registry will recall Hoeryumun's seal immediately. The travel rights, the food procurement rights, the qualification to recruit new disciples, all of it will vanish. The sect will have to close its doors within three days."

Jin Mugyeol did not lift his teacup. His fingertips traced lines over the table instead, trembling faintly.

"A public correction is just. But that justice comes at the cost of breaking these children's rice bowls. Let's quietly replace the ledgers, have the elders responsible step down, and settle it by paying for their treatment. To the outside world, we simply say it was a minor administrative error inside the sect. If you, as Disciplinary Scribe, take on that burden, I will gladly hand over my seal."

Cha Yeonho slowly ran his eyes down the names on the silk. Most of them meant nothing to him, but the two small dots stamped beside each name matched a mark he remembered. It was the notation for severity of harm. Under the pretext of protecting these children, his master was trying to erase the record and bury the whole matter.

"Master, if the pain these children suffered isn't put on record, it will happen again without question. Unless we make clear who pushed the backlash onto them, and who claimed teaching rights as the price for it, every child on this list will only become a second An Sobin. What frightens me isn't their safety right now. It's the pain waiting for them next."

"Can you bear it. Watching the sect cast out, watching the teaching rights in your own hands dissolve into nothing, and still you'd save them? That isn't justice, that's arrogance. If this sense of justice you carry drives those children out into the streets to starve, then tell me, whose sake would that choice really serve."

Jin Mugyeol's voice was low and dry. Instead of his teacup, he drew out his own seal and set it down beside the list.

"Hold your tongue, and these children stay. Take the honor for yourself, and I'll protect their lives. This is the last consideration, the last offer, I can give you as your master and as sect leader. Choose. Will you gather up the shattered pieces of this sect, or will you bleed on their edges."

Cha Yeonho clenched his left hand. Feeling drained from his fingers as if they had gone numb. Instead of answering, he slid the list back into the envelope. The envelope's rough texture scraped against his fingertips.

The clinic room was cool. Baek Miryeong had spread out fragments of the ledger, matching figures with the tip of her brush. When Cha Yeonho came in, she set the brush down without even lifting her head.

"I added up the backlash readings left at every acupoint. The consumption listed in the treatment records doesn't match the actual backlash figures at all."

"How much of a difference."

"Sixteen times over. This isn't a simple mistake, it's organized falsification. There's clear evidence that backlash was deliberately funneled into specific disciples' bodies, just to scrape the ledger clean and write in different numbers. These figures, they're numbers that ate away at someone's life."

Baek Miryeong grabbed Cha Yeonho's left hand and forced it open. His wrist joint creaked and screamed in protest. She set the bone and wound the bandage, speaking coldly as she worked.

"Is this justice, or is it just recklessness. The master proposed a quiet correction, didn't he? Swap the ledgers and let it pass in silence. What did he tell you? Did he say the children live if you keep your mouth shut?"

"How did you know?"

"Because the sect leader called for me. As a physician, I was offered ample funding for materials, in exchange for silence. The patients can only be treated if the sect keeps standing. Medically speaking, that's the rational choice. Between easing a patient's pain and leaving them with nowhere to go, even I couldn't help but choose the former. This is the reality of Hoeryumun."

Baek Miryeong tied off the end of the bandage and looked straight at Cha Yeonho. There wasn't a trace of sympathy in her eyes.

"But the choice is yours to make. If keeping a patient alive is a physician's responsibility, then cutting out the sect's sickness is the Disciplinary Scribe's. Decide now, what will you give up and what will you save. I fixed your hand so you could go make that choice, not so you could sit around drinking tea with your master. This time don't decide alone. Go ask them yourself."

Cha Yeonho endured the pain throbbing beneath the bandage and got to his feet. His steps wavered unevenly as he walked out the door.

In the corridor leading to the main hall, the cold predawn air brushed his cheek. An Sobin and Do Gyeom were waiting for him at the end of the corridor. Do Gyeom stood tense, cracking his knuckles, while An Sobin kept her head bowed, both hands hidden in her sleeves.

"Senior brother, the elders have started moving. They say they'll close out the settlement ceremony once the dawn bell rings. People are already gathering in the courtyard in front of the main hall."

At Do Gyeom's words, Cha Yeonho steadied his breath. He set the envelope containing the list down in front of the two of them.

"This is the master's offer. If we correct it quietly, these children can finish their training safely. But if we choose to make a public accusation, all of us will have to leave Hoeryumun. The sect's travel rights, its assets, its lineage registry, all of it will disappear. Will you still choose that?"

Do Gyeom's eyes widened as he snatched up the envelope. Checking each name inside one by one, his eyes reddened with blood. An Sobin checked the list without a word. Her finger trembled faintly over one particular name. It was proof of a pain she had carried her whole life.

"I... don't have the right to choose."

An Sobin said it in a low voice. Her face was pale, but her eyes didn't waver.

"But if it means no one like me ever has to appear again, then I'll put my name in that ledger. Senior brother, I don't want to stay a child who just gets protected anymore. If having my name on record is the one piece of evidence I can leave behind in this sect, then that's what I'll do."

Do Gyeom let out a hollow laugh and clenched his fist. His knuckles went white.

"Such cowards, all of them. Do they think we can't hold a sword without the lineage registry? First senior brother, no, Disciplinary Scribe. I'll put my teaching seat on the line. Let's prepare for a public inquiry. Even if we lose and get thrown out, we have to make it clear what actually hurt us. I'll go first. If they try to break my sword, then let them break it, and let the whole world see their cowardice while they do it."

Cha Yeonho looked down at his own left hand. The muscle was cramping, starting to swell. From forcing his internal energy up through strained breathing, the qi in his dantian had surged backward. His posture had collapsed, his breath rose up to his throat. The backlash he had touched had burrowed into the joint and stolen the feeling from his fingertips. The result of that misjudgment was pain that twisted the bone. He decided not to run from this pain. This pain was the only marker that told him exactly where he was standing right now.

"There isn't much time left. We organize our testimony before the dawn bell rings. Each of you write down your own wounds. That's our weapon."

Cha Yeonho sat on a step lower than the other two. The cold of the stone rose up from beneath his feet. Far off, the first bell announcing dawn sounded faintly. The document stamped with the sect leader's seal, and the list of survivors his master had held out. Between the two, Cha Yeonho suppressed the pain in his left hand and picked up his brush.

The declaration for the public accusation was brief. He wrote down names, positions, and the backlash readings confirmed over the past three days. The bell rang once more. He heard the doors of the main hall open. Jin Mugyeol stood before the disciples, the head seat left empty behind him. The cuffs of his sleeves were stiff, his expression unreadable. Hundreds of disciples filled the main hall, holding their breath.

"Cha Yeonho, report as Disciplinary Scribe. How will you bring the settlement ceremony to a close. It is time to decide the sect's future."

Silence swallowed the main hall. Dozens of disciples fixed their eyes on Cha Yeonho's mouth. He rose to his feet and raised his left hand. The bandage came loose, and blood seeped through. Unlike anything in the memory of his last life, this was a price he had paid himself, in this one.

"Hoeryumun's settlement ceremony is suspended."

Cha Yeonho's voice rang out through the main hall. He did not look away from Jin Mugyeol's eyes.

"I invoke the right to a public audit into the falsified ledgers and the improper exercise of teaching rights. This is not a choice made for the sect's survival, but one made to set right the sect's code. We will no longer stand on top of hidden pain."

Jin Mugyeol didn't answer for a long time. He set down his teacup and slowly rose to his feet. Leaving the head seat empty, he stepped down to the same level as the floor where the disciples stood. The seal was in his hand. He stared steadily at Yeonho. In his eyes was not so much anger as a tangled feeling, that his disciple had chosen his own path.

"The Disciplinary Scribe's petition will be accepted in accordance with the sect code. But the one who brought the accusation will bear the responsibility for it. If the justice you speak of brings this sect down, then I will watch closely to see what you can build on top of those ruins."

What Jin Mugyeol held out was not the seal, but a ring of keys to the old archive. It was both his consent to a public audit and a notice that all responsibility for the evidence now fell on Cha Yeonho. The red rust clinging to the tip of the key touched his palm. The cold feel of the metal cut through his whole body. There was no road back now. Cha Yeonho took the keys and nodded. The doors of the main hall closed, and the cold air of dawn filled the space. The settlement ceremony was over, and the trial was beginning. Cha Yeonho turned his back on the firmly shut doors of the main hall and clenched his aching left hand once more. From here on, everything would be decided at his fingertips. Seo Eunseol came from the end of the corridor and set an additional copy of the ledger down at Yeonho's feet. It was evidence traded for one teaching seat. Yeonho checked Seo Eunseol's eyes, then gripped the keys tight once more. The dawn bell rang for the last time.