The Downpour at Gugok Floodgate

Heavy rain poured down on the Gugok Floodgate. Muddy brown water rose over the threshold, and the roar of the current gnawing at the embankment struck the ears like thunder. Seok Muan, tying rope atop the floodgate, stopped his hands and drew a ragged breath. His calluses had split, and blood and mud mixed on his palm gave off a raw, metallic smell. Cha Yeonho stepped closer through the mud. His left thumb rubbed at the swollen, moisture soaked joint. The pain that had built since the day before had spread through his whole palm into a kind of numbness, but he did not stop.

Seok Muan turned his head to look at Yeonho. In his eyes there was no lofty pride of a martial artist, only open distrust and anger over grain to eat and money to treat his injured comrades. Seok Muan flung the blood stained roster he was holding down into the mud and spoke.

"Is this what you great warriors call protecting the sect? You haven't even paid last month's wages, and now you want us to risk our lives too. Look at this roster. These seven men had toes broken and fingers crushed during the last repair work. The settlement office rejected their medical claims three times."

Cha Yeonho picked up the fallen paper. Beside each name, instead of a treatment fee, the word "pending" had been scrawled over and over in red ink. From the leather bag on his back he pulled out the toll ledger he had found the night before, hidden deep in the archive by the former settlement officer, and spread it open in front of Seok Muan.

"This is what they've been hiding. The money collected as tolls flowed straight into the trading house, and the wages meant for you were double booked under the name of floodgate repairs. And look here. There's an urgent order from the trading house for floodgate repair. This isn't a record of repairs to protect the sect. It's a record of you being used as expendable labor for the trading house's shipping."

Seok Muan skimmed the ledger, then gave a bitter laugh and gripped the end of the rope again. He pushed back his wet hair and glared at Yeonho.

"The trading house? You mean the reason we've been risking our lives all this time is just to move their cargo? Senior Disciple, waving that ledger around won't fill our starving stomachs."

Instead of answering, Yeonho bent his knees and lowered his stance. He drove his heels deep into the ground and shifted his center of gravity down. He reached out his left hand to steady the swaying pillar of the floodgate. The Hoeryu Gate technique, Hoeryugyeong, circled through his body. It was a technique meant to redirect an opponent's force outward, but what he needed now was to take a massive pressure head on with his whole body. His right hand pressed against the crack in the pillar while his left fixed the twisted timber's axis. His shoulder joint creaked, and searing pain surged through him. He held his breath and tightened his core, and a crushing pressure closed in on his lungs. He forced himself to keep breathing and took the pressure of the surging water into his muscles.

"I'll bring this ledger before the transmission elder myself tomorrow morning. I'll see that every bit of what's owed to you is calculated. If the sect's reconstruction funds fall short, I'll put up my authority as senior disciple as collateral and hand a bond over to the trading house. Tonight, just don't let this floodgate collapse."

Seok Muan watched Yeonho grip the pillar and groan. Rainwater streamed down Yeonho's back, and dark blood seeped from the fingertips of the left hand pressed against the pillar. Yeonho forced a smile and put even more of his weight against the pillar.

"What's written in this ledger isn't just numbers. It's proof of who paid the treatment costs when you were hurt, and who was put on the most dangerous shifts. I'll take it and face the transmission elder and the settlement elder directly tomorrow morning. When that happens, put your names down as witnesses."

Seok Muan hesitated for a moment. He watched the drops of blood from Yeonho's left hand mix with the rain and soak into the ground. He had never seen a sect disciple wreck his own body this way just to prove something. Seok Muan clenched and unclenched his fist, then shouted at the workers beside him.

"Did you all hear that. The senior disciple here is putting up his own hand as collateral. If we don't redirect the water tonight, we all get buried with this floodgate. Bring the ropes!"

The workers began weaving rope and setting up beams again. Yeonho took his hand off the pillar. His numbed left hand had lost all feeling. He hid it behind his back and called out to An Sobin.

"An Sobin, take over the water level control from here. While they're fixing the pillar, we need to shift the angle of the northern tributary where the current is concentrated. Use your Hoeryugyeong to change the water's direction, but don't put too much force into it. Your hands are already at their limit too."

An Sobin ran through the rain and took her place beside Yeonho. She set her stance toward the floodgate. She steadied her breathing and crossed both hands, extending them toward the current. The moment she made contact, the massive shock of the water surged up through her arms. As her body began to be pushed backward, Yeonho stepped forward and braced her back. Their backs pressed together.

"Don't force it too deep. Don't try to resist the flow directly, disperse the force through the gaps in the floodgate. The force you spend now will come back to you tomorrow as backlash. Move as little as possible and just shift the water's direction."

An Sobin bit her lip and nodded. As she took hold of the pulse of the current, the rough waves battering the pillar slowly began to bend sideways. Seok Muan and the workers used the opening to drive wet beams into the gaps of the floodgate. With a groaning crack, the pillar settled back into place. Muddy water poured out past the floodgate, and the pressure on the embankment eased.

When the work was done, everyone collapsed where they stood, exhausted. Yeonho tucked the wet ledger back inside his robe. Do Gyeom approached. His face was expressionless as he glanced at Yeonho's left hand.

"Senior Disciple, we saved the floodgate. But the elders won't acknowledge this. Especially the settlement elder, he'll tie this to the senior disciple issue and use your unilateral intervention tonight as grounds to push for disciplinary action."

Yeonho looked at Do Gyeom. He suppressed the pain in his left hand and brushed the mud from his sleeve.

"I didn't start this to be acknowledged. I started it to make clear who bears responsibility. Do Gyeom, go to the archive tonight and find the remaining pieces of the missing backlash ledger. While I'm here getting the workers' signatures, you need to bring back the evidence of how the elders siphoned our sect's money to the trading house."

Do Gyeom bowed his head. His voice carried a strange sense of responsibility in place of his earlier resentment.

"I'll keep that in mind. But Senior Disciple, can your body hold up. Your shoulder muscle already tore when you were bracing the pillar earlier. If you don't see a physician right now, you may not even be able to hold a sword at the next sparring match."

"It doesn't matter. If I can't hold a sword, I'll protect the sect with something else. Tonight will be long. The floodgate is fixed, but the real fight is about to start inside these walls."

After telling this to Do Gyeom, Yeonho walked over to Seok Muan, who was clearing up the floodgate site. Seok Muan was catching his breath as he coiled the rope. Yeonho rolled up his wet sleeve and handed over the document to be signed.

"This is a guarantee for today's wages. Attend the senior disciple council tomorrow morning. You'll need to speak directly in front of the sect leader and the elders about why your labor deserves fair treatment."

Seok Muan looked at Yeonho's hand. With that hand, blood still not stopped, Yeonho was holding the document steady. Seok Muan finished signing with his own rough hand. Yeonho took the document and headed for the main hall. The elders would already be gathered there. He felt his left hand growing cold in the rain.

When Yeonho reached the entrance of the main hall, Jin Mugyeol stood there holding the door open. He saw Yeonho's soaked clothes and the blood still flowing, but said nothing. He was seated not in the sect leader's chair, which had been left empty, but in the auxiliary seat beside it. Jin Mugyeol pointed at the ledger and bundle of documents in Yeonho's hands and spoke.

"While everyone else blamed the hunger and the rain to shirk responsibility, you went to the floodgate and changed the course of the water. But in exchange, you've lost trust and safety within the sect. Is this the way you wanted it."

Yeonho did not answer and sat down across from Jin Mugyeol. He placed his left hand on the table. A drop of blood fell onto the table and left a red stain. He opened the wet ledger and spoke firmly.

"If propriety and dignity can't fill the mouths of starving disciples, then that dignity has already rotted. Today, I confirmed who bears responsibility for what's written in this ledger. Now this debt must be settled under the name of our sect."

Jin Mugyeol looked down at the ledger Yeonho had presented. His gaze wavered. He turned through the papers and confirmed Seok Muan's signature. Then he stared intently at Yeonho's left hand. Jin Mugyeol's hand trembled faintly. He rolled up his sleeve and showed his own wrist. There, in the same place as Yeonho's, a clear scar remained. Jin Mugyeol spoke in a low voice.

"To walk this path is to shave down one's own martial arts to fill in another's pain. Are you willing to pay that price as the senior disciple of Hoeryu Gate."

"I'm not doing this because I'm the senior disciple. I'm doing it because I don't want to pass on to the other disciples the cost of what I've already been through. This is my choice."

Jin Mugyeol held Yeonho's gaze. After a long silence, he nodded. He took out his seal and pressed it onto the document Yeonho had offered. It was not a simple seal. It symbolized the responsibility and authority the sect leader of Hoeryu Gate held over the running of the sect. The moment the seal was pressed, Yeonho felt the pain in his left hand stop being mere suffering and turn into a force holding up the sect.

"This is only the beginning. Tomorrow morning, once the audit report goes up to the central Oro Genealogy Registry, our sect will no longer be able to operate the way it has in the past."

That was when it happened. Urgent footsteps sounded outside the main hall, and the transmission elder burst through the door. In his hand was a sealed letter bearing Hoeryu Gate's crest.

"Sect Leader, a messenger has just arrived from the trading house. They're notifying us that due to the delayed repair of the Gugok Floodgate and the unlawful access to the settlement ledgers, they will be temporarily revoking our sect's transmission rights. They're demanding that the senior disciple be disciplined at once and that the ledger be handed over to the trading house."