The Walnut Tree
The carriage had stood still for a long while in the blizzard.
On the surface, it seemed calm, but inside, the quietest battle in the world was being fought.
Then the carriage door opened.
Thick venom dripped onto the snow, staining it black, and the poisonous miasma rose like mist, scattering in the storm.
A man stepped out. Dressed in black—Goiyi.
He tucked the Poison Manual (Gudokseo) into his robe and glanced back inside. There lay the corpse of the Poison Master, his body half-melted away.
I underestimated him.
The poison the Master had refined and stored was far deeper and greater than expected.
If the Poison Master's inner strength had not collapsed at the last instant, the one who died in that carriage would not have been him, but Goiyi.
Should've died quietly, instead of making this hard.
Goiyi coughed into the storm, then rolled across the snow to wipe some of the poison from his body. The cold bit into the wounds across his flesh, burning with venom and frost.
Beneath his black clothes, his body was covered in wounds large and small—scars from being hounded by assassins.
To make matters worse, the blood from those wounds had frozen solid in the bitter cold. If he stripped off his clothes now, chunks of flesh might tear away with them.
Damn those killers from Salmak.
Since late autumn, Goiyi had used every trick to shake them off.
He would enter villages and pretend to rest, only to slip out again in the night.
He dashed three nights straight through dense forests, swam icy rivers, and crossed in storms so harsh he could barely keep his eyes open.
Sometimes, it even felt like the blizzards had done him more good than harm, hiding his trail. That was how grueling his flight had been.
His bold moves bought him brief respites, but never for long. The assassins always reappeared.
At first, he thought they had marked him with some kind of tracking incense—but no, it wasn't that.
He ran. They followed. That was all.
If they'd only fought him head-on, it would've been better. But instead they circled, probing, waiting for an opening.
That was what Goiyi hated most about Salmak's killers. They weren't martial artists—they were hunters. Patient predators, circling endlessly, waiting for their prey to weaken.
And yet, perversely, the worse the situation grew, the more Goiyi felt vindicated. Splitting off from Mujin and Seol-yeong had been the right call.
Had he foolishly lingered near the assassins, thinking they'd just test him once or twice before retreating, then by now, Mujin and Seol-yeong would be corpses.
Goiyi scanned his surroundings. For now, no killers in sight.
The storm, stronger than ever, dulled every sense and erased his tracks.
He peered at the faint sun through the snow, gauging northeast.
It was time to return to Huizhou.
His hometown. The place where it all began. Where his wife and daughter were buried. Where the great walnut tree stood.
Goiyi started walking northeast.
Though unintentional, faint poison seeped from him, darkening the footprints he left in the snow. But before long, the storm covered them again.
***
As he trudged on, a troubling thought rose.
Once I bury the Poison Manual… what then?
He had never thought that far ahead.
In his heart, he wanted to return to Luoyang. To wander the Central Plains leisurely, as he had these past months. In his current condition, he might live another year, maybe two.
He imagined bickering idly with Mujin, then drinking heavy wine at some inn, greasy dishes as side fare.
Seol-yeong would sit quietly, sneaking her chopsticks toward the food. Though she knew full well ordering another dish or two was no issue, she never asked for it outright.
Perhaps, traveling so, they might one day cross paths with Hong Geol-gae.
Goiyi even dreamed of dragging him along—then the four of them roaming the world together. Five, if they met Man Rik-seung.
Better still, all five of them venturing to the southern coasts—Guangxi, Guangdong, even sailing to Hainan Island.
Or north, to Inner Mongolia. East, to Jilin or Liaoning.
The Central Plains were vast, with so much worth seeing. Worth showing to young, foolish brats—or to that friend cloistered in Shaolin, ignorant of the world.
But then Goiyi halted, sighing.
He realized that in his barren life, regrets had bloomed like wildflowers.
Since losing his wife and daughter, the young father had lost all will to live.
It hadn't mattered if he died today or tomorrow.
He had wanted to die—but hadn't. So he lived.
And as long as he lived, he needed a purpose. So he set one. And clung to it, just to keep going.
Because he thought death would come soon enough, he had lived without care for others' eyes.
But now… his thoughts had changed. At times, he wished he'd lived a little more carefully.
Careful enough not to draw Salmak's killers. Careful enough not to shatter his inner strength.
…Pointless thoughts.
Goiyi sighed deeply and pressed on northeast.
If he wanted to reach Huizhou, he had to keep moving before the snow erased his trail.
***
He no longer knew how many days he had walked without sleep.
His mind was hazy, his body moving only from sheer momentum. His upper and lower halves felt split, disconnected.
Then, suddenly, he sensed presence.
Looking up, he saw five assassins blocking his path.
He had crossed blades with Salmak's men more than once. But never had they confronted him so boldly, face-to-face.
So I must look that weak, eh?
None of them looked weak. Each one seemed to have surpassed the threshold of mastery. Even at his peak, he might not have had a chance.
"A lavish welcome, indeed. How much coin is on my head, I wonder?"
As always, no reply. The assassins silently drew their blades and lowered their stances.
Goiyi muttered bitterly.
"…Brats. After chasing me this far, at least tell me your names."
He drew a deep breath.
Just as there are times one longs to die but cannot—
there are also times one longs to live but cannot.
This was such a moment.
The instant the fight began, Goiyi unleashed his inner force, lunging forward with his sword.
Jem (Pierce). The simplest strike. Swift as a flash of light.
In a single thrust, one assassin's throat was impaled.
The man's bulging eyes, like some street thug caught unawares, almost made Goiyi laugh.
"What? Didn't expect me to start with true primal energy?"
If inner strength was water in a bowl, then true primal energy was the bowl itself.
Once shattered, everything within spilled out until nothing remained.
Unlike inner strength, it could not be replenished. To use it was to accept certain death.
So even in their final moments, most martial artists never called upon it.
The four remaining assassins fell back into guarded stances, plainly intending to wait him out until his strength burned away.
Goiyi nodded grimly.
"Yeah. Just as I thought."
This time, it was Goiyi who charged at the assassins.
The strength drawn from true primal energy was immense. But just because he wielded it did not mean he could overturn such overwhelming odds.
Each time his blade slashed out, four swords came to block. Focus on the front, and from behind another blade would fly to scatter his attention.
The assassins refused a direct clash, pouring all their effort into relentless defense.
As the fight dragged on, new wounds etched themselves across Goiyi's body. At one point, a blade carved deep into his forearm—his right hand could no longer even clench into a fist.
Blood loss was heavy. Before long, his movements slowed to the level of a green novice. At this rate, even if he swung his sword all day, there was little chance he would drag another soul with him.
Anyone else would have long since collapsed, surrendering to death. But Goiyi stubbornly endured, switching his sword to his left hand.
And then, all at once, Goiyi slid his blade back into its scabbard—and laughed.
"Ha… ha ha ha!"
The assassins tensed. Perhaps he meant to make some desperate, reckless move. There was no need to rush—he was already a dying man. Patience would do the work for them.
"You don't know why I'm laughing, do you?"
Goiyi raised his left hand and pointed at one of the assassins—the one he had crossed swords with the longest, the closest in reach.
"You should be feeling it by now. Die."
The man staggered, as if his throat had been cut by an unseen blade, and collapsed lifeless into the snow.
The remaining assassins froze, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
"Fools. Did you really think I'd waste my true primal energy right from the start, just to take one life? My life is not so cheap."
The poison core lay within his dantian, wrapped in his inner strength.
If the dantian was destroyed, or if his inner strength dispersed, the poison would inevitably seep out.
And the fastest way to scatter one's inner strength was twofold: drive a blade into the lower abdomen to shatter the dantian, or use true primal energy to break the vessel itself.
At last, the assassins understood Goiyi's design.
Through his seven orifices, through the very pores of his skin, a faint miasma had been escaping.
All this time, Goiyi had been letting out the poison he had accumulated, slowly and steadily intoxicating his enemies. Hidden by the storm, by his own blood, by his black garments—they had realized it too late.
The assassins tried to leap back.
But their limbs felt strangely heavy. Until now, they had blamed their sluggishness on the blizzard and the grueling chase. But that was not the cause.
They collapsed stiffly into the snow.
"Fools. I only told you because you've already taken in too much poison to survive."
Goiyi walked slowly among them. One by one, the assassins succumbed, their bodies blackened by the thickening miasma.
Goiyi, cloaked in a drifting haze of poison, looked less like a man than death itself, wearing human form.
When the five were dead, he glanced around.
In the distance, a shadow.
One of Salmak's scouts. They never joined battle—only watched. If Goiyi so much as tried to approach, the man would turn and flee.
He thought the figure looked like a crow, waiting for corpses.
Goiyi examined himself. The poison had not dispersed entirely outward—it was seeping back into him.
Already, his hearing and smell were gone, and only a faint, tingling sense of touch remained.
He looked around once more. Not far away stood a snow-covered tree.
He could hardly see now, but somehow he knew—it must be a walnut tree.
Dragging his failing body, Goiyi took half a shichen to cross the mere hundred paces to it.
At last, he sat with his back against the walnut tree, exhaling a long breath.
"Hoo…"
Then he released the very last drop of poison.
His poison core emptied, the white snowfield turned black.
The miasma was so thick now that any man who came close would die.
Even Salmak's scout would not dare approach.
Goiyi's hand brushed the book hidden in his robe.
Did they see me take the Poison Manual?
He did not know.
The rest would be left to fate. If Tang Mujin was lucky, the book might find its way into his hands.
For a fleeting instant, Goiyi wondered if he had been wrong to saddle Tang Mujin with such a debt.
Was it right to force his own dreams onto a young man, still so full of dreams of his own?
No… too late now.
Goiyi let the thought go.
Drowsiness weighed on him. At some point, the cold no longer touched him.
Even with his eyes open, he saw nothing.
At last, Goiyi closed them.
And there—the walnut tree of Huizhou. His wife. His daughter.