Longevity - Chapter 17

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 17: Five Pills Remain
Jin Ip-chu’s reasoning had merit. Yet Yi Jung-yong shook his head.

“Five days’ travel opens a dozen possible destinations. We can’t assume Master necessarily went to Gi-ju and returned.”
“I’d prefer to think otherwise.”

Jin Ip-chu exhaled sharply.
The three fell silent. From the direction of the carriage came the sound of horses drinking and harnesses creaking.
Jang-saeng gazed at the black carriage visible between the trees. Na Yang-ja’s cough had stopped. That very silence pressed heavily on his chest.
Days of relentless coughing. Teachings longer than usual. Five days of absence.
As separate fragments gathered into one picture, his thoughts spiraled toward the darkest conclusions. What if Na Yang-ja had been poisoned with something beyond his ability to cure?
Jin Ip-chu noticed Jang-saeng’s stiffened expression and approached. His hand rested lightly on the boy’s uninjured shoulder.

“Don’t let fear run away with you. We’re only guessing, letting worry get the better of us. Say nothing of this to anyone else.”

Jang-saeng nodded.
Jin Ip-chu gave his shoulder one more reassuring pat, then turned and left the grove. Yi Jung-yong opened his mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it and followed.
Jang-saeng remained behind for a moment. He understood why the others were afraid. But beneath that fear lay something else, something entirely his own.
The people of his village had always viewed him as cursed—the boy who survived a lightning strike. They’d even blamed him for Wang Ma-ja’s death. He’d never believed their words.
Yet now, as the thought took hold that even Na Yang-ja, who had taken him in, might fall to some unknowable poison, the old whispers came flooding back.
Did misfortune truly follow him wherever he went?
Jang-saeng gripped the quiver strap to push the thought away. His knuckles turned white, but the dread would not ease.
It took nearly half a watch to feed and water the horses.
Once they resumed traveling, Na Yang-ja said nothing. He leaned his body against the carriage wall, eyes closed.
Jang-saeng did not ask.
Inside the black covering, there was only the sound of urgent hoofbeats and the screech of axles turning. No one dared speak first.
Past midnight, Ba-tu-ru brought the carriage to a halt. The men could have endured further, but the horses could not. Both beasts snorted harshly and trembled on their legs.
Yi Jung-yong wiped the sweat from the horses’ hides while Jeon Jin-gung scattered dried grass before them. Jang-saeng sat near the carriage, keeping watch over Na Yang-ja.
Na Yang-ja opened his eyes briefly and drank only a few mouthfuls of water. When he returned the cup, his fingertips brushed its rim. It was the faintest tremor, but Jang-saeng caught it.
If Jang-saeng asked if something was wrong, Na Yang-ja would only deny it. The boy opened his lips, then closed them. Instead, he reached down to pull the blanket that had slipped away back over Na Yang-ja’s knees. Na Yang-ja did not open his eyes or speak.
They rode hard for four days.
By day they followed the Guan-do road in haste; by night they rested only as long as the horses could bear. With each passing day, Na Yang-ja’s cough grew more frequent.
At first, it came once in a long while. By the second day, he coughed each time he woke from sleep. By the third, he covered his mouth with his sleeve whenever the carriage swayed sharply.
Yi Jung-yong, Jin Ip-chu, and Jeon Jin-gung asked after his condition several times.

“I’m fine.”

Na Yang-ja’s answer never varied.
His disciples could not press further. Only Ba-tu-ru tightened his grip on the reins. When he slowed the pace, Na Yang-ja urged him faster. When he kept the speed, the coughing worsened. Ba-tu-ru clenched his jaw and spared the whip only when the horses neared collapse.
Jang-saeng counted the intervals between coughs in silence. With each gap that shortened, his chest grew tighter. All he could do was offer water, adjust blankets, and refrain from asking what he had no right to ask.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, the party entered Ye-ju.
Ba-tu-ru did not hesitate in finding the way. When he turned from the Guan-do onto a narrow side path, he wrenched the reins without doubt. The carriage wound through valleys and climbed deeper into the mountains.
It was then that Jang-saeng realized this was not their first time on this road. At each fork, Ba-tu-ru did not so much as glance around. He drove as though he already knew which low branches hung in the way and where the wheels might sink into mire.
Yi Jung-yong and Jeon Jin-gung did not ask their destination. They had been here before. Only Jang-saeng tried to memorize the topography through gaps in the covering, but endless similar peaks and ravines blurred together.
The path ended as the sun hung upon the western ridge.
Steep, towering peaks overlapped on all sides. Jang-saeng knew nothing of geomancy or burial grounds. He could only see that the carriage had no room to advance further, and that even the wind hung low and mournful, trapped between rocks.
Ba-tu-ru fixed the carriage in place and released the horses he had been leading. The beasts dropped their heads at once and exhaled in ragged bursts. Jeon Jin-gung removed their saddles and wiped the sweat matted into their coats.
Yi Jung-yong and Jeon Jin-gung unloaded a wooden chest from the rear of the carriage. As the lid lifted, shovel blades and pickax heads clanged together—not the movements of newly gathered tools, but the practiced motions of men retrieving something long buried.
Na Yang-ja also descended from the carriage.
The moment his feet touched earth, his body tilted ever so slightly. Ba-tu-ru immediately fetched a large slab of bluestone and set it firmly on the ground.
Na Yang-ja sat upon the stone and gazed at the setting sun.
Yi Jung-yong gathered the tools and spoke.

“Master, please do not go inside. We will manage.”

Na Yang-ja nodded.

“Each of you, choose only one weapon. Your circumstances may grow difficult hereafter, but you must never touch the gold and silver placed as burial goods.”
“We understand.”

His four disciples answered as one.
Jin Ip-chu gestured to Jang-saeng.

“Come on. Let’s at least take a look.”
“A tomb chamber is no place where good fortune lingers. Jang-saeng, you should not enter.”

At Na Yang-ja’s words, Jin Ip-chu nodded at once.

“Master is right. The youngest should stay and attend to you. Just tell me what weaponry you prefer, and I’ll bring it back.”
“I don’t know how to use weapons, nor what would be good.”
“Then we’ll choose for you.”

Jin Ip-chu pressed lightly on Jang-saeng’s head, then withdrew his hand. This time he pressed the matter no further.
Ba-tu-ru pointed to Jin Ip-chu’s abdomen.

“Third brother, you’re wounded—can you really go in there?”
“I can’t dig, but I can manage to pick something out once we’re inside.”

Jin Ip-chu straightened with a laugh, then immediately winced.

“Let’s go. The sooner we enter, the sooner we leave.”

Yi Jung-yong led the way up the mountainside.
Ba-tu-ru, Jin Ip-chu, and Jeon Jin-gung followed, dividing the tools among them. Jang-saeng watched until the four men’s figures vanished between the trees and rocks.

“Jang-saeng, come sit here.”

Na Yang-ja gestured him over.
Jang-saeng settled at the left end of the blue stone. The rock was narrow enough that two people sitting side by side would touch shoulders. He placed the water vessel between them, positioning it so Na Yang-ja need only reach out his hand to grasp it.
Na Yang-ja had called Jang-saeng to sit, yet said nothing. The two sat facing west in silence. A cold wind seeped beneath the blue stone.
Jang-saeng nearly asked about his master’s condition several times. But over the past four days his elder brothers had posed the same question, and Na Yang-ja had answered each time that he was well.
There was no reason to expect a different answer from his own lips.

“Master.”

Jang-saeng asked something else instead.

“Are all the weapons your disciples and I will choose contained within this tomb?”

Na Yang-ja nodded slowly.

“Whose tomb is this, that it holds so many weapons?”
“An imperial tomb. One who commanded the world and gathered the riches of the four seas would surely have had the means to amass the most renowned martial implements across ancient and modern times, and be buried with them.”
“I thought I would need to travel to many places.”

Na Yang-ja did not answer.
The sun was sinking beyond the ridge. As its last light faded, the outline of the peaks rapidly darkened.
The two sat for a long time.
In the darkness, no trace of the four men could be heard. Jang-saeng had no way of knowing which rock face they had entered behind. All that remained on the mountain was the wind, the sound of horses grazing on grass, and Na Yang-ja’s shallow breathing.
Jang-saeng watched his master from the corner of his eye. It was not the face of someone gazing blankly into emptiness. His eyes held the depth of one retracing something in thought.
What thoughts occupied him, Jang-saeng could not know. Yet they seemed far from light or trivial.
After a long while, Na Yang-ja’s shoulders trembled.
A dry cough came twice, then three times. Jang-saeng quickly poured water and offered it.
Na Yang-ja took the vessel and set it beside him, then withdrew a small ceramic bottle from his sleeve.
Jang-saeng recognized the bottle. It was one of the items they had found among Jong A-gyeong’s possessions.
Na Yang-ja shook a single red pill into his palm and swallowed it with water. Yet he did not put the bottle away.
He emptied all the remaining pills into his palm. Jang-saeng’s gaze followed the red specks.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Na Yang-ja confirmed the same count before returning the pills to the bottle. The soft click of the stopper closing sounded unusually sharp.
Jang-saeng held in his mind the single pill his master had swallowed and the five that remained. He did not know what the medicine was for. He only committed to memory the fact that Na Yang-ja had taken one after coughing, and that he had counted the remainder without missing a single one.
Jang-saeng watched the bottle disappear into the sleeve, then opened his mouth.

“Master, there’s something I don’t understand.”
“What is it?”
“If all the weaponry in the tomb is precious divine steel, why would the tomb’s master have taken it with him even after death?”

Na Yang-ja answered while gazing at the western sky.

“People are loath to let go of what they possess. Even emperors are people. If buried in a tomb, they believe it remains theirs beyond death. If left to posterity, they fear it will be stolen by others.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“We come into the world empty-handed and leave it the same way. What we cannot take with us is better spent in building something for those who remain.”

Jang-saeng nodded.
He grasped the meaning of the words, but he had never possessed much in his life, so the notion of letting things go still eluded him.

“I have one more question, Master.”
“Ask.”
“If the older brothers and Master carry fine weaponry, won’t others recognize it and try to seize it from us?”

Na Yang-ja turned to look at Jang-saeng. A flicker of light passed through his tired eyes.

“Your words are sound. I worried about that myself.”

He tapped his knee once with his finger.

“But I judged that the strength these weapons would grant us outweighs any calamity they might invite. We cannot abandon necessary strength simply because danger exists.”

Jang-saeng nodded again. One did not simply take everything of value, nor did one blindly discard what was dangerous.

“Is there no weaponry you wish to possess, Master?”

Na Yang-ja shook his head.

“When flowers bloom in profusion, the eye grows clouded, and when shallow grass grows thick, it hides even a horse’s hooves. A person must know what they truly desire. Only by knowing their desire can they know their path.”
“Yes.”

Jang-saeng asked nothing more. For now, he understood only that Na Yang-ja desired no weaponry.
As darkness deepened, the mountain wind turned biting cold. He recalled that Na Yang-ja had eaten poorly these past days.
He worried that kindling a fire might draw the eyes of others, but Na Yang-ja had said it was fine.
Jang-saeng gathered dry branches and set them alight. Unwilling to use his left shoulder, he dropped the sticks several times before managing it. When Na Yang-ja tried to rise, Jang-saeng shook his head, saying it was all right.
He poured water into a small pot and crumbled the remaining dried rations fine. He tore a piece of dried meat into thin strips and added it as well. As the broth began to boil, warm steam drifted out into the darkness. Jang-saeng ringed the fire with stones to prevent the light from spreading far and fed the wood into the flames slowly, piece by piece.
Na Yang-ja ate only a few spoonfuls before lying down to rest.
Jang-saeng banked the fire and kept vigil alone.
The tomb was one they had opened before. Since they only needed to clear away the earth blocking the entrance, the four of them had returned before nightfall.
The sound of footsteps was different from far off. They were much lighter than when dragging heavy tools.
Ba-tu-ru’s laughter burst out from beyond the firelight first.
He held aloft something long and gleaming.

“Youngest, come here and look at my new prize…….”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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