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Long ago, a child was left in front of the plum tree gate; a baby abandoned to the mercy of the daoists or death.
This child was handed to another: a boy of fourteen, who looked upon the infant as the truest wonder; this boy gave the child a name — Cheong Myeong, and swore to the elders and to the very land where they lived that he would take care of this child, whatever it cost him; and he promised to be a worthy sahyeong for his small and defenseless samae.
This girl grows up to be curious and mischievous, more like the boy who raised her and the other boys around her than other girls her age who were not in the cult. This girl smiles a lot, laughs a lot, and gets into fights to stand up for herself, which, again, was taught to her by a boy who was never a parent and knew nothing about girls at that point, and pays for it in moments of having to stop his samae from getting into trouble (unsuccessfully). This girl is talented, the people in the sect realize a little later, when flowers bloom on the tip of a toy wooden sword, and continue to bloom as if they've been there forever; the girl laughs at this, she runs up to her smitten sahyeong, hugging him, and waiting to be praised — which of course he immediately does.
Cheong Myeong — is special kid, and she's moving up so fast it's frightening.
And where there's fear, there's envy and contempt.
And the girl, not even a girl yet, starts getting into more and more fights, where of course she wins, but the sahyeong only scolds and berates her, from which she comes to the conclusion that boys are stupid. A little later, years later, her sago confirms her early conclusions, but tells her to use it when necessary — sometimes girls should be more cunning than boys, because the former are weaker than the latter. But that wasn't about her.
In fact, two decades from the time Tiny had been helped across the threshold of the Huashan Sect, there was no one who could defeat her.
Cheong Myeong gets to the top without much difficulty, with smiles for her sahyeong and her cute sajes with occasional (very occasional) samae, not feeling too sorry for her sasuk and the other sahyeongs who still have something against her. At one point, she realizes that despite the sago's words that the women should proceed more subtly, she'd rather drive the bodies into the ground until they agree with her. Finally, she reaches an agreement with her elders.
"Cheong Mun-sahyeong!" smiles the young girl exactly as she smiled as a small child, with boyish spunk and broad sincerity. "My elders and I have settled our differences!" another's blood is painted on her like an achievement, like a victory, as she mercilessly kicks one of her sasuks on the ground, and he nods quickly, followed by the others who are conscious, nodding, confirming Cheong Myeong's words.
Cheong Mun only looks to the heavens, asking his ancestors where did he go wrong in raising this child?
There are rumors spreading around Murim of a swordswoman with a coat of arms of plums, trailing a trail of the most beautiful plum petals.
Some say it is a goddess who has descended from heaven, so incredibly beautiful and impossibly strong is she.
Others whisper that she is a devil with a beautiful face and a seductive body who has come for your souls.
Rumors breed, diverge and converge, flying apart and gathering into an image as the swordswoman is followed by stories full of heroism, rescue and help, or the abandoned bodies of those who have challenged her.
Still later she is given the name that someone at the very top of the martial arts world can deserve, she is given the title Saint.
The Plum Blossom Saint Sword.
"Fight me!" the brat in green asks as her head splits with a hangover and the sun is too early for such a loud voice.
She looks at the brat and thinks there's something familiar about him... he must be from some Family the sahyong told her about, to watch her actions and not mess with them too badly, though she promised nothing of the sort. However, all charges could be dropped if she wasn't the one who started the fight.
"Alright, brat", she agrees, rising to her feet from the tree she fell asleep near, though the sahyeong begged her to stop falling asleep anywhere after she'd had a drink; she smiles and partially notices that the brat is distracted by something for a second; none of her business, though, "attack".
Of course she wins; what she doesn't expect is that this man, unlike hundreds or thousands of previous ones, doesn't begin to despise or fear her momentarily, no — instead he decides to become part of her life as an annoying leech on her side.
("Nuna, you need to take more care of yourself!" grumbles Tang Bo at her, stitching up a rather minor wound on her shoulder, looking solely at the area of her work or her face because, somewhere along the way, her chest bandage had been rendered completely unusable; it didn't affect her, though Tang Bo or sahyeong cared a great deal about it for some reason.
"I'm perfectly fine", she repeats for the sixth time in the last hour, sipping the local wine from a jug; not as tasty as it was in Siyan; the odd thought makes her chuckle, "or what, you think my scars don't color me?"
Her sago and samae often talked about it, they worried about it, and wore more clothes to hide it from others, though she promised them that she would beat anyone who said anything inappropriate — it always made them smile.
"I care more about the origin of the scars than having them", Tang Bo replies instead, "I'm not like my family".
She knows, though there's something remarkable about the stubbornness of the Tang Family elders who dared to tell her to her face that she's an exception to the rule than a confirmation. Tang Bo didn't let her beat them up, but who knows... maybe one day she will).
She knows she's beautiful, it's hard not to when she's been told that since she started growing breasts and forming a waistline.
And, even though she doesn't prefer to do so because she was younger and more stubborn back then, her sago has taught her everything a female cultivator should know. She knows an inordinate amount about tea ceremonies, and it's one of the most useless practices in her mind, except that her inner sahyeong perfectionist is happy when she makes him tea while he works in candlelight like a cult leader. She knows about how to tell quality fabric from mediocrity, which stones are precious and which are glass, how colors should go together, and how to braid hair, even though she's always been comfortable with a tight ponytail because that's the only thing Cheong Mun-sahyeong knew how to do with other people's hair. She also knows how to seduce men.
A pretty useless skill, she decides for the first four decades of her life, but then... she gets bored.
And she finds something amusing in the fact that some people (not just men, but women as well) become more ridiculous at times when she smiles a little less broadly than she's used to, when she barely-too-barely exposes skin in her hand and body movements, and has to restrain herself from laughing. Certainly not something she'd do to someone she knows well and cherishes. And of course, the jangmun-sahyeong must never find out about this, or she won't hear the end of this lecture even in the afterlife.
However, Cheong Jin, her library saje, definitely knows about it, though she's never confirmed his suspicions; maybe it's the fact that she'd practiced on him in her youth when her sago told her to find someone harmless and safe, and while the sahyeong fit the latter, he wouldn't quite fit the former; then again, there'd be no end to the lectures.
"Sago", Cheong Jin says tiredly and forlornly, leaning over her desk, "please can you stop breaking the hearts of the men who flood our gates with tears and marriage proposals?" he sounds so sad that she almost feels guilty. Almost.
Instead, she laughs, grabbing a new mooncake before she's even finished the previous one.
"What's the big deal?" she laughs as she swallows the food, licking her lips and catching another's gaze. "Did that wicked sago neglect her precious saje?" and she adds a little more sweetness to her voice, bending over so that her clothing stretches across her chest.
If it were possible, Cheong Jin's gaze became even more unimpressed and dead deep inside.
"No, she's done much worse, making me deal with her victims", Cheong Jin states critically, and she leans back on the pillow, munching on a flatbread; delicious. "Speaking of your fans..."
"Weren't they victims a second ago?"
"...What are you going to do with the Dark Saint?" asks Cheong Jin, and she tilts her head to the side, genuinely not understanding.
"What does this have to do with Tang Bo?"
She hadn't seen him in just a month, couldn't he have gotten into something too big? If he did, how dare he not call her out! Damn brat.
Cheong Jin looks at her with disappointment.
"Poor guy..." utters her sajae, apparently about Tang Bo, and doesn't clarify anything.
Cheong Myeong doesn't like this, so she crawls over to the other side, leaning against her saje's back with her chest and pulling his cheeks in different directions with force.
"Stop speaking in riddles and answer normally!"
"Sa-sago, sago! Stop it!"
A war begins.
And the war changes her more than she's willing to admit.
War tells her things about herself that she didn't know: she can forget about pity, leaving whole fields strewn with corpses; she can go forward and not look back when blood soaks her white clothes that they turn exceptionally red; she can lose where she never thought possible, when members of her sect die in her arms, when Tang Bo dies in her arms, daring her to smile at her and ask... don't think about it, she can hate so deeply when she didn't think it was possible.
War comes and takes so much from her.
And then war takes everything.
She loses her arm, she kneels, her sahyeong, her saje, her sajiles, her samae, everyone, everyone, everyone — dead.
"To think, if you had survived, you could have been even more famous for this, Sword of Huashan... " says a voice she hates.
Hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates,hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, h a t e s—
The whole world is as red as her blood and as his eyes.
"Thanks to all these people", and it's like a chuckle, and it makes her so angry she thinks her hair might turn gray with anger, "your sword caught up with me".
And so she rises; her own sword is broken, part of the blade in her shoulder in place of her lost arm, and she plucks the blade out, clutching at the remaining one.
"Truly, your swordsmanship is the best of all".
The blade cuts her skin — she doesn't care; her heart barely beats — she doesn't care; she doesn't feel her body like she should — she doesn't care.
"Shut your fucking mouth!"
She doesn't know how she moves, but there is her, there is the sword in her hand, there are the plums that have been with her longer than she can remember herself, and there is — the enemy.
"I will be reborn", Cheonma tells her from her summit as she swings back and plums reflections in the monster's inhuman eyes, "and I hope to meet you there again, Sword of Huashan".
And she cuts off the Heavenly Demon's head.
She takes breath, and dawn comes.
She regrets, and doesn't even feel herself falling.
She exhales, and prays that Huashan will prosper no matter what.
And history is rewritten by survivors, passing on a distorted truth to their descendants; the Huashan are forgotten, their glory swept under the rug, erasing someone else's sacrifice, someone else's achievements.
No wonder that after a few more decades, stories of the invincible swordswoman have turned into the swordsman, harsh and impossible; as inscrutable as a mythical hero.
It was the influence of habit, exactly as a little girl's sago told her the difference between boys and girls, exactly as stubborn old men told a strong woman she was an exception — it was true; for the most part, men are stronger than women, and it's a natural fact they balance in other ways.
Still later, when no one is left in doubt about the all-too-familiar stories of the Plum Blossom Saint Sword, one boy knocks on the cracked gate of the plum tree, and he brings about a change in very-very many things.