"Hail, Master of Sinanju, who sustains the village and keeps the code faithfully," the people shouted as their new protector strode down the path. "Our hearts cry with joy and pain at your departure. Joy that you undertake this journey for the sake of we, the unworthy beneficiaries of your generosity. And pain that your toils take your beauteous aspect from our midst. May the spirits of your ancestors journey safe with you who graciously throttles the universe."
The Masters who had preceded him back beyond the oldest memory, all the way back to before even the Great Wang, had all accepted the traditional words of departure with stoic countenance. But this Master was different than what the village had ever seen before. He smiled at the crowd as they sang his praises, accepted the flattery as his due. Hazel eyes turned left and right, soaking in the adulation.
Behind the new Master came the old one. Unlike his pupil, the former Master of Sinanju kept his eyes trained above the heads of those gathered, focused on some unseeable distant point. His face was stone.
"It is about time the old Master stepped aside," some of the villagers whispered after the two men passed by. "Look at this new one. Such pride, such bearing. Here is a Master whose praises we will gladly sing."
"Yes," more agreed. "He is not like that old-fashioned one who went before him and stayed long past his time. This one will bring glory to Sinanju."
"It is fortunate things worked out as they did," still others said. "If the old one's son had not died in training, he would not have had to take on another pupil. Then we would not have this great new Master to feed the children and care for the old and lame of our village. How lucky we are."
They all agreed they were very lucky the old Master's son was dead. As he walked through the village of his ancestors, the Master pretended not to hear their words.
Though his son had been dead for years, the wound was still as fresh as the day he had carried the little boy's battered body down from Mount Paektusan. Their words brought anguish to his weary heart. But he was a Master of Sinanju, and it was tradition since the time of the Great Wang himself that a Master could not raise his hand against any of the village. And so the retired Master made his ears deaf to all the hateful, petty things the people were saying.
In the village square the new Master stopped.
"I leave now on my great journey," he announced. "In Sinanju death feeds life. I will ply our art faithfully, for there is no higher calling. Death feeds life. What I embark on this day feeds the village. My labors sustain the villagers I love. Such has it been, ever shall it be."
When the cheers came, he soaked them up like desert rain.
The Master who had trained him could hear the falseness in the young man's voice. In truth he knew his pupil felt little but contempt for the village of his birth. But as Master of Sinanju his duties were clear. He would uphold the traditions as had all the Masters who had come before him.
Singing songs of praise to their new protector, the people swept the new Master up to the road that led from the village. With joyful hearts they sent him on his way. With tearful eyes they stood on the road, watching until he was a speck on the horizon and then disappeared into the muddy paddies. Certain that this new Master would restore the glory of the greatest Masters of Sinanju to the small fishing village, they returned to their homes to await the tribute from king and emperor that would fill their souls with pride and their cooking pots with food.
And they waited. And waited.
But the tribute never came.
Their new Master, their great protector, the one who would lead the village into greater glory, never returned.
Word came through circuitous means that he had abandoned the village, seeking to ply his trade for personal glory.
The villagers heard from the missing Master only once. When first he left, he performed a service that indirectly benefited his despised village. He kept the money, but he did send a servant back with a message for his teacher and uncle, the man who had been Master before him. On a small parchment scroll were carefully inscribed the characters, "I await the day." The retired Master slew the messenger.
The old Master was to blame. He had chosen the traitor. He had trained him. And after the betrayal, he was the one who kept the villagers' hope alive long after he should have.
Every day for years after his pupil abandoned them all to hunger and despair, the old one would come out of the House of Many Woods and pad through the village. He would climb up the craggy rocks above the bay and sit in the shade of the Horns of Welcome. Alone with thoughts that were never shared, he would watch the sea from dawn until dusk, waiting for his nephew to return. He kept the flickering light of hope burning long after he should have. Until the years had gone on too long even for him.
One day he suddenly stopped going to the shore. It had taken him long to admit his failure. But in the end even he realized the truth. He had chosen his pupil poorly, and so the entire village would suffer. The one who had left as new Master, but whose title had been stripped from him, flourished in his evil. In the years following his departure from the village of his birth, he was driven by greed and hate. He amassed wealth, craved power.
He shared the same name with his hated uncle, the retired Master of Sinanju. They were not the only ones to have had this name. His uncle's father, who had also been Master, also did. And there had been others still.
Since he hated them all, all the way back to the original Master of Sinanju, he had almost changed his name. But then he heard something wonderful. It came to him through that hum of life that somehow always connects one to the place he first called home. His uncle had changed his own name, as well as that of his father. All who had shared the name throughout the history of the House of Sinanju would no longer be called the name of the hated traitor.
The sound of the name was reversed. Henceforth his uncle and the others would be called Chiun, leaving the betrayer as sole possessor of a despised name.
He reveled in the news. He had given them shame. And that shame resonated back through the ages. Since leaving the village he had gone by many names. He was Inchu, Sun Yee, Uinch, Chuni. These days he was Mr. Winch. But those were just temporary changes as need dictated. When he formed the word of his name in his secret heart, it was always and would forevermore be Nuihc. The first true Master of Sinanju of the great new order.
In fact the aliases probably weren't even necessary. There was only one man on Earth he need fear, and his uncle had not made a move to follow him. He heard from sources within the village that the old fool sat looking out at the bay as if he actually expected Nuihc to come back to him. He had enjoyed many a laugh at the withered old idiot's expense.
Nuihc traveled the world. He found work in Russia and China, India and Italy and a dozen African nations. Wherever there was money to be made from dealing death, he was there.
The last Nuihc had heard, his uncle was still in Sinanju. No longer sitting on the shore, he spent most of his time hidden away from the villagers. An old man now, he sat in the Master's House, awaiting the end.
For Nuihc the world was just beginning. In spite of what his uncle thought in his senile old heart, all that had ended was the type of Sinanju that had been practiced for centuries in a muddy little village on the West Korean Bay. Nuihc was inheritor of the true tradition of Sinanju.
It was the most terrible secret in the history of Sinanju, never spoken of in public. The present-day art of Sinanju was founded on a lie.