In the Chwanjeou there was a tradition of persecuting vendettas, which were often passed down through three or four generations. It was the whole creed of the people. Sometimes entire families slaughtered each other to the last, their vendettas only being fulfilled when the last boy or man fell. Other families that had no fighters left were exiled from their villages by the victors, taking up refuge in some lonely watchtower from which they were loathe to emerge from or even show their faces for fear of being seen by their traditional foes and killed on sight. Sometimes vendettas were levied against outsiders, which became common whenever the Nanwians launched an invasion into their land. Most of them were fulfilled; few civilised men could comprehend the savages’ obsession with begrudgement and revenge, which was like no other in the known world. Because Hwanseong allowed the of Minju, a vendetta was created, which all of Nanwian would have to suffer for. 

But Yujin did not focus on her revenge just yet. Chief of her concerns was finding Minju and making her safe. Leaving her warband in the middle of the night, just as Soowon was conducting her to Yakotan where the Auric Council resided, Yujin trekked across mountains and running water without rest for two weeks to reach Makam, which had been abandoned to sink into the floodplain. Naturally Yujin found no one but weeping women and desolate elders there amidst mounds of dead bodies — some rent by cuts and bullet holes, some emaciated from hunger, some bloated and blue because they had drowned. She feared the worst, and spent many days in the waterlogged ruins of the city inspecting every dead body and huddling victim of the siege, dreading the moment when she would see Minju’s face among them. That she had been been harmed was well known to Yujin, but all the same she knew not how she would react if she came upon Minju in her wretched, sullied state. But it would be better than never seeing Minju again. 

But Minju was not in Makam. It would have been very convenient if Yujin had been told at her time of arrival that the poor girl had stolen away in a small canoe the day after the siege to some unknown destination, but things were as they were now; Yujin had to scour the entire Chwanjeou if she were to ever have hope of finding her sweetheart again. And the thought of this birthed a gaping hole of despair in Yujin’s heart. Why would Minju leave the city alone, with one of her legs hamstrung? The worst scenarios played out in Yujin’s head. Maybe Minju was taking up a self-imposed exile on herself; maybe she was deliberately hiding from Yujin out of shame; perhaps, worst of all, she wanted to find some secluded place where no man had ever gone before — a sharp precipice or hidden spring, and commit suicide to regain her honour. These thoughts assailed Yujin like a swarm of furious wasps. It was one of few times in her life that Yujin truly felt mortal fear — at losing the only person that tied her to the world of flesh and blood. 

Soowon was already displeased that Yujin had left him without his bidding; but he believed her to be the next Golden Master, and therefore she was well within her right to leave. But the Auric Council was much less understanding. They had been watching Yujin with attention, surely, but she was not above their rules yet. Heeyeon had not yet passed away, and the ailing leader wished to see her daughter and impart upon her personally the grave role she would play in the future of Nanwian. This wish was to be in vain. Furthermore, Soowon had promised the Council that he would present Yujin before them, and let her fulfill the ultimate prophecy Gyogak had foreseen for her. If she would not be here, then she was not the One.  

Therefore, in the month after Heeyeon’s passing in Shenda, there was no Golden Master. Yujin disappeared completely from the world; not a single person in the highlands knew where she was or what she was doing. Some warriors began to say that perhaps she had perished in some small skirmish with the infidels, or had been taken captive by them and sent to the court of Anju. Some said that she had gone over to the enemy willingly, and these people tended to cause fights with their peers who could not believe that Yujin was capable of such treachery. A few also said, from a romantic perspective, that Minju had indeed taken her own life, and Yujin, upon finding the body of her beloved, followed in her footsteps, unable to tolerate a bleak life without her. All these were just conjectures, though; no one knew for sure. 

In reality Yujin had indeed found Minju, who was very much still alive, but broken in spirit. It was a pitch-black night when she came across a band of Datars in Hwanseong’s employ, exhausted and demoralised from a long hike to the village of Dado only to find it abandoned and forced to retire without anything to show for their efforts. Their only spoils of value were some pieces of pottery and a single captive, who hobbled behind them due to a hamstrung leg: Minju. 

The Datars, although unused to the climate and steep elevations of the Chwanjeou, were intimately acquainted with the savage way of war in the highlands. They were also violent by nature, able to withstand immense hardship and live in spartan austerity, much like the tribals of the Chwanjeou. Furthermore, they were excellent archers, and could kill their sword-wielding adversaries from a distance with pinpoint precision. 

But in the night, hemmed in from all sides of their camp by thick forest and rock walls, the Datars were no match for a single warrior, burning with a boiling vengeance and courage. Yujin observed them for the entire evening from a hidden crevice behind a series of boulders, and her heart lifted, almost jumped, in joy whenever she saw Minju emerge from their tents. But it was soon followed by an intense pain and yearning, for she also saw the broken expression on her beloved’s face; what was once the spitting image of innocent loveliness was replaced by a ading emptiness. And she was forced to be a servant to these horse-loving heathens! Yujin could not allow them to live. 

The Datars remained vigilant throughout the night, as was their practice when on the move; therefore Yujin did not fully possess the element of surprise. Still, she commenced her ambush by rolling down the boulders she had been hiding behind, crushing several of their number to bloody pulps. Then, hidden in the thick brushes, shrouded in the looming shadows of the craggy peaks, Yujin picked them off one by one, emerging wraith-like from some bush to dispatch a Datar with knives and daggers, or rushing past them like a gust of wind, cutting open their throats with easy of her sword. There were not many of them in the first place, and as they began to withdraw to their campfire and huddle together for safety in numbers, Yujin revealed herself, covered in blood and tar, eyes flashing with lightning. She was an avenging demon of these mountainous wastelands, and the Datars were the unfortunate first victims of her vendetta. Slashing wildly she killed them all, and left their bodies as they were on the ground to insult them even in the afterlife. Then, with a tearful Minju in her arms, she vanished once more into the night. 

For a few more months Yujin and Minju remained in hiding. Minju had been despoiled, but it was her who pretended nothing had happened to her, tending to Yujin’s wounds in the little cave that the warrior had taken up residence in all this while. The Datars had not allowed themselves to go quietly into the next world; Yujin had been slashed across the head once, struck with three arrows, and had two ribs broken. Yujin could only repay her selfless care with whispered words of succour and comfort, pressing delicate Minju against her in silence for hours on end, thinking of nothing but each other’s presence. These months spent in isolation were perhaps the only quiet they would ever know, for afterwards there would only be Yujin’s preoccupations as the Golden Master and the Saviour of the faithful, the Sword upon the Nanwians, of which Minju would have no part. But now they were alone in their little paradise, unknowing of the world outside, thinking only of each other, living in love and stillness, at least until Yujin’s wounds healed. They would not have missed the carpets and cushions that made up the simple few furnishings of their home in Yuela. Besides, Yujin was a warrior and student of the holy ways; she was by occupation austere. Only the base desires of the flesh and beauty tied Yujin to the material world. She was not as fundamentalist as her mother in her ways of renunciation. 

Minju, as Yujin’s most loved wife, must have found the Golden Path to be a more formidable foe in romance than any of Yujin’s future wives. For Yujin was dedicated to the divine responsibility upon her, and not even her childhood sweetheart and most genuine of lovers could ever encroach on Yujin’s life as the enactor of the LORD’s will. She must have learned to put aside all considerations of true personal happiness, knowing herself only to be a brief avenue of comfort for Yujin, ancillary only to the ultimate goal of Chwanjeou independence and the coming of Paradise. That is why, being together alone in that tiny cave, with nothing left but each other, Minju cherished forever that magical, temporary, self-centered vacuum of all lovers. 

The time to leave could not come soon enough. While her wounds healed, the fury within Yujin smouldered like hot coals. She was raring to go against all her foes and avenge Minju many times over, but she realised that even that would not quench the rage inside. No. A normal vendetta would not do. In Minju’s body was embodied all the sin that had been committed against the Chwanjeou — the brutal and humiliation of the country that its inhabitants loved so deeply. It was not a vendetta between individuals or families or tribes. This was to be a vendetta between peoples: between the Chwanjeou and Nanwian, the Golden Path and the faith of the Sindeok, the savage and the civilised, the oppressed and the oppressors. The sins of the fathers m