It was nice that they could share their meals. She would prepare him some curdled-beef-blood-and-intestine soup, as well as some rice and kimchi. And they would sit and eat and talk about their family and their village. About tradition and about the great Master of Sinanju who worked to keep the entire village safe and fed.

He was glad that his daughter shared his reverence for the Masters of Sinanju. These men, only one in a generation, left their beloved village in order to sustain it. They would go, sometimes for years, toiling for faraway emperors. And the tribute they were paid was returned to the village.

For their labors and their sacrifices, Pullyang revered the Masters of Sinanju, and he had passed on this great respect to his only child, Hyunsil. He only wished the others in the village shared their reverence. The other villagers didn't respect the Master. Oh, they didn't show him open disrespect. They wouldn't dare. The villagers feared the Master of Sinanju. The current Master had spent much of the past thirty years away from home, but on those few occasions when their protector returned to the village of his birth, the men and women whom his labors supported stayed from his path.

Of course, they knew he wouldn't kill them. For it had been passed down since the time of the Great Wang, the first true Master of Sinanju of the Modern Age, that a Master couldn't harm another from the village. And this current Master was slavish to the teachings of the past. But he had a foul temper and little patience and-despite his respect for tradition-there was always the hint that something furious could explode from him at any moment. The people didn't want to risk injury, and so stayed away.

Pullyang didn't stay away. He loved the Master for all he had done and for all he represented. And this was the reason that Pullyang had been chosen from all others in the village to be caretaker for the Master of Sinanju when he was away. It was an appointment he accepted with great pride.