Permission From Above (4)

Even if you inherit a secret manual and a divine weapon from your ancestors, to make it truly your own in the fullest sense requires a process of seizing it through training.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-

The sword mnemonic verses of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship spread across the Sword Debate Chess board.

My eyes and brain swept and memorized in an instant the arrangement of letters and diagrams that densely filled the spaces not occupied by pieces.

“……Remarkable.”

The Gibraltar Temple’s Thousand-Hand Mary Great Compassion Sword, which pursues the extreme of swiftness, has sword paths that keep branching into two, doubling the number of possibilities and stretching into infinity.

In contrast, the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship was slower than Gibraltar Temple’s Kung-Fu, and its sword paths did not double.

And yet, even so, in the battle of counting moves, the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship held an absurd advantage over any sword art I knew.

“A sword technique where every trick is completed in two stages.”

Whether it was the Lily Sword Technique that unfolds six feints and real strikes in an instant, or the Thousand-Hand Mary Great Compassion Sword that forces a binary choice upon the opponent every moment, they might be faster than the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship, but it was not impossible to read their movement and respond.

But every sword trick of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship, unlike other sword arts that connect without a break, had a simple structure. It began from a static stance and ended in the very next motion.

No intermediate process. Only a finite sequence made of two stages, beginning and end.

The wondrous principle of the sword art presented by the mnemonic verses could well be called the aesthetics of an instant.

“So this was why one excluded excess intent by training Twelve Less.”

The Gibraltar Temple’s Kung-Fu was made with inspiration from the Thousand-Hand Mary who still lives and breathes in the hearts of countless people.

Blessed Mary, mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, symbolizes compassion, intercession, and growth.

Of these, what the wondrous principle of growth within the Thousand-Hand Mary Great Compassion Sword pursued was eternity and infinity.

As with the teachings of other Christianism Clan, it meant it contained the intent of wanting to walk with angels¹ and stand shoulder to shoulder with saints².

But the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship was different.

The Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship did not look ahead to future possibilities.

Without offering any clue at all, rather than pursuing lofty Kung-Fu principles, it was a Kung-Fu optimized for warfare that hurled the sword along a trajectory the enemy could not predict and inflicted a fatal wound.

Every trick was completed in two stages, and no one could easily grasp the number of its variations.

A human’s Kung-Fu that burns every capability and possibility one has right now, and seizes today.

Within those simple, clear Kung-Fu principles, there was no room for phantoms like the dead, souls, saints, or angels to dwell.

Twelve Less’ “less rumination” meant erasing the very scent intent gives off.

If a trick branched into only two or three paths, it would be blocked time and again by an opponent blessed with luck.

But what if the number of sword paths branching from a dry, static sword stance split into five, seven, eleven, thirteen… and further, into thirty-seven?

Prime numbers are lonely numbers divisible by no number other than one and themselves.

The Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship stuffs the present, where no process exists, into the moment of collision, and unfailingly drives a blade into the enemy’s body. A Kung-Fu for those who live in the now.

A Kung-Fuist of the same realm, to face one who has perfected the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship, must rely entirely on luck.

For the deeper the later stage grows, and the more tricks one learns, the practitioner’s sword traces sword paths so varied as to be beyond prediction, reaching 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13… 83, 89, 97, so the one on the receiving end can only cling to a probability of 1/97.

“Then shall we finish solving the problem.”

…With that premise, I began looking into the booklet again.

It began with the White Queen, who had moved to the Dragon-Lode³ at the center of the Sword Debate Chess board.

The Sword Queen on the Dragon-Lode, and the Heavenly Eye Gate masters surrounding her.

By matchup and numbers, it was overwhelmingly disadvantageous, something Gibraltar Temple’s swordsmanship could not break through.

Yet the moment I understood the wondrous principle of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship, Golden Shield Argus’s suppressive power ceased to hold any meaning in this Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem.

Since I had moved the Sword Queen, the next turn was Black’s.

The Heavenly Eye Gate’s Guard Combined Attack Formation engulfed the Sword Queen.

Normally, since she had to face a combined attack formation that added up all the pieces’ internal strength, even with the Dragon-Lode’s bonus it should have been difficult for the Sword Queen to withstand it—but not anymore.

Even if the wondrous principle of growth, likening the Thousand-Hand Mary’s thousand arms, said to stretch left and right and reach throughout the three-thousand worlds, to a great tree was sealed off, the Heavenly Eye Gate’s dull sword could not contend with the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship’s sword paths, which held an entirely different principle.

“First, two.”

As its name implies, this peerless divine art contained only prime-number sword paths, divisible by no number other than one and itself.

-Kang!

A hallucinated sound ringing through my head.

When I closed my eyes, in my mental image I saw a faceless Sword Queen striking swift sword blows at Black masters rushing in.

The first exchange canceled out.

The Sword Queen’s blade only succeeded in driving the Heavenly Eye Gate Kung-Fuists back.

However, under Sword Debate Chess regulations, a sword debate’s outcome is decided only after at least three exchanges.

And the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship does not reveal its true face on the first move.

In the exchanges that followed, the Sword Queen took her next stance, and the sword paths branching from it were three in total.

-Slash.

A Heavenly Eye Gate transcendent master fell helplessly.

Each time the Sword Queen adjusted her grip, changes were added to the sword paths.
From five paths, to seven, and then again to eleven.

But the Heavenly Eye Gate’s momentum couldn’t be taken lightly either.

As the Sword Queen advanced and opened the way, Black poured in every piece to block her advance.

But the Sword Queen didn’t stop.

Now that twelve White pieces had fallen, everything around her was an enemy.

There was no chance of a mishap where an ally failed to read the sword’s trajectory and was cut by the Sword Queen’s blade.

That only four White pieces remained was to loosen the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship’s constraints and let the Sword Queen run wild.

With her position on the Dragon-Lode, the Sword Queen could affect up to thirteen squares out of the Sword Debate Chess board’s sixty-four, and that number was rising from two up to eleven each time a Heavenly Eye Gate Kung-Fuist fell.

Each time offense and defense switched, the number of pieces the Sword Queen could target on the Sword Debate Chess board changed, and it, too, was made of primes alone.

This Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem did not exist merely to contain the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship’s secret manual.

This match itself was an extension of Twelve Less’s life-nourishing mnemonic verses, bearing the teaching that by suppressing the human heart and placing oneself in solitude, one can roam the martial world more freely than anyone.

But.

To burn everything one has for this moment is, in the end, akin to laying down future possibilities.

The Sword Queen’s sword, which overturned Heavenly Eye Gate’s stronghold, ended up stopping before it could even display thirteen variations.

The number of Black pieces she struck down before dying was fourteen.

She cut down every Heavenly Eye Gate piece except the Black King and the Black Sword Queen with the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship, but at the final moment, her strength ran out.

-Hududuk.

Upon the white snowfield painted by my mental image, the Sword Queen’s blood scattered.

My right hand was recording the death of the White Queen in the game record.

“……So this is as far as the Sword Queen goes.”

No matter how much of an Unrestrained Realm Kung-Fuist she was, one cannot endure the combined assault of a Black Sword Queen and Black King of a similar realm.

“Next comes the first-rate Kung-Fuist Pawn’s turn.”

Yet the back of the Sword Queen, who had opened the way with fearless courage, was etched clearly into the Dual Successor’s eyes.

“Sacrifice the Bishop and activate Holy Blessing. The poisoned White King also transmits his power to the first-rate Kung-Fuist through Succession.”

With movement speed raised by the Holy Blessing, Good News, Beautiful Legs, performed according to the mnemonic verses of the Roman Sutra, and with power increased to 6 unit through Succession, the first-rate Kung-Fuist Pawn dashed at once along the path the Sword Queen had opened, sprinted into the Black King’s stronghold, and completed Promotion.

What appeared was a new White Queen with internal energy totaling 14 units, no, a Sword Emperor.

The Dual Successor, inheriting the King’s power and the Sword Queen’s sword, advanced to a realm the two masters had not reached.

Thirteen sword paths unfurled through the Dragon-Lode.

Even the combined assault of Heavenly Eye Gate’s Black Sword Queen and the Black King couldn’t block him.

A solitary pure-white piece left in the center of the Sword Debate Chess board.

He had unified the martial world, but by the Sword Emperor’s side, neither friend nor foe remained.

“…….”

A truly lonely ending.

I recorded every step that led to it in the game record, with ink imbued with power.

“……Is this truly everything?”

I had certainly memorized and understood all the mnemonic verses of the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship.

I had grasped the tricks that branched from every sword stance, and awakened to the complex order of circulation and the method of Impact, so even if someone told me to perform the sword art right now, I was confident I could imitate it as smoothly as running water.

But even so, all I had done was learn how to imitate the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship; I had not grasped its true essence.

As I said earlier, every Kung-Fu can display its function only when it uses Essence suited to it as fuel.

And I believed the Essence needed to wield the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship was a pure aura excluding human afflictions, like the Emptiness Essence used in Kingswood Kung-Fu.

Hadn’t the booklet itself responded to my Essence and revealed its secret?

But.

-Seureuk.
-Buwoong!

I drew and swung the Heavenly Demon Cane, but it was far from the domineering sword tricks of the faceless Sword Queen and Sword Emperor I had seen in my mental image.

A movement that had form, but contained no intent.

You could not call such motion Kung-Fu.

Even if I won the exchange of moves, it would not display proper might. Could I cut an enemy like this?

“What was the problem?”

If I could perform the sword art correctly in my mental image, it should have been possible in reality as well.

The joy I felt at solving the Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem in a single day did not last long.

“What was I lacking…….”

After brooding for a while, I asked the late-risen Mrs. Hudson for a few things, went up to the second floor, and stared at the booklet in the sitting room.

And two hours later.

“Could it be that erasing intent wasn’t the answer?”

The cause came to mind at once.

The form of swordsmanship belonged to the domain of essence.
The internal energy placed into the sword belonged to the domain of Qi.

But the most important thing, Intent.
That is, spirit, was missing.

“It’s contradictory.”

Only by excluding the influence of intent from internal energy through training Twelve Less can one deploy sword tricks that can never be read.

It was similar to how the Zion Clan’s Lily Essence imitates a plant’s aura and excludes humanity, making it hard to distinguish feints from killing tricks in the Twenty-Four Lilies Sword Technique.

Then how, exactly, was one supposed to fill in the lacking intent?

I stared into the booklet and sank into thought.

The yearning for Kung-Fu I had forgotten while running around solving cases, the longing for strength, lit a fire in my upper elixir field once again.

My brain grew hot and my senses dulled.

My eyes were open, yet what I was looking at was not the booklet, but my own inner self.

The flow of time could not be felt.

I drew once more in my mental image the desperate battle shown by the Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem’s record, repeated it countless times, observed it, and tried to find a clue to enlightenment.

Everything arises from the mind.

Strength, weakness, everything.

Thus, a Kung-Fu without mind is no different from a child swinging a dull blade.

But if mind dwells in Kung-Fu, even a gaunt old man swinging a club can split Mount Tai.

And what creates mind is purpose.

Among the Buddhist Kung-Fus that crossed into the Western Regions, the intent dwelling in the 1200 Inch Punch is the transmission of doctrine.
Because the 1200 Inch Punch was created to convey the Buddha’s teaching to ignorant beings, that one step and a hundred steps are no different.

The reason one can display sufficiently powerful Kung-Fu even with Emptiness Essence that has erased the influence of intent is that Emptiness Essence, too, contains one most important intent.

Twelve Less is likewise training that erases the mind by the same principle. But merely erasing is not enough.

After erasing everything, what will you leave behind?

Upon a mental image bleached pure white, you must use the final Intent as ink and draw one bold stroke.

What you erase are stray thoughts.

If there is nothing to fill the empty space, an empty mind gives birth to no power.

‘What must be left behind…….’

The koan I finally discovered.

I saw an empty space in the Kung-Fu I had mistakenly thought complete.

In the mental image I had emptied clean, I set out to find the last puzzle piece.

What, exactly, did the Ancient Tomb Clan master who made the booklet wish to convey to later generations through the metaphor of the Sword Queen and disciple?

Why did the Sword Queen have to die in this Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem?

What did the Sword Emperor left alone symbolize?

Questions that continued without end.

Even amid them, I kept raising my concentration so as not to lose the koan.

The answer had to be simple.

The form of Kung-Fus may be the greater the loftier it is, but Intent exerts the stronger power the simpler it is.

A mind that can be expressed in one or two words.

If I found the common thread between this Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem and what I knew of the Ancient Tomb Clan.

If I could summarize it in a short keyword.

That would be the answer I sought.
.

How much time had passed?

At last, a bolt of enlightenment struck my brain.

-Click!

As I sprang to my feet, I felt a massive aura rising from the bottom of my elixir field.

“……Holmes?”

I saw Watson, awake from sleep at some point, come over with her eyes wide.

Looking out the window, it seemed I had been lost in thought for several hours.

But that was not important now.

I threw the fragment of intent I had finally found into my pure internal energy.

-Hwaak!

When I formed a hand seal with my right hand, golden flames resembling a lion’s mane flared up at my fingertips.

This was the key to solving the true difficult problem hidden behind the Zhenlong Sword Debate Chess problem, and the final piece that completed the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship.

The poisoned Alliance Leader’s Succession.
The dead Sword Queen’s beloved sword.
The Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship’s sword mnemonic verses hidden in the booklet.
The history of the British King doubling as the Ancient Tomb Clan’s head.
And finally, the reason the Ancient Tomb Clan received its name.

Every clue pointed to a single word.

“Succession.”

The sole intent needed to wield the Ancient Tomb Clan’s Kung-Fu did not take root in the practitioner’s own heart.

It was an old flame passed down from ancient times.

The Ancient Tomb Clan’s role was to tend that flame so it would not go out, and to pass it to posterity.

Every power in this world appears in its complete form only to one who knows its roots.

The moment I acknowledged that the Royal Prime Number Swordsmanship had passed through countless hands over immeasurable years, preserved and improved in the process, and resolved to inherit that great heritage, the thought of gratitude and reverence revealed itself in the empty mental image.

This power exists to guard the land inherited from old strong ones, and to pass it down whole to later generations.

And someday, when my body becomes ash and scatters, it will be a flame passed to someone else.

A lamp that will light Britain’s future even a thousand years from now is clasped in my hand at this very moment.

“Watson. Might I borrow a pen for a moment?”

Watson handed me ink and pen with a dazed face.

Holding golden Essence, I wrote the twenty characters of Sword Debate Checkmate into the game record.

-Paaat!!

All the booklet’s drawings and letters vanished in an instant.
A sight hard to believe, given how sluggishly it had moved when I first infused it with Emptiness Essence.

“……I did it.”

What appeared next was the British royal crest filling the page.

And the moment I saw it.
Internal energy burst from the minor meridians throughout my body and began creating a violent vortex in the boarding house’s second-floor sitting room.