Wondering If This Was All Right

Dang Myeong, sect leader of the Dang Sect, had gone about under the name of the Thousand-Hand Tathagata¹ before the byname the Thousand-Hand Soul Snatcher ever came about. That was because, unlike a man of the Dang Sect, he shunned killing and had no liking for poison and hidden weapons. The house had looked to him as its genius, so when he fell into swordplay instead, the Dang Sect was turned upside down. Then he inherited the seat of the Dang Sect’s leader and dug into poison and hidden weapons after all, and in less than ten years he was the genius who had completed the Sky-Filling Flower Rain.

He was the very man who had grown the Dang Sect into the Thousand-Man Dang House. The name meant that its fighting men numbered a full thousand, and he went on increasing the Dang Sect’s martial artists. The Murim Alliance had a good deal to say about that, and went on saying it for a long time. Until then the Dang Sect had been a martial house that pursued a small elite, so its warriors had never gone past five hundred at the most.

These days that same Alliance praised him for having raised up the Thousand-Man Dang House. The Demonic Cult might wreak havoc in Sichuan, but the Dang Sect held, and in that they seemed to take comfort.

“It is an honor to meet you, Sect Leader. I am the scholar Cheon Tae-san.”

Cheon Tae-san made a cupped-hands salute and greeted him. Seated on the high seat, Dang Myeong swept back his black beard and studied him closely.

“A scholar? Is Scholar Cheon not a martial artist? How can a man whose illustrious name as the Scholar Divine Sword rings abroad be a scholar?”

Cheon Tae-san looked at Dang Myeong and answered.

“Did the sect leader invite me as a scholar? Or as a martial artist?”

“As a scholar, of course.”

“And so I am a scholar.”

The focus of the exchange had slipped a little somewhere, but Dang Myeong snorted a laugh. How could a man who made so little of his aura and his question be a simple scholar?

“Better than I expected. Paeng So-un and Namgung Mu-baek I might grant you, but I invited you because they say you reformed even Mak Ji-mong. If it has put you out of humor, bear with me.”

“I shall.”

Etiquette called for a junior asked to bear with something to make a show of modesty, and a flat agreement was not what anyone expected.

“Bwahahaha! Indeed! Better than I expected!”

Dang Myeong laughed in high good humor.

“Scholar Cheon, there is one thing I wish to ask you.”

“Deign to ask it.”

“Do you know from when it was that the poison men lost their poison qi?”

“After Elder Gal U-heon attacked me, by the time I came to take the poison men the poison qi was already gone from them.”

“Is that so? That is a good deal different from our own inquiry.”

Dang Myeong looked Cheon Tae-san full in the face with a wicked light in his eyes.

“What this seat hears, you understand, is that when you fought the Demonic Cult men at the Hohyeon Estate, you fought with the poison men.”

“I did put the poison men forward and fight with them at the Hohyeon Estate. But they had less poison qi than I had supposed, and it left me in a fix. That was why what I prepared for that day was the Scorpion-Tail Rainburst Tube.”

Dang Myeong crossed his legs and spoke.

“Right, let us say that is how it was. This seat means to let the matter lie as it is. The Elders have things to say of it, but that I can silence. In return, do something to reform our youngest son.”

Cheon Tae-san gazed at Dang Myeong and answered.

“So then, you are saying there is to be no payment for reforming your youngest son, Young Master Dang Ji-in.”

“Just so. Is it because you are a scholar? Your understanding is good.”

It occurred to Cheon Tae-san that this might be a kind of test.

“That would be awkward. I came because Young Master Dang Jin-ok said he would give me a gift I would be satisfied with.”

“So, do you mean that we may look into the poison men rather more thoroughly?”

“I ought to be paid for taking the poison men from Elder Gal U-heon and handing them over to the Dang Sect at all. To be pressed with that instead would be a hard injustice, would it not?”

“Hmm.”

Dang Myeong drew his breath out long and glared at him. Killing intent flowed off the sect leader and closed on Cheon Tae-san, who set his three spirit energies turning and flicked it away.

“Oho.”

Dang Myeong snapped his fingers and spoke.

“Good. The past is only the past. Our Dang Sect is not so stingy a place as that. I shall have a gift prepared that Scholar Cheon will be satisfied with.”

He did not specify what the gift was, and it was there that he showed himself a man beyond the common run.

“Setting that aside, reform Dang Ji-in properly for me.”

“I understand.”

“Were it as my heart would have it, I would set Scholar Cheon’s lodging inside Dang Ji-in’s quarters, but it is one of our house’s statutes that an outsider reside outside the Dang Sect. Inconvenient though it is, I would be glad if you went back and forth to Dang Ji-in’s quarters and taught him there.”

For Cheon Tae-san that too was no hard thing. What mattered to him was that he could come inside the Dang Sect.

“I understand. When shall the teaching begin?”

“Dang Ji-in is under punishment from the Law Enforcement Hall at present, so let it be when he is released. The punishment will take some days. Until then, rest at your ease in the Guest Pavilion.”

That said, he stared fixedly at Cheon Tae-san, who rose to his feet.

“I shall withdraw, then.”

“Do so.”

Cheon Tae-san had expected no kind word at all from the sect leader of the Dang Sect. The man had issued the invitation himself and then treated him like an uninvited guest, which by itself proved how clumsily the people of the Dang Sect dealt with others. He knew the sect leader did not mean to humiliate him. Still, being human, he could not help being put out by it.

Just as well. As it happens I have not so much as checked the Flying Dantian since it absorbed Oh Ju-hyang’s internal force. I may as well spend a few days circulating the qi with the Flying Dantian.

As he came out of the Sect Leader’s Hall, he felt the blood flow of the men guarding it here and there about him. However perfectly they erased their presence through the Great Tortoise Breath Art, so long as they were human beings with blood running in them they could not escape his eyes.

Outside the hall, four stone lanterns as tall as his own body stood about the garden. Inside the stone lanterns, too, he could feel blood flowing.

Madness! They are hiding inside the stone lanterns?

The escorts hid inside those cold stone lanterns without stirring, guarding the sect leader. Cheon Tae-san felt for them, and muttered before he knew he was doing it.

“The sect leader is strong enough that he needn’t keep any escorts at all, and yet how he wears people out. I wonder if he even gets his rice warm, carrying on like this. Honestly. What a pitiful business.”

Cheon Tae-san tapped the head of one stone lantern as he muttered.

The escort inside the stone lantern came within a hair of breaking their own concealment art, because the scholar had marked their hiding place exactly.

A stone lantern was a sort of coffin made of stone, and it blocked a presence of its own accord, so that even without the Great Tortoise Breath Art most masters could not tell. Lay the Great Tortoise Breath Art on top of that and not even a transcendent-peak master could feel a presence there. That was why they went to the trouble of hiding inside the stone lanterns.

And yet the scholar knew where all four of them were, and turned a pitying look on each stone lantern in turn. The escort he had tapped felt their throat tighten.

Going into a stone lantern to stand guard was next to being tortured. That the scholar understood as much made their breath waver a little.

“And what will they do if it rains? Tsk, tsk. Still, they must be better off than the one in the pond. Guard duty is no work for a human being either.”

Somehow the stone-lantern escort felt grateful to the scholar, who sighed as he stepped out through the moon gate of the Sect Leader’s Hall. In all this time he was the first person ever to have felt for their lot.

Then, thinking of the escort in the pond, they decided their own lot was the better of the two after all, and took comfort in it.

My impression of Dang Myeong, now that I had seen him, was that he looked like an old man with nine serpents in his belly. That look in his eyes, that whole cast of a man with neither blood nor tears in him, might be no more than the air peculiar to the Dang Sect, but the current I felt coming off him was not a pleasant one.

I had been sitting blank a good while when Yeo-seol spoke.

“Brother. I’m going out into the garden to play with the bugs.”

At that a laugh escaped me in spite of myself. Yeo-seol playing with bugs meant that she was circulating the qi with the qi of nature, and there was nobody who could feel her do it, since the qi of nature was like spirit energy and was not felt as a flow of internal force. And she really did play with all sorts of bugs besides, so there was no room for suspicion. She simply looked like an innocent girl with no friends playing with insects.

“Right. I’ll be in the room circulating the qi.”

“All right.”

Now I could circulate the qi with an easy mind. In that respect it was no bad thing to have martial fame ringing abroad. In the old days, when I was a scholar with not even martial fame to my name, I could not help being conscious of other people’s eyes.

“Don’t go beyond the garden.”

“Mm.”

When Yeo-seol had gone out, I put the Flying Dantian into my mouth. It was a secret even she did not know. Once it had settled at the Mingmen point I circulated the qi with the Heaven’s Net Internal Art, and I felt a tremendous internal force stretching out into the capillary meridians of my whole body. Inwardly I was startled.

What is this?

I felt a pressure in the meridians that a little over thirty years’ internal force could not produce.

This feeling, this pressure of internal force. If the records are right, this is internal power amounting to nearly sixty years’ worth.

Considering how long the Flying Dantian had been inside Oh Ju-hyang, it was impossible for it to have absorbed more than thirty years of internal force.

Which means that when Oh Ju-hyang died and the control of her internal force went, the Flying Dantian absorbed her internal force faster than it had before.

It felt like a windfall. The root of my martial arts was the spirit energy of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes, but there was no particular reason to refuse internal force.

Sixty years’ worth is very nearly a peak master. The degree of mastery has to hold up too, of course, but unless a man’s internal force reaches sixty years, he is not called a peak master however good his degree of mastery.

Some while ago I had fused internal force and spirit energy and brought off the Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade with a sheet of paper. Back then it came to no more strength than lifting a teacup with the Empty-Air Grasp. Now that my internal force had reached sixty years, I wanted to find out how much stronger the Empty-Air Grasp had grown.

Sixty years’ worth — I ought to be able to lift about twice a teacup’s weight, oughtn’t I?

A small inkstone caught my eye. An inkstone would come to more than the weight of two teacups. I stretched out my hand and let spirit energy and internal force pour out, and the inkstone rose smoothly into the air.

“Hm!”

I was startled. When I had lifted the teacup with the Empty-Air Grasp before, I had felt the heaviness of lifting a lump of iron of the same size.

As it is now, the inkstone feels no heavier than a writing brush.

From that I realized that when internal force goes from thirty years to sixty, it has only doubled while the ability increases several times over. I marveled at it as much as anyone would have, since no martial-arts book set down the feelings and the experience of a man who had grasped each level of attainment.

This was why a teacher was needed. A teacher was one who handed down his own experience.

“In that case!”

I set the inkstone down and fixed my eyes on the sword hanging on the wall. Fusing sixty years’ internal force with the spirit energy raised by setting my three spirit energies turning, I attempted the Empty-Air Grasp.

— Shrring!

The sword slid out of the scabbard hanging on the wall.

— Whirip!

The sword that had come clear of the scabbard was drawn into my hand in an instant.

“So this is the Empty-Air Grasp!”

I tried out at once a thought that had suddenly come to me.

— Fwoosh!

The Samadhi True Fire burst out of my hand. The flames leapt up as though firewood had been put into a brazier, and they ran up the sword and settled on the blade.

A Samadhi True Fire made with internal force could not have clung to a blade. The only thing that could become one with a sword through internal force was sword qi. But the Samadhi True Fire I had summoned was half spirit energy, so it wrapped the blade and burned there on my will alone.

“It might as well be called a torch.”

An absurd remark came out of me. That was how bright it was.

“A flame sword, is it…”

I was deeply moved. A mere scholar was now called by the byname the Scholar Divine Sword and had risen into the ranks of the absolute powers, and on top of that I could fetch a sword to me with the Empty-Air Grasp, which they say only absolute powers can manage.

Beyond being proud of myself, I found myself wondering if this was all right. Fear, not pride, had come first. A power of this order is one a man can only manage once he is transcendent-peak.

I could not boast of this anywhere. For a while I shall have to keep this astonishing power a secret of my own.

The secrets piling up on one another were wearying, too. And at the same time I was curious how much more ability I could get if I gathered still more internal power in the dantian with the Flying Dantian.

No. Let me not get excited. To live in this rough world, I ought to be hiding not three parts’ worth of my ability but half of it.

Once I had put the excitement down, my head went cool and a number of things fell into order. Even in circumstances as favorable as these, there was one thing that kept me from enjoying the good feeling to the full. I still had not perfectly interpreted the words of the last oral formula of the Heaven’s Net Internal Art.

The perfect man has no self.

The words meant that in one who has reached the ultimate the thing called the self disappears, and what they meant within the Heaven’s Net Internal Art I had not yet grasped.

This seems to be an enlightenment that wants time.

I breathed, and let go of my impatience.