True Nature Comes Out

Namgung Hak seemed moved by it; he looked at me and broke into a broad smile, and Jeon I-an dabbed her tears away with a handkerchief and smiled at me as well. No words spoken aloud could have carried that much admiration. All around us the maidservants and menservants quietly blotted their own tears on their sleeves.

Namgung Mu-baek came over to me.

“Master Scholar, I want to learn the qin.”

It came so far out of nowhere that I stared at him wide-eyed.

True enough, at his age a man runs on impulse. Still, a martial artist wanting to learn the qin — that is absurd.

Martial learning and music were different worlds.

No — come to think of it, they might be the same thing. To me, music and martial learning had always looked like one world.

Just as a great melody strikes the chest and carries a moving strain in it, the higher martial arts had that same flow to them.

Just so. There is no call to set martial learning apart from nature, or from men. Martial learning is only a very small part of nature.

Every time I looked at a martial oral formula I came away with the same thing. The higher the art a formula belonged to, the more it resembled nature. Put it the other way round. A man who knows nothing of nature, nor of the human beings who live and breathe inside it, nor of the art those human beings make, will find the ultimate truth the martial artists talk about a very long way off.

“Very well. But you will have to listen closely to what I say.”

“Of course.”

Whatever might be said of his letters, Namgung Mu-baek was confident that music he could study properly. And he had his reasons for going at the man almost like a child demanding to be taught the qin.

When I heard Scholar Cheon’s music, I grasped a piece of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. To think the insight of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique should be sitting inside music.

He had asked Scholar Cheon because, in his own way, he had worked something out.

In truth, the mood around them was already enough to tell that Scholar Cheon’s playing had been the finer of the two. There was no need to go asking anybody. But Jegal Do-won could not bring himself to accept it.

“Miss Cheong, I would have the girl you brought with you give the judgment.”

Someone who could not see might well call his the better playing.

“Speak. You may say honestly what you thought of it.”

At Cheong Yo’s word the girl opened her mouth, her eyes still closed.

“I cannot see, so I have no way of knowing which of you was playing. I will tell you the music exactly as I heard it. If what I say should be a discourtesy to either of you, I ask your pardon. Before music I cannot tell a lie.”

She bowed deep and courteous, hands clasped, and parted her red lips.

“Listening to the pieces you two played, I felt I should never in my life hear better, and I was sorry the whole time after the playing stopped. I had thought Sister Cheong Yo’s playing the finest there was, but hearing the two of you, I felt as though my eyes had been opened.”

For a girl who could not see to say her eyes had been opened was praise of the highest order.

“Sister Cheong Yo, forgive me. The two of them were better than your playing.”

Cheong Yo smiled.

“What nonsense. I know perfectly well that you cannot lie. Had you lied, I would have been disappointed. And I felt the same as you did.”

The exchange between the two of them was proof enough that the blind girl did not speak falsely.

“The music of the one who played first felt like a martial artist dancing with a blade in his hand. The dance was splendid and stately. But it felt as though the flowers around him were being cut and wounded by that sword dance.”

“Eh?”

“That girl — is she really blind?”

Doubtful voices went up here and there.

“Why do you say so?”

Somebody asked, and somebody answered.

“Look at the flowers around Young Master Jegal. The petals are all shredded and holed through.”

“Ahh!”

At that, every eye in the crowd went to one place.

Jegal Do-won turned with the rest of them and looked at the flowers. Not one petal, not one leaf among the blossoms was whole. The damage was fine enough that you had to look closely to catch it.

The girl who could not see had described his music exactly.

“Hmmm!”

The internal qi he had let out riding the notes had wounded the flowers around him without his ever knowing. Had anybody been standing near him, they would have taken an internal injury.

“The second playing brought to my mind flowers swaying in warm sunlight and a gentle breeze, and butterflies flying about among them. It was as though I could smell the flowers, and as though I were a butterfly myself.”

“Ahh!”

“How can she know it without seeing!”

I spoke to the girl.

“Hahaha. Ever since I learned music I have grieved that I had no Zhong Ziqi of my own — and here my Zhong Ziqi was all along. Might I ask your esteemed name, Miss?”

The girl went red and answered.

“I am a girl of no consequence who cannot see. I could not bear such words from a young master.”

“Not at all. There is no rule that a person must be somebody in order to know music.”

“This girl’s name is Song-ran.”

“I am called Cheon Tae-san. I have a piece of my own composing, and I should like to hear what you make of it some time.”

“Then the honor would be mine.”

Cheong Yo crossed to Jegal Do-won and drew something out from inside her robe.

“Young master, I came at your asking, but I have been of no help to you. I will return the money I was given.”

“Keep it! Do you take me for a skinflint! Thrusting money at me, of all people! A worthless courtesan.”

Jegal Do-won flew into a rage.

“I am sorry.”

She had meant nothing by it, and she had fanned his temper anyway.

“Then when next you come to our tower, I shall receive you as my guest.”

Cheong Yo withdrew, the awkwardness plain on her face.

Jegal Do-won knew that at a moment like this the fine thing to do was to refuse calmly. But will it as he might, his true nature came out of his mouth and out of his face, and that made him angrier still with himself. He knew it laid his own want of self-cultivation bare, and even so he could not hold it down.

“Damn it all!”

And so the coarse words he let out only when he was alone slipped free on their own. Whenever things would not come right for him, his true nature rose up like this. This time it passed through the temper he was already in, twisted crooked, and leapt straight from his mouth.

“Mu-baek. Take up a wooden sword! We have a sparring match to hold.”

Watching Jegal Do-won spit out so abrupt a thing, Namgung Mu-baek clicked his tongue inwardly.

Tsk, tsk. He has gone off his head. The hellion has turned into a bolting colt.¹

He picked up the wooden sword that had been set ready and stepped out at his leisure.

“Shall we, then? Shall we see whether Young Master Jegal’s skill has come on since last year?”

He walked out onto the open ground with the air of a senior handing down instruction to a junior.

This is not how it goes.

Whenever he threw out a provocation like that, Namgung Mu-baek had always come at him raving like a madman, which was why putting him down had always been easy. Somehow it felt as though the arrangement had been turned around, and his insides sat very badly. His stomach acid came surging up and his gullet burned, as though he had swallowed a potato scalding straight out of the kitchen fire with the steam still coming off it.

A keen martial edge came rolling through the Demon-Repelling Garden, and the maidservants and menservants drew well back.

Before he went over to Jegal Do-won, Namgung Mu-baek came to me.

“Master Scholar.”

Cheon Tae-san smiled a little at that. Namgung Mu-baek, who before all this had used no honorific with him at all, now attached one as easily as breathing.

“What is it?”

“Listening to High Mountains and Flowing Water just now, I got hold of one thread of the insight of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. Is the direction I am going the right one?”

“Insight is different for every man who feels it. How should I have any part in yours?”

“Hearing High Mountains and Flowing Water, I felt the fourth move. It is as though I nearly have hold of it and not quite.”

Cheon Tae-san thought the boy was going in the right direction. The oral formula of the fourth move ran much the same way to Cheon Tae-san’s own feeling, after all.

“The fourth move, as I felt it, was Bo Ya cutting the strings. How would it be for the young master to try becoming Zhong Ziqi?”

“I am to become Zhong Ziqi?”

Just as Namgung Mu-baek was about to ask something further, Jegal Do-won spoke irritably.

“So you learn martial learning off a scholar as well, do you. Are you asking him to tell you where my weak points are? Why is the talking so long.”

He was scraping at Namgung Mu-baek’s nerves to shame him.

“Young Master Jegal, a man may indeed learn martial learning from a scholar. Is the road of martial learning laid down for martial artists alone? Confucius said that when three men walk together, one among them is sure to be his teacher.² If a man is a martial artist, then surely, for the sake of fathoming his art, he must ask whoever stands before him whenever he does not know. That is how I see it, and it saddens me that Young Master Jegal Do-won does not seem to see it the same way.”

Water running down a green mountain could not have run smoother.³

The Namgung Mu-baek of before could never have so much as thought of such a speech.

Ease is what draws out a wide field of sight. Tense up and the sight narrows.

Now that he was leading the situation instead of being dragged about by Jegal Do-won, his mind and body had settled, and his field of sight had opened wide enough to take in what stood around him.

The feeling of kicking at empty air over and over brought the irritation up in Jegal Do-won. This was how he had always put Namgung Mu-baek down to his face, and in those days there had been nobody watching, so it had never wounded him very deeply.

Today he was the one being shamed, and by the very method he had used to shame; his blood seemed to run backward.

“Tsk, tsk. There’s talk that Jegal Do-won is the Jegal Clan’s hidden dragon, but his character is nothing at all.”

One of the onlookers muttered it.

“They say he’s the finest set of bones the Jegal Clan has turned out in a hundred years. I can’t say I expect much.”

His own words were already eating away at the estimate people held of him.

Watching his youngest take Jegal Do-won to task, Namgung Hak was filled with feeling.

“My dear, our youngest is scolding Jegal Do-won, and quoting the classics at him while he does it.”

He said it to his wife half boasting, so pleased was he with the boy.

No answer came from Jeon I-an, and when he looked over she was wiping away tears.

“What does it matter if he loses the sparring match. Seeing our youngest stand up so boldly to a person of the Jegal house, I find I want nothing more. It was a hundred times well done of you, my lord, to bring Scholar Cheon here. It has been worth more than coming into a thousand pieces of gold. Thank you.”

Namgung Hak took her hand.

“He is changing by degrees. I think we shall not need to worry over him.”

The youngest son who had earned the disgrace of being called a hellion had always been the worry of them both.

He was, in the fullest sense, a sickness lodged in the heart and belly.

And now that such a son had begun, little by little, to give off light, how should they not be glad.

Jegal Do-won’s mouth twitched at Namgung Mu-baek, who stood there in a daze with his opponent right in front of him.

This bastard dares to stand in front of me and think about something else?

He started to say something to bring the man to his senses, then stopped and drove straight in with his wooden sword instead. Getting caught while you were not paying attention was hardly the bearing of a martial artist either.

Inside Namgung Mu-baek’s head the scholar’s words kept clinging and would not come away.

Become Zhong Ziqi? Then that means I am to think of Jegal Do-won as Bo Ya.

What Scholar Cheon had said, plain as it was, came to him as something profound. Then he saw Jegal Do-won coming in at him and dodged in a hurry.

Sunk in thought though he had been, he had kept Jegal Do-won in mind. The man was fond of dirty tricks, and he had not let his wits go wandering altogether.

Ah!

Inwardly, Namgung Mu-baek cried out in wonder.

That is it! When Scholar Cheon told me to become Zhong Ziqi, he meant that I should understand my opponent!

He had been confused, taking it to mean that he should think of Jegal Do-won as Bo Ya and love him, or forgive him. That was not it at all.

If he understood the man, he could read his attacks. He had dodged the last attack, which came at him like an ambush with no warning, precisely because he understood Jegal Do-won.

Until now I never tried to understand Jegal Do-won — only his martial arts. That is why I could never read his changes and his tricks.

He attacked Namgung Mu-baek, still deep in thought about something, and somehow the way the man kept dodging so well was maddening.

And so Jegal Do-won threw out a provocation he had no need whatever to throw out.