My Constitution?

I learned medicine because of my mother. We went to physician after physician and got nothing for it but the expense, so I trusted my own good head and set about studying medicine myself.

The Murim Alliance was a nest of predators, but to a scholar like me it was also nothing less than a treasure vault. It held martial manuals and rare volumes of every other kind besides, so I could finally read books I had wanted for years and never once managed to get hold of. That was why I stayed on with the Inspection Corps under every kind of pressure; the post let me come and go from the martial repository and the secret vault. In those days I turned over every relevant book in both of them, hunting for word of the Auspicious Spirit Flower, the one thing that could cure my mother.

And I did find a lead on it. Following that lead up, though, was going to take a carefully laid plan, because it pointed into the territory of the unorthodox sects. A place swarming with predators more savage than anything in the Murim Alliance.

The Alliance had no shortage of physicians, a dozen or more of them in permanent residence. I cultivated their friendship and learned medicine from them, and apart from the Inspection Corps the Medicine Hall was where I spent most of my time. What I never expected was that a study begun to cure my mother’s illness would carry me past the physicians who taught it. Acupuncture and moxibustion first, then herbology, then the meridians and pulse diagnosis, and by the end of it I had gone well past the level of any neighborhood physician.

Which brought me to a realization. I was gifted not only in letters but in a good many other fields besides. To test it I took up the great flute with a musician I had befriended at the Alliance, and once he decided I had an ear for music I was press-ganged into the qin as well.¹ Before long I was playing better than the Alliance’s own qin players, and it grew awkward enough that I took my hands off the instrument for good.

“Scholar Cheon! Scholar Cheon, you are a musician heaven itself sent down. Will you not pursue the study of music together with me!”

He clung to me so persistently that for a while I stopped setting foot in the Alliance’s Music Bureau.

“Could it be that I have a talent for martial learning as well?”

One final question, at the end of it all. And to settle it, in the end, I put my hand to martial learning too.

The Alliance keeps a few martial arts open to its new scholars, picked out from the great schools with some care. I read the oral formula and understood it at once. I recognized it for what martial artists call the ultimate truth, the thing they are supposed to arrive at only at the very end of the road. And I had reached it off a single reading of the formula.

But isn’t that obvious? I’ve already worked my way through the Daoist and Buddhist scriptures, and I’m at home in astronomy, the esoteric arts, medicine, music, poetry, calligraphy and painting — so a martial formula is as easy to make out as the Thousand Character Classic.²

Every time I heard martial artists say they had meditated on one for years, or delved into it for decades, I honestly could not tell whether I was the strange one or they were all blockheads.

How does anyone train a martial art with a head of rock like that?

The formulas really are that easy. Watching a man puzzle for years over a single line of one was beyond my understanding, and this was a rising talent, no less, rumored to be the genius of a great house. Passing him in the archive one day as he sat clutching his head, I stole a glance at the title and the formula.

Twenty-Four Plum Blossoms Sword Technique

To my eye the formula was a text stuffed with metaphor and simile, symbol and implication. Every advanced formula I had seen in the Alliance’s secret archive took the same form, a safeguard of sorts, no doubt, so that a leaked text would still be unreadable. Whole lines of it meant nothing to anyone who did not know the symbolism studied at the Mount Hua Sect, and read literally it would never yield the intent of the man who composed it.

But you would need the learning of a metropolitan graduate to make even a little of that out. Why write it so hard?

For martial artists who had walled themselves off from learning, the formula was far too difficult. Its sentences would not crack under a hundred days of agonizing if your scholarship fell short of them. And some formulas were composed like poems. What chance did a man who had never once properly recited a poem have with those?

That was when I understood. The men who created these martial arts long ago had the learning of scholars. As the ages passed and their successors concentrated on martial learning alone and built no scholarship at all, the higher martial arts became hard to interpret.

“With every passing age the number of absolute masters dwindles. Is talent not what it once was?”

I heard some master lament that once, and turning it over later I decided the whole approach was wrong. What they do not realize is that the further they drift from learning, the fewer of them come to grasp the higher arts.

Which in turn raised a question about myself.

“Why does everything come so easily to me?”

At first I put it down to simple genius, but once I felt how easily even martial learning came to me I went looking into what the people of the murim call constitution. And I found something that resembled my own.

“This is actually me?”

I was reading a volume in the Murim Alliance archive on the constitutions of martial artists, and I dropped the book. What was laid out on those pages made no sense at all.

The Heavenly Martial Sacred Body.

An intellect that grasps ten things from hearing one, and muscle that acquires ten things from performing one. The body most perfectly made for mastering martial learning, equal to having achieved the bone-changing rebirth. That was the line that knocked the book out of my hands.

The bone-changing rebirth was the ultimate goal every martial artist pursued. Nearly every special constitution carries the drawback of a short life, and in the case of the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body the drawback was fatal.

“The Heavenly Martial Sacred Body carries the fate of the Pojun Star³, and it can sustain its life only by absorbing the energies of six people who carry the fates of the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper. Failing that, once past the age of twenty its madness erupts and its lust swells to the utmost, and it may become a madman, or the foulest ravisher of the age.”

“This is my constitution?”

But every talent and trait that had shown itself in me so far pointed to the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body. Stamina that never flagged though I trained no martial art, and five senses sharper than any ordinary person’s. That was what sharpened my concentration once I passed twenty and made learning come easily. Even before twenty my memory had been good enough that study gave me no trouble, but after the constitution manifested nothing I read once was ever lost to me again, and picking up anything new became absurdly easy.

I had gone on doubting it even so, and what finally made me certain of my constitution was my mother. According to the book, one of the two parents of anyone with the Heavenly Martial Sacred Body is invariably born with a special constitution of their own, the Ziwei Supreme Star Body.⁴ That was why no medicine and no needle had ever had the least effect on her. Exactly one medicine could cure her, and it was an herb nobody could say still existed.

“Scholar Cheon!”

Setting needles into a patient for the first time in a long while, I had let the old days go flickering past me like images in a revolving lantern. At the moment I was at work in a teahouse on the street by the Namgung Clan’s north gate.⁵

For several days I had been making small talk with the people who worked in Namgung Mu-baek’s quarters, slipping in mentions of how good my medicine was, and every one of them had begun to show me goodwill. Someone in a family is always ill, and people of their station would never have had proper treatment in their lives. That was the gap I aimed for.

“Three days from now, have them all gather at the Cheongsim Teahouse by the Namgung Clan’s rear gate. I cannot make time to see them one by one, so I will see them all at once.”

Six people staffed Namgung Mu-baek’s quarters: two maidservants in attendance, two menservants and two guards. The patients who agreed to come that day numbered five, mostly their parents and their brothers and sisters. When I took all five pulses and named their symptoms one by one, some of them were openly amazed. Having their ailments identified exactly, these simple people treated me as though I were a master physician. I even wrote out the prescriptions myself and handed them over. Ordinarily a prescription like that meant seeing a physician and paying a great deal of money.

“Please take at least this much, Scholar.”

An old woman carefully set out three eggs she had brought from home. She was the aged mother of Eun-bi, the maidservant who had broken the water bowl the other day while I was speaking with Namgung Mu-baek.

“No, no. Take these back with you. Some of the herbs in this prescription are expensive.”

I had written them prescriptions, but these were people without the money to buy the medicine. So I simply sent someone off with money in hand, telling them to have all five made up as written.

“Oh, Scholar. You do this and we will not know how to face you.”

“It is quite all right. Are we not all one household? We have to serve Young Master Namgung, so we had best help one another. I came into a windfall recently, and that is what is paying for the medicine — so please do not worry.”

While the medicine was being prepared, I set needles for the three who needed them, and that was when the teahouse’s proprietress came over.

She turned out to be a young woman, and a considerable beauty at that, which surprised me a little. Most teahouse owners, man or woman, are middle-aged. Still, this was the commercial quarter around the Namgung Clan, so I supposed a beauty might well keep a teahouse here. It had been the same in the commercial quarter around the Murim Alliance, where a fair number of the shopkeepers were beauties. The Alliance always swarmed with martial artists, and martial artists meant money, so plenty of women either hired young beauties or ran the shops themselves.

“Scholar, it is uncomfortable out here. Do come into one of the rooms inside to set your needles.”

“It seemed an imposition, so I did not like to ask.”

“As I see it, the Scholar is giving his medicine to people in difficulty — surely I can manage that much. And if I should fall ill later, might I ask you as well?”

“Hahaha. Proprietress, my medicine runs to first aid for my own household and no further. If you fall ill you should go to a proper physician.”

“From what I can see, your needlework and your prescriptions both look better than the neighborhood clinic’s.”

“You flatter me. If I go treating all and sundry it becomes unlicensed practice and I could find myself in real trouble, so I do it only for people I know.”

For a man who is not a physician to treat the people around him is no great matter, but treating others for money leaves ample room for trouble.

“You are not taking money for it. What is there to be a problem?”

The proprietress asked it with her eyes wide and bright, and I let out a short laugh.

“Does the world run on goodwill and the natural order of things? These are days when good intentions come back as ill ones often enough. One has to be careful.”

For a start, it would be a problem if Namgung Mu-baek seized on this as a pretext. Only those registered as physicians with the magistrate’s office were permitted to practice medicine, which was why I saw the household of his quarters and nobody else. Good works could buy a man goodwill only this far and no further.

Their circumstances being what they were, I pressed more than ten packets of medicine on each of them and went back to my own quarters. The maidservants and their families all clasped their hands, bowed, and thanked me.

“Thank you, Scholar. To be treated like this in my lifetime. Thank you, truly.”

The herbs alone came to a considerable sum, and every one of them shed tears at the treatment they had received from me. In truth it was calculated charity, meant to give me the upper hand in living with Namgung Mu-baek, and they were grateful even for that. Whatever the intent, if it made people happy, I was satisfied.

The wind does not carry dandelion seeds in order to make beautiful flowers bloom.

Once the scholar had left the teahouse, the Third Protector, the one playing the proprietress, tilted her head.

“He is an interesting one, no question. No wonder the Young Palace Lord took an interest. And treating the people close to him for nothing — the report saying his character is good looks about right.”

Presently another woman came over, and the proprietress bent at the waist toward her.

“Have you looked into him?” the Young Palace Lord asked.

At the Young Palace Lord’s question, the proprietress answered.

“Yes, Young Palace Lord.”

“Let me hear it.”

“The name is Cheon Tae-san, born in Wuhan in Hubei. Three years past twenty, and his house is the Cheon Family Estate of Wuhan in Hubei. Once a family of some standing in the region — a scholar-gentry house that fell when his father died and then his mother took ill as well.”

— Sip!

As the woman they called the Young Palace Lord drank her tea, the proprietress took up the report again.

“…He passed as far as the provincial examination, and while he was preparing for the metropolitan examination his house collapsed, so he took service with the Murim Alliance.”

When the Young Palace Lord went on staring at her, she added,

“I heard it said that had he sat the palace examination he might well have taken Principal Graduate.”

“Hmm. A man whose understanding has opened, then.”

“Just so. He is reputed to be even-tempered besides. But he has many enemies.”

“Why is that? You said his character was good.”

“During his service with the Murim Alliance he was posted to the Inspection Corps, where he is said to have distinguished himself uncovering and punishing corruption of every kind. Those he caught and stripped of office run from Corps Chiefs to Pavilion Masters to Hall Masters to Branch Masters alike. So there is no small number of men who bear him a grudge.”

“Still, he could not touch anyone with real power.”

“Not so. He risked his life digging into the corruption of a Murim Alliance Elder and dragged him out of the elder’s seat.”

As the Young Palace Lord’s eyes moved back and forth between interest and approval, the proprietress laid out the unflattering side this time.

“There are reports too that, perhaps because he came out of the Alliance’s Inspection Corps, he swears like no scholar should and is brimming with venom. At times his mouth is fouler than a street thug’s, and he is vicious enough that ghosts would trail after him — which is how he came by the nickname the Ghost-Trailed Scholar.”

But the Young Palace Lord paid that no attention.

“If he is that capable, why send him to the Namgung Clan? Why not keep him at the Alliance?”

“The Murim Alliance does not care for men who know the inner workings of the martial houses. They take the very fact that someone knows their disgraces as a humiliation. On top of that he brought down an Elder, so they will have been afraid, never knowing when they might become his quarry. In fact he came to the Namgung Clan in the middle of an investigation into corruption among the Alliance’s Grand Elders. The Alliance felt the weight of it too, no doubt, and sent him away.”

“Which is why the higher-ups of the Murim Alliance get called the hypocrites of the orthodox path. But is the man simply fearless? A mere scholar, digging into the corruption of the Alliance’s Elders and Grand Elders? He has done what even the Alliance Leader could not.”

The Young Palace Lord went on.

“Anything out of the ordinary?”

Even after everything in the report so far, the impression that came through strongest was of a rather special and gifted Confucian scholar. In the imperial palace alone there were any number of scholars called geniuses on the order of Scholar Cheon.

“In the course of the investigation I found a few odd corners. But nothing certain, so…”

This was a woman who, told to investigate a man, stripped him bare short of tracing his in-laws’ eighth cousins. Why she should be fumbling so today was a mystery.

“Let me hear it.”

“There was also talk that Scholar Cheon Tae-san knows how to handle martial arts.”

“Martial arts?”

“Yes. It came out of the Murim Alliance itself, so it carries weight.”

“Specifics.”

The proprietress, realizing that the Young Palace Lord’s tone had turned clipped, tensed.

“I obtained information that he fought a sparring match against a rising talent of the Alliance — one not quite first-rate — and won.”

“Ho. A sparring match with a rising talent close to first-rate? It wasn’t a mere debate on sword theory, was it? And who was the opponent?”

The Young Palace Lord’s speech went short only when she was angry or when her curiosity had been thoroughly roused, and the proprietress’s nerves were on edge.

“Paeng So-un, son of the Murim Alliance Elder Paeng Gyo-cheol. There were several other incidents of the same kind, so a rumor went around that he might be hiding his martial arts. But by all accounts the words have never once left his own mouth that he trained in any.”

“That so? And?”

“As you saw, he is remarkably skilled in medicine, and a fair number of people benefited from it while he was at the Alliance.”

“Watching his needlework, I could see he has gone past the level of a neighborhood physician.”

Working as a physician herself, the Young Palace Lord knew that better than anyone.

“I was startled watching him write out the prescriptions. I would be hard-pressed to write one more precise myself.”

Somewhere along the way her tone had become that of a woman ordering a subordinate about, but the proprietress did not mind. Her manner of speech shifting with her mood was simply who the Young Palace Lord was.

“Anything more?”

“This one took some work to uncover. Officially he was pushed out by the political fighting in the Murim Alliance, demoted, and sent down to the Namgung Clan as a rotation posting… but in truth it appears Scholar Cheon volunteered to come to the Namgung Clan.”

“Volunteered? Why? As you know, the Namgung Clan has Namgung Mu-baek in it, a hellion the equal of Paeng So-un — why go out of his way? If he had been worn down by Paeng So-un at the Alliance, I would have expected him to pick the Mount Hua Sect or the Wudang Sect, where the priests are quiet.”

“That reason has not yet been established. And this is unconfirmed, but…”

Watching the Third Protector’s mouth open and close on whether to speak, the Young Palace Lord chided her.

“Third Protector. When you are wondering whether to eat, do not eat; when you are wondering whether to do it, do it. When you are wondering whether to go, go; and when you are wondering whether to speak, speak.”