Change Begins

The next day I begged Eun-bi’s pardon, sent her over to Cheong Yo’s carriage, and handed the Ice Palace’s martial learning down to Yeo-seol. There was not much to hand down, in truth. She had already read the secret manuals, and one explanation from me was enough for her to understand them outright.

“It just made sense to me.”

She had only to hear the name of an Ice Palace martial art to unfold its moves on the spot, and when I marveled at it and asked her how, that was the answer she gave me. I had given people that same answer myself often enough, so I only nodded.

“But how does Brother know all of the Ice Palace’s martial learning? You aren’t even from the Ice Palace.”

“I learned it by reading, the same as you.”

“Wow. Is my Brother a genius or something?”

I looked at Yeo-seol a while and then stroked her head.

“Mm, that’s right. Yeo-seol, were you careful in front of Sister Cheong Yo and Sister Song-ran, the way I told you?”

“Of course. Am I a baby? Brother made such a point of it, so of course I was careful.”

She talked as though she had grown up before her time, but with the baby fat still on her cheeks it was only endearing.

“You must never send out true qi or unfold a move except in front of me.”

By now Yeo-seol understood on her own that the dance she used to do was a kind of martial art. She knew too that cutting a flower with a twig was true qi, and that no child her age could do such a thing. Remembering what it had cost me to teach her those notions brought a wry smile up in me; I had in fact put more work into planting them than into her studies.

I watched Yeo-seol’s body take in the qi of nature and turn it into true qi. Trying to find an internal art suited to her, I called up every one I knew, and not one of them would do.

Shall I try teaching her the Nine Nether Dark Prison Internal Art? It is an internal art for handling spirit energy and ghost qi, so with Yeo-seol taking the qi of nature in just as it comes, it might well be possible. And if the Nine Nether Dark Prison Internal Art does not suit her she need simply not run it, so there is nothing that could go wrong.

There was a reason I would not teach her the Ice Palace’s internal art. Once a dantian has been formed with it, energy can never again be gathered in that dantian by any other internal art. An internal art that stresses one side of the energies alone carries its own failing; it cannot grow. The schools of the Daoist line taught a balanced energy, and their growth was near to limitless. The Wudang Sect and the Mount Hua Sect were not strong by accident.

No. Yeo-seol takes the qi of nature in through her whole body and forms true qi with it, so there is no need for her to master an internal art at all. She need only know the sword strokes. She can send sword qi out of a stick, so let us have her master a martial art built to that.

I said to Yeo-seol.

“Yeo-seol. From now on I’m going to teach you one of those dances with a stick.”

“Brother.”

Yeo-seol cut me off and spoke gravely.

“Mm?”

“Would you stop treating me like a child?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“A dance with a stick? Just call it a sword technique. I know that much by now.”

Was this what a father felt, seeing all at once that his daughter had grown up? No. Was it rather what he felt when she announced out of nowhere that she had a man she liked and brought him home?

What is this feeling of betrayal?

More than anything, Yeo-seol’s mind was outgrowing her body, and the change startled me a little more with every day that passed. The proof was that she was reading all sorts of books on her own now, and what she picked up from mixing with people was wearing the childishness off her.

“All right. I’m going to teach you one sword technique. From now on, if you ever have to use a sword technique, use that one. Nothing else.”

“Hmmm, so what Brother means is, don’t use the Ice Palace’s martial arts?”

“That’s right.”

“All right. I know something of the ways of the world by now, so don’t talk around it — say it straight.”

“I will.”

To look at her she was every inch a little girl still, and yet inside she was turning into a young lady by degrees, which did not leave me feeling especially pleased.

“Which sword technique are you going to teach me?”

She was a child who could not keep her mind on her letters, and yet at the word that she was to learn a martial art her eyes shone as they did at nothing else.

“It’s a sword technique of the Namgung Clan, one only the very greatest masters learn. The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique.”

“Ah, I know it. They said that one’s a tremendously strong sword technique.”

I wondered who she could have heard such talk from.

“Who said so?”

“Our old gentleman landlord. He said if I’d be his daughter he’d teach me that sword technique.”

A laugh escaped me in spite of myself.

This fellow. Of all things, luring a little girl in with a sword technique?

Worried, I asked.

“Did you do anything in front of the landlord, by any chance?”

Yeo-seol shook her head.

“No. He said it while telling me I have very good bone and sinew.”

“He’s never read your pulse or anything of that kind?”

“Of course not! I don’t even let him stroke my head when he tries.”

“Well done. Even if Sister Cheong Yo or Sister Song-ran try, you must not let them. Understood?”

Masters past the transcendent peak, Namgung Hak among them, had only to run true qi into her body to find out her true worth. Men of that level could read a person’s bone and sinew from a look alone, so let one of them lay a hand on her and send true qi through her, and he would catch on to what Yeo-seol was at once.

The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique I am teaching Yeo-seol, I teach purely in my standing as Protector of the Person. A Protector of the Person is entitled to that much.

I conferred the entitlement on myself.

The Twenty-Four Plum Blossoms Sword Technique is strong enough to stand comparison with the Boundless Azure Sky, but it is not a martial learning one may master without the Mount Hua Sect’s leave, so I cannot teach it.

I passed the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique’s oral formula on to Yeo-seol as far as its twelfth move, with a detailed interpretation and explanation besides. Not having to explain a thing two or three times over was a fine luxury.

“Do you understand?”

I meant to go over anything she had not understood, but Yeo-seol shook her head.

“I’ve got the gist. If I try it and get stuck, I’ll ask Brother.”

Even sword learning of the highest order was no obstacle to her. I watched her swing a wooden sword this way and that all morning, getting the feel of the technique, and it set me thinking. I turned over whether leading Yeo-seol into the world of martial learning was a good thing to be doing.

I teach her martial arts so that she can protect herself, since she is not an ordinary child — but I do not know whether it is the right thing.

If she could not live an ordinary life, better to guide her, I thought, so that she could go out and carve open a life of her own. But the thought wavered every time I looked at her, because somewhere along the way I had stopped seeing an Ice Sacred Body, or a child left in my keeping for a while, and started seeing my own family.

As it came on toward noon her concentration must have slipped, because she spoke up.

“Brother, let’s rest a while before we go on.”

At her word I had the carriage stopped. The place we halted at happened to look out on the skirts of a mountain of handsome scenery.

The coachman spoke.

“Scholar. I shall fetch water from the village to water the horses.”

“Please do.”

He shouldered the water buckets and climbed toward the slash-and-burn farmers’ village visible on the mountain’s skirts. Half an hour later he came back with a dismayed look on his face.

“What is the matter?”

“They say there is no water in the village.”

“No water? There is a stream in sight over that way — how can there be none?”

“From what I heard of it, the owner of the mountain has dammed the brook and cut the water off.”

“Oh no!”

The owner of the mountain had made a move to drive the slash-and-burn farmers off, by the sound of it. The settlement ran to some twenty households, which made it a hamlet of forty or fifty souls. It was out of the way, but having water of its own had probably let it grow to a good many households for a slash-and-burn village.

“They have not even water to drink, so I could get none.”

But Yeo-seol saw the business with the feeling of a little girl still, and she flew into a temper.

“Brother, if there are wicked bastards like that, I’ll give them a hiding myself. How can anyone cut the water off and try to kill people with it? Water is a part of nature. How can a person own it?”

Only Yeo-seol, who had no notion of ownership, could have said such a thing. Namgung Cheol-ung and the other two had nothing to say back to it, since explaining the circumstances of grown men would get them nowhere with her.

“I shall go up to the headwaters and draw water.”

That was Namgung Cheol-ung. There was no other way for the moment, so I gave my leave.

“Do that. It will be hard work alone, so let two of you go and bring it back.”

At my word Namgung Cheol-ung and Namgung Hwa-jun shouldered the water buckets and ran up the mountain with their lightness skill.

A little while later some of the slash-and-burn farmers who had seen us resting came over to us. In bowls carved out of wood they brought something baked from ground sorghum and corn, much like a spring pancake to look at.¹

“We have no water, but do have some of this at least.”

Yeo-seol took it gladly and ate.

“It’s good. Brother, you try some.”

When Yeo-seol handed me a spring pancake I ate one too. That she had taken it and eaten without a shred of suspicion did worry me, but I could not refuse the goodwill the slash-and-burn farmers were holding out.

Namgung Pyo, though, would not put the food to his lips. Warriors of the great houses did not lightly take food from outside unless it came from an inn or an eating house, a rule handed down in the clans from long ago. In such matters I was still a long way from a martial artist’s life.

In the end we finished the spring pancakes off between us, Cheong Yo and Song-ran included.

Yeo-seol gazed quietly at the slash-and-burn farmers and then spoke to me.

“Brother.”

“Mm?”

“There’s no water here. Can’t we dig them a well?”

Yeo-seol remembered that the Namgung Clan had wells here and there and that water had been hers to use as she pleased.

“Digging a well takes a long time.”

“Even if it takes time, can’t we do it for them?”

At Yeo-seol’s words, a middle-aged woman who had brought the spring pancakes spoke.

“Oh now. It is kind of you to say so, but in our hamlet there is nowhere fit to dig a well. My young lady. There is nowhere the water would come out.”

A boy of about Yeo-seol’s own age, who had come with the middle-aged woman, added a word.

“When it rains you just catch the water.”

When Namgung Cheol-ung and Hwa-jun came up with the water buckets on their shoulders, unfolding their lightness skill, the slash-and-burn farmers realized we were martial artists.

“Whoa! Are you of the murim?”

The boy looked at us with longing in his eyes. For the first time in his life he was seeing before his own eyes the people of the murim he had only ever heard tell of, and he was beside himself. His mother soothed him and stayed wary, though. She knew what sort of human beings martial artists were.

When I said nothing, Yeo-seol spoke.

“Brother. Something Brother taught me a while ago during our lessons comes back to me.”

“What?”

“You said it when we were studying Mencius’s Four Beginnings.² That a person with no heart to pity others is not human.”

I had never thought she would fetch up “Without a heart of compassion, one is not human” and fasten it onto this. Still, knowing how to put what she had studied to use was admirable of her.

Cries of admiration went up here and there at that. I sank into thought for a while.

Digging them a well would take time and I did not much care for it, and yet the slash-and-burn farmers’ plight was too pitiable for me to pretend I had seen nothing. In such cases the general thing is to pretend not to see in the end and go on one’s way. It is not one’s own business, so one can put it out of mind without much trouble. But now that Yeo-seol had taken hold of the heart of compassion and made an issue of it, pretending not to see was no longer possible. On top of that everyone doted on Yeo-seol, and there was no letting her expectations down.

“I’ll have a look for groundwater. If there’s water we dig the well, and if there isn’t we give it up.”

“I can compromise on that much.”

Yeo-seol settled it so cleanly that a hollow laugh came out of me.

This one is turning more and more into an uncanny creature.

I went into the hamlet and set the spirit energies turning. Three of them turning at once let me sense the flow of water qi. The water qi of the trees nearby came through, and the moisture around me caught in my sense for qi, but no flow of groundwater made itself felt beneath the ground, so I turned them a little faster. The energy strengthened at that, and the water qi came through strongly.

Walking about the hamlet, I felt a large body of water qi beside a great slab of bedrock. Standing there and running my energy down, I sensed a vast flow of water. Groundwater, it had to be.

“Digging here should do it.”

When I said there was water here after nothing but a walk about the place, they all looked as though they could not believe it. Master or no master, grasping the presence of groundwater was not a thing anyone could easily accept.

“There is no telling how many days it would take with a pickaxe, so let us scatter sword qi here and dig the ground out.”

The suggestion of using sword qi to dig the ground turned every eye on me.

“Is there some reason it cannot be done?”

Namgung Cheol-ung, Namgung Hwa-jun and Namgung Pyo were martial artists, and using sword qi to dig the ground seemed to strike them as a kind of insult; their faces reddened. To my mind, if sword qi was of use in a piece of work then by rights it ought to be used, but to men who held sword qi sacred the notion came close to sacrilege.

“Is the living sword the Namgung Clan speaks of something else, then?”

The living sword was an old precept handed down in the Namgung Clan: that the sword be used not for killing men but for saving them.

The three of them heard me out, thought it over carefully, and nodded.

“What Master Scholar says is right. If our sword qi can dig the ground and let a great many people wet their throats, then that is the living sword. That’s no small thing to have learned from it.”

I looked at them and smiled. They had taken my meaning exactly.

“Drinking the same water, a snake makes poison of it and a cow makes milk. Whether our martial learning is to become poison or milk differs according to our own hearts, does it not?”

They listened the way men listen when their teacher hands down words worth keeping, and then answered.

“We shall keep it firmly in mind.”

To begin with, Namgung Cheol-ung got a pickaxe from the slash-and-burn farmers, broke the surface of the ground with it first, and then struck down with sword qi.

— Whump!

Dust puffed up from the ground where the sword qi struck, and a hollow was gouged out of it.

“Eh? It works.”

They had never dug ground with sword qi and had not known it would work, and their astonishment showed. I said to them.

“Good. When one man tires, take it in turns and dig.”

The three of them dug with sword qi, and when it grew hard used the pickaxe, and so were able to dig more easily than they had expected.

“Wow! You really do dig well. Nicely done.”

Yeo-seol was so delighted that she clapped her hands, and the sight of it left me feeling good about the whole business, late as it was making us. I had worried that she might have taken on the coldness that is the basic temper of the Ice Palace’s martial artists along with everything else. Seeing that she could not pass by another person’s distress like this, I was set at ease.

A chivalrous spirit is not some distant, lofty thing. Is a heart that knows how to look back at people in difficulty not a chivalrous spirit itself? If chivalry is done with a heart like this, then the chivalrous hero is not so far away after all.

To my eyes, Yeo-seol delighting over the digging of a well and Cheong Yo’s party cheering the three men on to raise their spirits looked like chivalrous heroes, every one of them.

Oh no! At this rate the three of them will drop.

Answering the women’s cheers as they were, the three of them looked likely to do themselves an injury, and I clicked my tongue. Cheered on by beautiful women for the first time in their lives, they were plainly out of their senses.