The Ice Dragon's Manifestation

“I came by an enlightenment not long ago, and so I tried mixing martial arts together.”

“Indeed!”

Gwanryong Jin looked up at Cheon Tae-san and nodded.

“It is as the rumors have it after all.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Gwanryong Jin shook his head.

“It is nothing. Only that seeing the sword marks in the wall stirred my will to win.”

The admission came out of him honestly, with nothing held back.

“Assassins burst in and I fought them, that is all. I am a scholar and nothing more than that.”

“Is that so? I see.”

Gwanryong Jin ordered his men to clear away the broken door and the earth that had come off the wall.

“Tidy this up.”

Cheon Tae-san called for the innkeeper, who came up all nerves, watching for what was coming with no idea what would be said to them.

“Proprietor, I shall pay for the repair of the broken door and the wall. What would the sum be?”

“Ahh? Master Scholar Cheon, what is this you are saying?”

Gwanryong Jin cut in.

“An assassin came in and made this havoc, and you would pay for the repairs?”

Cheon Tae-san smiled wryly at that.

“Great Hero Gwanryong. It came about through an assassin’s attack, but look at it whichever way you like and the loss still falls on the proprietor. I am the party concerned, and I cannot pretend not to see it. It is not right that the proprietor should bear the loss alone.”

Cheon Tae-san paid the sum the proprietor named and sent them on their way.

“To spend money where there is no need…”

Gwanryong Jin muttered it like a man seeing such a thing for the first time in his life. Never once had he paid the price of what he broke raising a rumpus at an inn, an eating house or a teahouse. That, to his mind, was the keeper’s own business to bear. In the world of the unorthodox sects the weak must bow their heads to the strong.

“Consideration for the weak is hardly a virtue of the orthodox murim alone. Did the Supreme Mak Yeo-heun not say that a man who turns a blade on somebody who knows no martial arts loses the arm for it? He proclaimed that among the unorthodox sects the strong devour the weak in the world of those who practice martial arts, and not among the common people. Seeing that, the orthodox murim rates the Supreme’s principles highly as well.”

Gwanryong Jin weighed something in his mind for a moment, then put a question to Cheon Tae-san.

“As you see it, Master Scholar — what would a martial artist best do in order to grow strong?”

For some time now he had been feeling a wall in front of him, and how he might grow stronger was a thing he never stopped turning over. It made him curious what a scholar rather than a martial artist would make of it. Catch so much as a clue there, and he might raise his own level of attainment.

Cheon Tae-san gave a slight smile and answered.

“Hearing that question puts me in mind of something said by Great Hero Mak Yeo-heun, the Unorthodox Supreme.”

At the second mention of Mak Yeo-heun, Gwanryong Jin’s face turned solemn.

“‘All my life long I wandered madly in search of the highest martial art, and yet never once did I complete a martial art of my own’ — was that not it?”

“Yes. A famous saying of the Supreme’s.”

“Just so. It seems to me Great Hero Gwanryong’s answer may be found in the Supreme’s words. That before coveting what belongs to another, it is completing what is your own that makes you strong. To complete my martial art, my spirit, my body first — that is what matters. What belongs to another is a rice cake in a painting.¹”

“Oohh!”

Cheon Tae-san watched him marvel at the words and thought the man an innocent.

“Indeed! Here is a scholar worth the Supreme’s own invitation.”

Then his face clouded over.

“What is the matter?”

“Our Young Sect Leader is no ordinary man, and it worries me whether Master Scholar Cheon will be able to hold out.”

He was worried that so fine a scholar might come to harm at the hellion’s hands. For all that worry, Cheon Tae-san smiled.

Afraid that ill words about the Young Sect Leader might slip out of him, Gwanryong Jin shook his head and went down to the floor below.

I did not think the poison and the assassin’s attack had been set on by one and the same person. Every sign said the assassin had come for Yeo-seol and not for me.

He went from room to room making sure of his target.

Only the Ice Palace’s Elder Faction could know Yeo-seol’s identity.

It looks as though Elder Yu Yeok-rip, the one Jong So-bin spoke of, has had a hand in this business. And the poison was set on by Gal U-heon.

The Blood Cult was gone; Yu Yeok-rip and Gal U-heon had come onto the board in its place. The swap weighed quietly on me, because the danger had grown greater for Yeo-seol than for me.

Would it have been better to leave her behind at the Namgung Clan after all?

I shook my head. I had asked her once whether she could stay behind at the Namgung Clan, and she had clung to my arm on the edge of tears.

After seeing that look in her eyes — the look of somebody being thrown away — there was no leaving her behind.

I knew that feeling far too well to turn my face from it. They say a man clings to what he lacks rather than to his own happiness, and there I was, the very picture of it.

And then there was my own trouble. My judgment came down on the side of keeping Yeo-seol with me; leaving her behind would only have left me uneasy.

Right. Care will do it. And even if Yeo-seol falls into danger, the best thing is to build in her the strength to get herself out of it.

In that sense it came to me that I had better hand the Ghost Immortal’s martial arts down to Yeo-seol. I had never meant to go that far with her training, but this was no time to be choosy.

If she learns the Ghost Immortal’s arts, Yeo-seol will grow stronger still.

Yeo-seol was staring at me fixedly, like a cat, and I asked her.

“Yeo-seol, how did you manifest the ice dragon?”

“I made the azure dragon out of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, then poured the cold of the Ice-White Asura Sword into it, and it went white.”

“Hm.”

I had wanted something more detailed out of her, how she worked the moves and how her mind ran through them, but no better answer was coming.

A genius can do that. I heard as much often enough myself.

I took up the Azure Sky Sword and spoke.

“Watch. Like this, was it?”

I drew out the ultimate truth of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique to manifest the azure dragon, raised the internal force in my dantian, and poured in the cold of the Ice-White Asura Sword. The azure dragon’s shape went white from the tips of its feet, and the color stopped changing about halfway up its body. Six years’ worth of dantian was not enough to lay the cold over the whole of it.

“Hm, it’s a calico cat.”

Yeo-seol’s words came out with no thought behind them, and they wounded me. A calico is mostly white, with fur of two other colors besides, and even to my own eye the azure dragon had come out close to one, four white paws and all. She had not said it to mock me.

“It’s because your Brother here is short on internal force, so the freezing stops partway.”

“But I don’t even need a dantian.”

I had set Yeo-seol to study martial learning until she had a firm enough grasp of how martial arts are brought forth, and she had begun to wonder how she could manifest an ice dragon with no dantian at all. The time had come for her to know the truth.

“Yeo-seol, you’re a special child. You can use internal force straight away, with no dantian.”

Yeo-seol tilted her head.

“Yeo-seol has a body that can take in the qi of nature directly and send internal force out, without ever gathering it in the dantian.”

“Ah, so that’s why flowers just got cut off when I swung a stick, ever since I was little.”

“That’s right. And if you used that power on a person, the person would die, wouldn’t they?”

“So that’s why Brother told me over and over not to do this where there are people.”

She was working it out for herself.

“That’s right. And Yeo-seol will know this by now too. How long does it take a martial artist to gather internal force in the dantian and draw out sword qi?”

“Thirty years of training at the least, probably? And that’s if the talent is there too?”

Between what I had taught her and what she had seen and heard at the Namgung Clan, Yeo-seol had come to understand a great deal.

“And how old is Yeo-seol?”

“Me? Hmmm, well, ten-something or other, wouldn’t it be?”

With no memory to draw on she could not say her own age with any confidence; she could only guess at it from how far she had grown.

“And yet you throw out sword qi. Isn’t that strange?”

“It is. I never thought about it that way.”

“If other people saw how remarkable Yeo-seol is, what do you suppose they would think?”

Yeo-seol turned her eyes up at the question and blinked.

“Hm, would they dote on me? Hm, no. They’d be jealous, wouldn’t they? No. Or maybe, since I’m so good at it, they’d try to kill me?”

She still could not properly read what went on in people’s minds, and she laid out one possibility after another.

“If they were bad people, they would want to know how Yeo-seol does it, and they would carry you off. And then they would study you until you died.”

Yeo-seol shuddered all at once.

“I don’t want that.”

Most likely the memory of living as the Ice Sacred Body had risen in her.

“That’s why I tell you not to show your martial arts carelessly in front of people.”

“So that’s why we made it that Brother killed the assassin just now. Because it would look strange if I did the killing.”

“Just so. Now you understand.”

I stroked her head.

Someday this talent of hers will be found out; all I can do is hope it comes late. All I can do is stay at her side and shield her as best I can. And I have to grow strong enough myself that nobody else dares lay a hand on Yeo-seol.

Part of why I had come all this way was to feed internal force into the dantian that steals it.

“Yeo-seol, you have nothing to worry about. Just learn hard at the martial arts I teach you. Understood?”

“Mm, I’m not worried. Because Brother is here. Because all I have to do is do what Brother says.”

Strangely, the words were a comfort, and they rose into a smile. Having somebody lean on me and trust me was like hot spring water running through the heart. It filled an empty heart with a warm energy.

I saw Yeo-seol settled to sleep with Eun-bi and came out.

Thank goodness she is not uneasy. Anyone would be frightened, knowing that somebody had tried to carry her off.

The Hyeoncheon Asura Corps had moved into the inn and stood guard, glaring about them. It struck me as excessive, but there had been one attack already, and I could hardly stop them.

I went into my room and brought the dantian out. It was still no bigger than a thumbnail.

Calling this marvellous dantian simply a dantian will not do. I ought to give it a name.

I looked at it, floating there in the air, and spoke.

“How about the Thieving Dantian?”

The character meant to steal, so it might well have suited.²

“No, that’s a little weak. The Outer Dantian? Hm, too stale. In the sense of a thief — would the Thief Dantian be better?”

I let out a snort of laughter.

“Why do I keep fixing on the stealing? Even if the dantian does steal other men’s internal force, calling it a thief is rather much. Right — it flies about, so let us call it the Flying Dantian instead.”

I closed my hand around the dantian.

“From now on your name is the Flying Dantian.”

The character meant to fly, and it was an exquisitely fitting name.

“I shall make you a hundred and eighty years’ worth. Not many martial artists to this day have built a dantian of a hundred and eighty years.”

Whether a hundred and eighty years was the dantian’s allowed limit or not, nothing beyond that would gather in it. That is why a master of thirty years is called first-rate, and a master of sixty years is reckoned peak. Add thirty years at a time from there and the tiers divide into transcendent-peak, the Transformation Realm and the Mystic Realm, and at a hundred and eighty years it is called the Life and Death Realm.

Most martial artists die without so much as reaching the first-rate level, for the plain reason that they do not live that long. That was why they staked their lives on spirit medicines and on the inner elixirs of spirit creatures. If five years or several decades of internal power could be had in a single moment, there was nothing at all a martial artist would not do for it.

“The Hyeoncheon Sect’s Dragon Blood Pill will give somewhere between five and ten years of internal force too, I suppose?”

Then I could make a Flying Dantian with at least ten years or so of internal force gathered in it.

“And then the Flying Dantian’s power would be stronger still.”

I pictured it growing stronger once I had taken the Dragon Blood Pill, and a laugh came out of me of its own accord.

Look at this and who would call me a scholar? A martial artist in a scholar’s robes, they would say. There is a reason people keep believing the wild rumors about me. I have brought it on myself.

The wild rumors about me were of my own making.

Three thousand feet out in front of the inn, a small stretch of hill country spread away.

Up onto that hill country, twenty-odd men came climbing, in ones and twos.