The Power Gained From A Fortuitous Encounter

Dantians of spirit energy formed in thirteen spirit meridians all at once, and the spirit energy ran on out into every last capillary meridian.

So this is the soul-changing rebirth that Esoteric Buddhism speaks of, the thing akin to the bone-changing rebirth.

The bone-changing rebirth alters even a man’s appearance, but the soul-changing rebirth worked by spirit force left mine exactly as it had been. It is the soul that undergoes the bone-changing rebirth instead. The soul changes as well, and because the body now took in spirit energy freely, mine had been remade into the most ideal one there could be.

Wholly unprepared, I had walked into a cave under the lake and stumbled onto this stroke of fortune out of nowhere, and it left me dazed.

But what is it that has changed?

My body had become the ideal one for taking spirit energy in, and on top of that the spirit energy had made dantians in the spirit meridians. In the course of it, the spirit energy that had filled the cavern vanished into my body, and through it, I understood by instinct.

Absorbing Namgung Mu-baek’s energy stretched my lifespan by some five years — and now the limit on my lifespan is gone altogether.

The soul-changing rebirth had come, so my soul and my constitution had changed, and with that change even my lifespan had changed.

On the chance of it I set the spirit energy turning, to see whether even one more had been added. But the spirit energies that turned were three, and no more, which meant, in the end, that nothing but the Seven Stars wheel-energy turned.

Having absorbed all the spirit energy of the cavern, though, I felt energies I had never felt before. An inner elixir sat inside the imugi’s body, and I could feel even the ones in the bellies of the tortoise and the fish. I drew out the inner elixirs of the imugi and of each of the spirit creatures.

And then it struck me that I was not holding a torch.

“As bright as this?”

The torch had gone out long since, and yet I had so little trouble seeing that I had not even noticed.

“With the spirit energy brimming in me, my night eyes have sharpened too.”

It was not only my eyes. The flow of the water qi came to me more clearly than before, and I could sense flows of energy I had never felt until now.

I gathered the spirit elixirs. The imugi’s inner elixir was the size of a child’s fist, and gathering up the inner elixirs of every kind of spirit creature I had twenty in all, ranging from ones the size of a little fingernail to ones the size of a thumbnail. With them piled in one place I had nothing fit to carry them in, so I took off my long robe, put them in it and wrapped them up. A spirit creature’s inner elixir is a thing a fortune in gold could hardly buy, so I prized them dearly.

Just then several of them fell. The inner elixirs were shaped like beads, so if they fell they could roll and go into the water.

“No! Stop!”

If they went into the water I would have to dive and hunt for them, so I shouted it in a rush. And then, past all belief, the inner elixirs stopped dead before they struck the ground. When I looked at them and put my consciousness on them, they rose slowly into the air.

“So this is it!”

I had made spirit dantians in thirteen spirit meridians, my whole body was full of spirit energy, I had even undergone the soul-changing rebirth, and yet with no particular change to show for it I had been quietly disappointed. Now, with the spirit energy brimming, my consciousness alone was enough to lift an inner elixir into the air.

In murim terms, a faculty close to the Empty-Air Grasp.

This power was possible only because the object was a spirit creature’s inner elixir. An inner elixir is a thing brimming with spirit energy, and so it answered keenly to spirit energy. On the off chance, I tried to see whether a small stone lying in the cave would rise. But the stone did not stir at all.

Just as I thought — this works only because they are a spirit creature’s inner elixirs.

Since the inner elixirs answer spirit energy, I felt no weight in them. That was why I had been able to move the Flying Dantian with a finger, and now it seemed I could move the inner elixirs with consciousness alone. I held the belief that my spirit energy would reach all twenty spirit elixirs, and the moment I thought of floating them, they rose into the air.

“These inner elixirs have at least sixty years’ worth of spirit force piled up in them, so they will be no less hard than the Flying Dantian.”

With a jerk of my chin I sent one inner elixir flying at the wall.

— Whoosh!

— Thock!

The inner elixir flew and buried itself in the cave wall. Chips of stone came pattering down. When I put my consciousness on it, the inner elixir buried in the wall came free, and though it had driven through a wall of stone there was not a scratch on it.

The Flying Dantian was the same, and so were the inner elixirs. Moving on my spirit energy, they seemed to turn into something at nearly the level of a sword aura.¹

Could there be a stronger hidden weapon than this? The Dang Sect of Sichuan’s Sky-Filling Flower Rain is called the strongest hidden-weapon art in the world, but twenty spirit elixirs turning into sword auras and attacking would carry more force than that.

In high spirits I floated the inner elixirs in the air and drove them all into the wall at once.

— Thock-thock-thock-thock-thock-thock!

Twenty inner elixirs drove into the stone wall with force enough to sink in about a finger-joint deep. I raised both hands and took the twenty of them ten to a hand, and ten sat in one palm.

“With these there is no need to go learning martial arts. Who could dodge these inner elixirs? Fast as a lightning flash, and with the force of a sword aura.”

Even having gained a power so great, it did not feel real to me, and I stood a long while in a daze.

“With this much, I can protect Yeo-seol.”

That her safety was the first thing to come to mind told me I too held Yeo-seol dearer than anyone.

If I had been a martial artist and come by a power like this, I would have set out to conquer the murim, would I not?

A martial artist runs riot now and again, and it is always when he has come by a power he cannot govern. But even holding this power I could not grow puffed up with it. My own maturity of mind had gone past that, because in the end it is not force of arms that gives me happiness. Nor did I feel any such pull toward power as would overturn root and branch the life I had lived as a scholar.

“A martial artist has a martial artist’s life, and a scholar has a scholar’s life.”

Being able to use twenty inner elixirs as hidden weapons at will did excite me for a moment, but it cooled quickly. I gathered them all up and looked the cave over.

“Will I have cause to come here again?”

I wiped out every trace. I took even the torch, burned out long since, so that if somebody came in later and found the place they would know nothing.

“Ah — with every spirit creature’s inner elixir gone, will they be suspicious?”

Having said it, I looked again at the spirit creatures’ carcasses, and was startled. The carcasses that had lost their inner elixirs were going soft in that short time and beginning to rot. The imugi’s too had been stiff as a stuffed thing until a moment ago, and now it was half fallen in and melting away.

So it was the inner elixirs that kept the carcasses whole all this while.

At this rate nobody would even know the inner elixirs were gone, so whoever found this place would find no trace of an intrusion. Before long they would all have rotted away to nothing.

When I came out of the cave and returned to the village, the spirit energy that had been welling up out of the ground was no longer to be felt. I had all but absorbed the spirit energy in the cavern, so the spirit force itself was gone.

“There will be nobody seeing ghosts now.”

The village was close to Poyang Lake and not far from the Hyeoncheon Sect either, which made it a fit place for me to stay. One could go out on the lake and fish, and behind it fields ran to the horizon, land that looked good for farming. And with nothing here worth seeing, it would never be crowded with sightseers.

“I can bring the slash-and-burn farmers in here.”

To think that all of it, more than the eye could take in and out past the horizon, was my land drew a hollow laugh out of me.

“When things come right, they come right like this. It seems only the other day I was suffering on a pittance in the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps. I have risen in the world.”

I did not truly think this land was mine, either. I knew well enough that, whenever it might be, the Hyeoncheon Sect would take it back. Even so, it struck me that before then it would be a good thing to take in the drifters who wander with no land, as the slash-and-burn farmers do, and let them settle in a place of their own.

Out of nowhere, here I am doing the work of a shepherd of the people.

Whoever does it, is it not a good thing if it can be done? Did Yeo-seol not say it?

That a person with no heart to pity others is not human.

Out of the cave, looking at my sodden clothes, I remembered hearing that one dries clothes by giving off internal force, and so I gave off spirit energy. Until then, setting three spirit energies turning had not made the spirit energy especially strong; but now that I had opened spirit dantians in thirteen spirit meridians, setting the three turning sent out a spirit energy strong enough to dry the wet clothes in no time.

“With the spirit energy strong, it produces much the same effect as internal force.”

There was a pleasure in coming to grasp, one at a time, the things I had not known.

Water-weed clung to the dried clothes, and I slapped it off.

“Eh?”

As I beat at the clothes with my hand a flame suddenly rose from my palm, and I started violently. In my fright I shook my hand wildly. But the flame did not go out; it went on burning.

“It is not hot? Is it that this flame was kindled with spirit energy, so it does not burn me?”

At once I took a handful of dry grass and held it to the flame.

— Fwoosh!

To my astonishment it caught and blazed up. Only then did I spit out the one word that had been tickling at the back of my mind.

“This is very like the Samadhi True Fire. No — it is the Samadhi True Fire itself.²”

I realized that even without internal power, spirit energy strong enough could reproduce some part of what internal force could do.

“Could I realize martial arts of this kind? Things like the Samadhi True Fire, or the Empty-Air Grasp with the inner elixirs.”

I tried a few more experiments. Comically enough, experimenting brought me to see still more clearly that spirit energy and internal force are different powers. Used the way ordinary internal power is used, the spirit energy would not deliver its force. The stomping step, for instance, which any martial artist uses, I could not bring off even with my brimming spirit energy.

But when I set the three spirit energies turning and used my strength, I felt myself twice as strong as before. I could get both arms round a boulder the size of my own trunk and lift it without straining my back, a weight I would never have dared attempt. My agility felt twice as quick as well, so that only now had I come nearer to the art called shifting form and changing place, and the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork truly made me look like a ghost.

Watching a leaf fall from a tree, I was struck all at once by a thought.

The Plucked-Leaf Flying Blade, which they say only a transcendent-peak level of attainment can use. Could I do that?

I caught the falling leaf between my index and middle fingers, and then, with a flick of the wrist, I snapped it forward.

— Fwik!

The leaf fluttered in the air and drifted down. By this I understood that the power called spirit energy, or spirit force, cannot as a rule bring force to bear on a thing that has weight the way internal force does. The only power I could use freely as I pleased was the inner elixirs, and that power could stand comparison with what masters past the peak, at the transcendent-peak level of attainment, bring to bear.

And more: every time I take a Seven Stars energy I gain a power. Which means there is no telling what other powers I shall come to hold.

With the inner elixirs alone I could bring to bear the strength of the transcendent-peak level, but taken as a whole, I could be called only a peak master.

A scholar at the peak level of attainment.

Who would believe it?

This is why the talk keeps coming up: a secret weapon of the Murim Alliance, a joint successor, and the rest of it. And yet, having already let my abilities show any number of times, to call myself a simple scholar was a contradiction in terms. It was no different from deceit.

I fetched the poison men from where they had been left and brought them to the abandoned house in the village where I was to live. I unfolded the Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork with a poison man tucked under each arm, and I found it no trouble in the least. My strength had grown, but thanks to the enormous increase in spirit energy I was not even out of breath. A poison man is dangerous when he throws off poison qi; one who has gathered his poison qi in is not.

“Wait here.”

At my word the poison men sat down quietly on the chairs of the abandoned house. I looked at those lonely backs of theirs and let out a sigh.

Would they not sooner die than live like that?

Looking at the two poison men, I turned over what was to be done with them.

Would it be best to hand the poison men over to the Dang Sect?

I shook my head.

A poison man was once a human being too, and even now, with the wits of an infant, he is a human being still. If I handed them to the Dang Sect they would only be worked the harder as poison men. Would that be a better life for them? It is not as though they became poison men because they wished to.

The village was a place nobody comes to, which made it fit for keeping the poison men.

I went looking for my horse, to return to the Hyeoncheon Sect. The horse had carried me all this way well enough, and now, at the sight of me, it flinched, startled, and reared up. My spirit force must be so strong that it felt fear.

“Whoa, whoa.”

When I came near, it wheeled about and began to bolt.

“Hah, this wretch, really…”

People could not sense my spirit energy at all. That held even for a master of internal force. But animals, whose sense for qi must be of another kind, could feel it.

I ran to catch the horse, and chasing it I found I had come into the woods before I knew it. The beast that would not put on speed however I slapped its rump now ran for its life with me after it.

“So it could run that fast all along…”

I felt somehow betrayed by the horse. It ran faster than it ever had, but it could not shake off a man whose Nine Nether Ghost-Spirit Footwork had grown quicker still.

“You wretch, that is walk enough. Let us go.”

The horse snorted hard through its nose and then lowered its head. Unable to bear my power, it submitted.

I had mounted and was making to ride out of the woods. Just then my sense for qi caught the ring of weapons striking together and a man’s death cry.

Somebody is fighting.

I wavered a moment, then turned the horse’s head toward where the sound had come from. It might be that common people were being set upon by a band of brigands or a band of mountain bandits, and turning my face away would not leave my mind easy. A true scholar is one who cannot abide injustice even when he has no power; and now that I had come by power as well, to do justice was only right.

“Hyah!”

I rode hard down the forest path.