I'm The Teacher, You're The Student

Namgung Mu-baek set out a secret manual with the look of a man who had made a great decision.

The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique

I looked at the title of the manual, then up at his face.

Has he lost his mind?

The Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique was one of the Namgung Clan’s two supreme arts, a sword learning counted with the Emperor’s Sword Form among the peerless arts of the murim. The world at large knew its name the way it knew the Mount Hua Sect’s Plum Blossom Sword Technique or the Wudang Sect’s Taijiquan, and this was the sword learning that had raised Namgung Hak to the Three Swords Under Heaven. In the Namgung Clan a direct-line son took it up once he turned twenty and had reached a certain level. Fathoming it took a man his whole life.

Come to think of it, Namgung Mu-baek has reached twenty. He has the martial talent, and he has come a fair way with it, so they must have given him the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique. And he is expected to learn this on his own?

I picked up the book and asked.

“Is this not a secret supreme art of the Namgung Clan? Is it permitted to show such a thing to an outsider so freely?”

“Of course it isn’t. But I can. Because I actually want to learn it. Faster than my brothers.”

Namgung Mu-baek made no attempt to hide his ambition. A hellion was not a man without ambition; if anything, hellions paraded ambitions that outstripped their actual capacity, purely to be noticed.

Never knowing it was the shortest road to ruin.

“I don’t see Scholar Cheon, who served at the Murim Alliance, going about blabbing of this sword technique. You know the law of the murim.”

Naturally. Do that and my head would come off on a Namgung blade without so much as a mouse or a bird knowing of it.

“That is true, but…”

“All you have to do is read this formula and give me the interpretation. I only want to know whether it comes out the same as what I worked out myself. My learning is shallow, as you know, and I’m afraid of getting the reading wrong.”

At times like this he was honest enough. Then again, he knew that putting on a front about this too could drop him into qi deviation and kill him, so it was only natural.

I nodded.

“Very well. Since it is Young Master’s request, I shall give it a try. However.”

No sooner had I spoken than Namgung Mu-baek cut in.

“I know. That Scholar Cheon does nothing without a price. I’ll give you the money Scholar Cheon loves so much. If I get somewhere with this sword technique, I’ll give you a bank note for three hundred taels of silver.”

That was not what I had been about to say. He never let a man finish before leaping to his conclusion.

A windfall. Money is always wanted. Somehow I seem to be earning more than I did in the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps.

I answered with decorum. Anything else would have looked too grasping.

“It is not that I insist upon a price, but if Young Master offers it I shall not refuse.”

“The whole world knows Scholar Cheon is a miser, and here you are playing modest.”

He jeered, as though the three hundred taels had suddenly begun to smart. I helped myself to the opening he’d given me.

“Since you call me a miser, and while we are on the subject, you will have to give me half up front as a retainer.”

“What? Why, you—!”

“If you would rather not, never mind.”

When I set the manual down and made to rise, Namgung Mu-baek’s nose twitched. He heaved a sigh, went into the room, and came back out with a bank note.

“I’m the one doing the asking, but Scholar Cheon really is an infuriating piece of work. Not a taste of meekness in you.”

“Might Young Master look for that taste at an eating house?”

Unable to answer, Namgung Mu-baek flung the bank note at me and vanished.

“Bah! You jinx of a scholar! I hope you trip in the road and break your nose!”

I could hear him cursing me from beyond the moon gate. Still, he no longer swore at me to my face the way he once had, and that was extraordinary progress.

The oral formula of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique was beautiful, a poem in praise of heaven and earth and nature, and above all a song exalting the sky.

“Once I see the motions of the moves, I shall know the meaning of this formula exactly.”

Sometimes, if you moved with the meaning of a formula in hand, the meaning itself became the move. The Plum Blossom Sword Technique was such a case. It stood at the summit of illusion swordsmanship, and yet the moment you understood its formula the motions came clear. But there were times, as with the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, when the formula alone called no move to mind.

Which was why I found myself looking forward to Namgung Mu-baek’s training the next day.

“Hyah!”

There was no need to go so far as to shout. It only broke up the breathing. The higher the martial learning, the more a man had to husband every breath and govern it with the mind, and Namgung Mu-baek, who was all show, squandered his to no purpose.

“Kyah!”

“Hnngh!”

He evidently thought that was the presence of a master. Listening to it grated on me, so I spoke up.

“This sword technique requires you to husband every breath. Shouting only scatters your internal qi.”

“Hup—!”

Namgung Mu-baek, about to spit out another shout, shut his mouth at my words and walked through the form.

I had seen the moves of the Plum Blossom Sword Technique before, but the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique was a martial art of another order altogether. In the Plum Blossom Sword Technique every single move was soft as plum petals scattering on the wind, and at a glance nothing could have been more gorgeous. If that was like looking at a beauty who had put on too much ornament, this one gave the impression of an eagle riding the blue sky, lofty and haughty with it. Its attacks came as fast and as sharp as an eagle stooping out of the sky to snatch a fish from the water, and its defenses, if anything, were as exhilarating as that same eagle gliding.

A quarter of an hour later, Namgung Mu-baek steadied his breathing and lowered the wooden sword.

“This can’t be!”

He looked at me with startled eyes.

“What is it?”

“Up till now I couldn’t even get through the first move. I’d run short of breath and never finish it. Today, for the first time, I took the first move all the way through.”

I had only said it because the shouting irritated me, and hearing that it had produced a result drew a wry laugh out of me. It showed just how much internal qi he had been burning off on those shouts. Still, I answered as though I had intended it all along.

“The formula says to husband the breath. And as a matter of common sense, the higher the martial arts, the less breath one can afford to waste, would you not agree?”

“The formula says that? I’ve read it over dozens of times. Why didn’t I see anything like that? Where does it tell you to husband your breath?”

I put my finger on one place in the book’s formula.

“There is a passage saying it must be carried through with the steadiness of a candle flame that does not waver, is there not?”

“What about it? It means you have to hold your body that still.”

“Then why go to the trouble of saying a candle flame?”

“Ah. A candle flame that doesn’t waver means no breath is to leak out.”

I smiled. Happily, the passage did carry a line about the breath after all.

“That is precisely it.”

“That reading isn’t even in the family’s annotated copy. So this is what a scholar of metropolitan-graduate standard is? Impressive.”

At moments like this, hellion or not, a martial artist was a martial artist. His admiration ran on, and it was purely a martial artist’s.

“I’m genuinely astonished. Scholar Cheon, you’re something. But… the first move I somehow got hold of well enough to perform, and from the second move on I’m lost in the fog entirely. I go through the motions, but I can’t tell what the motions mean, so it never comes out right. Why is that?”

I felt that the moment had come. The time to settle what we were to each other.

“Then run it through in front of me first.”

“Run it through?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s right?”

“What, is something sticking in your throat? Got a problem? I’m the teacher and you’re the student. Isn’t that how it goes? If the one doing the teaching has to grovel to the one doing the learning, what sort of education is that going to be?”

“Hey! That’s exactly how it’s been until now!”

Namgung Mu-baek shot me a look with a faint edge of killing intent in it.

“That so? Then go and find someone like that. I’m the sort who keeps teacher and student separate. And here I was about to give you my reading of the formula from the second move on.”

I turned my back and muttered as I walked.

“A pity. Such a pity. Shall I go to the Second Young Master, then? I heard somewhere that the Second Young Master has been training the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique lately as well.”

I muttered it loud enough to be heard and made for the moon gate. Namgung Mu-baek was already standing in front of it, blocking the way with an awkward look on his face.

“Oh, come on!”

“Stand aside, Young Master.”

I said it politely, and Namgung Mu-baek answered.

“I’ll hear your reading of the second move’s formula, and then I’ll decide.”

“Young Master has no merchant’s honor. That is no different from sucking on a piece of rock candy and refusing to buy it if it doesn’t taste good. Is that a fair trade?”

“Why—! You scholar—!”

“Hm. I wonder how far the Second Young Master has got with his own reading.”

I turned my back and made to leave by the rear gate, and Namgung Mu-baek’s voice came from behind me.

“Fine! Only while we’re training, then.”

“Dear me. You might well be the only man of the Namgung direct line ever to reach the ultimate truth of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, and you are attaching conditions?”

“You’re that confident?”

“I am confident of my reading. Only, the result will differ according to the quality of the man performing the moves.”

“I don’t think my martial talent falls short of anyone’s. Hellion I may be, but the bones I was born with are outstanding.”

“Is that so? Congratulations. In that case I shall take my leave.”

“Damn it! You bastard of a scholar!”

“Hearing you say ‘damn’ brings Young Master Jegal Do-won to mind.¹ It occurs to me that I may well have an engagement tomorrow.”

I got right under his skin, and Namgung Mu-baek stamped his foot. He wore the face of a man who wanted to give his temper its head and beat me senseless.

“Fine!”

When I turned my head a little, he jabbed a finger at me.

“What you’re saying is that all I have to do is show Scholar Cheon some respect.”

“Just so. And no swearing, either.”

“The swearing’s a bit much.”

“Perhaps I should simply give a written reading of the formula to all the other young masters?”

Hearing me talk to myself, Namgung Mu-baek shouted.

“Fine. I said fine!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said… fine, sir.”

“Learning begins with respect for the other man. A very good beginning.”

“Agh. Honestly! If only he were no good with words.”

Namgung Mu-baek was starting to lose his temper; I frowned at him, and he let the words trail off.

“Master Scholar. They say blessings come to the man who endures, do they not?”

I could see Namgung Mu-baek gritting his teeth.

“Quite right. Patience and the mulberry leaf make a silk gown, as they say. Before long you will be looking at a Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique dressed in silk.”

“Then let’s get to the training ground, quick.”

I looked at him steadily, and he flinched and stretched the words out.

“…sir. Let’s go, sir.”

Perhaps it was because he had just set foot on the threshold of enlightenment. When I clasped my hands behind my back and ambled after him, he walked and stopped and walked again, waiting for me with an anxious face.

“Do walk a little faster. Master Scholar!”

Namgung Hak, curious whether his son was getting on with the scholar, told no one and quietly called in at his youngest son’s quarters. He moved without betraying the slightest presence, as furtive as an assassin walking in secret. The two of them seemed to be bickering over something, so he sharpened his hearing with internal force. If the boy was being foul to the scholar in word or deed, he meant to take him to task for it.

“…”

But the talk was strange. The son who used respectful speech only to his elders in the family, to Namgung Hak himself or to an older brother, was using it with the scholar. He had earned the name of hellion in the first place by talking down to nearly everyone, and talking foully at that. That such a boy should be flustered into deference before a mere scholar was a wonder.

Does Scholar Cheon truly have something in him that other men cannot see? I heard the rumor that he turned Paeng So-un, who was worse than my own youngest, onto the straight path, and I set my hopes on it, though I half believed and half did not. He really is changing the boy.

But as he listened a little longer, the talk turned to the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, and he was startled.

The boy handed Scholar Cheon the oral formula of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, to learn it faster than his brothers? He would have to be out of his mind.

However strong his will to win, how could he show a secretly transmitted supreme art of the family to an outsider so freely? He meant to watch what came next, give the boy a stinging rebuke, and drive a needle into Scholar Cheon as well. A man who had served in the Murim Alliance’s Inspection Corps would surely know the unwritten rules of the murim. The man might be an able scholar, able enough to turn his youngest onto the straight path, but this could not be allowed.

His youngest son performed the second move of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique in front of Scholar Cheon, and Namgung Hak, deciding he could stand no more, was in the very act of bracing his knees to spring down into the training ground.

“Mountains rise high, yet stand beneath heaven; waters run deep, yet flow upon the earth!”

Namgung Hak, on the point of vaulting the moon gate, went stiff as stone at the sound. He had come by that koan only recently, after more than twenty years of fathoming the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique and breaking through to it. And a scholar who had been at the main house barely any time at all had grasped it?

Gooseflesh was not the half of it. His whole body prickled and sang as though it had been struck by lightning.