Chapter 11

“That Gwang-seon boy. Didn’t they say it’s been all of seven days and nights since he was initiated into martial arts?”
“That’s what I heard, yes.”
“And they’re setting him against Danho?”
“Moyong Bi asked for the pairing with Danho himself, I gather.”
“Whatever can he be thinking.”
“It’ll be a light bout, surely. The whole point was for the boy to observe, wasn’t it.”

Moyong Danho was far and away the finest of the Moyong Family’s young of his own age, and nobody thought it undeserved when he was counted among the rising generation. Diligence was simply his nature; he had never missed a single day of training, and the others trusted him enough to make him their captain. Under him they trained all together and cheered each other on. Many hands make light work. Banded that tightly around Danho, they could just about endure even the hardest training, and word had begun to go quietly around that thanks to him this year’s Dragon and Phoenix Conference might be worth looking forward to.

He was no dullard to begin with, either. If Moyong Rin was the genius who would come after Moyong Bi, Danho was a gifted talent the family could be proud of in his own right, and one who had never let it go to his head; in ten years and more he had not once allowed his training to slacken.

And this boy was to fight that Moyong Danho?

“Heaven-sent genius or not, that makes no sense.”
“Danho will go easy, I’m sure. It’s only a light sparring bout. Come now — there’s a great deal to be learned from crossing hands with boys your own age. At that age they grow by squabbling with one another.”
“…He doesn’t look as though he means to go easy at all.”

Moyong Danho’s eyes never left Moyong Gwang-seon, and they were blazing with fury.

He dares look away with me standing right in front of him?

His opponent stood right across from him, and Gwang-seon would not spare him so much as a glance.

“Grrrrr….”

He was glaring at Moyong Bi, who had come out to referee for the day, and killing intent poured off his red, bloodshot eyes in streams.

So I’m not even in his sight? Why, the insolent—!

“Begin!”

The instant Moyong Bi lifted the hand that had been barring the two of them apart,

— Tak!

Gwang-seon hurled himself at his opponent, quick as the wind, and gasps of admiration burst out here and there in the stands.

“Oh!”
“Quick, isn’t he. Has Gwang-seon learned the lightness arts?”
“My good man. He’s barely taken up the mind arts — and he’d be learning the lightness arts already?”
“Ah, is that so?”
“Makes one look forward to how fast he’ll be once he does master the lightness arts.”

Gwang-seon had learned no lightness arts. He had simply fixed on the shortest line to his opponent by instinct and unfolded the fastest footwork he had.

A headlong charge, pure and simple!

A tiger bursting out of the undergrowth would have looked much the same. A little clumsy, perhaps, but the momentum behind it was the real thing.

If there was one small problem,

it was that the object of it was not Moyong Danho.

“Huh?”
“Where’s that boy going?”

Gwang-seon, his eyes on one man and one man only, swung his wooden sword.

“Die!”

A ferocious thrust.

Moyong Bi slipped it with nothing more than a small step to the side, as though he had been expecting it, and then planted a plain, unadorned side kick in the charging boy’s belly.

“Kugh!”
“…”

Watching Moyong Gwang-seon roll over and over, kicking up dust,

the crowd was lost for words.

“Now hold on — why is he attacking the referee, who’s done nothing?”
“Er, hmm. Is there some deep intent behind it?”
“Feinting at the referee to strike Danho? Has he grasped the principle of illusion already?”

Not a chance.

Moyong Bi clicked his tongue as the boy hauled himself up, growling like an animal. A few loving blows for his own good, and Gwang-seon had turned into an outright wild beast. Just look at those eyes of his. Not a scrap of reason left, nothing but wildness.

Still, trusting that the boy had not truly become a beast, he tried reasoning with him in a gentle tone.

“Gwang-seon. Your opponent right now is not me.”
“Diiie!”

Moyong Bi sighed.

So I’ve gone and raised a black-haired beast.

But Gwang-seon’s wooden sword never reached him.¹

— Fwsssh—

A wooden sword came flying at Gwang-seon, ferociously fast. He broke off his charge and rolled forward on instinct, out from under it, and when he sprang to his feet glaring, there at the end of that glare stood a young man with a face as resolute as rock.

Moyong Danho.

“So you’ll look this way at last.”

He had never had the least intention of retrieving the sword he had thrown. The boy was a greenhorn all of seven days and nights into martial arts, was he not, while Danho had honed his own martial arts for over ten years and stood proudly among the rising generation.

I can hardly use a sword against someone who hasn’t even properly learned martial arts.

The moment that beast’s eyes, full of killing intent, finally settled on him,

Moyong Danho traced the Supreme Ultimate slowly with both arms² and set his stance.

Diligent in all things, he had not neglected the fist-and-foot arts either. Looking into eyes brimming with wildness, he crooked a finger at the boy.

“Come. I’ll teach you the difference in class.”
“Kraaagh!”

Gwang-seon charged.

He closed the distance in an instant, and Danho was faintly startled. For a greenhorn barely initiated into martial arts, the momentum was fierce.

But that is all.

Danho gathered the incoming fist softly into the arms still tracing the Supreme Ultimate, turned on the spot, and used the boy’s own force to fling him away behind him. A clean posture with nothing wasted in it, as though an illustration out of the textbook had come to life.

The Moyong Family’s young let out a cheer.

“That’s Danho for you!”
“Show the greenhorn how it’s done!”

But this was no time to be taking it easy. Flung through the air, Gwang-seon did not sprawl on the ground. He landed nimbly as a cat, kicked off, and came charging straight back in.

This brat—?

Unruffled, Danho caught the oncoming leg and hurled him back, and once again Gwang-seon landed clean and pressed his attack without delay.

“Kraaagh!”

Is this an animal or a man?

The boy’s sense of balance was astonishing.

And so the fight went on. Gwang-seon charged; Danho turned the charge back on him and threw him this way and that.

“That’s Danho, all right.”
“Every movement precise as though measured with a ruler.”
“Even his fist-and-foot arts at that level. You can see plainly how little he neglects his training.”

The grown-ups of the Moyong Family praised Danho with warm smiles.

“Haha! That Gwang-seon. Danho’s playing with him completely!”
“All that genius, genius talk. There’s nothing to him, is there?”
“Whatever they say, he’s no match for Danho!”

The family’s young chattered away in high spirits.

“Honestly, how a reckless little savage like that ever got into the Moyong Family, I’ll never know.”
“My point exactly.”

Nothing about Gwang-seon’s headlong charging was the least bit like the Moyong Family. Where the Jegal Family are devious and the Paeng Family have nothing but dull brute strength, the Moyongs have long preferred to conduct a match with care and elegance. First they probe, measuring their opponent’s level slowly, then unfold answering moves to match it and press in, little by little. Every avenue of escape is stopped up one by one, until the opponent is bound to collapse of his own accord. In the end, with every move broken, he panics, blunders again and again, and, steeped in the most wretched sense of defeat inside a despair he cannot escape, sinks to his knees of his own will.

A perfect victory, in the truest sense. One nobody can help but acknowledge. There is a reason for the saying that the Moyong Family wins in the end.

That is the Moyong Family, in pursuit of a match that perfect and that beautiful.

And here was Gwang-seon, charging in like an animal, no questions asked³. A spectacle, truly.

Danho, flinging him this way and that as he came, was likewise conducting the match exactly as he had been taught, erasing the boy’s options one by one. Unrefined chaos was losing its strength beneath a solemn and stately order.

“Danho! You don’t need to be that careful against him!”
“That’s right! Just blow him away! So he never acts up again!”
“Finish it already!”

The crowd, too, had already decided how it would end.

“Hmm. It’s only natural, but he’s still no match for Danho.”
“It can’t be helped. It’s been all of seven days and nights.”
“Gwang-seon will take a great deal away from this match. He’ll certainly grasp that charging in blindly isn’t the only answer.”

Only one man.

Only Moyong Bi, refereeing the duel from closer to it than anyone, was smiling.

“Kraaagh!”
“Hyah!”

Danho, for his part, was finding it harder and harder to shake the charging boy off. Gwang-seon still could not lay a hand on his body, but the margin was narrowing bit by bit.

He’s grown in that little time? Impossible!

Loath as he was to admit it,

Danho could not help acknowledging the boy’s talent.

A genius really is a genius, it seems.

Danho accepted it humbly. Someday, far ahead, the boy would surpass him.

But that day is not today.

He let nothing slip and bent his whole focus on the match. He had thrown his sword away and was meeting the boy with fist-and-foot arts, true, but he could hardly let himself lose to a greenhorn of seven days and nights.

“Come, Moyong Gwang-seon! I’ll teach you the Moyong Family’s martial arts good and prop—”

— Grab.

“Got you.”
“…!”

Gwang-seon had a fistful of his robe at last, and Danho’s eyes went wide.

But.

“So what?”

A palm strike holding the principle of heaven and earth landed square on Gwang-seon’s chest.

— Bwaaang!

Gwang-seon flew back and rolled across the ground. Danho brushed himself down and turned to Moyong Bi, the referee.

“I believe that’s the end of it.”

Moyong Bi’s mouth curved up.

“Is it, though?”

Danho followed his gaze and found Gwang-seon already standing there, motionless.

Am I actually going to have to break an arm or a leg?

Danho clicked his tongue and set his stance. But Gwang-seon did not charge.

“…I see.”

He stood with his head lowered, muttering something.

“Why I couldn’t reach him until now.”

Gwang-seon raised his head slowly. The eyes that had held nothing but wildness were glittering now with intelligence.

The air about him has changed.

Somewhere in the balance between reason and wildness.

“Now I get it.”

Gwang-seon murmured it quietly, and then,

— Tak!

In that instant he vanished from sight.

He’s coming!

— Kraang!

Danho barely got an arm up in time to block Gwang-seon’s wooden sword. The blow was heavy.

Zzrrr— a numbing tingle came surging up through his arm.

What internal energy is this—!

It made no sense at all, not for a boy a bare seven days and nights into martial arts. Gwang-seon gave him no time to be astonished and swung the sword again.

Huh? That’s—?

Moyong Bi, watching the fight closely from the side, went wide-eyed. Wasn’t there something awfully familiar about the sword art the boy was swinging?

Did I teach Gwang-seon the Moyong Sword Art?

Except that where the Moyong Sword Art is focused on defense, the one Gwang-seon was swinging was decidedly aggressive. And that it still held the art’s principle intact was nothing short of uncanny.

Heaven and Earth became a sword and were swung. Fist and foot, with the Supreme Ultimate graven into them, met it.

“Huh? Huh—?”
“He’s fighting him on even terms?”
“What on earth—!”

The watching crowd was aghast.

“Impossible!”
“That greenhorn is holding even with Danho?”
“This has to be a joke.”

Confusion broke out among the Moyong Family’s young.

— Kraaang!

Danho gritted his teeth and stood against the boy’s Moyong sword. Gwang-seon was swinging as though possessed, and his blade grew keener and more precise by the moment. Even in this instant he was growing.

Fear swallowed Danho whole. At any moment this genius, come dancing down out of the sky, seemed about to overtake him.

The days he had thrown himself into training, day and night, flashed before his eyes. All the blood and sweat he had shed beyond counting. Was every last bit of it meaningless?

No. It is not.

— Thoom—

Danho’s hard fist knocked the sword aside.

My ten years and more were not in vain.

He drove a fist deep into the chest that had opened of itself.

“I will not lose to you here!!!”

In that instant, time slowed. Gwang-seon’s left hand, the sword knocked from his grip, slid smoothly out and gathered Danho’s fist softly in.

Huh?

— Whoosh—

Danho’s fist split empty air. Gwang-seon had not dodged. Danho’s own fist had gone curving around him.

A lurch.

With his full weight behind a punch that had missed, Danho lost his balance and staggered.

“…!”

He felt as though a ghost had bewitched him. As though someone had struck him on the back of the head with a hammer. He stood blankly for a moment, then looked at Gwang-seon with a face emptied of soul.

“…That, just now. Did you copy it from watching me?”

Gwang-seon did not answer. Instead he set the sword firm and upright in his right hand, and with the other drew a soft curve.

“That’s—!”

— Clatter!

The elders rose from their seats as one, their eyes wide enough to start from their heads.

“…Astonishing.”

Moyong Jin-seong, head of the Moyong Family, who had watched all of it in silence, rose slowly from his own seat as well and murmured with disbelief on his face:

“Right hand, Heaven and Earth — the overlord’s way walked; left hand, the Supreme Ultimate — softness subduing strength….”

The right hand walks the overlord’s road on the force of heaven and earth, and in the left dwells the principle of the Supreme Ultimate, so that softness breaks what is strong.

“And that is the Way of the Moyong….”

Leaving Moyong Jin-seong murmuring it like a man in wonder,

— Thump.

Moyong Danho sank to his knees. He had been overwhelmed by Gwang-seon’s preposterous martial talent.

“What… on earth are you?”

Just as he was about to answer Danho’s question,

Moyong Bi came over and raised Gwang-seon’s hand high.

“The winner — Moyong Gwang-seon!”

— Waaaaah—!!!

Only then did the cheering burst out like a broken dam. The Grand Training Ground seemed fit to come apart.

In that moment, with everyone rejoicing at the birth of a young genius,

“Me?”

Amid the pouring applause, with a face half wildness and half reason, Gwang-seon answered Danho’s question.

“The greatest waiter in the gangho.”

And then he swung a fist hard into the solar plexus of Moyong Bi, who was still holding his arm aloft and rejoicing as though the win were his own.

“Kuhuk!”

Ambushed out of nowhere, Moyong Bi folded in half at the waist,

and only then did Gwang-seon smile, clean and unburdened.

“I finally reached him.”

Moyong Danho’s mouth fell open.

“…Is he out of his mind?”

Watching from the stands, Moyong Rin put a hand to her forehead.

I looked at Moyong Bi rubbing his solar plexus, beaming all the while.

“…You hit hard, don’t you. Was the teacher who preached his lessons in a spirit of self-sacrifice so very hateful to you?”
“I only did as I was taught. An enemy won’t wait for you politely — that’s what you said, isn’t it?”

Ahh, is this the enlightenment the murim warriors go on about? Beat Moyong Bi, and the knot that has been sitting in my chest like undigested food slides right down. When I think of all those nights I couldn’t sleep properly, groaning my way through qi circulations to recover from the hidings he gave me… I’m nearly moved to tears.

“Serves you right.”

Big Bro Un-cheon chimed in from beside me, cackling.

“Beating on the boy like you were clubbing rats. You had it coming.”
“And who was it egging me on that I could hit him harder?”
“Big Bro?”

I shot him a betrayed look, and Big Bro Un-cheon dodged my reproachful eyes and smoothly changed the subject.

“Matching Gwang-seon against Danho, of all people. Did you have some inkling he’d win?”
“No? I just thought he’d learn a fair bit from someone else beating him for a change. And he did come away with something, didn’t he?”
“…”

What in the world is the wiring in a murim warrior’s head made of?

And since it actually worked, I can’t even say anything.

I grumbled once inwardly, then spoke up.

“Anyway — you’re going to teach me martial arts as promised, right?”
“I am. You seem to have the basics reasonably in place now, so it’s time to move on.”
“Yesss.”
“The Moyong Sword Art you stole in the first place is the martial art that underlies every sword art in the Moyong Family, so… good grief. You’re likely the first ever to steal the Moyong sword in under a week.”

Moyong Bi shook his head slowly and asked:

“So which martial art do you want to learn first? Sword arts? Palm arts? Or the fist-and-foot arts Danho showed you?”
“Obviously….”
“Obviously?”

To the two of them, watching expectantly for whatever I would say,

I answered without hesitation.

“The lightness arts.”
“The lightness arts?”

To the two of them looking at me as though it were the last thing they expected, I nodded firmly.

“Yes. I want to learn the lightness arts before anything else.”

A lavishly appointed reception room.

The door opened and a giant of a man in armor came in.

“You sent for me?”
“Sorry to call you in when you were resting.”
“Not at all. Please, go ahead.”
“General. Have you heard of the Bursting Fist Demon?”
“The public enemy of the murim, you mean?”
“In a place called Fallen Star Village, one of the prefect’s favored subordinates was killed by the Bursting Fist Demon, so I’m told.”

The General’s thick, bristling brows twisted savagely.

“That ruffian dared lay hands on a man in the service of the state?”
“He did. I’ll trouble you with it, General.”

— Crrrk—

“Have no concern. I’ll fetch you the head of that day-old pup who rampages about with no notion of how fearsome the world is. Where am I to go?”
“We sent people to search, but his trail has apparently gone cold.”
“He’s gone to ground, then.”
“There’s a waiter the Bursting Fist Demon took with him. Two of them went up into the mountains, they say, and only the waiter came back down.”
“A strange business.”
“We traced the waiter’s movements, and it seems he made for the Moyong Family.”
“The Moyong Family?”

Why should the Moyong Family come into it all of a sudden?

“On the day the waiter left Fallen Star Village, a Moyong Family carriage is said to have come to the village.”
“He’s certainly no ordinary boy. I’ll go and ask him in person.”
“I leave the choice of men to your discretion, General. Pick and take as many as you judge fit.”
“Is there any need for a cumbersome expedition to catch one disobedient colt? I’ll be back before long.”