Chapter 12

“Oh-ho. Dodging, are we?”

The master’s love came down on me like a hail of blows. Not to be outdone, I repaid it with a disciple’s love and lodged an objection.

“No, but it makes no sense. How is your weight supposed to disappear just because you take the strength out of your body? This violates the law of conservation of energy.”
“What’s he on about now. This brat. I know the law of conservation of your skull, though. Want me to teach you that one?”
“Do you really think an advanced course is possible without a proper understanding of the principles?”
“Fine. Must be nice, having such a hefty comprehension.”
“I’m the one who’s curious, actually. If you don’t know the principle precisely yourself, Teacher Yong-bi, how is it that you unfold the lightness arts?”
“This isn’t something you understand the principle of, it’s something you feel. Stop doubting and just feel it. You think I’d teach you rubbish?”
“That’s sophistry. Isn’t doubt a process that necessarily comes before understanding?”
“Agh, this little— You won’t concede a single word, will you?”

— Thwack-thwack-thwack!

“Enough. That’s enough, both of you.”

As the two of us went on fondly hurling fists and kicks at each other, True Teacher¹ Big Bro Un-cheon stepped in between us and played peacemaker.

Moyong Bi said, still puffing:

“Baek Un-cheon. You explain it to him.”
“Me?”
“This one’s marginally better than me at the lightness arts. Didn’t you say you go regularly to some lightness arts club or other?”
“Certainly. I am faster than Moyong Bi.”
“I said marginally.”

I had seen Big Bro Un-cheon’s lightness arts myself. A strange sort of movement, as though the middle had been deleted. He’d be standing off at a distance, and then in the blink of an eye he’d be right in front of you.

“How does one make the body light.”

And so began the lesson, taught by a man with an uncommon mastery of the lightness arts.

“I’d better explain this first. Where does internal energy come from?”
“From nature, doesn’t it?”
“Correct. A qi circulation is itself the act of using internal qi to sweep around inside the body and gather in a little of the natural world’s qi from outside. So what happens to our bodies when we work an energy that came from that natural qi?”
“…They get closer to nature?”
“That’s exactly it.”

Big Bro Un-cheon closed his eyes gently. A wind came and went, rummaging playfully through his hair.

“When I unfold the lightness arts, I sometimes feel as though I have become the wind myself. Assimilating a little at a time with nature. Turning into wind, that way. And somewhere in that process, the feeling of losing my weight, I suppose. That sensation of being freed at last from the pull of the earth.”
“Hm.”

Somehow I felt as though I understood it, a little.

So the heart of it is becoming one with nature.

“Did you get it?”
“A little, yes.”
“Good. Learn the rest from your teacher.”

Moyong Bi picked up the baton smoothly.

“Our Moyong Family has two representative lightness arts.”

I straightened my posture and made ready to listen closely.

“One is the Butterfly Step. The other is the Divine Cascade Step.”
“How do they differ?”
“The Butterfly Step means just what its name says, ‘the butterfly’s step’ — it gives you ornate, supple movement, like a butterfly flitting between flowers. The Divine Cascade Step, by contrast, is strong in movement along a straight line. As if flying, as if flowing. Sometimes with movement as violent as a waterfall. Good for closing the distance on an opponent, or for a chase.”

I summed up the two lightness arts in a single line.

“So the Butterfly Step is a curved lightness art, and the Divine Cascade Step a straight one.”
“Teach him one thing and he knows two. Makes a man want to teach.”

Chewing over Moyong Bi’s explanation, I remembered the footwork Moyong Rin had shown me.

“So the one Moyong Rin learned must be the Butterfly Step.”
“Teach him one thing and he knows three. You’re right. It’s mostly the women who take up the Butterfly Step. The men prefer to learn the Divine Cascade Step. Which will you try?”

The first thought that came to me in that moment was this.

Can I not learn both?

The Butterfly Step when the movement called for a curve; the Divine Cascade Step in every other situation. Wouldn’t that be better? I couldn’t see any particular reason it wasn’t possible, so I asked outright.

“May I not learn both?”

At that, the two warriors just stared at me, dumbfounded.

“What?”
“Good grief. There’s a limit to cheek. It makes no sense to begin with, skipping everything else to start with the hardest lightness arts. And now you’ll learn both at once? Oh, you’ll manage that beautifully, I’m sure.”
“They say a genius is different right down to his footwork. Turns out it’s true.”

No. If it can’t be done, then say so from the start….

“Well, if you insist on splitting hairs, there’s nothing that says you can’t.”

Moyong Bi flopped down where he stood and said:

“Right. Turn your back to me. I’ll start you on the Divine Cascade Step. Once you’ve got the whole of it down, take up the Butterfly Step as well or don’t, as you see fit.”
“Yep.”
“The Divine Cascade Step, as its name has it, is a lightness art that runs as if flying, as if flowing. No obstacle can hinder your step. Master it to the utmost, they say, and you can run through pouring rain without taking a single drop.”

Moyong Bi laid a hand on my back and drew out the meridian path for me, the way he had when he taught me the mind arts.

“You circulate your internal energy along the path I’ve shown you, and unfold the lightness arts as you do it. Understood?”
“Yes.”

Moyong Bi lifted his hand from my back and said:

“I’ll draw the meridian path for you once a day, so commit it to memory.”

— Beep—

The ring blinked.

A bar of the battery was spent,

— Vwooom—

and the meridian path was stored automatically.

I got to my feet and said:

“No need. I’ve memorized it.”
“…What? Already?”

Moyong Bi stared at me with a dazed look on his face.

“Even granting that it overlaps a good deal with the mind arts, you memorized that in one go? Don’t joke with me.”

Bouncing lightly on the spot, I ran my internal qi around the path.

“Oh, shit. He really has.”

— Bop— bop— bop—

I closed my eyes and hopped lightly in place, working at getting the feel of it. Ten-odd minutes of that, and there was still not the slightest sign of my body getting any lighter.

Hm. This isn’t easy.

The lightness arts were a far trickier martial art than I had imagined. A fist or a sword I could at least mimic, roughly; this was a story from an entirely different dimension.

“Don’t rush it. Circulate your internal energy along the meridian path Moyong Bi showed you. And think of it as becoming the wind.”
“Put it like that and it’s far too vague. Don’t think about anything else. Just kick off hard and take the strength out of your body, the way I said before.”
“That’s far too slapdash.”
“It’s better than wooly talk about becoming the wind.”
“Wooly talk, he says. Have you never heard of mental imagery? And you call yourself a warrior?”
“…Would the two of you please stop fighting.”

Kick off with everything I’ve got and take the strength out of my whole body?

Hard enough to say; harder still to put into action. I had taken it for nothing more than jumping hard. Why on earth was it this difficult? Nothing would go the way I wanted, and my face screwed itself up of its own accord.

A clucking chuckle reached my ears.

“I told you not to let your mind get ahead of you. The more it does, the harder this gets. As the saying goes, the greater the hurry, the longer the way round….”
“You brat. Even you will find it hard to get this on the first try. More than anything, it has to be backed by steady effort and a shining comprehension….”
“Do you mean to run before you can walk? Don’t get impatient — start by making the body light….”

— Bop— bop— bop—

Big Bro Un-cheon’s and Moyong Bi’s voices receded. As I gathered my focus, I stepped into a space where only I existed. The pitch-black cosmos.

What is it that I’m getting wrong.

First I threw out the method Moyong Bi had given me. I had done exactly as I was told and nothing had come of it. No, I had never properly understood what he meant in the first place, so how could anything have come of it?

The method is not the point. Whatever the method, reaching the goal is enough. The long jump is the same. Whatever your way of jumping, isn’t it enough that you jump far? The heart of the long jump is to jump as far as you possibly can, whether you jump off one foot or jump standing on your hands.

Then what is the heart of it here?

I called up Big Bro Un-cheon’s explanation.

The heart of it is becoming one with nature.

Moyong Bi’s explanation about kicking off hard and taking the strength out of the body was only one of countless methods for getting there. Just as that explanation had landed for him, I needed a method of my own.

— Bop— bop— bop—

I am nature. I become one with nature.

Nature… what is nature, anyway?

When I thought about nature… for some reason a cosmos rose up before me, so vast its end could not be seen. And as I agonized there in that blackness, I saw something glittering off in the distance.

What is that?

A star. One of the countless stars shining in the night sky, scattering its faint, far-off light.

As if bewitched, I made my way toward it. But however far I went, the star came no closer; however hard I ran, the distance between us stayed exactly as it was.

Does the star have feet on it or something?

As I stood still and gazed quietly at the star, a wind blew in from somewhere.

Wind?

Soon enough I knew what it was. Between star and star, through the vast reaches of space, flowed the interstellar wind.

Where is it blowing in from?

When I turned my head,

— Rrrrrumble—

a colossal starship passed before my eyes.

…!

Nothing I had ever seen came near it for size. Its sheer mountainous bulk was enough to overwhelm me. As a ship rides a waterway, the colossal starship rode the interstellar wind, voyaging across the vast cosmos.

— Vwoooooom—

The starship swept past me, and dazzling light gathered at the thrusters at its stern,

— Vwip—

and then it drew its tail out long like a comet and vanished from sight.

It had ridden the interstellar wind into interstellar flight. Surely it had reached the star I could not. The wind that spun off it stirred my hair, and the wind that had carried a colossal starship was not so very different from the one that went rummaging playfully through Big Bro Un-cheon’s hair.

Enlightenment came over me all at once, and my eyes seemed to fly wide open.

— Think of it as becoming the wind.

— Bop— bop— bop—

I felt my body growing lighter and lighter. How should I put it. The feeling of a soul that has at last escaped the stifling confines of the flesh?

I am the wind.

— Whoooooo—

The sound of wind brushed past my ear.

— Tak!

I opened my eyes and kicked off the ground with everything I had.

No. A storm.

My body floated up with a strange sense of release, and the scenery around me blurred like spreading paint and was shoved away behind me.

“Oop.”

I tried to land, could not master the speed, and ended up tumbling over and over.

— Ka-thud-crash!

For a move called the Typhoon’s Leap, the finish was clumsy.

“…”

Too embarrassed by how spectacularly I had gone down, I lay there a while without a word, then got up brushing the dust off as though nothing at all had happened. I scratched my head sheepishly and said:

“You were right, Teacher. It’s going to take a lot of practice to get the feel of it completely.”
“…”
“Teacher Yong-bi?”

There was no answer, and when I turned to look,

a good ten meters away, Big Bro Un-cheon and Moyong Bi were frozen like statues, mouths hanging open.

“…What’s he on about. This mad monster of a brat.”

A pleasant wind came in through the window.

Moyong Jin-seong, head of the Moyong Family, was at work in his office when he happened to look out of it.

— Hyah!
— Haap!

The Moyong Family’s growing shoots were throwing themselves into their training under the instructors’ guidance. They had been diligent enough to begin with, but ever since the Intra-Family Sparring Tournament they had been more diligent still, spurred on, perhaps, by the recent bout between Moyong Danho and Moyong Gwang-seon.

A good wind was blowing through the Moyong Family.

“What might our Gwang-seon be up to about now.”

The new son he had taken in as his adopted child, Moyong Gwang-seon, filled his head these days. Waking or sleeping, he thought of nothing but Gwang-seon. Was there anything the boy was uncomfortable about. Was he sleeping well. What might he be doing at this very moment….

“Come to think of it, didn’t they say he begins learning martial arts in earnest today. I’m curious what he’ll take up first.”

Moyong Jin-seong murmured it over a cup of tea that sent up curls of steam.

“Still, he’s a boy, so I suppose he’ll choose the sword arts?”

The Moyong Sword Art was the foundation of every sword art in the family, and the boy had wielded it at the Intra-Family Sparring Tournament without ever being taught it. At that rate he would be through the whole thing in no time.

“He might already be learning the Sword of Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, or the Sword of Flashing Light and Parting Clouds.”

Far too early for that, of course, but he was curious which lightness art the boy would take up as well.

The Butterfly Step and the Divine Cascade Step. Two lightness arts so utterly different in nature that they stood poles apart, and learning both at once was next to impossible. Which was why one usually chose just the one….

“Will he take up the Divine Cascade Step? No — he might unexpectedly pick the Butterfly Step.”

Come to think of it, the family had a peerless secret manual handed down like a legend, one that only a man who had mastered both lightness arts to the utmost was ever admitted to….

“Ha ha. Now I’ve gone too far.”

— Clink—

The moment Moyong Jin-seong, laughing heartily, set his teacup down,

— Knock, knock—

there came the sound of someone rapping at the door.

“What is it?”

— A guest has come from the Imperial Army.

“…From the Imperial Army?”