Chapter 41

“A training pouch?”

I picked up the bundle of training pouches Big Bro Un-cheon had flung at me. It weighed more than I’d expected.

What’s in this thing?

I’d taken it for a sandbag, but no sandbag weighed this much.

“What did you put in here?”
“No back talk. Put it on.”

I trusted Big Bro Un-cheon not to hand me anything that would do me harm, so I did as I was told. I strapped them onto my arms and legs, and wrapped one around my torso as well.

“Ugh.”

The weight was no joke. Like gravity had suddenly gotten several times stronger.

Is this how Mr. Son felt, going into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber?¹

Taking even a single step was hard. Watching me manage one anyway, on legs that shook and shook, Baek Un-cheon broke into a pleased smile.

“Just right. From this moment until we reach Luoyang. You do not take those training pouches off.”
“Sorry?”

I wondered whether I’d misheard.

“I’m walking all the way to Luoyang wearing this?”
“That’s right. Didn’t I say it was a training pouch? It’s training.”
“Hold on, why only me? I’ve still got the lightness arts to work on separately.”
“Don’t want it, don’t do it. Turning down special treatment. You don’t know when you’re well off. Push through to Luoyang like this and you’d come away with a real achievement.”
“Wait.”

That snapped me back to my senses.

I don’t have the luxury of training at a leisurely pace. I’ve already drawn the Demonic Cult’s eye, and the Imperial Army is watching too. Things are quiet for now, but the situation could turn at any moment. No, for all I know they’re already moving on me under the surface.

There’s no saying when the Demonic Cult sends someone next. General Hwa Mu-hong might turn up tomorrow to take me himself and call it the emperor’s command. To me this quiet felt like the calm before a storm.

And even leaving them aside, death is always lurking close by. In the Azure Sea Bamboo Forest alone I came within a hair of dying, didn’t I? Train the way everybody else does and I’ll die pointlessly before I’ve completed so much as half the constellations.

Can’t have that.

“Who said I wasn’t doing it?”
“That’s right. That’s the very look.”

Big Bro Un-cheon grinned.

“I’d been thinking you’d gone a bit slack of late. And there’s the venom rising back up. Good to see.”
“…”

What exactly was good to see about that. This one is definitely not right in the head either.

Which is what makes him a murim warrior, I suppose.

Struggling to keep my feet moving, I said:

“So how many lifetimes is it going to take to reach Luoyang like this?”

Already I was falling behind the group.

“Use your internal energy. You ate a Purple Empyrean Pill, didn’t you. What are you hoarding it for?”
“Wasn’t the idea to hoard it and use it only when I need it?”
“And isn’t this when you need it?”
“…”

Without a word I drew internal energy up out of my dantian and set it circulating through my whole body. That opened up my breathing a little. It still wasn’t comfortable, though. Something like hauling an A-frame carrier loaded to the top with firewood, maybe.

I picked up the pace, tramp tramp, and chased after the party. Holding that speed steadily meant keeping the internal energy circling my whole body without a moment’s rest.

So I have to circulate it through the whole of me. Evenly, without missing a single spot.

Internal energy normally gets spent in combat. In a fight I’d concentrate it only where it was needed, and what I was doing now was the exact reverse. Novel training, in more ways than one.

It took a great deal of effort. At this rate I’d collapse before I was halfway. So I cut back hard on the flow I’d been pumping out like an oil derrick, drew it out thin as thread instead, and set it whirling around my body.

Better.

Walking cost me a little more, but it was far and away more efficient. In my case especially, the ring made it easy: the moment I drew energy out of my dantian, it circulated through my whole body on its own, so it took far less work than it would for anyone else.

Big Bro Un-cheon wouldn’t set me to this without a reason. He must have something in mind.

I couldn’t say what, but he’d surely told me to do it because it would help. I walked on in silence, holding onto my faith in Big Bro Un-cheon. Powering through the hard parts on sheer spirit.

“Hold on — we’ve barely started and he’s already regulating his output?”

Big Bro Un-cheon’s voice came from beside me, muttering as though he couldn’t believe it.

“Normally nobody even makes a show of regulating it until they’ve run their power dry and fallen over a few times. A prodigy is a prodigy, all right.”
“This is hard. Kindly don’t talk to me.”
“Keep that pace for the time being. Do it long enough and there’ll come a moment where you think, actually, this is manageable. When that comes, be sure you tell me. Understood? You must tell me.”
“Why? What for?”
“Because it’s essential for the training, so don’t forget — tell me.”

Something about him putting it that way made me uneasy….

I gave him a look full of distrust, and Baek Un-cheon glanced around, came closer and whispered:

“Gwang-seon.”
“I told you not to talk to me.”
“You not going to use that wish coupon of yours?”
“I’m not using it.”
“Use it now and I might take a few pouches off you.”
“I said I’m not using it.”

Not a chance. The sharpest sword is at its most fearsome while it is still in the scabbard.

Watching Baek Un-cheon smack his lips over it like a man sorry to let it go, something occurred to me, and I said:

“Big Bro Un-cheon.”
“What.”
“I hear there’s a lightness arts club you go to now and then.”
“Ah, that? It’s nothing so grand. Just a little club some people who like the lightness arts got together and made.”
“I like the lightness arts a whole lot myself.”
“Since when?”
“It finally came to me this time around. That the strongest is the one who is fastest.”
“Your eyes have opened. Come to the Thousand-Mile Society.”
“The Thousand-Mile Society? The lightness arts club is called the Thousand-Mile Society?”
“That’s right. Those who run a thousand miles in a day — hence the Thousand-Mile Society.”
“How do you get in? Is there an entrance test?”
“Why. You want in too?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t a place just anybody gets into. That Moyong Bi couldn’t get in — doesn’t that tell you?”
“I haven’t taken the test yet, though.”
“There’s no official test. It isn’t organized enough for that. People join by word of mouth, through an introduction from someone they know, or an interview.”
“So how did you get in?”
“Some fellow turned up out of nowhere, said ‘They tell me you’re fast,’ and challenged me to a race, and I won, so in I went.”
“Then I could also….”
“Don’t. You were born with heaven-sent talent, granted. But you’re not yet at a level where I’d introduce you to the Thousand-Mile Society.”
“I got past you, didn’t I.”

Only for one moment, granted. Using the laser, I had definitely beaten Baek Un-cheon in a race once.

Big Bro Un-cheon’s eyebrows shot up.

“You mean to show off that heretical power of yours?”
“I’ll just say I picked up a slightly heretical martial art.”

Getting a bit of thrust hardly stands out compared to the laser, which eats a whole battery bar in one go. Used carefully, it leaves a little red afterimage, and that’s about all.

“You’re one of the great orthodox sects, you little brat.”

Big Bro Un-cheon said it as though he couldn’t believe me.

“Just tell them I got past you, even if only for one instant next to no time at all. Isn’t that enough to make me a rising prospect?”
“…I’ll think it over.”
“The Thousand-Mile Society, a mystery sect of the gangho. That’s pretty cool. Feels a bit like a secret society.”
“I told you it’s nothing so grand. No — hold on. Since when has this one talked so much? Feeling comfortable, are we?”
“Sorry?”

Baek Un-cheon added more training pouches.

“Here, load these on as well. Adapting already. Good thing I brought spares.”
“No, wait….”

A night when everyone was asleep. I went out alone into a clearing where the moonlight came pouring down.

“Oof. Every bone in me.”

Thanks to the training pouches hanging off me everywhere, there wasn’t a spot that didn’t ache. Baek Un-cheon’s strict order was that they were not to come off for a moment until we reached Luoyang, which left me wearing them even in my sleep.

I glanced back. In the darkness a campfire was crackling away. When there was a village along the road we’d take rooms at an inn; when there wasn’t, we camped like this. Sleeping rough had become an everyday thing.

Guess I’m a murim warrior myself now.

It had worked its way into my body. Lying down on hard, cold ground was thoroughly uncomfortable at first, but I sleep well enough now. Even tonight I was confident I’d be out the moment my head touched the ground.

“Still, what’s got to be done gets done.”

A bit of rummaging.

I took out the martial arts manual I’d brought with me.

The Three Stars Step²

After what Moyong Bi had said, I had gone to Moyong Jin-seong before we set out and asked for it.

— Is that true? You have learned both the Divine Cascade Step and the Butterfly Step?

Moyong Jin-seong could hardly bring himself to believe I had learned both footwork arts. In the end I blended the two lightness arts right in front of him, moving between them at will, and he fell silent for a long while before he nodded heavily and handed the manual over.

— And I had taken it for an idle legend. Was the tale of the first family head true after all?

By his account,

this was a lightness art beyond even the supreme, handed down in the Moyong Family generation after generation, a movement art that took the wheeling of the constellations in the night sky and melted it into the movement of a human body.

The Moyong Family’s ultimate footwork art, one that only a person who had learned both the Divine Cascade Step and the Butterfly Step could unfold. But nobody capable of that had ever appeared, so nobody had ever learned it, and in the end it was judged to have no practical value in a real fight and left deep in the vault to gather dust. Or so the story went.

— I have had a copy made, just in case. If something unavoidable should happen, do not hesitate — burn it.

I calmed my thumping heart and turned back the cover. Ordinarily I’d never have done anything so foolish as try to read at night without a full moon overhead, but tonight the faint moonlight alone was enough to see clearly by.

Thanks to the Star Eye.

In any case, turning the pages that way brought me to a preface.

• The Three Stars Step means the step that walks in the track of the Three Stars.
• I have set down here the martial learning that came to me all at once as I gazed at the constellations risen in the night sky, that it may be of use to those who study after me.
• The Three Stars Step is a footwork art that rules space.
• The moment you bring it to full mastery, your enemy will chase nothing but your shadow.

“Ahhh.”

That was some confidence. That’s our ancestor for you.

What kind of martial art was it, to brim with confidence to the point of arrogance like this?

Heart thumping, I turned the page. The moment I did, a sentence appeared that made me doubt my own eyes.

• The heart of the Three Stars Step is not running in a straight line.

Not run in a straight line?

Then how was I supposed to run? Diagonally?

Holding onto the question, I read on through the explanation that followed.

• The stars may look as though they stand still, yet in truth they move without cease, drawn by one another and along the orbits of the heavens. So too the Three Stars Step.
• To your opponent’s eye you appear to run in one fixed direction, but in truth your feet are ceaselessly tracing small circles and arcs, shifting your center as they go.
• Because of it your opponent cannot read distance or direction with any precision, and falls into the illusion of having aimed dead ahead only to find you already alongside them.

“Hm.”

I almost had it, and then I didn’t.

“I’ll have to read more before I know.”

Happily, our ancestor had divided the Three Stars Step into five stages and explained each in detail.

• The Three Stars Step is composed, broadly, of five stages.
• Fixed Star. As one fixes a star’s place, you fix your own center.
• Shooting Star. You move as though grazing the ground with your toes.
• Circling Star. As a star revolves, you turn with your opponent as your center.
• Migration. As the constellation itself moves, you change your center.
• And so, Three Stars. As though moving along the lines that join star to star, you range the battlefield freely in a handful of steps.

I burrowed into the manual as though spellbound, absorbed enough that I lost all sense of the time passing. By the time I finished my first read-through, the moon that had hung at midheaven had slipped a long way westward.

• The sword of a Moyong who has learned the Three Stars Step is no longer a sword. It is a shooting star cutting the night sky.
• A star cannot be caught. Nor can the Three Stars Step.
• We are, every one of us, a star. Bear this in mind and strive to refine yourself.

— Thup.

And with that, I closed the manual and gazed up blankly at a night sky thick with stars.

“We are, every one of us, a star….”

The last sentence stayed in my chest like an afterimage. A ticklish enlightenment came over me.

My ancestor’s martial learning of the Three Stars Step, made of printed letters, went soft as though soaked in water, and then, as though somebody had wrung it out hard, came dripping down over my head.

A whole day of walking in the training pouches had worn me out, but I couldn’t stay still. I sprang up and clumsily reproduced the martial learning that had taken shape in my head.

“Gah.”

The training pouches hanging all over me got in my way,

but I paid them no mind and kept my body moving.

“Whoa.”

Now and then I’d miss my footing and go down,

and spring right back up again.

Before I knew it I was soaked through with sweat. What kept me moving was the faint starlight glowing in my chest. The enlightenment beaded in my head like dew was ripening, little by little.

A long while of moving like that, sunk in a trance.

“You’re an interesting one.”

I started, and lifted my head. On a branch with a sliver of moon caught in it, a small figure stood.

I reached out at once and got hold of the Pork-Slicing Demon-Cleaving Saber I’d propped against a tree.

“Who’s there?”
“And how long have we known each other, that you’d talk to me like that?”

From the way they spoke, they seemed to be a master. I thought about it a moment, then asked again:

“And who might you be?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”

…What was this supposed to be? Did being a master mean you could run your mouth however you liked?

The murim warrior’s blood sleeping inside me came to a boil. Just as I was about to draw the Pork-Slicing Demon-Cleaving Saber and show them a murim warrior’s spirit,

the figure dropped lightly down from the branch and walked out into the moonlight.

A small girl.

“…Where’d a little kid come from?”

In that instant, the little kid’s eyes flashed fiercely.

“What was that?”