Chapter 7

The moon was out that night.

“The Moyong Family’s mind arts are among the finest in the gangho — you could count their equals on one hand. Nothing like that mongrel stuff of mine. You’d do well to learn it properly.”

Big Bro Un-cheon explained, sipping at liquor he’d got from somewhere.

“The Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth is one of the closest things there is to a perfect mind art. Flawless balance, flawless integrity. In stability alone you could call it absolute. You can take it as read that you’ll never fall into qi deviation¹ as long as you live.”
“And the downsides?”

It wouldn’t be a lie. Big Bro Un-cheon isn’t the sort of man who talks nonsense, least of all about another sect’s mind arts. But if the art was that fine, why was the family reckoned the bottom seat among the great orthodox sects?

“Downsides? It takes a long time to bring to full mastery, and it’s low on offense — about that much.”
“Low on offense?”
“It’s like this. Anyone weaker than you, you’ll beat for certain — but anyone stronger, you won’t beat easily. It hasn’t got enough in the way of surprises. And since it takes so long to bring to full mastery, you spend a long stretch hunkered down.”

Weak in the early going, and no beating anyone stronger than you. Which means that for the first while, you go around getting knocked black and blue, no exceptions.

“So what you’re saying is, it grows slowly, which makes the early stages overwhelmingly fragile?”
“Moyong Bi calls it a late bloomer’s art.”

Hold on. Isn’t this just a bully’s martial art?

Stable, if you want to be generous about it. What it actually means is that you spend the hunkered-down years getting hit. I mean, honestly. What am I, a turtle?

Isn’t a murim warrior supposed to be somebody who does blade-work for a living? Late bloomer or not, if you get strong someday but die early on, the whole thing’s a bust, isn’t it.

“So — are there many who actually bloomed in the end?”
“No. Not so many. Most of them died or ended up crippled.”

“…”

That settles it. In the gangho, low offense turns out to be the worst flaw there is.

“But I said it’s hard to win. I didn’t say anything about losing.”
“Sorry?”
“Hard to win with, but harder still to lose with. That is the Moyong Family’s martial arts. In sheer defense, I’m telling you, the thing is superb.”
“Hold on — you just said most of them died or ended up crippled?”
“That’s the early going, again. Get through that stretch and reach a certain level, and you become extraordinarily awkward to deal with. Short of someone breaking through you with overwhelming offense, you’d have to say losing is all but out of the question.”

The strongest defense there is, huh.

I had no wish to walk the edge of a blade and throw my life away like so much chaff, which made it exactly the right martial art for me. What I dream about is a long life in good health, after all.

“I wouldn’t recommend it to the hot-tempered sort. But I think it suits you well enough. Doesn’t it?”
“I think so too.”

I’ll survive this somehow and open the Peace Inn all over again!

I clenched my fist and swore it.

With our boss installed as innkeeper, of course, so I can shove every tedious job onto him.

“Heh heh heh.”

While I was drawing up my wicked schemes, Big Bro Un-cheon went on explaining.

“The Moyong Family’s martial arts are all well and good, but they’re short on offensive power… Well. I think you’ll find a way through somehow.”

That gave me a great deal to think about all at once.

Is he simply talking about my martial talent? Or about the fact that I killed the Bursting Fist Demon?

I changed the subject.

“But isn’t that early stretch the most dangerous part? You said people die or end up crippled.”

Big Bro Un-cheon propped his chin on his hand and said:

“The family will have plenty to agonize over as well. Keep them inside the walls and you can carry a lot of them through, but a man who has never brushed up against death turns out a half-made warrior. However fine the martial art, experience is what matters most. No flower gives off any scent without the fertilizer of experience. However beautiful it might be.”

Hothouse flowers, huh….

For someone who had only just started learning martial arts, it was hard to follow. Not that it seemed to be meant for my ears; Big Bro Un-cheon went on as though he were talking to himself.

“All you mass-produce is husks who cling to the divisions between levels and do nothing but posture. You think fellows like Moyong Bi grow on trees?”

Big Bro Un-cheon tipped the bottle straight back and muttered:

“For a warrior, death is a friend. You keep it beside you always. That’s the only way you grow.”
“…I’d really rather not, personally.”

Pretending not to hear Big Bro Un-cheon’s martial-arts doctrine seems better for the mental health.

The problem, though….

“Big Bro.”
“Mm?”
“This mind arts business is way too hard.”

Three years to full mastery was no exaggeration. First you memorize every one of the complicated acupoints inside the body, and then you memorize the paths that run through them. Acupoints, they call them; honestly, the whole thing was no different from a maze. Once you’ve somehow got them down, you have to raise qi from the place called the dantian and carry it along those memorized paths with a delicate method of circulation, and if you slip even slightly, it’s back to the start.

Going around once like that was where the mind arts began. It took extreme concentration.

And it’s only the one lap.

The process was unbelievably difficult. Simple enough to say; in practice it was nothing of the kind.

So there’s a reason people say a year at the very fastest.

Moyong Bi had laid a hand on my back and moved the qi himself to draw the path for me, but there was no memorizing the whole of it off a single viewing.

I held up the booklet with every acupoint in the body drawn in it and protested.

“Just the acupoints I have to memorize come to over a hundred!”

Big Bro Un-cheon burst out laughing.

“Did you think learning martial arts was that simple? If it were, everybody and his brother would be a murim warrior.”

“…”

Put like that, I’ve got nothing to say back.

“Now that you know, get to work.”

And with that, Big Bro Un-cheon went lightly over the wall and was gone.

“Haaah.”

I have already set foot in the gangho. Sooner or later the people who knew the Bursting Fist Demon will come looking for me. With questions about his death. Martial arts training is tied directly to my survival.

If I want to live, I have to learn martial arts!

I memorized the acupoints drawn in the booklet with great care, then closed my eyes and focused on the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth.

Half an hour later.

“Ugh, seriously!”

I flung the booklet down on the ground.

And then a clear peal of laughter came from somewhere.

“What? Something not going well?”

That girl again, the one my own age I’d seen the day before.

I picked the booklet back up, sheepish, and said:

“How long have you been watching?”
“A while now. You looked like you were doing well for a first attempt, so I thought, ‘A genius really is different.’ And then, sure enough, right away….”

Snickering away like that, she was a little insufferable.

“I told you, didn’t I? That even a year is fast? Hmph. A genius dropped straight out of the sky, they said. Nothing much to you, is there?”

Correction. She was extremely insufferable.

But this isn’t the time to be fussing over pride. Not with my life on the line.

I scratched my head and came out with it.

“You said you got it in three months, right? Could you give me a tip or something?”
“A tip?”
“Ah — I mean, like, advice.”

Her eyes went wide, as though she hadn’t expected that, and then a mischievous smile spread over her face.

“Try calling me Big Sis.”
“Big Sis.”

“…?”

“Honored Big Sis. Be pleased to bestow your teachings upon this pitiful little brother.”
“Wh-what are you doing?”

While I was at it, I went the whole way and dropped into a full bow. With my life on the line, calling someone Big Sis is nothing.

“S-stop that!”
“And what is it you would have me stop…?”
“Fine, I get it — just get up!”

She came scrambling over and hauled me to my feet by force. Somehow I’m the one who bowed, and yet she’s the one who seems more flustered.

“A warrior doesn’t go bowing his head to just anybody!”
“We’re not ‘just anybody’ though, are we? If we’re both of the Moyong Family, doesn’t that make us family?”
“Th-that’s true, but… anyway, don’t bow your head.”
“I shall keep it firmly in mind, Honored Big Sis.”

She stared at me blankly, wearing the face of someone thinking, ‘Where did this thing even roll in from?’

Should I bow one more time?

“I said don’t!”

She let out a heavy sigh, then pointed at the booklet and said:

“You don’t have to memorize all of that.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yeah. There’s hardly a warrior alive who has every acupoint memorized by rote. What matters is the flow.”
“The flow?”
“Yeah. Remember the flow. That’s about all the tip I’ve got for you.”

The flow. The flow, huh….

I thought it over carefully, then jerked my head up.

“Ah — thanks. That helped.”

She shot me a sidelong glare, as if displeased.

“Saying thank you is banned too.”
“Why?”
“That’s how warriors are.”

Warriors really are a cold-hearted lot.

“Well… you never know. If you do well, maybe you’ll even manage the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth before the year is out? Not that it would compare to me, obviously. Work hard.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’ll work hard.”
“I said don’t— haah… never mind.”

For reasons I couldn’t work out, she wore the expression of someone whose fun had been spoiled. She turned her back and hopped lightly up onto the wall.

“Um — do you like stir-fried bok choy, by any chance? Want to come round and eat sometime?”
“I said I’m not eating!”

She shouted it at the top of her lungs and vanished over the wall.

“Wait, why is she angry….”

Come to think of it, I never got around to asking her name this time either.

Next time I’ll definitely ask.

“The flow. The flow, huh….”

Turning the tip about the flow over in my head, I settled back into a cross-legged seat.

Just as I closed my eyes and set about lifting my concentration,

— Beep—

“Hm?”

I cracked an eye open to check. One bar of the ring’s battery had filled.

— Crash!

It was the sound of the liquor bottle in Baek Un-cheon’s hand striking the ground and shattering.

But Moyong Bi did not spare him so much as a glance. Both men’s eyes were fixed on the young boy in front of them.

“Ha— haha… you’re joking, aren’t you?”
“In a single day…?”

Reflected in the eyes of the two astounded warriors was a young genius scratching his head with an awkward look on his face.

“It, uh… it just sort of worked.”

The Moyong Family was turned upside down.

“What? He mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth in one day?”
“Talk sense!”
“Are you certain you didn’t see wrong?”
“It’s true. Great Hero Moyong Bi confirmed it himself.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Nor could I, not unless I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Do you know what kind of mind art the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth is? And he mastered it in a day?”

And so, with no choice in the matter, Moyong Gwang-seon found himself demonstrating the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth with the elders and the family head looking on.

“H-hello, everyone.”

Moyong Gwang-seon shuffled hesitantly into the family head’s hall, and Moyong Jin-seong, seated at the head of the room, asked him in a solemn voice:

“Gwang-seon.”
“Yes, Family Head.”
“I hear you mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth in a single day. Is it true?”
“Well, that’s….”
“Speak honestly.”
“It sort of just turned out that way. Haha….”

Every man present doubted his own ears.

He “sort of just” mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth?

To their ears, it was as though he had announced he’d sort of just picked up the Heavenly Demon Divine Art².

Is he making fools of us?

The eyes of the family head and the elders went cold.

“Th-then I’ll begin.”

The boy looked out at the crowd packed into the hall and settled into a cross-legged seat with a tense expression. Even then, the people of the Moyong Family had not withdrawn their doubts about him.

A boy who looks that green mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth in a day?
Unbelievable.
That Moyong Bi. First time playing master or not. Can a man really be this clumsy about it?
A good warrior isn’t necessarily a good master. Perhaps I ought to look into finding Gwang-seon a master of his own….

With the gazes of the family head and the elders pouring down on him,

Moyong Gwang-seon drew a great breath, closed his eyes, and sank into concentration.

He slowly raised the small store of qi gathered in his dantian. Behind his closed eyes, his eyebrows trembled faintly.

One look was enough to tell that this was not a man accustomed to handling qi. The qi wavered as precariously as anything could, as though it might lose its strength and drop at any moment. It was like watching a fledgling just out of the nest.

There it is.
He can’t even get started properly.
Why on earth would Moyong Bi tell a lie that would be exposed in moments? To land the newly adopted boy in trouble? The family decided the matter — surely he isn’t fool enough to have thought that way?

That he could feel qi and control it within a single day was astonishing enough in itself,

but that was a world away from saying he had mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth.

Well now. A genius he is, it seems. Circulating qi in a single day?
Rin would faint clean away at the news.
At this rate he might manage it inside three months.
That Moyong Bi. First time playing master or not. Isn’t there a limit to how far a man should exaggerate?

The elders turned suspicious eyes on Moyong Bi. He paid them no mind; he was watching nothing but Moyong Gwang-seon’s back as the boy raised his qi. In his own eyes a flame was blazing up.

After a while, Moyong Gwang-seon barely managed to draw a single precariously wavering thread of qi out of his dantian. Only now was he standing at the starting line.

In that instant.

His eyebrows stopped trembling,

and the qi accelerated.

Like an arrow off the bowstring, the qi raced, striking every one of the intricate acupoints exactly, in order. It tore through his body without a hair’s breadth of error, like a storm.

The elders, who had extended their qi-sense to watch, opened their eyes wide.

— Clatter!

The family head shot to his feet without realizing it.

Startled or not, the qi’s headlong run went on regardless. It climbed the line of his spine, passed over the crown of his head, reached his lips… then went straight down, past the chest and the belly, to the lower dantian.

Having run the winding, intricate maze inside his body in an instant, Moyong Gwang-seon let out a long breath.

“Hoooo….”

Then he cracked his eyes open and glanced around to read the room.

“Um… I’ve completed one full circulation, but….”

The silence broke, and the hall filled with the elders’ cries of wonder.

“He really did it! He really has mastered the Divine Art of Untroubled Heaven and Earth!”
“What in the world…!”
“Well, I never! What an uncanny thing!”
“A monster has come into the Moyong Family!”

The elders, who had been keeping their seats with such decorum, rose as one and came toward Moyong Gwang-seon. They crowded around him, hurling questions.

“How on earth did you do it? Did you learn every acupoint in a single day? How could you go through it as though you were looking straight inside your own body…?”
“How, indeed! He is a prodigy of the age, handed down by heaven itself — of course it’s possible!”
“This is a talent our common sense cannot measure. There is nothing for it but to acknowledge it humbly.”
“A blessing has walked into our house!”

— Thud!

At the footstep that rang through the hall, the elders, chattering away like excited children, fell silent. They parted to either side, and the family head, Moyong Jin-seong, came striding forward with no expression at all.

— …Gulp.

Moyong Gwang-seon swallowed dryly.

Did I do something wrong?

A tense moment passed. Then Moyong Jin-seong, stern-faced until that instant, broke into a broad smile.

“Gwang-seon.”
“Yes, Family Head.”

Moyong Gwang-seon answered politely.

“What’s this stiff ‘Family Head’ business? Try calling me father.”

Moyong Gwang-seon hesitated.

If I were ever going to call somebody father, I’d have thought it would be our boss….

In the end he opened his mouth carefully.

“Fa… ther….”

Stern Moyong Jin-seong’s mouth stretched into a grin that went from ear to ear. Deeply satisfied, he said:

“Yes, my son. You’re doing well, so press on all the harder. Just keep on exactly as you are. Ah — not that I mean to put any pressure on you. You know what I mean? Ha ha. If you need anything, tell me any time at all.”

Moyong Jin-seong clapped him warmly on the shoulder. Seen like that, he really did look like a doting father.

Taking courage from that, Moyong Gwang-seon carefully spoke up.

“There is actually one thing I’d like to ask for….”
“What is it? Anything at all — say as much as you like.”
“I’d like to go and see the town outside. Would that be all right?”

Gwang-seon had come from a country village, and Shenyang, the provincial capital of Liaoning, was as good as another world to him.

Moyong Jin-seong granted his son’s request gladly.

“Of course. Of course you may. I’ll assign you a guide so you can look around at your ease.”

…And the guide I was given turned out to be a very familiar face.

“What are you looking at?”

“…”