Growth

I washed, went out into the courtyard, and took the wooden spear down from the weapon rack. Today of all days it felt uncommonly light, and it settled into my grip like it belonged there. I drew a deep breath and swung.

— Whish! Whooosh! Vwoom!

The movements were simple. Strike outward from the inside, press inward from the outside, thrust forward. Lan, Na, Zha.

I had repeated those three tens of thousands of times over, and yet the power behind them was plainly different from before. My body moved with the spear far more naturally than it ever had. Force came up out of the soles of my feet, ran through my waist into my shoulders, down my arms and out to the spear tip, the whole chain flowing like water.

— Whum! Whooosh!

Once the force rode the spear properly, the sound of it splitting the air rang out heavy. On top of that, my improved constitution had my qi circulating faster, and my internal energy ran down my arms to the spear tip without a single blockage. Lan, the stroke that sweeps a spear outward, turned springy as a whip; Na, the one that bears down and presses, took on real weight. My internal energy went exactly where I willed it, and a laugh escaped me on its own.

I have brought my internal and external arts into harmony.

My internal energy and my body had never once lined up before. Now they felt like the teeth of two gears meshing perfectly. I had been waiting for this moment. The hand holding the spear tingled. Every hour I had spent tempering this body had borne fruit. Riding that feeling, I drove the spear forward with everything I had.

— Shhk!

The spear shot out like lightning, the way a snake springs off the recoil of its own coiled tail to snatch its prey. The tip punched clean through a falling pear blossom petal.

A perfect thrust.

The voice rang inside my head, as if to tell me I had it right. I drew the spear back and clenched my fist.

Every time I hear that voice, I skip past days of training at the least, and months of it at the most.

In my past life, getting this much martial prowess had cost me no end of grief and detours. Strength I had barely closed my hands on after passing through death’s door more times than I could count, I had won this time on a few months of hardship. I was glad, and uneasy at the same time. The thought crept up on me that it might all be possible only because this was a dream. I shook my head at once and threw the stray thoughts off.

Pointless thinking.

And what of it, even if it truly were a dream? What I had to do stayed the same either way. Train, and train again, and by doing so protect the house. That was all there was to it.

Even if it were only inside a dream, I would protect my family and my house. I decided to think about nothing else, and set my mind hard on it.

This is enough for the fundamentals. Time to move to the next stage.

All this time I had drilled nothing but Lan, Na, and Zha into the ground, and I had done it to learn the forms. A form is rooted in its fundamentals, and in spearmanship the fundamentals come down in the end to those three. Only once all three reach the realm of full maturity does an applied movement come out with no opening in it.

Lan and Zha first.

Strike aside, and thrust. Simple movements, but ground in by repetition they bring out power enough not to lose to dozens of men. My past life had already proved that much. All I had to do now was swing the spear over and over.

A light five hundred swings, then.

I set my stance and was about to extend the spear when I felt someone there and turned my head. A giant of a man, close to seven feet tall, stood at the main gate. Fierce, bulging eyes; a beard that shot out in every direction like a lion’s mane.

It was my father.

I ran over in a single stride and bowed my head respectfully.

“You have had a hard journey. Did the escort run go safely?”
“It did. Nothing happened.”

My father answered and looked me over from head to foot, then gave a small nod and strode over to the weapon rack.

“Take it.”

— Whish!

I snatched the spear my father threw out of the air on instinct. The cold of the metal and its heavy weight came straight through into my grip. Blade and shaft alike, the whole of it was iron. An ‘iron spear’.

In our house, an iron spear was not a thing just anyone could carry. You needed the strength to bear its weight, and your spearmanship had to have risen to a certain level.

And my father had handed me one. It meant he acknowledged me as a spearman in my own right.

My father picked up another iron spear and spoke.

“Come.”

He leveled his spear at me on the slant, and I set my own stance. No place to thrust showed itself.

There is no opening.

It was like standing in front of a vast fortress wall. His bearing was perfect, without one small hole anywhere in it.

— Step. Step.

I shifted my position, trying to make an opening, and it did not work. My father simply turned his toes a little where he stood and tracked my movement. Nothing opened up. My breath caught in my throat.

So this is the pressure of a martial artist who has reached the far edge of first-rate.

I could get no hold on where to attack, or how. But I was not afraid. If anything, my heart was pounding. This was the sparring match with my father I had longed for so badly in my past life. At the thought that a long-unfulfilled wish was finally coming true, my blood came to a boil.

Tricks and feints will not work on him.

I would go at him head-on. If there was no opening, I would simply make one by force.

I fixed my eyes on my father. He had the bearing of Mount Tai about him, a hardness that looked as though nothing would shake it however hard it was struck. But I had spent ten years rolling through a place close to hell myself, and I had fought men stronger than me more times than I could count and survived. It was my turn to show him the spear I had honed in those years.

I kicked off the ground, sprang forward, and thrust.

— CLANG!

My father struck my spear outward. Lan. The shock ran up through my hands on the shaft, but it was bearable; all that repeated training had left me in no danger of dropping the spear over a jolt like that. I used the recoil to turn the spear a half-revolution and thrust again.

— KRANG!

His spear bore down hard on mine from above. Na, this time.

— Grrk. Skrk.

The two spears strained against each other, his bearing down, mine pushing forward. The deadlock held, and it was my father who broke it, stepping back once and spinning his spear a full turn.

— CLANG!

The spinning spear knocked mine aside, and I fell back a couple of steps and set my stance again.

“Block it.”

My father’s spear came at me straight, in a dead line. A simple blow, but it came fast as a lightning flash. I twisted my body, brought my spear up, and struck it aside.

— KRANG! SKRRRRRK!

His spear scraped along my shaft and skimmed past the side of my face by a hair. The wind it raised whipped my hair hard. My cheek stung, and nothing had even touched me. I braced for the attack that would follow.

But my father only drew his spear back and looked at me.

Ah…

Only when our eyes met did I catch my father’s deeper meaning. He had shown me with his own body how Lan, Na, and Zha unfold in a real fight. A teaching handed over without a single word, through the spear alone. Standing across a spear from him and being taught that way, I felt my chest swell before I knew it.

My thanks for the teaching.

Now it was my turn to answer. I drew up my internal energy. True qi burst out like a waterfall and swept through my meridians without a check, turning through my whole body until strength overflowed in me.

— Thrummmmm!

The iron spear shook with a heavy sound. Faintly, but truly, internal energy had ridden into the metal. For a man only just arrived at second-rate, loading qi into a weapon was ordinarily close to impossible, but with the internal and external arts brought into harmony, a miracle had happened.

My father’s eyes went wide. He looked badly startled. His son, who had done nothing but shut himself up in his room right until the day he left on the escort run, had come on by leaps and bounds. Of course it startled him.

This is not the end of it, Father.

There was still more to show him. I had meant to save it until it was closer to perfect, but I judged that now was the right moment. I wanted to prove to him with my own hands that his son had broken out of his shell on his own.

The Yang Family Spear, First Form

Azure Dragon Emerges from the Sea!

“Hyah!”

I let the shout go and kicked off the ground with everything I had. Every scrap of energy gathered into the spear, and I drove it forward. It shot out with explosive force, like a dragon bursting up out of the sea. My father slid back and struck upward with his own spear.

— KRANG!

The sharp sound of iron striking iron slammed against my ears. I gathered up my rebounding spear and looked ahead. My father had given ground, several steps back from where he had been standing.

That did it.

My father was a master who had reached the far edge of first-rate. Breaking the stance of a man like that meant I had done exactly what I set out to do.

“…”

Whatever shock it had given him, my father could not close his mouth. He stared at me blankly for a long while. Seeing him in such a state was a genuine rarity; he was a man stingy with any show of feeling at the best of times, which made it stranger still.

Mother and Hayul should have seen this too. It was almost a shame that I was the only one who did.

I was stealing looks while pretending not to when my eyes met his. Only then did he hurriedly shut his mouth. He set his face straight away and came toward me.

— Step. Step.

Was he put out because of the way I had been sneaking looks at him? Or had using internal energy come across as impudent? I was still casting about for whatever mistake I might have made when my father patted me on the shoulder.

“You have put in the work. Well done.”

Those few short words from my father caught in my chest. It was the word I had longed for desperately across more than ten long years. The praise I had wanted so badly to hear, I had finally heard, and from his own mouth. My chest swelled full.

I had lived my whole life crushed under the words ‘no martial talent’. And my father had never once scolded me for it. He had believed I would rise on my own someday, and waited in silence for me to do it.

“…Thank you.”

I answered short and bowed my head deep. Any more than that and the feeling would come welling up. My throat closed and my face grew hot. My sight blurred over for a moment, and it could not have been a trick of the mind.

“Let us go in. Your mother will be waiting.”

My father clapped my shoulder once more and headed for the inner quarters. Only after I made sure he had turned away did I raise my head. His broad back was already moving off.

A memory from my past life brushed past me.

“Son. I leave the family in your hands.”

I could almost hear his voice from that day, when he had called me aside before he left on the escort run.

Yes, Father. I will protect it.

Father, Mother, Ugyeom and Hayul. I would protect every last person in this house. The tragedy of my past life would never come around a second time.

I clenched my fist and swore it to myself once more.