The First Button

The first thing to do was get my qi circulating smoothly.

“Hssss— Hooooo—”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. My mind settled. I looked into the internal energy in my dantian, and the bare handful of it there squirmed. I moved the qi slowly. It crept along like something squeezing out through a narrow crack.

Blood-Chain Meridians, they called it.

Whatever internal energy I gathered, my meridians stole straight back out of me. A freak constitution. Gathering qi came slowly because of it, and wielding what little I had was a labor in itself.

But raise the external arts to a certain level, and the constitution flips.

All that internal energy I had thought the meridians were stealing would make them hard as steel. Overuse true qi and they would not so much as flinch, and from that point on I would gather qi faster than anyone else. Payment, in a sense, for enduring all those years of hardship.

“Ssssssss—”

Breathing out in a long stream, I guided the qi along the verses of the Azure Dragon Art, House Yang’s heart method. The internal energy moved as slowly as a turtle hauled up onto dry land.

No wonder I neglected internal energy.

In my past life this crawling pace had frustrated me. I had concluded that the heart method was only half a thing, that something about it was wrong. It was the wrong conclusion.

This must have been where the first button went into the wrong hole.

Not anymore.

If my internal energy moved slowly, I would grab it by the collar and drag it along faster. I drove the sluggish flow forward by force, and it moved twice as fast.

— Tzzzrrrr.

Handling it that roughly sent a sting through my acupoints. But it was fine. I had spent my whole life training nothing but the Azure Dragon Art. Was I really unable to tell what it could and couldn’t take?

The internal energy ran its full circuit of every acupoint in my body, and I gathered it back into my dantian.

“Hooo—”

I let out a short breath. One full circulation. That was enough; spinning internal energy around blindly did not make more of it. In my past life I could not even have attempted a full circulation at this stage. Compared to that, this was enormous progress.

I was just rising to my feet, my acupoints still throbbing, when a clear voice rang inside my head.

“…!”

There it was again. I looked around, startled, but there was no one in the room.

I have no idea what on earth is going on.

A voice I couldn’t place had been ringing through my head since earlier. It wasn’t a voice I knew, and it wasn’t voice transmission. A call from heaven, then, or the whisper of a wraith? And if so, was I supposed to answer it?

“…”

I kept my mouth shut and waited. If someone was watching me, they would speak again; at times like this, waiting served better than rushing in. I held out a long while, moving nothing but my eyes. The owner of the voice did not speak again.

I ran a hand through my hair.

It isn’t my imagination.

Twice now a strange voice had sounded inside my head. Was this the price of coming back to the past? If so, I could bear it easily enough. I had my family in front of me again; a few phantom voices were nothing at all. The battlefield had always been full of screaming and the clash of steel.

I put the voice out of my mind and made to leave, and then something about my body struck me as strange.

“What? My acupoints are fine?”

I was so surprised the words came out of me on their own. A moment ago those acupoints had been throbbing; now I felt nothing at all. An internal injury that should have laid me up for a full day had washed clean away.

I set the internal energy in my dantian moving. It flowed out into my acupoints along the verses of the Azure Dragon Art.

Ah.

The acupoints were whole. No, they had widened. The internal energy flowed far more easily too, and I finished the circulation faster than the first time.

“Hah.”

Only moments ago this same internal energy had been as slow as a turtle on dry land. Granted, all it amounted to now was a slightly faster turtle, but even that much change was astonishing.

Then the words I had heard earlier rose in my mind.

Exactly what the voice said.

My heart pounded. No, it hammered.

Nothing like this had happened in my past life. I had gone out onto the battlefield thousands of times and never once seen the like. It had to be something that came with returning to the past.

I don’t know what the voice is, but it isn’t a bad thing.

If anything, it was good. Stronger acupoints meant my growth had sped up by exactly that much. For now, that was enough. There was no need to force understanding on what couldn’t be understood; what mattered more was how I would put this ability to use.

I opened the door and stepped outside.

That took care of the internal energy. The external arts were next. Internal training alone would not let me wield House Yang’s martial arts properly; only when internal and external both reached a high standard did the arts show their true power.

Physical conditioning first.

I had to build the most basic foundations first: stamina and strength. Loosening up as I went, I headed out into the manor’s courtyard.

A cart piled high with cargo was coming in through the main gate. A man who looked to be its owner had the horse by the reins and led the cart over to one side of the yard, four hard-faced workmen moving alongside as though they were guarding it. When the cart stopped, an old man already waiting there fell into conversation with the owner, then took hold of the ropes to check inside the crates.

Elder Kang.

The sight of him brought a smile to my lips. He had served the house as a retainer since my grandfather’s day, and he had looked after me like a grandfather himself. In my past life he had died wretchedly, in an accident.

Right around this time, wasn’t it?

The memory came back. He had been struck by toppling cargo and badly hurt.

My eyes went to the cart before I told them to. One side of the rope holding the load down was frayed.

— Snap. Snap-snap.

The instant I saw the rope giving way strand by strand, I gathered my internal energy and kicked off the ground.

— CRACK!

The sound came in that same instant, and the rope parted. With the binding gone, the wooden crates spilled down on top of Elder Kang. He stood frozen by the suddenness of it; I caught him by the shoulder and hauled him back.

— CRAAASH!

The crates pitched down onto the ground with an enormous racket. Elder Kang stood there with his mouth hanging open, then turned his head, found me beside him, and startled all over again.

“Young master!”
“What were you going to do if you got hurt, old man, with not a scrap of internal energy in you? Mind your age.”
“Thank you. You saved my life.”

My qi circulated faster now, and that was why I had reached him in time. A moment slower and he would have been badly hurt. The widened acupoints had earned their keep.

Then the shipment’s owner screeched at my side.

“Do you have any idea what all this is worth? You’ll pay for it, right now!”

He glared at the smashed crates and flew into a rage. Elder Kang bowed low.

“With respect, sir, this was an unlucky accident. All I did was put a hand to the rope.”
“Shut your mouth, old man! Why would a perfectly good rope snap? Don’t try to pull one over on me!”

The owner shoved Elder Kang’s shoulder, hard.

I said nothing and looked the scene over. The crates and the cargo first: nothing out of the ordinary. Then the cart itself. No cracks, nothing broken, and the load wasn’t over capacity.

I was half-convinced it really was just bad luck, as Elder Kang had said, when the center of the cartwheel caught my eye. The iron pin sat half out of its seat, glistening. I rubbed a finger along it, and the finger came away soaked in grease.

Then I remembered something Duho, a comrade of mine at Blood Sand Plain, had once told me.

It’s a scam they run on escort bureaus. You pack the iron pin that holds the wheel axle with grease, loads of it. Then the pin works its way loose a little more with every turn of the wheel, see? And when the bureau’s men go to check the cargo, you give the cart a nudge, the pin comes out, and — crash.

The memory kept coming.

And it’s not just the wheel. You mess with the ropes tying the cargo down, or with the horse. Can’t have the whole thing fall apart because you trusted the wheel alone. What, you’re asking whether breaking the cargo costs you? Naturally you load the crates with goods that were already broken.

I picked up the severed rope. It was new, and yet the break was a clean cut.

Swindlers.

Rope still in hand, I glared at them.

“What are you staring at, you little brat! Just pay up already!”
“Get the master of this house out here! The master!”

They bellowed at the top of their lungs.

Noisy bastards. Blood Sand Plain had been crawling with their kind; only men who had committed serious crimes ended up there, so the sight was familiar enough. But even they never tried to cheat me. Anyone who got caught was dead that same day.

Men like this couldn’t be handled with words. Coaxing and soothing settled nothing. Beating them was easier and faster.

“If the cargo’s broken then obviously somebody has to pay for— gurk!”

I drove my fist into the mouth of the one doing the shouting. A hard crack, and broken teeth came spitting out.

“Wh—what the hell!”
“Why you—!”

The brutish-looking men beside him pulled blades from their belts. I kicked up the crate fragments and spilled cargo scattered across the ground.

— CLATTER-CLATTER!

Splinters and dirt flew into their faces. The instant their hands came up to shield them, I sprang forward.

— THWACK! THWACK!

I put a fist into the jaw of each of the two nearest,

— THUD!

and kicked the one standing there gaping square in the solar plexus.

“Diiiiie!”

With four of them down in an instant, the last one swung his blade down in a desperate frenzy. I could see the arc of it with perfect clarity. I turned lightly aside, kicked off the ground, raised my elbow and brought it down.

— CRACK!

Something split with a sound to match, and the last man dropped his blade and went down. Elder Kang and the servants had gone white as a sheet.

“Y—young master! What on earth…”
“What were you thinking, beating men to a pulp like this!”
“If word of this gets out, it will be a disaster.”

They stamped about, at a complete loss. To Elder Kang and the rest of them it must have looked like a boy lashing out without thinking. But I had already worked out the answer, and it was simple.

I picked a particularly sharp splinter out of the wood scattered on the ground, then took the groaning shipment owner by the collar and hauled him up.

“Talk.”
“Krgh…”
“A greased iron pin, a rope cut through, cargo that was already broken. You came here to run a scam.”
“You— you little bastard…!”

He cursed me, blood running out between his broken teeth. Naturally I paid it no mind, and drove the sharpened splinter deep into his thigh.

— SHUNK!

“Gyaaaaaah!”

A scream tore out of him. I pulled the shard out and stabbed the other thigh.

— SHUNK!

“Gyagh!”

Shriek as he might, I went on driving the piece of wood in and pulling it back out. By the time there were five or so holes in him, I got what I wanted to hear.

“I’ll tell you everything! It was a scam, it was! Please, spare me!”

He wept and begged. I let the hand holding his collar go slack. It was dead silent all around, and Elder Kang and the servants were staring at me with fear in their faces.

That was how the cargo-fraud business came to a close, for the time being.

I went back into my room and thought back over what had just happened, replaying the scene of putting the swindlers down.

Not nearly enough.

Not my body, not my internal energy. Nothing but shortfalls. More than enough to deal with riffraff like these, but I had no intention of settling for it.

Some two years remained before the bandit gang made its nest nearby, and by then I had to reach the first-rate realm. As I laid the plan out, a thought struck me.

But does the danger just vanish because I reach first-rate?

No.

I could block the dangers I knew about, but dangers I didn’t know about might come all the same. Already I had changed the future that was set, saving Elder Kang, who should have been injured, and putting the swindlers down. My memory did not cover everything, and an unforeseen accident could happen at any time.

I was turning over how to make my father and the people of the house safe when one method came to me.

Shut down the escort bureau.

Then my father would never die at the bandits’ hands, and the house would never be a target for swindlers the way it had been today. The problem was that the bureau was the house’s main source of income. Walking in and saying let’s close it would not get the slightest traction; Father would take it for a childish tantrum.

I’ll have to get strong.

For my words to carry weight, I needed strength. In the gangho and murim, nothing proved a man like strength.

I opened the door and went outside. Before I knew it, it was the hour of the Rooster¹, and the sun was going down.

I warmed up enough to loosen my body and ran the perimeter of the yard. One lap, two laps, three… ten.

“Hah— hah— hah—”

Even with my lungs burning and my legs trembling under me, I did not stop running. The strain clamped down on my heart, and a sting ran through every muscle in my body. The longer it went on the stronger the pain grew, and the stronger it grew, the wider the smile spread across my lips. In my past life I had learned over and over that the more pain you endure, the stronger you get.

And then.

I’ll say it with confidence: my endurance is the best in the Central Plains.