Five Days Before the Festival of Oblivion
A blue full moon hung in the night sky.
"One shichen broken. A slight improvement over before. Raise the left leg a little higher."
"Kkugh."
I corrected the left leg that had begun to sag.
I was holding a handstand on a single finger pressed to the ground.
The martial robes clinging to my body had been reduced to ragged scraps. Sweat traced paths down the exposed skin of my upper body.
My legs, held rigidly toward the heavens, began to lower.
I slowly dismantled the straight line of my center of gravity.
Asura's teaching had been this: without the slightest aid of internal energy, one must learn to command one's entire weight with even the smallest muscles of the human body—only then could one respond to any situation.
I kept replaying the conversation we had shared.
Most of the so-called experts of the jianghu, the more their skill soars, sink so deep into the power of mighty internal energy that they neglect the tempering of the flesh itself.
Asura had rolled up his sleeves with that easygoing smile of his, flexing the loose flesh of his forearm to show off a bicep.
Look at those who've completed Bone-Changing Rebirth—parading around with stunning faces and willowy limbs. Hideous, isn't it? Hahaha.
Sweat poured down my entire body like rain.
Work at it. In the end, what devours a born genius is the evil spirit who grinds himself with desperate effort.
After he had transmitted the formulas of the Sura-dae-myeol-geop-jin, he had sat me down and spoken those words.
It was not the formulas of some martial art that mattered. It was not which martial art one unleashed that mattered.
In the end everything began from the heart of the one who walked the path, and that heart was born of a tempered body and a prepared stance.
I still had not fully understood those words, nor fully accepted them.
In the jianghu of today, men staked their lives on a single verse from some supreme secret manual.
Asura must have seen straight through that thought of mine even then; he had stroked his protruding belly and laughed heartily.
I said it without expecting much. If you already understood that, you'd be an Asura yourself, not some ordinary man. In time you'll grasp it the way a child naturally becomes an adult.
Even so, something from those words had been branded deep into my heart.
Temper the flesh without end. Train and train again.
If Asura's words were true, then at the very least the road I meant to walk was not the wrong one.
From that day on I lived a life of constant training.
A person eats three meals a day without counting how many times the chopsticks rise and fall. One does not bother counting every step from departure to arrival. One does not tally every breath drawn and released simply to live through a day.
To me, training had become like the air that always surrounded me—present whether I consciously noticed it or not.
Whenever there was a gap, I trained.
If circumstances forced me to miss a day, I punished myself by doubling the intensity the next.
When training ended I ate without limit.
Unless circumstances absolutely forbade it, I sought the deepest possible sleep whenever sleep was possible.
Mumyeong's help had been immense in that regard.
On nights free of artificial interference through dreams, even a brief span of sleep became true, death-like rest under Mumyeong's intervention—he halted every movement of my body.
"Time's up. Next stage."
The moment Mumyeong's dry voice ended I exploded up from the ground.
"Beginning the Muscle Counter-Flow Method. Ready?"
"Start."
A crushing sensation clamped down on my entire body; every muscle contracted of its own will as if seized by cramps.
"Kk… KRAAAAGH!"
Through the wringing agony I forced the muscles to move and began body-technique drills.
"You've improved a great deal. At first you couldn't even twitch under a mere ten percent intervention."
"Damn… it! Just standing is torture like this. I'd rather strap iron weights on and swing them."
Even throwing a single punch left my arm trembling violently.
This training method had begun at Mumyeong's suggestion—he who could regulate my entire physical form.
Human muscle works around joints: for every prime mover that performs an action there is an antagonist on the opposite side that resists.
In the arm, for example, the biceps flex the elbow while the triceps extend it.
If I attempted a straight punch—an extension driven by the triceps—Mumyeong would instantly apply measured force to the biceps, the antagonist, creating far greater resistance against the prime mover.
Every action I tried to take met maximized resistance through Mumyeong's interference. Because the very muscles that wished to act were being opposed by more developed versions of themselves, the difficulty only climbed higher the further the training advanced.
"Haaah! Haaah!"
I had not even completed a hundred kicks and thrusts, yet my whole body was bathed in cold sweat.
Brow and flesh twisted as if about to burst; everything had flushed scarlet.
Faint black lightning crackled along my frame.
I tried a midair flip; my legs gave out and I crumpled to the ground.
The clothes I wore shredded further.
"Today's training time is over. Well done."
I lay spread-eagled on the earth, gasping as though dying.
"For the next gak I will halt every bodily function except the bare minimum and restore you."
A chill began at my fingertips as the blood drained away.
My entire body seemed to freeze, the cold finally reaching the region of my heart.
I could not move even if I tried.
In that state I simply panted and stared up at the moon.
"…Happiness…"
The word had surfaced unbidden.
I rolled the syllable around—a word that suited me not at all.
The sweat cooling across my body left a faint, pleasant chill after the earlier heat.
I thought I had only closed my eyes for a moment.
When I opened them the moon was already setting.
Far off, a golden dawn was rising.
"A gak passed long ago, but I saw no need to wake you."
Mumyeong spoke calmly, having noticed I was up.
"No matter how much I assist recovery, it cannot compare in quality to restoration achieved while the host himself sleeps. Is the internal cultivation progressing smoothly as well?"
I nodded.
"You mean the Patcheon-hyeol-ma-mu-geuk-gong? I practice whenever there's a spare moment. But this mind method—are the effects you described certain?"
Mumyeong answered.
"They are. When Asura transmitted it he no doubt intended ordinary internal growth, as with any martial artist. But the host's flesh was already half-refined upon the foundation of the Heavenly Demon's body. As demonic qi accumulates through the Patcheon-hyeol-ma-mu-geuk-gong, the body responds to that qi and improves and evolves all the faster—like fertilizer fed to a thriving plant."
"So it's not a bad thing."
"Correct. As I have said repeatedly—"
Mumyeong continued.
"An ordinary martial artist—setting aside that they would lack even the will to endure—would not grow from training of this insane intensity without rest. Their flesh would necrotize and they would die."
I opened my palm toward the golden dawn.
A hand ruined by every kind of training and drill stared back at me.
I closed it into a fist.
It no longer looked like a human hand.
It looked like my life itself.
A faint sorrow stirred, not entirely absent.
I clenched harder.
Black lightning faintly coiled around the fist, piercing through crimson thunder-flame, then vanished when I shook my hand free.
I was not applying the Sura-dae-myeol-geop-jin.
"Time. Move."
Crimson light flared in both eyes.
My heart, slowed to the extreme, began to pound violently.
Blood like molten lava surged through my body; the cold that had started at my fingertips reversed course and turned scorching.
Muscles that had gone slack to the limit suddenly twitched and drew taut with tension.
I kicked off the ground in a single motion.
It was less a human body and more like a scatter of bird feathers taking flight.
"Clothes are a mess again."
I tore away the tattered upper garment and walked to a nearby stream.
I washed the sweat from my body.
Soaking my fallen bangs, I swept them back and stepped out of the water, glancing around.
"Somewhere around here should be the clothes Jegal Sea gave me…"
From the bundle she had pressed on me before I left the Jegal family I drew out a fresh set of martial robes.
"Huu. Is there any martial artist in the jianghu who burns through robes and weapons the way I do? And I'm broke, too."
I sighed as I changed.
"As expected of Jegal Sea. These should last a while."
I had known Eun Seollyeong had casually mentioned to Jegal Sea that I was hard on clothes and gear, yet I had not expected her to remember and apply that knowledge even when preparing a single outfit.
She had fashioned the robes from thoroughly tanned black iron-hide—softened until it was pliable—rather than ordinary cloth that would never have been used for garments.
I wrapped the wrist guards.
I fixed the greaves about my calves.
Finally I pulled on the human-skin mask So Yeomgyo had handed me.
I studied my reflection in the rippling stream.
"…Even if it's a human-skin mask, would it kill her to give me a decent-looking face?"
I muttered with a short sigh at the face in the water.
"I'm a man too, you know. I'd like to live a life where one blink makes women fall over, one gesture has the Five Great Beauties of the Central Plains squealing and collapsing. Can't I enjoy that at least while wearing the mask?"
"Impossible. Even a human-skin mask cannot create bone structure that was never there."
I kicked the water's surface and stood.
"Watch your mouth. My face may look like this, but the underlying bone structure is still handsome, all right?"
"It seems the jianghu's standards of beauty have shifted over the last few centuries. I shall reconsider."
"…"
I drew the cool morning air deep into my lungs.
Tightening the fluttering hems of the robes with the sash Eun Seollyeong had given me, I returned to the lodging.
The door creaked.
"Oh?"
In the golden light of early morning the first floor of the lodging held no one except So Yeomgyo.
Clad in crimson martial robes, she sat leaning back in a chair, head bobbing.
"You went out in the dead of night claiming you had preparations for the tournament, yet you're back sooner than I expected."
She had been studying a map related to the Oji Branch; her eyes rounded when she looked up at me.
"And you changed clothes? The outer look is almost the same, though."
"It's the first tournament of my life. I figured I should at least show some sincerity."
Right after my fight with Gwak Ido of the Jongnam Sect I had once complained to Mumyeong.
I regretted not knowing exactly where my martial strength stood in this jianghu.
Every day had been a succession of life-and-death struggles, days of thrashing simply to survive.
I had advanced through fight after fight wrapped in darkness, never fully knowing the reputation or true skill of the opponent before me.
To others this might look like a savage underworld martial contest of the black path—no rules, not even a spar, but a blood-soaked life-or-death duel that inspired nothing but dread.
To me it was nothing of the sort.
I had already endured days twice as despairing, days filled with nothing but life-and-death matches.
If anything, this tournament at least possessed a measure of transparency and fairness.
Just how high does my true strength rank in this jianghu?
Countless events of the past streamed backward through my mind like salmon fighting upstream.
At the very end I returned to the beginning—crawling the capital's streets, begging for instruction, taking beatings.
So Yeomgyo smiled at me.
"Your face is completely stiff. You're not scared, are you?"
I let out a short breath, tension still written on my features.
So Yeomgyo folded the map she had been reading, put it away, and rose.
"The human-skin mask suits you well enough."
At a flick of her fingers a silver soft sword coiled around her wrist.
"Every kind of black-path expert is going to come crawling out of the woodwork."
She added briefly:
"Of course I can't help you. I'll be pouring everything into hunting for traces of the Festival of Oblivion from the spectator seats."
I looked at her.
She looked back at me with a hint of worry.
"That said, don't tense up too much. With skill like yours you'll manage just fine. Stay calm, keep your confidence, and—"
"As much as possible,"
I whispered in a hoarse, low voice.
"I'll try not to kill anyone."