Heavenly Martial Body
Heavenly Martial Body.
There was not a soul present who failed to grasp the weight of those words.
Silence settled over the room like a shroud.
“Is it true?”
Moyong Taese’s voice, when he finally spoke, was hoarse and frayed.
“It is true.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
Without the slightest hesitation, Gam Seoin, Hall Leader of the Medicine King Hall, answered.
“I stake my entire career on it.”
“…What cruel jest of Heaven is this? I thought him nothing more than a mere bastard son.”
The hand Moyong Taese used to stroke his beard trembled violently. He took an involuntary step backward.
Shock rippled through everyone present, yet none of them were as stunned as I. While they had dragged me here in that cage, I had kept coughing up foul black blood. Mumyeong’s words returned to me unbidden—how my body had been reconstructed into the flesh of the Heavenly Demon.
Moyong Taese pressed a hand weakly to his forehead.
“Heavenly Martial Body… We are cornered. I tried so hard to remain neutral, yet this disaster has fallen upon us. Even if I had already steeled myself to stain my hands with blood… still, a Heavenly Martial Body… A member who might have become a treasure of our family, and I nearly…”
“Elder.”
Gam Seoin clasped his hands together.
“No matter how heavily the orders from above weigh upon you, as a true member of the Moyong Family you already know what the right answer must be.”
Moyong Taese’s eyes swam with turmoil.
“I should have refused Lady Yeo’s request to the very end. If only I had known nothing…”
His sighs continued.
“To verify his identity myself before the killing, for the sake of thoroughness… who could have imagined it would lead to this? What twisted game is Heaven playing?”
Every gaze fixed upon him had sunk into heavy stillness.
“Very well. All of you, listen.”
The wavering light in his eyes settled once more into the deep, unfathomable calm I had first seen in him. His hand rose slowly. Every person present watched that hand with taut nerves. Everything would be decided by his next words.
Moyong Taese nodded as though he had reached a decision.
“From this moment, every person here—”
The Eighth Elder’s residence was vast. Endless walls enclosed a garden paved in white gravel, steeped in perfect quiet.
I finished bathing and changed into clean clothes. Gam Seoin jerked his chin toward me and took the lead.
“This way.”
The great mansion lay deathly still.
Everyone has been cleared out of the estate.
So that was what he had meant by issuing an official notice. Not a single servant remained of those who had been visible only a short while ago. The silence was so absolute I could have heard a single grain of dust rolling across the floor.
When the door opened, Moyong Taese sat in the seat of honor.
“I find myself slightly regretting that I may have spoken out of turn,” Gam Seoin said, leaving behind words whose meaning I could not yet grasp.
“Not at all. This, too, must be Heaven’s will.”
“If that is the Elder’s wish.”
Gam Seoin bowed his head and withdrew. The door closed. Now only Moyong Taese and I remained in the room.
“Sit.”
He lifted the pot from the table, poured tea into two cups, and set one before me and one before himself. Silence seeped into the chamber like black ink.
So this is the Eighth Elder of the Moyong Family.
Of every person I had ever met in my life, he was surely the greatest master. In his eyes I must have been less than a gnat. Internal energy thick enough to grasp with the hand poured from his body and pressed down upon me—a murderous pressure that felt ready to crush my throat. I clenched my teeth and endured.
“You show not the slightest fear.”
Something unreadable flickered through Moyong Taese’s eyes.
“What choice do I have but to die? Of course, I have no intention of simply offering my neck.”
My words were no empty bluster. Walking a tightrope. This must be how it felt to walk a tightrope over a blade’s edge. I had already crossed the river. Now there was nothing left but to advance.
“And if I decide, as I nearly did earlier, to kill you after all? What then would you do?”
He stroked his beard as though watching the futile thrashing of a mouse, amusement glinting in his gaze.
“I do not know. But one thing is certain—I will not sit still and wait with my neck stretched out.”
“Even if that thrashing is utterly meaningless?”
“Even if it is a meaningless thrashing.”
I had sworn it before my mother’s frozen corpse. Even if I chased the sun and burned to death for it, I would never accept the fate of a frog quietly swallowed by a snake.
The emotions on Moyong Taese’s face as he regarded me grew endlessly complex.
“Very well. First let us examine your body. Roll up your sleeve.”
He took my pulse, then felt the structure of my bones. His expression darkened further still.
“There is no mistake. So clear that even I recognized it at a single glance…”
It was closer to pity than anything else.
“One question. Have you ever formally trained in martial arts?”
“Never formally.”
“Why in the world not? With a body like that?”
Looking at the genuine bewilderment on his face, a faint anger rose inside me. I chewed it down and swallowed it.
“There was never any opportunity.”
Moyong Taese seemed to realize, belatedly, the clumsiness of his words. For a long while he said nothing. Steam rose from the teacup before him, thinning and scattering into the air.
“I misspoke.”
His tone was flat.
The tea had gone cold.
“Did you know that your body was exceptional?”
“I did not.”
It was no lie. When Mumyeong had taken root within me, my body had been reconstructed upon the foundation of the Heavenly Demon’s original flesh. How could I have known the details of my own body? Paradoxically, Moyong Taese now understood my current physique more accurately than I did myself.
“Then you mean to say that until now you have never even had the chance to properly accumulate internal energy? At your age?”
“Yes.”
“…Huu.”
Moyong Taese sighed and closed his eyes. I could not tell what thoughts occupied him. I only heard the faint mutter that escaped him, almost too soft to catch.
“To bury and rot such a treasure over that petty power struggle…”
He covered his forehead with one hand. There was not the slightest pretense in his regret. Setting everything else aside, as a pure martial artist he sincerely mourned that a brilliant raw gemstone had missed its time.
“Yes. It is enough that we know now. Gam Seoin has saved me from a deed I would have regretted for the rest of my life.”
As though his throat were dry, he drank the cold tea before him.
“Listen well. Though my insight is limited, you possess a body so outstanding that even in the vast martial world it is rarely seen.”
I concentrated so as not to miss a single word. No one could be trusted. No one stood on my side. As before, my only asset was my own body, and my skill would become the sole means—and the strongest means—of protecting myself. The road ahead would certainly be treacherous. Before facing those crises, any explanation of my most fundamental asset was never enough.
“A body equivalent to a complete rebirth. Every meridian is pure and clear; the sinews, tendons, and entire musculoskeletal system possess extreme elasticity. And because you have never practiced any impure internal energy methods, it is truly pristine. Of course, your age is late for a true beginning. Yet… somehow it will work. Yes, it will certainly be resolved.”
His final words sounded more like a reminder to himself than to me.
“In the past, driven by the single desire to learn martial arts, I once begged to be accepted as a disciple at several sects.”
I hesitated, then opened my mouth.
“But I was turned away at the gate with the words that, having grown without systematic internal energy training from childhood, my dantian would already have hardened completely. So honestly… I am skeptical of myself.”
It was a humiliating memory even for me; I had debated until the last moment whether to speak of it.
“You tried to enter as a disciple and were driven off at the gate?”
“Yes. I was beaten by the gatekeeper servants and dragged out.”
“What?”
Moyong Taese’s reaction was fierce.
“What miserable little sect was that, that I should wipe it from the face of the earth?! A minor faction daring to lay hands on a member of one of the Five Great Families—the Moyong Family…!”
In the middle of his roar he seemed to recall that only a short while earlier he himself had intended to kill me. He bit his lip.
“…Yes. I have no right to say such things. In your eyes I must still look like the basest of opportunists. Of course I do. You watched a man who meant to kill you change his mind the moment he saw your talent… I can imagine what you must feel…”
“….”
“I say it again: I am sorry for what happened earlier.”
I could not curse a man who had nearly killed me and then reversed course upon seeing my body. In the end I was nothing more than a bastard son. Yet this great elder of the Moyong Family, who had nothing to gain from me, offered a solemn apology.
“It is nothing. I understand. This world is one in which people are inevitably ranked according to their utility.”
“…Yes. If you can put it that way, then so be it.”
Moyong Taese gazed bitterly at the teacup from which steam still rose. He laid his hand upon the cold teapot. A faint heat haze flowed from his fingertips, transferred instantly into the ceramic vessel, and the water began to boil once more.
Internal energy…?
My eyes widened of their own accord at the miraculous sight of a man heating water with nothing but his own energy. Seeing my reaction, Moyong Taese asked in a calm voice,
“Judging by your expression, this is the first time you have ever witnessed the use of internal energy.”
“Yes. The first time. Did you just heat the water with internal energy?”
The look he gave me was endlessly complicated. Countless expressions crossed his face in the space of three breaths. At the end of them all he seemed to have steadied himself somewhat; a quiet smile touched his lips.
“Yes. Something like this… if you begin systematic martial training even now, it is nothing at all. And the doubts you formed from your earlier experiences are not entirely wrong. Yet there is no need to despair, because… your name is Moyong Bi, is it not?”
It was the first time. The first time anyone of the Moyong Family had ever spoken my true name.
“…Yes.”
I did not understand why that alone made tears threaten. I clenched my teeth and held them back.
“Yes. If one grows older without ever cultivating internal energy, the unused dantian hardens, and even if one later learns an outstanding internal energy method, efficiency drops to an extreme degree. That much is true.”
“I see.”
“However, efficiency drops—it does not mean growth becomes impossible. And in my judgment, while your body is gifted, you possess something else as well.”
“….”
The tension that had loosened slightly drew taut again.
Surely not.
Had he noticed? As long as I remained within the orthodox path, there was one fact I had to conceal no matter how kindly the other party behaved: the remnant of the Heavenly Demon that had taken root in my body. That, above all, had to be hidden. Moyong Taese was thoroughly of the orthodox faction. In a martial world where mutual hatred went beyond loathing to the point of refusing the other’s very existence, if he learned that a remnant of the Demonic Cult remained within me, Heavenly Martial Body or not, he would drive a blade straight into my heart. No matter what, it had to stay secret.
“Moyong Bi, have you ever considered what the world truly means by the word ‘genius’?”
His next words were unexpected.
“Pardon?”
“I believe a genius must possess three things.”
He raised three fingers.
“First is the gift of the body. Without a physique capable of realizing every martial art, there are clear limits. Second is a background that can fully support growth at the proper times upon that foundation. Third and last is the individual’s own pathological hunger and pressure for growth. And of those who were once called geniuses yet fell into ruin, the great majority—”
He folded two fingers, leaving only one raised, and cut the air with it.
“—lacked the third.”
“Ah.”
“I have lived a long life. I have seen many geniuses born with exceptional physical traits. I have seen many martial artists who possessed the background of a prestigious family to support them. Yet those young masters who held both of those things almost invariably lacked the third. In a way it is only natural. How could someone gifted with talent and background ever know the rage, the sorrow, and the hunger that only the talentless feel? That is why I concluded that true geniuses are so hard to find.”
He pointed that single raised finger straight at me.
“It is true that you missed your timing. But setting aside that minor flaw, you possess everything else. Especially those seething eyes of yours—they are closer to a starved wildcat with nothing left but malice than to a hungry tiger. You will certainly overcome that flaw.”
The clenched fingertips resting on my knees trembled faintly.
I had been acknowledged. A man who had been beaten even by the gatekeepers of minor sects had been recognized and encouraged by the Eighth Elder of one of the Five Great Families.
How was I supposed to name this feeling?
Looking at me, flushed with emotion, Moyong Taese spoke.
“I will not kill you. I will spare your life.”
At his declaration the taut thread of my nerves seemed to snap and go slack.
“However.”
Before that reaction could even fade, his words continued.
“There is a condition.”
“A condition?”
Yes. I had known it could never end so simply. Nothing in this world came free. I swallowed.
The next words would be the real ones. No matter what he said, I would not panic. I would calmly refute and assert my own necessity. I would not simply stretch out my neck and wait to be cut.
“There is only one condition.”
Moyong Taese spoke with resolute eyes.
“Moyong Bi, become my disciple.”