Martial Arts
Martial arts.
Ma-bo—the stance in which you spread your feet wide, bend your knees, and lower your center of gravity. It was the first thing Yiryeong taught me, when I was still buzzing with excitement at the thought of learning martial arts.
It wasn’t a difficult posture, but holding it for long was another matter entirely.
Sweat poured off me like rain.
In the end, I couldn’t endure it and flopped face-first into the grass.
“Yiryeong, I thought we were going to do something a little more grand than this. Like swinging a sword, or memorizing some martial manual.”
“A lot of people make that mistake. Whatever the movement is, your body has to be able to follow it first. Strengthening it with internal energy comes after that.”
“I thought having internal energy meant that sort of thing just happened automatically...”
Yiryeong knelt beside me and brushed the sweat-soaked hair back from my forehead. I flinched at the cold touch of her hand against my skin, but then I let my head rest in her care.
“Think about it. If you need to throw a kick but your leg won’t lift, what good are internal energy or forms?”
A martial artist who couldn’t open his legs enough to kick and went sprawling in the middle of a fight. The image made me laugh.
“Haha... I get it now, all at once.”
“Some sects make children do nothing but ma-bo for a full year. That’s how much they emphasize the basics.”
“You’re not going to make me do that, are you?”
Seeing how horrified I was, the corners of her mouth lifted for just a moment.
It lasted only an instant, but I saw it clearly.
“Don’t worry. You won’t need to. For your age, this is already impressive. You’ve been training in your own way, haven’t you?”
“I only tried copying the movements of Black Spider Sect martial artists.”
“That’s enough. Still, for the time being, don’t skip a single hour every day.”
Yiryeong took her hand from my head and stood up.
“For today, keep at it for another half an hour or so. Then I’ll teach you the grand thing you were talking about.”
After finishing ma-bo and going back inside, Yiryeong handed me a book.
“What is this?”
“It’s Clear Lotus Art, an internal cultivation method shared by the Emei Sect with its affiliated sects. It’s a clean, solid method for building internal energy, so it’ll be more than enough to serve as your first stepping-stone.”
When I turned the pages, the faint scent of ink drifted up, as though it had only just dried.
“Did you copy this by hand? Thank you, Yiryeong.”
So this was what she’d been doing instead of sleeping me first every night...
Thinking of Yiryeong working through the night to prepare this for me made my chest tighten.
“It’s nothing.”
I could see her ears, which she was absentmindedly touching, turn a little red. She said it so lightly, but she looked pleased that I had noticed.
“Do I just memorize all of it?”
“For now, memorizing the formula will be enough. More importantly, can you read?”
“Somewhat. I learned by looking at signs and whatever wall postings I could find.”
“...That’s possible? No, tell me when you’re done. I’ll help you sense the qi.”
It was a rare look of surprise on Yiryeong’s face. I’d been piecing together meaning by spotting repeated characters here and there, so it was readable enough—but was it really enough to shock her?
Once I’d memorized the formula, Yiryeong gestured for me to come closer.
“Sit here.”
I tried to sit in full lotus, but she stopped me.
“Not like that. Sit in whatever position is most comfortable for you.”
“But everyone always sits this way, don’t they?”
“Do that once you’re used to it. If you force it now, you’ll only break your concentration.”
So I settled in comfortably, and Yiryeong placed a hand on my back.
“I’ll guide you by sending in qi, so feel it while you recite the formula.”
As soon as she finished speaking, something warm and soft bloomed against my back.
This is Yiryeong’s internal energy...
Her energy spread through my body. It was as though she were trying to build a path through every part of me.
It started at my dantian, shot down below my hips, then flowed up my spine and crashed through the crown of my head.
The energy lingered for a moment at the top of my head, then passed below my lips and back out through my back into Yiryeong’s hand.
I turned to look at her, startled by the sense of emptiness that followed, as if she were drawing away from me.
“Well? Do you understand?”
“It feels like a road has been opened in my body. This is where internal energy travels?”
“That’s right. Circulating energy through the whole body like that is called guiding qi. Now try it yourself.”
“But I don’t have any internal energy yet...”
In that instant, I could feel the energy that made up the sky and earth, the whole natural world. None of it was as gentle as Yiryeong’s, but each current flowed in its own way.
When I drew a breath, my body filled with countless forms of energy.
Ah...
Following the path Yiryeong had made, I gently gathered them and guided them below my navel. Some scattered away, but most obediently came along.
And once that energy settled in my dantian, its nature changed.
Even the freely flowing energy of the heavens and the deep, heavy energy moving through the earth came into harmony and became part of me.
They would move as I commanded, like my own arms and legs.
“So this is internal energy.”
I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from twitching upward.
“Congratulations on becoming a second-class martial artist, Lee Hyun.”
As I sat there grinning foolishly after building up my internal energy, a smile spread across Yiryeong’s face like a flower opening.
I stared blankly at her expression, one I had never seen before. Had she been hiding a smile like that behind that impassive face all this time?
“Smile more often. That makes me happier than getting internal energy.”
“R-right. It’s late, so let’s eat and get ready for bed. I’ll teach you more tomorrow.”
After saying that, Yiryeong fled the room as if escaping.
My guidance in circulating qi grew faster and faster, until I could repeat it several times a day. Watching my internal energy increase bit by bit filled me with a quiet sense of satisfaction.
And so the days repeated: ma-bo in the morning, circulation practice in the afternoon. Before I knew it, a month had passed since I’d come to this mountain.
“Hyun, you can stop ma-bo now.”
Lately, Yiryeong had taken to shortening my name. Maybe it was her own little term of endearment, but each time she said it, I felt strangely pleased, as though we were growing closer.
Still, telling me to stop ma-bo—was she finally going to teach me something new?
“From today, I’ll teach you martial arts properly.”
“Was what we’ve been doing until now not martial arts?”
“Building internal energy is part of martial arts if you look at it broadly, but what I mean is that I’ll teach you things like fist techniques, kicking techniques, and sword forms.”
Yiryeong picked up a thick branch and swung her sword. As wood chips flew and shaved away, she quickly fashioned it into a wooden sword.
“Before that, there’s something I need to check. Could you take this and slash up and down with it? Don’t do anything else—just cut.”
Remembering the straight lines drawn across the throats of the Black Spider Sect men, I took the sword and did as she said, cutting upward and downward.
“Now swing it however you want.”
However I wanted. The sword strokes of the Black Spider Sect lord—the ones that had once filled me with helplessness—rose in my mind. So did Yiryeong’s sword, moving at a speed so strange it seemed impossible.
The Black Spider Sect lord’s sword was certainly threatening, but that was all it was. The movements were too large, too heavy.
Until not long ago, it had filled me with a sense of powerlessness, but after seeing Yiryeong’s sword, I could finally see its shortcomings.
With my internal energy now, that level was possible. Maybe I could even fill in the gaps with Yiryeong’s sword.
My internal energy surged through the meridians of my entire body. I had never learned how to strengthen the body, but my internal energy seemed willing to listen to what I wanted.
The sword whipped through the air as if it would cut down everything it touched. At a speed no such motion should have been capable of.
Heavy, yet fast. Contradictory qualities came together, stitching each ponderous strike into the next.
Tap.
At last, the internal energy sustaining that strange movement ran dry, and the sword slipped from my hand as my body lost its balance.
“As I thought...”
Yiryeong said that, then closed her eyes and stood still for a long while.
I found that silence hard to endure. Had I done something wrong?
Maybe I’d carelessly mixed the sword form I’d seen with the crude slashing of a demonic sect martial artist, and she’d been offended by it.
“Did I make a mistake? I’m sorry for copying your sword form without permission.”
Then Yiryeong came over and laid a hand on my head.
When I looked up at her with uneasy eyes, she bent her knees slightly to meet my gaze.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that you’re so extraordinary that I didn’t know what to do, so I was thinking.”
Yiryeong smiled, as if to reassure me. Since that first smile of hers, she had started smiling at me more often.
“You remember exactly what you see, don’t you? You took that excellent memory and made a new sword out of it.”
“Yes. The last time I saw your sword, I thought it was beautiful, so...”
“Then I suppose there’s nothing else I need to teach you separately.”
“Nothing else to teach? Does that mean I can’t learn from you anymore?”
“That’s not what I mean. I just think I need to revise the plan a little.”
Learning martial arts from Yiryeong unfolded very differently from what I had expected.
Whenever she had the chance, Yiryeong showed me every form she knew—from the common techniques any martial artist would recognize to the Emei Sect’s most prized arts.
Once, I asked whether it was really all right for her to show me such things.
“It’s fine to show them. You’re not going to imitate them exactly anyway.”
It seemed Yiryeong wanted me less to master those martial arts than to experience many different styles.
Before bed, we even talked about the forms she had shown me that day.
“Doesn’t the fist technique Subduing-Tiger Fist move too straight forward?”
A crouching tiger. True to its name, it was stubborn and powerful, but so straightforward it was easy to evade.
“Subduing-Tiger Fist is something we teach the lay disciples. That’s why it isn’t of especially high quality.”
“Then what if it were used together with another footwork method? Something irregular, like Butterfly Tread, would suit it, wouldn’t it?”
“...Impressive. That’s actually how it’s used.”
Chatting away excitedly, I was patted on the head by Yiryeong as if she were telling me to calm down and go to sleep already.
It felt nice. By now, I was used to even her cold hand.
“Hyun, you have the makings of a sect founder.”
“A sect founder?”
“Someone who can create martial arts of their own. It’s an incredible thing. Those are the people who establish sects with their own hands.”
It was an awkward compliment. I placed my hand over Yiryeong’s cool one as it rested on my head.
Still, to me, Yiryeong was the more incredible one.