Fateful Encounter (2)
When the Zhou dynasty lost its strength and the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods rose in chaos, Mozi found himself asking a question.
"How can the world, sunk in misery and suffering, possibly be saved?"
At first, Mozi studied the Confucians. When he could not find the answer there, he proposed three great principles that became the very foundation of the Mo Sect.
Universal Love, Against Aggression, and Heaven's Will.
Universal Love meant showing equal affection to all beneath heaven, without discrimination; Against Aggression meant opposing unjust violence and invasion; and Heaven's Will meant honoring righteousness and protecting the weak in accordance with heaven's intent.
Because of that, the Mo Sect walked a road unlike the other schools of thought.
Unlike the other sages, who either took office or chose seclusion, the Mo Sect went out on foot to care for the people and drive back invaders. Naturally, it developed the engineering and carpentry needed for defensive strongholds, the medicine needed to tend the people, and the sword and fist techniques needed for self-defense; all of it was known as Mo Sect teachings.
Mukjeok was also a woman who revered and followed the teachings of the Mo Sect. She had, moreover, spent countless years in Zhangjiajie, from the day she was born until now.
Even if she could not compare with the Tang Clan or Qingnang Sect, she was a master of medicine, and she knew every herb in Zhangjiajie like the back of her hand.
Yet the hundred-year-old fleeceflower root that even Mukjeok, her father, and her father's father had all somehow failed to find was discovered by her disciple.
When she asked how he had done it, the disciple replied:
[I saw it.]
'...Is this impudent disciple making a fool of his master?'
Suspicion and irritation rose in Mukjeok all at once, and she deliberately put on an angry face as she pressed him further.
"Disciple, don't think to mock your master. How did you find it?"
But Wolyeon's answer did not change. He crouched down and wrote on the ground again, repeating only the same words: I saw it.
Mukjeok narrowed her eyes and looked him over.
"Very well. If that is truly so, can you find other herbs right now?"
Wolyeon moved at once. The child lifted a hand and pointed behind Mukjeok to a thicket, then wrote the words down.
[There is black mountainberry over there.]
When Mukjeok went there and parted the brush to look, it was exactly as Wolyeon had said. Fat, ripe black mountainberries gleamed in front of her, making their presence known.
Wolyeon's report did not end there.
[There is purple lilac deeper inside that growth.]
[There is white fungus on the branch of that old tree.]
[There is ginseng in the crack of that rock, though this disciple cannot tell whether it is mountain ginseng or white ginseng.]
"You..."
Mukjeok stared at Wolyeon with her mouth hanging open. Then she reached out and pinched his soft cheeks, which still held the baby fat of youth, turning his face this way and that as she examined him.
"Could the Six Yang Heart Mantra and the Clear-Heart Mantra I gave him as an infant have become this child's fortunate chance? Or was he simply born this way..."
She muttered to herself while studying her disciple's face intently.
It was then that Wolyeon's clear blue eyes stood out all the more brilliantly.
When his master held his cheek for a long while and showed no sign of letting go, Wolyeon looked at her with a puzzled expression.
Only then did Mukjeok jolt, realizing what she was doing, and release him.
She cleared her throat once to compose herself, patted his head lightly, and turned away.
"Come. We have wasted time. If we delay any longer, we won't get home before the rain starts."
Wolyeon nodded quietly and followed after her. As she walked, Mukjeok glanced back now and then at the disciple trotting along behind her, her gaze faint and unreadable.
There are a mountain's worth of things I need to confirm with this child.
That was what Mukjeok thought.
And for the rest of the descent, she kept her mouth tightly shut and did not exchange a single word with her disciple.
***
Hmm.
Did I move too fast?
I had only meant to show Master a little of what I could do, like, Look, I’ve got this special ability, please notice me, but instead she’d spent the entire way down with a stiff expression and not a single word.
The reason I’d been able to find the hundred-year-old fleeceflower root and the other herbs was Mind's Eye, the skill I’d gained in exchange for the penalty of being mute.
It let me read the flow of inner energy and qi.
In the game, it was useful in all sorts of ways.
You could use it to pinpoint or track an opponent through the flow of qi, detect traps or even puzzle mechanisms, and in battle it was basically a god-tier skill that could reveal an enemy's vital points and weaknesses.
Of course, the price of getting such a broken ability was paying a fairly heavy penalty in the character customization menu.
And the same rule applied to NPCs, too; characters who possessed Mind's Eye were often disabled in some way, or burdened with a comparable disadvantage.
But in the game, those characters were usually praised as once-in-a-century geniuses, and if they happened to be playable characters, the story would often have NPCs take the initiative to teach them martial arts.
I had expected something like that when I showed Master my ability, too...
Why isn't she saying anything?
Worse, her expression was serious.
I’d never seen Master look that grave before.
What if this had the opposite effect?
What if I ended up never learning martial arts at all?
It had been quite a long time since she took me in and began teaching me.
Eight years since I learned lightness arts, medicine, herbology, and carpentry.
At this point, she’d teach me martial arts, surely.
At this point, she’d teach me martial arts, surely.
At this point...
And yet eight years had gone by without that happening.
When in the world are you going to teach me martial arts?
If you set the background as mute prodigy taught by a reclusive master, shouldn’t she have at least taught me a line of inner cultivation by now?
Back when Master first taught me how to use lightness arts, I was so happy I thought, So now I can finally learn martial arts? That was two years ago.
Now I understood.
The reason Master had taught me lightness arts wasn't to begin instructing me in martial arts. She'd only been showing me how to survive in Zhangjiajie.
I didn’t know whether Zhangjiajie was really that dangerous or whether it only felt that way because of wuxia logic, since I’d never been there myself, but in a world without lifts, escalators, or elevators, if I didn’t know lightness arts, there’s no way I would have lasted a day before falling to my death.
And to make matters even more infuriating—
lightness arts could be used without inner energy or a mental method as long as you trained hard enough.
Honestly, who would have thought the principle behind lightness arts without qi was basically the same as parkour?
And somehow I’d learned it all in the body of an eight-year-old. Even I had to admit that was impressive.
Wow, look at me go. Someone praise me already.
Still, enough was enough.
The reason I was getting so restless wasn't just because I had possessed a wuxia game and wanted to wave around some martial arts for fun.
Well, to be honest, that was part of it. Romance has its place, doesn't it? Since I’d come this far, it would be nice to use swordplay and movement arts and all that.
But something even more important than that was my background setting.
Why had my past self added the utterly unnecessary extra line, the master is slain by the Demonic Cult, to the setup of mute prodigy taught by a reclusive master?
Stop giving things pointless tragic grandeur.
Worse, I’d only written that the master would be killed by the Demonic Cult, not when, so there was no telling when those bastards would come storming in.
I figured the earliest playable age was around eighteen, so maybe that was when the Demonic Cult would invade.
I had never seen Master display her martial arts in earnest, but I could still make a rough estimate of her level.
She had the discernment to teach a child high-level lightness arts that would take an ordinary person ages to catch up with, despite my young age.
Even though she was fifty, she looked no older than her late twenties.
The people of Mureung County all revered her as an immortal.
And from my memories as an infant, it seemed she was on friendly terms with the leaders of the Wudang Sect and Qingcheng Sect.
Truth be told, the game setting all but guaranteed it, but my master was definitely a master among masters.
And the demonic martial artists who would kill her would, without question, be stronger than she was.
So if I could learn even a single martial art now, shouldn’t I at least gain the ability to run away with her if need be? At the very least, I needed enough strength to protect her.
Of course, I had also thought about just running away on my own.
But guilt was another matter entirely.
I’d designed the setting so that Master picked up an infant like me.
Because of that, she had carried me on her back and raised me.
And because of me, her death had been set in stone.
When I thought about how she had changed my diapers from the time I was an infant, how she had wandered the village asking for milk just to feed me, how she had carried and raised me all these years, I couldn’t possibly avoid feeling guilty.
I will save her, no matter what.
Master was the woman who would become my mother.
I'll save Master, get my chance encounter, and gain strength.
That was why I’d secretly slipped into Master's study now.
This is usually when she leaves the room.
It was around the hour of the monkey, between 3 and 5 in the afternoon.
At this time, Master would usually head down to Mureung County to look after the people, or else—I didn't know exactly what she was doing—go deep into the forest and stay there for a long while before coming back.
Even if she were only going to Mureung County, the shortest trip would still take two hours round trip before she returned.
That should give me enough time to scrounge up a bit of something, whether it was a secret manual or some other treasure.
Let’s see. There should be that book she always reads somewhere around here...
Whenever I looked for Master around dinner time, I usually found her reading something in here.
Since this was a wuxia world, I vaguely assumed it might be a martial manual, and that thought guided my hands as I moved.
Only after clearing away the strange tools and mechanical devices piled on the desk did I finally find Master's book.
It was an old, well-worn volume with no title written on it at all.
Oho.
It already gave off a seriously suspicious vibe.
I swallowed hard and slowly turned the pages.
The most insanely awesome secret manual ever,
The most insanely awesome secret manual e—
Filled with that vague expectation, I plunged into the book and immediately had to frown.
[Force is that by which form is set in motion.]
[A circle is that in which every radius is the same length from the center.]
[If a circle is traced with a compass, the lines will overlap one another.]
...Huh?
What is this?
I wasn’t looking for a martial manual. I’d stumbled onto a math textbook.
Trying to confirm it, I turned the pages again, and different content followed.
[A cause is that which, once obtained, allows the result to be formed.]
[A minor cause is something whose presence does not necessarily produce a result, though without it the result will certainly not occur.]
[A major cause is something whose presence makes the result inevitable, and whose absence makes the result impossible.]
Huh??
The front half was as dry as arithmetic class, and the back half had turned into logic for dummies?
If I’d had a body that could speak, I would have blurted out, "What the hell is this, you nerd?"
The rest of the book was just as baffling. Even after flipping through page after page, all I found were obscure, incomprehensible lines mixed with diagrams of complicated mechanical devices, nothing that looked even remotely like a martial manual.
Damn it.
Total bust.
Why did Master spend all day clutching a book like this?
I hurriedly closed it and went deeper into the study to inspect the other books.
Master's study was modest—just two bookshelves, the sort you'd see in a studio apartment.
But those shelves were packed tight with all sorts of books, and I walked toward them carefully.
I had four hours left, after all. If I searched thoroughly, I should be able to find something useful among them.
While I was rummaging through the shelves,
Huh?
I spotted something sharp sticking out through an old cloth.
Curiosity piqued, I slowly lifted the cloth, and what emerged was something I had never once imagined.
Is that... a hawk?
Not just any hawk, either, but an enormous one made of wood and bronze, so large it was practically my own size.
***
It’s Mind's Eye.
The moment Mukjeok saw her disciple's gift, she knew at once what it was.
When she had wandered the martial world, she had seen others with a similar ability.
The abbot of Shaolin, Master Beopjeong. A man who had mastered Buddhism over long years of practice and gained far-seeing vision through his attainment.
The young daughter of the Zhuge Clan. She possessed a heavenly technique that could read the stars in the heavens with nothing more than a glance.
And Baekhyeon, that hopeless fool, who had picked up a blind child. Though the boy could not see, he read the flow of qi and used it to replace sight, and people said his perception far surpassed that of ordinary men.
And then...
Crunch.
As a detestable face surfaced in her mind, Mukjeok ground her teeth.
But she quickly shook her head and forced the thought away.
She had already retired from the martial world and left the dust of the mortal realm behind.
There was no point in clinging to old attachments, and no grievance left worth nursing.
Instead, Mukjeok decided to think about her disciple's ability, and naturally, her thoughts drifted to his clear blue eyes.
"That old man Baekhyeon... did he know all along and say this child would become my chance encounter?"
No, that couldn’t be it.
Her muttered words scattered quickly on the wind.
Soon after, Mukjeok stopped thinking and acted.
The few friends with whom she could speak with complete honesty, with her heart laid bare.
She planned to send them letters after a very long time.