The Mo Sect, Part 3
What is a hero of the jianghu?
Is he not a righteous guardian who roams the martial world, upholding justice, aiding the weak, and cutting down all that is crooked and evil?
That was why I had only left a pure and honest remark after seeing my master behave more like a hero of the jianghu than anyone I had ever met.
And yet here I was, unable to call my father “Father,” unable to call my master “Mother,” and unable even to call a hero a hero.
For the crime of calling my master a hero of the jianghu, I was forced to kneel for more than an hour.
For that full hour, while my knees and thighs felt as though they were being ground away, Master sat in silence with her legs folded beneath her, absorbed in meditation, never once showing any sign that she was thinking of anything at all.
That was the cruelest thing about being mute.
If I could at least make a sound of pain, I might have been able to stir a little pity from Master.
But what sound could come from a tongue that had been cut out long ago, from vocal cords already worn out and ruined? Even the faint hiss of air slipping past my throat would only be dismissed by Master as nothing more than wind.
I’m right here!
Master!
I’m dying over here!
And yet, as expected, there was no response.
What was more, whenever she fell into thought like this, she would sit in meditation for an hour or two without moving an inch, no matter whether rain or snow battered down around her. There was simply no way to make her budge.
Ah, no. I was reaching my limit.
As I tried to shift my trembling thighs into a less agonizing position, searching desperately for some tiny bit of relief, I suddenly heard—
“Disciple.”
I sprang upright on my knees at once.
Master unfolded herself from her cross-legged pose and rose slowly to her feet, then began walking toward me with measured, unhurried steps.
“You said that you dreamed of the martial world and the jianghu.”
Did I?
I think I did.
Come to think of it, I probably had said something like, “Because of Master, my illusions about the martial world and the jianghu have shattered.”
Before I could even think it through, I nodded. Master continued.
“Then, disciple. What are the jianghu and the heroes you dream of?”
Her question left me speechless.
Just a moment ago I’d been tearing the martial world and its so-called heroes to pieces, and now suddenly this?
A thousand thoughts flashed through my mind.
Was she testing me?
If I defended the martial world or the heroes now, would Master smash my calves again?
No, wait. My calves were already smashed.
But if I deliberately made something up to criticize them, she’d probably dislike that too.
In moments like this, there was only one solution.
The ultimate move: invoke the sages of old.
“A hero of the jianghu is one whose conduct, though perhaps contrary to what is righteous, is nonetheless marked by trustworthiness and bold action. Having made a promise, he fulfills it without fail; he aids another’s peril without considering his own; and even when he has faced life-and-death danger, he does not boast of his skill, but instead is ashamed to praise his own virtue.”
“It is also said, ‘He takes to a small skiff and drifts upon the rivers and lakes,’ for the jianghu is always unstable, a place where danger lurks at every turn. Yet just as there can be no rivers or lakes without streams, there can be no jianghu without heroes, and no place for the common folk to stand.”
I had not made that up on the spot. Those were words recorded by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian.
Thanks to all those endless recitations of the Twenty-Four Histories I’d endured while getting my forehead flicked by Master, the lessons were finally proving useful.
Master frowned and looked down at the lines I had written.
Then she remained like that for another half hour.
All I could do was keep kneeling and wait for her to speak.
Master, it’s already well past the hour of the rat.
Are you trying to turn this disciple from a mute into a cripple as well?
***
Hah, this cheeky little brat.
After all the painstaking instruction I had given him, he had gone and used that knowledge to answer his master back.
And yet Mukjeok did not feel offended. On the contrary, she felt a quiet pride in her disciple’s growth.
What troubled her was something else entirely.
The impression he had of the jianghu was so similar to the thoughts she herself had once held when she was first setting out into it.
When the world is already aflame with calamity, how could one ever fan the flames or pour on oil?
I would rather be the one who pours out even the tea he has been drinking, if only to put out the fire.
But the jianghu was cold.
Anything beyond that came back as disappointment, hypocrisy, and betrayal.
In the end, all that remained was a broken body and inner demons.
That was why Mukjeok did not want to send her disciple out into this filthy world, either.
But now that this boy has awakened the Mind's Eye, I can no longer simply stand by and watch.
Whether he liked it or not, he would be dragged into the storms of the jianghu.
As his master, then, she had no choice but to teach him how to endure the coming tempest.
For a moment, Mukjeok closed her eyes.
In her mind, she seemed to hear her father’s bitter voice from the day he had sent her away into the jianghu.
Then go. Walk the jianghu you dream of.
And when you wake from that dream…
You will come to understand how fleeting the jianghu truly is.
“Disciple.”
At Mukjeok’s call, Wolyeon looked up.
The way he fiddled with his feet, trying to endure the numbness in his legs, was both pitiful and oddly endearing.
“Are your legs numb? Then sit comfortably and listen.”
At that, Wolyeon hurriedly shifted into a proper seated posture and listened closely to what she had to say.
Suppressing the laugh that almost escaped her, she folded her legs beneath her and spoke to him.
“Watch your master’s movements carefully. You must tell me everything you see, in complete detail, without missing a single thing. Can you do that?”
Wolyeon had no way of knowing what she intended, so he tilted his head slightly before nodding with quiet composure.
His master would never ask him to do something meaningless. She must have a reason. Wolyeon thought as much.
“Good. Then begin.”
With those words, Mukjeok closed her eyes.
She focused on the five senses that made up internal cultivation—eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and mind—and began to control her inner energy with exquisite precision.
The inner energy of the Mo Sect was neither as flamboyant as Mount Hua’s nor as imposing as Wudang’s, nor as pure and bright as Qingcheng’s.
It possessed none of the vast daoist vigor that embraced heaven and earth, nor the deep compassion of Buddhism that gathered all beings beneath its mercy.
It simply flowed on, steady as the earth, gentle as the wind, and silent as the night sky.
That was because the inner energy of the Mo Sect was not a means, but an end in itself. One did not cultivate inner energy in order to wield martial arts; one wielded martial arts in order to cultivate inner energy.
What was more, the Mo Sect did not boast of its martial arts, nor did it indulge in cumbersome ornamentation.
For that reason, even this mental method had no intention of receiving a grand name. It had merely been given the already dull-sounding title of Mo Heart Formula by earlier generations, so that it would not be saddled by outsiders with the even more obvious label of “Nameless Mental Method.”
As Mukjeok circulated the Mo Heart Formula, black inner energy rose around her like ink dropped into water.
At a glance, it looked like ominous black mist and might have seemed sinister, yet unlike the demonic sect—namely the White Lotus Cult—it contained no trace of any vile or corrupt force.
If the demonic sect’s power was darkness, then the Mo Sect’s was the night sky.
If the demonic sect’s power was emptiness, then the Mo Sect’s was closer to shadow.
Wolyeon’s blue eyes tracked the flow of that energy without missing a single detail.
Only when Mukjeok had completed the great heavenly circuit, guiding the current of her mental art once around the twelve primary meridians, did the movement of his pupils finally stop.
“Hoo…”
The battle against the Blood Demon and the Heavenly Saber King, where she had fought as though throwing her very life away.
The injuries she had suffered then still tormented her, and even the control of her inner energy was not what it once had been.
To feel this exhausted from nothing more than a simple breathing exercise… Mukjeok let out a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her brow before asking her disciple, “Disciple. What did you see?”
Wolyeon rolled the twig in his hand between his fingers for a moment, lost in thought.
Mukjeok sat quietly and waited until his thoughts had settled. Soon, Wolyeon’s hand began to move.
I saw an energy like black mist blooming around Master. It felt strange, as though ink had been mixed into cloud and fog.
But the mist did not move evenly. At times it seemed to break apart in the middle, and at other times it vanished like a mirage only to reappear sharply, as vivid as a cloud. I did not know how to describe it, so it took me quite a long time to answer.
…As I thought.
Since her disciple possessed the Mind's Eye, she had expected him to see the inner energy and the mental method flowing through her body.
But to think that he would also notice how her internal force had become blocked by stagnation, then gathered and broken apart until it had become a weakness in itself.
This level of attainment is something that even Master Beopjeong of Shaolin only barely reached.
For an eight-year-old child to have achieved such a feat…
If he had been born into an ordinary family, he would already have been praised as a prodigy sent down by heaven. But as a mute orphan, he was little more than a fine-looking wooden figure.
A sacrifice, to be used by others until he was drained dry and left with nothing, even his life taken in the end.
Mukjeok did not want to see her disciple walk such a path.
“Disciple. Listen closely.”
After much deliberation, Mukjeok finally spoke.
“What you saw is what wandering martial artists in the jianghu call a mind formula—a mental art that every true expert should know at least a little of.”
Wolyeon’s eyes widened visibly at those words.
Seeing that reaction, Mukjeok continued.
“I’ll say this plainly. Your eyes can see through the weak points of every peerless expert under heaven, read the paths of heaven’s qi and the wind, and perceive the flow of the earth. Doesn’t that sound extraordinary to you?”
Wolyeon looked blank for a moment, then slowly nodded.
Mukjeok’s lips curved slightly as she went on.
“And now imagine that you, an orphan with no family, a mute who has never learned a single martial art, were to step into the martial world. No, you needn’t even go out into the martial world. If word spread that a reclusive immortal with no ties to anyone was living here in Zhangjiajie, warriors from all under heaven would come looking for you. What do you think they would do to you?”
Wolyeon stared at her in a daze, then his face quickly drained of color as he wrote.
I doubt it would be anything pleasant.
“‘Anything pleasant’? That would be the farthest thing from it. Alive, you would be worked like a human armillary sphere until the end of your days; dead, your corpse and even your eyeballs would be boiled down for elixirs. Whether living or dead, you would be serving martial artists all the same.”
Wolyeon’s face went even paler.
Ah, so he could make that kind of adorable expression after all.
Mukjeok forced herself to suppress the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth in order to preserve the dignity of a master.
“You foolish disciple. Is that truly the hero’s path you dream of?”
At that, Wolyeon shook his head in a hurry.
Mukjeok lifted the corners of her mouth and asked in return, “What is wrong with it? Even if the method is flawed, if one burns this body for the sake of justice and never stops even after death, is that not what righteousness is? What do you think?”
At his master’s words, Wolyeon looked at her with an expression that bordered on chewing shit.
It was absurd that he would dare to make such an insolent face at his master, but Mukjeok decided to let it pass. After all, she had been the one to provoke him on purpose.
“Exactly. The hero’s path, the hero of the jianghu, the martial world, and the jianghu you speak of—that is what they are. The man with power is justice; those without it are evil; and those who are neither are merely tools for justice.”
She took a step toward her disciple and stopped there, looking down at him.
“And this master cannot bear to watch her disciple suffer such a fate with her eyes open. It is simply too ugly.”
Then she drew her dark, ink-black sword and pointed it at Wolyeon.
With a smooth motion, she turned it halfway around and offered the hilt to her disciple.
“Therefore, this master intends to teach you the martial arts needed to safeguard your own body. Will you accept?”
Wolyeon did not take long to answer.
Clutching the hilt of his master’s sword, he poured strength into his legs and rose from his place.
“I will.”
If this was truly an unavoidable road of thorns, then he would gladly offer everything he had gathered so far and become the boots that would carry her along that thorny path.
***
Good heavens.
I’d been caught up in the mood and taken Master’s sword, but I was still every bit as stunned as before.
Really?
Was Master actually going to teach me martial arts?
I almost opened my mouth to cheer without thinking, and barely managed to stop myself. Even if I had tried, I wouldn’t have been able to let out a proper shout anyway.
What if I acted too brazenly and Master scolded me for having “vulgar manners” and took back the offer?
But still,
if I’m being honest, I was thrilled.
Master!
So all those years of grinding away under her for eight whole years had finally paid off!
I wasn’t simply happy because I’d gotten the chance to learn martial arts in a wuxia world.
If I learned martial arts, I could protect this inconvenient body of mine.
And more than that, it meant one more way to prevent Master’s death.
“Disciple.”
Then what would she teach me first?
I tried to think ahead, turning the future over in my mind.
Was she going to start with inner cultivation?
Or, since I’d already been practicing movement techniques until now, would she begin with movement arts?
Or maybe she’d start with sword swings.
What about my level? Since my character description had been “mute expert,” would I start as a first-rate expert right away?
Or would I begin as a third-rate martial artist and slowly improve until the game’s starting point?
“Wolyeon.”
Yes?
The moment Master called my name, I snapped instantly into a rigid stance and looked at her.
I had been so busy with wild fantasies that I hadn’t even heard her calling me.
Master stared at me with a sharp, hawklike look for a moment, then let out a small snort and took a book from inside her robes.
“This is the mind formula I shall give you.”
A mind formula?
Was the mental art she had just demonstrated inside this?
Then was this the very Mo Sect manual I had been desperately searching for all this time?
My hands were trembling.
I couldn’t tell whether it was from tension or pure joy.
Forcing my pounding heart to settle, I received the book respectfully and turned the pages.
And inside that secret manual…
Force is the cause by which form is stirred into motion.
A circle is that in which every point is equidistant from a single center.
If one traces a circle with a compass, the outlines overlap one another.
Huh.
This feels awfully familiar.
“Begin by drawing circles.”
The words were like a fresh bucket of cold water poured over my heart, and then Master drove the ice in deeper with her next sentence.
“From this moment on, you will draw five hundred circles. No ellipses, and no slight angles allowed.”
Ah!
So Master had planned to raise me not as a martial artist, but as a human compass.