The First Hanja Formula

The next evening, the death row ward lay silent as a grave.

Footsteps came ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠down the corridor, low and measured. A moment later the bolt gave a thin creak, and the door of my solitary cell swung open.

"You asleep?"

"No. I was awake."

Ma Cheol stepped inside. For a man like him, his face was unusually flushed.

"...I'll be damned. My girl's improved a great deal."

"There, you see? I told you."

He had taken the temporary prescription I'd given him, bought the medicine at an apothecary, and dosed his daughter with it. Her condition had turned around almost past belief.

"I'll grant you this. You know this sickness better than anyone in Luoyang."

He could hardly have wanted to bargain with a convict, but in the end he had admitted there was no other way.

He undid the cloth bundle he had brought. Inside, several medicinal herbs gave off the smell of raw earth.

"Here. The herbs you asked for."

A handful of black fleabane. Half a handful of licorice. Exactly what we had agreed on.

"Goods check out. Thank y—"

"The full cure first."

He had shown them only to snatch them back. I clicked my tongue and held out my right hand.

"Paper and brush. If you would."

"Take them."

He passed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them over as if he had been waiting for the request. I wrote out, in detail, everything I knew of the treatment for Snowfield Arid Fever, and for good measure added a method to speed the recovery once the cure had taken.

"There. Finished."

"Give it here."

The paper was snatched from my fingers before the words had even settled. Ma Cheol skimmed it for anything strange, then lifted his narrowed eyes to me.

"Follow this exactly, and my daughter truly recovers? All the way?"

"If you don't believe me, drag in every physician with a reputation and ask them. They'll faint."

They simply couldn't get a grip on the illness. Any doctor with real skill would have known the worth of that prescription at a glance.

"...That so. So that's how it is."

Ma Cheol's brows twitched. He cleared his throat a few times, then drew a tiered food box from the bundle.

The lid came off with a clack. Inside, to my surprise, lay a neat pile of boiled pork and a pair of chopsticks.

"You've not had a proper meal since they locked you in here."

"That's true enough."

I was a man of the twenty-first century. I was not about to choke down lumps of mud.

"Eat. This is a genuine kindness."

My stomach had been stuck to my spine anyway. Perfect timing.

"Thank you. I'll eat well."

I took up the chopsticks without protest. Ma Cheol nodded, rose, and threw the cell door open. He left me one last line.

"Until tomorrow night, the other guards won't come this way."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing's going to interfere with your hobby."

"......"

With that, he was gone. I emptied the pork from the box and turned his parting words over in my mind.

A stroke of luck? Or...

On the surface, it looked as if he had swallowed the junkie act and meant to indulge it. Even so, a faint unease lingered. Not that it would change how I moved.

"Hah. Stomach's decently full, at least."

The meal was more or less done. There was still a fair amount of pork left even after I was full, so I set the rest aside to eat slowly.

My eyes went to the herbs Ma Cheol had handed over.

"About time I tried for it. Brush Authority."

The right to write in the Hanja brush method. Brush Authority. In this world it was the ticket into the upper ranks of the pyramid—the very power Jang Mancheol had coveted above his station, and the reason his status had been rewritten to condemned man.

There was, of course, a practical problem. The spiritual elixir he had bought with embezzled fortune was a counterfeit, and all a death-row convict had in hand now were a few cheap herbs. Obtaining Brush Authority under those conditions? Anyone would call it nonsense.

But I was a veteran of the original work, and I could see it: the critical flaw in the premise, the one that could flip the board.

What if the elixir hadn't been a fake? What if it had been real?

I carefully retraced Jang Mancheol's memories. The moment of ingestion came back vivid and whole. Heat had boiled up in his gut. It had ridden the Sea of Qi point and tried to climb straight into the Chest Center—

—and there it had stopped dead, and the surging energy had guttered out completely.

That was no ordinary failure. In most cases, swallowing a spiritual elixir should have cleared the path without obstruction all the way to the Chest Center in the breast, and Brush Authority should have been his. But if the elixir had been counterfeit, the energy boiling at the Sea of Qi in the first place made no sense at all.

"Well then. Let's verify."

A modern man could hardly guide qi with perfect precision through every acupoint. Still, I had the important points and their directions more or less memorized, and through Jang Mancheol's memories I had a fair sense of how the energy was supposed to feel as it moved.

I took the finely ground black fleabane and licorice in hand and tipped them into my mouth without hesitation.

How much time passed after that, I couldn't say.

"Kkh—!"

A mouthful of dark blood burst from my lips, and pain boiled through my gut as if something inside were cooking. Even so, barely able to keep my mind clear, I laughed.

"Yes. This is it...!"

Just as I'd half expected. The elixir Jang Mancheol had taken was genuine. The real cause of the earlier failure lay elsewhere: the turbid qi packed solid through his meridians.

Two hours of real sleep a night. Walking, washing, eating—every hour that wasn't work had been cut to the bone. All the rest he had spent hunched at a desk. His back and neck had bent into a hunchback's curve, his hair was a wild tangle, and still he had thrown himself at the work and nothing else.

Even a workaholic has limits. This is past them.

Health had never stood a chance. And perhaps that was the saving grace. Ordinarily, the instant energy circulation failed, the elixir's power should have run wild in the meridians and thrown him into qi deviation. This body, though, defied common sense. Clogged tight in place after place, the energy hadn't even been able to rampage properly.

Which means that with the right trigger, it can be woken again.

Dark blood slid from the corner of my mouth. The elixir I had taken had done its job admirably as jumper cables for a dead battery. From here on, it was entirely up to me.

All right. Let's begin.

A deep rumble rolled through me. The energy buried at the Sea of Qi stirred. I had no intention of repeating the old failure by driving it straight at the Chest Center. What I chose instead was a backdoor: the Gate of Life, on the spine.

Thud. Thud.

"Kh...!"

Each strike brought a pain that seemed to drop the floor out from under me. I clenched my teeth and endured.

A crunch of bone—and the Gate of Life gave way. In that instant the hideously bowed line of my back was forced straight.

"Ghhh—!"

Agony beyond imagining tore along the nerves of my spine. Years of a twisted frame made it worse than I could have pictured. But on the heels of the pain, the stifling heat that had been crushing my back drained away in a rush. My spine cooled as if a fan had kicked on. There was no time to feel relieved.

...One mountain after another.

The next target was the Hundred Convergences, at the crown of the head. A lethal point. Clearing it without anyone's help was a brutal ordeal. I had nowhere to retreat. I drew a long breath and hauled the energy upward.

Not piercing it. Riding over it.

The energy that had passed the Gate of Life climbed the Governing Vessel of the spine, surging up like a waterfall in reverse.

A sharp crack. "Kh—!" Fresh blood ran from my nose. I ignored it and tried again.

Another crack, bright as a bell. A clean rupture rang through my skull. My vision cleared, and sensation honed itself to an edge, as if current were running through every cell of my brain.

Now the Chest Center. That's all that's left...!

The very point Jang Mancheol had failed to open. Blocked while pushing from below? Then drive it down from above.

True qi fell from the crown like a cataract and slammed without mercy into the center of my chest. Something inside the breast split and broke apart. The shackles of incompetent that had bound this flesh shattered completely.

Energy began to spin with ferocious speed. The Lesser Heavenly Circuit had succeeded. Brush Authority was mine.

"Ha. I'm actually dying..."

I dropped onto the cold floor of the cell. I was gasping, and yet vitality poured through my whole body.

They said anyone who holds Brush Authority possesses a body no ordinary person can match. Just by having it.

Even without using the brush method, the physical ability alone far outstripped a normal man's. I wiped the blood from my mouth and grinned.

"Damn. This feels incredible."

And in that very moment—

A bright chime. "Huh?"

A crisp mechanical tone rang in my ear. A translucent window rose before my eyes.

—!

My eyes flew open. The Status Window I had hunted for the moment I was thrown into this camp had only now unlocked.

So obtaining Brush Authority was the trigger.

A thoroughly welcome sign. I brought the Status Window up at once, ready to try my first Hanja technique—and a crimson warning flared in the empty air with a shriek.

"...Agh. Thought my ears were gonna fall off."

The alert was loud enough to murder sleep on contact. But when I took stock of my body, I had to admit the warning was entirely fair.

Five minutes from a total wreck.

My meridians were swollen an angry red in place after place. Use the first technique like this, and I wouldn't be staging a jailbreak. I'd be punching a ticket on the qi-deviation express.

Rest first, then.

Ma Cheol had promised to clear the ward's guards only until tomorrow night, and the date of my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠execution was still a good way off. No need to rush. I set my back against the cold stone wall and quietly closed my eyes.

I opened my eyes in silence. Through a ventilation slit so narrow a rat would have struggled to use it, a single thread of blue moonlight leaked in.

"...Hoo."

I let out a long breath and lifted my gaze a little.

My body was in perfect condition. The footsteps of guards pacing the corridor ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had, at some point, cut off as if they had never been there.

Ma Cheol really did pull the other guards. A full day had passed, so the treatment I'd given him would have been applied to his daughter without trouble. She had probably already been declared cured.

That suited me. I had no desire to see Ma Cheol if something went wrong and his rage climbed all the way to the top of his head.

"All right. Let's begin."

"Five to start. That's the iron rule."

Only five characters were available to me. Someone might ask why so few. The reason lay in how Hanja Brushwork worked. Knowing a character did not mean you could write it on the spot. You had to internalize it through a secret manual. Only after that process could you deploy the specific character you wanted.

Even Fire—the people's character, the one everyone knew—had to be learned from a beginner elemental manual and then drilled in its own method of use before it could be handled properly. Opening Brush Authority was not the end of it.

A catalog unfurled before my eyes with a rustle.

Light and sound. Motion and force. And separation.

Not a single flashy offensive character—no flame, no lightning. These were the five most basic state-characters granted by default to someone who had only just awakened Brush Authority. For a martial artist's blade-work they were a shabby tutorial set.

Enough to get out of this cell.

Ordinarily, Force was the decent pick. A large rise in strength would help whether I was breaking a lock or running into another guard. The problem was the cost. Hanja Brushwork still needed a medium. Sending energy into a small object and wrapping it around one's entire body were not the same expenditure. The difference in internal energy was obvious.

If I held Force in reserve for whatever might come, the choice left to me was clear enough.

"...Hoo."

I reached out and set my right hand on the lock of the cell's iron bars, shut hard. Cold metal met my palm. I closed my eyes and gathered my focus.

Exact meaning. Exact sound. Exact form.

The three elements of Hanja Brushwork, as the original had named them. Energy from my dantian—freshly opened, circulating with ferocious speed—surged up the meridians of my right arm like an incoming wave.

A low hum. Power gathered at my fingertips, and the lock began to tremble, ever so slightly. A sheet of white paper opened in my chest. Onto it I brought down a heavy brush tempered from internal energy.

A sweeping stroke—Eight, splitting wide to either side. Then a slash beneath it—Blade, cutting down. The two pieces locked together and caught fire. I released the energy I had been holding back.

With a clean crack, the lock parted down its center, smooth as if it had always been made that way.

A long creak. "Well. Checkout time."

I took my first step into the ward, where the dark lay thick.