The Bandits of Myeongwol Mountain
How does one divide the realms of martial cultivation?
It was simple.
The Three Physical Realms, which temper the body; the Four Qi Realms, which refine one's internal energy; and the Four Heaven-Earth Realms, which cultivate the mind.
It was said that those who passed through every one of these stages would ascend to immortality and become true immortals.
The Three Physical Realms proceeded, in order, from the Realm of Refining the Self, where a martial artist began his training; to the Realm of Entering Qi, where blood and vital energy condensed to form the dantian; and finally the Realm of Circulation, in which every impurity was purged from the body and a martial artist at last took his first proper step on the path.
Beyond that point, something called the middle dantian came into play.
Within the Four Qi Realms, the Twin Emergence of Yang Light was the stage where the middle dantian first began to open, allowing even a modest reserve of internal energy to unleash tremendous power. The Five Dragons Venerating the Saint marked the middle dantian's full opening, and the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown was the stage where the middle and lower dantians were unified as one.
From there on, the body's capacity for recovery increased by overwhelming degrees.
The Five Qi Returning to the Origin was the realm where the middle and lower dantians fused completely, and the True Dantian created through that fusion amplified the amount of internal energy one could store by geometric orders of magnitude — so naturally, in fact, that one came to crush everyone of a lower rank beneath one's heel without even trying.
The Four Heaven-Earth Realms followed a similar logic. They represented the stages of opening the upper dantian, the point at which one first began to feel the qi of nature itself.
The Realm of Harmony was where the upper dantian began to open, and the Realm of Entering Divinity was where it opened fully, drawing in the energies of the natural world.
The Realm of Myth was where the upper dantian merged with the True Dantian; from that point onward, wielding the qi of nature, one became nature itself.
And the Limitless Realm…
Almost no one in the entire history of the murim had ever reached it. It was said that the upper and True Dantians united in perfect wholeness, completing a martial artist in the fullest sense of the word — and even I had never entered that realm.
Never mind entering it. I hadn't even come close. I had remained stuck far, far below.
My realm in my previous life was Harmony.
A realm painfully inadequate to the title of one of the Ten Great Masters of the World — and yet, even so, I had become one of them.
The secret lay in two things.
Two martial arts my master had passed down to me.
The first was the Primordial Unity Qi Cultivation.
It was a cultivation method that ran entirely counter to the ordinary sort. In my experience, there were only two kinds of qi in the world: common qi, and natural qi. And at the core of both lay a single thing.
True qi.
What people usually called innate true qi. All of those energies drifting through the void contained true qi within them. Ordinarily, a cultivator could not store that true qi inside his body — but the Primordial Unity Qi Cultivation made it possible.
More precisely, it transformed that true qi into a new kind of energy and put it to use.
My master called it Pure Harmonious Qi.
The problem was that Pure Harmonious Qi accumulated at a pace even the crudest third-rate cultivation methods could outstrip. But the moment it was actually used, the story changed entirely.
Because with a single portion of qi, one could crush down ten portions of an enemy's.
A method that unified the soul, the body, and qi — the great root of all creation. That was the Primordial Unity Qi Cultivation. Master once said that if I cultivated it for ten thousand years, I would eventually be able to wield something called Soul-Origin Qi, but that was a matter for the distant future. Honestly, I doubted I'd ever get that far.
Silently, I devoted myself to my circulation.
At this point in time, I was a martial artist who had entered the Realm of Entering Qi only recently. I hadn't so much as formed a proper dantian — at best, I had sketched out a vague semblance of one.
The sheer amount of impurity clogged inside my body was problem enough, and the fact that I hadn't even built a proper dantian was a bigger one still.
So that was what I was doing now: building my dantian.
Before I began my circulation, I had summoned the other servants and told them to buy up every qi-condensing pill they could afford. If money had allowed, I would have preferred spirit medicines, but I had none to speak of.
As it turned out, most of what they brought back were Qi-Entering Pills — modest things that merely assisted the condensation of internal energy. They were hardly high-grade elixirs, but for someone at my current level, they were more than I could ask for.
A former one of the Ten Great Masters, dying because he couldn't even form a dantian? I'd sooner drop dead on the spot.
The purging of impurities could wait. Once we reached the main estate, there would be means prepared for it there.
While forming my dantian, I set another work in motion alongside it.
The second divine art that had made me one of the Ten Great Masters of the World.
The Ring Stepping Cultivation.
It was a martial art built on a concept no one in the murim had ever conceived of, and its principle was beautifully simple.
First, one formed a ring near the lower dantian. It was the same concept as the dantian itself — in a sense, it amounted to creating multiple dantians at once.
And what did this ring do?
It amplified the stored Pure Harmonious Qi.
Energy expelled from the existing lower dantian collided and collided again within the ring, splitting and splitting further. Pure Harmonious Qi was, true to its name, true qi — no matter how finely it was divided, the energy it carried never vanished, never diminished.
Which meant: form one ring, and you could draw upon twice the energy. Two rings, and twice that — four times. Three rings, and eight.
For an art this absurd, side effects naturally existed. Namely, the meridians. If one's meridians were too narrow, then no matter how many rings one created, the amplified energy could not be used. Each surge was so vast in itself that it would rupture the meridians — or more likely, blow my entire body apart.
But for now, that was no concern of mine.
I was capable of controlling it that much, at least.
I opened my eyes slowly.
Everything registered with perfect clarity.
A single ring wrapped around my dantian.
And beneath it, a lower dantian, formed completely.
I had ascended, at last, to the full Realm of Entering Qi.
Rising slowly from my seat, I thought of the bandits of Myeongwol Mountain.
The humiliation of losing to them in my past life still burned vividly.
This time, things would be very different.
I tied my long hair back and stepped outside.
The head stewards of the Yi Clan's Third Household were waiting in formation.
"We depart."
No answer came. If anything, their faces were full of resentment.
Which I understood well enough.
The third young master they so openly despised had ordered them to wait — and that "moment" had stretched past three full hours. Of course they were furious.
Normally, such stares would be unthinkable. But this was my standing in the family as it stood now.
I had no intention of changing it. It would change on its own, soon enough.
The Yi Clan's Third Household caravan entered Myeongwol Mountain — and as though on cue, the ring of clashing steel erupted from every direction at once.
Two hundred of them. Two hundred bandits, and the faces of Yi Do's party turned corpse-pale at the sight. It was only to be expected.
The Yi Clan was a proper martial house. It ran businesses of every kind, and so naturally it employed its own warriors as well as hired escorts. But who, after all, led the clan's caravan now entering Myeongwol Mountain?
The third son. An illegitimate one, at that — Yi Do.
Everyone in the Third Household knew Yi Do's standing. Even a stray mongrel trotting past knew it. The warriors assigned to accompany him numbered a mere twenty, with thirty hired escorts. The stewards and porters weren't even worth counting.
By numbers alone, it was two hundred against fifty.
This was a situation where being slaughtered to the last man would count as good fortune.
The bandits' chieftain slung a massive axe across his shoulder and roared out.
"Hahahaha! They say trouble comes on the day you least expect it — looks like we've hooked a fat fish today! If you value your lives, drop your goods where you stand and run. If not, I'll be sending every last one of you across the Three Crossings — so think carefully before you act."
Yi Do's party was, in all seriousness, contemplating flight. That was when the carriage door opened.
Yi Do stepped out slowly, smiling faintly as he met the chieftain's gaze.
"Well now. Laughing, are you? You've gone mad, boy. So you truly wish to taste something sharp?"
"I have a word to offer you heroes of the mountain."
"Oho... now that I look closer, you're one of those manners-instilled brats, aren't you? Fine. Let's hear it."
"What you want is money. Am I wrong?"
"Right you are. So set down your goods and be on your way. We'll handle the carrying ourselves. No — what, you mean to help us carry them too? Very well, I'll leave you a tenth of the haul for your trouble."
Several of the bandits burst into howling laughter. It was mockery, plain as day to anyone watching — but the smile never left Yi Do's lips.
"We are currently carrying five hundred nyang of silver. I will give you all five hundred of it, on the sole condition that you withdraw."
"Heheh. This whelp... Five hundred nyang? Not five thousand, but five hundred? Do you have any idea how many mouths we feed in these mountains, and you'd hang that sum on whose nose?"
Yi Do scratched his head, then walked forward slowly. When at last he stood before the chieftain, he asked in a low voice:
"You were hired by Yi Jeong and Yi Won, I know. But that is that, and this is this. From this moment, I intend to propose a new arrangement."
The Yi Clan warriors standing nearby were dying to know what on earth he was saying — but he was practically whispering, and none of them could catch a word.
The chieftain's eyes took on an odd light.
Well, well. They said the Third Household's third son was a half-wit, but that was apparently not quite true either. Facing two hundred armed men, and showing this kind of gall.
So he asked.
"A new arrangement?"
"I don't know how much they paid you, but I'll offer more. On top of that, I'll tell you where Yi Jeong and Yi Won's caravans will be traveling — and you ambush them. Naturally, I'll tell you every item they're carrying as well. What do you say?"
For an instant, a chill ran down the chieftain's spine.
"...So you really are out of your mind."
"They do it, so why can't I?"
The chieftain swallowed hard. There was something deeply wrong with Yi Do's eyes.
Those two eyes, glistening with killing intent — and though the man stood right in front of him, that killing intent was aimed not at the chieftain, but at his own elder brothers.
Yi Do went on.
"And if you kill those two for me, I'll pay you a great deal more."
"...How much?"
"One hundred nyang."
The chieftain's brow slammed into a knot.
"A hundred nyang? Are you toying with me? How is it less than the five hundred you offered a moment ago?"
"Because that was silver. This is gold."
The chieftain's eyes flew wide open.
There was nothing ordinary about this one. Not by any measure.
They said the third son was lacking in the head — turns out he's rotten to the very core.
One hundred nyang of gold, to have his own caravan ambushed.
Even in the middle of all this, greed stirred in the chieftain's chest.
"Two hundred, then. Two hundred nyang of gold, not silver."
"Two hundred is far too much."
"Then there's nothing more to discuss, is there. Though — do you really think you can bear the consequences?"
A crooked smile spread across the chieftain's lips. It was the smile of a wild wolf that had just realized its prey had more meat on it than it had first guessed.
"You've already commissioned the murder of your own brothers. The third son of the Yi Clan, asking bandits to raid his own family's caravan — what do you suppose happens to you if I tell those two? Or if I tell the head of your clan? I'll leave the rest to your imagination."
Yi Do shook his head.
"Imagine what you like — but there is a way to make sure this conversation never leaves this spot."
"How convenient. I just thought of that same way myself."
"Then let me hear yours first, before I tell you mine."
"Fine. Bring me five hundred nyang of gold, and I'll keep this secret buried."
Five hundred nyang of gold.
To be perfectly clear — that was money the current Yi Do could not possibly obtain.
"Not that I expect it all at once. I'll give you plenty of time, so send us money every month. Do that, and today's little talk never happened."
A soft smile curved Yi Do's lips.
"Then may I tell you my way now?"
"And this way of yours is better, is it? Fine. Let's hear it."
Yi Do answered.
Not with words — with action.
It happened in the space of a single breath.
The internal energy of Yi Do, newly entered into the Realm of Entering Qi, surged up as if it would explode. And in the same instant, the hidden blade that had waited in his sleeve—
Thrust.
—sank into the chieftain's throat. He twisted it. With a wet crunch, the neck parted.
That was Yi Do's way.
Dead men tell no tales. And he had given them their chance, only to be met with this.
But it did not end there. The enemy had him outnumbered — so what was to be done?
He would suppress them with sheer presence.
Yi Do reached out with his free hand and seized the chieftain by the hair. Then he dragged the dagger across the dead man's neck.
Shk. Shk.
A hideous sound rolled across the clearing, and not one of the bandits could move a muscle. It wasn't only that Yi Do's body had been drenched utterly by the wave of blood that had come boiling up — it was that the whole scene was simply drenched in terror itself.
The blade seemed to be catching on something, so he planted the dagger in the chieftain's shoulder and picked up the dead man's axe instead.
And then, without a word, he brought the axe down on the chieftain's head.
Crack.
The head came away.
Silence settled over the clearing. Yi Do seemed to find the heavy stillness very much to his taste — the corners of his mouth were lifted in a smile.
It was, in truth, the face of a madman.
He tossed the chieftain's head lightly aside.
Thud. Roll, roll.
The head went tumbling across the dirt.
While every eye in the clearing was fixed on that rolling head, Yi Do's own eyes were sweeping his surroundings.
Five. Five men radiating open hostility.
Yi Do set down the axe and began rifling through the chieftain's robes. Inside were eight throwing knives in all — different lengths, different metals. He drew out every one.
Four knives fanned in each hand, he hurled them all at once. They streaked outward, each on its own path.
Shhk-shhk-shhk—!
Not an inch of error.
Five men steeped in hostility, and three more who had been hovering suspiciously at their sides — eight knives buried themselves in eight skulls.
As eight corpses toppled in unison, the remaining bandits stumbled backward.
Yi Do picked the axe back up, slung it across his shoulder, and drove in the final wedge.
"Get lost. All of you — before I decide to kill you too."