Not Even Half a Martial Art
Yuun's uncle had no children of his own. His aunt had suffered a stillbirth in labor and could never bear a child again, and so the two of them took Yuun in and treated him as their adopted son.
Had they belonged to a martial clan, a high official's house, or some vast trading company, they might have taken a concubine simply to secure an heir. But however well his uncle's business did, it was only well by the measure of an ordinary man. They meant to treat Yuun as their son and, in time, leave the trade to him.
Anyone who meant to run a business had to know his letters, at the very least, and so they intended to have the boy taught. At first they thought to engage a private tutor, but keeping a tutor was something only the truly wealthy could afford. Yuun therefore became the pupil of an old man who made his living in the marketplace, reading and writing for others and teaching children their letters.
Not a martial disciple — a disciple of letters. The old man had many such pupils, and at first Yuun simply called him Teacher. Unlike the other children, who learned for nothing, Yuun paid a little coin. That was the only difference.
But then something happened that split even that small difference wide open.
While he taught the children their letters, the old man also taught them a tu-na method — a breathing exercise which, practiced each day for about as long as it takes to eat a meal, kept a body free of petty illness and in good health. It had no name. He simply called it the tu-na method, a thing as common as they come.
The children who learned it, though, were wild for it. They carried on as if they had just been granted the greatest internal art under heaven and might strap a blade to their waists and stride out into the murim at any moment. Yuun was one of those children.
"Teacher. I heard a heart-method has to have a mnemonic formula. Isn't there one?"
He was only a child who knew the ordinary truth that merely breathing in and breathing out could never become a martial art.
"This is only a breathing method, child, so there is no formula. What made you think there ought to be?"
At that question the old man asked back as if the boy had caught his interest, and Yuun answered him honestly.
"Uncle does business with martial artists, and they said so! A heart-method without a formula isn't even third-rate!"
And, child that he was, he said it with perfect frankness.
Yuun had no idea what was wrong with the answer. All the same, it provoked the old man — his master — in earnest.
"Very well! If you can finish the Thousand Character Classic within a week, I will show you that my heart-method is no third-rate thing!"
Yuun had only blurted something he had overheard. Even so, among the children of the marketplace he was one of the clever ones, and his master took the remark for a sophisticated provocation from a boy sharper than the rest.
Told that a proper heart-method would be his reward, Yuun truly mastered the Thousand Character Classic in a single week.
"To think you would actually succeed. You possess a comprehension unlike anyone else's."
The wager had been offered only because the master had talked himself into being provoked, but he admitted defeat without a fuss. Then, his face turning solemn, he raised an inner force worthy of a man of the murim.
And he began to lay his secret bare.
He was the inheritor of a hidden sect stretching back into the immemorial past. After long cultivation he had attained enlightenment, and with it the chance to ascend to immortality. But he had never taken a disciple, and fearing the sect's transmission would be cut off in his generation, he had forced himself to remain in the mortal world.
Now that fate had bound him to Yuun, he would pass on everything of Yangui Mun and fulfill the ascension he had so long postponed.
Thus Yuun took the old man as his master and became the successor of Yangui Mun.
"Yuun. To reach this level of attainment with a heart-method that does nothing but lay a foundation — you truly have talent."
Seven years ago. On the day his family was put to death for treason, Yuun went to show his master what he had achieved.
Yangui Mun gathered no inner force; it only laid a foundation. Yet on its introductory heart-method alone he had opened past the middle dantian all the way to the upper, and the feat drew a cry of wonder from his master. Then came the declaration. The preparations for true entry were finished, so the real martial arts would now be passed down — and the master himself would ascend.
At those words Yuun could have leapt for joy. He would be receiving the arts of a mysterious sect he was not even permitted to mention to his own parents, and to a young boy the thought of becoming a hidden master, withdrawn into seclusion at the very center of the world, felt endlessly magnificent.
But the tragedy that struck that day hurled his life into the abyss.
In the marketplace hung the severed heads of his uncle and his aunt. And of his father and his mother.
The moment Yuun saw his family's heads, he lost his reason. Even a boy of eleven could tell that this was madness.
They said the family had traded with a high official executed for treason, yet they had offered no bribe and given no official the least benefit. They had only sold, in the ordinary way, goods they sold to anyone. It was a groundless false charge, and they had been killed as an example.
At that, Yuun lost his reason. He made up his mind to kill every last person who had framed his family.
"Hah... I felt an ill omen and came running, yet already there is no turning back."
Watching Yuun erupt with a killing intent no one could believe belonged to an eleven-year-old, the master smiled a bitter smile.
"Yuun. It is far too dangerous to leave you like this. I cannot stand by and watch the successor of Yangui Mun bring about a Great Blood Calamity."
And with a single motion of his hand, he put the rampaging boy to sleep.
To the people who had been staring at the severed heads, it was only the briefest brush with the terror of sudden death — an instant so short they would believe they had merely felt fear at the sight of the heads themselves.
Nor did the master stop at putting him to sleep.
He forcibly shut the points that had opened all the way to the upper dantian, closing the boy down through the middle. Even the lower dantian, so sturdily tempered, he made weak.
"To seal the dantian itself is beyond me. The enlightenment I have gained is too vast. But do not grieve too deeply. You have already opened the upper dantian, and one foot of you already rests in the immortal realm. On the day we meet again there, I will beg your pardon for this."
At the last, as he erased Yuun's memories and sealed even that remarkable comprehension, the master wore a sorrowful smile.
Had more time remained to him, he would have guided the boy so that Yuun would not become the Killing Star who brings a Great Blood Calamity. But he had already resolved to leave everything to his disciple, and little time was left. So he destroyed all that his disciple was, and apologized.
Even as he spoke, he finished the arrangements, so that someday his disciple — or someone whom fate might touch — could inherit all of Yangui Mun.
With every preparation complete, Yuun's master ascended.
All that remained to his only disciple was a martial art that did not even amount to half.
His memories restored, Yuun called up the foundational arts of Yangui Mun that still lingered in them. Circulating that immense energy, he mended the body the immense energy had damaged, then drove what remained onward and rebuilt the middle dantian, sealed for so long it had gone to ruin.
While he was about it he wanted to break through to the upper dantian once more, but too much of the energy was already spent. The memories had returned. The comprehension his master had sealed had not, and so he could not open the way as far as the upper dantian.
Only when every last shred of the elixir's energy had been spent through the heart-method did Yuun open his eyes. He drew one long sigh — and the first thing he did was explode at his master.
"Haa... you damned old geezer!!! I don't care how you justify it — you wiped my memories!!!"
That the man had been wary of his turning villain, for the sake of a secret kept by a mysterious sect of one-person transmission — that, he could understand a hundred times over. Then he ought to have talked the boy down. What sort of master, without a single word of warning, seals his disciple's memories, martial arts, and comprehension, makes a street beggar's lot of him, and leaves him to starve?
It was an outrage that cast aside the bond between master and disciple. That such a man had ascended and become an immortal made Yuun boil.
"Fine. He said I'd go to the immortal realm when I die anyway, so I'll grab the old man by the collar once I get there..."
His own ascension was already as good as promised, and so Yuun swore to take his revenge later. Then he felt six gazes resting on him, watching as if to keep him safe, and he looked back at them.
"Uh, so... Yang Jeonghyeon?"
"Oh! You didn't forget my name?"
When Yuun addressed the only man among the six, the other nodded, acknowledging that he was the childhood friend Yang Jeonghyeon.
"Something's changed, but it's a change for the better, isn't it? I'm glad you seem to have done well."
Yuun nodded at Jeonghyeon, who had grown into a clear-eyed, handsome young noble, and shifted his gaze.
"Pyeon Ja-in?"
A sharp light lived in her eyes, as if she had kept whole that stubborn nature which never once yielded when she believed something was wrong. With her hair neatly bound away beneath a headcloth, she called the childhood friend so completely to mind that Yuun spoke her name.
"Wow. You got it on the first try. That's right."
"Then this one is Gyeon So-ryeong?"
He asked it of the woman in black silk and a bamboo hat, and So-ryeong nodded at once. Yuun turned toward the woman dressed in splendid red.
"The one who was such a tomboy she might as well have been a boy — you've changed a lot. You're Woo Cheonghwi, aren't you?"
"Who are you calling a tomboy? I'll have you know I'm the princess of Mugang Fortress now!"
At his words Cheonghwi, who looked every inch a young lady of a good house, bellowed, and Yuun only shrugged. He had no idea where Mugang Fortress was, but if people were calling her a princess, then Cheonghwi had done well too, and that was a relief. She was a child who had grown up without a father, in a house with only her mother, and a shadow had once shown in her. Loved, it seemed, without stint, she carried not a crease of that old gloom.
"Then there are two left..."
At the last he looked from Ma Gyo-bin to Baek Seong-hwa and back again, and fell into a quandary. The others still carried some trace of their childhood faces, enough to know them. These two he could not begin to guess. Which was the cowardly crybaby Baek Seong-hwa, and which was Ma Gyo-bin, boss of the alley? He had no idea.
"...I'm just glad you all seem to have done well."
"Don't change the subject! You got the others right, so you've got to get us right too!"
He couldn't tell them apart and had been about to slide past it with something vague, but when Seong-hwa shouted at him he nodded and smiled. Since he had no way of knowing who was who, the question had been meant to draw their childhood selves out into the open.
"Ah! You're Ma Gyo-bin, right?"
"Wrong!!! Why do I look like Gyo-bin to you?! I'm Baek Seong-hwa!!!"
"Puhahaha!!!"
He had been certain that a prod like that would make Gyo-bin the one to flare, and he had said it with full confidence. Faced with the fact that he was wrong, Yuun looked from Seong-hwa to Gyo-bin and back again.
Seong-hwa stood in black martial robes with an ornate hairpin gleaming in her hair. Gyo-bin looked like any ordinary girl from the neighborhood, with nothing about her to mark her. Staring at the pair, he almost wondered whether they had switched places.
But rather than say so outright, Yuun held his tongue. Ten years was long enough for mountains and rivers to change their course. Was it so strange if two people changed as though they had traded places?
When he stayed silent, the others only exchanged glances, as if they had agreed on it beforehand, and no one said a word.
It wasn't awkward. It was only astonishing that all of them should be gathered like this after so long. Not one of them had ever imagined that a promise made at the age of eight would be kept by every single one of them, ten years on. Honestly, they wanted to savor that friendship in their hearts.
Grrrgle!
But the moment Yuun's stomach set up a shameless clamor for food, the silence broke around his awkward laugh.