It Might Be a Peerless Divine Art
Once the journey to the Demonic Cult was settled, Yuun taught the others the foundational art of Yangui Mun that he himself had learned.
Yuun could cultivate nothing but the arts of Yangui Mun, and he knew no others besides. On Jeong Hyeon's advice, then, he would have to make a new art to match that foundation, with his friends' help.
Lacking any other technique, the foundational art was nothing more than a breath-guiding method that kept the body healthy—and yet it was still the martial art of a mysterious sect passed down through a single heir. By rights he should never have taught it to anyone else, but from where Yuun stood, the thought was simply, Who's even going to know?
He had already lost everything to his master's viciousness. The man had sealed Yuun's memories and his comprehension, yet he had never once spoken of casting him out of the sect. And that master had long since ascended beyond this world.
Which meant Yuun was the only disciple of Yangui Mun left alive—and its sect leader. What he did with the art was his own affair. Teaching it to his friends would even serve, in a small and petty way, as revenge. Kept to himself, the thing was a crippled art that wasn't even half of what it ought to be, and he felt no particular attachment to it.
"You called it a foundational art just for entering the sect, but it's seriously incredible. Learning it alone can change your constitution."
Once they had heard the breathing method and the oral formula, his friends cried out at the art's effects. Pyeon Ja-in, the physician, was more astonished than any of them.
There was a flaw: unless one learned a paired art to go with it, one could not cultivate further. But simply mastering this foundation would let a person live in sound health, untroubled by minor ailments. To a physician, preventing illness mattered every bit as much as treating it—and this art was remarkably effective at doing just that.
"If you breathe without the formula, it won't go so far as changing your constitution, but you'll certainly stop catching every little sickness. If you don't mind, I'd like to pass this on to other people."
"Do as you like. You can spread the formula too."
Ja-in, who had let a little greed show, was struck speechless by how readily he agreed. It was a single-heir art. She had never expected him to hand it over so lightly. However much he wanted to spite his master, this was a martial art Yuun himself had learned. If it spread, it would be no different from announcing his weakness to the whole world.
"Yuun. However badly you want revenge, that's just giving up on yourself."
"Huh? What are you talking about? There are plenty of arts anyone can pick up, like the Wudang Sect's Taiji Fist."
Ja-in, trying to talk him around, shook her head at once. Arts like Taiji Fist were easy to come by because sects like Wudang were vast and prestigious. Where there were many people, there were many lay disciples, and the training halls and martial schools those disciples opened could be seen everywhere. That was why a foundational art like Taiji Fist was so commonly met with. Even the greatest sects did not lay their secret transmissions open to the world.
"Don't tell me you mean to turn Yangui Mun into a great sect."
"No, nothing like that. I just thought that much would be fine—ah, but no, it won't work after all. If I go spreading the formula and then people can't learn anything but Yangui Mun's arts, I'd only be making trouble for them. Don't spread the formula."
Yuun had briefly entertained changing the sect's principles as a petty revenge on his master, but a moment's thought reversed him. Even if he meant to alter Yangui Mun's way, he would have to do it only after creating an art to pair with the foundation, or after finding the Yangui Mun techniques his master had left behind. That was a matter for the distant future.
"But are you truly going to the Demonic Cult after Seonghwa? Come with me, and I was even thinking of paying you as a physician's assistant."
"......That's tempting. But even if she's become the Heavenly Demon, at heart she's still crybaby Seonghwa. If I don't humor her, she'll sulk."
Reassured now that she had leave to share Yangui Mun's breath-guiding method, Ja-in turned her worry on Yuun instead. Seonghwa might be the Heavenly Demon, but the Demonic Cult was a place ruled by the law of the strong. Sending Yuun there, a man who knew no martial arts, was no different from tossing a friend into a tiger's jaws.
Yet when he explained why he had given in to Seonghwa's pressure, Ja-in couldn't help a stifled laugh. Set the Heavenly Demon beside crybaby Seonghwa and one could hardly believe they were the same person—but remembering how she had poured spirit medicines into Yuun while he lay dying, it was plain enough. Just as he said, she was crybaby Seonghwa through and through.
Among the heaps of things Cheonghwi had brought by carriage were fine liquor and simple fare to nibble on. They drank with those morsels for company, trading stories of the old days, and rather than purge the drink with inner energy they simply enjoyed the buzz.
They hadn't driven it out—and still they would not get drunk. His friends were the sort on whom even a considerable poison would have no effect.
"More useful than I expected, this."
Yuun could not begin to match their tolerance. He had the finest body for learning the arts of Yangui Mun, but he had never reached a realm like theirs. No—thinking of how even his upper dantian had once stood open, he had reached it, only to have his master seal it away so he could not use it. That, however, was not the point.
Unable to keep pace with the drunkenness at all, he circulated the foundational art, and the buzz vanished without a trace.
"Oho, it could do that? Then let me have a try!"
Drunk on the mood rather than the liquor, Cheonghwi circulated Yangui Mun's art for no better reason than whim. She had already heard and memorized both the breathing and the formula, so putting it to use was no trouble.
"Hey—hey! That's dangerous!"
The danger was this: Yangui Mun's foundational art remade one's constitution to suit the sect's martial arts. Yuun started violently, but his friends looked entirely unconcerned.
"No need to worry. I analyzed it while reading the formula. It can't change the constitution of anyone who's already anchored inner energy in the dantian."
Already strong enough to contend for the greatest under heaven, his friends had taken the art's nature apart. The breath-guiding method of breathing alone, without the formula, cleansed the body and preserved health. Add the formula, and it altered one's constitution—but in those who already held inner energy in the dantian, it only refined that energy to greater purity. It did not change them.
"You could truly call this a peerless divine art. At this level, it makes you want to go looking, just to learn what the original art was."
"Then shall we look? Between us, we could search anywhere under heaven."
Gyobin said it as if the notion amused him, and Jeong Hyeon's admiration drew answering murmurs that it did sound like fun. There was hope in it too: if Yuun only learned the arts properly, he might become an expert fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
Yuun took no part in the talk. It wasn't that he didn't want their help. Something strange was coming off Cheonghwi as she circulated the foundational art, and he was too fixed on that sensation to hear a word.
"Huh?!"
"What?!"
What shattered his focus was the instant a fierce inner energy—domineering enough to be called the Way of Hegemony—surged up in his dantian. Not only Yuun. Cheonghwi, still circulating the foundational art, sensed something wrong and snapped her eyes open.
"What is this! My inner energy, all of a sudden..."
It had not vanished. It had grown pure while keeping, untouched, the fierce and hegemonic character of the art she had learned. That much one could already have known from analyzing the formula. Hidden inside it, though, was an effect none of them could have guessed.
Woo Cheonghwi was little known beyond her own walls, but within Mugang Fortress she was called Mukanghui.
The name meant, quite literally, the princess of Mugang Fortress, and she bore it because she was the cherished daughter of Woo Cheol-jin, the Wild Rampage Martial Emperor—supreme hegemon of the Unorthodox Faction and lord of the fortress. That renown concealed something else: Woo Cheonghwi had already surpassed the Wild Rampage Martial Emperor's own achievements.
His art, the Battle God Raging Blood Art, drove inner energy in a circulation as violent as qi and blood running wild, pouring forth an aura of pure hegemony. As befitted the art of the Unorthodox Faction's supreme hegemon, it was a peerless divine canon worthy of contending for the greatest under heaven. Having learned it, Cheonghwi was certain that no matter how extraordinary her friends' comprehension and attainment, they could never imitate the Battle God Raging Blood Art unless they knew it.
"What is that supposed to be?!"
And yet Yuun was suddenly giving off the art's distinctive hegemonic aura, hardened qi forming in his hand.
"Uh... this feels like the aura of your art."
"I know! It's the art I learned! That isn't what I'm asking—Yuun, how are you circulating the aura of the Battle God Raging Blood Art?!"
"I don't really know either. Your inner energy, the same as what you have, suddenly flowed in, and then I just... knew how to use it."
He had only tried Yangui Mun's foundational art, and the technique had been copied whole. The realization sank Cheonghwi into a deep frustration. It was not the sting of having her art taken by her friend Yuun. It was the sting of an achievement she had trained so hard for being taken from her by a single breath.
"Ah. I can't keep this up for long."
The moment he muttered it, the aura of the Battle God Raging Blood Art around him began to thin. At last it scattered completely, and not a trace of it remained.
"What! What happened?!"
"Your energy that flowed into my dantian is gone. As expected, if it isn't an art of Yangui Mun, it won't take."
He called up the aura he had felt and tried to circulate it, but his empty dantian did not so much as stir. Even when he tried to draw the energy in through his breath, the dantian refused to hold it. The power had been temporary, and Yuun felt the loss of it.
His friends' eyes, though, were shining.
"Seems there's an effect you can't read from the formula alone. Want to run an experiment?"
He knew those eyes. He had seen them often as a child, whenever they found something that looked like tremendous fun—and he knew that friends wearing that look could not be stopped. Yuun accepted the experiment without a fight.
If someone who already possessed inner energy circulated Yangui Mun's foundational art within two zhang of Yuun—roughly twenty feet—he could take in that person's inner energy and use the martial art they had learned. Not by clumsily aping it, but as if he had known it all along.
He could wield it for about a quarter-hour. A single breath was enough to take hold, and the longer the breathing went on, the sooner he could bring the art to bear. Yet no matter how long that breath was held, the time he could use the art never exceeded a quarter-hour. Once he began, and that quarter-hour passed into a state where he could use it no longer, the span reset; draw the inner energy in through breathing again, and he had another quarter-hour.
"Fascinating. Yangui Mun's art is a peerless divine canon, no question."
When Soryeong murmured over the results, every head nodded. Serving in the Embroidered Uniform Guard, she had committed to memory the traits of every art hailed as a peerless divine canon, and she could say with certainty that none of them possessed an ability as strange as this. The certainty only fed the urge to test further—and the urge was not hers alone.
"Then this time, shall we see which art takes hold in Yuun if all of us circulate the foundational art at once?"
Ja-in had confirmed there were no particular side effects while he took in each of their arts in turn, and she offered the next trial easily. Yuun shook his head hard. He was done.
There had been no side effects to speak of, but taking his friends' energies one after another had left his lower dantian heavy, and little by little he was wearing out.