Prologue: My Disciple Came to Kill Me
If you heard a story called My Disciple Came to Kill Me, most people would immediately wonder what chain of events could possibly drive a disciple to murder their own master. After all, even if the saying “a teacher for a day is a parent for a lifetime” was coined later, respecting one’s master as one would the heavens has always been a cornerstone of Confucian culture. And this is a wuxia world where your prestige, your income, and even whether beams of energy shoot from your sword are all decided by who taught you and which manuals you studied. It is simply common sense that you wouldn’t even step on the shadow of your master’s friends or senior disciples—people you’d address with proper titles like martial aunt or uncle while carefully observing generational hierarchy.
Yet my disciple came to kill me.
In the dead of night he crossed the paper screen with a blade in hand, aiming straight for my heart and driving the sword forward with everything he had. A brilliant beam of energy, of course, erupted from its tip. After all, he was my disciple.
If I were to unravel the tangled story that led him to such a ruthless decision, the truth is I don’t really understand it myself.
The first time I met the boy I gave my surname to—Yu Baek—was several years ago in a village at the foot of a mountain that no longer exists. When I asked who had named an orphan who didn’t even know his parents, he told me someone had taken one look at his pale face and started calling him Whitey. The nickname stuck and became his name. Just as he said, even though the rest of him was filthy with grime, his face was startlingly white and his eyes pitch black.
At the time I was engaged in a rather frank exchange with two hot-blooded village youths in order to clear up a small misunderstanding. This strange child, however, paid no attention to the men lying beaten on the ground or to the faces that had caused the whole incident. His gaze was fixed solely on my fingertips as though nailed there.
He looked like a beggar living off scraps, yet there was something strangely carefree about him. I worried he might actually starve to death if left alone, and his behavior was so unusual that the whole situation carried the unmistakable flavor of a classic wuxia cliché. Before I knew it, I had brought him home and taken him as my disciple.
After a night’s sleep the martial-arts euphoria wore off and the practical problems of cohabitation—such as the inconvenience of shared living and the food costs of a growing boy—came crashing down on me. But by then it was too late to send him away. Reluctantly, I stood before the half-asleep child who had just woken up and declared, “From today on, you are my disciple.”
The boy, whose face had always seemed expressionless, broke into a huge, radiant smile. The memory of that smile is still vivid—how difficult it was to meet his eyes because of the guilt I felt.
…Looking back now, it really was a beautiful memory.
Reality, however, was that if I didn’t do something immediately, the sword that boy was swinging would take my head clean off.
So I turned my attention to the blade right in front of me. An unconscious sigh of admiration escaped my lips. Oh. He’s gotten better again.
It is only natural that people think differently. Even if they swing the same sword, their intentions and understanding differ, so the shape of their strikes inevitably changes. Once you choose a direction and delve deeper, you realize your method is imperfect and rethink it. Through repeated trial and error, internal energy accumulates. That is the ordinary process of all human learning, including martial arts.
But this boy is different. I had sensed something extraordinary from the moment we met, and sure enough, he was a genius. His perception was frighteningly sharp; from just a few words and gestures he could read another person as easily as reading a book. Not only could he infer the full technique from its visible parts, he could even imitate the underlying beliefs, values, and emotions perfectly. It was astonishing that such a thing was possible.
That was why I never needed to wait for him to achieve sudden enlightenment after asking questions. If I showed him something he could reasonably understand a few times, he would first imitate it clumsily, then absorb it so naturally that it seemed as if it had always been his own.
A week ago his understanding had not been this complete. The thrust still carried the same meticulous precision that wasted not a single strand of nerve, yet it was no longer the obsessive perfectionism that sought flawlessness. It was now a passionate precision that left nothing of himself behind. This version came far closer to the true essence of the technique I had shown him.
What should I show him next? While I was indulging in this escapist worry, I extended my fingers. The blade was drawn between my index and middle finger as though sucked in, stopping half an inch down. When the sword stopped, so did the body behind it. Or rather, it was stopped.
It was a variation of Twofold Palm Return or perhaps Heaven and Earth Reversal… a bit modest for those names, but something along those lines. My two fingers, connected through the sword to the single structure formed by my body and Yu Baek’s, along with all the forces acting upon it and the informational superiority granted by our respective senses, allowed me to completely overwhelm every possible movement Yu Baek’s entire body could produce with no more force than it would take to lift a single sheet of paper.
If he knew nothing at all, he might have been able to break this stalemate by rushing headlong toward his own destruction. But because he knew just enough, he was trapped exactly as he was. It was the same as how, if you don’t even know the rules, you might throw a tantrum when the score increases, but if you know them only halfway, you have no choice but to fold before the hand is even dealt.
I met Yu Baek’s eyes. As always his expression was faint, but he somehow looked unhappy. I couldn’t begin to guess what circumstances had brought him to this point. Would I even be able to handle it if I heard them?
I tried to appear calm, but I knew better than anyone how badly shaken I was. I have always been fatally weak when it comes to thinking on my feet. A martial artist with no real combat experience for entire centuries? Pew pew… And then this boy, the moment his sword was caught, fainted as if someone had flipped a switch.
Even if I woke him right now to talk, it was doubtful whether he would be in his right mind. …Perhaps it really would be better for both of us if he slept deeply and we spoke properly after he woke up?
Having rationalized it to myself, I gently laid the unconscious Yu Baek on the bedding in his room, returned to my own, and pulled the blanket over my head. Postponing troublesome matters until tomorrow was one of the few things I had abundant experience in.
The next day, when I finally rose and faced Yu Baek, my mind was overflowing with thoughts yet I couldn’t settle on a single thing to say. So I reflexively offered the same morning greeting I gave every day as if nothing had happened at all.
“Did you sleep well?”