The Martial Talent of Defying Heaven (1)
In the middle of a deserted lot, I sat on the ground and set four books down before me.
Their covers read Three Talents Heart Method, Three Talents Sword Art, Six Harmonies Footwork, and Language.
I still hadn't fully learned to read, so I couldn't make the characters out on my own, but that was what the bookshop owner had told me, and it was probably true. Surely he wouldn't have lied about the titles themselves. Turn it over as I might, I couldn't see what he stood to gain.
I opened the volume marked Language first. Pictures sat beside the characters and the words.
Hm. Easy enough.
Flip. Flip. I read with care, and only after some thirty minutes did I finish a book about as thick as an encyclopedia.
Doesn't feel like I was swindled.
Too much of it rang true for that. The characters I already knew fit their meanings exactly. If this was a fraud, the fraudster was a prodigy. Even so, I had to be careful. The world held more impressive lunatics than one might think.
Next I examined the book titled Three Talents Heart Method. Run through the Language primer I had just read, the characters truly formed sentences. So it wasn't a scam after all.
"Hmm..."
I let the sound out and studied the lines written alongside the illustrations. This was what they said.
First, one must feel Qi.
A wondrous power dwells in all things of creation and gathers into the courses of rivers. This is called Natural Qi.
It is the power of truth: born of Heaven, becoming Earth, and embracing Man.
Humans, born of the earth and yet rising against Heaven, achieve the defiance of Heaven by taking into their own bodies the Qi that embraces them. This begins in knowing Qi—the truth that binds the Three Talents into one.
Qi is an unseen current. Whoever would go against that current and work the miracle of defying Heaven must perceive the current's direction.
The time required to feel Qi varies greatly from person to person.
A great many words, and yet...
This really does smell like a cult.
I had felt the current of all things under heaven even in my first life. And that was supposed to be the truth that bound the Three Talents into one? I didn't laugh, but it was a ridiculous thing to say. Even allowing for the archaic pomp of the style, I could take it for nothing more than a painstaking fraud.
I clicked my tongue and turned the page.
Second, one must make a vessel to hold Qi. Because what blooms differs according to what is planted and how it is tended, this vessel is called the dantian.
The domain of reason bestowed by Heaven is the Upper Dantian at the crown of the head, the first thing Heaven shaped. The domain where Heaven and Earth gather to form life is called the Middle Dantian, in the chest. And the vessel newly made below, so that a person born of earth may ascend toward Heaven, is named the Lower Dantian.
The dantian has no form, and so the epithet field of the mind suits it. Forming the Lower Dantian rests on the same foundation. Draw what is called Natural Qi—or the spiritual Qi of heaven and earth—with the pull of one's own mind as the axis, and condense it in the lower abdomen. That, then, is the dantian.
Forming the Lower Dantian takes an ordinary talent a little over three years, a skilled talent a little over one year, and a genius a mere three months.
Much of it was unusually abstract. Even so, it was written convincingly enough to stir the illusion that it might be true.
Well. A scam all the same, no doubt.
I let out a sigh and glanced at the book.
...Should I try it?
Sitting still would only leave me where I was. Old wisdom claimed that if you stayed put, you'd at least get halfway there, but I had never once seen staying put carry anyone halfway anywhere. Better, then, to look upon even a thread of hope and put it to the test.
Following that thought, I did as the book instructed. I formed the pull of the mind and drew the current I could feel down into my lower abdomen.
Gather.
That single intent was enough.
Shuuuu—
The surrounding current—Qi, according to the book—drew together into a sphere, as if thread had been wound into a ball.
"...Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped me.
Is this what they call a dantian?
Qi circulated through my whole body, and vitality stirred in me. Even this much would put a little more strength behind a swing of the sword. If I had known of something like this, I might not have lived so wretchedly in my first life.
A brief regret flickered through my mind, and I shook it off at once. Nothing good came of chewing on thoughts like that. I had to move forward—so why look back along the road I had already walked? Reflection on the sword already overflowed in me. Regret was best kept to a minimum.
Wait. Didn't it say a genius forms a dantian within three months?
I didn't think I had taken even three seconds. Was this a proper dantian at all? I checked what came next.
If at this point Qi has gathered in the lower abdomen in the form of a sphere, that is the dantian. Demonic beasts give this substance and shape it into a pill-core, but a human need not. One has only to gather Qi inside an empty sphere.
If you have followed this far, you who are reading this book have reached the realm of Third-Rate.
Reading the explanation, it did seem to be a dantian, more or less.
And yet... an empty sphere?
Through the senses I had naturally honed in my hunter days, I turned my awareness inward and observed the Qi within my body.
"..."
No matter how I considered it, it did not seem empty.
...Whatever. It'll work out somehow.
Failing that, giving the sphere of Qi a solid form and playing the demonic beast didn't seem so bad either. Having died from a bird's pecking, I had learned that animals were stronger than one might think. I set the worry aside as nothing worth troubling over and turned the page with it.
Third, one must accumulate Qi inside the dantian.
It is called a dantian because it resembles a field. Just as a field exists so that something may be planted in it, a dantian likewise gains the meaning of its existence only once it holds Qi within.
As when forming the dantian, one forms the pull of the mind and gathers Natural Qi inside it.
At this stage the dantian is itself Qi, and so it forms a pull upon Natural Qi. Therefore the accumulation of Qi ought to be incomparably easier than the making of the dantian.
I had nothing that could be called the inside of a dantian.
Then the answer was simple enough. Grow the dantian itself.
Shwaaa—
Natural Qi gathered in my lower abdomen and swelled the dantian's size.
"..."
I stopped drawing Qi in. At this rate the dantian would grow too large.
Then I'll have to compress it.
Shuuuu—
When I formed the pull more strongly, the dantian returned to roughly the size I had first made. The amount of Qi remained the same, so it felt denser—almost as if it had taken on a hint of substance. I wondered whether I was about to turn into a demonic beast, but it hardly mattered. If they wanted a beast, I would be a beast.
Thinking so, I read on.
Lastly, one must now open the acupoint channels.
Force must have direction if it is to move anything, and what sits still can accomplish nothing. Setting a direction, therefore, is vital as well.
Acupoint channels are the paths along which internal energy—or internal Qi—the Qi accumulated within the human body, flows. Those who would defy Heaven must follow the tangible blood vessels Heaven bestowed, form intangible acupoint channels, and thereby commune with the world. Opening all three hundred and sixty-five acupoints so as to commune with the world is called clearing them.
The channels must be opened according to the illustrations herein. If one knows only the rough paths, then as one's realm of internal energy rises, the acupoints that open easily will clear of themselves, beginning with those.
Through this, the internal energy held in the human body circulates more smoothly, and great force may be drawn from little of it.
Open every acupoint, and one may reach the ultimate of the First-Rate realm.
And it is said that one who surpasses even that, and realizes the principle of life, may reach the Peak Realm.
I read the passage carefully, then studied the illustrations beneath it. Three hundred and sixty-five acupoints were marked there. The pages that followed laid out the realms of the martial path and the standards that divided them, and even that ran long. There certainly were a great many. I sighed over it, and memorized them all in about two minutes.
Then I began what they called guiding the Qi and tuning the breath—matching that business about the pull of the mind to my breathing, the better to absorb and circulate internal energy.
Hwaaak—
And I opened ninety acupoints where I sat. It took about three hours.
Mm. The threshold of Second-Rate, then.
They said the realm an ordinary talent could reach by effort alone was the entrance of First-Rate. At this pace, it seemed I did have some gift for the martial path. Of course, anything beyond this was too much for me. I had struck a wall while opening the acupoints, and barely scraping into the entrance of Second-Rate was as far as I could go.
I kept guiding my Qi and tuning my breath while I pored over the Three Talents Sword Art and Six Harmonies Footwork as well.
Ah. Right. They said that unless it was a moving method, I was supposed to shut out every other sense and focus only on the circulation.
A moving method was an internal art designed from the outset to accumulate internal energy while the body moved, and the explanation said the Three Talents Heart Method was not one of those. It wasn't that something else was the problem. It was supposed to be impossible from the start.
And yet, what do I know?
It was working, so there shouldn't be any trouble. Thinking so, I brought the Three Talents Sword Art and Six Harmonies Footwork to Great Completion over the course of five minutes.
When I thought of my hunter days—sent onto the battlefield with no one to teach me, fighting magical beasts—this was simply easy. Unlike then, when there had been no pioneers, now I had only to walk, roughly, along a road countless predecessors had already paved.
"Hmm."
I let out a short sound and sank into thought. I wanted to join the Three Talents Sword Art and Six Harmonies Footwork into one.
The sword art was made of three forms: Mount Tai Pressing Down, a cut from above to below; Sweeping a Thousand Armies, a horizontal slash; and The Immortal's Road, a thrust straight ahead. Six Harmonies Footwork divided the ground into six directions and stepped along them, pace by pace.
In my mind the two arts tangled together and gave birth to a new one. It was nothing grand. Taking the point drawn by The Immortal's Road as the center, I simply split the sword-path of Mount Tai Pressing Down—the form that stood for Earth—into six directions. I also added to the footwork a direction corresponding to Heaven. That was all.
The only thing that needed mending was the way internal energy was deployed, and even that was merely refining the method so force would settle properly into the direction I had added. Designing linked movements that combined footwork and swordplay was hardly something I needed to agonize over, so it didn't matter.
I gave it no name. I wasn't going to teach it to anyone, after all.
Instead, I simply decided to test the new art.
Shwk. Shwk!
Sword-paths drew themselves through the empty air and stacked, layer upon layer.
"Mm."
I slid the sword back into its sheath and let out a short sound. Unfolding the forms with internal energy behind them, they felt quite decent.
It was the moment I created a martial art for the first time.
"Ah. And."
I spoke quietly, and turned.
"...You can come out now. I don't want to kill anyone else."
As my red eyes sank cold with the words, a woman carefully peeked her face out from behind a tree.
Long white hair like a field of snow. Blue eyes that seemed to hold the sea within them. A slender line of jaw, and skin so clear and white it stopped just short of pallor. Features that fell into a proper harmony with one another. It was the woman I had seen today.
I didn't want to kill her. Still, if I had to, I would. I could only hope it wouldn't come to that.
"Speak. Why were you hiding there?"
My hand resting on the sword's grip, I said it in a cold voice.