What a Disciple of Heaven-Cleaving Is
"A disciple of Heaven-Cleaving ought to be exactly so."
"Come to think of it, that lunatic's real classes start today..."
"We can get stronger. I like it."
The two disciples kept up their idle chatter until they reached the place Cheon Hwi had told them to find.
"Seol, is this it?"
Hyeon had no choice but to ask. The academy was enormous, and the training grounds scattered through it were just as many. Were they really meant to leave all of those perfectly good grounds behind and use a basement?
"Yes."
Seol answered while checking even the rough map Cheon Hwi had drawn for them himself.
"Right. He must have some idea."
Or did he? Judging by the way he carried himself, it was just as easy to believe he had no ideas at all. Resigning herself to a fate she could not escape, Hyeon opened the basement door.
It ground open. With the sound, lights flared to life, and the whole of the basement laid itself out before them.
"Whoa... It's huge."
Set beside any other training ground in the academy, it did not fall short. At a scale like this, calling it a basement felt wrong. Underground Training Ground suited it better.
"Hm. You are all here. Well done."
While Hyeon was still taking in the size of the place, Cheon Hwi came to meet them.
"I'm only asking just in case. We're not fighting again today, are we...?"
"No. We will not fight today."
At that single sentence, the disciples let themselves relax.
After the beating they had taken, did they actually believe him? Of course not. Lunatics share a common trait. They talk nonsense, but they do not lie. Why else would a lunatic be a lunatic? They believe their own convictions without compromise, and that is what makes them mad. If all they did was lie, the world would have called them liars, not lunatics. By the peculiar faith of we trust him because he is a lunatic, the disciples were able to set their minds at ease.
"Then... what are we doing today?"
"Before that, there is something I would ask you."
"Hm?"
What could he possibly want to ask?
"Do you know why martial arts... no. Why swordsmanship loses to magic?"
They had braced for questions about the academy's facilities, about grades, about any number of things. They had not braced for this. Even so, a question like that needed no thought. With nothing but a bare body, you cannot make fire, and you cannot cut it. You cannot smash a boulder that springs into being from nowhere, and against telekinesis you cannot so much as resist. Those were not things willpower could do. Hyeon laid the thought out without softening a word, and Cheon Hwi granted it.
"Then why did you apply to the Swordsmanship Department?"
"Because we have no talent for magic..."
It was true that the academy was a prestigious school of magic, and true that in this world anyone could use magic — and yet there were people who could not. Even among those who could, some cast spells so weak and so wasteful they hardly counted. So the Swordsmanship Department, and the other places where one learned martial arts, were where students went when they had the learning to enter the academy but could not enter the Magic Department. Put simply, they were there to walk away with a name on a diploma, if nothing else.
"Do not lie. You are not the sort who give up easily for lack of talent and settle somewhere else. Had you been, you would have spoken to another professor and refused this class from the start."
Cheon Hwi denied her at once. If they had truly abandoned magic for want of talent, they would never have applied to the Swordsmanship Department either. And even if they had applied, they would have ignored this class and sat through the academy's ordinary lessons.
"You came to take my class not out of fear of me, but because you were certain you could grow stronger. Was that not so? Answer me truly. Why did you apply to the Swordsmanship Department?"
The words could easily have sounded arrogant. They struck the disciples' hearts exactly. Hearing them, Hyeon corrected herself, as if she had understood what he meant.
"...Because I like the sword."
Ah. I didn't want to say it.
This was a world that favored magic and looked down on swordsmanship — no, on nearly every martial art, the sword included. Train for three years with a weapon and you would still lose to a single year of magic. In a way, the contempt was only natural. To practice something like the sword was to live every day being measured against others and cursed for the comparison.
And the martial arts professors? They were outstanding magic students too. They had simply liked the sword a little more than most, and used it a little better, and so they had been made professors. If a post in the magic faculty had opened, they would likely have gone straight to it. The so-called martial arts professors did not teach because they were masters of the art. They taught for the title of academy professor. Hyeon had felt that truth to the bone the moment she enrolled, and she had sworn never to say such a thing to anyone again. Yet somehow, before Cheon Hwi, the words had come out far too easily. As if she had known him for a very long time.
"If you're going to laugh, go ahead. Everyone else does."
The words had come easily. The one who heard them would not understand them so easily. Hyeon laughed, awkward. Seol looked as expressionless as ever, but anger showed through beneath it. Both of them, most likely, were certain Cheon Hwi would look down on them.
"Why would I laugh? You did well. A disciple of Heaven-Cleaving ought to be so."
He stepped outside everything they had expected.
"You did well. Whatever the world may say, you did not take up the sword in order to lose."
Cheon Hwi looked into each of his disciples' eyes in turn and went on, slowly.
His gaze had deepened as he spoke. For a moment, silence fell.
Drip. Drip.
What broke it was a drop of water striking the floor. Was the rain leaking in? Once a single drop fell, the sound came faster and harder, and before they knew it the floor beneath the disciples' eyes was wet through.
Had he simply told them it was all right, that they had done well, that he meant only to comfort them, it would not have moved them like this. They might even have grown angry. What do you know, to say such things? But the comfort Cheon Hwi offered was not simple comfort. He affirmed the reason the two of them had chosen the martial path, and even if the world's measure called that choice worthless, he raised it into a conviction that would not break. It was not pity, soothing them for how hard the choosing must have been. It was a comfort that made them remember the dignity of having the choice respected, and it wrapped itself around hearts the world had wounded.
"It seems the rain is falling. Even if someone weeps, no one will hear it."
The moment the words ended, a small sob could be heard.
They were underground. There was no way it was raining. Not one person there was fool enough to miss so obvious a truth, nor the meaning hidden inside what he had said. For the first time, the disciples let their feelings show and wept, and Cheon Hwi only listened. He said nothing more. The lonely road was theirs to walk, and what had to be endured was theirs as well. He himself was only a guide along that road. He knew very well that he was not the traveler who had to walk it.
"Have you finished crying?"
"I never... hmph... cried!"
"Yes, yes. Hyeon says she never cried."
Well, her pride ran deep. She did not show her tears easily. Even in the previous life, years had passed before he ever saw her cry with his own eyes, or was allowed to hear her sulk.
"So what are we doing today?"
The face that had looked so gloomy only this morning had brightened considerably. No — past brightening. She looked as if she was looking forward to whatever came next.
"Earlier, you explained well why martial arts lose to magic. But martial arts can do what magic does."
"What?"
Impossible. Of that, she was certain. Magic draws in mana from the outside and releases it. To loose that external mana, one must purify it in the mana heart within the heart, and only then cast the spell. Even reading it on the page, she had no sense of how such a thing was done. How could a body of pure flesh ever manage it? And yet, if it were possible, then it would no longer be impossible for the Swordsmanship Department to defeat the Magic Department. The two of them looked at Cheon Hwi with expectation, and he answered it.
"You need only form a dantian."
"A dantian?"
"Yes!"
"What's that?"
"...What did you say?"
What? These children don't even know what a dantian is?!
Magic had something called a mana heart, so he had naturally assumed martial arts had a dantian as well. He had only thought the children did not know how to form one — or that even if they did, they gathered inner energy so poorly they might as well not know.
No wonder there wasn't a single word about the dantian in the swordsmanship classes.
They had beaten the Magic Department with nothing but their bodies, without even knowing what a dantian was? No — wait. Worse than that. He had been testing his skill by fighting children who did not even have one...?
"I... I am sorry."
"For what?"
Hyeon asked with a smile bright as sunlight, as if she truly had no idea what he meant. That, of all things, jabbed at his heart.
Don't smile as if you genuinely don't know! It only makes me feel like even more of a piece of trash!
"I am sorry for all of it..."
An apology was all Cheon Hwi could offer.
Once that brief bout of self-reproach had passed, he began to explain the dantian. It was a vessel that gathered the water called inner energy. The body was the tool that used that water. Every part of it was a metaphor, and yet it was precise, and easy to grasp. Besides, the skill of that monstrous transfer student was something they could believe. No professor had ever taught them anything like this, and here he was showing them with his own body as he taught. How could they not believe him? If they only learned well from Cheon Hwi, defeating the Magic Department would no longer be a mere dream.
"I understand the dantian and inner energy now, clearly enough. But how do you make a dantian?"
A theory you cannot follow is worse than no theory at all.
"Ah, you need not worry about that. I will guide the energy and open it for you myself. We shall go in order. Hyeon, sit here first."
"Okay!"
That both disciples would soon regret not having fled at that very moment was a future not far off. The disciples did not know it yet.