Soft Sword (2)
The northern reaches of Shaanxi Province were quieter than expected.
Every incident and every quarrel resolved itself inside the heretical murim of northern Shaanxi; nothing spilled past the borders of Paegeommun’s territory. Yet everyone understood that the peace was only a surface calm. Inside that sealed jar, every venomous creature was thrashing and devouring the others, brewing a living poison. The moment the lid came off, the finished toxin would burst into the open world.
From the standpoint of the Zhongnan Sect, the Huashan Sect, and the Hao Gate, the situation demanded constant vigilance. They would have liked nothing better than to smash the jar at once, but their elite forces were still occupied with stabilizing Nanman. Any clash in their absence would exact a heavy price. Winter had locked the roads and mountains; movement was difficult. Most therefore expected the true battle to come with the spring. For the orthodox path, the task of winter was simple: store strength and prepare.
In the Zhongnan training grounds, Cheonhwa leveled Okgyeong straight ahead. Facing him, Myeonghwa, Jeokhwa, and Yeobhwa each settled into their opening stances and waited.
“Begin.”
At Cheonhwa’s signal the three charged together. The Six Harmony Sensory Path sketched a web of trajectories around their assault. In the past he would have met each line with a separate parry. No longer. Over the paths drawn by the Six Harmony Sensory Path a new set of lines overlaid themselves—the living current created by the three attackers’ motion. Cheonhwa followed that current and traced a single, unhurried curve.
Myeonghwa’s soft sword was guided aside. Jeokhwa’s swift blade was received and turned. Yeobhwa’s crushing fist was simply not there when it arrived. All of it was the work of one curving stroke.
Having blunted the wave, Cheonhwa immediately reversed the sword for the counter.
When defending, become the wind; when striking back, become lightning.
Recalling the maxim of the upper soft-sword art—the Clear Wind Sword Art—he sent a strike along the same flow. The force he had just neutralized and redirected was still inside the blade, yet the expression of that force was never brutal. It merely robbed the three of their balance.
They crumpled where they stood.
Shock flashed across every face. Losing balance and dropping in a single exchange was clearly more than they had expected.
“That just now… was that Hwageong?” Yeobhwa asked on pure reflex, wanting confirmation of his own guess.
Cheonhwa nodded. “Yes. Neutralizing Jin.”
“I knew Hwageong could do such things, but feeling it with my own body is something else entirely.”
Neutralizing Jin was usually employed for pure defense—to bleed away an opponent’s force. Mastered, however, it could be turned into offense and used to shatter balance. Yeobhwa, who already knew how to apply Hwageong through fist arts, understood exactly how difficult that was. Myeonghwa, who trained soft sword, understood it just as well.
“To reach that level with soft sword usually takes years of grinding. How did you climb so far in so little time?”
Cheonhwa answered as if it were nothing special. “I simply entered the lake and practiced handling the flow of water.”
“I thought you’d gone mad when I heard you were training in a lake in the middle of winter… but it actually worked.”
Myeonghwa stuck out his tongue. Even with Dark Heaven True Qi granting a measure of resistance to cold, one only felt the chill less; it was nothing like the complete immunity of Impervious to Heat and Cold. Stepping into a frozen lake in midwinter would make any ordinary martial artist’s teeth chatter. Yet if it was for training, Cheonhwa would endure far worse.
If it’s Junior Brother Cheonhwa, of course he would.
Myeonghwa nodded to himself, freshly reminded of how thoroughly his junior brother was possessed by training. Cheonhwa, who could not hear the private thought, only tilted his head in mild confusion.
While Myeonghwa remained lost in his own musings, Jeokhwa spoke.
“You weren’t simply using soft sword. Judging by how you subdued us with the least possible motion, you’ve been training dull sword as well, haven’t you?”
“Once I trained to feel the flow, my attainment in dull sword rose on its own.”
Both soft sword and dull sword contained the principle of later departure, first arrival—moving later yet still controlling the one who moved first. Training that read the flow therefore improved dull sword without conscious intention.
And without intending it, Wind-Cloud Body Form advanced the same way.
Wind-Cloud Body Form—also called Wind-Cloud Body Technique—was the movement art that supported soft sword. Who would have guessed it would mesh so perfectly with the Deep Flowing River Art? Wind-Cloud Body Technique wrapped the body in light, wind-like energy and sought soft, effortless motion. Deep Flowing River Art allowed one to breathe and move underwater as freely as on land. In the internal circulation that assisted body movement, the two arts shared astonishing similarities. Thanks to that kinship, Cheonhwa had learned far more quickly how to move with the flow even on dry ground.
Body technique, footwork, and lightness skill together formed the three classic arts of using the body. Footwork governed the first step; continuous steps became body technique; continuous body technique became the running method of lightness skill. There was a reason the three were often spoken of as one continuum—foot, body, and lightness.
The sensation of many arts linking organically… it felt similar to binding the principles of several sword arts into one through the layered maxims of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven.
Among Zhongnan’s teachings, certain arts were deliberately paired by the nature of their internal methods: White Steel Sword Art with its supporting footwork Golden Strong Step for hard sword, Clear Wind Sword Art with Wind-Cloud Body Form for soft sword. It was time, Cheonhwa decided, to pay equal attention to the supporting arts that surrounded the sword itself. The intuition was still vague, yet it might one day become a key to the final, polar maxims of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven.
“My turn now.”
The spar finished, Yeonhwa stepped forward from where she had been waiting. Myeonghwa, Jeokhwa, and Yeobhwa quietly yielded the stage. Only Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa remained on the sparring platform.
Cheonhwa raised Okgyeong once more. Yeonhwa lifted her Dark-Manifest Sword and settled into stance. From the tip of her blade a mist of true qi unfurled; the yin-cold energy of Dark Heaven True Qi spread outward, claiming a domain centered on the Dark-Manifest Sword. It was the upper dull-sword art, the Secluded Boundless Sword, re-created as sword wind rather than sword qi.
Even as sword wind rather than sword qi, the completeness is remarkable.
She was not yet a Peak Expert and therefore could not drag an opponent into her domain through Empty Space Grasping, yet for a first-class martial artist to command so wide a sword circle was already extraordinary. The reach of the sword was called the sword circle; the higher the realm, the wider that circle grew. Before first-class the length of the weapon itself was the circle. At first-class the circle expanded to the reach of sword wind. At Peak Expert the circle became still wider and far more refined under spiritual nature and intent.
Yet Junior Sister Yeonhwa is already handling a sword circle comparable to a Peak Expert without having awakened spiritual nature.
Only natural talent joined to unceasing effort could produce such precise emission and reception of internal energy.
Ordinarily I would open a path by flinging sword wind to cancel hers. In this spar I must not.
The previous match against three opponents had been practice in applying soft-sword principles to multiple foes. This one existed to test those same principles against a proper sword circle.
“Huu…”
Cheonhwa steadied his breath and raised a mist of true qi along Okgyeong’s blade. The mist climbed the hilt, coiled around his arm, and finally clothed his entire body as though he wore garments of fog. At a glance it resembled protective true qi, yet in truth it was an extension of sword wind—or of Intent Qi Manifestation. In that sense it was a sword circle much like Yeonhwa’s, though far smaller and humbler in scale.
It can’t be helped. I was not born with Junior Sister Yeonhwa’s senses.
Having awakened spiritual nature and intent, he could expand the circle if he wished; yet the wider it grew, the less fine the control would become. So he deliberately kept the circle no larger than the reach of a weapon.
If I lack the talent to command a wide range, I will simply command a narrow range with greater precision.
Precision itself demanded talent, of course, but Cheonhwa possessed arts and experience that could stand in for talent. Through the Six Harmony Sensory Path and spiritual nature he observed every current of energy inside the circle in meticulous detail. With the sense of flow inherited from the Deep Flowing River Art he unfolded Wind-Cloud Body Form. Moving like a cloud that rode the wind, he stepped into the domain of snow-wind.
Naturally the yin-cold energy tried to invade and smother him. The mist that already wrapped him moved first.
Wander empty and free, like a drifting cloud.
The maxim of the upper soft-sword art, the Flowing Cloud Sword Art, answered. The mist around his body thickened at once. The yin-cold energy was caught in that current, never reached him, and was drawn into the mist instead.
Yeonhwa’s eyes narrowed. It looked almost like the way Heaven-Under Lightning Flash coiled around an opponent’s force and returned it—yet it lacked any of that art’s roughness. Soft, natural, inevitable. She felt her own sword wind being swallowed by a current as vast as a great river. Against a soft-sword circle of such density and stability, ordinary sword wind would be helpless.
Deciding that a wide circle no longer served, Yeonhwa contracted the domain of snow-wind until it matched Cheonhwa’s modest scale.
She means to decide it through pure emission and reception of internal energy?
As if affirming the guess, Yeonhwa thrust. Her sword wind compressed to its limit and screamed a desolate note—her own attempt, founded on Flowing Cloud Mountain, to pierce a sword circle. Cheonhwa’s answer was little different from the earlier spar. The jade wooden sword, still wreathed in mist, drew a gentle arc and received the strike. The heavy impact that should have rung out was swallowed by the flowing mist. Softly he bled away her force and tried to steal her balance at the same time.
Yeonhwa stamped Nine Palaces Footwork in a flash and recovered her stance—yet the concentration required to right herself left her half a beat late against the counter that followed.
Kuuung!
A dull, layered boom rolled across the grounds. Every offensive she had launched—sword wind and the latest thrust alike—had been gathered into a single point and returned intact. Yeonhwa skidded backward until she left the platform.
“…I lose.”
Confirming she was out of bounds, she released a long breath and accepted defeat. The match ended there.
“Nothing but consecutive losses these days.” Her expression was far from bright. Ever since Cheonhwa had become a Peak Expert, defeats of this kind had multiplied; the only times she won were when he deliberately restricted himself to the level of a first-class martial artist. She knew perfectly well that this was only natural. No matter how gifted she was, the wall between Peak and first-class could not simply be vaulted.
Hearing her quiet complaint, Cheonhwa spoke softly.
“But you have no intention of giving up, do you?”
Yeonhwa lifted her head and met his eyes. They held an unshakable trust—the certainty that she would keep challenging no matter what. And he was right. She had never intended to stop.
If it were Junior Brother Cheonhwa in the same situation, he would keep challenging too.
To keep chasing that back. That had been the vow she made the day she created the Heavenly Blossom Axis Scripture. She lagged behind for now, yet she would never abandon the day when they would stand side by side again.
“One more match. This time use any sword art except soft sword.”
“Understood.”
A faint smile touched Cheonhwa’s lips as he nodded. Moments later the sound of colliding sword strikes rose again from the sparring platform of the training grounds.
In the elder council chamber the leadership of the Zhongnan Sect had gathered. Sect Leader Okwon Jinin asked in a grave voice,
“Has confirmation been completed?”
An elder bowed his head. “Yes. Cross-checking the intelligence extracted from Yeo Yongmyeong has proven it true.”
“I had hoped it would prove false. It seems that hope was empty.”
Okwon Jinin released a deep sigh; lines gathered between his brows. The old Taoist’s gaze fell naturally upon the documents lying on the table.
Jiangshi. Spirit Beasts.
Those two words alone were enough to make the old Taoist’s head ache.