Mental Image (3)
Jeokhwa compiled everything that had happened in the Baoji martial world and sent the report to the Zhongnan Sect.
On the most critical subject—the Ihwamun Lord—she could not go into full detail, for Cheonhwa, who had fought him directly, still had not opened his eyes. Even so, she built the account from the testimony of those who had witnessed the duel, from the information Yeonhwa had gathered through pulse diagnosis, and from the contents of the martial manuals Cheonhwa had entrusted to her.
It was not as exhaustive as a firsthand account, yet it was more than enough for the main mountain to grasp the rough outline of events. Having taken the measure of the situation in Baoji, the sect issued the following orders.
“Once the Baoji martial world is stabilized and Cheonhwa awakens, investigate the origin of the martial manuals.”
“So we are to continue the mission,” Jeokhwa murmured. “Ordinarily they would have ordered us home. This is unusual.”
“They must have judged the danger of the two demonic arts we uncovered this time to be considerable.”
The manuals Cheonhwa had found on the Ihwamun Lord’s person—the Heavenly Yang Divine Art and the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art. Precise details remained unknown, yet both were demonic arts of tremendous power and extreme peril. The Heavenly Yang Divine Art carried pure yang energy that could burn even its own user. As for the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art, it was a vicious technique that drained the essence and vital energy of others.
Even this much I only know from experience. The truth may be worse still.
To fully understand a demonic art required research based on the manuals themselves. Yet the main mountain had decided that bringing those manuals back immediately would be too dangerous.
Two demonic arts appearing near Baoji at roughly the same time? Far too convenient to call coincidence.
Someone was orchestrating this from the shadows—almost certainly one of the mysterious forces that moved unseen. If they rushed back to Zhongnan carelessly, that force might catch the scent and strike. For the same reason, Cheonhwa’s party would keep possession of the demonic manuals until they returned to the main mountain themselves. Sending the manuals alone risked interception along the road; better that the group hold them until recovery could be made together.
“Here. Take this.”
Jeokhwa drew the manual of the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art from her robes and held it out to Cheonhwa.
“Yeonhwa will keep the Heavenly Yang Divine Art. If we are to hold the manuals, it is better that the two strongest among the third-generation disciples carry them.”
“Understood.”
As Cheonhwa accepted the booklet, Jeokhwa exhaled a long breath of relief. She had kept it out of necessity, yet the thing had preyed on her nerves the entire time—always on her person, always watched, every moment away from it spent fretting that someone might snatch it. No wonder she looked so unburdened now.
No wonder the Ihwamun Lord kept them against his chest.
To him those demonic arts must have been peerless divine arts—immense power granted at a terrible price. The hunger to become a master through overwhelming martial strength was a common dream that crossed the line between righteous and evil; the mad obsession the Ihwamun Lord had shown toward higher realms was proof enough.
Which is exactly why we cannot let these arts spread through the martial world.
Having tasted their danger himself, Cheonhwa knew: if they proliferated, chaos like the upheaval in Baoji would sweep the entire jianghu. He wanted nothing more than to burn the manuals to ash. The trouble was that there was no guarantee these were the only copies.
If some force is deliberately scattering demonic arts, destroying one or two manuals will solve nothing.
Rooting out the source would be ideal. Failing that, they at least needed to analyze the arts and forge countermeasures. That was why the main mountain had ordered both recovery of the manuals and investigation of their origin.
“Ahem. So what do we do from here?”
Wijiun cleared his throat lightly and asked about their plans. He seemed worried they might set out on the mission the moment Cheonhwa was on his feet. With Baoji still unsettled, the departure of Cheonhwa’s party would make restoration far harder.
Cheonhwa spoke to put him at ease.
“I intend to remain in the Baoji martial world for a while. Don’t worry too much.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. The cleanup here is unfinished, and we still need to dig for information.”
Cheonhwa drove the point home and rose from his seat. After ten straight days of lying still, his body felt stiff and heavy. Before anything else he would need to loosen his limbs and take a proper meal.
From the day he woke, Cheonhwa threw himself into the work of sweeping out the remaining Black Path remnants and stabilizing Baoji, always with his companions at his side. Whenever time allowed he also exchanged pointers with the martial artists of Geongonmun. After watching them train for only a short while he offered a blunt assessment.
“Their foundations are a mess.”
“I know.”
Wijiun, standing beside him, nodded in rueful agreement.
“I never realized it while I was still at the main mountain. Once I came back down I felt it in my bones—how thoroughly Geongonmun has neglected the basics.”
As a secular branch of Zhongnan, Geongonmun taught the sect’s fundamental arts and followed roughly the same curriculum. Disciples began with the introductory arts, including the Balanced Heaven Qi Accumulation Art; once that reached the third stage they advanced to one of the Four Directions Heaven Arts—commonly the Vast Heaven Qi Art. The standards, however, were far looser than those of the main mountain.
“Reaching the third stage of the Balanced Heaven Qi Accumulation Art before learning a Four Directions Heaven Art is the same at Zhongnan. But watching them teach higher sword arts while their mastery of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven was still pitiful nearly stopped my heart.”
There were even cases of disciples learning advanced sword techniques without ever having practiced a Four Directions Heaven Art at all. The memory alone drew a long sigh from Wijiun.
“If they never properly learned the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven—the very foundation of every sword art—then of course this is the result.”
Cheonhwa watched the Geongonmun disciples execute the White Steel Sword Art. Stances were wrong as a matter of course; even the transfer of weight was so flawed that balance collapsed at every step. No real sword force could possibly ride those blades.
“I tried to fix it myself, but habits already set in stone are hard to break.”
Wijiun had proposed training the way they did at Zhongnan. Not one of them lasted three days before quitting. Only then had he truly understood how extraordinary the training of the entrance disciples had been.
“This whole affair showed me how weak Geongonmun really is. We need foundation training if we are ever going to make up the difference. Is there any way?”
“In my experience, forcing people to train is far less effective than making them want to train.”
Why did Geongonmun’s martial artists neglect the basics and fixate on higher arts? Because they wanted to grow strong quickly. Orthodox martial arts, however, could never be rushed. First they had to feel that truth in their bones.
“So how about we do some foundation training together, the way we used to? We can call Yeonhwa and Jeokhwa as well.”
“That sounds perfect. Let’s try it!”
From that day Cheonhwa, Wijiun, Jeokhwa, and Yeonhwa began foundation training in full view of Geongonmun. They drilled external body tempering bare-handed, practiced the first half of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, and even sparred under the condition that only those early forms were allowed.
At first the Geongonmun disciples watched with simple curiosity. A few with sharper eyes noticed that the forms the visitors—especially Cheonhwa—were using were anything but ordinary. Cuts, thrusts, blocks, and cleaves: simple one-strike techniques, every movement familiar, yet somehow refined beyond recognition. It was hard to believe they had all learned the same art.
At last one disciple could no longer contain his doubt.
“Is that truly the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven?”
“Yes. The same Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven you know and are learning.”
“How can we wield the sword the way Daoist Cheonhwa does?”
As though he had been waiting for the question, Cheonhwa smiled.
“Shall I teach you?”
He had the Geongonmun disciple take the starting stance. The instruction that followed was nothing exotic—correct posture, proper weight transfer, the circulation of inner force through each form. The most basic of basics. Yet even that alone changed the force riding the blade.
“Ah…!”
A clean arc cut through empty air; a gasp of pure wonder escaped the disciple. The sensation of something long out of place suddenly locking into true alignment was almost intoxicating. As if spellbound, he began to swing again and again. Cheonhwa merely adjusted the occasional flaw from the side and made no move to stop him.
Only after a long time lost in the trance did the disciple come back to himself.
“I—I apologize! I asked for instruction and then just swung however I pleased—”
“No, it’s fine. More importantly—did you enjoy swinging the sword?”
“…Yes.”
Slowly the disciple nodded. How long had it been since simply moving a blade felt this good? It was as though he had returned to the day he first learned martial arts.
What Cheonhwa had given him was the sensation of success—the feeling of the wind itself catching the body and drawing it forward. The experience was so vivid it left a craving to feel it again, and that craving naturally led to immersion in foundation training. Only someone who had mastered the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven and the basic arts to their depths could teach this way.
“What did you feel when you swung? Even if it is abstract, tell me exactly as it came to you.”
“It may sound grandiose, but… it felt as though I were cutting the world.”
“That is precisely the mental image woven into the first half of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven.”
Every martial art carries an image it seeks to express. The image of the early forms of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven was a sword path that stretched outward into all thirty-six directions of heaven and earth—dots, lines straight and curved, broad strokes of ink racing across the canvas of the world.
“A mental image is the meaning one seeks to place inside a martial art.”
Cheonhwa settled into the starting stance.
The name means to cut the world vertically and seal it shut—an image that bisects heaven and earth and bars the way.
Of course, severing the world was not as simple as the words made it sound. Yet a journey of a thousand li begins with a single step. Before one could cut the world, one first had to learn how to cut properly at all.
“When the foundation is complete, you may not yet be able to cut the world—but you will be able to cut whatever stands before you.”
The sword that had been lifted toward the heavens fell toward the earth. A cold whisper of wind parted the air, and a single line was drawn through space. The disciple receiving the lesson and every Geongonmun martial artist watching from the side shuddered as one.
It was only an ordinary, simple descending cut—neither especially powerful nor particularly ornate, neither fast nor slow. Yet if asked whether they could block that stroke if it came at them, every one of them would have shaken their heads. The form of World Vertical Severance that Cheonhwa had shown carried that kind of weight.
“You asked how you might wield the sword as I do. You already know the method.”
He meant the foundation training he and his companions had repeated every day without fail.
“If you keep repeating the basics and correct your bad habits, you will become stronger than you are now.”
Of course a limit would eventually appear. There was no need to fear it. Everything built so far would become the solid foothold for the next step.
“Will you try?”
Cheonhwa looked across the Geongonmun disciples. In their eyes he saw a fire he had felt countless times while training with the third-generation disciples of Zhongnan—longing, and resolve. A silent affirmation that needed no words.
These people simply never knew the method.
They had not known how to put forth proper effort. They had not known how to taste the satisfaction of achievement through that effort. That was why they had neglected the foundations and reached for higher arts.
But once they feel the importance of the basics with their own bodies, everything changes.
It would be hard and exhausting at first, yet soon enough they would see it: themselves, stronger than before through foundation training alone.
Because the martial arts of Zhongnan are a path for those who strive.
That had been the founding ancestor’s wish—a lineage in which every person, gifted or not, received reward in proportion to effort. For a moment the smile of the founding ancestor—wearing Jinhyun’s face inside the mental image—passed through Cheonhwa’s mind.
The founding ancestor created martial arts so that ordinary people could become masters.
One of those creations was the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, an art devoted utterly to the basics.
And the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven is also the root of every sword art of Zhongnan.
Cheonhwa recalled the forms the Geongonmun disciples had been practicing—the White Steel Sword Art, a higher technique that carried the principle of hardness from the first half of the Thirty-Six Swords. The outer shapes differed, yet their cores clearly spoke to one another. What created that difference?
Following the pull of his own heart, he swung the sword again. Powered by the Vast Heaven Qi Art, the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven took on the character of a hard sword—yet it still fell short of a true hard-sword art. That was only natural: the essence of the Thirty-Six Swords was a middle-way sword and a heavy sword.
What, then, was needed to fill the gap?
The intent woven into movement and qi circulation must be realigned to match a hard sword.
The mental image that had held the middle path shifted to fit the rigid nature of the Vast Heaven Qi Art. Following that intent, the shape of the forms and the flow of inner force changed. A heavy stomp—jin release through the foot—was added to the footwork to generate force, and as that force rode properly into the arc of the blade, the presence of a true hard sword emerged.
The movements were startlingly similar to arts he already knew.
Diamond Tread Footwork and the White Steel Sword Art.
Zhongnan’s hard-sword style and the footwork that paired with it. He knew the motions, yet not the detailed formulas. Even so he found himself performing arts he had never been taught. Only then did the realization strike him.
Any sword art born of Zhongnan can be imitated simply by watching it.
The words Okwon Jinin had once spoken were true. The founding ancestor had declared that, past and future alike, the supreme sword art of Zhongnan would always be the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven—because every other sword art of the sect had branched from it. The reverse was also true: insight gained from those derivative arts could flow back into the Thirty-Six Swords. Only because the martial arts stood solidly within his mental image had such a thing been possible.
It is still only about thirty percent complete, but the more I see them, the higher the fidelity will rise.
Mastering sword arts that sprang from Zhongnan would without doubt deepen his grasp of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven. In that moment he found yet another reason to keep teaching the disciples of Geongonmun.