Past and Present (2)
In the infirmary within the Dan Family Manor, research into the demonic art possessed by the Damjeok Pavilion Master was underway.
"Hoo."
Yeonhwa wiped the sweat from her brow and drew her hands away from the unconscious Damjeok Pavilion Master on the sickbed.
After a full five days, she had finished every examination she could perform for the moment. To investigate any further would require learning the demonic art herself.
Leaving the pavilion master as he was, Yeonhwa turned to Cheonhwa and Jeokhwa to report her findings.
"After analyzing the mnemonic formulas from the martial manuals we've obtained and examining the body of someone who has actually cultivated a demonic art, I've reached a single conclusion."
"What is it?"
"Every demonic art we've acquired so far cultivates a twisted energy—demonic qi."
At her words, Cheonhwa recalled the strange energy he had sensed from the master of the Ihwamun. That sinister power was almost certainly the demonic qi Yeonhwa spoke of.
"It's true I felt a twisted energy from the Ihwamun master, but I sensed nothing of the sort from the Damjeok Pavilion Master. How do you explain that?"
"It seems demonic arts have a property of concealing their demonic qi until a certain level of mastery is reached."
Yeonhwa shook her head, explaining that she had only found the traces after scouring every corner of the pavilion master's body. Had she not analyzed him so thoroughly for the sake of the investigation, those traces of demonic qi would have been nearly impossible to detect.
Cheonhwa thought back to the moment the Ihwamun master had begun to reveal his demonic qi in earnest. Only after he had madly absorbed the surrounding internal energy with the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art had that twisted aura become palpable. Put another way, until that point it had been nearly impossible to distinguish from ordinary martial arts.
"And demonic qi differs greatly in nature from ordinary internal energy."
"In what way?"
"It goes beyond refining the natural qi of the world—it even draws upon turbid qi and the body's original true qi to cultivate its power."
Like a hungry ghost from the underworld, it devoured every form of energy to fatten itself. In that sense it stood in complete opposition to the pure true qi of orthodox martial arts, which sought to cultivate energy of the highest purity.
"That's also why demonic arts advance so extremely quickly. They convert not only pure essence but even the turbid qi accumulated in the body into demonic qi."
"So they're trading lifespan for higher realms."
Unorthodox martial arts already pursued rapid advancement, yet demonic arts went far beyond them. There was a madness to it—a willingness to throw away one's very life so long as power could be gained by climbing the ranks.
"Worse, the more you cultivate a demonic art, the more it seems to instill an obsession with the art itself. Even if you notice your lifespan being cut short midway, you can't stop."
The obsession the Ihwamun master and the Damjeok Pavilion Master had shown toward their martial manuals—had the degree of that obsession not varied with how far they had cultivated the demonic art?
"The greatest problem is that a means to offset these drawbacks of demonic arts already exists in plain sight."
"You mean the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art."
The Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art was a demonic art that absorbed the essence and internal energy of the dead. Energy taken in this way could suppress the side effects of a demonic art that even drained the body's original true qi. And once mastery rose high enough, it would surely be able to absorb energy not only from the dead but from the living as well. In effect, it would allow one to treat people as living elixirs—no exaggeration to call it the birth of a peerless demon.
"Of course, being a demonic art, its drawbacks are as great as its advantages."
The Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art had two primary weaknesses. First, the bloated demonic qi left the mind vulnerable. Second, the practitioner could not control the vast energy and ended up leaking demonic qi freely.
"In the worst case, one might lose all reason and become a madman who thinks of nothing but absorbing life force."
"Then the Four Great Villains becoming the Five Great Villains wouldn't be surprising at all."
Jeokhwa shuddered at Yeonhwa's explanation. The Four Great Villains were masters whose notoriety had spread across the entire Central Plains martial world, earning them places on the list of public enemies of the murim. A martial artist driven mad by the Essence-Stealing Qi Absorption Art would, regardless of realm, more than qualify for a villain's seat on the strength of the demonic art's danger alone.
Demonic arts, large or small, weaken the mind. Which means… could it be?
Cheonhwa considered a possibility. The soul-stealing technique that had been used on Seo Mun-il of the Muksang Sect—if it was a heretical art that controlled a person's mind, would it not easily dominate a mind already made fragile?
If demonic arts were truly scattered through the murim with that intent, the danger is anything but ordinary.
It would not end with the chaos demonic arts sowed in the martial world. Practitioners of those arts could become vanguard agents of some mysterious power.
"We should send the analysis of the demonic arts to the main sect without delay."
"Understood. What about that one?"
"If you mean the Damjeok Pavilion Master, leave his disposition to the Dan Family Manor, the same as the other black-path rabble."
The analysis of the demonic art that could be done for now was finished; there was no further use for the pavilion master. All that remained was for him to receive punishment according to the karma he had sown.
He sold innocent people just to purchase a demonic art. He won't get off lightly.
Afterward the Damjeok Pavilion Master was handed over to the Dan Family Manor. Before the eyes of the people of Tianyang County, they beheaded him and hung his body from a pole. Those who had suffered under the Damjeok Pavilion cheered that he had gotten what he deserved.
Yet not everyone was satisfied by his death. The families of those sold by the Damjeok Pavilion were still desperately searching for their missing kin. And so the affair of the demonic arts and the Damjeok Pavilion came to a close, leaving many wounds behind.
Once the matter of the Damjeok Pavilion was settled, Cheonhwa's party remained at the Dan Family Manor, waiting for information to come in. While they waited, they borrowed the training grounds to practice and each spent the time as they pleased.
Jeokhwa passed the days in refined leisure—sipping tea at her ease or reading books. Yeonhwa sat nearby, reading with her or meditating. Cheonhwa, on the other hand, was teaching the martial artists of the Dan Family Manor, Dan Myeong-geuk among them. "Teaching" was not so grand a word; he was only looking over their fundamentals. Yet for a minor family on the frontier, even those fundamentals were rarely solid.
Without a proper foundation, one cannot unfold martial arts correctly.
That was common knowledge to any martial artist who trained. Traveling the rivers and lakes, however, Cheonhwa had learned how hard that common knowledge was to uphold. Even the basics one ought to learn were sometimes beyond a person's reach; what little foundation they had acquired was sometimes wrong from the start. It was a reminder of why a sect like the Zhongnan Sect, which placed such weight on fundamentals, was called a great sect.
As he corrected the twisted foundations of the Dan Family martial artists, Cheonhwa also studied their arts.
It isn't of the Zhongnan lineage, so I can't absorb it by sight alone—but that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn.
Earlier at the Geon-gon Gate he had sharpened his eye by watching Zhongnan's hard-sword arts. That cultivated insight now laid bare every flaw in the Dan Family practitioners. Worldly martial artists favored hard sword and fast sword—simple, intuitive styles—because their straightforward nature made them easy to enter.
But ease of entry is all it is. Mastery is another matter entirely.
Hard sword demanded steady outer training as the basis for Jin Release, along with practice to generate jing force. Fast sword required raising sword speed while also learning to control it. Without such training, the principles woven into a sword form could never be properly expressed.
Then what of my own hard sword?
Cheonhwa examined his own hard-sword practice. The body that underpinned his Jin Release had reached a high realm through unceasing training and fortunate encounters. His skill at generating jing force had also reached a level he could not call lacking. Yet he felt a shortfall that kept him from claiming true mastery of the principle of strength. It was not simply a matter of insufficient practice, but the sense that something fundamental was missing.
Belatedly he understood the true nature of that dissonance.
At some point, the desperation vanished.
He recalled the days when, as a novice disciple, he had learned the four introductory martial arts. The period when he had driven himself into the foundations by thoroughly excavating those mere four basic arts. Somewhere along the way, that fierce urgency and longing had faded. He had never trained halfheartedly; he had always given his utmost. And yet it was also true that the old heat was no longer there.
When did it begin?
He slowly retraced his memories and realized a single turning point had been the cause.
From the moment I rose from novice disciple to formal disciple.
From then on, the desperation with which he approached training had disappeared—because he no longer had to fear being cast out of the Zhongnan Sect.
In a way, it's only natural.
The desperation Cheonhwa carried had been born of the lack he had felt through years of poverty. The time he had spent as a disciple of the Zhongnan Sect had grown longer than the years he had spent sitting in the streets. Naturally a measure of ease had settled in his heart, and with it the desperation had faded.
But that desperation is the very root of my martial path.
He recalled the moment he had reached the peak of the first half of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven. The answer he had offered to ascend to that peak: the resolve of never retreating from any hardship or trial; the yearning for a path of life amid the boundary of life and death. It had been the roar of a nameless orphan of the ends of the earth, howling at the world.
Thus the peak formula of the first half is the self I was as that orphan of the ends of the earth.
Then what was he to do now, when the desperation of those days had vanished? Should he deny the past, or condemn the present?
After long thought he reached a conclusion.
Neither.
The orphan of the past. The Zhongnan disciple of the present. Were both not simply himself?
Denial will not erase the past.
Cheonhwa ran his hand along Okgyeong, its surface marked with scorch. The rough texture under his fingertips was the clear residue of battle—proof that the effort he had piled up until now had let him survive the thick of combat.
Because the present is what the accumulated past has finally reached.
To deny the past was to deny the present; to condemn the present was to condemn the path of the past. Had it not simply been a life lived with all one's strength? Then he must neither deny the past nor condemn the present.
The answer of the past was an answer that could be given only because it was the past. Then the present must offer an answer that fits the present.
The question returned to the original doubt.
What of my hard sword?
As he sought the answer, he found himself, as if entranced, taking up Okgyeong and settling into a ready stance. Beginning with the heavy sword that used the Balanced Heaven Qi Accumulation Art, the principles of the sword he had learned and refined until now unfurled one after another. The hard sword that used the Vast Heaven Qi Art. The blunt sword that used the Dark Heaven True Qi. Even the heavy sword that combined multiple energies.
There are too many kinds of sword. That's why it feels half-finished.
In the days when he had learned the four introductory arts, he had dug a single well with patient depth. But as he mastered multiple internal arts and awakened the matching principles of the sword forms, the situation had changed. He could no longer focus on a single principle; hard sword had become merely one means among others.
How am I to resolve this?
Suddenly the peak formula of the middle half of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven rose in his mind.
Three Techniques Sword Intent. What did one pursue through the three arts—Qi-Guided Charging Sword, Jin Release Wave, and Internal and External Dual Cultivation Method?
He had not yet perfected the middle-half forms, yet it was a theme worth pondering.
With these three arts—and further, with all the martial principles I have learned until now—what will I pursue?
He was still far from ready to offer an answer. Yet today's meditation would become the stepping stone for tomorrow's. Without haste, Cheonhwa slowly sought the path he would take.