Is the Heavenly Demon Using Taoist Magic? (1)
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[You're finally using Taoist magic?!]
It seemed the viewers were happier than I was about me finally using Taoist magic. After all, they had spent the whole day watching me learn nothing but how to observe and distinguish the flows of the world. Since they couldn’t see those flows themselves, it must have been boring to sit there while Baru and I talked about catching at clouds in the natural scenery. Personally, I wondered why they bothered watching something so tedious to the very end, but I decided it was because they liked me that much and left it alone.
A smile slipped out as I watched their overflowing expectations. I turned my gaze toward Baru. Ever since she had started teaching me, she had taken to puffing out her chest with pride whenever the word “master” came up, as if it had given her some great sense of accomplishment. It didn’t come across as particularly majestic; it was more like a child showing off her confidence, which only made her look cute.
“Min-ga, as you well know, the method of using dosul itself is not that difficult. You simply trace the flows already drawn upon the world with your own hand.”
Baru gave a light wave of her hand, and a gentle breeze stirred, rustling the trees around us and sending leaves fluttering down.
“However, this world is not as lax as it appears. At times it is meticulously strict, so simply copying the flow is not enough to manifest Taoist magic.”
Baru waved her hand lightly once more. A path drawn by the wind appeared above her palm, but this time no breeze followed.
“Do you understand the difference?”
“I don’t.”
There was no point in acting arrogant while I was the one learning, so I stated the truth plainly. The corner of Baru’s mouth lifted slightly.
“It is because you did not attempt to become one with nature.”
“Huh?”
“The world, you see, readily nods when nature draws the path, but when a human tries to draw it by hand, it frowns and covers its ears. Therefore, to gain the world’s permission, you must pretend to be a part of nature itself.”
What Baru was telling me was a common saying among dosul practitioners. Become one with nature. Abandon personal desires. To become a true practitioner, one must be human yet not human. So that was the meaning hidden behind those words.
In the past I had thought it was nothing but empty, archaic nonsense, but it turned out to be about deceiving the world and exploiting its fixed rules. What a truly amusing story. If you shifted your perspective just a little, it meant the shinseon were not enlightened sages who had attained realization, but skilled swindlers proficient at fooling the world.
I laughed inwardly at the thought. If I said it aloud, Baru would probably frown, so I changed the subject.
“But Baru.”
“Speak.”
“Last time when I created fire, I was able to do it quite easily, wasn’t I? I don’t recall making any particular effort to become one with nature then.”
“I do not know the reason for that either.”
Just as I had confidently admitted my ignorance earlier, Baru admitted hers without the slightest shame. The only difference was that I was the student and she was the teacher. I narrowed my eyes at her in mild reproach, but Baru didn’t shrink back at all.
“What do you expect me to do about it! If I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Huh.”
So that surprised expression she had made back then really had come from genuine ignorance.
“In any case, close your eyes for now.”
“Understood.”
It wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed. In the end, deceiving the world and taking advantage of it meant giving up on surpassing it, lowering your head, and playing tricks in the places its gaze could not reach. I would go along with it once, considering all the effort Baru had put in so far, but if there was truly no other way, I would have to consider giving up on handling dosul altogether.
When I lowered my eyelids, the scenery around me was blocked and darkness descended. Even so, the landscape remained vivid to me. The world could be seen with the mind rather than the eyes, so eyelids held no meaning as a blackout curtain for someone like me.
“Withdraw the internal energy you have spread around you as well.”
At Baru’s command I recalled my qi. The energy that had been meticulously scanning everything around me vanished. Yet the world was still dark to me, and yet not dark. Human senses could not be fully blocked simply by losing the use of one of them.
“Now then. From this moment, you shall become a single tree. A tree rooted in this land—cast a hypnotic suggestion upon yourself.”
What rose in my mind at Baru’s words was a giant tree I had once seen. A tree that had grown alone, separated from the clustered others, rising higher than anything else.
“Close off your five senses and imagine it. Then, once you have become a tree, open your eyes once more.”
Self-hypnosis was not particularly difficult for me. It was something I had done to the point of exhaustion before. Become a tree. Become a single seed. Take root in the ground and grow. Extend branches from a small trunk, gradually growing until you reach the sky.
I repeated the image over and over until my thoughts grew monotonous, then opened my five senses. As I slowly opened my eyes and looked at the world, various flows stood out clearly. When I had first imprinted those flows in my eyes, I couldn’t distinguish what anything was. I could only guess based on my own experience. If a path was etched around a person, I assumed it was related to that person and tried to interpret the shapes. Sometimes I was right, but I was wrong far more often. It was essentially no different from blind guessing, so it was only natural.
Things were not much different now. The pictures drawn on the world’s canvas still looked like a child had haphazardly filled them with color. Baru’s teachings had allowed me to categorize them broadly, but I still could not grasp the finer details.
“Min-ga. Have you opened your ears?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the day you first saw the paths?”
“I remember.”
“Then do you remember the scene you saw at that time?”
“Of course.”
Yet there was one clear difference. The flow of the wind that had blown toward me remained vividly clear even as it continuously brushed past.
“Reproduce it.”
I extended the energy stored within my body through my fingers—now acting as branches—into the empty air. Using the world as my canvas, I drew the picture. What I imagined was the gentle breeze that had just scattered the leaves around us.
“Once you have drawn it, release it into the world.”
When I released the picture I had drawn, a wind blew through the surroundings… or rather, it did not. The forest on Mount Hua remained as calm as ever, without the slightest breeze.
“...Huh? Min-ga. Did you truly draw the picture?”
“Wait a moment.”
I drew the wind once more and released it into the world, but the result was the same. There was no change whatsoever.
“How strange. What you drew is correct. So why does the world reject you? Does it still not recognize you as part of nature?”
Baru tilted her head, wondering if the self-hypnosis had been insufficient. I agreed with the assessment, so I closed off my five senses once again. I repeated the same process countless times.
I extended roots. Digging beneath the soil until they filled every corner of Mount Hua. I increased my size until I swallowed the entire area alone. I increased my height until I pierced the sky and gazed toward even higher places.
Yet the result remained the same. I had failed to manifest the Taoist magic.
“Why? What is the problem?”
“Right… what could the issue be?”
Seeing this, Baru tilted her head as if it defied her common sense, and Baekju—who had joined us at some point—could not offer a proper answer either. Watching them only made frustration rise within me, so I severed the self-hypnosis. In my mind I cut the roots of the tree whose size I had expanded, chopped the trunk, and burned it all to ash.
“Min-ga! What are you—!”
“Eek?! Lady Min-ga! Doing something like that—!”
The two deities made a fuss as if they had sensed what was happening in my mental world, but I was fine. For anyone with a normal sense of self, abruptly exiting self-hypnosis in such a way would be suicidal. But it posed no problem for me. If I were the kind of person who could lose myself over something like this, I would have been devoured by the qi of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art long ago.
“It’s fine. From the beginning, telling me to assimilate with nature was an impossible demand. What could the problem possibly be?”
No matter how much I hypnotized myself into becoming a tree, at the root of it all lay the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. I could not change the foundation, the center I had honed for over a hundred years.
“But Min-ga. If you do not, you cannot wield dosul.”
“She’s right. To utilize the established rules, you must become a part of nature, Lady Min-ga.”
“Who decided that?”
It had been a foolish endeavor from the start. Deceiving the world was only possible if I—who held the single-minded determination to shatter the heavens—acknowledged that I could not surpass them. How could such a thing be possible? There is no heaven I cannot shatter. The heavens exist only as obstacles to be broken and overcome.
If the rules sought to oppress and bind me, then I would shatter those rules.
“If the world set those rules, then I simply need to become the world myself.”
I pressed my acupoints. If I was going to arbitrarily erase the picture on the canvas, I would draw one that could never be erased. Using the qi of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art as paint, I drew an indelible dark-crimson picture upon the world’s canvas.
“Min-ga?! What kind of insane act is this!”
“Baru! Before you start screaming, prepare for the aftermath that thing will cause!”
The moment I completed the picture and released it, I saw it. Among the countless paths that adorned the world, the path I had drawn was being etched into place. Other energies, startled by a path that should not exist, surged forward to erase what I had created.
The wind blew. A fierce gale strong enough to uproot a tree whose roots had sunk deep into the earth. But it lasted only the briefest instant. By the time the storm reached the world, it had already transformed into a faint breeze.
Hmm.
“How interesting.”
As laughter threatened to spill from my lips, Baru grabbed me by the collar.
“What’s interesting?! It’s a mercy it failed—if a wind drawn with that much power had actually manifested, it would have brought disaster upon this entire mountain!”
“Exactly! Are you trying to turn the mountain we’ve only just rebuilt into a barren wasteland?!”
“No matter how irritated you were! A skilled martial artist who cannot even control her own emotions…!”
Heh. Those two really do nag a lot.