My Voice Shall Command the World
Namgung Cheon gathered his focus and began to examine his new body with meticulous care. He ran his awareness down through it layer by layer—every inch of skin, every fiber of muscle, down to each individual joint of bone.
The skeleton is decent enough. It looks frail, but the foundation is solid.
But that was where the praise ended. The flow of qi and blood was feeble, as though the body had never once been properly trained, and there was scarcely anything one could call internal energy to be felt at all.
And yet... what is this sensation?
It was too unusual to dismiss as mere lack of conditioning—a strange resonance stirring from somewhere deep within the flesh. The organic linkage of bone and muscle, an instinctive sense of balance that grasped the body's center of gravity on its own.
Even undertrained, the body carries this much martial talent...
He reached into memory at once. The brief flashes from young Namgung Cheon's childhood: an unusual quickness of mind whenever a sword was placed in his small hands. The moments when he had mirrored his instructor's teachings without a single correction, grasping the principles of the blade far faster than any of his peers.
This is no ordinary talent.
A faint smile touched the Heavenly Demon's lips.
The Body of a Hundred Weapons. A physique that instinctively comprehends the nature of every weapon under heaven, and can draw out its power.
It could not compare to the Heavenly Martial Body, that heaven-sent gift of singular martial genius—but the two simply occupied different domains, and this was more than good enough a body in its own right. Where the Heavenly Martial Body possessed the depth to achieve overwhelming mastery in a single field, the Body of a Hundred Weapons held the potential to embrace the breadth of every martial art there was.
To have been born with such talent, and to have hidden it away, buried under a shell of mediocrity.
The Heavenly Demon clicked his tongue. Perhaps the narrow orthodoxy of the Namgung Clan—a house famed for its swordsmanship above all else—had simply failed to recognize the gift. Perhaps the clan's hidebound insistence on mastering one path alone had crushed that possibility before it could bloom. Or perhaps the boy himself, unwilling to shoulder the turmoil such talent would invite, had turned his eyes away from it.
But things were different now. The new master of this body was the Heavenly Demon, who had once stood at the very summit of the Demonic Path.
I've gained this extraordinary gift, the Body of a Hundred Weapons—and for now it is nothing but a feast painted on paper.
His gaze swept slowly across the interior of the Myriad Swords Thicket once more. Hundreds upon hundreds of swords hung in the dark, each one breathing out its own distinct aura. An ordinary warrior would have collapsed, mind undone, beneath the crushing weight of all that concentrated sword qi filling the cavern. And even if the special sensitivity of the Body of a Hundred Weapons allowed him a dim awareness of each blade's character and worth, the flesh that would have to endure it—and claim it as his own—was nowhere near ready.
The soul may be the Heavenly Demon's, but this body of Namgung Cheon's is, frankly, worthless.
He judged his situation with cold clarity. In his current state, properly exploring the Myriad Swords Thicket was out of the question; one careless movement, and the sword qi steeped into this place could crush him and squander this hard-won second life. What use was a table laden with the finest delicacies under heaven if the vessel meant to hold it lay shattered? To the unprepared, a stroke of fortune was sometimes no different from a calamity.
First, I must make this body serviceable. And for that... yes, the heart law needs reworking.
Reclaiming his lost power, and laying a solid foundation from which to draw out the full potential of the Body of a Hundred Weapons—that was the task that came before all others.
But an immediate problem stood in his way. Which heart law, exactly...?
The heart laws of the Demonic Path he had cultivated in his past life were, without exception, destructive in nature and ferocious in their energy. And channeling demonic energy through this body is out of the question besides. That left one path: to work with the heart law of the Namgung Clan that the original Namgung Cheon had been learning.
From the boy's memories he called up the single internal cultivation art the youth had ever studied—the Azure Sky Great Evolution Heart Law. Every trueborn member of the Namgung Clan learned it. It was the root of all Namgung martial arts, and in truth the whole of them. Considered on its merits alone, it was an art that could contest for a place among the finest in the world—but it was not one that rewarded haste. The Namgung Clan prized honesty and steadfast diligence above all virtues, and as an orthodox art it did not wrench power upward by force the way demonic cultivation did. Its heights could only be reached over long, patient years.
...That part, I don't care for.
Namgung Cheon left the Myriad Swords Thicket and seated himself in a cross-legged meditation in a slightly open clearing.
A few modifications are in order. The swiftness and explosive force that were the strengths of the Demonic Path—could they not be blended with the tolerance and stability that were the strengths of the Namgung Clan's arts, late-blooming as they were? Of course, the demonic character could not be allowed to show too plainly. Otherwise, they'll grow suspicious. The alterations had to be measured—just enough that no one would ever think to question them.
Namgung Cheon slowly closed his eyes. With a long breath, his consciousness sank deep into his dantian, and at once the first passage of the Azure Sky Great Evolution Heart Law rose in his mind.
"Heaven and I are born of the same measure; the ten thousand things and I are one."
Heaven and I are one; the myriad things of creation differ not a whit from me. The clan interpreted this as harmony with all things under heaven and earth—a teaching that, in the end, everything converges and mingles into a single whole.
So it asks me to wait for that day, does it?
But Namgung Cheon could not.
I will stand shoulder to shoulder with heaven itself.
The energy in his dantian began to pulse, slowly at first—a faint tremor—but as though it had found a definite purpose, it swelled with startling speed and surged up through his meridians. Internal energy blazed hot along his spine and wrapped itself around his entire body in moments. He exhaled a short breath, and the next passage of the mantra followed naturally.
"Ride the uprightness of heaven and earth; master the changes of the six ethers; wander the boundless."
To flow along the straight and true qi of the cosmos, skillfully steering the shifting currents of energy, until one reached the realm of infinite freedom. It was the central axis of the entire art.
And deep within him, he rejected it just as firmly.
To follow the current is, in the end, nothing but riding on another's back.
Instead, Namgung Cheon pictured himself taking the vast flow of heaven and earth as his own footing—seizing the violent changes of qi in his grip and bending them to his will. His body was already responding. The gentle, docile energy pooled in his dantian grew savage by degrees, whirling like a storm as it tore through his meridians in rapid circuits, until at last it condensed into something dense and hard.
"Kgh..."
His body shuddered under the abrupt transformation. Pain flared again and again from his dantian, but he paid it no mind. His lips moved in the faintest whisper. The final passage.
Respond without sound; achieve without form.
To answer without a voice, to accomplish without a shape—the natural order of the world itself, and its ultimate realm. But Namgung Cheon rewrote the words without hesitation.
"My voice calls, and the world answers. My form moves, and all things follow."
When I cry out, the world responds; when I act, the ten thousand things move at my command. It was a declaration that refused both waiting and submission. He would not stand idle hoping the world might deign to react. He would shout first, and shape the world with his own two hands.
That was the moment it happened.
A violent heat erupted from somewhere deep within him. Internal energy roared alight in the depths of his dantian like a struck flint, then spread at once along his meridians in every direction. Vessel after vessel drew taut, compressing the surging qi with ferocious intensity.
Namgung Cheon's bearing transformed entirely. His muscles and meridians trembled as they strained to adapt to the newly reforged energy, and a fine mist of vapor rose from skin that burned slowly hotter. His breathing deepened. There was no more of that meek compliance that simply followed the current—henceforth, he himself would be the center of the flow.
He drew one more long, deep breath. The road ahead of him was now certain.
My will shall become the principle of things, and my actions the law of heaven and earth.
For that was the way of the Heavenly Demon.
The energy he had gained by reshaping the heart law was astonishing. Internal power unlike anything before now sat firmly anchored in his dantian, and the meridians throughout his body seethed with vitality like earth receiving rain after a long drought. Best of all, the oppressive weight of the murderous sword qi that had saturated the Myriad Swords Thicket pressed upon him far more lightly now.
At this level, I'd say the bare minimum of preparation is done.
He rose slowly from his seat and stood once more at the mouth of the Myriad Swords Thicket. Now was the time to face, in earnest, what lay hidden within this graveyard of blades.
Even in Namgung Cheon's memories there was no record of which swords rested inside. At the very least, the blades in the deepest reaches should surpass anything elsewhere in the Sword Soul Cave. His gaze began its slow survey of the thicket's interior.
The place was better ordered than he had expected. Each sword rested on its own pedestal, and before it stood a small name tablet bearing a brief account of the blade's name and the rank its former master had held in life. Well kept, at least. Fitting enough—it is Namgung's history itself.
Having taken his measure of the place, he moved deeper. Before long, his unhurried progress along the rows of blades faltered. One sword had seized his attention. Though it slept within its scabbard, the mighty energy steeped into it was bleeding outward into the air.
...Remarkable.
The tablet read: Changcheon—left by Namgung Cheong, Thirteenth Generation Family Head.
Namgung Cheong. The clan patriarch two generations past, a man who had risen to the very seat of the Orthodox Path's foremost swordsman.
With a soft ring, the blade slid free of its sheath. Indeed. A masterwork without flaw. In an instant, Namgung Cheon grasped the energy steeped in the steel and the exact balance of its weight. A fierce, forthright power—anyone who had trained in the Namgung sword arts would covet it.
And yet, for my purposes, it is far too righteous. He returned the sword to its stand and moved on.
The next blade was ominous from the scabbard alone. Ebony, carved in bas-relief with the coiling form of a monstrous serpent. Sahon, the Serpent Soul—captured from the Blood Demon Brigade Leader.Hm. The Blood Demon Brigade Leader. One who made quite a name for himself among the Unorthodox factions once. The killing intent and yin energy steeped in the blade are respectable—but not to my taste. Nothing but cheap tricks in it. Namgung Cheon turned away without a trace of regret.
Masterworks of the Namgung Clan, trophies won from the Unorthodox sects of the past—nothing appeared that could hold his heart. He kept walking inward, ever deeper. Swords favored by the successive family heads of the Namgung Clan, swords wielded by master smiths who perfected particular techniques, even ceremonial pieces received with due courtesy in exchanges with other sects. Blades that had defined an entire generation—and still his footsteps did not slow. This much is not enough. Above all, none of it suits me.
It was when his path led him into the deepest quarter of the Myriad Swords Thicket that a presence utterly unlike anything before it pressed down upon his whole body, heavy enough to choke the breath. And the sight that unfolded before his eyes was one that even his vast experience struggled to parse.
...How strange.
Every one of the dozens of swords arranged nearby had rotted black with corrosion, or rusted through and snapped at the midpoint. Are they draining the energy of every other blade in the thicket...? Moving with care past the corroded husks, he at last arrived at the space that seemed to be the wellspring of all that strange power.
Then a breathtaking scene entered Namgung Cheon's sight. At the very deepest point of the Myriad Swords Thicket lay a circular chamber. And at its heart, thick iron chains descending from the cavern ceiling had wound themselves around a single sword, binding it in midair. A scabbard of pitch black, darker than the dark itself. And beneath it, carved in crimson upon a slab of stone arranged like an altar, a single word:
Heaven.
The instant he saw that character, a faint smile rose to Namgung Cheon's lips. He understood at once why Namgung Mugang had kept this sword as he had. So you acknowledged it. The worth of this sword—and my worth. This was no blade left carelessly on a stand like the others. It had been sealed away deliberately, beyond the reach of idle hands, so that no one—not anyone—might touch it until a master worthy of it appeared. The courtesy owed to a worthy adversary, and the respect owed to a promise.
"That stubbornness of yours hasn't changed a bit, Namgung Mugang."
Namgung Cheon murmured the name of his old rival in a low voice, in the tone of one greeting a friend long unseen—composed on the surface, and deep with feeling beneath.
"I have come to keep our promise."
And toward the token of that promise, he reached out his hand.
Namgung Cheonma
Author | Baek Rihaeng
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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