The Faceless Martialist (2)
The next day, Jinmyung's morning began under Ak Jun's relentless prodding. He rose far earlier than usual, scrubbed the lodgings spotless, and waited for Namgung Hyeon.
Just as Ak Jun had predicted, Namgung Hyeon arrived the moment the breakfast dishes were cleared. When Jinmyung moved to prepare tea, Namgung Hyeon produced a pouch of plums instead.
Jinmyung sent Ak Jun to brew a pot of jehotang, then brought out a go board and sat across from his guest.
"Do you play go at all?"
A scion of a great clan could hardly be ignorant of the game. They were expected to cultivate refinement as carefully as they cultivated martial skill.
"I know enough to place the stones."
"I'm much the same. Shall we play a bit until the tonic is ready?"
Had they been elders of the great houses, the board would have seen moves of divine cunning and ghostly subtlety. As it was, both men possessed only the rudiments one might glean from a beginner's manual.
Only after basic openings — the knight's move and its kin — had filled the four corners of the board did Jinmyung open the conversation.
"So. What brings you here? From the look of you, your mind hasn't shifted between before you visited the privy and after."
"I'm still soothing my stomach with jehotang — how could it have? Still…"
Namgung Hyeon drew the words out as he studied the board.
Click. Atari.
"Last night, Strategist Zhuge Sang of the Murim Alliance came to see me, along with members of the Disciplinary Hall."
The Mt. Hua Sword Debate was an affair of the Mt. Hua Sect and of the Murim Alliance both. Because the event took place on Mt. Hua, the sect generally oversaw most matters. The Alliance's Disciplinary Hall intervened only when the rules themselves had been broken.
"I didn't expect the Strategist himself rather than the Hall Master."
"So even Young Master Go doesn't know everything. Amusing."
"I'm hardly the Supreme Deity. I can't know every human affair under heaven."
Jinmyung connected the black stones that the atari had severed.
"Still, I imagine you have some idea."
Namgung Hyeon placed a white stone several moves ahead, cutting off the black stones' path. Jinmyung rolled a black stone slowly in his palm.
"The Iron Cloth Shirt and the mask were the problem, I take it. I was hoping they'd dismiss it as a junior's diversion."
"More than the Iron Cloth Shirt, it was the unidentified figure using unfamiliar martial arts that concerned them. They asked me about your identity."
Jinmyung set a stone where it interlocked with Namgung Hyeon's last move.
"Did you vouch for me?"
"Me? I came to confirm whether Young Master Go is truly… Young Master Go."
Jinmyung considered this for a long while, then placed a black stone at tengen — the very center of the board. Tengen was, in truth, a point from which little real advantage could be gained.
"Can you believe what I've told you?"
"In our previous dealings, the man seated before me was unmistakably a merchant. That is my judgment. But… when I saw the Faceless Martialist of the sparring arena, I…"
Namgung Hyeon answered the tengen stone with a white one in a knight's-move position — a textbook response to a black stone of no real significance at the center. Jinmyung waited for him to continue, privately reflecting that the young man would never make a capable merchant.
"I found myself wondering whether I could have subdued Su Min in a single form. No — whether even the heavy sword of the Changgung Muae Sword Art could have withstood that rebounding force… If it were my brother…"
After returning from the sparring grounds, Namgung Hyeon had analyzed Jinmyung's match dozens of times. And he had realized that none of the forms he had mastered could exploit an opening in Jinmyung's defense.
"No — you've gone too far afield."
Seeing Namgung Hyeon sinking into his own thoughts, Jinmyung drew him back. Ak Jun entered, set down the jehotang, and withdrew again.
"Even street thugs have a few tricks, but no one calls what they practice martial arts — merely brawling skills. In your view, Young Master Namgung, what is martial arts? What is wugong?"
Namgung Hyeon thought of his late grandfather, Namgung Seon. After the war, the old man had stepped down as clan head and withdrawn into seclusion. Their father would bring him and his brother to visit the manor where Namgung Seon lived. After the two boys demonstrated the Changgung Muae Sword, the old man would smile faintly and always ask the same question.
What is martial arts? That was the very question Jinmyung was posing now.
"In our clan, we were taught that it is the will to end fighting."
His brother Namgung Jin had answered their grandfather's question by simply raising his sword. Namgung Hyeon himself had asked many people and settled on the answer he now gave.
"Yes — if you break down the characters, that's what you get. If martial technique is mere skill, then martial arts — wugong — implies the honing of that will as well."
Jinmyung smiled in a way that recalled Namgung Seon hearing that same answer, and continued.
"In the last war, many people possessed the will to stop the fighting. The Murim Alliance was an assembly of such people."
He took a sip of the jehotang. The slightly astringent taste made his brow crease, but Namgung Hyeon seemed unbothered.
"Will is the heart. When the heart moves, qi arises, and the body moves."
Namgung Hyeon recalled first learning his clan's martial arts. What Jinmyung spoke of — the heart, qi, and body — was the foundation of all martial cultivation.
"And when will and qi alone move the world, that is called sorcery. But when will and qi are housed within one's own body and then move the world — that is martial arts."
"Yes, I suppose that's a common teaching in martial families. I read this in the archives and… felt a little resentful."
"Pardon?"
"When fighting breaks out, who suffers most? Merchants. And yet I found no martial arts that house a merchant's will."
"…Merchants do suffer, of course — but didn't the Donghwa Merchant Group conduct considerable trade even amid the war?"
Living in fear, Jinmyung added silently. Whenever his grandfather spoke of the war, he always poured wine rather than tea. He would smile broadly and tell the tales like heroic exploits, but he could never fully hide the regret on his tongue.
"Young Master Namgung, do you know what war is called in Sanskrit?"
"I am listening carefully."
"'I want more cows,' they say. War obstructs trade. The Donghwa Merchant Group… if the war had lasted even a little longer, it would have gone bankrupt. The group's wealth… came from the Emperor's investment and largesse after the war."
Namgung Hyeon could feel the will in Jinmyung's eyes. Born into a martial family, he had taken up the sword as a matter of course. Everyone around him trained in martial arts, so he had never wondered why one should learn them. But Jinmyung was different.
"I came to Chang'an for the sake of trade."
Namgung Hyeon thought of a deal with the Emperor.
"But the Murim Alliance archives held a great deal on qi circulation breathing methods. Sitting at a desk all day was ruining my health, so I learned a bit about breathing."
Qi circulation breathing was the foundational training for accumulating internal energy. Namgung Hyeon understood that Jinmyung was about to reveal something of his martial arts.
"Breathing is taking the surrounding qi into one's body and making it one's own. What people commonly call accumulating internal energy."
"Yes, and the internal energy so accumulated, when expressed outward, is…"
The realm Jinmyung had demonstrated. That was what Namgung Hyeon wanted to know. Sword Qi Coating. Only upon reaching the realm of projecting one's energy could one truly be called a martial artist of the Murim.
Before leaving the clan, his brother Namgung Jin had blocked Namgung Hyeon's sword with his own sword qi. Namgung Hyeon had lost his stance and tumbled across the sparring ground, but it hadn't hurt. Only when he saw the look in Namgung Jin's eyes looking down at him did he feel as though a sword strike had landed in his chest. Namgung Jin had gazed at him with pity.
And then he had passed on the title of Changcheon Geomryong. Namgung Hyeon had wished his brother had simply despised him instead.
Namgung Jin, seeing his brother's level, had bequeathed the title of Changcheon Geomryong to protect him. The renown of the title left Namgung Hyeon's opponents cowed before they even faced him. But Namgung Jin could not have known — that his pitying gaze and the inherited title would drive Namgung Hyeon to retching and convulsions…
The match of Jinmyung that Namgung Hyeon watched after recovering had been enough to astonish him. The martial prowess displayed by someone who was not even a scion of a martial family. If he could learn that secret, he thought, he might show his brother a changed self.
"As I mentioned before, your previous match showed a resolve different from the other participants. Where does that resolve reside?"
"Where… do you mean?"
"Is it in the qi between breaths? Or does it dwell among the muscles you've trained? Or if neither of those…"
Resolve was something carved into the heart. Something he had carved there to keep his body upright even when retching left him unable to control it.
Click. Jinmyung placed a black stone that severed white's momentum. The large group of white stones was now in danger of capture.
"I had an important deal to make, so I needed a participant's token. Among the eight Rising Dragons and Phoenixes… the one I wished to deal with was you, Young Master Namgung, and so I made a deal with you."
More precisely, the others would never have accepted a deal. But Jinmyung saw no need to say so.
"…I cannot teach you the martial arts I've learned. That, too, is material for trade. But I trust this much will allow you to vouch for my identity."
"I have one question. Why did you wish to deal with me?"
"If a child who came alone to a foreign land ten years ago, frightened, saw another child in similar circumstances — wouldn't his heart move?"
Jinmyung had said he too had suffered from retching and convulsions. Shared suffering. Namgung Hyeon felt gratitude toward him.
"I will vouch for Young Master Go's identity. Still…"
Namgung Hyeon cast his stones aside. He saw no way to save the large group of white stones.
"Playing go like this today has been enjoyable."
"I've heard it's most fun when players of similar skill face each other."
"I wonder if I might drop by now and then for a game."
"I'll be waiting whenever you like."
When Jinmyung finished speaking, Namgung Hyeon bowed with clasped hands and left. Watching his expression as he turned away, Jinmyung felt that his intent had been conveyed.
"Is the accounting done?"
"Seems so… though I wonder if I came out too far behind."
The moment Namgung Hyeon left, Jinmyung collapsed face-down on the bed as if drained. Even when Ak Jun asked while clearing the table, he answered in a limp voice.
"Behind how?"
"A junior who, with a body whose metabolism was a wreck, carved his way through the Mt. Hua Sword Debate on resolve alone… and who seems to have grasped something…"
Perhaps a true dragon soaring toward the azure heavens — Changcheon Geomryong. Jinmyung swallowed the rest.
Still, he had kept the nature of his martial arts hidden, so it wasn't a total loss. Jinmyung rolled iron coins in his hand as he thought.
Five iron coins passed between his fingers and through his palm. And one by one, they dwindled away.