Chapter 69: Why Use a Sword? — 4
Just as I predicted, the Heavenly Demon took the Harvesters away to run his experiment. He pushed each of them into a different place, then taught each one something different. The wording, though, was exceedingly strange. If he meant to explain, why not say it straight? Why so many metaphors?
From the far side of memory, a faded man was shouting at them — didn't they even know to cry Gali and then recite the formula?
Their memories say they do know it, more or less. But who teaches anyone in such a stupid way? If you are going to tell a person something, tell them properly.
Having heard him, the Harvesters sat down in uncomfortable postures and began moving through their bodies what I took to be qi. It differed sharply from what Eunjae does. I remember how Eunjae did it. Couldn't they manage the same?
In any case, the Heavenly Demon taught the three of them each a different martial art. If this is an experiment, shouldn't he teach them the same one? Does the Heavenly Demon not even know how to control his variables? I have my doubts. But I am only here to watch the experiment, so watch is all I can do.
Gapjae and Eunchun. Those two learned the sword from the Heavenly Demon. Byeongil alone was taught a thing called footwork. All three threw themselves into the arts, delighted. Seeing how happy they are simply to be growing stronger, they seem almost pure.
Soon they were astonished at the speed of their own learning. Set against their memories, I can hardly tell the difference, but they themselves seem to feel it as something enormous. They mutter in wonder — that the verses interpret themselves, that they can't believe a thing can be understood so easily. And there is Byeongil, hopping about and declaring he never knew his body to be this light.
But none of them uses the method Eunjae used. They simply draw qi in from outside the body, optimize it for themselves, store it in the abdomen, and take it back out to spend.
Eunjae was the same, at the moment she had only just become a Harvester. She used what was in the belly, and only now and then drew out what was in the head. Little by little she stopped using what lay below and used only what was above, because what is below runs dry at once and takes a long time to fill again, while what you draw from above the head never depletes.
I know there is an upper, a middle, and a lower dantian, and meridians through which qi is said to circulate, and that qi moves along them. Honestly, even looking straight at it, I have no idea what any of that is supposed to mean. Why write it all out so complicated? Wouldn't drawing power from above the head be easier, and the faster way to grow strong? Eunjae thought so too.
So I slowly pushed the method Eunjae had used back then into the three Harvesters. Fortunately, set beside summoning magic, this doesn't take up so very much capacity. And I know precisely how much has to be cut away before a person can accept it. Someone strong of mind would be unable to hear me, but these three — I don't think they will fail to.
A month of slowly pressing Eunjae's method into their heads. At last, watching a mass of deep-violet light burst from their swords, they smiled in pure rapture.
Then Gapjae suddenly did something strange. He hid the power. He had learned how to draw strength out through the head, had used it with his own hands, and after that not once did he use the power in his head. What is he after? Grow stronger, and you can climb, can't you? He must have lived for that all this time. Why refuse a power he is able to use?
Look at Eunchun. Straight to the Heavenly Demon, to show off. This is gang qi, he said, and boasted that he could become a Hall Master rather than a Guardian. The Heavenly Demon watched with the face of a man looking at something utterly trivial, and yet, through the cracks of that look, surprise showed.
Byeongil began attacking with that footwork of his. I keep thinking every joint in him is about to give out, but each step sends a wave made of qi spreading from the point of it. Curious, I suppose. Even so, I can't help thinking one more swing of a sword would be better.
But that isn't what matters. What matters is that all three of them, exactly as I sent them Eunjae's memories, have begun drawing power from above the head.
I watched closely while they drew power from the head. Through the line that connects us, they are drawing on me. Every Harvester is connected to me. Only, once I enter someone's body like this, I come up off the floor. If the Harvesters carrying only a part of me increase, the world collapses. If the whole of me is inside a human body, the world does not.
I don't understand it. Even now, the line connecting them to me does not run downward. It connects into this flesh. And yet the moment I use my power, the world begins to crack, like a pane of glass with a heavy stone set upon it. The laws of the world have their ambiguous places too. Think of it logically, and the instant something contains me, shouldn't it be too heavy and shatter at once? Or does it mean that, so long as I am inside someone's flesh, I may cover the world with Harvesters and it will still be all right?
I really don't know. If I go down to the floor now, will there be a monster again? As time passes, what I don't know multiplies faster than the questions I manage to solve. Even so, I have to do my best and untangle them one by one. Only then can I obtain warmth.
Let me bring the story back.
The Heavenly Demon went around to each of the three and confirmed their skill, then gathered the people of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. He laid out some enormous board and set them to competing on it. Listening to his words through the three's ears, I gathered that this is a traditional event of the Cult. People fight one another, and the victor takes a higher rank. The Cult proclaims itself a place where the strong reign, and shouts that power matters most of all.
Power is important, of course. But then you always have to watch your back, don't you? I don't think a human can endure that stress for long. So the one who gains power sets the laws in order — the better to exploit, and so that, should someone stronger than themselves appear, the many can kill them. A religious group, of all things, would do it even more...
I cannot understand the structure of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. But whether I understand it or not, this is how the society turns. I note the question in a corner of my mind and go back to watching what is actually happening.
As he drove the event forward, the Heavenly Demon personally introduced the three as people he himself had taught. It wasn't untrue. The moment the words ended, the eyes of everyone around them changed. Even so, the three stood their ground with their heads high, and on the Heavenly Demon's declaration the event began.
People draw up a bracket and fight. The bracket is built so that those of lower rank fight their way up. Ah. There is a mechanism to it, in its own way. Fighting tires a person, but if you make them fight this often, then the higher a strong one climbs, the more it profits them — because they come face to face with the weak already worn out. With a little luck, badly wounded besides. Easy to beat.
And as expected, the ranking matches work much the same. Between those of similar skill the fighting would be fierce, but here you do not fight the one directly above or below you. You fight someone who has already been fighting a long time, from considerably further down. Climbing is extremely hard. Just as I thought. A rigid structure that kicks the ladder away behind it. Now this is what people are like!
Even that, though, can be crossed if the power is great enough. Gapjae hides his strength, but Eunchun and Byeongil revealed theirs. Their momentum does not stop. If anything, the more they fight, the more accustomed to fighting they become. Of the people collapsing around them, more fall because their qi has drained away than because their stamina has given out. These ones have no such worry. They are supplied without limit from the head.
I supply it.
Still, spend it like water and there ought to be some feeling of it dwindling, or of strength being drawn out of me. There is no such feeling at all, and that is a little strange. Am I that strong? Heavy, perhaps. But if you asked me whether I am strong, I really couldn't say. Press down with this weight and the glass bottle would shatter to pieces, of course. But that would mean nothing. I would feel the heat again, and the vicious cold would steal every bit of it away.
If I could have that heat forever, I would smash the bottle with everything I had the moment I arrived in another world. The drop from happy pleasure into cold, though, is too great, and it is misery. Keep on like this and I would go completely mad. Better to take the warmth a little at a time.
There are so many worlds. I won't paint all of them. I'll keep the number to a certain measure and harvest warmth that way. Paint infinite worlds, and I would obtain infinite warmth. Cold — but it would mean there is warmth.
Hehe.
For that future, I do my best.
Gapjae, who is after something, was eliminated early. From what people were saying, he had jumped several ranks past his original place and received congratulations laced with jealousy. Soon even that was gone. If anything, many of them pitied him, because Eunchun and Byeongil had grown strong enough to challenge the ones called Hall Masters. They scorned him instead — taught by the Heavenly Demon himself, and this is all you can do? But Gapjae is thinking of something else. He means to grow his power further still. One might take him for someone like Tisha, but that isn't the temperament. He is insidious, rather, and greedy.
What he will do, I will have to keep watching to see. Look through his memories and I could predict it, but I don't know yet.
Eunchun and Byeongil, meanwhile, pushed straight on. Both of them seized a victory from the first Hall Master they ran into. Byeongil went no further than that. He won the last bout and collapsed where he stood. Eunchun won once more, and even so the look on his face was not a good one. If anything, he was glaring at Byeongil where he had fallen.
The technique Byeongil used at the end is called the Heavenly Demon Dominion Steps, and they say it is a method neither the current Heavenly Demon nor the one before him could use. A legendary martial art, lost and now appeared again? Lost — and yet I don't know how they know it so well. The attention, if anything, fell more on Byeongil.
A pity that Gapjae, Eunchun, and Byeongil alike have no moment to spare for looking at the Heavenly Demon, so I have no information at all about what he is thinking. But I am certain. He will undo my seal, because these ones have displayed power more than strong enough. Whether I teach the next Harvester the method Eunjae used is, of course, mine to decide.
Heehee.
One tool I can control. With this, let me see about moving the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
Three days passed. In that time Eunchun and Byeongil each rose to the seat of the Hall Master they had struck down, and a festival of eating and drinking was held to mark the end of the event. Just as the festival ended and everyone was turning back to ordinary days—
Shrrk.
"Come out."
The cloth that had bound me came loose. Through the gap, a man in women's dress — thick in the jaw, heavy with muscle — was looking up at me.
See?
My prediction was right, wasn't it?