The Value of a Word - 3
It seemed Sa Yun and Yu Hui were every bit as startled to see me. While the two of them stared my way with round, wide eyes, I gave a casual shrug.
"You don't look like you came here to shop. What brings you all the way out here?"
"Ah. Well, you see..."
Sa Yun scratched her cheek with an awkward smile. A faint flush had crept over her face—apparently whatever it was proved too embarrassing to say.
Or perhaps she was ashamed of having slipped out without properly finishing the homework Hong Ryeon had assigned her.
Either way, that made my day.
"Sa Yun's been having a rough time of it lately, so I brought her out for a change. It happened to be our rest day. Left to her own devices, she'd only have kept moping by herself."
"Hmm. Letting loose once in a while is important too."
"Right? But this one here is hopelessly stuck."
"Ahahaha! Senior Sister, I'm getting dizzy~!"
Yu Hui's hands clamped onto Sa Yun's head and shook. She kept rattling it until Sa Yun, who had been laughing drily, looked for all the world like her eyes were spinning in circles.
Must be nice, damn it!
I want a turn too!
But the government office was close by, and those constable fellows are scary, so I kept my hands to myself. All I could do was hold on to my composure and watch the scene with a contented smile.
Truthfully, even just this was enough to make a corner of my chest swell with warmth.
"Well, this works out nicely. It's nearly dinnertime... If you don't mind, why not stay for a meal before you go?"
"Eh? But..."
"Of course, I don't intend to simply feed you for nothing."
"We're not yet permitted to accept commissions. If you wish to make a request of the Hongseong Sect..."
"Don't worry, it's nothing so grand as all that. It's just... hmm. Well, actually, about something that happened today..."
I told the two of them about the Five Animal Frolics I had learned that day. Perhaps because it touched on something familiar? Their eyes lit up, and they nodded along.
"Ah, so you'd like some help practicing the Five Animal Frolics?"
"That's right."
Sa Yun pondered for a moment, then broke into a bashful smile. Good heavens! Sa Yun, smiling that brightly!
Screenshot! I have to take a screenshot!!
The lack of a camera was my one regret in this world.
"The Five Animal Frolics is an art I know a little of myself."
Huh? Really?
"I learned it from Senior Sister Ryu Hyeon. As for Senior Sister Yu Hui..."
"Ah, I never learned it. I've been studying my family's restorative arts separately."
"Then I might actually be of some help."
Was it because a child's impetuousness still lingered in her? Sa Yun puffed out her small chest and declared it with no little pride.
All the better for me.
"Then could you help me out whenever you find a spare moment? You needn't come every day, of course."
Truth be told, I'd have loved it if she came every day—but that was just my own greed talking. If I hoped to avert the Hongseong Sect's annihilation and see her grow into her own, then Sa Yun needed to learn as much as she possibly could at the sect before the Iron Blood Dan arrived.
"If that's all it is... yes!"
"In return, meals on the house. And a box of dang-gwa sweets. Though I could pay you in coin instead..."
"Um... then, well. The meals and the sweets are both fine, but..."
Sa Yun stole a furtive glance at me.
"Could you perhaps... see fit to reduce, just a little... what the Hongseong Sect spends when purchasing supplies?"
Squirm, squirm. Anxious that her words might have rubbed me the wrong way, Sa Yun twisted herself every which way. I nearly mistook her for a pretzel.
It wasn't a burdensome proposal in the least. The Hongseong Sect's supply bills hardly amounted to anything.
And even that was only a partial discount she was asking for—not the whole sum.
And in return, Sa Yun would give me one-on-one lessons?
Pfft—how was anyone supposed to resist that?
"On those terms, I'd be the one begging for the favor."
At my answer, Sa Yun beamed.
Truly, no camera. My eternal regret.
In any case, it was getting late, and there was no way I could send them off hungry, so I brought the two of them back to the inn.
They declined again and again, but I pressed just as many times, until at last the two of them nodded.
Even so, they ordered nothing but plain wheat noodles, as if they'd sooner die than touch anything expensive—honestly, those two were stubborn as oxen, the both of them.
"It's not as if I have anything worth teaching you, Innkeeper."
"Haha. You never know."
"Phew... I'm stuffed. Thank you so much for the meal."
"Think nothing of it. Now then, let's give it a chance to settle..."
"Ah. Yes."
We made our way out to the inn's back courtyard. The sun had long since set, but with the inn's lanterns casting their glow over everything, securing a clear line of sight was no trouble at all.
"You said you only learned the Five Animal Frolics today, didn't you? Could you run through it once, simply?"
"Of course."
I unfolded the Five Animal Frolics before Sa Yun's eyes. First came Metal. I set strength into my outstretched leg and rounded my right and left arms. And just as I slowly turned my waist and settled into the Metal form—
"You need to sink your stance a little lower."
Press. Sa Yun's small foot came down on my thigh. Then she climbed lightly aboard, brought her hands to my shoulders, and pushed down.
"Watching you hurl stones the other day, I'd say learning a few throwing techniques wouldn't hurt you... not that there's anything wrong with the Five Animal Frolics, of course."
"Mmmph. That can wait for la—aaack!"
"Now, now. You need to draw your arms in a little more."
Like a monkey turning somersaults, her small, light body clung to mine and clambered every which way across it. She sprang off my thigh, looped her arms lightly around my neck, then pressed her knee in and pulled my hunched back straight.
And once the stance had taken shape, Sa Yun murmured from behind me, soft as a whisper at my ear.
"This stance is the Metal form of the Five Animal Frolics. The Metal form also takes the might of a tiger as its image. So you must be stronger still—let your pressure show."
The Daoist never went this far, though?
Pressing firmly down on my lower back from behind, Sa Yun continued in all seriousness.
"This stance is called the Tiger Form Stance. Now, if you extend your arms from here, you arrive at the Fierce Tiger Stance..."
Only after roughly an hour had crawled by could I finally win my freedom from Sa Yun's hands.
If the question was whether it had been pleasant or not—honestly? It had been pleasant.
After all, it was as good as receiving private instruction from my favorite.
Besides, perhaps because daily practice was said to grant health and long life, the body that had ached until just a little while ago now overflowed with vitality.
"There! Wonderful work today. From now on, please practice every day. As they say—dripping water pierces stone!"
Steadfast persistence was, above all else, the single most important thing in mastering the martial arts.
At her words, I burst out laughing.
"Oh? Did I... um. Did I say something strange?"
"No. It's just a very fine saying. Dripping water pierces stone... yes. Persistence is a good thing."
"Of course it is! My master says the very same!"
I nodded.
When Sa Yun had attained her first enlightenment, that very phrase had been one of the koans she'd wrestled with.
Dripping water pierces stone.
If she came to grasp the remaining one, mastering the Meteor Fist would be no great challenge.
"In any case, you've worked hard. It's gotten rather late... hurry on home now."
"Hehe. Yes. Senior Sister Yu Hui—have you been waiting long?"
"Hm? No, no. I was meditating myself. Come on, let's go. Innkeeper Yu Wol, we'll be off then—thank you for everything."
The two girls, brimming with energy, slipped out of the inn. I watched them go, then took out my pipe and set it between my lips.
"Did you two run off to play house, perhaps?"
A sharp voice drifted down from above. I tilted my head back to find a woman with a distinctly unimpressed expression leaning against the railing.
"From where Moon Lotus Pavilion stands, playing house is exactly what it looked like. Guest."
"...Well, now."
The sharp-featured, black-haired beauty—clad in what I could only assume were Moon Lotus Pavilion's signature full-body tights—vaulted onto the railing and leapt down in a single bound.
Her long, straight legs, sheathed at the end in platform boots, struck the stone floor—yet her landing made not so much as a whisper of sound.
It was, quite literally, the movement of a master, light as a feather.
Chae Jin, eldest disciple of Moon Lotus Pavilion, swept her hair back with a flick, dragged a chair over from the courtyard, seated herself without so much as a by-your-leave, and spoke with leisurely ease.
"This morning you were learning the Five Animal Frolics, and now you're asking the Hongseong Sect to correct your form..."
"Is there a problem with that?"
"No. What problem could there possibly be? I just thought... well, if you're going to learn something anyway, wouldn't it be better to learn it properly?"
Chae Jin flashed a grin and beckoned with a crooked finger. In that instant, golden light flashed, cleaving through the darkness.
A master above the First-Rate could raise and rein in their internal energy at will, summoning qi of their own accord.
Not by borrowing the power of forms, but by commanding qi perfectly through their own control.
I watched her for a moment, then smiled.
"So what you're telling me is that Moon Lotus Pavilion would like to try its hand at teaching me. Isn't that about the sum of it?"
"Moon Lotus Pavilion is not the Hongseong Sect, you see. So long as one pays the entrance fee, anyone at all is accepted as a disciple."
"And only a tiny handful of those disciples ever make it to inner disciple, I hear?"
"My, my? You know quite a lot about Moon Lotus Pavilion."
Winking one eye, she smirked. Then she rose slowly from her seat and came drifting toward me, light as thistledown.
"Power must never be granted to those who cannot awaken it for themselves. Moon Lotus Pavilion merely uses that as the line dividing the inner hall from the outer."
"So then—am I fit for the inner hall?"
"What do you think? But even as an outer disciple, while we would withhold the Moonlight Divine Art, you would still be taught proper martial arts."
Like a dance, her drifting hand alighted on my shoulder. Then, stroking gently, it set my arm in motion.
"If the enemy does not move, I do not move; if the enemy moves so much as a hair, I move before he does."
Her voice low, her outstretched hand began to gather rotation into itself.
Beside me, Chae Jin's hand settled down softly—like a dance, like a butterfly folding its wings.
"Use intent, not strength. Everything in this world has the place where it belongs, and martial arts are no different. There is no need to summon force. All that is required is rotation, and softness."
The settled hand surged upward. But there was no fierceness in it. There was only softness, and nothing else.
Moving my arm as lightly as a willow leaf trembling in the breeze, Chae Jin drew her hips back, then sank into a seat, extending her left leg straight out.
And with that, she spun her entire body in a single instant.
—Whooom!!
"Distinguish the empty from the full. Only by clearly grasping empty and full can one's movements be correct."
—Whooom!! Whooom!!
Her movement carried mine along with it. It was by no means a swift motion.
And yet every sweep of her hands and feet carried force enough to send the wind surging upward.
And the fallen leaves caught in that wind became a circle—and within that circle, they split in two.
Yin and yang.
Beside me, guiding the wind that now traced out the Taiji, Chae Jin delivered her next words with perfect calm.
"Inner and outer unite. Opposition resolves into the limitless, and the limitless is oneness. When inside and outside accord, when above and below receive one another, and every motion flows into the next without a single break—"
—Whooooom!!
The spinning bodies halted. The hands that had penned the wind halted.
And what they left behind, formed in the stillness, was—
the pattern of the Taiji, heaped in a ring around me.
"The Taiji takes shape."
And vaster than the Taiji I had made—the supreme Taiji pattern Chae Jin had wrought.
"This is what we call the Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan—the foundational art of Moon Lotus Pavilion."
The Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan.
One of the arts you could receive from her upon clearing the first stage of Chae Jin's affinity event—this was it.
They called it a foundational art, but it was by no means a poor technique.
Master it to completion, and you could pass through the Enlightenment of Yielding event; and like the Five Animal Frolics, its practice alone—slow going, admittedly—would let you accumulate qi, building internal energy as you went.
Besides, as an art of the Daoist lineage, it paired beautifully with the Five Animal Frolics.
And yet—had I ever actually formed a bond with Chae Jin?
I looked at her, and Chae Jin ducked away from my gaze, then spoke in a tiny, mortified voice, like someone trying to crawl into a hole.
"I-I'll teach you this, so... it's just that I didn't bring much travel money, so could you maybe give me a discount on my lodging too...?"
Ah. Discounts, unfortunately, were out of the question.