The Paradox of the Hostage

The Walpae had assembled in force — five thousand men, no fewer. In this day and age, an age that has never known the great upheaval called the Great War of Righteousness and Evil, such an army was not a sight one came across easily.

"Seal off the surrounding area. Leave not a single gap."

"Yes, Boss!"

At Gang Pae's command, the five-thousand-strong Walpae sprang into brisk motion. Nor did it take long for the net to close — a Net of Human Force that would have lost nothing in comparison to the Murim Alliance's Heaven-and-Earth Net.

"Myeong, little brother — what do we do now?"

Gang Pae, long accustomed to deciding matters on his own authority and issuing the orders that followed, was asking another man for his opinion. Not because the man before him was the rising star of the jianghu bearing the fearsome epithet of the Dancheon Divine Dragon, but because he was a little brother Gang Pae had taken into his heart in earnest. And because that little brother was, even by Gang Pae's own exacting measure, a true man.

"There is nothing for it but a frontal assault." Dancheon Myeong answered with quiet resolve.

"There are hostages inside."

That was the very point Gang Pae feared. Longing aside — should Yeo Wol be sacrificed, the operation would be as good as failed.

"Then we simply make certain there is no problem."

He offered no grounds for that confidence, yet it carried conviction all the same — and no doubt it did because little brother Dancheon Myeong wore, right then, the expression of a man who meant every word.

"Good."

Gang Pae found himself thinking he had sworn himself a fine little brother.

A hostage situation is, at its heart, an ambiguous thing. And the stronger I am compared to the enemy holding the hostage, the more potent that ambiguity becomes.

I could subdue my opponent without effort, yet I dare not move freely for fear of the hostage's safety. The dearer the hostage is to me, the deeper that paralysis runs. The instant the hostage is lost, it becomes a foregone conclusion that the mighty enemy will blow the culprit to pieces — and not a clean death either, for the culprit knows full well that the man will come tearing at him like a ravening wolf with nothing but vengeance in mind. Small wonder he must tread carefully. In the end, every party at the table ends up shackled.

The conclusion, then, is this: the man staging a hostage standoff seizes the initiative on the tacit premise that he may harm the hostage — while simultaneously landing in a self-contradictory bind, for he must protect that hostage's safety more zealously than anyone else alive.

Which means one must grasp the essence of the thing. A hostage standoff must rightly be seen not as a debating floor where one argues over whether the hostage can be saved, but as a field of struggle for the seizure of initiative. And one must know this truth: initiative belongs to whoever moves first.

For the record, none of the above is the fruit of rational deliberation.

These are the lessons Myeong-gae earned firsthand, living through a timeline that has yet to arrive. The Great War of Righteousness and Evil. In that butchery of a war, hostage-taking belonged to the realm of the everyday.

The Myeong-gae of those days had been green. It was the first hostage situation he had ever faced.

But the man I am now is different. I know perfectly well that outwardly I look like a callow boy giving off the perfumed air of a great clan's second son — but the substance beneath is Myeong-gae, who has weathered every hardship the world had to offer.

I will seize the initiative. I will bring the hostage out unharmed. And then I will make them answer for it. A hostage standoff must not be allowed to become an arena of barter — it must become an arena where I devour the whole table alone. Where I differ from Myeong-gae is that I have united the five stage-trainings of the Yakseon Heart Decision and attained power standing at the very threshold of the best under heaven. It was more than possible.

What is more, in the present timeline a hostage standoff is a rare beast indeed — which meant my opponent was certain to blunder. Men who have never once staged a hostage-taking, facing a man who has been caught in countless ones? That was the mistake, right there.

For the sake of success, then, the first hurdle had to be smashed: the underground secret cavern.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The underground secret cavern. The term refers not to a grotto hollowed out by nature's grandeur, but to a space dug from the earth by human hands.

In the murim of today, such a place serves as a warehouse, or as a vault where the rarest of eccentric masters leave their final arrangements behind. In the era of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil, it had been something else entirely.

The reason was that, amid the carnage of that war, murim folk awakened to the cavern's strategic worth.

An underground secret cavern is dark. Unless a man's coffers are rotting with excess, no one inlays night-luminous pearls chamber by chamber — and in truth, the darkness was by design; there was never any cause to set costly pearls into stone.

It is also cramped. Narrowing the passages on purpose was the heart of the design, and it proved devastatingly effective at blunting a large-scale incursion. Pitch-black dark and a pinch of space — for tying an enemy's hands, nothing in the world was better value.

Nor does it end there. Where a natural cave is shaped by whatever whim nature's hand takes, an underground secret cavern obeys human intention from first shovelful to last — which means it lends itself beautifully to mechanism formations and traps of every description.

And last of all: an underground secret cavern built in secret on enemy ground is, as a rule, fitted with an Explosive Demolition Formation. Meaning the owner need only wish it, and a single fuse brings the whole cavern down.

Should things turn sour, they simply entomb the vault — and so it was that countless masters of the Righteous Path, come to catch the rabbit hiding in the dark, were crushed to death beneath the collapse. Even now, that memory is not a pleasant one.

I could not swear to how far the underground secret cavern's mechanism arts have advanced in today's murim, an age that has yet to live through the Great War. But caution is right. Especially when what stood before me now had been built by Eunyeong — the Hidden Shadows — the very archetype from which the underground secret cavern springs.

"So we simply force our way in?"

Brother Gang Pae asked. His iron fist had always advanced by crushing whatever stood in its path — had the Tyrant Emperor, Yeom Gi-ha, been standing in this spot, he would surely have said the same.

"It may bear a little more thought. Charging straight in is not a good move."

Ma Sok had looked restless from start to finish, but now, with the moment upon them, he had recovered his cool and spoke to hold them back. He knew in his bones that only a clear head would bring Yeo Wol out alive.

"That may be, but we have no time to spare."

Brother Gang Pae granted the point without agreeing to it. The masters of the Righteous Path could hardly be ignorant of what a battlefield meant. The inside of that cavern was the enemy's ground, and a reckless entry was hardly sound. That Gang Pae wanted in anyway came of having no better stratagem to offer — and of his fear for Yeo Wol's safety.

"Even so, charging in blind is not the answer."

"Brother Ma Sok — this is Lady Wol we speak of."

Grrr.

The moment Brother Gang Pae's words landed, Ma Sok's teeth — clenched in a struggle to stay calm — ground together, rough and audible.

"Do you take me for a man who doesn't know that?"

Ma Sok's killing intent had turned so savage that even Gang Pae — a man's man ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if ever there was one — instinctively drew back a step.

"Forgive me. I spoke out of turn."

"...No. I was the one being touchy."

But Ma Sok was a man of sound judgment, and before long he accepted Brother Gang Pae's apology. In truth, of everyone present, it was Ma Sok whose insides were rotting away worst of all.

"Then do we simply wait until they come out?" Brother Gang Pae asked, his fire banked...

"Sitting idle and waiting is the worst of plans."

This time it was I who objected.

"What about feeding smoke down into it?"

"Oh!"

Brother Gang Pae warmed to Ma Sok's suggestion at once. It made a certain sense — Ma Sok appeared to have dredged up one of the tricks used when hunting a rabbit holed in its burrow.

But...

"All that would accomplish is announcing to them that enemies are lying in wait outside — would it not?"

"Hm."

To my rebuttal, Ma Sok had no answer. In truth, smoke had seen heavy use in the Great War of Righteousness and Evil, and my memory was that it had never amounted to a very successful method.

There was no time, so the right thing was to hand them the answer straight away.

"I am going to raise an earthquake."

"Hm?"

Brother Gang Pae stared at me as though I had begun raving. There was no time for a proper explanation, so I resolved to ignore him.

Commune with all things of heaven and earth, and take the universe into your body. That is the act usually called circulating one's qi — or, in plainer terms, absorption.

A person who holds the power of all creation, whole and unbroken, within his dantian becomes a martial artist. He shatters the mold of the common man and takes wing — in folk tales, they would call him a wonder-worker of impossible strength.

Yet martial artists, in the end, still carry human flesh, and the reality is that no such flesh can stand beside the grandeur of nature. I have heard that sorcerers — men of arts rather than of martial cultivation — use the wind-summoning, rain-commanding arts to reach past the body's limits and wield nature's power from their fingertips; but sorcerers of that caliber are said to be as rare as masters of the Profound Realm, so it is right to set them aside from the reckoning.

In any case — the grandeur of nature needs no assistance to reduce a human being to something small and crawling. Never more so than with the calamities we name natural disasters: lightning, storm, tidal wave, earthquake, landslide, volcanic eruption. Disasters no mortal can overcome became objects of awe and dread, and it was for just such reasons that so many of the supreme arts of the Righteous Path took the likeness of natural disasters.

But consider, then. Any information broker capable of logical, dispassionate thought ought to raise a question here. Can a human being truly never hold the grandeur of nature in full? A martial artist has already shed the common man's shell by the simple act of circulating qi and absorbing the world's power — on what basis does he then decree that nothing beyond it is possible? For a martial artist whose spirit has bloomed and spread its branches, should not more be possible? That is what I mean.

Naturally, I know the answer.

Because I am a martial artist who has reached the unity of the Yakseon Heart Decision's five stage-trainings, and achieved the Five Energies Converged at the Origin.

"Set your feet firm against the ground."

Without one word of protest, Ma Sok and Brother Gang Pae sank their stances deep, unfolding the full subtlety of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Thousand-Pound Anchor.

"Once this is done I will be unable to use my strength for a quarter-hour or so, so I leave what follows to you."

To mimic the grandeur of nature in full — a backlash of that size was inevitable. But this was the best way. Far better than setting my own two feet inside that buried vault.

Whether he read the truth of it in my face or not, Ma Sok nodded once, his expression set firm.

Hwoooooo—

Answering my will, the energy of all things in heaven and earth began to circulate through my body. The torrent born in my dantian wheeled around the Baekhoe point at the crown of my head and came streaking down toward the Yongcheon point at my soles.

Slowly.

It would be a lie to say I felt no tension. This was the first time I had ever projected this power — this power that had reached the unity of the five trainings and the Five Energies Converged at the Origin — at its full.

But the right thing was to trust the time I had banked. Brother Chun-baek, my father Dancheon Gang, Uncle Yeo-baek, my eldest brother Dancheon Hak, and the rest. Had not every exchange of sword theory and every bout I had shared with them been for precisely this — so that in this one moment I might use my strength whole?

Gooooooo—

The unprecedented flood that had made a Grand Circuit of every vital point in my body began to gather at the Yongcheon point. The meridians within me swelled violently under the load, and in recoil, veins stood out bulging across my whole body.

Spurt—

The meridians I had forged through the First Training of the Yakseon Heart Decision — the Stage of the Individual — could not bear the strain, and ruptured. They had not burst so badly that blood fountained out of me like a waterfall, but a dangerous state of affairs was a dangerous state of affairs all the same. By any ordinary measure, this was the sort of peril that courted qi deviation—

It's fine.

I was different.

Sshhh—

The efficacy of the Golden Body — the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠training of my current stage — set to work restoring my flesh in real time. An exquisite balance: the meridians had dilated to carry a vast river of true qi, and my body rebuilt itself fast enough to bear that river's flow.

Grrrumm—

At last it arrived. The true qi pooled in my Yongcheon point had reached critical mass. The power massed there now was my full strength — if even this fell short, then I was not yet fit to raise a natural disaster. That I did not worry was thanks to the certainty I held in myself.

Tap.

I brought my foot down. Measured against the stomps that had unleashed my power before — the 'BANG!' and the 'KUWUNG!' of them — it was an infinitesimally frail little sound. Reality would prove otherwise: because of that small step, every last thread of the true qi charged to its critical point in my Yongcheon passed, whole and undiluted, into the earth.

"...?"

Every one of them wore the blank look of men who could not make sense of what had happened.

"What...?"

Brother Gang Pae, the least patient man present, opened his mouth first. Fortunately, no explanation would be needed.

Krrrrrumble—

The ground screamed like thunder. Even by my own reckoning, it was a feat of monstrous strength and divine marvel — scarcely the work of anything human.