A Letter from Wudang
Once again today, I crossed swords with my uncle Yeobae. Thanks to his undiminished passion for the martial arts, it would be fair to say we passed a truly meaningful stretch of time. Only after a contest that ran nearly two full hours did he and I at last sheathe our blades.
"Hwaah—"
Uncle Yeobae, decorum forgotten, crumpled onto the floor of the training ground. Judging by the way his chest heaved, it was no act.
I, meanwhile, remained as calm as ever. It helped that I had not found the bout particularly taxing.
They say the greatest gulf between the Harmony Realm and the Profound Realm lies in the strength of one's intent, but that could hardly be the whole of it. The Harmony Realm is founded upon the attainment of the Three Flowers Gathered at the Crown, while the Profound Realm rests upon the Five Qis Returning to the Origin.
The moment a martial artist achieves the Three Flowers and unites essence, qi, and spirit, he is, rightly viewed, already complete. But if that were the end of the road, why would anyone emphasize the Five Qis? The Five Mechanisms are essence, qi, and spirit with yin and yang added to them. Yin and yang—the very root of harmony and circulation. And I had carried that yin and yang not merely to Taiji but all the way to Wuji. Between Uncle Yeobae and me, a vast difference in stamina and staying power was therefore inevitable.
"It seems the gap isn't narrowing. It's only growing wider."
"I still have far to go."
I accepted Uncle Yeobae's grumbling with a smile. His words were both right and wrong. In truth, there was a sense in which what I was doing now could hardly be called growth. If I had to put it into words, it would be more accurate to say my skill was catching up to a realm I had already ascended to ahead of time through the Yakseon Heart Decision. And of late, as I grew adept in the artistry of the Formless Sword, it was more that Uncle Yeobae had come to feel the gulf between us with real certainty.
Leaving the spent Uncle Yeobae behind, my feet turned back toward the training ground. My next opponent already stood in full readiness.
"Here I come."
"Come."
Clang!
With the fallen Uncle Yeobae behind me, I fell into rhythm with Chunbaek. It was neither arrogance nor bravado—my training of late had simply centered on exhaustion. Not the mere release of strength, mind you, but a method that drove one's martial arts mercilessly until the body had nothing left to give.
The day I had wrung out every last drop of my strength to trigger an earthquake, I had tasted severe exhaustion for the first time since entering the Yakseon Heart Decision. The marvelous part was discovering that I had grown a layer deeper afterward. The higher one's realm, the more a small difference matters. Having found a new road, was it not my duty to walk it? Did not a certain eminent monk once say that the more one empties oneself, the fuller one becomes? The words of the ancient sages held no error.
Another two hours slipped by...
Swish.
"I'm beaten."
Before I had even withdrawn the Formless Sword, Chunbaek had dropped to his knees. He, too, was a martial artist of superb skill, befitting the inheritor of the Sinbi Sect—but in experience he fell short of Uncle Yeobae. After all, the man had refused to kneel even after our fiercest exchange. Experience, in the end, shows its worth far more in a protracted battle than in a short one, which made it only natural.
"Well fought."
As I clasped Chunbaek's hands and drew him to his feet, a figure soaring in from far across the grounds came hurtling toward me with murderous menace.
"Questions and answers are useless!"
Clang—!
It was my eldest brother, Dancheon Hak.
A martial artist, in the end, grows alongside the training ground. Uncle Yeobae, captain of the Dancheon guard, was a man pressed by his duties and vanished without a word the moment our bout ended; Chunbaek, Dancheon Hak, and I, though we had each just come through a battle, were resting beneath the shade canopy at the edge of the grounds. It was because none of us had any thought of leaving yet. The sun still hung in the sky—calling an end to training would have been absurd.
"Hmph. This time left me wanting. Next time, I won't go easy on you."
So spoke my eldest brother, Dancheon Hak.
"Mm."
In truth I felt no disappointment whatsoever, but I chose not to argue. Dancheon Hak's conduct seemed to regress with every passing year, yet the sight struck me as far from unpleasant. And watching his martial arts advance day by day, month by month, even as his behavior grew lighter, I could not fail to see how hard he was striving. I would stake my word on it: among his peers, almost no martial artist could stand against Dancheon Hak. I said "almost" because, properly speaking, the likes of me—or Chunbaek, resting right beside us—had to be excluded. The jianghu is so vast, and yet so very small.
And then...
"So here you are."
A familiar voice reached us.
"Mother."
Dancheon Hak supplied the answer. It was my mother, Baek Yeo-hae.
Since my regression, I had succeeded in mending my relationship with her. But it was equally true that ours was hardly a warm bond—not because any knot of grievance remained in my heart, but simply because such things do not come easily to expression. A son of the jianghu, by custom, steps out of his mother's embrace once he passes his twentieth year; I, by contrast, had only drawn close to her after passing mine.
"Mother, what business brings you here?"
My manner, perfectly respectful yet rather stiff, had its roots in exactly that. There was no ill intent behind the question. I asked only because my mother—a daughter of the martial Baek clan who had never learned a single martial art—never once set foot upon a training ground.
"Take this."
My mother held out a letter. A familiar wave of déjà vu rose in me. It brought back the days when she had gathered the love letters that came flying in from every corner of the jianghu and passed them along to me. Back then, she had been frantic to see me married off.
"Do not misunderstand. It is no matchmaker's letter."
She, too, seemed to have read my thoughts, for she was quick to dispel the misunderstanding.
"It appears to be a letter from Wudang."
"......!"
At my mother's words, the eyes of Chunbaek and Dancheon Hak converged on the letter. At last... the hour had arrived—the great hour that would carry me to Wudang, the hour in which great deeds would be done.
The Nine Great Sects and One Gang are great. No—the Beggars' Gang, which holds the seat of the One Gang, is a fellowship that seeks out the lowest of places by its very creed, so it is only right to set them aside here. I am, after all, one who understands and honors the will of the Beggars' Gang more than anyone.
Let me correct myself. The Nine Great Sects are great. Shaolin, Wudang, Mount Hua, Kunlun, Zhongnan, Qingcheng, Emei, Kongtong, Diancang. Looking upon that glittering roster, one cannot deny that each and every one is a great sect boasting a grandeur like the stars themselves.
For the record, the order above is no idle listing—it is the ranking of the Nine Great Sects as the Beggars' Gang itself has set it. It is awkward to call that order a closely guarded secret, for the world's perception does not greatly differ. It is not something one proclaims in the streets, but neither is it a thing easily hidden.
In any case... even Diancang, regarded as the last seat of the Nine Great Sects, wields a majesty and depth of power that the foremost sects and clans of the jianghu cannot hope to match. Their long-accumulated history says as much, and so does their scale. Such are the Nine Great Sects of the murim today.
"Heh heh heh."
There was Dancheon Hak, wearing the grin of a complete dolt. He had shown a rather goofy side of late, but this—him playing at the authority of a great clan's heir, so unlike his usual self—drew my gaze all the same.
"Is it truly so good?"
Only upon my question did he seem to realize his lapse; his slack grin hastily reassembled itself into dignity.
"Hmph. Wudang itself has invited me by name—is it not obvious that this is a fine thing?"
"I see."
In truth, Dancheon Hak's reaction was the normal one. The great clans and the Nine Great Sects may be called rivals of a sort, but was it not always the clans who burned one-sidedly with competitive fire? To burn with rivalry is, in the end, also to stand in awe. And among the Nine, Wudang stood at the very summit—Dancheon Hak's swelling pride was not difficult to fathom.
"Heh heh heh."
As though he had never reclaimed his dignity at all, Dancheon Hak's face split into a grin once more. It told me plainly how deeply he revered Wudang.
"Hm. So that's the measure of it."
If anything, I ought to count it a mercy. For reasons I cannot guess, the letter inviting Dancheon Hak had arrived a full day after mine—and what happened in the interim remained vivid still.
"No... this can't be!"
That was the day Dancheon Hak, despair written across his face, cried out those words, then forswore his meals and shut himself away for an entire day. Only the next day, once my mother delivered his letter, did he break his seclusion.
"Of course they wouldn't invite only you."
I found that muttering less than pleasing, yet I could not deny it had spared me a measure of bother.
"Brother."
"What?"
"Why do you favor Wudang so?"
"Because it is Wudang."
"......?"
The answer made no sense to me.
"Tsk. Ignorant, benighted soul that you are. You know nothing of Wudang's greatness."
"......"
Dancheon Hak was wrong. Had I not lived my life as a beggar and returned from it? I, who had walked a beggar's road, surely knew far more of Wudang than Dancheon Hak, who had spent his whole life within the clan walls.
"Are the Nine Great Sects great?"
"What a question to ask."
"And set against the Hegemon Emperor?"
"Hm."
At my question, Dancheon Hak fell to earnest pondering. His air was so gravely serious—how simple a species is man.
"I side with Wudang."
"Might I ask the reason?"
"A sect, as a rule, is not made by a single great martial artist."
"Hm?"
Honestly, I was a little surprised. I had not expected so profound a reply from Dancheon Hak. I had long since judged him more than fit to succeed the Dancheon clan, yet his words made me appraise him anew.
"A great sect must be judged by the whole of it: the history they have built, the world's perception of them, the influence they can exert upon the jianghu, the number and skill of the absolute masters they command, the count of their martial artists, the quality of their martial arts. Merely possessing the finest man under heaven does not make a sect the finest under heaven."
"True..."
"And."
As if his speech were not yet finished, Dancheon Hak swiftly cut across my words.
"On this journey to Wudang, I intend to take their measure with these eyes of mine. It is bound to serve as a cornerstone of the Dancheon clan's advance. It must not be done half-heartedly—and you would do well to bear that in mind as well."
I found it pleasing, the sight of Dancheon Hak lecturing me so sternly. It meant he was growing, step by steady step, into the clan head he was meant to be.
Only...
"Brother. Respect and reverence are well and good, but objectivity matters too."
"What do you mean?"
"As you say, the Nine Great Sects are great. But we must ever be asking ourselves how long they will remain so."
"The Nine Great Sects were great, and they will be great."
I could see that Dancheon Hak's view differed greatly from my own. Yet I welcomed it, having long since understood that a family advances through friction.
"The Nine Great Sects' history, heaped up unbroken day upon day—by the proverb that no flower stays red for ten days, it is long past time their bloom began to fade. But recall the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly."
"The Dragon and Phoenix Assembly?"
Eighteen—the age at which I had regressed. In that year there had been a Dragon and Phoenix Assembly. The Five Dragons of that time, set down in order, were as follows.
The Coiled Dragon—Dancheon Myeong of the Dancheon clan.
The Sword Dragon—Dancheon Hak of the Dancheon clan.
The Spear Dragon—Namgung Tan of the Namgung clan.
The River Dragon—Unso of Shaolin.
The Saber Dragon—Paeng Jin-hu of the Paeng clan.
Even allowing for the anomaly of two Dancheon clansmen, it was a roster with something questionable in it. That's right. The dragons of that era had been produced chiefly by the illustrious clans, not by the Nine Great Sects.
Dancheon Hak seemed to sense where I was going with this. He did not seem able to concede it, however.
"That is your arrogance. Are the Nine Sects' arts not orthodox martial arts, growing ever stronger with time?"
"The clans' arts are likewise rooted in orthodoxy. They have merely been refined to suit the mundane world."
"Hm."
Dancheon Hak sank deep into thought, and I saw no need to press him. Whether Dancheon Hak was right or I was—that was not what mattered. The letter from Wudang. The reason it had invited both Dancheon Hak and me stemmed, I was certain, from the very truth I had just spoken.
It was called the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe—the Exchange of the Rising Generation. The chance to stride openly through the mountain gates of the Nine Great Sects, gates long barred to outsiders, had been forged from precisely such reasoning. Thanks to it, ties with Wudang could be formed without strain—and perhaps, from where the Central Plains murim stood, this was nothing less than a windfall to be welcomed.