Sky-Cleaving
The murim is a place where marvels and eccentrics swarm without end.
Take that kindly, and it means the world is thick with people who have achieved every manner of extraordinary thing. Take it less kindly, and it means there are an awful lot of strange bastards in it.
As a rule, I would say half of all the incidents in the jianghu that earn the name of "miraculous encounter" are set in motion by these very marvels and eccentrics.
For the record, the other half springs from that company known as the hidden ancients — hermits long withdrawn from the world — and on rare occasions, the mystic sects put in an appearance as well.
"This should be about far enough...."
The ground beneath my feet belonged to a city called Gyesu.
A city with a rather peculiar name, perched on the border between Anhui and Henan. Gyesu was where the people of Anhui gathered when they meant to cross into Henan, so it was only natural that I should find myself here.
Even so, it was only when I climbed the ridgeline on the city's outskirts that a familiar stretch of terrain finally came into view.
"Here it is."
What I had found was one of the remnants left behind by a marvel whose name had rung through the entire murim — the hiding place of the legacy of Cheon-gong, the master craftsman who had dominated the previous generation and a genius of mechanisms and trapworks besides.
Three years from now, the treasure maps marking Cheon-gong's legacy would be loosed upon the murim.
Back then I would be twenty-one, freshly risen to the One-Knot rank and newly escaped from the wretched grind of begging for my daily bread. My first mission as a One-Knot of the Beggar Gang had been to gather every scrap of intelligence on the legacy that shook the jianghu to its core, so this place was not one I could ever forget.
There was another reason, too.
In the vicious scramble to claim Cheon-gong's legacy, better than a hundred souls had been killed or wounded. Such was the pull of the master craftsman's armaments — prizes men would lunge for with utter disregard for their own lives.
And there was yet another reason the casualties ran to the scale of a blood calamity.
As I said, Cheon-gong was an eccentric who could contest the title of first under heaven in all things mechanical. Most of the dead had perished against the trapworks he had hidden away, while others, competing against one another, let a quarrel turn lethal and parted with their lives. Between the two, the count reached a full hundred.
It was there that I first witnessed the true cruelty of the murim. It was the moment when Dancheon Myeong — who, bastard or not, had lived his whole life sheltered within the peaceful walls of the Dancheon clan — was reborn as Myeong-gae, a beggar of the Beggar Gang who walked the murim as it truly was.
"No need to watch that happen twice."
I hardly fancied myself a chivalrous hero, but letting a blood calamity unfold exactly as fated sat ill with my temperament. And besides, the one armament I truly needed lay sleeping in this place. Two birds, one stone.
Rustle, rustle.
Brushing the undergrowth aside bared the mouth of a hidden cave — and I knew that somewhere within it, Cheon-gong's legacy lay sleeping. Step inside, and mechanisms of every kind would rise to greet me: the works of Cheon-gong that had reaped dozens of lives.
"Shall we, then?"
One of the Beggar Gang's iron rules was never to poke one's nose into the brawls over treasure maps. The reasoning ran that since our pursuit was the beggar's life, what use had we for treasure hidden at marked sites — but I had always taken it as the forebears' way of safeguarding the Beggar's Way they loved.
By the same token, Myeong-gae — who would never move toward his regression until every last preparation was in place — had likewise never once set foot inside a marked treasure site. Which meant the passage leading to Cheon-gong's legacy was uncharted territory even for me.
Even so, I had my reasons for striding in with such confidence.
Click.
"Huh?"
The sound of something giving way underfoot reached me at that very instant.
Phit-phit-phit!
"Wha—?"
Before I could so much as flinch, flying needles came darting at me from the blind angles.
Ting-ting-ting.
"Hm."
But not one of them could pierce my skin; they all clattered harmlessly to the ground. I bent and picked one up. A faint, subtle stain colored its tip — plain, undisguised malice.
"So that's the trick of it."
Had these been attacks from living men bearing killing intent, I might have dodged them one way or another. But poison flung at you carrying not the slightest wisp of energy was another matter entirely, and far harder to evade. Small wonder such unusual numbers of martial artists had met their ends here.
In my previous life, the one who broke through this vile legacy and reached the treasure at its end had been an Arhat monk of Shaolin.
"How in the world did you pass through those mechanisms unscathed?"
"Amitabha."
He only wore a sheepish smile and gave no answer — but anyone worth their salt could read the truth in him. Skin like carved wood, and the sun-points of his temples jutting sharp and high. That monk had attained Vajra Indestructibility and reached the realm of Impervious to Blades — a supreme master among masters.
"If that's how it works, this should be easy enough."
For I, too, possessed a body that had reached the Second Step of the Yakseon Heart Decision — Golden Body.
"Is this guy genuinely, certifiably insane?"
Compliments that marvels and eccentrics would only too gladly receive poured from my mouth without pause. I had simply grown sick to death of the vicious malice of a madman called Cheon-gong.
Not a stain of blood on me, my body whole and unharmed — but my clothes had been shredded into rags.
Poisoned needles to begin with; spears thrusting from blind angles; arrows loosing themselves from the ceiling; dozens of sword tips springing up as the ground gave way beneath my feet; great axes as big as a man's torso, swung with the force to tear a body limb from limb. Dodging what I could, taking the rest head-on with my whole body — that was the price of breaking through Cheon-gong's legacy.
Hm. Truth be told, even at the Peak Realm, had I not attained Impervious to Blades, I reckoned I would have died a good seventeen times over.
"Still, I won, you damned old man."
Had Cheon-gong also been a master of formations, things would have been far harder. Mystical arts woven from concepts I could scarcely pronounce in one breath — the Wuji and the Taiji, the Three Powers and Four Images, the Five Phases and Six Harmonies, the Seven Stars and Eight Trigrams, the Nine Palaces and Ten Perfections — remained unknown territory even to me.
But mechanisms and trapworks belonged, in the end, to the domain of physical force. It had been anything but easy, yet thanks to a body no blade could touch, I could push through all the same.
And then, at last.
"So this is the end of it?"
I had arrived at the far end of the cavern where the legacy awaited. A single sword of auspicious bearing stood driven into a boulder the size of a man's torso, drinking in the full glow of the night pearls set into the ceiling.
That was the one. The reason I had set foot in this place at all.
I drew near, my steps cautious — there might yet be one final trick waiting at the very last.
"Phew."
Only when my hand came to rest upon the hilt did I finally relax.
Shing.
The sword had been sunken deep into the rock, yet it slid free as smoothly as if drawn from its scabbard. And in the same breath as I pulled it out, I beheld the message Cheon-gong had left carved upon the boulder.
"So — what say you of my craft?"
The very strokes of the carving exuded the man's aloof confidence and his swollen ego.
Madman.
And with that sight, the most crucial piece of intelligence concerning Cheon-gong's legacy surfaced in my mind: it had been Cheon-gong himself who arranged for the treasure maps of his own legacy to be scattered across the murim.
A fact the Beggar Gang had unearthed through dogged, painstaking investigation. This was a man who had plotted to reap dozens of lives just to unveil his final work — call him a marvel or an eccentric all you liked, it was hard to regard him kindly.
But the fact remained that I was the one holding his sword. The least I could do was answer him in person.
I gave Cheon-gong's sword a lazy flourish. Though I channeled no sword qi whatsoever, the boulder sheared away beneath the edge, leaving carved upon it the words I wished to say.
PATHETIC.
A word meaning, quite simply, wretched beyond redemption. A master craftsman, aye, and a genius of mechanisms — but as a human being, Cheon-gong, you were a sorry excuse for one.
Still, credit where credit was due. My blade flicked again, and another line joined the first.
BUT.
THE SWORD — SUPERB.
Yet even so, I could not deny the truth those lines named — your sword, Cheon-gong, stood supreme.
I took another long look at the blade. A dignified edge wreathed in a subtle reddish sheen, bearing itself like a true famed sword. And engraved upon the hilt, its name: Dancheon — Sky-Cleaving.
A name Cheon-gong himself had bestowed, to declare that it would one day cut down even the other swords of his own making. The Dancheon Sword was, in the truest sense, his final and his finest work.
And that its name should match my family's surname — that, too, I could only call fate.
Sword in hand, I was not yet done.
"Do you have any idea what night pearls cost?"
My gaze drifted to the night pearls that had bathed the famed blade in their light. Each was the size of a fist and threw off a generous radiance — any one of them would fetch well past the price of a grand estate.
I reached out to pull one free.
Clunk.
"Hm."
A sound that had no business sounding, sounded. I had been through this routine often enough that it felt almost familiar.
"Damn it all."
The pearls' light, so abundant a moment ago, dimmed to a tenth of its strength. An ill omen. A bleak, sinister air began to seep through the cavern.
Only when the pearls dimmed did the writing on the ceiling — drowned until now beneath their glare — become legible.
"You never saw this coming, did you? A final gift — for the one who has unraveled my life's work."
For him, it seemed, the true masterwork had never been the Dancheon Sword at all. It was this secret cavern itself.
Rrrrumble—
The whole cave shuddered uneasily. This was a man who had built mechanisms that moved of their own accord; bringing the cavern down around me would have been no great feat for him either.
I strained at the night pearl once more, but whatever trick he had worked, it would not give. I could hardly let myself be buried alive over a pearl.
"Haah — what an absolute son of a bitch."
Having thus lavished my highest praise upon the marvel Cheon-gong, I abandoned the pearls and bolted from the cavern at speed. Fortunately, I escaped being crushed alive.
Mount Cheonjung in Henan — where I had retrieved the Empty Blue Stone Milk not long ago — lay three days' travel from the Dancheon estate, one way. Mount Cheonjung sat in Henan's southeast, reasonably close to Anhui, but Mount Song in Dengfeng County lay to the northwest, well past the province's heart: a good five days' walk.
Of course, that estimate assumed the first-rate Dancheon Myeong of my former life. I now stood at the Peak Realm, and with the Second Step's Golden Body complete, my Gyeongsin Gong ran deeper than ever before and rarely knew fatigue.
Thanks to which, I had covered the distance to Gyesu on the Anhui-Henan border in half a day and claimed the Dancheon Sword besides — time, in short, was comfortably on my side.
And so I turned from my course with an easy mind. Leaving the shortest official road toward Dengfeng County, I bent my steps south.
"This way, then?"
My next destination lay in the far south of Henan: the great range that straddles the border of Henan and Hubei — Mount Daebyeol.
There I would enter upon the Third Step of the Yakseon Heart Decision. And once that was done, I could promise this much: no rising star in the murim would be able to stand before me at the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
The jianghu offers any number of roads to death, but the most traveled by far is the body torn open by a weapon.
Train in the martial arts all you like; in this one respect, a person of the murim is no different from any commoner. Let a blade churn through your gut once, or part your head from your torso, and death follows as a matter of course.
Given that the sword and the saber were the jianghu's most common arms, this is what the old expression means — being "caught by steel or point."
And what, then, would you guess comes next on the list of killers?
It would be pleasant if the answer were a natural death after a full span of years, but the heartless jianghu is not so beautiful a place.
The correct answer is death by poison.
For those who live by the murim, poison has never been hard to come by. Did I not say that even the Blue Phosphor Liquid — a lethal poison if ever there was one — could be had without difficulty at the very mouth of the black market?
The aloof Daoists of the orthodox sects and the warriors of the great clans rarely stoop to poison — the famed Sichuan Tang Clan excepted. Beyond that rarefied tier, however, the truth is that most everyone makes use of it.
The nameless wanderers you brush past in the street, sworn friends who would die for one another, the vile scum of the Unorthodox factions, even the merciless devils of the Demonic Cult — for all of them, carrying a poison or two alongside their weapons was simply a fact of daily life.
Why do I speak of poison all of a sudden? Because it bears directly on the Third Step I was to achieve upon Mount Daebyeol.
Through the First Step, I had used the Empty Blue Stone Milk to lay my body's foundation — the stage of the Remade Body. Through this Second Step, I had used the Blue Phosphor Liquid to forge a body no blade could touch: the Golden Body.
The name of the Third Step was Impervious.
The moment anyone who walks the jianghu hears that word, their mind will fly at once to that legendary realm told and retold in hushed tones.
Exactly right.
The Third Step, Impervious — is the very same "impervious" from the phrase impervious to ten thousand poisons.