The Vagabond's One Breath
“The Sinjin Gyoryuhoe shall now resume. Kindly maintain your silence!”
Cheon-am-jinin, the overseer of the exchange's sparring matches, raised his voice. For a Daoist of such deep cultivation, his bearing remained perfectly serene — but eyes honed by years as an information broker could not be so easily deceived.
After all, I had watched his expression crack the moment sword qi flared from Dancheon Hak's blade.
“Vagabond Swordsman Yi Chun-baek, step forward.”
At the summons, Chun-baek rose from his seat with unhurried calm.
“Off you go.”
“What would you have me do?”
Chun-baek asked me. I could see it in his eyes — a playfulness that had never been there before. I hadn't answered him, yet he had clearly read the discomfort in my mood.
I understood Chun-baek's heart well enough, so the right thing was to play along with his mischief.
“You'd best not use sword qi.”
“Hm?”
Chun-baek voiced his puzzlement. It was a fair question — Elder Brother Dancheon Hak had already unleashed his sword qi in full display.
But the old wisdom of the Jianghu says a martial artist should conceal thirty percent of his strength. In Chun-baek's case, I figured he could hide fifty and still be fine.
Truthfully, that wasn't the whole reason.
“Settle it in a single exchange, without sword qi. Can you manage?”
What I was asking was harder than anything Elder Brother had accomplished. Perhaps he read the mischief written across my face, for Chun-baek broke into a broad grin. Had we not been in so public a place, Chun-baek — whose threshold for laughter was notoriously low — might have burst out with a hearty puphat right then and there.
“Hut. That won't be easy.”
“The Chun-baek I know could do it without breaking a sweat.”
He did not deny my assertion.
“Then I'm off.”
The back of the vagabond as he strode boldly toward the center of the arena, ringed by the elders of the Nine Great Sects, looked positively colossal.
As I have said time and again — information is power. Speaking personally, I would rank it mightier than sects or famed weapons, mere byproducts of martial strength; after raw force itself, information is the second most important power in the world. The Nine Great Sects, who trusted only in their openness while neglecting intelligence — and then failed even to invite the Open Palm Sect to this very convention — would come to understand their blunder, however late.
“I'm back.”
“Well fought.”
“There was nothing to fight.”
“I agree entirely.”
From the moment Chun-baek left his seat with those parting words to the moment he returned to it, barely ten breaths had passed. And most of that was heavy silence hanging over the arena.
A brief introduction and the ceremonial fist salute had consumed several breaths; the actual bout, one could say, took none at all. To be precise: less than a single breath. The instant Cheon-am-jinin finished saying begin, Chun-baek's blade was already resting against his opponent's neck.
“...I have lost.”
The bout had ended in a flash, so quickly that Gongson — who couldn't even remember his opponent's name — could only concede defeat. Perhaps it was because Chun-baek's skill was so extraordinary, or perhaps because his identity as a vagabond left the man unable to mount any proper countermeasure. Either way…
“Dancheon Myeong of the Dancheon Clan, step forward.”
My turn had come. Unregistered lineage, information warfare — strip away the fine words, and that was all this was. The lofty gazes of the Nine Great Sects were forever looking down on the lesser clans.
If I had to guess, it was because the Buddhist sects — Shaolin foremost among them — took the salvation of all sentient beings as their path to nirvana, while the great Daoist sects sought to become gods through their own power. Their gaze upon those aspiring to ascend on clouds could never point downward.
“I, too, once sought to become a god.”
I knew such a being as well. My master, Yakseon — a man who would not have been overcalled even a Grand Patriarch.
Thud.
As I walked slowly forward, murmurs rose from all around. Not from the crowd — the source was the thirty-six elders of the Nine Great Sects who had encircled the arena under the pretext of security.
“Is that boy also a child of the Dancheon Clan?”
“That must be the Saber Dragon whom Taecheong Jinin and Beomgak Daesa praised with one voice.”
“The Dancheon Sword Dragon?”
“So I've heard him called.”
“Wasn't he below the Harmony Realm until recently?”
“He was the Sword Dragon.”
“Hah. A prodigy, indeed.”
Apparently the epithet of one of the Dragon-and-Phoenix pair, along with the name Dancheon Sword Dragon, had reached even the ears of the sect elders, so starved were they for intelligence.
Thud.
I walked deliberately slowly. I had judged that a composed gait would serve better than any flashy footwork.
I do not know the Dao. But I know Yakseon. I pride myself on knowing his footsteps better than anyone, so perhaps I might claim to know a little of the Dao after all — for I know that the path of ascension Yakseon pursued was not so different from the path of the great Daoist sects. One of the men Yakseon had admired in his day was Sambong Jinin, and who could fail to see that Yakseon, in the end, followed in Sambong's footsteps?
By my reckoning, however, the path the Nine Great Sects walk today may have drifted somewhat from the tracks Sambong Jinin left behind. The sects are meant to be the great bulwark that holds back the Righteous-Demonic War — their drift must be corrected.
Step.
I took my place at the center of the arena.
“I am Dancheon Myeong of the Dancheon Clan.”
Put another way: I had come to educate them.
Tension rippled through the hall. The greatest cause was how the sects' momentum had been snapped mid-march. It began with Dancheon Hak proving himself a man of the Harmony Realm, and deepened with Chun-baek finishing his bout without revealing so much as a sliver of his true level.
As I have said before, the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe is not merely a battlefield for victory — but a contest between martial artists is a matter of life and death, and defeat is a bitter thing to swallow with grace. Even for Daoists who claim to pursue the way of immortals.
At any rate, the sects' once-lofty spirit had deflated a full measure, and the warriors of the lesser clans did not cheer. Partly because this was Wudang's home ground and they would not hand their hosts an excuse, but perhaps also because the Dancheon Clan's advance gave them no particular joy. None of them knew of the calamity of the Righteous-Demonic War that loomed ahead — small wonder if they thought only of their own petty advancement.
“Isn't that Dancheon boy a swordsman?”
“The Dancheon Clan has been a storied sword clan for generations — a swordsman he must be.”
“Then why does he carry no weapon?”
They were right. Having handed the Dancheon Sword to Elder Brother, I had not yet procured a new one. I stood there unarmed.
“Tsk. A swordsman without his sword. What arrogance.”
“Perhaps he has some mastery of fist and palm arts?”
“At his age? He hasn't the years to spare for anything but the sword.”
There was no need to mind the spectators' chatter. I would not offer excuses like I have mastered the Formless Sword, so weapons are useless to me — I would simply win, sword or no sword.
“Mu-dam of Wudang, step forward.”
At last my opponent was called. From the very start he burned with pride, and his blazing eyes left an impression.
“Ho. So that is him?”
“They say he earned a dragon's epithet recently.”
“Flowing Dragon, I heard. Fitting for one carrying Wudang's future.”
“Having embodied both Wudang's sword and its teachings, they say he could handle masters a full step above.”
“A step above?”
“His talent is so exceptional that he is said to have touched the peak of the Transcendent Realm back in his Dragon-and-Phoenix days. Two years have passed since — in my view, he could comfortably manage even a Harmony Realm master now.”
“But his opponent is the Dancheon Sword Dragon. It won't be easy.”
“Watch, and we shall see.”
Just as I was unmoved by the surrounding chatter, the Wudang swordsman approached me with steady, unhurried steps and offered a ceremonial fist salute.
“Mu-dam of Wudang.”
“Dancheon Myeong of the Dancheon Clan.”
At my introduction, a smile bloomed on Mu-dam's face.
“I have long wished to meet you, Senior Brother.”
In that smile of his, pure as it was, an unmistakable competitive fire was steeped. By my eyes, refined was not too generous a word for it. It was the very image of a sincere heart devoted wholly to the martial way. Truly, the spirit of Wudang lived here.
The tension I had carried into this arena, sharpened by thoughts of education, quietly drained away. Perhaps because, for the first time, I was looking at Wudang whole.
Mu-dam, third-generation disciple of Wudang. I knew him. He was of my own generation — the man who, at a mere fifteen years of age, would lead the Azure Dragon Corps, the Murim Alliance's elite strike force. During the Righteous-Demonic War, having crossed the threshold of the Harmony Realm before he even came of age, the Flowing Dragon fought at the very front of the battlefield more fiercely than anyone. And though it owed much to the devotion and sacrifice of his Azure Dragon soldiers, it was that very Mu-dam who finally took the head of the Daeryeok Sinma, a demon who walked the Demon-Destroying Realm.
The rumor that he had fully embodied Wudang's teachings and could handle masters a step above was no idle talk. But I did not know the Flowing Dragon. The reason being: in the timeline I remember, Mu-dam of the Azure Dragon Corps never took a dragon's epithet. If I had to guess, it was a change wrought by my own existence.
At any rate — Yi Chun-baek, King of Vagabonds. Paeng Jin-hu, the Mad Tiger Blade. Mu-dam, commander of the Azure Dragon Corps. All of them were warriors of towering renown whom the old me could only gaze at from afar — heroes of the Righteous-Demonic War, whose very weight differed from that of a mere branch-clan member.
But the important fact right now was this: Mu-dam was not yet the corps commander, and I was not yet the man I would become.
“You carry no sword?”
Mu-dam asked with a curious look.
“I don't use one.”
There was no need for a lengthy explanation.
“I see.”
Mu-dam nodded deeply, as if something had dawned on him. I was simply not using a sword because I had no need of one — what exactly he had realized, I had no way of knowing.
“It shames me to ask, but may I have the first move?”
“By all means.”
Mu-dam spoke with courtesy, and I assented. I could tell he did not look down on me. If anything, I judged he genuinely intended to face me in earnest.
The martial arts of Wudang do not favor attack, yet neither may they be lightly transgressed.
That maxim held the essence of Wudang. Its arts are not aggressive, but neither can they be casually invaded. Mu-dam intended to show me the very pinnacle of Wudang's martial philosophy. Had it not been said that all swords turn toward Wudang? That was why — because by penetrating Wudang's sword art alone, a swordsman could prove the full measure of his own.
Shrrk—
Mu-dam took his opening stance.
“You won't draw a weapon either?”
“Since you will not use your sword, Senior Brother, I thought I would try fighting without mine as well.”
Mu-dam added quickly, “Do not misunderstand. Wudang's fist and saber arts are first-rate in the Jianghu in their own right. I pride myself on never neglecting their training.”
His words were no boast — the opening stance of the Mugeuk Hyeongong Fist he assumed was flawless enough to be called perfect. It stood as representative of Wudang alongside the Taiji Wisdom Sword; there was nothing lacking in it.
I nodded.
“Here I come.”
Tang!
I am a martial artist who has achieved the Five Qi Converging to the Origin and circulates the Hyeoncheon current. I had brought no weapon because, even without resorting to the Formless Sword, I could wield my body's extremities like blades without difficulty — but since my opponent had extended the courtesy of fist arts, the right thing was to answer in kind.
Kung—
The true qi circling my Yongcheon point amplified through my dantian and poured into my fist.
Swae-ak—!
The force that arrived at its end sliced cleanly through the air. Mu-dam's arm, unfolding his fist arts, drew a graceful arc and coiled around my power, drawing it in.
Perfect Taiji. It was the textbook opening of the principle of yielding to redirect force — and yet I could see it was not yet ripe. It fell somewhat short of being seamless and unbroken, which meant the gaps were there to be found.
Ah.
A small realization arrived.
Not yet ripe.
So that was the twist in what Paeng Jin-hu — no, what the Sovereign of Destruction Yeom Gi-ha had once told me. To walk a high realm is not simply to possess great power.
Mu-dam's expression, full of resolve, filled my eyes.
Tung—!
“Ugh!”
Unable to withstand my force, Mu-dam was flung backward with a final cry. My power had forcibly severed the incomplete seam in his Taiji Fist — in truth, he had been thrown by his own strength.
“Well fought.”
With those words, I turned back toward my seat.
“…….”
“…….”
Silence flooded the arena.