The Unseen War
If you asked me privately, I would say that sincerity is a dangerous thing. What I mean is that a proper measure of pretense, of well-intentioned lies, and of well-timed silence is the very grease that keeps the world of the Jianghu murim running smooth.
Human beings are, by nature, creatures incapable of perfection, and sincerity has a way of forcing a man to stare that imperfection full in the face. That is why, in all my dealings with Mugeuk Jinin, I had always kept a portion of my sincerity tucked away. Put simply, I had no wish to shatter the goodwill he showed me, nor the amicable bond I might yet build with him. What the world calls social graces, in other words.
Tempered as I had been by the brutal communal life I shared with the beggar bastards of the Beggars' Gang, social navigation of this degree was as easy as turning over my palm. Naturally, I felt no guilt over it. Proper social conduct could hardly be called deceiving one's fellow man, could it?
But Mugeuk Jinin, it seemed, had been a little different. Even I could feel that he had always approached me with goodwill born of genuine sincerity — with true favor, one might say. If I, who prided myself on an exceptional eye, had failed to notice even that much, I might as well have eaten all my beggar's gruel for nothing. It was high time I simply admitted it: Mugeuk Jinin was a good man, and he cherished me with real care.
I had also come to suspect that he possessed a magnanimity the likes of me could never hope to rival. And in truth, it was not only him. Every Taoist I had met at Wudang seemed cut from the same cloth.
Cheon-am Jinin, head of the Martial Scripture Pavilion, who had awakened to his own wrongdoing and entered penance of his own accord. Jinsu Jinin, who had shielded such a man with unfeigned sincerity. Mu-dam Jinin, who, despite being my peer, had watched me — standing far beyond his reach — with eyes of pure reverence, without a trace of envy or jealousy.
Cheon-su Jinin, head of the Disciplinary Pavilion, so scrupulous in separating public duty from private feeling that he had offered a frank apology the moment my innocence came to light. And even the Sword Emperor, Mugeuk Jinin, who had showered me with a benevolence whose source I never fathomed.
Perhaps it was precisely such conduct that reached all the way to the Dao Wudang pursued. I found myself thinking it would be right to break the prejudice I had long carried against the Nine Sects and draw a little closer to them.
Let me become a little more honest.
They say that repaying what one has received is both the duty and the decency of human life. I had learned my sense of shame over bowls of begged gruel, and shame was precisely the value I could not bring myself to turn away from. Before such men, then, it would be right to offer sincerity rather than a social performance steeped in pretense. It helped, too, that I had now become an honorary disciple of Wudang under the name Mubong.
"Venerable Sword Emperor."
"Why do you call?"
"I have a question to ask."
"Then speak."
Whether he had read the quiet turmoil hidden in my heart I could not say, but the Sword Emperor answered with ready grace, an air of transcendence resting upon him. His was a bearing that lacked nothing the word sage demanded.
"If the Great War of Righteousness and Evil should break out — would you take the front line?"
"Hmm?"
Whether my abrupt question had caught him off guard, the ever-inscrutable Mugeuk Jinin wore a subtle expression for the first time. He seemed, if anything, a little flustered.
Watching that face of his, what I felt was not exhilaration but tension. I could not have explained it precisely, but I had the feeling that his answer, given here and now, would settle anew what he and I were to each other.
"Could you... give me an answer?"
In truth, it was not so absurd a question as all that. I have said before that I did not like the transcendent elders of the Nine Sects. That stretch of time has since vanished along the line my regression rewound, but I remembered, intact, the conduct those elders had displayed during the horrors of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil.
I knew that the pillars of the Nine Sects' elder ranks and the warriors of the first, second, and third generations had prowled the war's battlefields at will. And I knew just as well that nowhere on those battlefields could the Nine Sects' transcendent elders be found. It was a thing I could never stop lamenting. Why had the elders who boasted the supreme martial arts not come to the rescue of the Jianghu's countless souls? With time, and perhaps inevitably, that lament had curdled into resentment and fury toward them.
Mugeuk Jinin deliberated for a long while before he gave me his answer.
"Perhaps... I could not."
"Ah..."
The answer was disappointing enough that an involuntary sigh slipped out of me.
"Why?"
Even so, I asked again because I had now shed my prejudice and was looking at Mugeuk Jinin, whole and unfiltered — no longer judging from scraps of information, but seeing him through my own experience and my own feelings. If my eye was not mistaken, Mugeuk Jinin and the elders of Wudang were not men who would ever turn their faces from the world's turmoil. The me of now, I had to admit, saw from a perspective quite different from Myeong-gae's.
"Myeong."
"Yes."
Mugeuk Jinin called my name in the voice of a kindly old man.
"This Heart Sword of mine that you witnessed — how did it seem to you?"
It was not a deflection; that much I knew — merely the manner of speech peculiar to an old Taoist. And at the end of this exchange, perhaps, waited the answer I had been wanting. I would have to ponder honestly before I replied. I recalled the Sword Emperor's Heart Sword. I could only call it a realm I had never dared to imagine. The artistry of shaping spiritual nature with nothing more than a single human's power, and of forging the image of a sword from it, had without question touched the very extreme of existence.
"It seemed to me a fragment of a great realm I have yet to reach."
I gave my impression plainly, exactly as I had felt it.
"Wrong."
...
In principle, a question after another's honest opinion ought to admit no right answer at all. And yet I had to lend my ear to Mugeuk Jinin's categorical verdict — because that single word, wrong, sounded less like a denial of my answer than a denial of the realm he himself had attained.
"My Heart Sword cannot reach greatness. It bears the image, but it lacks the substance."
It was like, and yet unlike, the teaching the Sword Emperor had once given me — that Yi, righteous intent, is straight but has no image. I understood what he meant, and at the same time I did not understand it at all.
"Then grant me your teaching."
I knew how precious a thing it was, when there was something one did not know, to have a being from whom one could beg instruction. I knew this well, for I was Yakseon's successor.
"In the Jianghu murim, the Heart Sword is known as a realm second only to Peak Perfection. A true Heart Sword must give rise to its image in the very instant intent is formed, and that image must be realized as substance. Will and severance in a single breath — it is, quite literally, the extreme of extremes of the martial arts."
Even as he spoke, the Heart Sword took on its image before the Sword Emperor. I could tell how deeply practiced he was in this art. Hwoooong— as if answering his will, the Heart Sword swept down and clove through the Sword Emperor's own arm. And nothing happened.
"And yet, with this Heart Sword, I cannot cut a single thing."
"Do you mean to say it is lacking?"
"Perhaps it is."
Which only deepened my confusion.
"Is filling what is lacking not the very purpose of training and enlightenment?"
The Sword Emperor shook his head.
"It is not a matter of training or enlightenment. My training is not what falls short — it is that I have reached no farther than the realm of the Half-Immortal. This Heart Sword, which has achieved only half, is proof of it; and that I have failed to ascend to immortality, stopping short at Youthful Reversion, is proof as well. I am, in plain terms, only half of what I ought to be."
"Hmm."
On the surface of it, I did not understand. The Sword Emperor calling himself a Half-Immortal I could accept — a man who had achieved Youthful Reversion and wielded spiritual nature was closer to an immortal than to a man. What I could not understand was his dismissiveness toward that half-immortal realm, for I knew his temperament was not so bleak as that. If any part of it made sense, it was because he had long since mastered the Hyeoncheon Jingyeol through and through. My guess was that even within the Hyeoncheon Jingyeol, Sword Emperor Mugeuk Jinin had failed to find his answer.
"Behold."
As if to dissolve my doubt, the Sword Emperor loosened the front of his Taoist robe.
...!
Carved just above Mugeuk Jinin's heart was a scar of dark crimson. Look at it however I might, it was a scar no more than three days old. Its shape was vivid enough that I knew it for the print of a palm. The mark felt so gruesomely alive because of the stark demonic qi that clung to it, soaked into its every line. Mugeuk Jinin offered no explanation whatsoever; he simply closed his robe again. But I could identify the thing beyond all doubt — for I had felt it once before, the presence of a death that could not be resisted, and I saw that same presence in the Sword Emperor's scar.
"I cannot stand at the front of the Great War of Righteousness and Evil."
Mugeuk Jinin said it flatly, as though reciting a mandate laid upon him.
"The Heavenly Demon. That is the reason that Half-God must never set foot at the war's front."
"Hmm."
Only then did I grasp the flaw in my question. I had framed it as "if the Great War should break out," but for Mugeuk Jinin, the Great War was already raging, this very moment. And that was why he could not stand at its front. In the hidden heart of the Jianghu murim, or at its very summit — in places no one knew of, waging battles no one would ever credit — the Nine Sects' transcendent elders had long since been locked in fierce struggle with the Heavenly Demon.
"...I'm sorry."
"Sorry? For what?"
I had no answer for his counter-question. I understood only how narrow my world had been, and how badly I had misjudged. I had not been fighting alone. The road I meant to walk, the Nine Sects' transcendent elders had been walking all along — and only now did I know it.
"You are the benefactor of Wudang."
I thought of the elders of Wudang clasping my hand, offering thanks again and again for finding Sambong Jinin's legacy. But only now did I understand the truth of it. They — they were the true benefactors of the Jianghu murim.
Mugeuk Jinin had called himself a Half-Immortal, and lacking; the Heavenly Demon Seol Cheon-sang was a Half-God, and dangerous. I sensed that the assessment was not merely a matter of the difference between immortal and god.
"In truth, immortal and god must be judged equals in standing. The trouble is that I have, at long last, only now reached the half — while the Heavenly Demon has just now climbed to it."
"Ah."
For the first time in a long while, I felt I had understood Mugeuk Jinin's words in full. Which was to say...
"Is this a matter of positive thinking?"
Having lived the life of a Beggars' Gang vagrant, I knew. Granted, I had learned the very essence of begging straight from Chwipung-gae, but the ordinary beggar of the Gang learns his way of thinking first.
[The begging bowl is only half filled.]
[The begging bowl is half filled.]
The same result — but the happy beggar, so the saying went, was the latter. Such is the weight of perspective. As if he followed me, Mugeuk Jinin smiled faintly.
"You are not wrong — but the outcome is not so light a thing."
With those words, Mugeuk Jinin opened his mouth no further.
...
I do not know the full measure of Mugeuk Jinin's power — he stands on a realm far above mine. But... I do know that his destination is the same as mine.
Peak Perfection. The legendary realm known also as the Realm of Life and Death, the Realm of Divine Immortals, the Transcendent Realm, the Realm of the Ascended. It could not be dismissed as mere legend, for history held living proof of it. The Hyeoncheon Jingyeol that Sambong Jinin left behind as his legacy, and the Yakseon Heart Decision alike — were they not both martial arts standing as testimony that Peak Perfection was real? Though I had no intention of learning the Hyeoncheon Jingyeol, I would reach Peak Perfection through the Yakseon Heart Decision. To break the Heavenly Demon — already a Half-God, and gazing beyond — there was no other road.
My guess was that Mugeuk Jinin believed he would never ascend to immortality, and that the Heavenly Demon would soon touch godhood. But I was different. I had taken the Beggars' Gang's Intoxicated Dog Pill, and after it, Wudang's Supreme Clarity Elixir. I judged that I was now sailing fair winds on the voyage toward Peak Perfection.
"Accomplish the Sixth Stage, Pyeongcheonha, and thou shalt naturally arrive at Peak Perfection."
Those were words the Pill Immortal himself had flung out like a boast, so they could not possibly be wrong.
"I will teach you."
"Hmm?"
"Please wait just four years."
"That would be no bad thing."
Had it not always been said that a student surpassing his master is a teacher's greatest joy? Mugeuk Jinin smiled, looking thoroughly satisfied.