The Whole-Body Strike
Chunbaek hyung's sect was a mysterious one.
When I asked cautiously, he told me it had no name.
"What need has a place passed down from one master to a single disciple for a name? For now it is called the Jaseong Sect; the next generation, it will be the Chunbaek Sect."
Lee Ja-seong's answer, sounding for all the world like a man more detached from worldly desire than the Daoists themselves, left a deep impression on me.
Nor were his words mere pretense, for his thatched hut was plain to the point of austerity. It differed hardly at all from the hermitage of Sword Emperor Mugeuk Jinin at the edge of Nogunam, so much so that one could not have said whether this place belonged to the mundane world or to retreat from it.
And yet the reason I felt such peace here might simply be that the warmth the two men held for each other filled the room from wall to wall.
"Master."
"What is it?"
At Lee Ja-seong's reply, Chunbaek hyung drew out what he had tucked away in his breast and handed it over.
"What is this?"
"It is a herb called the Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid."
"And why bring it to me?"
"I picked it up on the way here."
"I see."
"Mm."
Listening to their exchange, I swallowed a dry gulp without meaning to. The Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid did grow wild in nature, so "picked it up on the road" was not strictly a lie, but what appalled me was the sight of these two treating a Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid as a common weed.
"What am I to do with it?"
"Hmm."
Chunbaek hyung pondered the question for a moment before answering.
"Shall I blanch it and season it as a wild green?"
"It looks fresh enough. That might not be a bad idea either."
......
Hearing the dialogue of these ignorant, benighted souls of the Mysterious Sect, I found myself struck dumb. But struck dumb was precisely what I could not afford to be. The atrocity of a Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid eaten as a seasoned vegetable was a tragedy to be prevented at all costs.
"Hand that here."
"Hm?"
All but snatching it from them, I closed my hand around the orchid.
"I will refine it properly, Master. All you need do is take it."
"Oh? Much obliged."
I was not so erudite in the medicinal arts as Uisaeng-gae, but I knew at least that I was better at this than those two. Besides, the Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid was hardly a perilous elixir to begin with, and Lee Ja-seong's martial attainment was formidable enough that even my clumsy work would do no harm.
"I will refine it this evening and bring it to you tomorrow morning."
"Heh heh. Let it be so. Chunbaek has chosen his friend well."
"Haha. I think so as well."
Leaving behind the two men whose very laughter sounded alike, I had barely saved the orchid's life when a voice called from outside.
"Is Brother Yi in?"
A husky voice drifted in from beyond the door. It was a voice I had heard before.
Creeeak—
The hut was, from the start, the kind of place where the moment the door opened, the outside lay plainly in view, so I could confirm the visitor at a glance.
"Jang, you rascal. What brings you here?"
It was the man I had met at the edge of the village, the one Chunbaek had introduced as Brother Jang. Seeing that face again after sundown, I could only conclude that his countenance was truly no different from a street thug's.
Hm.
No, that was not quite right. Had I not, after all, once laid eyes on five thousand thugs alongside Gang Pae hyung? By that measure, Brother Jang deserved to be called a thug of the highest order, one who could stand at the head of them all.
"Pahahaha!"
Laughing bright and clear in defiance of his own face, Brother Jang thrust aloft the thing he had brought.
"That rascal Chunbaek is back after so long, so I cut ten catties of my own meat and brought it."
Come to think of it, Brother Jang was the village butcher. Like some green recruit proud of his first weapon, the enormous cleaver was still at his side.
"You fool, how are we meant to eat that, blood dripping off it, hauled straight here just as you carried it?"
Just then, another master of the same striking-faced school planted himself squarely beside Brother Jang the butcher. That one, without a doubt, was Brother Mok of the smithy.
"Kwahahaha! Which is exactly why I came along."
In his hands was not a person-sized greatblade but a person-sized brazier. His bearing was so perfectly serene that I began to suspect Brother Mok simply enjoyed hauling person-sized objects around.
"I was just growing hungry. Well timed."
A brazier that size was never going to fit inside the modest hut, so we resolved to roast the meat in the yard.
"Kwahahaha! I have a fair hand at butchering too, mind you, but when it comes to cooking, I am the finest in the gangho."
"As expected of Brother Jang."
And the boast proved no lie; the meat, cooked to perfection, was truly delicious. It would have been no exaggeration to call it the finest delicacy of both my lives, Myeong-gae's and Dancheon Myeong's alike.
Watching me as I ate, Brother Mok spoke up.
"You're in one piece, I see?"
"Pardon?"
"Never mind."
Leaving that baffling remark behind, yet another voice rang out.
"You oblivious rascals, gorging on good food and leaving me out again?"
It was the village chief, trudging closer with a pipe a full arm's length clamped between his teeth.
"Chief, you're here."
"I knew these unobservant fools would bring nothing but meat, so I brought this along myself."
"Oh."
What hung from the chief's hand was unmistakably top-shelf Jiannanchun liquor, a rare treasure not easily come by in country such as this. My throat had been drying at just that moment, so I could only call it perfect timing.
The chief naturally joined our table and passed the drink to me.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
"Wuhahaha! You're Chunbaek's friend, I hear? You have it rough, my boy."
"Not at all."
The chief studied me for a moment, then said:
"You're in one piece, I see?"
"Hm?"
"Now, none of that useless talk."
Lee Ja-seong hastily sealed the chief's mouth.
......
Perhaps Chunbaek hyung's lack of friends had owed not to the Mysterious Sect after all, but to some other cause entirely. In any case, one thing had become perfectly clear.
"Eat up, lad. Enjoy it."
"Thank you. I will."
Sinhaenggol, hidden retreat of the Mysterious Sect. I knew now that this place, too, was a corner of the world where people lived with warmth in their hearts. Which meant the judgment that had brought me here, seeking Chunbaek hyung's sect, had not been wrong, and that I had best make every preparation accordingly.
Do you know where martial artists most love to train?
Kwakwakwakwa—
The answer is the waterfall. And if that waterfall happens to pour a vast volume of water from the crown of a heaven-blocking cliff, then it may be called the finest training ground of all. Not only reclusive hermit-masters, but a good number of masters of ascension choose the waterfall for their training.
For the record, my own memories of waterfalls could not be entirely fond. The reason being that for the Beggars' Gang, the waterfall was a place of both love and resentment.
Once you became a Three-Knot beggar, all manner of tasks came your way, but the most common by far was finding people. When it came to tracking down those whose whereabouts had vanished, no organization in the world rivaled the Beggars' Gang.
"Have you located the Heavenly Swordsman?"
"Yes, sir. Barely."
"Where on earth was the man hiding all this time?"
"Under a waterfall, they say."
"Aigoo."
"Why the sigh, sir?"
"Because every poseur in the world crawls under a waterfall, and we are the ones who suffer for it. Is that not so?"
"First sensible thing I've heard from you in a while."
Whack!
"Argh!"
My begging bowl cracked across the One-Knot beggar's skull.
"What was that for, sir?"
"What? 'First sensible thing'? 'Sensible'?"
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Right, right. You spoke the truth, so it is only proper that I teach you what it means to be struck for speaking it."
In any case, my complaint had not been mere grumbling. The reason was that waterfalls, as a rule, lay buried deep in remote mountains and secluded valleys. Hard to find, and harder still to reach.
"Sir Myeong-gae."
"Now what?"
"A request has come in."
"What is it this time?"
"They ask us to find Elder Dose again."
"The old man's gone and vanished again, has he?"
"Yes, sir."
Requests to find Elder Dose paid generously, so I rose to my feet.
"Let's move."
"Where to, sir?"
"First, we turn over every waterfall in Hebei."
"Aigoo."
"Quit whining and follow."
"Yessir."
The waterfall. It was, in the truest sense, a name that meant love and hate together. I had always judged those who trained beneath waterfalls to be fools pickled in vanity, but the time had come to revise that opinion slightly. What I had realized was that so many masters did not crawl into the waterfalls of remote mountains merely to strike a mysterious pose.
The true reason to take the waterfall as one's training ground, I now saw, lay in practicality. The waterfall is one of the very few places where a person can face the majesty of nature at any hour, day after day. And nature, above all the things men call disasters, lies beyond the reach of human power. No one can summon a storm, a flood, a tidal wave, an earthquake, a landslide, or a lightning strike to meet him whenever he wills it.
And so the next best thing men settled upon was the waterfall. It possessed a power as overwhelming as any disaster, yet was not so savage as to be beyond all control, and it could be faced at any time one pleased. That martial artists in pursuit of the path of ascension gathered before waterfalls was, seen one way, simply inevitable. In the martial arts, nature itself is the wellspring of inspiration.
—Any fool who crawls beneath a waterfall is, without question, a poseur drunk on his own swagger!
Kwakwakwakwa—
Drowning out Myeong-gae's indignant voice in the majestic roar of the falling water, I gave myself over to training. When noise reaches its extreme, it becomes silence. That is no grand enlightenment; it is a truth any ordinary soul could grasp after only a quarter of an hour beside a waterfall.
Borrowing the waterfall's power, I erased my hearing; closing my eyes, I erased my sight. With the two mightiest of the five senses sealed away, at last my undiluted self began to come into view. Taking the beat of my own heart for a guidepost, I sank into my depths, and deeper still.
Yes. For tasting, however indirectly, the State of No-Self, a realm that even masters of ascension cannot enter unless their cultivation carries them there, the waterfall was surely the finest of teachers. Now I began to understand, a little, why so many masters had once buried themselves beneath falling water.
My mind, drawing near to no-self, began of its own accord to replay my conversation with Lee Ja-seong.
"What do you think is the most difficult attack in the world to face?"
It was the question Lee Ja-seong had asked once we finished reviewing our sparring match.
"Hmm......"
There are, roughly speaking, two cases in which a man cannot answer a question. One is when there is no answer, or he does not know it. The other is when there are far too many answers. The reason my mouth had sealed itself shut that day was, unmistakably, the latter.
Swift, strong, heavy, unpredictable, elusive, and on and on. Among the countless subtleties of the martial arts that filled the gangho, not one of them was easy to turn aside.
As though he had read the shape of my thoughts, Lee Ja-seong smiled kindly and offered a way out.
"It is a question without an answer, so you may answer as you please."
Only then could I seize a thread of an answer.
"A fast attack can be met by using movement arts to open the distance, and a strong attack can simply be evaded. So I would say the unpredictable attack is the most troublesome of all."
It was the best answer I had.
"I see."
Having declared from the outset that there was no answer, Lee Ja-seong did not judge mine right or wrong. He simply told me his own.
"In my case, the most difficult attack to face is the one you see coming and still cannot block."
"Hm."
It was a somewhat hollow answer, and yet perhaps he was right. The intuition of a master of ascension entering a life-and-death struggle is no different from foresight. The senses of a martial artist who has reached the Realm of Harmony encompass all things, and so it is safe to say that such a man is almost never struck without knowing it.
Truthfully, I too had answered "unpredictable attack" only upon the unspoken premise of "if one must split hairs," and even that unpredictability is, in the vast majority of cases, gathered up by the senses and turned aside. Was it not so?
"Then what attack could there be that one knows of and still cannot block?"
Perhaps the riddle exchange with Mugeuk Jinin had been easier after all.
Kwakwakwakwa—
Leaving behind the sounds of the world the waterfall had washed away, Lee Ja-seong's voice echoed up from within me.
"In truth, there is no answer. For one man, the answer may be a crushing blow powerful enough to shatter his opponent's guard outright. For another, a swift sword that slips past awareness itself. For yet another, an unpredictable attack that leaves even sense and prediction far, far behind."
Though Lee Ja-seong said there was no answer, I could not help feeling that he carried one after all. Call it a martial artist's intuition. The reason I could stake my own conviction on something as uncertain as intuition was that I, too, was a martial artist walking a lofty realm.
"I have an answer of my own. It is the attack that carries a man's whole body and soul. Call it, if you will, the Whole-Body Strike."
The Whole-Body Strike. Hidden within that all-too-obvious term lay the very answer I had never been able to find.