The Assembly's First Legend
Movement arts and sword strikes belong to separate domains.
One swift of foot may strike feebly, and one slow of foot may strike ferociously; between the two, one could say, there is little correlation.
Looked at in the broadest sense, however, it is not quite so simple — for both are, in the end, martial arts honed by one and the same warrior.
That a man is profoundly strong usually means his movement arts are superb and his sword strikes fierce.
Past Namgung Tan, who had stood at the midpoint of the first test, the sword strikes of the late-stage masters began to gather real force.
Clang!
No one broke their blade anymore. Which is to say, every one of them now struck the Hundred-Refined Steel with subtleties of their own devising. This was the stage on which they proved why they had claimed the top ranks in the movement test.
Even so, none crumpled the Hundred-Refined Steel as Paeng Jin-hu had, and none sheared a piece from it as Namgung Tan had.
"Hak of the Dancheon Clan. Step forward."
"Yes, sir."
And so time flowed on, until at last came Dancheon Hak's turn.
Where Namgung Tan had been so keenly conscious of me, Dancheon Hak, absorbed in himself alone, squared off against the Hundred-Refined Steel.
Shring.
Inferior, perhaps, to Namgung Tan's — said to be the eighth sword of Cheon-gong — it was still a famed blade that only someone armed with hundreds of gold pieces and the right connections could ever hope to obtain, and it bore itself accordingly.
"Hoooo—"
The presence of the concentrating Dancheon Hak sharpened to a razor's edge.
At a mere twenty years of age, he wore the face of a fully realized Peak Realm master.
"Ha!"
Dancheon Hak's sword was loosed.
His sword was unlike those of the other late-stage masters. It was no cut employing the subtleties of Four Ounces Deflecting a Thousand Pounds, but a thrust that layered in the principles of swiftness and piercing.
The thrust is, to be sure, one of the surest ways to bring a sword's full worth into play — yet not one late-stage master had attempted it until now.
None had carried the audacity required to thrust at a block of Hundred-Refined Steel, square-cut and better than a foot thick.
But Dancheon Hak had chosen a road no one before him had walked — and at the very least, the moment laid bare his unshakable faith in his own arts.
And then—
Clee-eeng!
His gambit reaped a magnificent reward.
Dancheon Hak's sword had punched clean through a full foot of Hundred-Refined Steel.
The tip of his blade had suffered a little damage, so it could not be called flawless — but by the measure of this test, no one could deny that his was the finest result yet.
"Splendid."
Taecheong Jinin, praising a test-taker for the first time, proved that fact himself.
Dancheon Hak's brimmingly confident smile turned my way.
Unlike the twisted smiles he had worn until now, it was — oddly enough — an expression that stirred my own competitive fire.
"Worthy of you, Brother."
For the first time, I spoke those words in earnest rather than in spite.
Every late-stage master in the hall would be thinking the same thing.
That Dancheon Hak, with his unrivaled display of might, would bring the second test to its close. Having struck the steel with their own hands, they knew better than anyone how difficult it was to pierce it clean through.
But they would be wrong.
For remaining still was Yi Chun-baek — disciple of the Mysterious Gate Sect, the man who would one day be hailed as the King of Vagabonds — and remaining still was I.
"Vagabond Yi Chun-baek. Step forward."
Every eye in the hall converged on him.
Unlike the other Dragons and Phoenixes, introduced by nothing more than their clan and given names, he had been announced as a vagabond — and he was, moreover, the man who had claimed second place in the first test.
Yi Chun-baek stood before the Hundred-Refined Steel.
Fwip.
Without even a breath to gather himself, his sword was loosed.
Shk.
"……!"
A clean sound, as though a log had been neatly severed.
Yi Chun-baek's sword had sliced a corner from the Hundred-Refined Steel — a piece about the length of a finger joint.
"Oh ho."
Taecheong Jinin looked on with interest.
It was a method quite unlike that of the late-stage masters, who had struck at the heart of the steel.
The late-stage masters murmured among themselves.
Some marveled at it as a stroke of out-of-the-box thinking; others whispered, voices hushed, that it surely counted as foul play.
But the judgment belonged to the presider, Taecheong Jinin.
To Yi Chun-baek, who bowed briefly and withdrew, Taecheong Jinin offered neither praise nor blame.
"Finally — Myeong of the Dancheon Clan. Step forward."
At last. My turn.
I settled into my hand the sword won from Cheon-gong's secret grotto — the hilt of the Dancheon. The worn grip's familiar warmth eased the tension from my body.
It was Cheon-gong's final sword and his posthumous masterwork, named Dancheon — Sky-Cleaving — for the meaning that it would cut down even the blades of his own making.
If Cheon-gong's ambition held true, then this was a blade among blades: one that would sever even the eighth sword of Cheon-gong carried by that Namgung Tan fellow.
Shring.
As I drew the Dancheon Sword, a blade tinged with a curious red sheen revealed itself.
"A rusted sword, is it? How fitting for a bastard."
Namgung Tan sneered — but the moment Taecheong Jinin's gaze swung his way, he flinched and hastily sealed his mouth.
"Hoooo—"
As for the technique, my choice was settled: Dancheon Lightning Strike, from the first half of the Dancheon Sword Formula. This technique, which hews straight down from the high guard, is simple — and precisely because it is simple, there is nothing better for concentrating one's strength.
In truth, there was also the small fact that I, who had mastered only the first half of the Dancheon Sword Formula, had precious few other options to begin with.
The principle, as I had explained many times before, was Four Ounces Deflecting a Thousand Pounds.
No matter how keen the blade, pure brute strength could never cleave through a foot of Hundred-Refined Steel.
And the crowning touch was the Dancheon Sword itself — the posthumous work of Cheon-gong.
A king among swords, said to cut down even famed blades.
My concentration climbed.
Time slowed, and all the world melted away until only the Hundred-Refined Steel remained.
I knew, then, that a truly fine sword strike lives in the harmony of technique, principle, and blade.
"Hup!"
Shk.
A restrained sound, paired with a sensation of perfect cleanliness.
My sword cleaved through the air without the slightest check — slicing the Hundred-Refined Steel as one might slice tofu.
"……!"
A soundless astonishment ruled the hall. Even Taecheong Jinin could not keep the expression from his face.
Before me stood two pieces of Hundred-Refined Steel, their cut faces straight and smooth as a bronze mirror.
As I steadied my breathing, Namgung Tan's face entered my view. His mouth would not close. Enough that I worried his jaw might come unhinged.
Shring— click.
The soft sound of the Dancheon Sword sliding home into its sheath broke the silence of the hall.
"That is all."
That day, I forged the first legend in the history of the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
When the second test ended and a brief rest settled over the hall, the air around me changed.
No one had approached me or Yi Chun-baek before, and no one did now — yet something was different.
I could feel every late-stage master around us taking our measure.
The gazes of the Dragons, flicking toward me as if to envy and check a rival, were one thing; the gazes of the Phoenixes, stealing glance after glance at my face with reddening cheeks, were quite another.
If I had to choose, I would call the Phoenixes' gazes the more uncomfortable of the two.
That particular breed of gaze was utterly unfamiliar to me.
Of course, I did my best to feign serenity, as though none of it touched me.
Let it show that such things got under my skin, and wouldn't I look like a hopeless nobody?
"Myeong, you're strong, I see. Had I known you were this strong, I needn't have helped you back then."
Yi Chun-baek — the only soul in the hall whose gaze held no trace of jealousy — tossed the quip my way.
"In that case, first place would be yours, Brother Chun-baek."
"Puhaha!"
Perhaps he had not expected me to answer a joke with a joke; Yi Chun-baek laughed aloud. A broad-featured, thoroughly manly man — and yet when he laughed, he looked like a child.
"If we do well in the next test, it seems you and I will both walk away with the title of Dragon."
We had both posted fine results in the first two tests, so this was no idle boast.
And yet Yi Chun-baek shook his head, a bitter smile on his lips.
"I think this is as far as I go."
"……"
Something about that bitter smile of his kept me from speaking rashly.
I took a moment to choose my words, then opened my mouth.
"Brother Chun-baek. Won't you regret it?"
This was the coveted honor of Dragon and Phoenix, after all — no small thing, I would judge, to let slip from one's very grasp.
"I expect I will. But there is something I must keep."
"……I see."
At my answer, Yi Chun-baek nodded quietly.
Only now did I understand why a master of Yi Chun-baek's caliber had never won the title of Dragon or Phoenix.
Yi Chun-baek likely believed I knew nothing of it — but I did. It was surely bound up with the fact that he was a disciple of the Mysterious Gate Sect.
In truth, that was probably why he had remained all but nameless until the Great Righteous-Demonic War.
I found myself recalling the man I had been — before I obtained the Yakseon Heart Decision — chasing rumors high and low in my longing to become a disciple of the Mysterious Gate Sect.
It was an hour that bred many thoughts.
"Have you all rested well?"
A new figure had appeared.
I knew who he was at a glance — for he, too, was one of those who sat at the very summit of the Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures.
A man who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Singija, hailed as the finest mind in all the Jianghu and Murim.
The eccentric called Manbakja — named so because there was nothing in all the world's affairs he did not know — that was the man.
"I'll be taking charge of the third test myself. Manbakja's the name."
For the record, he ranked at the very top of the roster of eccentric masters — though in the sense of strange, I would say, rather than great.
If Cheon-gong had been a master artisan and a supreme hand with mechanism traps, then this man had defined himself in a decidedly different fashion.
"Allow me to introduce my inventions."
A crackpot who called himself by the outlandish word inventor, no less.
Clap, clap.
When Manbakja clapped his hands twice, two burly attendants came groaning out, hauling between them a sphere the size of a man's torso.
"This here is called the Internal Energy Measuring Sphere."
At his words, disbelief clouded every gaze in the hall — yet not a soul opened their mouth.
His signature inventions, after all, were thunder bombs and hidden weapons. Picking a quarrel with the man seemed unlikely to end well.
How, then, does one measure internal energy?
To measure a thing, one must first know its unit — and for that, a measure of background knowledge is required.
Martial artists customarily call the unit of internal energy the Jiazi.
That name has a history.
It is a tale from the era before martial arts had matured into a full system — the days when they were still being shaped by the life-nurturing arts of the immortals.
When man drew in the energy that pervaded Heaven and Earth, this triad — Heaven, Earth, and Man — was named the Three Talents, the very root of the martial path.
A nameless great master took the Three Talents as his foundation and devised heart methods, footwork, sword arts, saber arts, fist arts, and more — and this, one may say, was the prototype of all martial arts.
It is none other than the Three Talents arts we nowadays dismiss as street-corner martial arts.
Circulate your energy without pause for sixty years by the Three Talents Heart Method, and internal power roughly two finger-joints' worth accumulates in the dantian. This, by common convention, is called one Jiazi.
Because the energy of Heaven and Earth lies evenly distributed across the world, the Three Talents Heart Method — untainted by any technique or artifice — yielded much the same accumulation of qi no matter who practiced it. As a yardstick, nothing could have served better.
And among the martial artists who reached one Jiazi, those who attained enlightenment brought forth what is called sword qi — and such ones were hailed as Peak Realm masters.
Naturally, this is a legend well over a thousand years old, and it differs somewhat from the heart method systems of the present day. Who, in this age, would spend sixty years doing nothing but accumulating qi through the Three Talents Heart Method?
Even so, the Jiazi endures in Murim to this day as an equal standard of measure.
In any case, there are several ways to measure internal energy in Jiazi units.
By observing oneself through circulation, a martial artist can know his own internal power.
But this can never serve as a basis for comparison. How does one prove a thing that only oneself knows?
For the record: I, who had circulated the Dancheon Heart Art — the secret heart method of a great martial clan — with unfailing diligence, reached one Jiazi at the age of seventeen. The secret arts of great clans are not secret for nothing.
There is also an objective means of measuring internal energy.
Namely, for a supreme-grade master to pour his own true qi into another through the pulse gates and observe the other's body from within.
But this method harbors a danger of its own: the risk that the pathways of one's circulation, or the core formulas of one's heart art, might be read in the process.
Supreme martial arts are, by their very nature, transmitted only to the worthy. Even when the reading is performed by one officially certified by the Murim Alliance, few martial artists care to gamble their arts on another's eyes.
For that reason, the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly had always relied on the final method for its internal energy test.
Namely, the contest of internal power.
When two martial artists clasp hands and pit their internal power against one another, who holds the upper hand is not difficult to discern.
But this method, too, had its flaws.
Namely: even with a supreme-grade master standing as mediator, the contest could overheat, leaving the loser with wrenched meridians or a violently shaken core — a danger that had never once gone away.
Small wonder, when those doing the contending were hot-blooded late-stage masters in the full flush of their prime.
In any case, the internal energy test had always been the Assembly's sorest point — and into the middle of it, Manbakja had for the first time put forward a new device: the Internal Energy Measuring Sphere.
It was a method such as the world had never seen.
And I knew.
I knew that the Internal Energy Measuring Sphere Manbakja had built would, in time, win broad recognition from the famed masters of the Jianghu.
Be that as it may — leaving behind the Dragons and Phoenixes still murmuring over the unfamiliar device — Dancheon Hak came to me.
"This time, I will win."
I could not say what change had come over his heart, but the contempt that had once soaked his manner was gone. It felt, rather, like the way one faces a rival held in genuine regard.
"Best of luck to you."
So I answered him.
As if this time, at last, he would stake everything on victory, confidence was written plainly across Dancheon Hak's face.
Brother. This body of mine has taken the Empty Blue Stone Milk and the Vermilion Fruit.
I could not bring myself to tell him so.