The Harmony Realm and a Mother's Heart
Most martial clans keep a closed-door training cave. Ah — that may not be quite right.
Let me correct myself.
Most renowned martial clans and famous sects keep a closed-door training cave.
For a warrior who has reached a certain realm, growth comes not through the body but from within, which is why training that seals away the outside world and sinks one deep into the inner self so often proves its worth.
What else could drive a man to crawl into a cave when vast wilderness and immaculate training grounds lay open before him?
But then, the Yang Family Hall was a merchant guild, was it not?
The Hall employed plenty of martial artists, yet they were men who carried out missions, not men who stacked up cultivation. That was why the Hall paid them handsomely in gold — and why it had no reason to keep a closed-door training cave at all.
All the more so when the place in question was the residence of the family's second daughter, who had never learned the martial arts.
"Are you sure this will really be enough?"
"More than enough."
The room Yang Su-rin had given me sat in a corner of her residence.
It was her residence, granted — but there was nothing improper in it, no cause for concern over the separation of men and women.
This was, after all, the Yang Family Hall, the wealthiest house in all of Anhui. She was a lady of such standing that an entire grand hall belonged to her alone, and so spare rooms overflowed accordingly.
As for me, I would not be training at all — I would be falling into suspended animation — so rather than a training cave, a single bedroom served me fine.
"I'll be in your care for the next month."
A body that had completed the third stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision could ward off blades, needles, and the deadliest of poisons — but it could not ward off starvation. Her help would be essential.
For the sake of secrecy, I asked her to attend me personally rather than entrusting the duty to servants.
With my inner qi so abundant, a warrior's sturdy frame could hold its peak on a single meal a day, so I judged it would be no great burden for her.
"Don't worry. A merchant's credibility rests on keeping her promises."
With that, Yang Su-rin left without a backward glance.
She was no martial artist, but she had lived her whole life with a foot in the jianghu and the murim.
She knew perfectly well the common rule that one must never spy upon another's training.
Rustle.
I drew the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root from my breast.
Crunch.
Without hesitation, I chewed down the thick root and swallowed.
Compared to the Empty Blue Stone Milk, sweeter than sugar, or the Vermilion Fruit, which had put apples to shame, eating this was sheer torment.
Crunch, crunch.
But there was no leaving behind a treasure like this, so I chewed it thoroughly, with everything I had.
Then I lay down.
For the first time, instead of folding into the lotus position, I ran the Dancheon Heart Method through the reclining posture. Perhaps because my body had already entered Transcendent Peak, there was nothing difficult about it despite the first attempt.
And then I layered the Yakseon Heart Decision on top.
"Mmm..."
An irresistible sleep demon swept over me. Eyelids grown heavy as a thousand pounds slid shut on their own.
I dreamed.
Since I knew myself to be in suspended animation, "lucid dream" would be the proper term for it. And yet even knowing it was a dream, I could not move as I pleased — so perhaps it was no lucid dream after all.
I was meeting my mother, whose face I could not remember.
There, I was swinging a sword.
I had been left all alone.
There, I was swinging a sword.
I was training with Uncle Yeo-baek.
There, I was swinging a sword.
I was roaming the jianghu with Brother Chunbaek.
There, I was swinging a sword.
Before I knew it, I had become a peerless master who held the jianghu in his palm.
There, I was swinging a sword.
I was watching the Great War of Righteousness and Evil.
There, I was—
Perhaps because it was a dream.
I knew perfectly well that only a single month was passing, and yet I came back having lived through quite a long while — no, perhaps a very long while.
And when at last I opened my eyes—
"Mm."
I could feel it: I had touched the Harmony Realm.
"You've been through a great deal. And — thank you."
I offered the words to Yang Su-rin, who had kept watch at my side. Her care had known no lapse; despite a month of suspended animation, there was not the slightest disorder in my body.
"Try calling me 'Young Mistress.'"
Her expression was radiant. Her plan had come to pass exactly as she intended.
"That calls for congratulations."
I said it to her.
And I said it to myself.
A fortnight and a little more with Brother Chunbaek, and a little over a month in Yang Su-rin's residence.
Seven days or so still remained of the two months I had promised my father, Dancheon Gang — but my steps were already turned toward the Dancheon clan.
It cut a rather different figure from most rising stars fresh into the jianghu, who wander the Central Plains with romance in their hearts.
The man who had once roamed every corner of the jianghu — to lay the groundwork for fortuitous encounters, and to carry out his missions as a member of the Beggars' Gang — had been none other than Myeong-gae.
In truth, I had never carried much of the jianghu's romance to begin with.
I had achieved everything I set out to do on this journey, and I judged it better to return to the clan and prepare for the contest for heir than to wander the jianghu to no purpose.
I said "prepare," but in truth there was little left to prepare.
Closer to the mark: it was not that there was nothing I could do, but that there was no longer any need to do it.
The reason was simple. The realm called Harmony had leapt clean over every scrap of information and imagination I possessed.
Having entered it, I could see that all the plans I had drawn up in my Myeong-gae days as "preparation" for the contest were worthless.
'So this is the Harmony Realm...'
Until now, the Harmony Realm had been to me nothing more than a line of intelligence.
A realm where the spirit blossoms open and communes with all things under heaven and earth.
A realm where one begins to wield intent — the mark of a true supreme master.
A realm that grants the peerless weapon called the sword aura.
Intelligence saying that even in the Dancheon clan, a renowned martial family, only the clan head Dancheon Gang, the Escort Captain Bang Yeo-baek, and a handful of elders had barely set foot within it.
But having entered the Harmony Realm myself, I understood the truth of it.
A power that could shatter paltry preparations and secondhand knowledge in a single stroke. That was what the Harmony Realm was.
At last I understood, beyond any doubt, why the thing ranked first in the jianghu and the murim is neither information nor gold, but martial skill itself.
For Peak, Transcendent Peak, and the Harmony Realm travel on entirely different tracks.
Which is to say: only now did I grasp how completely my standing had changed.
Looking back, I think I had been afraid.
I had regressed, yes.
I had taken the Yakseon Heart Decision, yes.
I had even earned the epithet of Dragon and Phoenix.
And yet the seat of Young Patriarch of the Dancheon clan had still looked far away.
Illusions about what I did not have had taken on substance of their own and swelled out of all proportion.
But now was different. I had changed.
Just as essence, qi, and spirit had merged into one upon reaching the Harmony Realm, so had the knowledge that lived only in my head merged with what I now held in my hands. There was no mistaking it.
Now that I stood in the Harmony Realm, I knew: the seat of Young Patriarch of the Dancheon clan was mine for the taking, if I wished it.
That meant confidence and conviction had taken root — and that the anxiety was gone.
I would have what I wanted.
If my brother Dancheon Hak, like me, had not set foot in the Harmony Realm in the meantime, then this was an inevitability no one could refuse.
For Dancheon Hak to have already entered the Harmony Realm was impossible — which meant, in truth, the seat of Young Patriarch had been set aside for me from the start.
Before overwhelming capability, pedigree and politics alike are reduced to nothing.
"It's been a while."
I greeted the guard standing watch at the main gate of the Dancheon clan.
"Young Master! You've returned!"
These days even the household servants took my courteous manner of speech in stride, as a matter of course. That, too, was one of the changes these two years had wrought.
"We've been waiting for you, Young Master!"
And yet his bearing was a little different from before.
"Come in, come in!"
"Thank you."
It was the bearing of a child in the presence of a hero of the jianghu.
"I heard all about your travels!"
Thanks to him chattering without pause as he led me through the gates, I learned of something — a rumor that had shaken the whole of the jianghu and the murim.
A rising star who had cut down a spy of the Demonic Cult the moment he set foot in the jianghu.
A new star destined to light the future of the murim.
My epithet, it seemed, had changed without my knowledge — no longer the Dan Dragon, but the Dancheon Divine Dragon.
I could tell at once whose handiwork it was: Jao-gae, and the brothers of the Shanxi Beggars' Gang.
Two months on the road.
I had not merely reached the Harmony Realm.
Seven days remained until the contest for heir.
Inwardly, I had attained the Harmony Realm; outwardly, I had won the name of a new star.
Everything, one might say, was perfect.
The Elder Council of the Dancheon clan.
One of the three pillars upon which the renowned Dancheon Sword Clan stood.
If it differed from the councils of other great clans in any way, it was in this: not a single member of the Dancheon Elder Council bore the Dancheon name.
Under the clan's law of succession by the legitimate line, every son who lost the contest for heir was sent out of the family altogether — and so the Dancheon surname belonged to none but the clan head and his direct blood.
Thus the council was made up of one of two kinds of men.
Warriors of collateral blood who, like Bang Yeo-baek, carried no Dancheon name — or men who had served the clan for decades as retainers and been seated on the council in recognition of long service.
When a warrior who had given his whole life to the Dancheon clan passed his sixtieth year and withdrew from the front lines of the murim, the place that received his old bones was the Elder Council.
To that Elder Council, the clan's mistress, Baek Yeo-hae, came in secret.
"Will it truly be all right?"
She had come, one might say, to lay her own unease to rest.
"Hoh. Madam, what is there to be so anxious about?"
Cheon Il-san, an elder of the Dancheon clan, received her words in a voice soft as silk.
The two had long been comrades in the same boat — better than ten years in it now — and though their stations were worlds apart, neither felt the slightest discomfort in the other's company.
"Naturally, it's the contest for Young Patriarch. Once the Clan Head returns in seven days, the contest begins, doesn't it?"
The clan head, Dancheon Gang, was away from home at present. Baek Yeo-hae took it that he had gone to arrange matters for the succession — for the place he had headed was the Murim Alliance.
"No doubt."
Nor was it merely her guess. Most everyone had already surmised that the contest would soon begin — for tradition, in the end, is forged through repetition and predictability.
"Madam, young master Hak has already attained Transcendent Peak. At twenty-two, no less — is that not a wondrous blessing upon the clan?"
"Of course it is. Whose son do you think he is?"
At the praise of her son, satisfaction bloomed across Baek Yeo-hae's face.
It would be too easy to dismiss as doting, for the realm of Transcendent Peak at twenty-two was truly a momentous thing.
Had even Dancheon Gang, the pinnacle of the clan, not reached that realm only at thirty?
"Then what weighs on you so?"
Worry clouded Baek Yeo-hae's face once more.
"Dancheon Myeong. That child makes me uneasy."
"And might I ask why?"
Baek Yeo-hae let out a long breath and went on.
"I know that child is a genius. Perhaps more of one than Hak."
It was a confession she had spoken to no one.
Within the clan, no one disliked Dancheon Myeong more than Baek Yeo-hae did — and yet no one had watched him more closely, either.
She had not grown wary of him because he was a bastard entered into her own register.
It was because — by chance, or perhaps by inevitability — she had learned, to her cost, that the boy was a genius.
Genius enough, in a clan whose law was succession by the legitimate line, to threaten her own son's place.
"Even so, I will make Hak the clan head. No — the clan headship was Hak's from the very beginning."
With a resolute look, Baek Yeo-hae pressed her lips shut.
It was a mother's heart.