The Road to Concordance
A year had passed.
It had been time enough to settle fully into my place within the clan, time enough to hone myself now that I had ascended to the Harmony Realm, and time enough to temper my elder brother, Dancheon Hak, as well. You might call it the year in which Dancheon Myeong, the twenty-one-year-old second son of the Dancheon Clan, went out and lived in the world, standing in for Myeong-gae, the man who at twenty had turned his back on his family and thrown himself into the Beggars' Gang.
A quiet evening, the day's training wrapped up. I sat in my quarters, resting at my ease. My rooms carried a very different air from the desolation of old.
"I thought you might need these, so I brought them."
"All of this, Mother?"
"If you have no use for them, I'll have it all taken back."
"I have use for it."
"...I'm glad to hear it."
"Thank you, Mother."
"I was only repaying a debt. Think nothing of it."
That was thanks to Baek Yeo-hae, who had filled my quarters with meticulous care even while keeping her tone brusque. Whether it was because of what happened that day, or because word had reached her that I had withdrawn from the contest for the Young Patriarch's seat, I could not say, but she was a very different woman from the Baek Yeo-hae I had known. If I had to put it into words, she was no longer Baek Yeo-hae the woman. She was Baek Yeo-hae the mother.
"I will put them to good use."
"...See that you do."
It was not for lack of money that my quarters had once stood so bare. And yet I could not deny how fond I had grown of this place now that its bareness was gone. Just as succeeding Uncle Yeobaek had become my place within the clan, these rooms, too, had become a place where I belonged.
"It's just about time..."
A year had passed since I entered the Fourth Stage. It meant I had fully adapted to the new epoch that was the Harmony Realm, and that my preparation for the Fifth Stage was complete. In truth, I had never delayed my entry into the Fifth Stage on purpose. The simple fact was that, just as with the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root, the elixir required for the Fifth Stage had only now appeared in the jianghu.
My gaze drifted to a corner of the darkened ceiling.
"You've come."
I spoke toward that corner. No, I had not lost my mind.
"Heh heh. You noticed me, did you?"
The darkness melted away, and Ma Sok of the Soul-Chasing Life-Taking revealed himself. Since I had summoned him, it could hardly be called an intrusion, even if he had climbed the Dancheon Clan's walls uninvited.
"Goodness, I won't be able to keep this up much longer. Do you know how many times I nearly got caught on the way here...?"
Ma Sok was joking. It was hardly groundless talk, though; for nearly a year now, any observer would have judged that the Dancheon Clan's level was climbing at a steep rate.
"Next time, I'll come to you."
Ties to Hao Gate demanded caution at all times, so that seemed the better arrangement.
"Did you secure the information I asked for?"
This was why Ma Sok had come. I had requested Hao Gate's help in tracking down the elixir I needed to enter the Fifth Stage.
"The Fifth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision, this Dao has named Concordance."
Concordance. A familiar name. Had it not been said that in the Amplification of the Fourth Stage, upon reaching the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, one achieved the concordance of Essence, Qi, and Spirit? This Concordance was that very concordance. Naturally, when I had first pored over the Yakseon Heart Decision, I had not understood why a concordance already achieved in the Fourth Stage was being emphasized anew at the Fifth.
"Fated One, what do you believe true Concordance to be?"
One thing was certain: there was a strangeness to Yakseon's thinking that no ordinary man could follow. Where I merely gathered information and analyzed it, Yakseon was one who pursued the essence of things until he awakened to them. In plain terms, it meant I had not the faintest idea what that true Concordance was. Fortunately, kind Yakseon had deigned to hand an answer down to us ignorant mortals.
"In truth, to speak of the 'concordance' of Essence, Qi, and Spirit is a mistaken expression. Essence, Qi, and Spirit do not stand in opposition; they exist along a single continuum. It is more correct to say they are made One than that they are brought into concordance."
Perhaps this was why the Dao-devoted orthodox sects so often produced martial artists of transcendent height. While others buried themselves in ever more efficient cuts, they pondered principle and reason. The key to tearing down the wall and stepping into a new realm came from the expansion of the spirit, from contemplation of the ten thousand things.
"Concordance means that opposing things come to fit one another. The order of the world is rooted in the unity of opposites, and so Concordance is the very gateway by which one advances toward a new horizon. If Unity develops a thing to its utmost limit, then Concordance is the road that breaks through that limit and opens a new horizon beyond."
"And so this Dao agonized for long years over where the root of opposition lay. At last I reached a firm conclusion: yin and yang, I judged, were the answer. That even good and evil are no more than offshoots of yin and yang, that was this Dao's enlightenment. All advancement, in the end, is rooted in the foundation."
"When yin and yang are made One, that is Taiji. When yin and yang are brought into concordance, that is Wuji. It is my hope that you, Fated One, will set your aim through the Fifth Stage upon drawing near to Wuji."
Taiji was no mistaken road either, he said, but the road this Dao had pursued was, in the end, Wuji.
Wuji. The summit of the new epoch, the thing every martial artist yearned for. It was the stage at which a martial artist whose spirit had flowered through communion with all creation finally gave form to his will. To speak of being Number One Under Heaven while ignoring the matter of will, was that not absurd? The Yakseon Heart Decision ran on a different track from ordinary martial arts, yet in the end it resembled them all the same; one might call it proof that all streams return to the same sea.
What deserved attention here was that Yakseon had spoken of Wuji at the Fifth Stage, the very Wuji the jianghu ordinarily held up as its summit. And since he had clearly spoken of a Sixth Stage as well, the claim that mastering the Yakseon Heart Decision in full would make one Number One Under Heaven was no empty boast. Yakseon had spoken of what lay beyond the end of the martial arts as the murim knew them.
In any case, when the concordance of yin and yang was added to the unified Essence, Qi, and Spirit, the five faculties fell into harmony, and that in turn destined the five energies to circulate of their own accord. It was the mechanism by which the Five Energies Converged at the Origin, the supreme realm so named in the jianghu, came about naturally. If the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown achieved the flowering of the spirit, then the Five Energies Converged at the Origin strengthened that spirit and marked the realm where one began to wield one's will. It stood comparable to the threshold of the Profound Realm, beyond a fully ripened Harmony Realm.
The Profound Realm. It meant setting foot in a realm on par with the Ten Great Masters Under Heaven, the undisputed pinnacle of the murim. It meant, at last, standing shoulder to shoulder with Yakseon, who had been a teacher to me. A realm one could call supreme, and I had no intention of being satisfied there. Was it not the way of a truly fine disciple to surpass his master, the blue outshining the indigo it was drawn from? The grace Yakseon had given me was too great; it was a duty I could never turn away from.
"This Dao has rambled long enough. Let me cut the digression short and come to the point."
"To enter the Fifth Stage, you must take in an elixir symbolizing yin and an elixir symbolizing yang at the same time, and bring them into concordance with yourself. But heed this one caution: seek the elixir of ultimate yin first. Treasures exist in the murim that can seal away extreme yin qi, but no treasure exists that can seal and preserve extreme yang qi. Secure and preserve the elixir of ultimate yin, then go to where the elixir of ultimate yang lies and take them both in a single stroke. That, I tell you, is the only way."
Yakseon's earnest explanation, long digressions behind it, had finally arrived at its conclusion.
"The closer an elixir lies to ultimate yin, or to ultimate yang, the greater its potency. You have built a vast foundation; it is only right that you raise a vast universe upon it. This Dao believes you will find elixirs worthy of that expanse."
"Among the elixirs of ultimate yin, the one this Dao recommends above all others is the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. This Dao, whose years fell short, had to make do with the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Spirit Herb. But I hope that the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng finds its way to you, Fated One."
As for the elixir of ultimate yang... By the time the teachings reached the Fifth Stage, I realized, Yakseon's explanations had grown truly grand in scale. Perhaps he, too, felt a tender fondness for the successor who had followed him this far. That was how it seemed to me.
"How on earth did you know the North Sea Ice Palace's delegation was coming to the Murim Alliance?"
Ma Sok asked with undisguised curiosity in his eyes. He looked remarkably like Yeo Wol in those moments, I thought. Three years of shared history, and still he had never caught so much as a glimpse of my secrets. I understood the wellspring of his curiosity, but it was not something I could ever share.
I answered only with a faint smile.
"Yes, I know. It's a secret, of course."
Fortunately, he seemed by now to know the man called Dancheon Myeong well enough. That he wondered yet never pried spoke of his respect for me as well. Exactly the right distance, exactly the right relationship, I would call it. I brushed away a vague twinge of guilt and raised the matter at hand.
"So, did you get it?"
What I had asked of Hao Gate was not merely whether the North Sea Ice Palace's delegation existed. I had asked for the delegation's exact route of travel. I knew in broad strokes that the North Sea Ice Palace would send a delegation to the Murim Alliance this year, but their precise path was another matter entirely.
"Whew. The powers beyond the frontier are a closed lot, as I'm sure you know."
"There's no way at all, then?"
I tried not to let disappointment show. When did the world's affairs ever flow exactly as one wished? I knew the delegation's destination, at least. I could only console myself that if I revived my old Myeong-gae instincts and pounded the pavement hard enough, some opening was bound to turn up.
The moment I seemed to resign myself, Ma Sok broke into an uncharacteristically impish smile and went on.
"I never said I couldn't get it."
"Oh?"
"We are Hao Gate, are we not?"
"Oh!"
"Ahem."
Ma Sok squared his shoulders and preened. A far cry, I had to admit, from the Soul-Chasing Life-Taking I had known only through the Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures in my Myeong-gae days.
"Ahem. It was not easily come by."
After a moment of savoring his own credit, Ma Sok handed over the intelligence and records he had compiled.
"My thanks."
Securing the route the North Sea Ice Palace's delegation would take toward the Murim Alliance would be no simple feat, even had the Beggars' Gang thrown its whole weight into it. Prying out secrets of that order ultimately meant coaxing and co-opting insiders, a difficult play for the Beggars' Gang, whose strength lay in what drifted into their ears. Only Hao Gate, with its vast intelligence network and its mastery of schemes and stratagems, could manage it.
"It's nothing, beside what you have done for us, Young Master."
"Haha."
In truth, Ma Sok's words were honest enough that I had no need for false modesty. I could hardly deny that I had put in the work all this while for exactly such moments as this.
"Then I'll take my leave."
Ma Sok's figure, leaving only a farewell hanging in the empty room, seeped into the darkness. His earlier complaint about nearly being caught had been mere jest, it seemed; his form vanished into the dark far more swiftly than he had come.
I turned my eyes to the intelligence report he had left behind. Well, well. A report of this size could be committed to memory in a single reading, so I burned it on the spot.
Why would I want the North Sea Ice Palace delegation's route badly enough to spend Hao Gate's intelligence on it? Among the elixirs of ultimate yin needed for the Fifth Stage, the first one Yakseon had recommended was the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. And I knew that the North Sea Ice Palace's delegation carried it. The treasure of the North Sea that had not shown itself in the murim for nearly a hundred years; what else could it be but the Snow Ginseng?
Fate itself was leading me toward the Fifth Stage. It was a perfectly reasonable thought to have.