A Kite with a Snapped String
A familiar voice reached my ears.
"You!"
It had plainly been a long while since I last heard it, yet it bored into my ears as sharply as if I had heard it only yesterday.
Naturally, I knew its owner: the second daughter of the Yang Family Hall, and the prodigy who had outstripped every one of her siblings last year to claim the seat of Young Mistress. She held the first seat among the Five Flowers of Anhui, beauty and intellect in equal measure.
That's right. Yang Su-rin.
"It has been a while."
That was the whole of my impression upon facing her.
Where my expression stayed placid, Yang Su-rin came at me with a bristling look. Anger mixed into that beautiful face of hers, and "a cat in a huff" was the kindest way to describe the result.
"Isn't this a bit much?"
"What is?"
"How could you not send word even once after that?"
"Hmm."
Honestly, this time the fault was mine to admit. When I reached the Fourth Stage, I had spent a long month under her care—and then severed contact without another word. "Ungrateful" would be a fitting label for that.
"I assumed you would be busy, having become Young Mistress."
In truth, it was no excuse hastily thrown together. Setting aside my own failure to seek her out, the reason she had not once visited the Dancheon Clan in nearly a year traced back entirely to her changed position, did it not?
"And that was you looking out for me?"
"One could see it that way."
At my answer, the sulk steeped into her expression thinned a little.
"Well, I'll let it pass this time."
I had no idea what exactly was being let pass, but it promised to be a hassle, so I did not ask.
"More to the point—is it true?"
"What is?"
How was anyone to know, with the object of the question left out? I was no mind reader. It was one of Yang Su-rin's worse habits.
"There's a rumor going around that you failed to become the young clan head."
"It is true."
Pressed to be precise, I would have had to distinguish between "could not" and "did not," but I knew from long experience that quibbling over such trifles in a conversation with her only made life harder.
"So it was true after all."
Saying so, she curled her lips into a smile of unreadable origin and went on.
"I've received information that you've become a kite with a snapped string."
"Hmm."
"A state of utter impasse" would be the correct way to put it. Information, properly speaking, lived or died by objectivity and consistency, and not one piece of what she called information, from first to last, was sound. For a man who had lived the life of an information broker, it was intolerable—yet I could not easily open my mouth. An utter impasse earns its name precisely because it cannot be untangled in a word or two.
Quite apart from my impressions, confidence rose into Yang Su-rin's face. The faint lift of her chin could be called arrogance without doing the word any injustice.
"Well then. If the second son of the Dancheon Clan, turned kite with a snapped string, finds himself with nowhere to go, I shall graciously bestow my favor."
"...?"
Even my sharp wits could not produce a fitting reply, so Yang Su-rin carried on.
"I mean I would take you in. Specially. Ah, don't misunderstand—this is not a proposal to renew our engagement or anything of the sort. How about working under me for a start?"
I thought to let it slide past me, but I knew that was not to be. So I asked her.
"Where did you get that information?"
At my question, her shoulders seemed to lift a fraction. I was certain that if the word "puffed up" were ever given form, it would look exactly like that.
"Surely a Young Mistress of the Yang Family Hall keeps her own secret line? Ah, but of course—you might not know, never having become a young clan head yourself."
With that smiling look added to her beauty, I would admit the sight was bewitching. All the same, some things demanded correction. The reason being: she was one of the seeds I had planted.
So I spoke, packing every ounce of sincerity I had into it.
"That secret line of yours—get rid of it. Now."
It was the best kindness I could offer her, and advice given in earnest.
"Well, I suppose now isn't the time, but if you ever need help, just say the word. We're comrades, after all."
"...Understood."
With that exchange, I sent Yang Su-rin on her way and, for the first time in an age, went looking for my elder brother Dancheon Hak.
Partly because the man who would have come nipping at my heels the moment word of my return got out had yet to show his face, and partly because I was curious what my brother had made of himself in the meantime.
Riding my heightened realm, I crossed to Dancheon Hak's grounds without a whisper of presence—and there he was, swinging his sword in the training yard.
Hwoong—
Dancheon Hak's swift, darting footwork sent his blade flashing through the empty air. It was Cloud-Treading Steps at its lightest, and a Dancheon Sword Formula without a single seam to pick at. It told me, if only indirectly, how relentlessly he had driven himself.
Two hours.
Over that long stretch, his Cloud-Treading Steps pounded the earth and his swordwork stitched patterns across the sky. His forms flowed so gracefully that I, hidden away, felt no boredom watching him at all.
Time wore on, and Dancheon Hak, breathing hard, began winding down his forms.
I took a step forward and let a faint trace of my presence slip out.
"You came."
"It has been a while."
Even that whisper of presence had been caught at once, which told me his senses had been honed to a keen edge.
"...You've changed again."
Dancheon Hak said it, taking me in with his eyes. This time, I thought the same. The brother I met after so long had changed a great deal.
"So have you, Brother."
What I could not bring myself to ask was whether he had been training hard. The hand gripping his sword hilt was wrapped in cloth, and a dull red was soaking through it. Even so, that hand squeezed the hilt with all its strength, as if it had forgotten what pain was. A martial artist of the Transcendent Peak Realm had swung his sword until his grip tore open—the ferocity of it spoke for itself.
"You've grown stronger."
He seemed, considerably, stronger. The callowness of a great clan's darling son was gone.
"Hmph."
But Dancheon Hak's thoughts seemed to run elsewhere.
"To have taken the Empty Blue Stone Milk, and still fall short of the Harmony Realm."
It was a far cry from the Dancheon Hak who had once overflowed with confidence.
"When you return, my sword will not go easy on you."
It was also a far cry from the words he had left me with when I set out on my Jianghu journey to reach the Fifth Stage.
I knew that look of his. The face of a martial artist brought up short before a great wall—it had seeped into Dancheon Hak. The difference was that even so, he had not surrendered to despair; he was still at war with himself. Truly worthy of the name, rightful heir of the renowned Dancheon Clan.
In truth, ninety-nine out of a hundred martial artists close their lives without ever setting foot on the threshold of the Harmony Realm, and adding another nine-tenths to that figure would not be wrong. Having neglected my sums while honing the martial arts, I cannot put it more precisely than that—but I know the real odds are far lower still. By rumor's account, only one in a million ever entered the Harmony Realm, so failing to reach it could hardly be called proof of inadequacy.
But the life of a great martial clan's heir was governed by different laws, and I could guess at Dancheon Hak's plight. I knew his worry was premature—he was still far short of thirty—but with his younger brother standing in the Harmony Realm, impatience was only human nature.
Holding my silence, I studied Dancheon Hak's potential. The Harmony Realm was a realm reached through the unity of Essence, Qi, and Spirit, so this amounted to reading each of the three in him.
Perhaps because I had attained the realm of wielding Intent, a great deal revealed itself to me.
I saw Dancheon Hak's sturdy frame. Not imposing, but with not a single untrained inch on it—I would call it optimal for the sword. Here was a talent who had seized the title of Dragon and Phoenix by his own strength and stepped into the Transcendent Peak Realm on his own merit at barely past twenty. Natural gifts compounded with bone-grinding effort: he had raised a body lacking nothing for the road to the Harmony Realm.
At his age, his Qi should have run short—and that, too, had been resolved. Because I had given him the Empty Blue Stone Milk. A martial artist who had climbed to the Transcendent Peak on his own strength had then taken that supreme of elixirs, securing Qi enough to reach the Harmony Realm with room to spare.
Which left, in the end, his Spirit. His Essence and Qi brimmed full, but his Spirit had failed to bloom, and so the Three Harmonies would not come.
And that meant there might be nothing I could do for him here and now. The reason being: every Spirit is its own. A hundred martial artists meant a hundred Spirits, and short of being a Great Luo Immortal, no one could tell another how to make his bloom. Some found it through meditation, some through duels of life and death, some through training itself—and some, even, had enlightenment ambush them in their own bedchambers. My case had been exceptional in the extreme, my Spirit forced into bloom by the Yakseon Heart Decision, so much as pressing a koan upon him would be no simple matter.
But not knowing the way was not the same as there being none.
"Brother. Come at me."
"What?"
"Let's have a look at your strength. It's been a while."
I knew he was already spent from his brutal training—which was precisely what made this fitting. My brother, weighing his own condition, hesitated, so I thoughtfully added a provocation.
"What, are you afraid?"
"Hmph!"
Before the words had even left my mouth, Dancheon Hak's sword was already bearing down on me. This fighting spirit of his was a fine thing—it was living proof that he was the timber from which the Dancheon Clan's future would be cut.
Kaaang!
My sword turned his blade aside with ease.
"Brace yourself."
Today, I would not go easy on him. My journey through the Jianghu had taught me something new. Martial arts are not learned by swinging a sword. They are learned by being hit. It was a lesson the Grand Master Yeom Gi-ha, the Sovereign of Destruction, had handed down to me with his own hands, and I had tested its worth on my own hide.
Bam!
"Kgh."
Dancheon Hak, sprawled across the yard, scrambled upright in a heartbeat.
"Good spirit."
His eyes still burned with fight, so the lesson would take.
A grin crept across my face. The chance to thrash my elder brother Dancheon Hak, openly and officially, was not one I welcomed purely out of glee.
I respect Dancheon Hak.
To put it another way, it would be no great stretch to say I revere him. The reason: unlike me, grown through regression and the Yakseon Heart Decision, Dancheon Hak had reached the Transcendent Peak Realm at the tender age of twenty-three, wholly by his own strength.
There was a time I credited his dazzling rise to innate talent and the accident of being a great martial clan's eldest son. Honestly, even calling it "a time" would be generous—through my entire past life, right up until my life as a named beggar ran out, that belief never wavered.
But now I knew. Dancheon Hak's achievements owed nothing to talent or lineage. Judged through an information broker's objective eye, the right verdict was that they owed to his towering pride. In a common man whose words outran his deeds, such pride might wall him off from reality; in Dancheon Hak, whose deeds outran his words, it had become the engine of tremendous achievement.
Which meant, in the end, that his achievements were his own—and that no single method serves in every case. That was not something I had always known; it was a truth I had grasped only of late, once Intent awakened in me.
I studied Dancheon Hak again. His body was evenly wrought but deeply worn—accumulated fatigue past all reason. With willpower any less tenacious, fainting where he stood would have been unremarkable. He remained a formidable martial artist, but an overworked body could not show its full measure, and his Qi, too, trembled at the edges. For convenience I spoke of Essence, Qi, and Spirit as three, but Essence and Qi were, in the end, one continuous thing—and still, clear Qi cannot settle in a shaken Essence.
So my diagnosis was this: Dancheon Hak needed rest, now. But imagining a Dancheon Hak who heard the word "rest" and meekly answered "very well" was beyond impossible. Whatever our relationship had become, the man was simply built incapable of it. A Dancheon Hak who obeyed without grumbling and fussed over his own health—that, if anything, would be the true calamity.
Kaaang!
"Khh!"
Blocking my blade already looked like a struggle. He had reached his limit long ago. It was right to end it here for today. It was time to give him his rest.
Hwooo—
No strain ran through the Dancheon Sword in my grip, and resolve hardened in Dancheon Hak's eyes.
"Block it properly. Slip, and you die."
"Come, then!"
Kwaang!
"Kghk—"
Crash.
Dancheon Hak, sent skidding back a good ten paces, rolled across the ground. And he did not get up again.
"Rest well."
He would sleep like the dead for a day, perhaps two. Some might call it beating a man unconscious, but from where I stood, "granting him the opportunity to rest" was the correct way to phrase it. When he woke, he would be one step further along than the man he was today.