Pacifying the World
I had just seen my benefactors off and was at last letting myself breathe when my father, Dancheon Gang, and my uncle Bang Yeo-baek came over to me.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Yes, Uncle. I'm perfectly fine."
Uncle Bang Yeo-baek, who had asked, looked a good deal less fine than I did — and seeing that, I understood anew just how potent the Yakseon Heart Decision truly was.
My father, who had held his silence for a moment, spoke at last.
"So it was you who saved the clan."
But I...
"...No. It is not so."
I could not answer any other way.
It was true that the bonds I had built over the years had lent great strength to the clan's survival. But it was equally true that this entire calamity had sprung from me in the first place — and so I honestly did not know how I ought to answer.
Only one thing was certain: I lacked strength, here and now.
Having looked upon the Heavenly Demon's majesty with my own eyes, I could not pretend that my level — the Fifth Stage, achieved in full — was anything but wanting. I would have to grow stronger still. The Sixth Stage was inevitable.
The solemn air had scarcely settled when—
"You!"
A familiar voice rang out. Yang Su-rin came running up, breathless, and behind her followed dozens of warriors — the fighting men of the Yang Family Hall. At a guess, that was the largest force the Young Mistress could mobilize on her own authority.
"What is it?"
"I heard something terrible had happened to the Dancheon Clan."
As she spoke, her gaze swept across the clan's grounds; it would not have been hard for her to gather that the calamity had already come and gone. Yang Su-rin let out a long, heavy breath, and then she said:
"You were right. We really will have to rebuild our information network from the ground up."
"No."
It was not consolation. I meant it.
Barely an hour — that was all.
That was the difference between the moment Ma Sok of the Haomun had arrived at our gates with his fellow sect members and the moment Yang Su-rin had arrived with her own people. And remembering that the Yang Family Hall lay farther away, the true gap was smaller still.
It meant that a mere merchant house had built an intelligence network capable of standing beside the Haomun's.
"Thank you."
It seemed the seed called Yang Su-rin was growing rather well, too. Only then did she smile, and I felt as though some of the worry lodged in my chest had been washed away.
I had not been wrong.
Self-Cultivation, Family Regulation, State Governance, Pacifying the World.
Having given myself to the martial path, my schooling was short, so I could not claim to know it precisely — but I understood it to be a saying from the Great Learning, one of the Four Books of the Confucian canon. Honestly speaking, even that much was knowledge I had gained only after mastering the Yakseon Heart Decision; as I have said before, scholarship and I were never destined for one another.
I could not fathom why Yakseon, a man who had lived a Daoist's life, would take a Confucian maxim as the core principle of his Heart Decision. But at the end of every martial path, ten thousand streams return to a single source — so I could only suppose it was something of that kind. In any case, the important thing was that this phrase carried great meaning for me.
The Yakseon Heart Decision reckoned the first three Stages as Self-Cultivation, the Fourth Stage as Family Regulation, and the Fifth Stage as State Governance. In other words, I now stood within a realm that could be called State Governance.
A state. To call a single person's body a nation was, on its face, absurd — yet considering the supreme realm known as Hyeon-gyeong, it was a perfectly fitting metaphor.
But there was something I came to understand after meeting the Heavenly Demon. No — to put it rightly, it was an uncomfortable truth I had understood ever since I began moving with Yeom Gi-ha. It was this: nations, in the end, come in ten thousand different forms.
If the realm I had built was a small kingdom that had only just taken shape, then the Heavenly Demon's realm was a great power — no, an empire. A small kingdom cannot stir great currents upon the continent's map. It is swept about by the whims of greater powers, and before an empire it can only kneel. Trampled and plundered, it would have no means of striking back. Just as I had been, when I stood before the Heavenly Demon.
I called back to mind my calling — the one I had briefly forgotten, or tried perhaps to hand off to that extraordinary man, the Tyrant Emperor Yeom Gi-ha.
I would become the Murim Alliance Leader. I would reach Number One Under Heaven. And with that power, I would stop the Great Righteous-Demonic War.
It would be alright, in truth, even if I never took the leader's seat — the great tree known as the Tyrant Emperor bore that position firmly upon his own shoulders. Since I had never wanted it for the sake of rank or glory, I felt no regret. If anything, the post that truly tempted me was a humbler one: captain of the clan's guard, succeeding Uncle Bang Yeo-baek.
But Number One Under Heaven — that summit I had to reach. The reason was simple: I now knew that the Number One Under Heaven of this age was the Heavenly Demon. And how unsightly a sight it would be, begging the Tyrant Emperor to "please step over the Heavenly Demon" on my behalf? I had to reach the summit by my own strength and hold back the war with my own two hands. That was the right way.
Yakseon had said that if one turned away from the Sixth Stage and instead honed one's martial learning to the utmost within the Fifth, one might well have become the undisputed Number One Under Heaven of the era. He was right. Having reached the Fifth Stage, I could now see that the road ahead stretched a full ninety thousand li — it meant there was much I could accomplish without ever needing to reach the Sixth Stage.
I could refine my intent and temper my resolve. I could study the subtle mysteries and establish new forms. I could even found a divine art of complete and perfect shape, as Yeom Gi-ha had, and walk that road. Whichever path I chose, I could go forward. The realm called Hyeon-gyeong was like a deep lake, wide enough to hold many things at once — that was why.
But... even if I — a mere small kingdom as I stood — honed my martial arts until I became an empire, against the Heavenly Demon, an empire since long before, the very best I could manage would be a stalemate. No matter how I polished myself within the Fifth Stage, it would be empire against empire. At best.
And when colossal force met colossal force, a war vaster than the last Righteous-Demonic War might well be born.
...That must not come to pass.
In truth, I had seen the limit of the Fifth Stage. No — it would be more accurate to say I had seen the greatness of the Heavenly Demon. I had simply understood, at last, that the Heavenly Demon was a true monster of divine caliber, a being no Fifth Stage could ever surmount. That was why my thoughts could turn nowhere but to the Sixth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision.
The First Stage, Opening the Body; the Second, the Golden Body; the Third, Invulnerability — these three, bound as one, were named Self-Cultivation. The Fourth Stage, Amplification, was named Family Regulation. The Fifth Stage, Unification, was named State Governance.
Then what name had Yakseon given to the Sixth Stage — the stage that stood for Pacifying the World?
"The Sixth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision, I name Pacifying the World — for no other naming would serve."
Just so. Pacifying the World was, in and of itself, Pacifying the World. The very essence of the Yakseon Heart Decision: the Sixth Stage, Pacifying the World.
I knew that pacification was, at its heart, another word for oneness. There could never be two, nor three, masters of a pacified world. It spoke of a single, unshared existence — which is to say, it could be read as another name for Number One Under Heaven.
The road that led over the Heavenly Demon and barred the Great War lay there.
"Looking back upon it, the Yakseon Heart Decision was not perfect."
Yakseon, preparing to speak of the Sixth Stage, opened by denying everything he himself had built. There was no self-mockery in it, nor despair — I knew it was a retrospective made for the sake of moving forward. Perfection admits no progress. Yakseon confessed that only after achieving the Fifth Stage had he grasped that truth: all growth is born of deficiency.
"Having achieved the Fifth Stage, I would ask of thee, O practitioner: what dost thou believe the Yakseon Heart Decision to be?"
Yakseon's transmitted words were, to me, a dialogue. Having long since committed the Heart Decision to memory in its entirety, I already knew what would follow.
And yet his message remained, to me, both an answer and a question. For every time I turned his question over in my mind, it arrived bearing a different meaning. Where one stands changes, and so does the scenery before one's eyes — that was simply how it worked.
What was the Yakseon Heart Decision?
To me, the raw initiate, it had been a divine art and nothing more — a devastating martial art that would shake heaven and earth and cleave the heads from demonic cultists in a single stroke.
To me, having achieved Self-Cultivation, it had been possibility. The possibility of reaching Number One Under Heaven; the possibility of becoming anything at all. It had been another name for a radiant future in which the Great War could be stopped.
To me, having achieved Family Regulation, it had been fulfillment. For the first time, it was not the world outside but my own self that I could see, whole and entire. I could face squarely the things that surrounded me. I could receive my elder brother Dancheon Hak and my mother Baek Yeo-hae in a way I never had before. Fulfillment — in other words, my deficiencies had been answered.
And to me, having achieved State Governance, the Yakseon Heart Decision was...
"I hold the Yakseon Heart Decision to be Nature itself."
Nature.
Perhaps, at long last, I had learned to look upon the world through the same eyes as Yakseon. Nature named a great and mighty existence — and at the same time, it named the world exactly as it was.
"I wished to make myself resemble Nature.
Nature is the one and only god that truly exists in this human world; born into human flesh yet yearning to ascend the divine throne, I resolved that I must take Nature into my embrace."
One might call it an intuitive method: by taking in the peerless elixirs — the very essence of Nature — one comes to resemble Nature.
Looking back, the Yakseon Heart Decision did resemble Nature. It staked its ground, guarded itself, spread outward, and became one — in all of these ways, it did. That was why the Heart Decision could be great. For this is the way of things: what resembles the great grows great in turn.
"Yet at its end, I beheld the limit."
And at the same time, that point was the limit. The trouble was that it resembled — it was not the same. That, he said, was why the Heart Decision, designed as it was to conclude at the Fifth Stage, had been driven to carve out a road to the Sixth.
"I cannot deny that Nature is great.
But what matters is that Nature exists for all eternity.
'Immortal' would not be the precise word — yet neither would it be far wrong.
A human being, born to a mortal's fate, who wished to resemble Nature: that such a one should never reach its end was inevitable."
The Heart Decision was complete because it resembled Nature. Yet at the same time, it could never become complete, because it could never become Nature. It was, in the end, only a resemblance.
"A human is not constant.
Nor is a human immortal.
Say it otherwise, and it means this: a human is imperfect.
That is why the Yakseon Heart Decision could not be perfect — and yet it was there that I found the first thread of perfection."
Yakseon was hardly one to despair. He was a true Grand Master. And a Grand Master is, after all, one who wrings learning even from failure — just as the Tyrant Emperor, defeated by the Heavenly Demon, had found his road forward.
"I know not how it may be in thy era, O practitioner, but even along this thread of time on which I live, there exist a few beings great enough to stand against Nature.
Truthfully, looking back, it was a thing I might have understood long ago —
for even before I was born, there lived grandmasters who refused to yield to Nature and stood shoulder to shoulder with it: the Sword Immortal Dongbin, Darma, and Sambong."
Yakseon, who could not become Nature, had turned his gaze instead upon the great possibility of humankind.
"Now that I have achieved the Fifth Stage, I cannot turn all things back to non-action.
For I know full well that, having seen the limit, I could not begin again from nothing in the martial arts and stand shoulder to shoulder with the other grandmasters who built their hymns to humanity.
Yet after long and exhaustive searching, I found the way."
"Long and exhaustive searching." I could fathom the suffering packed into those years, condensed into a single phrase. And I could fathom the rapture of drifting lost across a boundless, featureless sea before finding, at last, a landmark.
Yakseon had left his discovery behind as a transmitted message for those who would come after him. The benevolent face I had seen in my dream rose before my eyes. He was, indeed, my benefactor, my teacher, and a true Grand Master.
"The elixirs of Nature resemble Nature. Born of Nature, it is the natural order that they resemble Nature.
And so the pills and elixirs wrought by human hands, though their roots lie in Nature, come to resemble humanity.
Born only after passing through human hands, it is the natural order that they resemble humans.
So great an existence was humanity, after all."
I could feel the joy that clung to those lines.
"If what is needed to embrace Nature is the peerless elixirs of Nature herself,
then what is needed to walk, wholly and completely, the path of humanity is the supreme pills and elixirs.
O practitioner. Having reached the Fifth Stage, add the great power of humanity to this Heart Decision that endlessly resembles Nature, and thou shalt pass beyond the Limitless onto a new path.
But it will be no easy road — for rare indeed are the vessels that, though shaped by human hands, can stand comparison with Nature's greatness."
"O practitioner — dost thou know the Five Great Murim Pills?
Those great names would never be found wanting, even set against Nature herself.
There lies the path of the Yakseon Heart Decision's Sixth Stage.
Take Nature into thine arms, and stand wholly upon the power of humanity.
And there, at last, lie Pacifying the World — and the divine throne."
Yakseon had stepped beyond the written lines and was shouting it aloud with his own voice. He rejoiced in the new path. And he was passing down every last word of it, freely and without price, to the one who would come after him — for no reason other than that I was his heir.