The Golden Body
Late at night.
"It's been a while, Young Master."
The visitor who had pierced the Dancheon Clan's tight security to reach my quarters was none other than Ma Sok of Haomun.
My quarters stood in a low-priority corner of the estate, where the watch was admittedly lax — but the mere fact that he had crossed the clan's walls unseen was proof enough that his stealth arts had reached true mastery.
"What brings you all the way out here?"
"I've obtained the Blue Phosphor Liquid. I couldn't very well keep it from you, could I?" Ma Sok replied with that same easygoing waiter's smile he always wore.
That such an unremarkable-looking man could reduce the Dancheon Clan's defenses to nothing so effortlessly reminded me, once again, that a long life in the murim demanded constant humility.
"There's also a debt of gratitude I've been meaning to express to you, Young Master."
His qi bearing had shifted, subtly but surely.
Hadn't the famed Myeong-gae been renowned even among the beggars of the Beggars' Sect for his discerning eye? My own realm was too low to peer deep into him, but even so I could sense the change. Perhaps he wished to boast a little, for he had let his aura slip loose without quite meaning to.
"Congratulations on your breakthrough."
It wasn't hard to guess that he had taken the Empty Blue Stone Milk and climbed to a higher realm.
"It's all thanks to you, Young Master."
Why Ma Sok's goodwill kept flowing my way, though, I couldn't say.
"Hardly my doing. It was the Matriarch who made so grand a gesture."
After all, it had been Yeo Wol, Matriarch of Hwawollu, who granted the Empty Blue Stone Milk to Ma Sok. The man had obtained two drops of that peerless elixir — and handed one of them to a subordinate. It was proof, either, that the bond between Yeo Wol and Ma Sok ran far deeper than I'd imagined, or that Yeo Wol's generosity was on a scale the world had yet to learn.
"Here is the Blue Phosphor Liquid. Hand-picked, every last vial — the highest purity to be had."
"Thank you."
It barely amounted to a single measure, yet it sat heavy in my hands.
"Until next time, Young Master."
As he spoke his farewell, Ma Sok glanced back over his shoulder.
"Should you ever need my help — at any time — say the word."
With that, he vanished like smoke.
Forging a cooperative relationship with Haomun — and with Yeo Wol above all — I would one day judge to have been a very wise move indeed. For aside from Ma Sok and Yeo Wol, not a soul in the world knew that I had asked for the Blue Phosphor Liquid.
The early stages of the Yakseon Heart Decision were devoted to forging the body — to building, above all else, the vessel that could one day reach the summit of the world.
"The world's finest resides not in the martial art but in the person, I say. Herein lies the true meaning of this old Dao's words — that even the Three Calamities Sword Art could reach the summit."
I agreed with Yakseon a hundred times over.
The First Stage, the Opening of the Body, harnessed the Empty Blue Stone Milk to fortify the blood vessels of one entering the martial path, burn away every impurity, and throw open the Ren and Du meridians — tending the inner body through a mechanism much like the fabled rebirth of exchanged bones and sinews.
And this stage was called the Golden Body.
Where the First Stage had put the interior in order, the Second remade the exterior. As the name implied, it made the body itself hard — one might liken it to the famed Vajra Indestructible Body of Shaolin.
Yakseon had declared outright that upon reaching this stage I would possess a body impervious to blades, and a recovery swift enough to close most any wound — that never again would I die in the murim to a knife I never saw coming. He had added, as was his habit, that since every supreme master owed his seat to the proper harmony of internal and external power, the Golden Body would bring a meteoric rise in physical ability besides.
And what the Second Stage demanded was precisely this — the Blue Phosphor Liquid.
Was the Blue Phosphor Liquid an elixir? A delicate question. It was, and it wasn't.
Obtaining it, for one, was easier than one might think. Set against the Empty Blue Stone Milk, its worth didn't amount to a speck of dust. It wasn't sold openly in the markets, but walk a few steps into the Black Market and it could be had without much trouble — for the Blue Phosphor Liquid was, in the end, a poison.
That's right. A poison — and a viciously lethal one at that. Let it touch the flesh and the pain was excruciating; it was said a man lost his reason before ten breaths had passed. Even a trace swallowed meant death.
But hadn't the Sichuan Tang Clan, the famed puppet-masters of poison, always said that medicine and poison blurred at the edges — that they were, in truth, one and the same thing?
"I studied countless elixirs in my day, yet nothing achieves the Golden Body like the Blue Phosphor Liquid, I say."
Yakseon, it seemed, shared that opinion. And he had proven it — for through the Yakseon Heart Decision itself, he had raised a poison to the same line as the peerless elixirs of the world.
I carefully dissolved the Blue Phosphor Liquid Ma Sok had brought into the bath. I was no connoisseur of poisons, but even I could tell it was pure and clear — no cut-rate stuff from the mouth of the Black Market, but the finest grade there was.
To enter this stage, I had to steep my body in the liquid, like some ascetic tempering his internal qi beneath a pounding waterfall. A single measure wasn't nearly enough for a grown man to soak in, so I thinned it with water to stretch the volume. It hardly mattered — the Yakseon Heart Decision's circulation would draw every last drop of that measure into my body, and there was no fear, I'd been assured, of the water diluting its potency.
"Whew. Here goes."
Soaking oneself in a lethal poison, it turned out, was nerve-racking business. Had I not had absolute faith in the Yakseon Heart Decision, I would never have attempted such madness.
Splash.
"Ugh."
The instant my toes touched the liquid, a searing pain shot up my leg. If even a one-in-ten dilution hurt this much, then had I gotten ten measures and plunged in undiluted, I might well have blacked out before I could so much as begin the circulation.
In I went, then. What was done was done — the poison had already found my skin, and instead of pulling my foot back out, I threw my whole body into the liquid, eyes shut, sinking until even my face went under.
Khak—
Bubbles roiled around me. The agony had wrenched a great gasp through my clenched teeth before I could stop it.
Focus.
I steadied my mind and folded into a cross-legged seat beneath the surface. Five breaths had already slipped by; there was no time left to waste. I had no intention of going down in history as the greatest fool who ever drowned in poison in his own bathtub.
The water murmured around me. I set the Dancheon Heart Method turning, and laid the Yakseon Heart Decision over it. Perhaps because my Ren and Du meridians stood open, the Heart Decision answered my will at once and swept through me in an instant.
And then, as if by magic, sensation vanished. As though it had made fuel of the poison's agony, I sank into selfless stillness.
I couldn't tell how much time had passed. Whether from the selfless trance or the Heart Decision's workings, it felt as though I had spent a very long time within the liquid. But even a man at the Peak realm is still a man, and there is a limit to how long anyone can hold out underwater without breath. I judged I hadn't been under for more than a quarter of an hour. I was, after all, still alive and un-suffocated.
"Pwah!" I broke the surface, loosening my cross-legged seat and lifting my face from the water.
When I opened my eyes, the water had returned to its original clear hue. The bone-chilling blue of the Blue Phosphor Liquid had vanished without a trace, and with it that sour-bitter tang. Every drop had passed through my skin, drawn in by the Heart Decision's workings.
With a slosh, I climbed out of the tub. The floor was soaked and I paid it no mind — there were far more important matters at hand.
I picked up the short dagger I had brought along out of curiosity, where it lay beside the tub, and squeezing my eyes shut, drew its honed edge across my wrist.
"Oh."
It didn't cut. A crude little blade, but its edge had been whetted to a razor's finish — and still it could not bite my skin.
"And if I try harder?" I fed a thread of sword qi into the dagger. I have no taste for self-mutilation, so I didn't give it my all.
Clang!
Sword qi was, one might say, the distilled essence of manifested inner power — an art beyond human muscle that could cleave solid rock like tofu. Yet the dagger, the moment it touched my skin, was flung away, unable to overcome the repelling force.
I inspected the spot. A faint pink flush, but no wound.
"A little more, then?"
The Golden Body's gifts didn't end at imperviousness to blades. Powerful regeneration was part of the package as well, and to confirm it, I resolved to wound myself properly. I drew out my sword qi to the very limit of what I could produce, squeezed my eyes shut, sucked in a breath — and drove the dagger down at my own arm.
Thud!
With a violent rebound, the point punched just barely through my skin.
"Gh." Knife pricks hurt, after all.
I pulled the dagger back at once and examined the wound. A little blood welled up — but that, too, didn't last. Smooth as silk, before even five breaths had passed, the wound had closed. I dashed water over the spot and confirmed it: sealed shut, and no more blood coming.
"This is no joke."
It was, in every sense, a body impervious to blades. A sword-gang strike would still tear through me easily enough — but that was no reason to scorn the gift. In a life-or-death duel against a master of equal skill, I knew well, a difference this small decided everything.
I ran a hand over my skin. This was a body that had just repelled sword qi itself, yet to the touch it felt no different at all. I studied myself in the bronze mirror in the washroom, and the same unchanging face as ever looked back — quite unlike the Shaolin arhat monks who achieved the Vajra Indestructible Body, with their wooden-plank skin and bulging temples.
That was thanks to the Golden Body's defining trait: the Returning Rebound.
"Second Young Master. You'll have to come with us."
Out of nowhere, three burly men barged into my quarters. Faces I knew.
"Why should I?"
This was the Dancheon Clan's own grounds, and I was its second son. Mere household retainers had no authority to lay hands on me — such was the law of the family.
"He said that if you won't come willingly, we're to subdue you and bring you in regardless." Though judging by their expressions, their thoughts ran rather elsewhere.
"You'd dare touch the direct bloodline, inside the Dancheon Clan itself?"
"Then forgive our discourtesy." The leader of the three bowed his head, then spoke like a man issuing an order. "Take him."
"Yes, sir."
At the word, two of the strongmen reached for me with rough hands. I knew why they were so confident. All three were warriors at the Peak realm; against a boy not yet even twenty, there was no reason for caution. And whatever price there was to pay for touching me, the one who had ordered it would smooth it over.
"It would not do, I say, to think the virtues of this stage's Golden Body a mere imperviousness to blades."
With the body made ready within and without, the road to supreme mastery stood open before the practitioner — and this was what he called Mind-as-Action. Mind-as-Action: to move precisely as the mind wills. That itself was martial art.
I knew that within those seemingly simple, brutish grabs lay the refined mysteries of the Golden Net Hand. But what of it? My eyes, which could now even track Uncle Yeobaek's sword, read every one of their movements as plainly as written text.
Thock — I raised a knee and blocked one strongman's reaching hand. Crack! And chopped down with my elbow across the other's wrist.
"You gentlemen really ought to train a little harder." Offering that advice with a smile was a bonus.
"Grah!"
Steel sang from its sheath — the man whose hand had met my elbow, stung with fury, had drawn his sword.
"Jangsan. That's enough."
The leader cut him off at once. Subduing me was one thing; baring a blade at me was quite another.
"...My apologies."
The man who had drawn on reflex bowed his head quickly. His own hide, it seemed, was precious to him as well.
Hm. A pity, that. Had I unleashed my unarmed arts against that sword, I could have put my blade-proof body to a proper test.
"Second Young Master. Won't you come along peaceably?" The leader bowed with genuine courtesy. I couldn't say what he had seen in that single exchange, but his bearing now carried a respect for me that hadn't been there moments before.
Still — thinking on it, what fault was theirs?
"Tell my elder brother I'll come to him myself."
This had been my brother's business from start to finish.
"...We beg your pardon."
The Golden Body was mine now. It was high time I paid my elder brother a visit.