The Birth of the Jianghu's Greatest Herb Hunter
Chunbaek-hyeong and I became herb hunters.
To be precise, since we dealt in spirit herbs and medicinal plants of every kind rather than ginseng alone, spirit herb hunters would have been the more accurate term — but herb hunter was the word that came most readily to the tongue, and so that was what we called ourselves.
The reason we went to the trouble of putting on a guise that hardly suited us was, of course, to secure the plausibility of one day discovering the Garden of Delight.
It was the difference between saying, 'We simply knew where the Garden of Delight was,' and saying, 'While living as herb hunters in search of spirit herbs, we happened upon the Garden of Delight by chance.' The latter was the only version with any plausibility to it, and that was why.
Granted, even the latter required the seasoning of heaven-sent luck — but luck made for a far better story than the absurdity of a causality that had been deleted from the world. At the very least, it was a necessary step so long as I did not intend to reveal that I was a regressor.
And since we would have to live as herb hunters for a full season at the least, it would have been a dreadful waste to let that time slip by idly. Above all, I wanted to do something for Chunbaek-hyeong, who had so willingly thrown his own hours into helping me.
"Chunbaek-hyeong, would you spar with me?"
That was how it came about — the reason Chunbaek-hyeong and I began sparring in the deep mountains and secluded valleys.
"If you're offering to teach, I'll gladly learn."
"I'm a little lacking to be giving instruction."
"Then let us teach each other."
"Sounds good to me."
And so the two of us began our sparring of mutual instruction. As for the results — they went without saying.
Chunbaek-hyeong, who lived by the old maxim of renewal upon renewal — each day new, then new again — had set foot in the threshold of the Harmony Realm less than a year before, yet he already stood at the far edge of its mastery.
He was a truly outstanding martial artist, and I believed without a shred of doubt that he would soon touch the realm of Intent.
For me as well, it became a period of overcoming my lopsided growth while refining my own Intent. It was mutual flourishing in the truest sense of the word.
Besides, our mutual-instruction sparring never ended with the mere crossing of blades.
"In the thirty-fourth exchange, why did you thrust for my Jueque?"
"Jueque sits at the body's center. Deflect it half-heartedly, and you've no choice but to take a blade to your ribs or your chest."
"So you were forcing my movement."
"That was the intent."
"You forced my strength, then aimed for Zhongfu in the thirty-fifth?"
Chunbaek-hyeong had it right. To parry a thrust, one must twist the body and expose the Zhongfu point — so that move had been meant to seize the opening it created.
"Exactly. If your parry hadn't knocked my blade a good two feet off course, I'd have followed with a thrust instead of a slash."
"If you'd struck Zhongfu in the thirty-fifth the way you planned, I couldn't have stopped it."
"Well, aiming for Jueque in the first place, it's hard for the blade not to get knocked aside."
"What if you used the thirty-fourth as a feint?"
"I could set up the thirty-fifth that way, I suppose — but a feint aimed at Jueque, the moment it's seen through, wouldn't I be in serious trouble?"
"I imagine so."
The moment one point of discussion settled, another sprang up.
"Now then, in the forty-seventh exchange..."
Dissecting our duels exchange by exchange and discoursing on the sword broadened both our horizons. In truth, the sword discourse is a remarkably difficult art — unless it rests upon perfect understanding and acknowledgment between the two parties, trouble is inevitable.
"Fine! Let's cross blades right now and see whether things work the way you claim!"
"Bah. The moment your argument falters, you lunge straight for intimidation — no different from any street thug!"
"Shut your trap and draw, you all-mouth frog."
"Fine! Let's settle who's right once and for all!"
And so, more often than not, a sword discourse ended just like that — at which point it became nothing more than a quarrel, no longer the training of the mind meant to raise one another's realms.
But the sword discourse between Chunbaek-hyeong and me knew no such turbulence. Partly because ours took strongly the form of a replay built upon duels already fought — but it was also living proof that he and I understood and acknowledged each other completely.
Truthfully, at this point, perhaps the right thing was to call each other sworn brothers rather than bosom friends. Even while we idled away our days under the herb-hunter disguise, we had been building a friendship — so it had been anything but time wasted.
"Let's leave it here for today."
"Good work out there."
Of course, being a man with far too much left to gain to rest content with friendship alone, I brought our discourse to a close and rose to my feet.
"Off to hunt spirit herbs?"
I gave an affirmative nod.
"I'm an herb hunter, am I not?"
An herb hunter in disguise, admittedly — but an herb hunter all the same.
"I'll be off, then."
At my words, Chunbaek-hyeong rose unhurriedly to his feet as well.
"Then I'll see if I can't find a decent one myself."
"Let's make it a contest, then — whoever finds the better one wins."
"I like that."
With those words, Chunbaek-hyeong's form and mine vanished from the bamboo grove.
Fsshh—
Only the bamboo, trembling and shaking loose its snow, proved that we had ever been there at all. Since our steps had carried us into the deep mountains and secluded valleys anyway, it would be nice to come away with a good find.
At the summit of the nameless mountain lay a plain far broader than I had expected.
"Remarkable."
A plain, at the summit — after passing through the snow-bamboo grove spread across the mountainside and forcing a way up through crag and sheer cliff. This, too, was one of nature's mysteries. It also meant the mountains of the Central Plains were every bit as grand as their reputation suggested; had I not been the martial artist I was, conquering this summit within half a day would have been beyond me.
"And beautiful."
Snow that had fallen with the winter solstice blanketed the plain, and a snowfield of pure white spread out across the summit. People are, as a rule, moved by beautiful things — and so I stood for quite a long while, admiring that white expanse. A place this mystical and this beautiful — surely at least one spirit herb was growing here, I couldn't help thinking.
The pristine snowfield, unmarked by so much as a beast's track — bearing no trace even of the wind's passage — was living proof that no one had sought this place in a very long age. Which made it the perfect ground for a spirit herb to have taken root across the long years.
Swish.
I closed my eyes.
Since entering the Five Qi Converging to the Origin, my five senses and my qi sense had grown so keen that they seized upon everything without my willing them to focus. But what I meant to do now was not to broaden my qi sense, so I cut off my sight for the sake of deeper concentration.
What I sought to capture was spirituality itself.
Even now — with my spirit in bloom and Intent at my command — spirituality remained uncharted territory to me. Unlike Yakseon, born with his spiritual eyes open, spirituality had been to me something like a mirage. For ordinary souls born without a divine gift, was it not something they could never know in an entire lifetime?
But to the present me, who had attained the Fifth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision, spirituality could arrive with a somewhat different meaning. It had become less a mirage I would never touch in this life, and more an unknown land I had simply yet to open up. Meaning that, though I did not know it yet, it had become something I might well reach — depending on how far I was willing to push the frontier. And in any case, 'unexplored' means, for now, 'not yet reached' — which may be precisely what lent this attempt its worth.
"Spirituality operates by a mechanism quite apart from the spirit."
"Even for this Dao, it is a thing difficult to put into words — yet for my disciple's sake, I shall attempt to describe it."
"The greatest difference between the two lies here: the spirit dwells within a person's inner being, known to that one alone — whereas spirituality manifests outwardly, appearing as a sign upon the world."
"The eye-art this Dao was born with could not gauge another's spirit, yet it could hold the spirituality carried by a peerless spirit herb — so on this point, this Dao cannot be wrong."
Yakseon had added a caution: even for the peerless masters of the world, capturing spirituality would be impossible in most cases. In truth, an obvious point — spirituality had nothing at all to do with the realms of martial arts; it belonged, rather, to the world of mystery.
"If this Dao's theory holds true, then a disciple who achieves the convergence of the Fifth Stage may open his eyes to spirituality."
"That said, like the Sixth Stage of Pyeongcheonha, it remains within the realm of theory."
"The reason being: having never proven it, even this Dao cannot be certain."
"In all the jianghu, this Dao alone has ever reached the Fifth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision."
"Yet this Dao was born with spiritual eyes already open — so there was no way to verify whether the Fifth Stage's merits include the boon of granting the capture of spirituality."
"Still, after attaining the Fifth Stage, this Dao's spiritual eyes expanded vastly — so it stands as a hypothesis of ample possibility."
"In truth, unlike the Sixth Stage of Pyeongcheonha, this is not a matter in which even this Dao holds certainty; my disciple would do well to take it as merely one possibility among many."
After attaining the Fifth Stage, I had trusted Yakseon's words and striven ceaselessly to capture spirituality — but I had yet to grasp even a single thread of it. Perhaps Yakseon's theory was simply wrong. Even Yakseon, so brimming with certainty in all things, had called it merely a possibility — and perhaps that possibility had simply never manifested in me.
But I did not let go of the thread. Because, as I reckoned it, there had been a moment when I felt spirituality without even knowing it.
The Heavenly Demon, Seol Cheon-sang. The day he visited the Dancheon Clan.
Long before the Heavenly Demon ever manifested, I had dimly known that a death beyond all resistance was approaching. My case had differed from my father Dancheon Gang's — he had detected the demonic cultists infiltrating the clan in secret. But looking back, my memory of it was quite different from his.
I had sensed the Heavenly Demon's existence itself. As I said — I had intuited the manifestation of an irresistible death. And what being but the Heavenly Demon would anyone dare call an irresistible death?
That had clearly not been anything like qi sense — which gave rise to the vague thought that I might, without knowing it, have captured spirituality. If that assumption were true, then sensing spirituality could become a great strength to me. Too precious a possibility to let slip — hence my attempts like this one, every single time.
"It is right and proper that spirituality cannot be seen. Thus, to see spirituality is a contradiction."
"What should be unseen is, plainly, unseen — and yet it shall be seen."
"With this Dao's ability, there is no way to express it beyond these contradictory words — so my disciple must needs understand them well."
"If there is a knack to it, it is to focus upon the outward sign."
Chewing over Yakseon's bequest, I turned my contemplative gaze from my inner self out onto the snowfield. With my body in the midst of mastering Intent, turning the gaze of contemplation outward was not so difficult.
Yakseon had it right. Spirituality was a vaguer concept even than spirit or Intent. In truth, it belonged less to martial artists than to shamans and diviners. Just as Yakseon had been born with spiritual eyes, shamans and diviners were born with the divine gift — and so they were the ones who came to know spirituality.
Perhaps the greatest difference between spirituality and spirit was simply this: whether one was gained through training, or born with. I had not been born with a constitution for capturing spirituality — but through the once-in-an-age boon of regression, I had learned the Yakseon Heart Decision, the divine art of a grandmaster. So I had no intention of giving up. Because I knew: rather than doing nothing under the banner of wu wei, non-action, attempting anything at all was the road that carried me one step closer to the Heavenly Demon.
Whooo—
The wind, grown colder still by the bite of the high altitude, brushed past my body. I paid it no mind. For a long while, I stood frozen, one with nature, like the husband-watching stone of legend.
"Hm?"
Something — a sensation I could not name — drew me onward.
Seventy-two paces, to the northeast. Not nearly as far as I had expected, something was radiating a faint, elusive presence. At first I took it for a shimmer of light reflected off the snowfield, but I soon knew it was nothing of the sort. Had I not realized that my eyes were still closed, I might never have noticed it at all.
Yakseon's phrasing had been right. What should be unseen was, plainly, unseen — and yet, impossibly, I was seeing it. A strange sensation indeed.
I opened my eyes and started slowly toward the northeast. It was a distance I could have covered in a single burst, but I deliberately counted out each step as I walked. It was the process of verifying whether what I had captured was a mirage — or spirituality.
"Here, is it."
Bare-handed, I slowly parted the snow and began to dig into the earth. Lest the spirit herb be harmed, my bare hands — carrying no internal energy at all — dug into the frozen ground for a short while.
Thock.
"Hm?"
Something had caught in my hand. I drew it out with care, and the thing that finally revealed itself to the world was, beyond doubt, a spirit herb.
"Hm."
Perhaps, at this very moment, the greatest herb hunter in all the jianghu had just been born. But the important thing just now was not that the greatest herb hunter had been born.
"So this is spirituality..."
The moment I concentrated my senses, the mirage that hovered around the spirit herb began to come into view. Joy took root in my expression — for I had achieved something far greater than the discovery of a single spirit herb.