The Master's Secret Basement
It was something from long ago, blurred at the edges of memory.
One night, Jin Cheong-un woke from his sleep and heard a strange sound coming from the training hall.
A thief.
He grabbed his wooden sword, crept closer, and — being the man he was — opened with a surprise attack.
“Hand over everything you've got if you don't want to die, you thief!”
In the next instant, Jin Cheong-un was the one startled.
His wooden sword had been blocked, and worse, the person he'd taken for a thief turned out to be his master.
His master stood silently in the dark, deserted training hall.
And there, Jin Cheong-un saw it — a pitch-black pit.
The floor of the training hall, flat as flat could be, concealed a passage leading down to somewhere no one knew about.
“Cheong-un.”
His master had always carried a certain mysterious air, but that night there was something about him Jin Cheong-un had never seen before.
“You'll understand when the time comes. Keep it secret until then, will you?”
Looking back now, his master had seemed far too composed. Like someone who had meant to be caught.
Jin Cheong-un, being far too young at the time, simply answered:
“For free?”
After negotiating a dramatic settlement involving a few candies, Jin Cheong-un kept his word and stayed silent.
Truthfully, he simply lost interest and forgot. His master was a man too, after all — he'd probably just hidden some erotic paintings from the kids, he'd figured, and let it go.
Thinking back on it, though, it's strange.
Why would a rural martial arts academy need a space like that?
Obviously, to hide something.
Which meant he had to find out what…….
“Hah! Hah!”
His face flushed scarlet, Jin Cheong-un flung the shovel aside.
“Forget secrets. I'm digging my own grave with this.”
Clatter!
Dropping to the ground where he stood, Jin Cheong-un looked around.
Square-cut stones lay scattered about carelessly. Barely a handspan thick, they were none other than the flagstones that had paved the training hall floor.
That fastidious old man wouldn't have done this in the dead of night himself.
Which meant there was some kind of mechanism.
But without knowing where, the only option was to pry up every last stone.
“Hup!”
Rising to his feet again, Jin Cheong-un's eyes gleamed.
“Let's see who wins.”
Thud!
He slid the shovel under a flagstone and levered it up on the principle of the fulcrum.
Boom!
Grabbed it with his hands and flipped it over backward.
Thud!
And again.
Then, in a single moment—
Shift!
“……!”
Jin Cheong-un hastily dropped the shovel and lowered his body.
Different. Far lighter than the other stones. Looking closely, it was slightly thinner, its edges neatly dressed.
As if made to be lifted easily.
This one.
Swallowing dryly, Jin Cheong-un hooked his fingers into the gap.
Sliiiide.
The stone lifted with almost no resistance.
And beneath it, a door revealed itself.
Creeeak!
The moment he flung the door open, Jin Cheong-un froze solid.
“I figured it'd be a storage cellar at best.”
Beyond the entrance stretched a long passage, leading off toward somewhere unknown.
Thud. Thud.
His footsteps echoed through the narrow passage that showed no sign of ending.
Jin Cheong-un narrowed his eyes, gauging the direction.
If it's this way, it should come out toward the back mountain.
When building a hidden vault in the Jianghu, one made the passage long and dug deep beneath a mountain or underground. Sensitive Jianghu fighters might sense the hollow space beneath the earth, after all……
But that's the kind of thing only wealthy sects and noble houses do.
No matter how he thought about it, this was not the structure of a dirt-poor rural academy.
And that wasn't even the end of it.
Jin Cheong-un glanced up.
Even night pearls.
Not the cheap kind that needed sunlight to glow, but the self-luminous superior grade. At this point, all he could do was marvel.
Master, don't tell me you were rich?
He'd seemed to live frugally and carefully — and he'd secretly been a hidden magnate?
Well, he did have a strangely refined air for an ordinary country old man.
“Hold on.”
Jin Cheong-un stopped short.
“Then don't tell me this place is—”
Where his master had hidden his secret funds?
Thud thud thud.
Jin Cheong-un advanced down the passage with noticeably quickened steps.
How long had he walked? His body stopped dead.
A door.
An iron door of jet-black hue.
Its surface was covered in intricate carvings — less a door than a work of art.
Knock. Knock.
He rapped on it, and instead of the ring of metal, a dull thud sounded, like a solid stone.
Jin Cheong-un clicked his tongue.
Darksteel?
That would cost as much as its weight in gold — and he'd made a door out of it?
This was it. Something was inside.
The moment he seized the handle and pulled with all his swelling anticipation—
Clank!
“……?”
Clank! Clank!
“What's wrong with this thing?”
Clank! Creeeeak!
“Hnnnngh!”
Bracing one foot against the wall, face reddening, he pulled with everything he had — and it didn't budge an inch.
“Seriously, what kind of door—”
Jin Cheong-un released the handle, looking defeated.
If it had even trembled, he might have thought he lacked strength. But it didn't move at all.
Was there some mechanism keeping it locked?
How was he supposed to open it like this? Don't tell me it can't be opened……
No.
He'd drilled mental fortitude into his disciples; he couldn't very well give up himself.
I will inherit my master's legacy, no matter what.
If strength isn't enough, then it simply means I don't have enough strength!
I'll draw it out and use it.
The Gihae acupoint, the lower dantian.
The unknown true qi coiled there.
“Whooo.”
Jin Cheong-un took a deep breath.
Carefully. More carefully still.
Like breathing life into a fragile ember, he stimulated the true qi with minute precision.
Tstststst!
Before long, a pale haze began to smolder up from Jin Cheong-un's body.
It looked for all the world like smoke rising from a blazing fire.
Internal energy's "fire-timing" — this was why the term was attached to the study of internal energy arts, the control of fire's intensity. Handling internal energy meant tending the fire within one's own body.
But.
Fire, at times, becomes an uncontrollable demon of flame.
FWOOSH!
“Kgh.”
A pain that suddenly clamped down on his airway made Jin Cheong-un grind his teeth.
His internal energy, on its own whim, had surged not into his arms but into his lungs.
This was why handling true qi without knowing the method was dangerous. Fire that lost control could leap wherever it pleased and run wild at any moment.
In the Jianghu, they called this state:
Qi Deviation.
Good.
But this had been his plan all along.
As long as I can put the fire out in time, what does it matter if it catches?
Anyone watching would call it madness. Setting his own body ablaze and burning it only as long as he could barely manage to extinguish it?
But it didn't matter.
He had done nothing but train in martial arts, save for eating and sleeping. As if he couldn't control even his own body's energy.
Of course it's dangerous. And because it's dangerous……
One shot.
The moment Jin Cheong-un seized the handle with the intent to shatter it—
Whoosh!
His internal energy was drawn into the darksteel door without the slightest resistance.
Clank!
Then came the sudden sound of something engaging, meshing together.
Jin Cheong-un pulled the handle in a daze, and—
Creak.
It opened.
And with such ease.
“…….”
The internal energy he'd worked so hard to draw up sank right back down, deflated.
Jin Cheong-un stared at the door, dumbfounded.
A mechanism array?
It had reacted to true qi?
To distinguish who was worthy of opening it?
A surge of indignation rose up in him. They could have just written it down somewhere, couldn't they? When someone had risked qi deviation to draw up his internal energy—!
“No. Right. Either way, it opened, so that's what matters. It opened.”
Exhaling a long sigh, Jin Cheong-un stretched a foot through the doorway—
No, he stopped mid-step and drew back a pace, gazing at the door.
Why was it, he wondered, that the pattern carved into the great door felt so familiar, like something he'd seen before?
Age reveals certain things.
What would his master have needed most, running a martial academy while taking in orphans and beggars like himself?
Love, plain and simple.
A disciple receives a master's love and grows into a proper adult.
And love comes from a well-padded purse!
Feeding the kids, housing them, teaching them — it all cost money. How many people were out there paying stipends? Running an academy on that alone?
So inside this hidden chamber, his master's love — love like a vast sea, love that gleamed and sparkled — was surely piled up to the ceiling!
No, it had to be!
And yet why!
Why, of all things!
“……There's nothing, is there.”
Not a large space.
The stone chamber, closer to a small storeroom, held only a few pieces of furniture, a bookshelf among them.
But then, something beside the bookshelf caught his eye.
What's this?
A box! And an enormous one at that!
Jin Cheong-un sprinted to it in one breath.
I believed in you, Master.
What would be inside? Gleaming gold? Shimmering silver ingots? Smooth porcelain? Antique jade carvings?
Jin Cheong-un lifted the lid with the utmost care.
Glint!
Glint? Silver ingots!
Excited, he flung the lid all the way back in one motion.
“……!”
The corners of Jin Cheong-un's eyes trembled.
Soon the trembling spread to his throat, his shoulders, his hands.
“What is this?”
Silver ingots.
The problem was that in that enormous box, there were exactly two.
A solid darksteel door, night pearls on top — and two lousy ingots? They weren't even spent. Why would a box this big hold nothing but two silver ingots?
Hold on.
Spent?
Come to think of it……
In that instant, an old memory flashed through Jin Cheong-un's mind.
The officials who bought and sold like they were eating meals.
His master, bowing his head here and there all over town.
And the thick money pouch in his master's hand……
Creak. Thud.
Jin Cheong-un quietly closed the box.
And nodded with a perfectly composed face.
“What does wealth matter? Besides, how could a disciple covet his master's possessions?”
Money didn't matter.
Now that he was to inherit and rebuild the Cheongun Martial Arts Academy, he'd only wanted to confirm everything connected to his master. He meant it. Truly.
“……Still, no need to let perfectly good silver rot in a box.”
Opening the box again, Jin Cheong-un slipped the ingots into his robe and straightened his back.
Only then did his surroundings come into focus.
No wealth, but there were other things.
Are these secret manuals?
One of the five — five! — bookshelves was packed tight with tomes.
Jin Cheong-un pulled one out at random and flipped through it.
“…….”
He stopped short.
Not a martial manual.
This was…… a diary.
Gyeongsin Year, Gimyo Month, Musin Day. Woon-ah and Jin-ah fought again. Was I too harsh in scolding them? Perhaps I should have gently coaxed them instead.
When my disciples don't follow me well, I think it must be that I am a poor teacher.
The children have finally finished the Thousand Character Classic. They must master the Four Books and Five Classics to become proper adults.
The weather is fine today, so I took the children on an outing to the back mountain……
Reading the diary slowly, Jin Cheong-un carefully took out the volume placed at the very end.
Even if the children grow up and each walk a different path someday, I hope this place will remain their home.
I hope, with all my heart, that they will one day return and become family to one another again.
“…….”
Jin Cheong-un gazed at the page in silence.
Before he knew it, a wry smile had escaped him.
So he really did raise them with love.
There wasn't just one diary.
Dozens of volumes, at a glance — and in every stroke of every page, his worry, his concern, and his love for his disciples soaked through.
……Nothing like what I expected, and no real gains either.
Jin Cheong-un nodded calmly.
Still, an inheritance like this isn't bad.
He was turning away with a strangely lighter heart when—
Something flickered at the edge of his vision.
What's that?
A bookshelf somewhat smaller than the others.
Unlike the diaries, a volume wrapped in silk. Jin Cheong-un carefully unwrapped it.
He flipped it open in a hurry, and more characters were written there.
Volume One.
Geoncheon-gong (Heaven-Spanning Art).
Geon — the trigram of Heaven.
Geon, Tae, Ri, Jin, Son, Gam, Gan, Gon.
The first of the Eight Trigrams, the character that signifies Heaven itself.
That character implied this was not a completed martial art in itself — that six more volumes of the same school of martial arts existed.
Jin Cheong-un's pupils wavered.
What my master taught me wasn't Palhwangmu — it was a martial art called Cheongun-gong.
But the formulas were the same.
No — more complete.
As if he had deliberately taught only a part.
“…….”
Jin Cheong-un quietly looked around the hidden chamber.
Serving as a secret bodyguard, he had encountered the martial arts of countless sects and learned every manner of hidden history and secret lore.
But the name Palhwangmu — even he was seeing it for the very first time.
By the time Jin Cheong-un emerged from the hidden chamber and finished tidying the ransacked training hall, the sky was already darkening.
I combed through every single diary, just in case.
Nothing related to the manual's true nature.
But he soon noticed something odd.
The bookshelves were far too many for the number of diaries. In the first place, would storing mere diaries have required a space like this?
Jin Cheong-un lifted the manual.
Palhwangmu, is it.
That was probably the identity of the true qi settled inside his body.
But then why on earth had his master never said a word?
Come to think of it, he knew very little about his master. They had all been too young to wonder about anyone's past.
So……
Right. What good is agonizing over it now?
Stretching until his joints popped, Jin Cheong-un shook off his thoughts.
“Time to eat.”
He'd skipped lunch and done nothing but work; his stomach was sticking to his back.
Right now, a mystery manual mattered less than the dinner table Jeong So-so had surely been preparing.
He'd slipped her some money, so today there'd be meat dishes, wouldn't there?
Even her vegetable cooking was that good — if it's meat……!
He arrived at the Jeong residence in one breath.
But Jin Cheong-un, who had looked ready to kick the door down on the spot, gradually slowed his steps.
Because he spotted an unfamiliar man loitering in front of the main gate.
“Ah, there you are.”
The man, dressed in the robes of a scholar-official, offered a cupped-fist salute.
“A pleasure to meet you for the first time. I am Baek Seo-gun, Chief Steward of the Black Dragon Hall.”
“The Black Dragon Hall.”
“Yes, the Black Dragon Hall.”
Baek Seo-gun smiled pleasantly.
“I've been waiting for you. Jeong So-so refused to let me in, insisting her master had to be present. Might I have a word inside?”
The tone was exceedingly courteous, and Jin Cheong-un nodded.
“Come in.”
Jin Cheong-un ushered Baek Seo-gun in first and followed him into the Jeong residence.
And then—
Clack!
He slid the bolt home.
Baek Seo-gun flinched.
“……Why did you lock the door?”
“Pay it no mind. Just securing the premises.”
Jin Cheong-un fixed Baek Seo-gun with a long, hard stare and asked:
“So. What is it you want to talk about?”