Starting from Scratch
Vuuuum!
A pale shimmer of heat rippled up from Jin Cheong-un's body where he sat cross-legged in the lotus position.
'Move.'
The instant he willed it, the qi slumbering in his dantian began to pulse.
A laughably small reserve compared to his days in the Supreme Alliance. But in depth and purity, nothing else could touch it. Even the hard-won inner strength of ascetics who spent their entire lives keeping every precept and pouring themselves into refining the body would seem wanting before this Geoncheon Origin Qi.
Pop!
In an instant, his right shoulder twitched.
Pop! Pop!
Then his elbow.
Pop-pop-pop!
Before long his wrist and fingers were squirming of their own accord.
Shaaaaaa!
A rush of heat spread through his entire right arm. The meridians along his right side, twisted and tangled by his old injury, had knit themselves back together.
"Hoo."
Jin Cheong-un opened his eyes with a contented smile.
"Already back to this much, hm." He clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, then nodded.
A fair amount of time had passed since he'd begun studying Palhwangmu in earnest. With the Geoncheon qi settling into place, his shattered body was mending fast. No — this had gone beyond recovery; his very constitution was changing. As the Geoncheon Origin Qi seeped into every corner of him — his blood and vital energy, his bones, muscles, and tendons — it was forging his vessel harder, and wider.
Of course, none of this counted as his martial arts growing. Only the raw aptitude with which he could learn them had improved.
"Which means it's time to put it to the test."
Brushing the dust from his trousers, Jin Cheong-un rose and lifted the wooden staff he'd propped at his side.
Whoom! Whoom!
How uncannily at home he looked, twirling it in easy arcs. Only when the feel of it had settled back into his hands did he lower his stance and take up position.
"……"
In an instant, the light in his eyes changed. The idle, easygoing air vanished without a trace, replaced by the lethal edge of an assassin moments from a kill.
As he had told the Jeong siblings, essence, energy, and spirit were to be honed as three, yet forged into one. This was how the Jin Cheong-un of old had always trained — and to reclaim the man he used to be, his mindset would have to match.
Which meant…
'No. No, it doesn't.'
Reclaim his old self? He couldn't, and he had no intention of trying. The arts he needed to learn had changed, and so had everything surrounding him. Naturally, his mindset had to change with them — he was no longer Jin Cheong-un, the Alliance Leader's hidden blade. He was Jin Cheong-un, master of the Cheongun Martial Arts Academy.
'This isn't about stacking the old bricks back up. I have to replace everything — from one to ten.'
Jin Cheong-un quietly extended the staff and settled into the opening stance.
Pah-aang!
The staff-tip thrust into empty air split it with a sharp report.
Whish!
He pivoted with measured rhythm into the next form.
Whoom! Tang!
The staff whipped up another vicious crack of split air, but Jin Cheong-un's brow creased faintly.
'Off by an inch, was it? Focus. More exact.'
Thoom!
With a weighty stamp of his foot, the staff carved a great sweeping arc through the air.
To be honest, this kind of training was utterly foreign to him. He had always privately sneered at the disciples of the great sects, shouting "Yah! Yah!" at empty air while drilling their forms — all of it, he'd assumed, stagecraft with no place in a real fight. What good was rehearsing set moves along fixed lines with no opponent? One more round of sparring would have been worth more than all of it.
'And it hadn't been entirely wrong thinking, either.'
That shortcut had made him strong. But shallow at the same time. A man can reach the summit by the fastest road, yet that doesn't mean he has seen the whole of the mountain. In the end, he had never managed the leap to the realm that lay beyond it.
'So it has to be discarded.'
Discard the old stubbornness. Only then could the vessel be filled.
Now he knew. What he'd taken for empty display was in fact the work of laying a foundation — a process for carving the true essence of the martial way deep into the marrow. He still believed, mind you, that training done merely to look good was a waste of breath. But he could no longer deny that once its hidden meaning was understood, it became the fastest — and most elegant — way to build that base.
Yes. This was training. Jin Cheong-un had finally grasped what the word truly meant.
Look. Weren't the creaks and wasted motion already draining out of movements that had squeaked only moments ago?
Terreong!
With a thunderous stamp, Jin Cheong-un's motions accelerated. Out of stillness and into motion — swift and ferocious, and at the same time deliberate, probing the depths of the art, chewing over the meaning buried in every form. His eyes flashed.
Pah-aang!
A thin smoke began to curl up from the tip of the extended staff.
"Hoohhh."
Steadying his ragged breath, Jin Cheong-un slowly lowered the staff.
A sprout had broken through the soil and was growing. Losing his original martial arts and choosing a new path had not erased the experience and knowledge stored inside him — his hard-won instincts and senses were becoming the fertilizer from which that new sprout would rise.
Just then—
"Master! All done with your training? Time to eat!"
Jeong So-ryong came pattering up on quick feet, closing the distance with a radiant smile.
"Come on, then. Let's go."
Jin Cheong-un swept the sweat from his brow and nodded.
Hup-hup-hup!
Chopsticks flew in every direction. White rice, dressed vegetables, grilled fish, stir-fried meat — and the chopsticks that had laid waste to every last dish in moments now carried their spoils toward their final destination: the bottomless pit known as Jin Cheong-un's mouth.
Chomp chomp chomp chomp.
Even the stir-fried meat, a little on the tough side today, didn't survive an instant. Jin Cheong-un's teeth tore through and ground down everything in their path.
"Mm. Nothing beats a meal with meat in it. So-ryong, you eat plenty too."
"Gulp! Yes, Master!"
"And So-so, why are you picking like a sparrow?"
"It's just… meat so early in the morning is a bit…"
"Tsk tsk. Meat is what gives you strength. Eat up. Come on, eat."
Chomp chomp chomp chomp!
Back at full ferocity, Jin Cheong-un set about laying waste to the table once more. Could that honestly still be called a 'meal'? Wouldn't 'absorption' or 'annihilation' be closer to the truth? He should have looked like a ravening beast eating that way, yet not a single fleck of seasoning touched the corners of his mouth — which was, frankly, a marvel in itself.
Bewildered, Jeong So-so slowly turned her gaze.
'Well, that's just Master being Master, but…'
Her expression dimmed.
'What on earth is wrong with YOU?'
Beside Jin Cheong-un, her one and only little brother was likewise waging his meal as an all-out campaign.
"Mmph. Mmph-mmph. Gulp!"
Cheeks bulging, Jeong So-ryong chewed and swallowed with brisk, businesslike efficiency. He did pause for a heartbeat when his chopsticks landed on the pickled vegetables he normally loathed.
"Uuu… mmph!"
But then, wearing the grim resolve of a man facing a mortal enemy, he stuffed them in and chomped them down.
My brother. My precious baby brother, the one I carried and raised like gold and jade — what on earth happened to him…
"D-Do jianghu folk generally eat this much?"
"Hm?" Jin Cheong-un swallowed what was in his mouth before answering. "Well, ours is a trade that wears the body out, so we do tend to eat a lot. Why?"
"I was wondering whether they all eat as much as you do, Master. Oh — here you go."
"Er. Right. Thanks."
She hadn't even been asked, yet Jeong So-so had refilled his bowl as naturally as breathing; and Jin Cheong-un, accepting it just as naturally, tipped his head.
'So my appetite really has grown, has it.' He'd always been a hearty eater, but never to this degree. Perhaps his body simply demanded fuel while it remade itself.
"Our disciple's cooking is simply too good — no wonder the rice keeps disappearing."
"Aw, come on! It's not that good!"
Even as she waved it off, the corners of Jeong So-so's mouth kept creeping upward.
"I mean it. This would hold its own at a first-rate inn. Isn't that right, So-ryong?"
"Yes. Everything my sister cooks is delicious."
"I-is that so? Ah! Should I get you more side dishes?"
"Oh no, no. Any more and I'll plump right up — I'd better stop here."
"You will not! There's plenty! Eat more! Don't you dare hold back — eat! MORE!!"
"F-fine, fine."
A while later the meal ended, and as Jeong So-so cleared the table, a thought drifted through her mind.
'It's been quite a while since the Black Tiger Den affair, hasn't it.'
A good few months had slipped past. The repairs on the manor — Jeong Manor no longer; it was Jin Manor now — had come a long way as well. The walls and the main gate had been finished days ago, and the annex that had burned to the ground was slowly taking shape.
It was, truly, peaceful.
'Yes, peaceful. It really is peaceful, and yet…'
Having finished the dishes and returned, Jeong So-so fixed her gaze on Jin Cheong-un, who was slumped back in a half-recline.
"Um, Master?"
"Hm?"
"How far along are the preparations for the opening?"
Jin Cheong-un went still.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because for months now, apart from going out to drink at night and occasionally coming home with strange books from the bookshop, you hardly ever go out at all…"
"Strange books?"
Jin Cheong-un bristled.
"Not strange books — an anthology by Master Hundred Faces, the one true literatus of this age, who has mastered every principle under heaven! Insult me all you like, but I will not stand by while anyone slanders Master Hundred Faces!"
"……"
Jeong So-so's eyes glazed over.
Her master sometimes stayed up all night over a book, and she'd wondered what it was — only to discover it was one of those storybooks the peddlers flogged at the day market for a couple of coppers. Monsters. Dueling heroes. Blatant, breathless tales of men and women tangled in bed… more or less that sort of thing. The last kind had actually been rather fun, and she had sneakily read one, but never mind that — that wasn't the point.
"The money's all right, isn't it? You spent an enormous amount on the manor and the academy repairs."
"…Of course it's fine."
Jin Cheong-un's eyes slid away. In truth, it was not fine.
'It really is strange, though.' It had been barely a few months since the Black Tiger Den's master had left him a cheerful fortune and his purse had felt pleasantly full. Yet when he'd called at the money house a few days ago, what remained had shrunk to a frankly unbelievable sum.
'I genuinely don't understand it.'
There had been no waste. While the repairs were underway anyway, he'd fixed this and added that — surely anyone would agree it was better to spend a little more and have it done properly. That much was perfectly reasonable expenditure. As for money spent elsewhere — nothing worth mentioning. A few bottles of the pricey liquor he never normally allowed himself, as a gift to himself. A few rounds of geom-pae tiles with the local men he'd recently taken up with, purely to pass the time.
'…Could it have been that?'
Jin Cheong-un gave one loud, deliberate ahem and spoke.
"Everything is proceeding exactly according to plan, so worry not. You don't mean to say you doubt your master?"
"Of course I trust you. What a thing to say."
Jeong So-so answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I only brought it up because we worry we're nothing but a burden to you. I want to help somehow…"
Jin Cheong-un was moved, inwardly. Where else in the world would you find a disciple who thought of her master to this degree?
"I can't speak for anyone else, but I know. You only pretend to take everything easy, Master — I know you're carrying deep worries behind it all."
"……?"
"You must have some grand design for the academy. I'm still young, so I can't fully grasp the depths of your foresight… but someday, I want to become a disciple who can stand beneath you and hold you up."
"Er, hm."
A grand design? Profound foresight? Had there ever been such a thing?
"Master, I believe in you too."
Even Jeong So-ryong chimed in, eyes shining.
Faced with the siblings' trust-filled gazes, Jin Cheong-un felt cold sweat sliding down his spine. This was… there was a misunderstanding here. A disciple's picture of their master could drift, sure — but this had drifted clean off the map. And yet he could not quite bring himself to shatter their illusion.
"R-right! Thank you for understanding. Well, since it's come up — shall we all go together?"
"Go where?"
"Today's the day I pay the balance."
And that was that. One way or another, the academy's renovation was finally complete.
Cheongun Martial Arts Academy.
The gloomy old ruin that had once made skin crawl had been refurbished so cleanly that the word reborn suggested itself unbidden. But in all the world's affairs, there is a price to pay.
"The balance comes to one hundred and fifty nyang. A note from the Central Plains Money House would suit me fine as well."
For all the bravado he'd shown Jeong So-so, Jin Cheong-un's fingertips trembled ever so slightly as he held out the note.
"This blue-steel stone… it was always this expensive?"
"I took a bit off, seeing as you ordered so much of it. Heh heh. Well then, I'll be on my way."
"……"
A martial artist's training is brutal on flooring. Even decently sturdy stone tended to crack after a few good stomps, which was why the great sects mostly finished their floors with a special stone called blue-steel stone. Naturally, Cheongun Martial Arts Academy had paved all of its floors in gleaming blue-steel stone as well. And yet… laid end to end, the stuff had cost nearly the price of an entire manor.
'Back in the Alliance, the floors were paved wall to wall in the stuff — I'd assumed it was cheap.'
And that wasn't all. They'd sunk a brand-new well, ordered training robes and practice weapons, commissioned wooden dummies and sandbags… How was it that everywhere he looked, there was nothing but another place for money to drain away?
"So-ryong, look at that!"
"Whoa!"
Watching his disciples circle the training grounds with their eyes sparkling, Jin Cheong-un felt a chuckle escape him.
"Well? Do you like it?"
"Of course!"
"Then that's all that matters."
Money was simply something to be earned again. If heaven had a shred of conscience, it was high time it turned a little luck his way. In any case, the housing problem was settled and the academy's renovation done — which left only one thing.
"So all that's left now is recruiting disciples."
"Right. Now it truly begins."
"What's the plan?"
"Want to hear it?"
Jin Cheong-un grinned.