Turns Out People Don't Die That Easily
So people don't die as easily as you'd think, huh?
Sccccrrrrape…
"Hahh… hahh… hahh…"
Deep inside the inner compound of the Sichuan Dang Clan, in Dang Mulin's private training yard, the only sounds echoing were something heavy scraping across the ground and the ragged gasps of someone whose breath had shot all the way up to their throat.
"That's enough for now!"
I'd been staggering lap after lap around the yard with a feeling like I was about to cough up my own heart—and the instant Dang Mulin's words ended, I went down flat on the ground, just like that. Watching me lie there on my belly, wheezing over and over like a worm wriggling in the dirt, she clicked her tongue.
"Tsk… and you're already gassed?"
When I'd started running, the sun had only just been coming up; by the time this hellish lap-running ended, it was already hanging dead overhead. My mind went a little hazy just looking at it. At some point Dang Mulin had come over to where I lay sprawled and was unfastening my shackles.
"It's lunchtime. Dust yourself off and go get some food over there."
The moment the shackles binding my limbs dropped away, I felt a liberation too immense for words, and looked toward where her finger was pointing. At the end of her index finger there was only a table set out beneath the shade of a large tree.
Ptui! Sand had apparently gotten into my mouth in the brief time my face was planted in the dirt; I spat it out and staggered upright.
"I-is it… over?"
Dang Mulin answered with the kindly smile of a saint.
"Well, this part's done."
"Ugh… I'm dying."
"That was the morning training, you see."
At that thunderbolt out of a clear sky, I wondered for a moment whether my ears had broken and asked again.
"I'm sorry—what?"
"Oh… did I never mention it? From now on, mornings are conditioning, afternoons are martial arts training. Every single day."
"Training all day, every day? Then when exactly am I supposed to catch my breath and rest?"
"You rest while you eat and while you sleep. Oh, and at night you'll be honing your heart method—I've decided. That should wrap up before the hour of the Rabbit anyway, so all you have to do is nap a little and come back out by the hour of the Dragon."
Listening to the absurd schedule pouring out of her mouth, I raised a trembling hand to my chest and spoke.
"Sis… if I can't even get a proper two hours of sleep and I'm rolling around out here every single day, won't a person actually die?"
"You won't. I've done it."
Faced with her flat, matter-of-fact declaration, I widened my eyes into the most pitiful look I could manage and begged.
"Sis… this is way too hard. I really might die. How about we adjust the schedule just a little?"
Despite my pleading, doe-eyed gaze, Dang Mulin answered with a face so cold that stabbing it wouldn't have drawn a single drop of blood.
"No. Not changing it. No intention of changing it. Hurry up and go eat."
I stared at her, hollow-eyed—where on earth had I heard that line before?—and she spoke up again.
"You're the one who swore you'd throw yourself into this like your life depended on it, Muyeong. It hurts my heart, as your sister, to watch you struggle. But I'll swallow that pain and keep pushing you, so understand that."
She clearly wasn't going to budge no matter what I said, so I gave up and dragged my wobbly legs toward the tree.
"What is this…"
Looking at the "meal" laid out on the little table, all I could do was laugh in disbelief.
"Ha… ha."
"I had the Poison Refinement Hall make it—special recipe. Do you like it?"
At the words of Dang Mulin, who had somehow trailed along behind me, I felt a vein throb at the base of my skull.
"You actually expect me to eat this? Is that a serious question?"
To me, choking up at the sight of the laid-out table, she replied in a tone that suggested there was simply nothing to be done about it.
"Good-for-you things never taste good. Just bear it and eat. It's all for your sake."
I scrubbed at my face with a dry hand, trying to retrieve my runaway composure.
"This doesn't even look good for me…"
The meal arranged "for my sake" included a mushroom salad in colors gaudier than a Christmas tree, a purple something-or-other that was sort of a soup, and a fluorescent frog lying primly on its back with its legs tucked in. Beyond that, every manner of dish that looked like it had crawled out of a twisted hellscape filled the table with color, glittering like a karaoke mirror ball.
Faced with a spectacle you couldn't find anywhere else in the world, Dang Mulin herself looked a little sheepish, scratching her head.
"It's all tonic as far as your body's concerned anyway, Muyeong, so chew everything up nice and fine before you swallow."
"Ha…"
Watching her speak in a tone of genuine, heartfelt concern, I let out a hollow laugh with the face of a man who'd just lost his kingdom, and she added:
"There's a lot still left to do today. Can't have you getting sick to your stomach, you know."
Sitting down before the table in total surrender, I thought:
Fuck… my big mouth. It's always my big mouth. What riches and glory was I even chasing, doing this shit…
They say that when you suddenly push your body through exercise it isn't used to, you start dry-heaving and whatever appetite you had simply flees. Mine had already left the Dang Clan compound behind, and this special nutritional meal looked ready to chase it clean out of Sichuan—a complicated feeling welled up in me of its own accord. But Dang Mulin stood right there watching, plainly determined to see every last bite go down whether I was despondent or elated, so I had no choice but to shovel the things into my mouth, gagging all the while.
Right in the middle of forcing it all down—
"Ulp…"
I barely held back the contents of my stomach from staging a full evacuation, and thought:
You motherfucker… that frog wasn't steamed. It was sashimi.
"Sis… please. Water."
"Okay."
Begging for water to quell my stomach, which wailed for something—anything—normal, I received from Dang Mulin something even more spectacular.
"What is this… this isn't cola?"
The pitch-black liquid in the cup she handed me was fizzing away, bubbles rising steadily. It looked exactly like the drink I used to gulp down every day before I got dragged here. I took a cautious sip, and—
"Haaah… what is this stuff?!"
"That's a tea I brewed by mixing this and that into some salt-cured pufferfish. Drink every last drop of that one too."
Having gulped down the pitch-black tea—which tasted like seawater blended with espresso—under tearful protest, I turned to her.
"By the way, aren't you eating, Sis? Want to join me?"
She shook her head hard enough to make her hair whip.
"Just watching you eat, Muyeong, fills me right up. I don't think I need any…"
"Does watching me fill you up? Or does watching me kill your appetite?"
Dang Mulin dodged my suspicious stare and did nothing but cough awkwardly, again and again.
Only after the meal was over—the kind of meal that would make even the demons of hell mutter "whoa, that's a bit much…"—did she come re-shackle me where I sat slumped on the ground like a corpse.
"Hah… hey, Sis."
At the faint skepticism in my voice, she tilted her head.
"What? Is something the matter?"
"Didn't you say afternoons would be for learning things like the Light Body Technique or hidden weapon arts?"
"I did say that."
"Then why put these back on? You can't exactly learn footwork while dragging around great big iron balls like these."
To my question, asked with the face of a man who could not comprehend this situation on any level, she began her explanation, calm and methodical.
"Muyeong. When do you suppose the moment will come for you to use the Light Body Technique?"
"Hmm… running away? Or chasing someone down?"
"Right. You'd use it when you're mid-fight with someone and it's gone so bad you have to flee for your life. Yes?"
"I… suppose that'd be it?"
"And if that situation ever arrives, you'll probably be short on internal energy from all the trading of blows, with the strength drained right out of your limbs. Wouldn't you say?"
"Uh… I mean, that's true?"
Her logic was growing stranger by the sentence. Just as I tilted my head to object, she steamrolled right over my bewildered question.
"Questions later. Listen for now. In any case—Light Body Technique, hidden weapons, whatever it may be—training under the assumption of extreme situations is what makes your skill grow fastest."
It was logic profound enough to make enlightened philosophers slap their foreheads. I felt my mind begin to spin.
"Is that… actually true?"
"I tried it. It is."
Tested with her own body, apparently. I said nothing more and simply resigned myself to the hardships and trials hurtling my way.
"If Sis says so, then… what can I do."
Watching my expression of serene enlightenment, Dang Mulin nodded, satisfied, and asked:
"We'll start with footwork, then… is there a particular kind you'd like to learn?"
Baffled by a question that made no sense to me whatsoever, I answered carefully.
"There's more than one kind of footwork? Then give me the best of the lot."
At that, a look of oops crossed her face, and she scratched her head and offered a supplementary explanation.
"Footwork is important—it more or less decides the manner in which you'll fight. Now, if you were like the direct line of the Namgung Clan and fought with a fixed, limited repertoire of sword arts, a single footwork would do. But in our clan, only the heart method is fixed. Everything else, each of us decides for ourselves how to fight—so your footwork has to follow suit."
As I nodded along, roughly following her explanation, she went on.
"And that's why, looking back over the generations of Dang Clan heads, you'll find those who specialized in poison, those who specialized in hidden weapons… we even had a spear-wielder once."
Hearing all this, I pondered long and hard which footwork I ought to learn.
Maybe something hegemonic? No… no, better to learn something stealthy instead, wouldn't you say?
After a good long deliberation, I made my decision and spoke up.
"Would it be all right if I learned two?"
"Well… I don't see a problem with that? But you'll be putting your body through the wringer learning both of them, Muyeong."
"How much worse can it possibly get from here? Anyway—I'll take one hegemonic footwork and one stealthy one."
"Then the Bamboo Grove Hidden Snake Steps and the Heaven-Crushing Mountain-Collapsing Steps will do nicely."
I stood there marveling, my chest swelling magnificently at names that were, in truth, pointlessly grandiose.
"Whoaaa…."
And to that gaping idiot, she—producing two books from her own magnificent bosom—said:
"Read these through carefully in the meantime. I have somewhere to be."
"Okay…"
After handing me the books, Dang Mulin flitted away, and that was that. Left all alone in the training yard, I sat slumped on the ground, tearing at my hair and staring holes into the books on footwork.