The Thousand Martial Statues (3)
"Back for another beating today, I see?"
Jin Yigang said with a grin.
"Honestly, dying from a beating or dying from this pill—it's all the same, isn't it……"
Gu Ham said, lifting a small knife.
"Elder, don't you feel great after taking your licks?"
"If getting beaten feels good, that makes you a pervert."
"Oh, so you're the kind of bastard who gets pleasure out of it?"
"Otherwise there'd be no reason to dose me up and smack me around, would there? Am I wrong?"
"That's not it. It just didn't hurt."
"It didn't hurt?"
Gu Ham's eyes went wide. There was a martial art that hardened the entire body by striking every meridian without pause—it was called the Myriad Strike Mad Body Art. The body forged through that art was known as the Black Demon Body. A sudden thought struck him: had Jin Yigang somehow attained it?
"Yep! So when you dosed me…… that hurt."
"You lunatic!"
"The measles are over now, anyway."
"Measles?"
"Every once in a while—not often, but sometimes—I just really hate myself and life gets boring."
"And that's when you abuse yourself?"
"No, I test myself."
"What kind of test?"
"Whether I die or not."
"……"
"I swore it the first time I swallowed a poison pill. If I died, so be it; if I survived, I'd live like a complete madman. But sometimes it gets really hard."
"So now you'll live earnestly, then."
"I suppose I will."
"Why not quit and leave this place?"
"No money."
"You spent five years saving money and never spent a single coin. You even drank liquor stocked inside the Jecheon Medical Manor. You earned six thousand nyang a year, so that's thirty thousand nyang in all. That's enough to start a business, isn't it?"
"Right! Didn't I tell you I have a father?"
"First I'm hearing of it."
"I do. I'm his only son, so he bet everything on me. And then his boy, who'd even placed first in the Imperial Examination, became a stray dog overnight. How do you think that felt?"
"Unspeakable, I'd imagine."
"Exactly. He became a complete wreck. Close friends and relatives all abandoned him. But after everyone left, he found new friends."
"What kind of friends?"
"Liquor and gambling."
"Ha!"
Gu Ham snorted with laughter.
"With those two friends, who needs the human kind, he says."
"Well, you and your father certainly are research subjects."
"How did that man even know I'd woken up……"
"Is Yi Seung coming again?"
"Yep."
Jin Yigang nodded.
Just as he said, Yi Seung entered the room a short while later.
"If you're awake, follow me."
Jin Yigang walked out with Yi Seung.
"Making me take the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill?"
"You'll take it this evening."
"Who observes when I take it?"
"The Devil Physician has ordered me to bring you to him."
"Why him, all of a sudden……?"
Jin Yigang frowned.
The Devil Physician, Je Simhak, was the Manor Lord's own younger brother—not only a poison specialist but famous for developing vicious drugs that pushed the body to its absolute limits. Most of the test subjects who had died had taken drugs Je Simhak created.
"He's the one who brewed the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill."
"Son of a—!"
Jin Yigang spat out a curse.
"Take this one first."
Gu Ham held out a pill to Jin Yigang.
"What is it?"
"A painkiller. It won't eliminate the pain entirely—just takes the edge off, a little."
"Then I'll just take a lot of them."
"Taking more doesn't make it work better."
"Come on, if you've got any hidden away, hand them over."
"I told you, I don't. And what kind of young man loves medicine that much!"
"I like medicine more than food. So—nothing, then?"
"Nothing."
"Can I take it now?"
"Go ahead."
Jin Yigang tossed the pill into his mouth and chewed it up.
"Rest well."
With that farewell, he headed out with Yi Seung.
"You have time until evening, so take it easy."
Yi Seung said as they stepped outside.
"Then I can do my training?"
"Training?"
"I need to loosen up my muscles after a beating."
"You mean you're going to run through the Five Animal Frolics?"
The Five Animal Frolics was said to be a martial art devised by the physician Hua Tuo, imitating the movements of the dragon, tiger, leopard, snake, and crane—but in truth it was closer to a health regimen. The Shaolin Five Fists, which Bodhidharma refined from those frolics, stayed within the same bounds as well—health arts made for monks who spent all day in meditation and scripture.
The place Jin Yigang and Yi Seung entered was a vast space crowded with countless life-sized statues.
Every statue held a different pose.
One stretched its arms straight out; one bent its knees; one thrust a fist forward; one brought an arm chopping down from above; one stood in a horse stance; one extended both arms at once—every posture seemed drawn from martial forms.
"This place……"
Yi Seung looked at Jin Yigang with a puzzled expression.
The statues here were called the Thousand Martial Statues.
No one knew when or by whom they had been made. They were said to predate the Jecheon Medical Manor's founding on this ground five hundred years ago.
Several legends had come down about the Thousand Martial Statues.
Some said an absolute master of the fist had created them from his own martial art a thousand years ago; others claimed a sect had preserved its secret techniques in the form of human figures.
And so many had challenged the statues' mystery. Absolute masters, scholars, prodigies—people of every stripe spent anywhere from months to years here. But not a single theory was ever proven. Time passed, and the conclusion was reached that the Thousand Martial Statues held no secret at all.
From then on, the place was opened up.
Only members of the Manor could enter, of course. Outsiders needed the Manor Lord's permission.
"Did you learn martial arts here?"
"Martial arts?"
Jin Yigang stared at him.
"The Five Animal Frolics counts as a martial art too, you brat."
"It doesn't even rank as third-rate."
"Then why did you practice something beneath third-rate so diligently?"
He asked because Jin Yigang had been carrying that book every time he saw him.
"You know I begged hundreds of times for a different book and never got a single one?"
"So there was nothing else to read……"
"That's why I came here every day, too."
"You came here every day?"
"Yep. I even counted every single statue."
"It's called the Thousand Martial Statues, so isn't it a thousand?"
"Exactly one thousand and fourteen. The forms change depending on which entrance you take—eighty-four thousand distinct movements in total."
"Eighty-four thousand movements?"
Yi Seung looked at Jin Yigang in astonishment.
To his eyes, every statue looked more or less the same. Sure, they faced different directions and held different poses.
Even so, eighty-four thousand was hard to believe.
"Yep."
"Don't lie to me, you rascal."
Yi Seung snorted.
"Anyway, every time I enter, I have to pass all one thousand and fourteen statues."
Whoosh!
Jin Yigang launched himself at the statues.
Stopping right in front of one, he thrust out his right fist.
Thud!
A dull sound rang out.
"Ha!"
Yi Seung snorted. It wasn't the crack of a Desolation Fist—just the sound of his left hand slapping his own chest as the right shot out.
The extended right fist stopped precisely in front of the statue's chin. The left fist that had struck his chest now thrust toward a different statue, and as he swung it he ducked his upper body, slipping past the statue's arm.
"Even so, that's impressive."
It was a sight that drew admiration in spite of itself.
Jin Yigang was weaving through the statues while running the Five Animal Frolics—and he wasn't merely passing them.
He ducked low and leapt, retreated in a flash, sprinted at full tilt, evading every hand and foot the statues extended.
"Huh?"
Yi Seung's eyes widened.
It looked as though the statues were attacking Jin Yigang. In truth it was only the effect of Jin Yigang dodging their forms at high speed.
"Well, I'll be damned."
Yi Seung chuckled. Jin Yigang's movements grew faster and faster. He seemed to have passed all thousand statues and reached the far side. Without stopping, he plunged into the heart of the statues—taking a different path this time, his movements changing with it.
"That's not the Five Animal Frolics, is it?"
Yi Seung tilted his head. From behind he hadn't noticed, but watching from the front, Jin Yigang's movements looked far more precise. What he unfolded as he evaded the statues was something apart from the frolics.
"His form changes as he dodges them."
He kept watching. Jin Yigang moved ceaselessly among the statues, weaving back and forth nearly eighty times before finally emerging.
"Done already?"
Yi Seung asked.
"Yep."
"You didn't use your feet?"
"My feet?"
"You looked like you were holding back from kicking. Was I wrong?"
"How did you know?"
This time it was Jin Yigang who looked at Yi Seung in surprise.
"I once dreamed of being a warrior too, you know. I did plenty of research on the martial arts."
"I do want to kick. I'm just holding back."
"Why hold back?"
"Because they told me not to."
"Who did?"
"The statues, who else?"
"You hold conversations with statues now?"
"I met them every single day for five years—rain, snow, storms, not one day missed. Isn't small talk the least I owe them?"
"You……"
"Impressive, right?"
"You're out of your mind."
"Never had an experience like that?"
"No."
"It was a first for me too, but one day the statues started talking to me."
"What did they say?"
"First, they told me to dodge."
"So you did as you were told?"
"I'm fairly good at listening to my elders."
"Elders?"
"Those statues have to be at least a thousand years older than me, don't they?"
"You really have lost your mind."
"Anyway, from now on they say I should start using my feet a little too."
"How……?"
"Like this."
Jin Yigang snapped a kick toward one of the statues.
Crack!
The top of his foot struck the statue's neck dead-on.
"Aaagh!"
Jin Yigang hopped around clutching his foot.
"What kind of idiot kicks solid stone, you lunatic? Come on."
Yi Seung ambled off.
The moment Yi Seung turned his back, Jin Yigang stood up straight as if nothing had happened and started walking. He looked nothing at all like a man in pain.
Psshh!
A short while after the two had left, powder drifted from the statue's neck, which had caved in deep. The spot where Jin Yigang's instep had struck.
But neither Yi Seung nor even Jin Yigang himself knew that the statue's neck had crumbled to powder.
A cold-featured middle-aged man gazed at Jin Yigang. Merely looking, yet his gaze was so intense it felt like a glare—this was the Devil Physician, Je Simhak, second-in-command of the Jecheon Medical Manor.
Though only in his mid-fifties, Je Simhak looked far older thanks to his stark white hair and eyebrows.
Before him lay a pill wrapped in gold leaf. Chestnut-sized, it was the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill Jin Yigang was to take.
"How is your condition?"
Je Simhak asked.
"Peak condition, sir."
Jin Yigang answered truthfully. The reason he so often sought out the plaza where the Thousand Martial Statues stood was that visiting it left his body and mind feeling washed clean.
"Take it."
Je Simhak indicated the pill.
"Should I chew it?"
Jin Yigang asked.
"Yes."
"Understood."
Jin Yigang nodded, picked up the pill, and peeled away the gold leaf. A foul stench wafted from the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill, and Jin Yigang grimaced slightly.
He had swallowed countless poison pills over the years. One whiff was enough to gauge a pill's potency. And this one was the strongest he'd ever taken.
He thought he might need to leave a will.
"This is top-shelf quality, sir."
He said it as he popped the pill into his mouth.
Whatever it was made of, the Thousand Poison Demonic Pill dissolved the instant it entered his mouth. Before he could do anything at all, it slid down his throat.
"You have always taken only the strongest drugs."
Je Simhak said.
"Even so, I think this one calls for a will, doesn't it?"
"It might."
Je Simhak nodded.
"……Someday I'm going to stuff a Thousand Poison Demonic Pill down that throat of yours too. Gaaah!"
Jin Yigang let out a scream.
Black blood poured from his gaping mouth. The poison had begun convulsing through him in earnest.
"I have hated you from the very beginning."
Je Simhak said coldly.
"I—I've hated you too, you son of a……"