The Secret Room (2)
“What's so funny?”
Gung Yo asked.
“You've heard people call you a cat before, haven't you?”
Bukgung Hansang asked, looking at her. The more he looked, the more she reminded him of a cat.
“Not a cat. A leopard.”
“A leopard?”
“Say I'm not one, and I'll leave claw marks on that face of yours.”
“Hearing that, you do seem more leopard-like.”
“So what exactly is funny?”
Gung Yo asked again.
Thud!
“That sound. That's what's funny.”
“You mean he's making it on purpose, striking his own chest?”
“You noticed?”
“He does it every day like it's a game. No way I'd miss it.”
“A game?”
“That place is his playground.”
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud-thud!
The dull impacts came in rapid succession.
“A man who plays against the Thousand Martial Statues... now that's interesting.”
Bukgung Hansang grinned.
Jin Yigang's movements were getting faster by degrees.
“What martial art is he using right now?”
“Five Animal Frolics.”
“The one Bodhidharma supposedly— no, wait, the one Hua Tuo created?”
“That's right. The health regimen Shaolin built from the Five Animal Frolics became the Five Fist Forms.”
“Even so, with internal force behind it, wouldn't it pack some punch?”
“Punch or not, it's still third-rate.”
“Well, fair enough. But then...”
“Why does a man who isn't even a martial artist play around in there? That what you're asking?”
“Yeah.”
“Out here, if you don't focus on something, the days are too damn long.”
“...”
“Whenever they test a new drug, at least one or two of us die a day. Watching the person beside you swallow a dose and die throws you into terror, and a single day starts feeling longer than a year.”
“So you focus on something to make the time pass?”
“Exactly. He just picked the Thousand Martial Statues as his object of focus. There's nothing deeper to it.”
Just then, Jin Yigang, who had gone to the far side, came back over. On the way, he'd passed through the entire set of statues again.
“There's nothing here.”
Jin Yigang said, looking at Bukgung Hansang.
“...”
Bukgung Hansang said nothing, only staring at him.
“You came in because you wanted to know whatever secret the Thousand Martial Statues might be hiding, didn't you?”
“Do you know anything about martial arts?”
“Would a guy who reads stuff like that know anything?”
Jin Yigang pointed at the book Yuk Daemo carried, titled Third-Rate Martial Arts.
“Like you said, anyone at the level of reading a book like that couldn't possibly know anything about those statues. Am I wrong?”
“The conclusion that the Thousand Martial Statues hold no secret wasn't mine. It's the conclusion of the countless warriors who came here before me. If it had been one or two people, I could say they were wrong, but I've personally seen more than twenty of them. Every single one left the same way, muttering that they'd wasted their time. Still... when you stand right there and look at them, they do look like they hide something. On a foggy day especially, the place turns into pure legend.”
Jin Yigang flashed a grin and dashed back toward the Thousand Martial Statues.
“Maybe I'll take a look at this place myself.”
Bukgung Hansang loosened up lightly.
“If I were you, I wouldn't.”
Gung Yo said.
“Why not...?”
Bukgung Hansang turned to her.
“Try it first. No matter how much I explain, you won't understand until you've been through it.”
“So you're saying it's not easy?”
“I said try it.”
“Fine.”
Whoosh!
Bukgung Hansang plunged toward the Thousand Martial Statues.
“Ugh!”
Barely a few steps in, he stopped with a cry. A statue's fist had come flying at him out of nowhere. And not just one — fists shot out from every direction, blocking his path. To be precise, it was he who had thrown his body toward the statues' fists, but it felt exactly like being attacked.
He could go no further. He stopped dead.
He got through this... at that speed?
Bukgung Hansang looked back the way he'd come. He had passed only ten statues.
Yet Jin Yigang was charging through them without a hitch.
“That's just pathetic.”
Scratching his head, Bukgung Hansang returned to his original spot.
“Astonishing, isn't it?”
Gung Yo asked with a smile.
“Doesn't it make no sense, though? A warrior can't get past ten statues, but apparently there's 'nothing' here?”
“What you just said is exactly what the countless warriors who stayed here all said. It's the very phenomenon that makes the Thousand Martial Statues so mysterious.”
“Now I'm fired up.”
“Good luck.”
Gung Yo gave a small laugh and turned away.
“Then why did you come?”
“I came to find out why it works for him and not for me.”
Gung Yo turned back to face him as she spoke.
“So you think there is something here after all?”
“I've only been here for a year.”
“How many have you gotten through?”
“A hundred.”
“Only a hundred in a whole year?”
“Yep. See you.”
Gung Yo left.
“The Drunken Fairy, Gung Yo... couldn't get past even a hundred...”
Bukgung Hansang murmured under his breath.
“Was that woman just now the Drunken Fairy, one of the rising stars everyone's talking about?”
Yuk Daemo asked, eyes wide.
“You didn't know?”
“How would a head maid know a martial artist?”
“Ah— right, of course.”
Bukgung Hansang nodded. He didn't leave his spot, keeping his eyes on Jin Yigang. And Jin Yigang never stopped moving.
Jin Yigang came back to the two of them two hours later, his upper body gleaming with sweat.
“Let's go.”
He left with Yuk Daemo.
“And he's only third-rate...”
Bukgung Hansang launched himself at the Thousand Martial Statues again. But this time, too, he stopped at the eleventh statue.
“This is driving me insane. And he's only third-rate...”
Scowling, Bukgung Hansang sank to the ground.
“I am Bukgung Hansang. The Ghost Sword.”
He sprang back up. And went again to the very beginning.
“Do you know who Bukgung Hansang is?”
Jin Yigang asked Yuk Daemo.
“A warrior known by the epithet Ghost Sword.”
“Famous?”
“Very.”
“Then why would someone like that be here... don't tell me it's because of the Thousand Martial Statues?”
“That would be my guess. The same goes for the Drunken Fairy, Gung Yo.”
“So Gung Yo's famous too, huh?”
“Gung Yo and Bukgung Hansang are both members of the Ten Hidden Talents.”
“The Ten Hidden Talents — you mean the rising masters.”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn't you say both of them have already made it, then?”
“Barely past thirty and famous enough that everyone knows their names? That's remarkable.”
“So why would people like that come here?”
“To see the Thousand Martial Statues, perhaps?”
“Thousands of warriors already investigated this place and concluded there's nothing here. Unless they're idiots, they wouldn't come for that.”
“You mean they must have some other purpose in coming?”
“If it were me, I wouldn't come just to look at the statues.”
“That could be true.”
Yuk Daemo nodded.
When he reached his quarters, Jin Yigang washed up, ate, and went into his room. The moment he stepped inside, he sat down at the table and opened the book.
This book was the record of a loser.
I am the Loser of a Hundred Thousand Defeats.
I gave myself that title. In all my years, not once did anyone call me a master.
How old am I?
Don't be shocked. Ninety.
I lived my whole life under the label of warrior, and I never won a single fight. It was always a draw, or a loss. Every time I lost, I wrote down the reason, and from the age of eighty, I began writing this book based on everything I had recorded. I don't know whether I'll live to finish it, but here goes.
The world is full of martial arts.
Count every martial art in existence, and I guarantee you'll find as many as there are stars in the night sky.
So what lies at the root of those tens of thousands of arts?
Defense and attack. Only two things.
Some dodge and evade — but evasion, too, is a form of defense.
Internal force is merely a medium that raises the intensity of attack and defense; strictly speaking, it isn't a martial art at all. There are those who insist you must attain enlightenment to grow strong. Enlightenment my ass. None of it is needed.
Then what is the supreme martial art?
The finest killing technique is the supreme martial art.
Sever your enemy's lifeline faster, more effectively, than he can sever yours.
Then you are the one who survives.
You who read this — be the one who survives.
Now, let us discuss martial arts of actual combat.
First, the Three Talents Sword Art, which every man, dog, chicken, and ox supposedly learns. There is a Three Talents Step Art, a Three Talents Fist Art, a Three Talents Kick Art.
In any case, they all exist.
Heaven. Earth. Man.
This world is made of heaven, earth, and man. A martial art that contains all three.
How beautiful is that?
“Pfft.”
Jin Yigang snorted.
Only the pages up to where he was reading were swollen and worn. That meant the previous owner had closed the book for good the moment the explanation of the Three Talents Sword Art began — nothing after that had been worth reading.
“A book isn't finished until Jin Yigang's read it.”
He turned the page.
He didn't know that he was the first person ever to read the chapter after the Three Talents Sword Art.
Combine the qi of Heaven with the qi of Earth, and unleash it through Man. That is the Three Talents Sword Art.
The foundation for executing it is the feet.
Which is to say, the foundation of all martial arts is footwork.
“Nope. I'm closing it anyway.”
Snap.
Jin Yigang shut the book.
“Gotta make it last, after all.”
He smirked and climbed into bed.
Lying there staring at the ceiling, Jin Yigang recalled the Thousand Martial Statues he'd cleared that evening. He now had all fourteen hundred and fourteen statues' stances memorized.
Number ten, you move this way. Number twenty-five, over there. Number one, come to the front. Number two, right in front of number one.
He arranged each statue across the ceiling. Turning the ceiling into a plaza and setting the statues in place had been part of his nightly routine for the past five years. Once the arrangement was done, he set off through it in his mind.
At first he blocked and thrust, dodged and lunged, pressing forward. A faint smile played on his face.
“What's that?”
When he'd cleared the set once and reached the edge, Jin Yigang's eyes went wide. The edge was the left wall. And there, faintly inscribed, was the character for open. Like the Cheonin Stone Lodge carved above the main gate, it was written in the ancient seal script.
“It means 'open'...”
He got out of bed and walked to the wall. Horizontal and vertical lines ran across it at even intervals — the natural seams of cut stone laid in rows. He stared at the wall in silence, thinking.
“Which means there's a door here. And to make a door, you'd have to cut one of these stones.”
He held a flame up to the grooves between the stones.
“This one was carved on purpose.”
What he'd lit wasn't the natural seam left by stacked stone, but a groove scored by something sharp. He traced it leftward.
Following the character, he found the true groove — the seam born where two boulders had been stacked.
Then he went the other way. Two characters' width from where he'd started, the groove ended.
Having checked left and right, he checked above and below. When he was done, he knew: it was a single solid panel, half a jang tall and half a jang wide.
“If this is a door, how would it have been hung?”
The best way to figure out how a door opens is to figure out how it was mounted. To set a door into a wall with no visible marks, you'd have no choice but to build an axis at its center and make it rotate.
“If it opened sideways, it could swing open if someone leaned against the wall or hung something on it. If it were me... I'd use a horizontal axis, set above the midpoint, so the bottom half is far heavier. That way it won't open by accident, even if someone shoves it or drapes something over it. But...”
Jin Yigang leaned against the wall and pushed hard.
At first it didn't budge an inch — enough to make him wonder if he'd guessed wrong.
“My reasoning's sound. And I'm confident in my strength.”
Bracing with both feet, Jin Yigang pushed with everything he had.
Grrrk.
A low sound came from within the wall.
Jin Yigang bore down harder.
Grrrrrk!
With a low groan, the bottom half sank inward — and the wall swung open.
