***
Storm clouds veiled the moon.
A darkness in which one could not see an inch ahead settled over the mansion.
A woman in a black martial arts uniform stood before the mansion's gate.
She looked up at the enormous dragon that adorned the side of the main gate.
"If you are a guest, come again tomorrow when the day breaks."
The gatekeeper waved her off, saying this was not a place that received visitors carelessly.
However far its fortunes had declined, the Yunnan Dan Clan were descendants of the royal house that had once founded the Dali Kingdom.
Pride at guarding royalty ran through the gatekeeper's voice.
But the woman who had appeared today had a strange air about her.
Wearing a bright smile, she said she was an old friend of the Clan Head. She insisted stubbornly that she had a gift to deliver and absolutely had to meet him.
The look in her eyes was no ordinary one, so the gatekeeper could block her no further and sent word inside.
The Clan Head, who had meant to retire early, frowned deeply at the news of a visitor and received her.
The middle-aged man studied the face of the woman who had appeared in the dead of night, then opened his mouth.
"Noona?"
She was his own elder sister, who had left home long ago. He had believed she died while traveling the martial world.
"You were alive all this time?"
The woman in the black martial arts uniform nodded.
"Why did you never once send word in all that time?"
"Because I thought I would bring disgrace on the clan. In the martial world I lived under a different name."
Even in childhood, his elder sister had been tight-lipped.
Whatever the story was, the Clan Head thought it better not to know if she would not speak of it.
"I heard there was a happy occasion recently."
For generations the clan had been sparse in offspring.
The Clan Head himself was the only son of a third generation of only sons, and ten years after his marriage he had at last gained a single son.
"Might I see the child once?"
Her tone suggested she thought herself unworthy of it, but the Clan Head gladly called for the wet nurse and had the newborn brought in.
"We named him Se-min."
A child he could have put in his eye without pain, and yet.
The eyes of the woman in the black martial arts uniform, studying the baby closely, took on a desolate shade.
"As I thought. What I saw last night was indeed a star of calamity."
"A star of calamity?"
"The Heaven-Slaying Star shone. Born with that energy, his martial talent is beyond doubt. But the greater problem is that he was born with a Supreme Yang Body."
"What? What does that mean?"
"It is similar to the Nine Yin Severed Meridian. It will be easier to understand if you think of it as the opposite. In the severed meridian, yin qi blocks the meridians; in the Supreme Yang Body, the meridians burn away with fire qi. Because he is born with fire qi by nature, once he passes the age of twenty the symptom of burning meridians will appear. Once those symptoms begin, he will not live even five more years."
At words like a bolt from the blue, the Clan Head's brows drew together.
"Noona, you appear after twenty years and speak such ill-omened words?"
"Surely the Clan Head has some vague knowledge that such a curse runs in our house."
Now that he thought of it, he remembered hearing the old men of the clan speak of such a thing long ago.
But that such a curse would fall on my son, of all people.
"Noona, is there no method?"
"Heaven and earth are wide, so there will not be no way for him to live. Now and then tales are passed down of those who cured the Nine Yin Severed Meridian. The Clan Head must have heard the story of one who cured it and rose to the seat of the world's best."
The Clan Head pondered a moment, then asked.
"Do you mean that if he becomes the world's best, the severed meridian affliction can be cured?"
At his words the woman in black paused.
She stroked her chin with a pale, beautiful hand.
"Hm. That is not without reason. Until now I thought that one who cured the Nine Yin Severed Meridian went on to become the world's best, but perhaps the cause and effect are reversed. Perhaps becoming the world's best is what allows one to go on living."
The woman in black raised her hand.
"I will open his upper qi center and his crown acupoint."
"The upper qi center?"
"If the fire qi is gathered in the upper qi center and vented through the crown acupoint, the onset of the severed meridian symptoms can be delayed as long as possible."
With the feeling of a man grasping even a rotten rope, the Clan Head handed the newborn to his elder sister.
The woman roused her energy and poured it into the child's back.
"......!"
The woman's eyes widened.
'Impossible. The upper qi center and the crown acupoint are already wide open. What is going on?'
At that very moment.
The woman's inner arts flowed endlessly into the baby.
No. She had thought wrongly.
It was not that her energy was flowing into the child's body.
The newborn was drawing in the inner arts of an absolute master at an astonishing speed.
'Qi absorption? The Star-Absorbing Grand Technique?'
The woman narrowed her eyes.
This was not the feel of such an artificial sorcery.
This was instinct.
From birth, the infant possessed a qi center of absurd size.
He took in the energy of the world as if breathing,
and moment by moment sent it flowing through his meridians.
Merely by injecting true qi to examine the child's body, the woman lost in an instant the inner arts of thirty years' cultivation.
Even so, there was no regret in her eyes.
What her face held instead was wonder.
'Inner arts can simply be built again, but this child's fate is pitiful.'
She poured her energy in deeper, more finely.
'The size of the upper qi center is beyond imagination. The brain, too, already shows signs of awakening. Is it the talent of the Heaven-Slaying Star, or the influence of the Supreme Yang Body......?'
A being beyond balance. That energy was unmistakable.
'This child is a being beyond the measure of man.'
The energy flowing from the woman grew stronger.
At that moment, the child's body gave off a brilliant light and began to shimmer.
His skin shone translucent, and over it silver scales slowly rose as if blooming.
The scales reflected golden flame, wrapping the infant's whole body and flashing like a protective barrier.
"......The Mark of the Naga?"
The woman's lips trembled faintly.
She could not believe the sight before her.
The founder who established the Dan Clan in Yunnan took a daughter of the Dragon Palace as his wife, made the clan prosper, and later founded the Dali Kingdom.
Thus the legend was handed down that the royal house of the Dali Kingdom carried on the dragon blood, and the kings of Dali were called "Descendants of the Dragon" generation after generation.
'The dragon blood, the legend of the naga's scales. Were they true after all?'
She stroked the glittering scales with her fingertips and murmured.
The scales slowly vanished,
and the child returned to the form of an ordinary newborn.
The woman in black withdrew her hand and drew a wooden case from her robes.
With a face gone pale from the abrupt loss of her inner arts, she took out a wound medicine and put it in her mouth.
After steadying her breathing for a moment, she held out a small jade case to the Clan Head.
"This is a gift for my nephew."
A frigid energy flowed out from the wooden case.
"What on earth is this?"
"The Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Crystal of the North Sea."
"How did you obtain something so precious?"
"You have no need to know. Nor would knowing do you any good."
"How should it be used?"
"Have him carry this ice crystal on his person at all times. It will help him govern the fire qi of the Supreme Yang Body. And when his Blazing Heaven Divine Art reaches the fifth stage, help him absorb the crystal's energy so that he may accumulate extreme yin qi within his body."
The Clan Head bowed his head low.
In all the history of the Dan Clan, the only one to master the Blazing Heaven Divine Art beyond the fourth stage had been the founder who created it.
Even he, the Clan Head, had reached no further than the third stage.
"Do not worry overmuch. This child's talent is beyond what anyone would dare imagine."
"Thank you, Noona."
But what use was outstanding martial talent if his fate was to die young?
The Clan Head's expression remained troubled.
Watching him, the woman in black quietly rose to her feet.
"Are you leaving already?"
"Yes. I came because I heard a child had been born, to repay the bond I received from the clan. The task is done, so I must return."
"Noona, will you leave so coldly? Stay the night, take a meal with the family, and then go. Or wait just a moment. I will wake my sleeping wife and my daughter as well so they may greet you."
"Enough. No good will come of my staying here long."
The Clan Head had no choice but to rise as well.
Even as a child, his elder sister had never changed her mind once it was set.
"You will come again, will you not?"
"There will be no occasion to meet again."
Despite the Clan Head's attempts to stop her, the woman left the estate.
"So the legend of the dragon blood was true. Born with the talent to become the world's best, and yet born with a Supreme Yang Body and cursed with the severed meridian. What a cruel fate it is!"
Running with the estate at her back, the woman muttered to herself.
"O Heaven. Why did you send down such a heavenly punishment together with the talent of the dragon blood?! Was it that you envied that talent?!"
Just then the clouds slowly parted, lighting the road ahead of the running woman.
***
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
The sound of a great waterfall crashing down rang out.
A boy stood in the middle of the great waterfall, taking the water that fell on his head.
He was Dan Se-min, eldest son of the Yunnan Dan Clan, once called one of the Five Great Clans of the murim, now much fallen in fortune.
The falling water struck his head.
The boy smiled as if it felt cool.
If he went even a single day without standing under the cool falls, the fire qi gathering in his upper qi center made him feel as though he would go mad.
'Now I feel a little more alive.'
Since last night, the feeling that his meridians were burning away had kept him from sleeping a wink. Even a boy his age could feel that the severed meridian affliction, the burning of the meridians, would soon flare up.
"Young Master! I told you to come out now. It's dangerous. And there isn't much time left before the guests are due to arrive."
From a distance a servant shouted, fidgeting anxiously.
'Is it that time already?'
As the boy gathered his energy in, the fire qi that burst out in an instant evaporated the falling water, and an enormous mist bloomed around the valley.
SIZZLE! SIZZLE!
The body of Dan Se-min that emerged as the mist cleared was hard to believe was that of a boy of fifteen.
The sinew and bone were already those of a finished martial artist, enough that one might believe he had undergone Body Reformation.
'I've clearly broken through to the fifth stage of the Blazing Heaven Divine Art.'
Se-min could not understand at all why, in the clan's history, so few had ever mastered the Blazing Heaven Divine Art beyond the third stage.
'Is it because of the severed meridian I was born with?'
Because he had been born with a Supreme Yang Body, the boy had an abundance of fire qi by nature.
It was clear that this suited the Blazing Heaven Divine Art, which cultivated extreme yang qi.
Perhaps that was why: merely by calling the oral formulas of the Blazing Heaven Divine Art to mind, Se-min accumulated enormous inner arts, and he had no difficulty building them.
Dan Se-min found it hard to understand why his father suffered the danger of qi deviation again and again with a martial art this easy to train.
It is hard for the ordinary to understand a genius, but harder still, by nature, for a genius to understand the ordinary.
Dan Se-min had been born with heaven-given talent.
He knew without being taught, and mastered without practice.
At three, he memorized every character a servant showed him after a single look.
In the year he turned four, he mastered the histories that recorded the secret annals of the murim.
In the year he turned five, Se-min went into the clan's library pavilion, took out the scriptures no one else could approach, and read them.
《Blazing Heaven Divine Art》, 《Fire Yang Secret Scripture》, 《Five Elements Fire Heart Record》
He absorbed the contents of the secret manuals handed down from the Dali Kingdom.
When he called the oral formulas to mind, the true qi in his body surged.
He saw the hidden flow of true qi with his own eyes.
The trajectories of qi that adults tried to grasp with their heads, Se-min simply felt and took in through the sense of sight.
Any scripture he had once skimmed breathed from that moment on like a living thing.
The letters on the paper rippled gold, and the energy of nature trembled as if dancing.
He was a child whose brain had awakened.
To say merely that his intellect was outstanding fell short of explaining his gift.
He had the talent to give visible shape to the qi of all things in the world.
The direction in which the energy of nature flowed.
The breath a person exhaled, even the vibration of an insect crossing a stone.
He could feel and perceive the current that all of it created.
One day at the age of seven, Se-min set a fallen leaf afloat on a lake.
With his fingertips he sent a thread of true qi along the ripples.
In that instant the leaf rose against the wind
and spun in a circle in the middle of the lake.
He had succeeded in controlling the flow of the water completely by regulating the energy of nature.
At nine, watching the guards training on the practice ground, Se-min said indifferently.
"That sword leans so far toward speed that the force isn't properly carried."
Then he burst into the middle of the practice ground and blocked the sword tips of three men at once with a single finger.
Se-min slowly lowered his finger and murmured.
"A technique that fails to hold true qi properly is a dead sword."
When Se-min swung a sword, a huge blaze shot up.
From that day on, the people of the clan called Se-min the "Son of the Blazing Heaven."
Around the age of ten, he began in earnest to learn the Blazing Heaven Divine Art, the clan's secret martial art.
That art, which no one had ever pushed past the third stage, Se-min brought to the third stage in three months and broke through to the fourth in three years.
Whenever he circulated his qi, the air around his body shook violently.
A heat like swirling fire filled the air.
Fire formed a vortex with his body at its center.
"It's Samadhi True Fire!"
"That child was not born from a human womb."
"He is one who sprang from the Flame-Light Samadhi."
Even the old men of the clan whispered such things when they looked at Se-min.
But Dan Cheon-hwi, Se-min's father, wore a troubled look each time.
His son was already a being who surpassed human talent.
Flames could swallow him without leaving a single wound, and neither blade nor sword could cut his skin.
The clan's teachers said there was nothing left to teach him, but Se-min seemed unmoved by the words.
"You said that if I become the world's best, I can live, did you not? Before I die, I will see the end of martial arts."
The reason Dan Cheon-hwi could not smile even at so admirable a son was this.
His only son had been born to a numbered life, doomed to die young of the severed meridian.