TL/ED – Miso
The members of the Hall of Refined Arts were whispering.
"You know that Yeon So-wol? The kid who paid his way in with gold."
"Ah. That old kid? What a prick. Like money's going to buy you martial arts. Damn, I'm jealous though. Coughs up a little gold and suddenly he's getting one-on-one lessons from the Hall Master and the Instructors. Total bullshit."
"You hear he got put in Closed-door seclusion, though?"
"Huh?"
"For real. Ju-cheol heard it while he was hauling load after load of jerky over to the seclusion chamber. Sounds like it's been almost half a month already."
"That's insane. Why would a guy who's only just starting out in martial arts be in the seclusion chamber?"
"Guess the Hall Master's teaching him a real Internal cultivation method."
"Not the Free Wandering Art?""Not the Free Wandering Art."
"......He's dead, then?"
"Probably, yeah."
"Oh. You said half a month, right? Then he's already dead."
"Haaah......."
"Ah, hell. Does that mean we're the ones cleaning it up? Bodies from qi deviation are seriously nasty."
"Remember Brother Cheol-bung last year. Wouldn't listen to the Hall Master, pushed the method way too hard, burned his lungs out. God, the stink of scorched meat......."
"Man, that was a clean one. What was it, five years back? Right when I first got here, there was a senior named Geum-hun, and his Huiyin acupoint got overheated."
"Huiyin acupoint? Like, his ass?"
"Yeah. Around the anus. So anyway, all the essence down there got cooked and went soft and mushy....... His organs slid right out through it."
"No way."
"His pants were hanging down all saggy like he'd shat himself, except it was his guts that had poured out....... And he came shuffling over like that begging us to save him, and then he died. Man. I couldn't eat for a month after that."
"Oh. I remember that story. Heard it after I got here. Jeez. So you actually saw it. That's messed up."
"Right? When they tell you not to do a thing, just don't do it....... But it's the Brothers who are good at it who do it more, if anything. I guess once people start calling you Second-rate, you get greedy. They find some way to push too hard, and, ugh."
"It's really not easy. But making somebody do that when he's eighteen and just walked in the door? Wow. What was the Hall Master thinking?"
"Seriously. Poor guy. ......I take back what I said before about him being a prick."
"I take back what I said before too."
"What did you say?"
"Don't remember. Take it back. Take it back."
"......Still, though. He'd have taught him the Internal cultivation method properly, right?"
"Bet he did. Sat him down one-on-one and drilled him on the theory and everything. Doing something that dangerous, he'd have to."
"Okay, that part I envy. I've had it explained to me three separate times and I still get confused about how the Twelve Primary Meridians connect to the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. And we all learn together, so it feels awkward to even ask......."
"So. Jealous, are you?"
"......Ah, no. No I'm not. Take it back. Take it back."
"That Brother Yeon So-wol. Right about now he's probably burned to death alone on the cold floor of the seclusion chamber, or died with something pouring out of him....... And you're jealous?"
"......Fine. I'm trash."
"Yep."
"......So when are they opening the seclusion chamber, anyway? I mean, if he died in there, nobody'd even know."
"Oh, that. If he doesn't come out on his own, the Hall Master's opening it himself in two years."
"Two years?"
"Yeah. Apparently he told him not to come out until he reaches the Fire stage. He told him to come out once he'd grasped the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, which amounts to the same thing."
"Makes sense. In two years he'll either have reached the Fire stage or be dead, so I guess he left plenty of room."
"No way he pulls it off. I've been at the Fire stage for over a year and I still don't really get the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. And the Twelve Divergent Meridians, the Fifteen Collateral Branches, all that? I can't even feel whether they exist."
"Ugh. My head hurts just thinking about it. Oh, but then what happens with that other thing? Wasn't it supposed to be three months of watching him before deciding whether to take him on as a disciple?"
"That. Sounds like if he just survives, the Hall Master means to make him a direct disciple."
"Whoa! A direct disciple?! Not an outer disciple with the rest of us?"
"What, jealous again? Go into Closed-door seclusion yourself, then."
"......No. Never mind."
"You piece of trash."
"......."
"Good. Another piece of trash dealt with."
Yeon So-wol repeated the Willow Haze Art over and over, continually turning up more waste, more residue, more trash inside his body.
It was not an easy process.
A body looked small from the outside, but when he contemplated it by following the energy, it felt as vast as a mountain.
Combing every last corner of a body as huge as Mount Tai, hunting down each sizable deposit of waste and trash and clearing it out, demanded enormous concentration and patience.
Some of the waste, in particular, blocked the meridians so naturally that the work became harder still.
Every so often Yeon So-wol would think, 'Hm? So this stretch is just shaped like this', and move right past it, only realizing later. That the whole stretch had been one solid mass of waste.
Pinpointing the waste, then confirming over and over that it was external turbid qi with no relation whatsoever to his own essence, qi, and spirit.
It was as exhausting as hunting down every last typo in a book printed in minuscule characters with no spaces between the words.
But once he got through that grueling process, a sweet reward was waiting.
Hissssss-
White smoke slipping out from between Yeon So-wol's front teeth.
His eyes were bloodshot,
and the skin beneath them was black.
But his mouth curved into a smile.
"This thing. Why is it so much fun?"
He found it, he got rid of it. And then acrid smoke came curling up out of his mouth.
A thrilling sense of impact hidden inside a simple act.
It was as fun as playing an addictive mini-game.
On top of that, the reward was unmistakable.
"So that's two meridians cleaned out, right?"
The Twelve Primary Meridians.
Twelve major meridians.
They existed in perfectly symmetrical pairs, left and right.
If there was a meridian called the Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian, then an identical one existed on the left and on the right.
In other words, they were called the Twelve Primary Meridians, but in practice there had to be twenty-four passages.
Of those, Yeon So-wol had cleaned two, the Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian that rose from his right hand and the Foot Yangming Stomach Meridian that ran down to his left foot.
In the process, his understanding of the Twelve Primary Meridians deepened as well.
"Wild. On the chart they're two separate things, but the moment you move the Qi gathering through, they're connected."
On the meridian chart, the Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian and the Foot Yangming Stomach Meridian existed separately.
The right Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian began at the index finger and ended at the left Yingxiang acupoint (beside the nostril).
The left Foot Yangming Stomach Meridian began at the Chengqi acupoint below the eye and ended at the second toe of the left foot.
Separate as they were, once he actually moved the Qi gathering he could tell that a passage ran straight through from the Yingxiang acupoint beside the nostril to the Chengqi acupoint below the eye.
Two names, but in truth a single passage, starting at the right index finger, crossing through the head, and continuing down to the second toe of the left foot.
Once he had scoured the whole of it clean, that part of him could not have felt lighter.
"So this is what it means for the essence to warm up."
With the Qi gathering flowing easily through the cleaned passage, his right arm and left leg turned warm. A sense of strength surging up, of limbs going supple.
It was not merely a sense of it.
Whoosh-!
"Holy crap. That actually whistled."
When he planted his left foot and drove his right fist out with everything he had, he heard the air split.
A movement that should have been impossible for the body of a high school senior.
But it worked.
Essence was the foundation on which the flesh was built. When that cold, stiffened thing loosened and warmed, vitality welled up.
"My head feels clearer too. If I'd known about this back when I was studying......."
Even the fatigue piled up over more than half a month felt like it was draining away. Yeon So-wol was thoroughly fired up.
"All right! Let's clean out the rest of them!"
Excited, Yeon So-wol went back to repeating the Willow Haze Art.
He had cleaned the crossing passage that ran from the right Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian to the left Foot Yangming Stomach Meridian, so this time he meant to do the reverse, cleaning the crossing passage that ran from the left Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian to the right Foot Yangming Stomach Meridian.
A full month went by that way.
Yeon So-wol managed to clean the whole of the Twelve Primary Meridians.
Cleaning, in this case, meant only that he had barely cleared away the larger deposits, the ones thick enough to feel like threads. But when he finished, what he felt in his body was something else entirely.
"......I feel like I've been born again."
His body was unbelievably light.
It had turned supple and springy.
It moved exactly as he willed it, and his strength flowed out in long, clean lines.
It felt as though his reflexes themselves had been rebuilt.
As if talent he had never possessed had suddenly sprouted in him.
With a body like this, maybe he could take a shot at being a soccer player, or a UFC fighter.
But as Yeon So-wol moved his newly light body about, his expression was not entirely bright.
"But seriously, what are the Eight Extraordinary Meridians?"
At first he had taken it lightly. Just as he had discovered the Twelve Primary Meridians while practicing the Willow Haze Art and come to grasp what they meant, he had assumed that if he kept cleaning meridians and training, he would naturally come to understand the Eight Extraordinary Meridians too.
He was completely wrong.
"Do these things even exist?"
When he gathered flame through his breathing and set it moving, he could feel it flow along the Twelve Primary Meridians without any effort.
But.
"There's no passage anywhere near where the Eight Extraordinary Meridians are drawn."
Yeon So-wol puzzled over it.
He puzzled over it while training, he puzzled over it while chewing fasting pills and jerky, and he puzzled over it while drawing spring water and scrubbing himself down.
He did not puzzle with his head alone; he puzzled while endlessly carrying on his breathing and his movements. He kept contemplating his interior.
A passage. Where was the other passage?
But there was none.
There was none.
Nowhere at all.
If anything, all he found were passages that were not the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
"Huh. There's a passage here that branches off the Twelve Primary Meridians and runs deep into the inside of the body."
Contemplating his interior was much like groping through a pitch-black, tangled cave with a single guttering candle.
Which meant that every so often he turned up a new passage he had missed before.
Another passage that was nowhere on the meridian chart Yi Yu-baek had given him.
"What is this......."
Yeon So-wol explored those as well. They were packed solid with impurities and waste. He wanted to clean them, but they were narrower than the Twelve Primary Meridians, and since he could not feel the threads, cleaning them was impossible.
He had no choice but to explore slowly, losing great chunks of his Qi gathering every time it snagged on the waste.
"Still, I've got to check. These might lead through to the Eight Extraordinary Meridians."
And so Yeon So-wol discovered twelve side-paths branching off the twelve major meridians.
These, too, had a name, the Twelve Divergent Meridians, but Yeon So-wol did not know it yet.
Another month passed.
Two and a half months since he had entered Closed-door seclusion.
But Yeon So-wol still had not found the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
The side-paths he had found did not connect to them.
"Maybe this one connects."
Instead, he had found yet another passage, smaller still.
If the meridians of the Twelve Primary Meridians were long, wide caverns, and the meridians of the Twelve Divergent Meridians were side-tunnels he had to duck his head to enter, then this new passage he had found was as small as a dog hole or a mouse hole.
Searching every last inch had turned up even things like this.
"Looks brutal. But I've got to explore it. Where the hell are these Eight Extraordinary Meridians......."
Carefully, carefully, Yeon So-wol began exploring the small passage.
"This is insanely complicated. The passages are all linked up like a net. Huh? Hold on. This connects to here?"
Yeon So-wol was startled.
The meridians of the Twelve Primary Meridians, which he had thought were separate from one another, were all connected through the small passages he had just discovered.
Nor did it stop there. The passages kept branching outward as they grew smaller and smaller, forming endlessly many minute connections, like capillaries.
"Wow. Insanely complicated. And fun."
The passages Yeon So-wol had found this time had a name as well.
The Fifteen Collateral Branches.
Martial artists also called them the body-wide fine meridians.
Yeon So-wol explored those passages as far as his strength would reach, but nothing came of it.
"What's going on."
Splooosh!
He puzzled over it while washing himself with spring water.
"Where on earth are they."
Chew, chew.
He puzzled over it while eating jerky and fasting pills.
"The Eight Extraordinary Meridians......."
Hooo. Hup!
He puzzled over it while honing the Willow Haze Art.
Once he started digging into something, he was the sort who could not rest until he had dug all the way to the bottom. He had been the same when he was studying back on Earth.
Then one day.
Something struck Yeon So-wol out of nowhere.
"But why does the Qi gathering keep weakening at certain stretches?"
It had been a long while since he cleaned the Twelve Primary Meridians.
The flame he collected through Qi gathering now traveled quite smoothly all through his body, and yet, oddly, at a few points he could observe the flame growing weaker.
"It only happens when the flame gets past a certain strength."
As though the heat were being sucked away somewhere. And only in specific stretches.......
"Wait!"
Yeon So-wol shuddered as though he had been struck by lightning.
"Don't tell me!"
Specific stretches.
What if those were the places that connected to the Eight Extraordinary Meridians?
"Is the flame leaking out into the Eight Extraordinary Meridians here? But there's no connecting passage."
Yeon So-wol closed his eyes and contemplated his interior.
Honing his already keen Qi sense keener still.
'Where are you. Where the hell are the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.'
He searched every inch of the passage walls.
But there was not even the tiniest passage.
"......Then let's see where the flame is disappearing to."
Yeon So-wol picked one of the spots where the flame weakened the most.
Three inches below the navel. 'Guanyuan acupoint'.
He concentrated the Qi gathering there.
Ordinarily he would never have let the Qi gathering sit in one place, always keeping it moving, but this time he decided to take the risk for a little while.
He piled up the Qi gathering,
and kept piling it up.
'Ah!'
At last Yeon So-wol felt it.
'Insane......!'
The flame, heaped and heaped until it had grown considerable, leapt up at a certain moment.
Scattering sparks in every direction like a firework.
'Whoa.'
They soaked into the walls of the Guanyuan acupoint, all across it.
As if being absorbed.
The walls of the passage rippled. As though they were alive.
'Don't tell me the Eight Extraordinary Meridians are beyond this wall?'
Yeon So-wol marshaled his entire Qi sense and contemplated what lay beyond the Guanyuan acupoint.
'Ah!'
A shudder ran through him.
"Found it."
He had failed to recognize it all this time because he had been fixated on passages.
"The Eight Extraordinary Meridians aren't just passages."
They were.
Different from the Twelve Primary Meridians.
Vast, and packed full.
Like an ocean.
"What is all this......?"
Beyond the Guanyuan acupoint, the space was crammed with something far hotter and far denser than anything Yeon So-wol had been calling 'fire' until now.
Not fire but lava.
Only then did Yeon So-wol realize it.
"This. This is residual heat."
The Eight Extraordinary Meridians, deep inside the body.
There, the innate heat a person received from heaven and earth at birth still sat packed tight, not yet gone cold.
That was the very source of vitality.
The thing martial artists called 'Innate true qi.'
The Eight Extraordinary Meridians were both the vessel that held the Innate true qi and the passage for it.
"The Eight Extraordinary Meridians are the real source of life. When the flame running through the Twelve Primary Meridians is strong, the Eight Extraordinary Meridians absorb that heat and make the interior hotter. And when the Twelve Primary Meridians cool too far, heat is released from the Eight Extraordinary Meridians to warm the exterior......."
Yeon So-wol had completely grasped the relationship between the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
He had perfectly satisfied the standard Yi Yu-baek had set.
Yeon So-wol did not know it, but at that point he had already entered the Fire stage. He had felt the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and understood their connection to the Twelve Primary Meridians, so he could now use their heat indirectly to raise a greater flame.
That was the very heart of the Fire stage (the regulation of fire).
The time had come for Yeon So-wol to break his Closed-door seclusion and walk out.
But that fact never occurred to him.
"Holy crap. This is so interesting."
The Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
A kind of insulated tank, stuffed full with the heat a person received at birth and keeping it preserved.
As he trained the Willow Haze Art, Yeon So-wol observed and experimented meticulously, watching how it reached past the Twelve Primary Meridians and interlocked with the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
And so the season changed.
The first snow came down thick and fast in the night.
The snow piled up deep,
and Yi Yu-baek's voice came from outside the door.
"Are you alive?"
Sweating as he trained the Willow Haze Art, Yeon So-wol answered reflexively.
"Yes. I'm alive."
"So-wol. Three months have passed."
"I see."
Three months.
That was the term Yi Yu-baek and Yeon So-wol had agreed on.
Three months of watching him before deciding whether or not to take him as a disciple.
But that thought never surfaced in Yeon So-wol's mind.
He was utterly and completely drunk on the structure by which heat circulated between the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and the Twelve Primary Meridians.
The voice came from outside the door again.
"......So-wol."
"Yes."
"I mean that the three months we agreed on are over."
"I see."
By now Yeon So-wol was not hearing the words at all. He answered, but his mind was turned entirely inward.
At that, a small laugh came from outside.
"So your heart has finally reached its utmost."
"......."
Yeon So-wol did not answer.
He had already fallen into selfless absorption.
Beyond Qi gathering, he was teaching himself the Fire stage.
"......So-wol?"
"......."
"......."
"......."
At some point the voice stopped coming altogether.
Yeon So-wol was no longer shaken by anything.
Around the seclusion chamber, which Yi Yu-baek had strung off with a sacred rope, the first snow lay piled deep. [TL: A straw rope hung to mark a place as sealed off and not to be disturbed.]
Untrodden by anyone, the pure white first snow lay spread without a single blemish, like a cotton quilt.
But because of a strange heat, on the roof of that chamber the snow was melting, little by little, and dripping down.