TL/ED – Miso
"Changing the very substance of your body with innate heat. That is what we call Tempering."
The first half of the word meant pottery. Firing a vessel inside the flames.
The second half meant metallurgy. Shaping metal inside the flames.
But Yeon So-wol could not answer.
"Hoooo....... hoooooo."
Unable to do one thing or the other, he could only keep breathing.
He could not pull his attention away from what was happening inside his own body.
'What in the world......!'
The spot the tip of the elbow touched when the arm was pressed against the side. That place where the ribs ended and the flesh dipped inward was the Zhangmen acupoint.From there, Yi Yu-baek's qi gathering was pouring in, endless and inexhaustible.
At first he was thrown by the heat of it, but Yeon So-wol was soon astonished by something else entirely.
'Flames....... can move like this?'
It felt like watching a magic trick.
Qi gathering was not something that could be moved around however one pleased.
Inside the body there were meridians set aside as the paths qi gathering could travel.
Just as heating gas moved along fixed pipes and caused trouble the moment it strayed from them, qi gathering had to move along its own road.
Otherwise, not only would the qi gathering he had built up with such effort fail to keep, but places that should never be heated would be heated, and that could end in qi deviation.
So in the end, no matter how hot a flame one crammed inside, it inevitably took time for it to spread through the whole body. Warmth spread slowly, following its appointed road.
'That's what I thought.......'
Right now, inside Yeon So-wol's body, something he had never once imagined was taking place.
'The way this fire moves.......'
The Zhangmen acupoint belonged to the Foot Jueyin Liver Meridian, one of the Twelve Primary Meridians.
As far as Yeon So-wol knew, there were only two roads leading out of the Zhangmen acupoint.
The road that ran straight down along the Foot Jueyin Liver Meridian to the big toe, to the Dadun acupoint.
Or the road that crossed into the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian connected directly to it and went on to the thumb, to the Shaoshang acupoint.
But Yi Yu-baek stepped into a side path with total familiarity, as though Yeon So-wol's meridians were his own neighborhood.
'The Twelve Divergent Meridians!'
Yeon So-wol tried to make sense of the situation with the scraps of basic theory he had picked up along the way.
The Twelve Primary Meridians ran through the entire body.
From the index finger to the head
From the head, through the torso, to the second toe
From the second toe to the big toe
From the big toe, through the torso, to the little finger.
And back to the head.
Turning a little further with each pass, it circulated on and on, warming the body evenly.
This was the pathway Yeon So-wol mainly used.
But the Twelve Divergent Meridians were the side paths that branched off from there, ran into the torso, connected with the organs, and tied back into the other primary meridians.
The passages were small, but inside the body they formed an intimate network.
Yi Yu-baek burrowed into those side paths with complete familiarity. And that was not the end of it.
'The Fifteen Collateral Branches too?'
The scalding flame scattered into every dog hole and mouse hole splitting off from the Twelve Primary Meridians.
As if he already knew that tangled maze from end to end and had not the faintest worry about losing his way.
'This is insane.......'
That confidence was the real thing.
The flame filled even the collateral vessels, every last one of them, the finer threads that split off from the Fifteen Collateral Branches and netted every acupoint together.
In perfect order.
With perfect timing.
From perfect positions.
The fire flowed back and forth.
In an instant his body flushed burning hot.
Centered on Yeon So-wol's abdomen and thighs. When the great flame swept past along the Twelve Primary Meridians, the smaller flames scattered into the Twelve Divergent Meridians followed after it and combed through, and the moment those had passed, the flames dispersed into the Fifteen Collateral Branches and the tiniest collateral vessels gathered in and warmed him faintly, quietly.
Striking and withdrawing, they stroked the essence that was his bone and flesh, thorough and exquisitely precise.
The feeling of flame seeping into every single cell.
'The fire stage.......'
Yeon So-wol was struck dumb.
'This fire stage makes no sense!'
Flame control at a level he had never even imagined.
'Then what have I been doing all this time?'
He had thought he was rather confident in his own fire stage, what with Exhaled Smoke and Cloud and all the rest of it.
Now he saw that it did not even amount to the flame control it took to boil instant noodles.
This was on another plane entirely, wasn't it?
Yeon So-wol was still shivering with awe when,
quite out of nowhere, an absurd thought struck him.
'But this. It's like being a slab of meat cooking on a grill.......'
Seared over the high flame running along the Twelve Primary Meridians,
turned this way and that over the medium flame of the Twelve Divergent Meridians,
and finally cooked through nice and even over the low flame of the collateral vessels.
'Grilled perfectly evenly, right through.......'
That was the moment, with these strange thoughts refusing to leave him alone and souring his mood.
"From here on. I'm going to temper your bones and flesh."
Yi Yu-baek declared it in a weighty voice.
Fwap-fwap-fwap!
There was no wind at all, and yet Yi Yu-baek's sleeves billowed out.
Veins bulged up on the backs of his hands, on his neck, on his forehead.
"Keep breathing."
The instant he whispered it,
Fwooooosh!
As though all the heat until now had been a joke, an unimaginably scorching energy came surging in along the Zhangmen acupoint.
!!!
Yeon So-wol clamped his lips shut to keep from screaming.
Blood beaded on the lip his front teeth had torn and dripped down.
But there was no one there with any attention to spare for a thing like that.
'Insane. Insane. Insane. What the hell is this!'
FWOOOOOOSH!
Yeon So-wol took back what he had just been thinking.
Meat on a grill, my foot!
Tempering. That was the word for it.
The kiln where porcelain was fired.
The furnace where iron melted away.
That blinding orange heat that burned off everything turbid and left only what was clear and bright.
The gleaming, purified things that were completed inside it.
He was not being grilled.
He was being tempered.
The essence that had hardened into bone and flesh
flickered, here and there, into clear essence qi inside the flames.
It was the lowest grade of essence qi, true,
but unmistakably something weightless, something from before matter.
Something like white sandalwood brushed the tip of his nose.
Clean and pure, the smell of incense wood burning.
And it seemed as if, somewhere, a wooden temple block were being struck.
"So-wol. This. This is the tempering of the body."
Whoosh!
Yeon So-wol felt wind.
Far below, a much-shrunken Yi Yu-baek came into view.
Having flung him up there one-handed and without the least effort, Yi Yu-baek wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead and grinned.
Whoooooosh-!
Had he been thrown some 10 meters into the air?
"Ah......."
Yeon So-wol felt as though he had become a great kite.
The oncoming wind nudged his body slightly aside.
Whooooo!
He was plainly falling, and yet somehow he was not afraid.
Yeon So-wol spread himself wide open and caught the wind with his whole body.
He lifted a little, his falling speed faltered and slowed, and when the ground finally came up to meet him, Yeon So-wol settled onto it as lightly as if he were crouching down to sit.
Tap!
Like a cat.
Even the sound of the landing was faint.
Filled with wonder, Yeon So-wol looked over his own body.
"......This is."
"That's right. What you just tasted is our Refined Arts Sect's lightfoot technique, the Soaring Wind Drift."
"Soaring Wind Drift."
"How did it feel?"
"Light. Light enough that I felt the wind carrying me along."
"Which is why the name has 'Drift' in it. Like a willow leaf floating free on the air, you might say. And this one in particular you could call our sect's signature technique. You go lighter than with any other sect's lightfoot technique, and you've got the advantage when it comes to changing direction, too."
"Is that so?"
Yeon So-wol's eyes lit up.
Better than the other sects, no less.
For someone who had meant from the very start to learn lightfoot technique and footwork first, it could hardly have been more welcome news.
Yi Yu-baek saw it and laughed.
"You brat. You're only working that out now? We're a sect that took the words for 'wind' and 'willow' and made them the name of our martial arts, for heaven's sake. We lump the whole thing together and call it the Wind Flow Sword, but the real root of it lies in the movement art." [TL: The sect's name is ordinarily read as "refined arts", but here it is written with the characters for "wind" and "willow".]
The Willow Haze Art, the sect's exclusive Internal cultivation method, was the study of becoming like a willow tree.
"Through the moving art you warm the essence throughout the whole body and set it circulating, until you've got the supple spring of a willow. Do that, and tempering the body becomes far easier."
"Ah."
"You make the body like a willow with the Willow Haze Art, then walk with the Willow Leaf Step that sways like a willow leaf, and ride the wind with the Soaring Wind Drift. That is the road our Refined Arts Sect walks."
"Ah......!"
Yeon So-wol felt something tug unexpectedly at his chest.
'That's actually. Kind of magnificent, isn't it?'
He had taken up martial arts only because they looked useful, because they seemed necessary, but the further he went the more he seemed to be falling for it.
For the martial arts. For the Refined Arts Sect.
"Right. So. Did you get a feel for what it takes to use the Soaring Wind Drift?"
Yeon So-wol nodded.
He understood now what Yi Yu-baek had meant by 'warming it properly'.
"I have to heat the muscles and bones as evenly as possible without breaking the balance. And not heat them until they've turned completely into essence qi, either. The key seems to be holding them right on the edge of changing."
"Sharp as ever. That's it."
Yi Yu-baek snapped his fan open. He fanned a fluttering breeze over a face still beaded with sweat.
He was slightly out of breath, too. Forcibly tempering Yeon So-wol's body had cost him a great deal of internal power.
"Phew. We say the Internal cultivation method turns cooled essence and qi hot again, but at the end of the day we're people wearing flesh. Turn that flesh straight back into essence qi and you may as well be killing yourself. You'd be losing your body bit by bit. No, wait. Losing it would be the kinder outcome. What if it turned into essence qi, then cooled and became bone and flesh again? What do you suppose happens if that sets into your body wrong?"
"......I'd rather not imagine it."
"Exactly. So you must always work at your fire stage."
Holding that borderline state, forever on the verge of changing and never quite crossing over, with a quiet, steady, exquisitely delicate flame, that was the heart of it.
"Do it that way and the bones and flesh you've tempered will settle smoothly back into your body, so you'll only come out sturdier for it; your muscles and bones won't be harmed."
The feel of heating water without ever letting it boil.
"So. What you have to learn from here on is the flame control method that makes it possible. In other words, the oral formula of the Soaring Wind Drift."
'Flame control? The kind he just showed me?'
Yeon So-wol flinched.
"Do you really think I could do that?"
Yi Yu-baek laughed.
"Of course you can't do it like me from the start. What I showed you is the Ninth Stage, a hair short of Great Completion. You, for now....... let's have you learn it up to the Third Stage. That much, and you should be able to slip out of those bastards' grip. It'd be cutting it fine, but you'd manage."
One thing in those words caught Yeon So-wol's attention.
"Father is at the Ninth Stage now. For me to get all the way to the Third Stage....... I think it's going to take quite a long time."
"It would. Normally."
Normally?
Yeon So-wol's eyes gleamed.
Yi Yu-baek smiled meaningfully.
"I gave you an elixir, didn't I. Once your Soaring Wind Drift reaches the First Stage, we'll have you take it. After that you'll reach the Third Stage in no time at all."
Yeon So-wol clenched his fist.
'Finally. I get to take it. The elixir.'
"That mushroom is what's called a Dragon Scale Fungus. It works wonders for burning off the turbid qi piled up in the muscles and bones and improving the constitution. Improve your constitution with it, and tempering your muscles and bones will get far easier."
"Thank you."
Yeon So-wol felt a fresh rush of gratitude.
It was because he felt a problem he had been chewing over anyway was being solved along with everything else.
'Let me try this Dragon Scale Fungus first, then work out a plan for taking the Great Restoration Pill.'
The Great Restoration Pill he had won by killing the Killing Demon.
He had originally meant to take it once he entered the fire stage, but as things turned out he had gone a step further and reached Exhaled Smoke and Cloud. Which meant his body was more than ready to take the Great Restoration Pill whenever he chose.
But Yeon So-wol was a little afraid to gulp the Great Restoration Pill straight down.
Internal cultivation methods had proved so terrifying that he was afraid elixirs, too, might have some trap hidden in them.
'Taking the Dragon Scale Fungus should give me a feel for that side of it as well.'
Once he had his thoughts in order, he felt a stir of excitement.
If merely eating a Dragon Scale Fungus would bring him to the Third Stage of the Soaring Wind Drift in no time, then what on earth would the Great Restoration Pill, the legendary elixir, do?
"Um. Father."
Yeon So-wol couldn't hold back and blurted it out.
"Hm?"
"When I first started out, I kept being told I was too old to be taken in as a student."
"I'm sure you were."
"And back then somebody told me that with a Great Restoration Pill, even someone like me could learn martial arts and enter a sect."
"Hm. A Great Restoration Pill would certainly clear a road all the way up to First-rate, even for an eighteen-year-old fool."
Yeon So-wol was startled.
'Even a fool, to First-rate?'
Think how much he had suffered just to reach Exhaled Smoke and Cloud, the thing Yi Yu-baek called Second-rate.
If his will had wavered even a little, if he had slacked even a little, if his luck had been bad, it was brutal enough training that he would never have come out of it alive.
And the pill could take a man not merely to Second-rate but all the way to First-rate? A fool, at that?
"Th-then. What would happen if I took a Great Restoration Pill right now?"
"Why? Do you happen to have one?"
"No."
Yeon So-wol answered instantly.
"Why the quick answer? Do you actually have one?"
"No."
"Hm. If you do, throw it out."
"Why.......?"
"Because there's no chance it's a real Great Restoration Pill."
Yeon So-wol was shaken.
'A fake?'
It was a possibility that had never once crossed his mind.
'It did look awfully ordinary.'
No particular scent to it, shaped just like an Ox Bezoar Calming Pill. The sort of pill one might pick up at any pharmacy.
Now that he thought about it, it was a bit strange.
All the more so when he thought of the Dragon Scale Fungus Yi Yu-baek had just given him, whose faint, sweet mushroom scent seeped out even through the wooden case.
Yeon So-wol swallowed hard.
"......Is that so?"
"That's right. The Great Restoration Pill is a legend of the Jianghu. Not something you could ever get your hands on. If you did get one, it'd be a fake some swindler put together with a convincing shine and a nice smell added on top."
"Then what is a real Great Restoration Pill like?"
"There's a saying, Returning to Simplicity. A truly precious thing looks perfectly ordinary. The way I've heard it, the real Great Restoration Pill is plain, if anything. Just a round pill with no real scent to it, the kind you'd think you could buy from any herb seller."
"......."
Yeon So-wol was relieved.
'So it's the real thing after all.'
Patting down his startled heart, he shot Yi Yu-baek a small glare.
"Would you look at this brat?"
Yi Yu-baek bared his teeth.
"I thought a forced tempering might have rattled you a bit. But there's still fight in those eyes, is there? Good. Asking me to train you hard, are you? You must be in a hurry to eat that Dragon Scale Fungus."
Huh?
"All right. Then let's start learning the fire stage of the Soaring Wind Drift in earnest."
He beckoned Yeon So-wol with a jerk of his chin.
"Come here and stand."
By now, whenever he heard those words,
Yeon So-wol broke out in a cold sweat for no reason at all.