TL/ED – Miso
Yi Yu-baek passed on the oral formula of the Soaring Wind Drift.
Empty, and it fills of itself,
push not from behind,
but sweep clean, and invite the emptiness.
'A poem?'
A passage that felt obscure, right on the edge of understanding.
Yeon So-wol turned the meaning over carefully.
'If it empties, it fills of itself, so don't push from behind. Just sweep it clean and invite the emptiness in.'
Ah.Yeon So-wol realized it.
"You're talking about the knack for guiding the fire, aren't you?"
Fire rose to fill an empty place.
So when moving fire along a meridian, trying to shove the flames from behind had little effect.
Instead, one only had to sweep out the place the fire should go, make an emptiness, and invite the fire in.
'Air flows toward lower pressure too. So it's the same sort of thing. Don't think about pushing it; drop the pressure where it needs to go, and it gets pulled in on its own.'
It looked simple, but it was a great teaching. One that let him control the fire more finely and more quickly with less effort.
Yi Yu-baek smiled with satisfaction.
"That comprehension of yours really is something. What was it Mo Cheong said? 'If it's empty, why would it fill up? People gather where there are lots of other people, not in empty places, so why are you telling me to empty it?' He kept picking at it like that, so in the end I just told him to memorize the thing."
Mo Cheong, who had been standing at attention in silence all this while, made a sulky noise.
"Ah! Maaaster!"
"Well, it's true, isn't it?"
"That's exactly what makes it worse!"
"All right. All right."
Yi Yu-baek shook his head and recited the next oral formula.
Drum, and the fire rages,
pouch, and the fire warms,
empty, and the fire quiets.
With a drum, one makes the fire fierce,
with a pouch, one makes the fire warm,
with emptiness, one makes the fire gentle.
"Do you follow this one too?"
'This one.......'
It was a little harder than the last.
But Yeon So-wol groped after the meaning with the language skills he had ground away at back in school.
'Start with what's there. Fierce. Warm. Gentle. Going by that, it's about controlling the fire's temperature. The question is what the drum and the pouch and the emptiness are....... Ah!'
He answered.
"It's a method for controlling how hot the fire burns."
"Correct. But how does one control it?"
"The drum means an actual drum. If you make qi gatherings knock against each other the way you beat a drum, the fire turns fierce."
"Well, now."
"The pouch means an actual pouch. Just as air swells inside a pouch, penning a qi gathering in an acupoint makes the fire warm."
Snap!
Yi Yu-baek spread his fan. A crisp scent of lemon.
"And last, the emptiness follows from the earlier verse. It said that where things are emptied the fire flows on its own, so keeping it flowing is what makes the fire gentle."
"Good!"
Yi Yu-baek laughed, fanning himself in slow, easy strokes.
"Your comprehension amazes me more by the day. You'll have this oral formula down far faster than I expected."
It turned out just as he said.
In no more than a single shichen, Yeon So-wol had learned the whole oral formula and was fumbling his way through the fire stage according to it.
Yi Yu-baek was impressed,
and Yeon So-wol enjoyed himself for the first time in ages.
'Yes! This is what studying is supposed to be!'
Not his body melting every single day. Or burning up.
Or losing his mind. None of that.
Putting in the hours calmly and safely earning the result.
This, above all, was the way of studying that Yeon So-wol, dropped in from the 21st century, knew intimately and felt confident about.
"All right, then. Shall we get down to it properly?"
At least, until Yi Yu-baek strode over and seized him by both sides of his waist.
??!!
Goosebumps rose on Yeon So-wol's body in an instant.
"Wha. Father. Hold on!"
It was because he thought Yi Yu-baek was about to pour a qi gathering into his body again.
'I'm not ready yet!'
Second time around, so it went down easier than before? There was no such thing.
If anything, the second time was worse. The first time it happened to him before he knew anything about it, but this time he already knew exactly what was coming!
'Aaaah!'
It was true that Yi Yu-baek's astonishing fire stage had amazed him, but the experience could not by any stretch be called pleasant.
The sensation of another man's qi gathering boring into his body.
It was a more chilling feeling than having a blade held to his throat.
The terror of knowing the other man could, any time he felt like it, melt him down into a bucketful of soft flesh and bone.
That was not something anyone could get used to, no matter how many times it was repeated.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to force a tempering on you."
Yi Yu-baek said.
Yeon So-wol very nearly let himself relax,
Whooosh!
before his eyes flew wide at the wind suddenly pouring into his face.
"Huh? H-huh?!"
A sensation he had felt once already.
Thrashing in midair, with Yi Yu-baek and Mo Cheong tiny far below.
"Whoa-oa-oa!"
But there was one difference from before, his body was not the least bit light.
Unlike earlier, when he had been light enough for a breeze to nudge him aside, Yeon So-wol was now heavy enough to crush the wind flat as he fell.
Eleven meters, the height at which a person is said to feel the greatest fear.
Thrown that high, Yeon So-wol stopped rising and began to drop.
"A-aaaaaargh!"
And into Yeon So-wol's ears came Yi Yu-baek's voice, striking home.
"Come now. What are you doing? If you've learned the oral formula, use it. There. Make your body light. Let's fly, son."
"Aaaaaargh!"
Like that was ever going to work!
He had only just learned it, he was still fumbling through it!!!
He tried to shout that, but all that came out of his throat was a scream.
Shreeeeek!
The tearing sound of wind.
His heavy body would not steady itself at all. The more he thrashed in the air, the more he spun, arms and legs twisting every which way.
The dirt ground rushed up to his face in an instant.
The moment Yeon So-wol's eyes went wide.
Fwip!
Yi Yu-baek cut in fast, wrapped Yeon So-wol's head and torso, spun him a full turn through the air and drove him into the ground.
KRAAAASH!
The ground heaved and a pale cloud of dust went up.
"......."
Yeon So-wol's eyes were huge, his mouth hanging open.
Yi Yu-baek had cradled the back of his neck and skull with his hands, but the shock that came up through his back and hips rattled his lungs and innards.
"Hgk. Hgggk......."
He could not draw breath.
An impact that might have burst his organs and killed him outright, if the Willow Haze Art had not tempered his flesh.
Looking down at the utterly dazed Yeon So-wol, Yi Yu-baek said,
"Why didn't you fly?"
!!!
"Wai......!"
Before Yeon So-wol, sensing what was coming, could get a word out to stop him,
Whooooosh!
another fierce wind slammed into his face.
Yi Yu-baek and Mo Cheong shrank away, and the whole of Xinxing County came into view at once.
"Aaaaaargh!"
Yeon So-wol went on being thrown like that for more than a full shichen (two hours).
Around the time beads of sweat began to well up on Yi Yu-baek's forehead as well, a short rest was granted.
"Bleugh! Blueeeeergh!"
His stomach turned completely inside out, Yeon So-wol crawled along the ground, retching over and over. He had already brought up everything he had eaten, so nothing came, and even his stomach acid had run dry.
Watching him with pity, Mo Cheong said,
"Master. Isn't this a little too harsh......."
"What is."
"Well. He's only just learned the oral formula, and telling him to work the fire stage by it while he's being thrown around like that......."
"It's fine. He won't die."
"......He won't die, no, but if the training's too hard his will breaks. And once his will breaks, his progress falls off a cliff."
"That's true enough."
"So then......."
"But. About So-wol. He entered at eighteen and reached Exhaled Smoke and Cloud in under half a year."
"......."
"Does this really look like harsh training to you? For So-wol?"
"Now that I think about it again, no, it doesn't."
"Right? That's what I thought."
Yi Yu-baek laughed.
"Seven days and nights. Have him do this for seven days and nights exactly and he'll reach the First Stage easily enough. When you fire a large vessel, you need a large flame."
Yeon So-wol was thrown.
And thrown again.
The training had begun in the morning, and somewhere along the way the sun had started to sink.
"So-wol. So-wol. You have to give it your whole heart. When exactly do you plan to make up your mind? You have to make up your mind to fly before you can fly."
It was hard enough already, and every time he heard something like that from Yi Yu-baek, Yeon So-wol felt like he was going mad.
Enough that he broke off in the middle of retching, shot to his feet and argued back.
"......I have been making up my mind, over and over. It's only that the mind alone doesn't seem to be enough."
That was all he could get out after swallowing it down and down again.
Inside, in fact, he was screaming.
'No! How is that supposed to work with the mind alone?! To use the Soaring Wind Drift, don't I have to move the fire along thirty-six paths according to twelve methods of fire control, govern it through a hundred and eight variations, and temper my body with it? My head's ready to burst from that alone, and then you throw me into the air and tell me to do it! Does that work with the mind alone?!'
He crushed all of that down and spoke politely, and Yi Yu-baek's attitude did not shift in the slightest.
"It is possible. It is possible with the mind alone. A fist fighter who gives his whole mind throws his punches even when he's lost consciousness, and a bird that gives its whole mind will still find its way down to the ground on torn wings. Only when the mind is at its utmost can a man use martial arts in any situation at all."
'Aaargh! That damn willpower sermon again!'
Even back on Earth, Yeon So-wol had never cared for brainless willpower talk.
There was nothing willpower couldn't do?
That kind of thinking was exactly why people died while training.
A human being was a creature bounded by clear, undeniable limits, and so working scientifically and efficiently produced results far faster than working like a brute.
That was a fact the 21st century had proven.
It was unfair. It was absurd. How long did he have to stay this powerless? How long did he have to be thrown around like a toy?
In the end he could not swallow his indignation, and Yeon So-wol let a little more of it out.
"But! I have to control the fire. I have to watch over the body I'm tempering. I have to work out how I'm supposed to move in midair. Isn't it only after all of that, after working until my head splits, that the Soaring Wind Drift comes out at all? This is something a person has to spend a great deal of time on until the body knows it, not something that happens because he makes up his mind for a moment. Really. I don't think it is."
It was the first time Yeon So-wol had ever pushed back hard against Yi Yu-baek.
Yi Yu-baek looked at him seriously.
Then he spoke, low and weighty.
"So-wol. We call the Willow Haze Art an Internal cultivation method, don't we."
'What is he going to say this time.......'
"Why is that? It handles the innate qi and the fire stage is its heart, so wouldn't it be more fitting to call it a qi art, or a fire-tending method?"
"......."
Huh. Why, indeed?
Something complicated settled into Yeon So-wol's eyes.
"Of essence, qi, and spirit, the spirit is the mind, and the mind is light. That's why. Because light reaches everywhere."
What kind of riddle was this?
"It reaches everywhere. Only the mind does. It shines on everything inside you, all at once, all at the same moment."
Tap.
Yi Yu-baek's finger poked Yeon So-wol's left breast.
"The light that is the mind touches every difficulty you just listed, all at once, and each one separately. As one moon is held whole in each of a thousand rivers (Songs of the Moon Reflected on a Thousand Rivers). Swaying with the ripples, and scoop as you might, never fading."
"......."
"So. If you dye your essence and your qi and your spirit in a single light, then you may fly a thousand times without a moment's carelessness, and fly for the first time without a moment's danger."
"......."
"Because only the mind can accomplish something that difficult."
Yi Yu-baek said,
"The study of handling the hottest fire inside you, the hardest study in all the world, is what we call an Internal cultivation method."
Why was that?
Yeon So-wol ran a hand over his arm beneath his sleeve.
Goosebumps had risen all along it.
Why was that?
On the edge of understanding, and no further.
He still did not understand Yi Yu-baek's teaching.
And yet somehow his skin had already prickled with goosebumps.
"Haven't you been through it once already? During your Closed-door seclusion. I rather thought you had."
!!!
At those words, dropped as though in passing, Yeon So-wol felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
The time he had spent in Closed-door seclusion came flooding into his head.
At first it had been horrible.
Then it had been hateful,
then, little by little, it had become enjoyable,
and finally.......
'I forgot all of it.'
He had forgotten everything.
There had only been himself, endlessly watching and probing and moving.
Perhaps in those days not even the self-awareness called 'Yeon So-wol' had existed.
'If that....... is what a mind at its utmost looks like.'
All at once, Yeon So-wol looked into himself.
The Innate true qi within his Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
The acquired qi within his flesh and bone.
The flames riding around his Twelve Primary Meridians.
'Ah.'
It was all still there, every bit of it.
The traces Yeon So-wol had carved in those days with a mind at its utmost.
Twelve Primary Meridians warmed to a deeper heat.
Eight Extraordinary Meridians whose impurities had burned away, hotter and purer than before.
Bone and flesh grown suppler and stronger.
Because every one of those things was a trace carved by a mind at its utmost, simply touching each of them in turn was enough to make Yeon So-wol feel as though he had gone back to that time.
Yes.
He could feel the mind of those days.
Not swept away and lost to time, but still carved into the very heart of his Internal cultivation method.
"......."
Yeon So-wol's energy settled quietly.
The waver went out of his eyes.
"......Good."