TL/ED – Miso
"Shall we start again, then?"
Even when Yi Yu-baek said that.
Yeon So-wol only stayed still.
'A state of self-forgetting?'
The condition of giving the mind entirely, until the self is forgotten.
Yi Yu-baek felt a certain tension.
He brought his Qi sense to bear and examined Yeon So-wol closely.
All he could feel was an utterly quiet energy, as though it had been drawn through a fine comb a thousand times.
'......Really. He brought his mind to its utmost? From one word? In that instant?'It was hard to believe.
The easiest study in the world was the study of the mind, and the hardest study in the world was also the study of the mind.
He had told the boy to do it, but he hadn't thought it would happen in a single breath.
No. Even if it did, he hadn't thought it would run this deep from the very start.
Could it be real?
The flow of energy settling, thread by thread, around Yeon So-wol.
By feel alone, at least, it truly looked as though the boy's mind had deepened.
'......Throwing him will settle it.'
Pressing down the gooseflesh prickling up over his skin, Yi Yu-baek launched himself forward.
In one motion he seized Yeon So-wol by the waist and hurled him into the air.
Whooooosh!
Yeon So-wol flew upward, hair streaming.
This time he didn't thrash about.
He let all the strength drain out of his body and gave himself over to the sky.
As if he were going home.
Fwoooosh!
All at once flames blazed up inside him.
The hottest pulse of Innate true qi seared through the Twelve Primary Meridians and his whole body, and the qi gathering he had collected through his breathing rode that heat and ran the meridians of his entire frame.
Following the oral formula of the Soaring Wind Drift.
At times fiercely.
At times warmly.
At times faintly.
The flames wound through his whole body.
Heated evenly through, his bones and flesh grew clearer, flickering on the verge of changing and not changing.
A faint scent of sandalwood.
The sound of stone striking stone.
Though it fell short of what Yi Yu-baek had forced upon him,
Yeon So-wol's body was tempering, without question.
In the way of the Soaring Wind Drift.
And at that very instant,
Whooooosh!
The grain of the wind against his body felt utterly different.
The wind that used to be crushed flat and pitiless under his weight now began to push back and hold him up.
Yeon So-wol curled his body in. His rise toward the sky grew faster.
Riding the wind, splitting it, soaring.
Just as he willed.
He could grow lighter.
He could grow heavier.
Anything he wanted.
"......."
Yeon So-wol suddenly thought he might cry.
Up here above the world.
He was no longer helpless.
He was no longer a toy flung about without any strength of its own.
Here in the open air,
he suddenly felt free.
Tiled roofs stretching out beneath his feet. The city wall and its gate towers rising at the edge of that black tide. The mountain ridges running on beyond them. The red sun tilting as if to slip over their far end.
Hanging bright and high in the air, taking all of it in, his heart was not unsteady by so much as a hair.
His body rode the wind lightly.
It was nothing at all like the first time, when Yi Yu-baek had tempered him and thrown him.
This time he had accomplished it purely by his own strength.
Something he could bring forth himself.
Something he could draw back himself.
His own study.
Lightfoot technique.
The heavy labor he had piled up in order to become light
now held him firm from within.
In the wind grazing his cheeks,
in the pressure swelling up along his body,
he felt a release he had never known in his life.
Me. Right now.
I'm flying.
"What is this. Seriously."
What is it.
What is this.
Why does it keep happening like this.
"This world......."
Yeon So-wol turned himself over.
He tipped toward the ground.
He fell like a raindrop,
then flipped his body like a falling leaf,
and settled down lightly.
Knees bending, both palms braced against the earth.
Ka-thud!
Louder than when Yi Yu-baek had thrown him, but light all the same.
Yeon So-wol sank into the lingering feeling.
Yi Yu-baek was astounded.
'He really did it? Already?'
Mo Cheong whispered beside him.
'Master. He's already got it.'
Yi Yu-baek's lips worked without sound.
He thought it over for a moment.
Should he stop here? It was already a tremendous achievement.
But greed took hold.
Because he could see Yeon So-wol sitting there quietly, not showing the slightest joy at his success.
A mind already brought to its utmost.
Moments like this did not come around every day.
'Stopping here....... isn't that a bit of a waste?'
He looked back at Mo Cheong.
He hadn't originally meant to put Mo Cheong into today's training. He had only told him to come along so he could watch, and take over the training whenever his master was busy.
'That won't do.'
He scrapped the plan.
Mo Cheong, in.
"Mo Cheong."
"Yes, Master."
"Thrash him."
"Sorry?"
"Are you asking me twice?"
"N-no, sir."
"He's got the fire stage in his body now, so it has to go deeper, doesn't it? Thrash him."
"Yes, sir!"
Mo Cheong shot forward.
Straight at Yeon So-wol, still seated with his eyes closed.
'Sorry about this!'
Shuddering under the icy glare of his master at his back, Mo Cheong went to drive a kick into the head of the seated Yeon So-wol.
At that moment,
!!!
Yeon So-wol's eyes flew open and he threw himself backward.
Whoom!
His body moved as lightly as a falling leaf. The speed of it, the arc of it, nothing like before.
"Mo Cheong. What are you doing."
"Yes! Yes, Master!"
Hoooooo-
Pure white vapor came billowing out of Mo Cheong's mouth.
Tap!
Mo Cheong kicked off the ground, and his movements turned swift as well.
He closed the gap between them in an instant.
Yeon So-wol muttered to himself.
"I see. You shift your weight from one instant to the next."
Heavy when planting the foot. Light when pushing off.
By varying the fire stage and adjusting the weight of the body in an instant, one could bound like a coiled spring.
Tap!
Yeon So-wol slipped out from under Mo Cheong's hand.
"You......!"
Mo Cheong's eyes went wide at that absurd feat of learning, but.
"Mo Cheong."
At the sound of Yi Yu-baek calling him, his shoulders gave a shiver and he raised his internal power hard.
"Sorry!"
Taaap!
Mo Cheong's body stretched forward in a straight line. Less a leaf than a bird kicking off the surface of the water into flight.
Yeon So-wol couldn't react to that speed and took the strike full in the chest.
THOOOMP!
The single palm, with all that speed behind it, rang out heavily. Yeon So-wol flew backward, struck the ground, and bounced three times.
SKRRRRSH!
He sprawled out, leaving a long gouge in the dirt.
Only then did Yi Yu-baek speak, satisfied.
"How about it, So-wol? One hit and you snap right back to your senses, don't you? That's what we call a shallow fire stage. If one blow cuts off your control of the flame, what martial artist could ever fight? So the fire stage has to be deep. Deep enough that you can keep it going in any situation at all, even on the edge of death. It has to be deep."
And the moment he finished saying it.
"Hooooo......."
Thick white vapor poured out of Yeon So-wol's mouth.
"Hm?"
Yeon So-wol pushed off the ground ever so lightly, floated up, and rose to his feet.
"Hah!"
The corners of Yi Yu-baek's mouth pulled all the way up toward his cheekbones.
"Mo Cheong! Hit him!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
Boom!
Mo Cheong kicked off the ground again and chased after Yeon So-wol.
Yeon So-wol evaded the pursuit.
His movements had grown far more varied than before. Up onto the top of a wall, a light spring off it, a kick against the stone, and then, in a single step, standing on a thick branch.
With a mind wholly unified.
With a spirit wholly focused.
He watched nothing but Mo Cheong, and dodged, and dodged again.
Of course, that didn't close the gap in skill between the two of them.
Bang! Crack! WHUMP!
Yeon So-wol dodged for all he was worth, but every so often Mo Cheong caught him anyway.
Kicked in the stomach, a fist driven into his cheek, an elbow slammed into his chest, flung through the air and dumped into the dirt.
But Yeon So-wol's Soaring Wind Drift never broke off. He rose lightly and slipped the next attack.
Each time it happened, Mo Cheong glanced back at Yi Yu-baek.
'He's doing incredibly well. Should I keep going?'
But Yi Yu-baek only fluttered his fan and laughed. Marveling to himself.
"Good! His fire stage is deep already! If that's going to stay in his body after he comes out of self-forgetting, we have to drive him harder now. Mo Cheong! Strike him hard!"
"......Yes, sir!"
Mo Cheong gritted his teeth and charged. He'd decided he might as well hit harder. That way, he figured, he'd have to land fewer blows in the end.
Whish!
As Mo Cheong lunged, Yeon So-wol sprang up onto a branch.
"I told you that doesn't work!"
Mo Cheong leapt up after him.
Whish!
Just then, Yeon So-wol jumped for the very top of the tree.
But,
Sway!
No matter how light his body had become, the tip of a tree is far too thin and frail.
The moment he stepped on it, the top of the tree bent deeply.
"That's the end of you!"
Mo Cheong thought he had his chance.
He launched himself at Yeon So-wol.
At that moment,
Fwoosh!
Yeon So-wol's Eight Extraordinary Meridians stirred, the qi gathering surged back and forth through the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Twelve Divergent Collaterals, and his body grew lighter still.
Clearer, but not burning, not evaporating, exactly right: bone and sinew tempered one degree further.
Twaaang!
At the weight that vanished in an instant, the bent tree sang as it whipped back into place, and Yeon So-wol took that force and accelerated.
Tap!
From its tip he leapt.
No. He flew.
Flap-flap-flap!
"......Huh?"
Losing Yeon So-wol right before his eyes, Mo Cheong kicked off the tree once and dropped to the ground.
He hurriedly threw his gaze up into the air.
Flap-flap-flap-flap!
Yeon So-wol's overrobe streaming in the wind.
His body riding the wind, drifting free and unhurried like a single willow leaf.
Following the path the wind opened for him, Yeon So-wol crossed the empty air.
Tap,
His foot touched down on the peak of a roof.
Without cracking a single tile.
High on that roof, Yeon So-wol straightened his back, light and unbound.
"M-Master?"
Mo Cheong looked back.
He asked with his eyes.
'Should I go after that one too and get him?'
But Yi Yu-baek wasn't looking at Mo Cheong.
For once, most unusually, he was entirely dumbstruck.
"Is that....... even possible? In a single day?"
Hear one thing, know ten. [TL: a classical four-character idiom describing a genius who grasps ten things from being taught one.]
Yi Yu-baek had always thought it was overblown rhetoric. Where in the world was there a genius who understood ten things from hearing one?
"Unless he's an immortal fallen out of the sky......."
And there one stood, right in front of him.
"Ha......."
Yeon So-wol let out a long breath of white vapor.
The thrill of a moment ago was still sweeping through his whole body.
That sensation of riding the wind up into the sky like a bird.
That heart of his that hadn't been afraid, not even a little.
'Now. Even if I dropped out of the sky the way I did when I first came here.......'
He didn't think he'd fall into a panic the way he had then.
Of course, at his current level of movement art, he wouldn't escape death.
'Then I'd just grab the thread of the sky again.'
His chest swelled up suddenly, full to bursting.
The awareness that he was no longer helpless.
The certainty that from here on he would only grow freer.
The world felt a little less frightening.
Little by little.
He was building up the strength to shake his head and slip aside, no matter how unfairly the world came down on him.
Yeon So-wol lifted his head.
"Ah."
It all spread out before him at a glance.
Xinxing County, with the sunset going down over it.
The black tiles on every roof glowed red, and the swaying curves of the eaves ran on and on, winding all the way to the distant ridgeline.
The sun had buried half its head below the mountains, and inside the reddened walls rose the smoke of cooking fires.
Yeon So-wol forgot the time.
Soon he forgot where he was as well.
He stared blankly.
He felt the urge to throw himself down into it with everything he had.
Tap!
Just then he heard the sound of a foot landing behind him.
"So you flew."
"I was lucky."
"Luck, my foot."
Yeon So-wol glanced back, and something came flying at him with a swish!
He caught it out of the air: a small cup that fit neatly into one hand.
Black on the outside, the inside washed with ground gold so that light clung to it.
Yi Yu-baek shook a wine bottle.
"Let's have a drink."
Yeon So-wol came closer as if spellbound and held the cup out politely, and red wine poured from the tilted bottle.
"It's Jade Crown Red. A fruit wine brewed from lychee. Lychee flesh is white as ice, but throw in plenty of that red rind when you brew it and you get wine like this."
A fruit of the southern lands, called lychee in the 21st century.
The sunset was already drawing to a close.
But in the gold-lined cup, a red sun rose again.
"Drink."
Yeon So-wol swallowed that dawn.
The first wine he'd ever tasted was
bitter. And hot. Terribly hot. And then, at the very end, suddenly sweet on the nose.
It was fragrant.
"How is it?"
"That was, my first time."
"Fragrant, isn't it?"
"......Yes."
Now, too. And before, too.
"That's how it is. There's no wine in this world that's only bitter."
Yeon So-wol quietly held out both hands.
"Let me pour this time."
"Go ahead."
He filled Yi Yu-baek's cup to the brim.
Yi Yu-baek tipped his head all the way back and swallowed it in one go.
"Ah! Good wine! Really good. Here, hold out your cup."
"Yes, sir."
One cup, two cups, three.
A father and a son, bound to each other by sworn loyalty, shared their wine.
Draining the last cup, Yi Yu-baek said,
"Tomorrow we'll have you take the elixir."
Yeon So-wol started in surprise.
"Have I reached the First Stage?"
'I thought it would take a few more days.'
Just as he was feeling the joy of an achievement faster than he'd expected,
Yi Yu-baek said, offhand.
Without even looking back, lifting the bottle itself and shaking the last drops into his mouth.
"Third Stage."