TL/ED – Miso
When he opened his eyes that morning,
Yeon So-wol mumbled, still drunk on the tail end of a dream.
"Finally, I'm out of prison......."
Now that he'd said it, it was a strange thing to say.
"Hm?"
Out of prison from where?
Had he been in a cell or something?
Last night's dream was already evaporating out of his head, and Yeon So-wol, with no idea why he'd said such a thing, started to sit up, and then,
"Ah."He realized it.
"It's......light?"
Like shackles had come off. Like he'd stripped away a suit of armor that had been too tight.
Like he had only now found his own body.
"My senses too......."
What he saw. What he heard.
Like he'd been let out of a cramped cell.
As if he could see the spirits dwelling in all things. As if he could reach out and touch them.
The world was wide. It was vivid.
Even swapping out a monitor and a sound system for high-end gear priced in the hundreds of millions of won wouldn't have felt like this.
'What on earth have I.......'
What had he been seeing, what had he been feeling, all this time?
With a body that dull, that blunt.
"Insane."
Goosebumps rose all over him.
Body Refinement [TL: written here with the character for "spirit" in place of the usual "body."]
Once the body had been scoured clean,
he saw himself anew.
He hadn't even begun the qi circulation of the Willow Haze Art yet, and already the Twelve Primary Meridians, changed in quality, were warming his whole body through.
Steeped in wonder, Yeon So-wol trained the Willow Haze Art and then washed himself.
The feel of the water against his skin startled him all over again.
"Water! Water! So this is water! Ahh."
Repeating Helen Keller's revelation in a world that wasn't Earth.
"Hm. So this incense had a stuffy finish to it all along."
Feeling clearly the aftertaste of a scent he'd never noticed before, he stepped outside to pay his morning respects.
"No morning greetings today."
Kang Mu-hyeok, eldest of the Three Young masters of Refined Arts, spoke from in front of the quarters.
"Why not?"
"He's resting."
"......Is he in that bad a way?"
Yi Yu-baek's pallid face from the day before came back to him.
"Don't worry. I saw him myself. A little recuperation and he'll be right as rain before long. That's all he's doing, recuperating."
"That's a relief, then."
Even as he said it, Yeon So-wol felt a quiet weight in his chest.
Yesterday he'd mostly felt dumbfounded, but a day on, what stood out more sharply was Yi Yu-baek's resolve.
The lighter his body had grown, the heavier that weight settled on his heart.
"You heading out today?"
"Yes. I want to find some new incense. And I thought I'd have spring clothes made ahead of time."
"True enough. It'll be the fourth month soon."
Kang Mu-hyeok nodded and clasped his hands behind his back.
"Little brother. Mind if I have a look at your Soaring Wind Drift?"
"The Soaring Wind Drift?"
"That's right."
Tap-tap.
Kang Mu-hyeok kicked off the ground.
Shhhrraaak!
Dragging one foot along the earth, he moved as nimbly as a man sliding across ice, and a circle some one jang (3 meters) in radius took shape.
"Jump up as high as you can, and I'll attack. Don't dodge, block. And don't leave this circle."
Out of nowhere?
Yeon So-wol thought it a little odd, but he didn't ask.
Small graces were what built reputation and goodwill.
"Yes."
"Good. Jump. As high as you can."
"Yes."
Hwoooooo.......
As he breathed out white vapor and deepened the fire stage, his whole body flushed hot in an instant. A rich, nutty fragrance welled out of him. It had even grown sweeter than before.
His Twelve Primary Meridians, remade by Body Refinement, were nothing like what they had been.
The fire stage came incomparably more easily, and his bones in particular, sitting so close to the Twelve Primary Meridians, tempered with a lightness that made no sense at all.
Thump!
He kicked off the ground. His body was light.
As light as the day Yi Yu-baek had forcibly tempered him and hurled him into the air.
Whoosh!
All he'd done was push off the ground.
And he flew.
Past the pillars, past the bracket sets stacked atop them, higher than the black tiled roof.
"Just as I thought. Fourth Stage. All right. Let's see, then."
Whoosh!
Kang Mu-hyeok sprang up after him.
Catching him in an instant, he flicked his palms out lightly and shoved.
Smack! Smack-smack!
The attacks weren't fast, so blocking them was no trouble. The trouble was that blocking in midair sent his body sliding this way and that and twisted his center of gravity out from under him.
"Uh. Uh-oh."
Yeon So-wol tried to hold out as long as he could.
Instinctively, he varied the fire stage part by part across his lurching body.
Heavier where he was being pushed, lighter where he wasn't, anything at all to find his balance.
Thud!
He touched down.
Outside the circle.
"Again."
Start over.
Thud!
Outside the circle again.
"Again."
Around the tenth attempt, Yeon So-wol finally managed to adjust the fire stage in parts and land without being driven out of the circle.
"So it can be done."
Kang Mu-hyeok was not a man who made a show of his feelings, but his eyes were unsteady now.
"At this rate your Soaring Wind Drift is halfway past Fourth Stage. You've got a foot in Fifth Stage."
At Fourth Stage one grew lighter still.
At Fifth Stage one was no longer precarious.
The stage of matching the wind, adjusting the body's weight piece by piece, finding stability in empty air.
The truth was that Kang Mu-hyeok had set the test half doubting it would work; he hadn't expected him to manage it this well.
"To pull that off on feel alone. That genius Qi sense of yours really shines in lightfoot technique."
"......I've a long way to go. Moving the way you did earlier, elder brother, drawing that circle, I can't even begin to feel out how it's done."
Yeon So-wol played himself down, a little embarrassed.
"That? You'll manage it once you learn footwork. Once lightfoot technique has you controlling your weight, footwork is where you really learn to use your body."
"Ah."
"But even at the level you're at now, those three mutts won't be catching you. Even if you can't stand and fight them."
"You think so......? I heard they all started martial arts ten years ahead of me."
Yeon So-wol shuddered as he turned his memories over.
In barely seven months, how many times had he nearly died?
Thinking about men who'd been at it for ten years...... he tensed up in spite of himself.
Kang Mu-hyeok standing right in front of him went without saying, but even Mo Cheong, the youngest of the Three Young masters of Refined Arts, was faster and stronger than he was.
Both of them Second-rate, and still the gap ran that deep.
At that, Kang Mu-hyeok muttered.
"......I think there's some misunderstanding here. Well. You'll see for yourself."
He clasped his hands behind his back.
"Master left a message for you."
"Yes."
For some reason it made Yeon So-wol glad, and he straightened himself up.
Pleased by that earnestness, Kang Mu-hyeok passed on Yi Yu-baek's words.
So-wol.
Don't be ashamed of running.
In this Jianghu, there are plenty of times you don't need to win.
What's truly shameful,
is failing to say what needs saying because you're frightened.
That one's a bad look.
So.
Say what needs saying.
And don't go getting beaten.
"Ah."
Something about it didn't quite add up, and yet it landed square in his chest all the same.
"Those Xinxing Three Dogs will be sharpening their teeth for you, no doubt. Still, seeing what you've accomplished, I feel better about it. Go on out with your shoulders straight."
Pat, pat.
Kang Mu-hyeok clapped Yeon So-wol on the shoulder and walked on past.
Weak Severing Sword
That was the sorest nerve of the Resentful Dog, Jeon Tae-gwang.
Weak Severing Sword, they called him, for being the one conspicuously weak one among the Severing Sword Sect's four direct disciples.......
"That doesn't mean the Resentful Dog's some kind of joke, does it? Have you all forgotten? Last year, that Black Path lout who came swaggering in from the big city, Duanzhou. The Resentful Dog ground him into paste single-handed, didn't he?"
"He did. That's right. That fellow broke a good few of our local Black Path types, men who pass for Second-rate around here, and the Resentful Dog smashed him without breaking a sweat."
"That's exactly my point. It's that the Three Young masters of Refined Arts and the Three Severing Swords are strong beyond anything a place like Xinxing County has any business having. It isn't that the Resentful Dog is weak."
"Fair enough."
"But what good does it do him? All he does with that strength is beat people and smash the gravestones on other folks' family plots......."
"Ah. The gravestone. That went too far. Taking his temper out by disgracing a man's dead parents like that."
"The lad it happened to is a friend of mine. To this day he can't sleep without drink. Beats his chest and weeps, every single night."
And so the people of Xinxing County adored Yeon So-wol and worried over him in the same breath.
"That Annam woodcutter made a fool of the Mad Dog the other day, I hear?"
"Annam woodcutter, is he? The man is the adopted son of the Great hero Yi Yu-baek, no less. Young master Yeon might be a stretch, but you could at least call him Yeon So-wol."
"Ahem. Hm. Right. Yeon So-wol, then. Anyway, I hear the Mad Dog came at him foaming at the mouth and he slipped it easy as you like. He was courteous enough with the Resentful Dog and the Laughing Dog, but the Mad Dog he glared down to the very end. Hah. You've no idea what a weight off my chest that was."
"Hearing about it lifted my spirits too, I'll say that."
"Only, satisfying as it is, I'm worried. Are those mutts going to leave Yeon So-wol be now?"
"Oh no! That won't do. Our Young hero, the Elegant Young master......."
"Elegant Young master? The 'Elegant' as in elegance? What in the......."
"You'd know if you saw him. Just look at him once. You've no idea how splendid our Young hero the Elegant Young master looks."
"Oh, here we go."
"She's not wrong, though. See him in the flesh and between the face and the scent there's something of an immortal about him....... Makes him feel a bit hard to approach."
"Here we go indeed."
And the talk spread and drifted until it reached the ears of the Xinxing Three Dogs as well.
"......Elegant Young master? They're calling him that? People are still calling him that?"
The Resentful Dog, Jeon Tae-gwang, the one they called Weak Severing Sword, seethed.
"Ha? Haha? Ha? I got made a fool of? Me? By him?"
The Mad Dog laughed, half out of his mind.
"He's too scared of catching a beating from us to set foot outside that hall. A gutless little mutt, and they go on about......."
Just as the Mad Dog was working himself into a froth, the Laughing Dog raised a finger.
"Huh? Hehe. He's right there, though."
"What's there?"
"Yeon So-wol."
!!!
It was true.
There in the crowded market street stood Yeon So-wol, looking over bolts of cloth.
"......!"
The Resentful Dog was the first to throw himself off the inn's second floor.
Light on his lightfoot technique, he dove into the packed market. White vapor rose spicy from his mouth.
"Stupid bastard. Look at him crawling out here."
The Mad Dog bared his white teeth and flung himself after the Resentful Dog. A sharp, burnt smell trailing behind him.
The Laughing Dog followed after them, snickering.
"Argh!"
"Aaagh!"
"Ngh! What the hell?"
"Eep!"
And a moment later an uproar broke out in the crowded marketplace.
'......What pieces of work.'
Yeon So-wol had been going over cloth first, for the clothes he'd wear come spring.
He clicked his tongue at the sight of the Xinxing Three Dogs bounding toward him across the packed market, treading on people's heads and shoulders.
"Ngh!"
"Aaagh!"
"Hgk!"
Lightening the body with lightfoot technique did not make its weight vanish altogether.
For someone walking along minding their own business, having a dirt-caked shoe suddenly stamp down on their head and their shoulder could only be horrible.
But Xinxing's three mutts spared not a thought for anyone else, working their feet however they pleased, and came to a stop in front of Yeon So-wol.
"Hey."
The Resentful Dog called out to him.
Yeon So-wol observed the courtesies for now and gave a fist-palm salute.
"We meet again, Senior."
"Why don't you come along with us a minute? Feels like we've got something to talk about."
Yeon So-wol blinked and answered.
"Was there something?"
"......Listen to this little shit."
A muscle twitched in the Resentful Dog's cheek.
"No manners on you at all. Barely started learning martial arts and here you are fussing over overrobes and scent pouches. Isn't this when you're supposed to be pouring everything into training? Are you out of your mind? Does the Refined Arts Sect know you go around like this?"
It was a long speech, but translated, it meant he'd find some pretext and beat him. Under the fine banner of correcting a junior's manners.
Yeon So-wol had already been warned, so he wasn't thrown off guard.
"Yes, they know. But does the Severing Sword Sect know?"
"......What?"
"That you go around stamping on people's heads with your lightfoot technique. Surely you didn't work that hard at something so difficult just to feel superior in a way as petty as that."
The Resentful Dog revised his thinking.
'Even if Master tears into me for it. I'm grinding a few of his bones to pulp.'
Hwoooo-
As white vapor rose from his mouth along with that spicy, burnt smell, Yeon So-wol spoke.
"Ah. By the way, I'm asking this because I honestly want to know."
"......?"
"Senior, why is your fire stage like that?"
At a question he hadn't seen coming at all, the Resentful Dog frowned without meaning to and asked.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well. Your fire stage. It's a little."
Yeon So-wol cocked his head to one side.
He sniffed at the air.
That spicy, burnt smell.
"It seems, well, very simple. And even what's there seems a bit rough."
"......?"
At first the Resentful Dog wondered what on earth he was talking about.
Then, belatedly, he understood.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
"You......!"
"Your fire stage. You shouldn't be doing it that way, should you?"
"Why you!"
Bang!
Stamping down on the ground, the Resentful Dog charged like a wild beast.