TL/ED – Miso
The Willow Haze Art.
It was Yi Yu-baek's own exclusive Internal cultivation method.
The very foundation of the martial artist that Yi Yu-baek was.
That powerful, and that quick to bear fruit, and by that same measure that difficult and that dangerous.
It was no wonder Mo Cheong was appalled.
"You can't, Master. It's far too dangerous!"
At that, Yi Yu-baek shook his head coldly.
"Mo Cheong. Be quiet. So-wol said he came here staking everything he has. And he did stake his life crossing the sea from Annam to reach us, and he showed his resolve by handing his entire fortune over to me. So shouldn't I answer that in kind?"
Listening to the two of them, Yeon So-wol forgot the joy he had felt a moment earlier and began to feel distinctly uneasy.'Just how dangerous is this thing?'
If it really was too dangerous, that was a problem.
He was learning martial arts so he could live the way he wanted, not so he could get himself hurt learning martial arts.
His head was a tangle.
Yi Yu-baek spoke to him then.
"It may be dangerous, but it's the road that will get you what you want far faster. As I said before, if you throw your whole heart into the training, you could enter the fire stage in less than a year. Hold to it after that and you'll reach the next level much faster as well. You might all but overcome the handicap of your age."
At that, So-wol's eyes widened a little.
Until now the only method he knew of for overcoming the handicap of his age was the Great Restoration Pill, and yet plain training alone could produce the same effect?
'Then if I add a Great Restoration Pill on top of that......!'
So-wol felt his heart pound.
Entering the fire stage meant that, even if people called him Third-rate, he could become a martial artist.
And then he could learn the Willow Leaf Step.
And then he could take the Great Restoration Pill.
That was where the real beginning lay.
'Then I have to do this, no question. However dangerous it is.......'
Just then Mo Cheong cut in from the side.
"Don't! Yeon So-wol! Something really bad could happen to you!"
"Mo Cheong. This is a man with a purpose. Don't get in his way."
A cold came warning from Yi Yu-baek.
Mo Cheong flinched and drew his head in. Cutting into his master's words was a serious offense.
Even so, Yi Yu-baek scolded him no further.
Because he knew it too. He knew how absurd it sounded to start a man who was taking up martial arts at eighteen on the Willow Haze Art of all things.
'But I can see it. Yeon So-wol. Your will.'
Yi Yu-baek looked at Yeon So-wol.
So-wol felt uneasy for no reason he could name.
"Come stand over here."
"Yes, sir."
So-wol worked to keep from trembling, to look composed.
'I can't show weakness. Not once. This is Murim. Nobody here is on my side. I'm weak.'
There was nowhere to fall back to.
He could not shy away.
He could not spare himself either.
'Even if they try to throw me out, I won't hand them an excuse. I'm going to reach a real level here before I walk out.'
Even if the training truly did turn dangerous,
'It's not like it'll actually kill me.'
So-wol believed that.
He believed that Great hero Yi Yu-baek of the Hall of Refined Arts was at least the sort of man who drew a line somewhere.
Hadn't the man smoothed over a killing for him, after all?
Wasn't he clean, and sweet-smelling besides?
So-wol gathered his nerves in close and steeled himself.
The two of them stood face to face, close together.
Yi Yu-baek said,
"The Willow Haze Art is a moving art. You move the body to perform qi gathering, and you stimulate essence and qi."
He reached out and took hold of So-wol's shoulder.
"Ugh!"
He clamped down as though he meant to crush it.
He twisted it.
He hauled on it.
"Gaah!"
That was only the beginning. Yi Yu-baek's brutal hands seized every part of So-wol's body, twisting, dragging, wrenching, forcing him into one posture after another.
"Gaaaah!"
Yi Yu-baek's hands were hot as fire.
No. He called it fire only because there was no other word for it, but it was a kind of heat So-wol had never experienced in his life. A strange pain that seemed to belong to some other world. It was much like the heat of those writhing threadworms in the places where he had been struck.
Yi Yu-baek went on twisting and pressing and pulling at So-wol's body.
Blood rose in Yi Yu-baek's face.
"A man's essence and qi and spirit are borrowed from heaven and earth, and in the beginning they are utterly pure and brimming with life. But from the moment of birth they cool little by little, turbid qi settles into them, and at last they become unusable. When essence and qi and spirit have gone completely cold and turbid and come to a halt, only then does a man arrive at death. So then, what is an Internal cultivation method?"
The uncanny heat grew hotter and hotter.
The writhing threadworm-like things seeped into that heat and finally became one with it.
A sensation he had never felt in his life spread further and further over his whole body.
Sweat streamed off him.
And not off So-wol alone.
Yi Yu-baek, still gripping and moving him, had a face drenched in it as well.
"An Internal cultivation method is a technique for reviving essence and qi and spirit that have stiffened and grown foul. To be exact, you kindle a fire and bring them back to life with it. The way ore full of impurities is refined into pure silver or pure gold inside a hot blaze."
Hot fire burned away the impurities and returned essence, qi, and spirit to their purity.
Add heat, and they came alive again.
"That is why the entry stage of any Internal cultivation method is called qi gathering. It means to gather fire. It is the stage where you kindle a fire inside yourself through your breathing, collect the heat, and begin bringing essence and qi up to temperature. Now, learn the movements, and follow the breathing along with them. Draw in. Hold it. Let it out slowly, and draw in again. From this moment your body becomes an elixir furnace."
A furnace meant a vessel in which fire was burned.
A wind-brazier was a small stove fanned with air to bring a pot of medicine to a boil.
The one in which fire was burned to burn incense was an incense burner, the one that melted iron was a blast furnace, the one that burned by atomic power was a nuclear reactor. [TL: In the original, all of these words share the same character for "furnace", including the word for a nuclear reactor.]
And among them, the elixir furnace was the one in which the elixir, the medicine that made a man an immortal, was refined.
So-wol followed Yi Yu-baek's teaching in a daze.
He memorized the postures the man shaped him into, and added the breathing on top of them. Every time he breathed correctly, the strange flame that had bloomed inside his body swelled a little larger.
"I haven't been beating you all this time for nothing. I was driving True qi deep into that stiff, hardened body of yours to make embers in your essence and qi. And right now I'm feeding those embers with my own hands, through meridian-clearing massage."
Sure enough, every time Yi Yu-baek hauled on his arm, every time he pressed into his thigh as though to bore straight through it, So-wol felt faint embers scattered all through his body coming further to life.
"Our goal for the present is the fire stage. The fire stage means watching the fire. It means regulating it. Once qi gathering has raised flames enough inside you, from that point you control those flames and begin burning off the turbid qi in earnest. The way a sword is tempered, the way pottery is fired. That is precisely what the fire stage is. But that comes later. For now, let's get you a feel for qi gathering."
For two full hours Yi Yu-baek kept hold of So-wol and forced him through the movements. He taught him the postures and the breathing method and blew hot energy into his body.
At last Yi Yu-baek let go of him.
"Hoo. Hoo."
"Haa. Haa......."
Both men were soaked through with sweat.
For So-wol, whose essence and qi had done nothing but cool until now and had been set alight for the first time in his life, the pain was beyond describing.
And driving True qi into a body like that, forcing a response out of it while performing meridian-clearing massage, was no ordinary labor either. Even for Yi Yu-baek, called the foremost expert in Xinxing, it was a taxing art.
The two of them stood still for a long while, gathering their breath.
Only afterward, his composure restored, did Yi Yu-baek ask So-wol,
"Well? Do you feel warmth inside you? Not body heat. I'm asking whether you feel True qi stirring warm in there"
So-wol nodded.
"Yes. I feel flames. Burning."
"Hm?"
"Not warmth, flames? Already? It ought to be faint as anything."
"They feel very clear, and searing hot."
"That can't be."
Flustered, Yi Yu-baek caught So-wol's pulse gate.
"Where do you feel these flames?"
"Hm....... The biggest one is in my lower belly. After that, my right thigh. A small one in my left calf. And I feel another small one in my left shoulder."
"......!"
Yi Yu-baek turned to look at So-wol with the face of a man who had seen a ghost. Because every single one was correct. An impossibility for someone who had touched an Internal cultivation method for the first time that day.
"I knew your Qi sense was sharp from the way you kept slipping my attacks. But this sharp!"
Yi Yu-baek nodded in admiration.
"That's a relief. A Qi sense that keen will be a great help. Since there's no taking this back now."
So-wol tilted his head.
No taking it back? Taking what back?
"Training an Internal cultivation method always carries the risk of qi deviation. At the qi gathering stage it isn't usually so strict, but....... you're old for this, so there's no helping it."
Yi Yu-baek abruptly drew a blade. Then he swung it and carved letters into the floor.
They were the cautions So-wol had to observe.
"Fix these in your mind and keep them to the letter. First. From now on you breathe only by the method I taught you. You must never stop it for more than a quarter hour. You keep the method going. While you're awake, and while you're asleep too."
While he was asleep? So-wol was baffled. How was a man supposed to run a breathing method in his sleep?
"If you can't manage the method, then don't go to sleep."
"......."
So-wol was appalled.
"You keep this up until you enter the fire stage. Because warmth has now begun circulating through a body full of turbid qi. What do you suppose happens if that warmed energy stops passing back and forth with the outside?"
So-wol reached for ordinary common sense. Warm, sealed off from the outside, and damp?
"It would rot, I think. Mold would set in."
"Just so. If you don't keep the breathing going, your essence and qi will rot and spoil. You'd vomit black blood and die."
"......."
So-wol asked back inwardly. 'Excuse me?'
"Second. The breathing method must be observed absolutely. In particular, in the stretches where I told you not to exhale, you mustn't even part your lips. If you open your mouth, even by mistake, all the qi gathering you worked to collect will come rushing out, your insides will go cold, and you'll fall gravely ill."
"......."
Cold sweat ran down So-wol's back. Hold on a moment.
"Third. You have to keep practicing the Willow Haze Art I just taught you, at every hour of the day. You feel the qi gathering, and through movement you spread that fire evenly through your whole body. You'll have to wake and move a few times during the night as well. If you don't, one part of you goes cool while another goes hot, and your qi and blood will twist out of alignment. In the end you'd lose the use of your body. Or you might simply drop dead."
"......."
"Last of all. Until you enter the fire stage. No. For the rest of your life, don't spit. Because your 'essence' is being warmed. The saliva pooling in your mouth may be your vital essence, so if you spit it out carelessly, that essence will waste away in no time."
So-wol's eyes wavered.
'I die, or I end up crippled......? One wrong breath and that's what happens?'
So-wol denied it.
No. Surely not. There was no way.
There had to be some sort of safeguard.
It only stood to reason.
He asked calmly.
"If by any chance I should make a mistake, what should I do."
"You should not make one."
"......."
So-wol asked again, calmly.
"This seems even more dangerous than I expected. Is there any advice you could give me for doing it safely."
"Hm? I just told you all of it, didn't I."
"......."
So-wol hoped every bit of this was nothing but exaggeration meant to frighten him.
"......Then have there truly been cases such as you describe? Dying. Losing the use of the body. If there are, I ask so that I may carve them into my mind and stay on guard."
"Not usually at the qi gathering stage. But the deeper you go with an Internal cultivation method, the more it becomes a fight against qi deviation. You, though, you're old for this, so the danger of qi deviation is there from qi gathering onward."
"So people really do die, and really do lose the use of their bodies......."
At that, Yi Yu-baek gazed off into the distance, his eyes gone far away.
"I have three direct disciples. They're called the Three Young masters of Refined Arts. But by rights they should have been the Four Young masters of Refined Arts."
"......."
"Even so, I came off well. The Severing Sword Sect's direct disciples were meant to be the Seven Severing Swords."
"And how many Severing Swords are they now......."
"Four Severing Swords, I believe it was."
"......."
"Coveting transcendence while still clothed in a human body, this is how brutal it is."
So-wol quietly closed his eyes.
Why. How had it come to this.
All he had done was work hard.
All at once Elder Jo Man-seok's voice circled in his ears.
'Never, ever trust a Jianghu practitioner.'
But.
'There's no taking it back now. And whining won't get anyone to listen.'
A mad world.
It was precisely to avoid ending up like this that So-wol had resolved to become strong. Someday. Without fail.
So-wol pressed down hard on the surge rising in his chest and answered.
"Yes. I understand."
Mo Cheong was astounded by how calm he looked.
'He heard all that and he isn't afraid? How can anyone be like that?'
Yi Yu-baek smiled with satisfaction, as though he had expected nothing less.
"Do you see now, Mo Cheong? When a man takes a purpose into his heart, he can move even Mount Tai. What is there to fear?"
Yeon So-wol glared at Yi Yu-baek.
Yi Yu-baek liked that look in his eyes.
"Good! That's fine spirit!"
"......."