TL/ED – Miso
Yi Yu-baek spoke.
"Training an Internal cultivation method is a truly perilous thing. Especially in a case like yours, where a great warmth suddenly begins moving through essence and qi that have gone cold and stiff."
He poked Yeon So-wol's forehead with a finger.
"It isn't only the body that's put at risk, but the mind as well. That's because when essence and qi start pulsing, spirit shakes along with them. You may suddenly believe that you've understood everything. Suddenly some strange notion will come to you, and you'll mistake it for a tremendous enlightenment and truly believe in it."
Yeon So-wol thought.
'Mania. Something like delusions of grandeur?'
"And for a while you'll hear things that don't exist and see things that don't exist. You'll come to believe that things which never happened were real. You won't be able to tell the true from the false."
'Auditory and visual hallucinations. Schizophrenia?'
"Therefore. You must enter Closed-door seclusion. Because if you wander about freely in your present state and keep mixing with people, something terrible could happen."Closed-door seclusion.
Shutting up an entire building, holing oneself inside, and doing nothing but training.
In practice it was closer to isolation, to imprisonment.
'A bit. Isn't this too much.'
It was bad enough that he had to carry out a difficult practice in which not a single thing could go wrong, and now he had to do it shut away alone, without a soul to help him.
"......."
Yeon So-wol fell into a gloomy silence.
Calmly, Yi Yu-baek explained why it had to be this way.
"In this Jianghu there have been a great many tragic incidents caused by people who trained without entering Closed-door seclusion when they needed to."
A certain disciple of Shaolin, in the midst of practicing an Internal cultivation method, deluded himself into thinking he had attained enlightenment.
He came to believe with absolute conviction that burning away every worldly torment and every karmic sin in flame was the road to true attainment.
Rather than carry out that enlightenment alone, he wanted to bring all of his fellow disciples to it along with him.
That night a great fire broke out at Shaolin Temple, and thirty warrior monks burned to death.
"......."
Yeon So-wol swallowed hard.
Yi Yu-baek went on.
"Something like this happened to me, too."
About 30 years ago, a renowned master of swordsmanship settled in Xinxing County. In Xinxing County he took on two disciples in all.
The second of them was Yi Yu-baek, and the first was a certain someone. Yi Yu-baek had erased that man's name from his memory.
Because that certain someone had stabbed their master to death.
While practicing an Internal cultivation method, he had come to believe with absolute conviction that their master had insulted his parents. Of course, nothing of the kind had ever happened. But he believed it all on his own, and for a full 15 years he kept what was inside him hidden while he received the transmission of the swordsmanship, and then, at the decisive moment, he stabbed their master to death.
Yi Yu-baek cut off the man's limbs and asked him why he had done it. Only then did he learn of the heart demon the man had been raising for 15 years.
"So when you're doing the kind of training that invites a heart demon, absolutely no one may come near you. The single fact that nobody was there is what gives you a standard for telling what's true from what's false. If that certain someone had done his Closed-door seclusion training properly back then......."
Listening to the story, Yeon So-wol felt a chill crawl up his spine.
'Why on earth is this world like this.......'
Yi Yu-baek continued.
"Because Closed-door seclusion is something you do alone, your heart must be utterly devoted at all times. If your heart isn't utterly devoted, you won't be able to see your own condition. And if you can't see your own condition, you'll fall into qi deviation."
Qi deviation means the running of the fire careening into calamity.
"A person is formed from the harmony of essence, qi, and spirit. Setting a fire under essence, qi, and spirit must always be done in a way that doesn't break that harmony."
Long ago there was a certain Daoist priest.
He wanted to heat his essence to an extreme in order to make his body supple.
But he thought only of driving the fire stage (the control of the flame) hard and getting his essence glowing hot, and never gave a thought to maintaining the harmony that his essence was part of.
He simply touched his steadily softening body and felt satisfied that he was growing limber and young again.
Then one day his disciples got a terrible shock.
They had come to pay their morning respects, and found their master with bone and flesh all melted, spread out across the floor.
Still bundled in his clothes, stuck fast to the floor, the master had not died even in that state, and his mouth worked open and shut. Pour me into a mold. Pour me....... The disciples screamed and fled without looking back.
"......."
Yi Yu-baek also told him about a certain fist technique practitioner who grew lax with his breathing method until his essence and qi went foul and his rotted organs came pattering out of his belly, and about a certain strongman who never spread his qi gathering evenly but piled it up wherever it happened to land, until he burned to death and was left a heap of ash.
"......."
"So. So-wol. Once you're in Closed-door seclusion, you have to train the Willow Haze Art with an utterly devoted heart."
"......How do I train with an utterly devoted heart?"
"Here, I'll give you a meridian chart."
Yi Yu-baek held out a drawing of the human body's Twelve Primary Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
It was a picture with nothing on it but lines connecting one part of the body to another and the names of each acupoint. There was no explanation whatsoever.
"Drill the Willow Haze Art while you study this. If your heart is utterly devoted, that alone will be enough for you to understand how the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians work."
Yeon So-wol felt his head go faint.
"Hall Master. Today was the first time I've ever seen this drawing."
"Yes. But you've learned the Willow Haze Art, haven't you."
"I've only learned the breathing method and the movements, Hall Master. If you could give me even a little instruction about this drawing, I think it would help me enormously."
"So-wol. Read a book a hundred times and its meaning reveals itself. The principles of the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians are contained within the Willow Haze Art, so if you repeat it with all your heart, understanding will come to you on its own."
"......."
"You must not break the Closed-door seclusion before you understand."
"......Yes, Hall Master."
Yeon So-wol pressed the matter no further.
'There's no way arguing gets anywhere with a man who hands out, on a whim, a method that could kill or cripple me.'
Seeing that Yeon So-wol had given up, Yi Yu-baek smiled faintly.
"That attitude, not asking the same thing over and over. That's a truly good thing. You. You'll do fine."
"Thank you."
Yeon So-wol simply bowed his head. If he had to do it anyway, he figured he might as well earn a little goodwill out of it.
"Ah. And, So-wol."
"Yes, Hall Master."
"Here."
Yi Yu-baek held out a basket of raw garlic to him.
"Chew this when sleep comes for you. It'll help."
"......Thank you."
Yi Yu-baek led Yeon So-wol straight from there to the place of Closed-door seclusion.
A storehouse, emptied clean.
Inside the storehouse were several changes of clothes, a lit lamp, and a spring that trickled up out of the ground, and heaps of fasting pills and dried meat to fill an empty stomach.
"This paper is a seal. If this paper is intact, it means this door has never been opened."
Yi Yu-baek inked Yeon So-wol's palm and pressed it onto the paper.
"May fortune favor you, then."
Slam!
The door shut.
The windowless storehouse went dark. The faint lamplight barely lit his surroundings.
"Put up the sealing paper."
At the voice from beyond the door, Yeon So-wol wordlessly stuck the sealing paper bearing his palm print dead center across the seam where the doors met.
Scraaaape!
Clack!
Outside the door, the noise of a bar being dropped and chains being fastened rang out loudly.
Soon it went quiet outside.
"......."
For a moment Yeon So-wol thought of his mother.
"This crazy world."
How much longer would he have to live like this, always on the edge.
'Still, this training ought to help me get by in this crazy world. Right. Let's do it. Let's just get it over with.'
Grinding his teeth, Yeon So-wol slowly began to move. He started training the Willow Haze Art.
Seven days and nights passed that way.
'I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.'
In all that time Yeon So-wol had barely slept.
He was too keyed up to sleep.
Clack. Shhhhhhh-
1 quarter-hour is 15 minutes.
In the place of Closed-door seclusion there was an hourglass that ran exactly 1 quarter-hour.
Yeon So-wol flipped it compulsively.
So that his breathing method would never stop for any longer than that.
He checked himself, and checked himself again.
Doing that, there was no way he could sleep.
What if he fell asleep and got the breathing method wrong? That was what frightened him.
Fortunately, training the Willow Haze Art sent heat flushing through his whole body, left him feeling refreshed, and made the drowsiness draw back.
Thanks to that he had held out a good long while, but even that had now reached its limit.
Yeon So-wol, bloodshot eyes and all, standing in the middle of the seclusion chamber, swaying on his feet as he dozed.
Just then the door opened a crack and Mo Cheong stepped inside.
"Oh man. So-wol. What a rotten business this is. Rough, huh? Get some sleep. If your breathing slips while you're out, I'll wake you. Rest easy. Master gave the okay for it."
At those words Yeon So-wol was overjoyed.
He had no strength left to show how glad he was, but inside he was truly glad.
"Thank you."
Clack.
Yeon So-wol turned the hourglass. He sat down and let his eyes fall lightly shut. But sleep didn't come right away. He had been far too tense.
He opened his eyes again.
Mo Cheong was there.
About half the sand was left in the hourglass.
"It's all right. Get some sleep."
"Yes."
Clack!
Yeon So-wol flipped the hourglass again.
He closed and opened his eyes a few more times like that.
Each time, Mo Cheong put him at ease.
"Go on, sleep."
"Yes......."
Only then did the tension ease a little, and Yeon So-wol flipped the hourglass one last time and let his eyes slide shut, and then,
?
he stirred for a moment and, out of habit, cracked his eyes open,
"Huh?"
He shot to his feet and looked around.
!!
Goose bumps swept over him.
"......."
The sand in the hourglass was very nearly run out.
And,
"......."
Not there.
Wasn't there.
Mo Cheong wasn't there.
He definitely said he'd watch over me all night, didn't he?
"You...... son of a......!"
Yeon So-wol was furious.
"That bastard!!!"
He'd lie to me even in a spot like this?
Says he'll wake me up, and then the second I'm asleep he ditches me and slips out?!
Rage shot up to the very top of his head.
The whole world felt as thin as a single strand of thread.
The ground, the sky, the faintly burning candle flame, all of it.
If Mo Cheong had been standing in front of him, he would have killed him. He absolutely would have killed him.
His heart pounded.
The sand left in the hourglass amounted to barely 60 seconds.
'I almost died!'
His essence and qi had nearly rotted and killed him!
Yeon So-wol hurriedly resumed the breathing method.
"Hssssssp. Hoooooooo......."
A vicious stench came pouring out with his exhaled breath.
If he had to put a name to it, it was close to the reek of laundry left out in the rain. Only about ten times worse than that.
"......."
Goose bumps rose all over his body.
'It was true.'
It hadn't even been a full quarter-hour. And a stench like this.
The last scrap of doubt lingering in a corner of his mind was blown clean away.
Yi Yu-baek never exaggerated about anything.
'This really does rot essence and qi and kill you.'
Yeon So-wol clenched his teeth harder still.
"Mo Cheong....... Mo Cheong......."
This grudge felt like something he would never be able to forget.
Because it had been so hard.
Humiliation suffered in hard times is that much harder to forget.
Yeon So-wol sprang to his feet.
On the chance that Mo Cheong might be standing outside the storehouse door snickering, he muffled his footsteps and crept up close to it.
"......."
And then he realized.
Rattle. Clank.
That the storehouse door was locked perfectly tight.
In the center of the door, the sealing paper stamped with his palm print clung there, gone damp. This door had never once been opened.
"Now that I think about it......."
The Mo Cheong in his memory had said he'd come in with Yi Yu-baek's permission.
But wasn't Yi Yu-baek the very man who had stressed again and again that he must not meet a single soul while in Closed-door seclusion?
There was no way that man would have given Mo Cheong permission to come in.
Which meant.
"......It was all a hallucination?"
A chill of goose bumps ran over Yeon So-wol.
Mo Cheong's expression, his voice, were still vivid in his ears. And yet. None of it was real?
He groped a hand out, seized a fistful of raw garlic, and shoved it into his mouth.
The garlic was so sharp that moisture beaded damply at the corners of his eyes.
"Hah. Hoo. Sss."
Chewing the garlic, Yeon So-wol moved his body.
Steadying a breath that kept rising and falling and turning ragged, he trained the Willow Haze Art with damp eyes.
Following the breathing method, he kindled fire throughout his body, and through the movements he spread that heat to every part of it.
So that he wouldn't be afraid.
So that he wouldn't go mad.
Without pause, Yeon So-wol repeated the Willow Haze Art.
"Hah. Hoo. Hssssssp. ....... Hah......."
Crazy world.
This crazy world.
Understanding the Twelve Primary Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians remained as far out of reach as ever.