Early morning, the sun just risen. In a small courtyard in the west of Mingzhou City, Sun Lang stretched with his eyes still closed and declaimed loudly, "Who first wakes from the great dream? I have always known it myself. In my thatched hall I've slept my fill of spring, while beyond the window the sun lingers slow..."
Only then did he open his eyes, push the window open, and look out. Well — no vulgar guest had come today either, to admire him plagiarizing poetry to look impressive...
He dressed, got out of bed, washed up a little, and, facing the rising sun, gave another lazy stretch.
Holding his breath and listening, he heard cookfires being lit, a husband and wife talking, a husband heading out the door, a mother whaling on her kid... all of it, the myriad lives of ordinary households.
To common folk, these were sounds and events that happened every day, that would go on happening a whole lifetime — ordinary, plain. But in Sun Lang's ears, they were a thing of such delight.
"This is how the world ought to be..." Sun Lang murmured, laughing at himself. "It took me nearly eight years of being transmigrated to get to live like this... screw your old man, ordinary is good."
Before he transmigrated, he too had read the odd novel, and whenever he came across a protagonist who longed for an ordinary life, who recoiled from the strangeness around him and bellowed long live peace, he'd sneered at the fellow, sure he was being precious to the point of ball-aching melodrama.
But after transmigrating, after living through all manner of right and wrong, through magnificent upheavals an ordinary person couldn't imagine in a lifetime, after being dragged into vast whirlpools beyond his control — only then did he truly come to understand how precious a peaceful life was.
In any case, his goal for this stage of life was to be a quiet, handsome young man: to live well, play well, and have a good look at this interesting world he'd never had the chance to see before.
Having reflected a while on bitter days past and sweet days present, he ambled lazily into the side room on his right, pushed open the door — and a stark, metallic killing air rushed at his face.
Training room, practice hall, call it what you like... a room like this was all but standard equipment in every home in the empire, from kings and dukes at the top down to the lowliest commoner; even the poorest households would plant a few practice dummies in their yard.
The Great Han stood upon martial arts; the flourishing of the martial way crowned the Central Land, and across the whole nation nearly everyone could manage a few moves of fist and staff.
Even a farm wife who washed clothes, cooked meals, and tended the crops all day might, if you got her started on Through-the-Arm Longfist, speak of it with real authority.
Such being the custom, a place like the training room was quite simply the most important component of a household.
To the empire's common folk, practicing martial arts not only strengthened the body but was a chance to change one's fate — for once every three years there was a national rite to select talent, called the Martial Examination.
Any son of a decent family, regardless of rank or birth, high or low, could go to the capital to sit the exam and contend for that one fate-changing chance... A thousand armies and ten thousand horses crossing a single-plank bridge: through layer upon layer of selection and elimination, from countless martial skills and techniques to questions of strategy and statecraft, three hundred men were chosen in the end.
These three hundred lucky souls would not only leap the dragon gate into the empire's bureaucracy, but at the palace examination would be bestowed by the Emperor's own hand a divine treasure named an "Imperial Arm," gaining inconceivable, miraculous power, rising above ordinary martial artists from that day forward, walking a road to glory that brought honor to their houses.
To ordinary families of humble birth, this was already a temptation worth giving everything for.
Though the courtyard Sun Lang now lived in was not large, the training room still took up a fair amount of space. As he strode in, a crisp crunch came from underfoot — his boots had stepped on fine, scattered debris.
Even ordinary households kept their training rooms spotless, but this room was filthy and chaotic in the extreme. For some reason the floor was strewn with great quantities of sharp metal fragments.
Should some stout fellow come here to run through a round of rolling-saber forms, within ten moves he'd likely first turn himself into a hedgehog.
In a corner of the training room lay a heap of weapons, nearly all of them swords, each one gleaming cold and streaming with light.
In ordinary eyes, every one was a rare treasure — the kind that, kept in a home, you'd polish several times a day, tending it more attentively than your own ancestors.
Here, though, they were piled together any old way, a waste so flagrant it could send every sword-lover in the world stamping their feet and cursing.
Sun Lang casually dragged out a sword, stepped back a couple of paces, stood in the center of the training room, stretched, gave a few small hops, and idly flourished a few sword-flowers.
The sword arts of the world — some nimble and swift, some intricate and ever-shifting, some winning by sheer force — were as numberless as the sands of the Ganges.
But whether the peerless sword art honed to its very peak, or the crude swordplay even a woodcutter could manage a couple of strokes of, if you broke their moves down into the most basic actions one by one, you'd find the principle behind them all was the same.
The thrust.
One of the most fundamental actions of swordsmanship.
The sharp sword-tip slipped out without a sound, fast as an illusion.
In the space of a finger-snap, Sun Lang's arm extended level and the sword thrust out — its point not trembling, its body dead straight, like an extension of his arm frozen into a statue... This thrust was utterly unremarkable.
But had any martial powerhouse been present, they'd have been struck with awe, for this thrust had made no sound whatsoever.
You see, every action in this world meets the resistance of air; more or less, it must produce a sound of cutting wind.
When blade or sword strikes, it of course carries a fierce wind-sound, stirring the airflow — and the faster its momentum and the heavier its force, the louder and sharper the wind.
Yet this sword just now had clearly reached the very limit of speed, and still made no sound at all.
This phenomenon, so utterly defying common sense, could mean only one thing... that thrust had cleaved the air itself, leaving sound and airflow unable to keep pace, and with exquisitely subtle control of force had quelled every stray noise it might have made.
On the strength of that single, unremarkable thrust alone, Sun Lang could have won himself a resounding name in this empire founded upon martial arts and become an honored guest of kings and dukes.
But Sun Lang let out a silent sigh, as though dissatisfied with his own swordsmanship. He gazed at the long sword's blade, its cold light mirrored like the arc of the moon, shook his head, and slowly drew the sword back. Then, once more, he thrust.
Halfway through, the sword suddenly let out a fierce, explosive crack. This fine sword — tempered a thousand times, forged in molten fire — burst with a bang.
Its sturdy blade, which could hew at solid rock dozens of times without chipping, shattered in an instant into hundreds of iron fragments spraying in every direction, becoming a floor full of utter scrap.
Sun Lang's expression did not change. Or rather, he had long since grown used to it.
"One sword... a rare treasure even ordinary folk seldom see, and it can support only a single swing of mine. After one stroke, the sword's spine is destroyed by the wantonly surging sword-qi, and turns more brittle than bean-curd dregs." He tossed the hilt aside and laughed at himself. "Still, it's a far cry better than two years ago, when I'd blow up anything I touched... at least now I can rein this uncontrollable power in a little."
Two years. It had been two years since he last took up a sword against an enemy.
The bygone days of soldiering, when a single sword swept all before it and ten charges broke ten lines, were gradually being sealed away in the depths of memory, and would in time vanish into the river of years — just as all that blood and tears would, in the end, sink into the earth.
Two years ago, he had cast aside his own sword: a sword that could drive every martial artist in the world mad, yet the cause of all the nightmares and pain of his six years... Still, he had at last won the freedom he wanted.
Only, the price of that freedom... was so goddamn heavy.
Heavy enough to render a pure and righteous young man incapable of so much as conversing with a woman — to the point that when he claimed to hate H, no one would believe him.
The memory lasted only an instant. Sun Lang came back to himself and cursed, "Screw you, your old man's going to do exactly the opposite of what you want... Anyway, you think I'm so eager to use a sword? I've got guns! You superstitious idiots, clinging to your cold steel — sooner or later you'll be ground to dust by positron siege-cannons and two-dimensional foil..."
He left the room with its floor full of scrap, returned to the main hall, and stuffed the Bifang Type-3 detonation gun leaning against the wall up his sleeve.
He clipped a row of ammunition onto the buckle-strap at the small of his back, then idly pulled open a drawer and took out a few iron cylinders that any fool could tell were nothing good, hanging them haphazardly in the inner pockets of his robe, and muttered, "Hmph, Devil May Cry's nowhere near as fun as CrossFire..."
Ready at last, he shut the door, stepped out of the little courtyard, locked the gate, and went on his way.