GONG—
From somewhere deep within, a temple bell rings as though to wake the world.
And then a voice he cannot place surfaces in his mind.
—I know that setting my own body upright comes first. To pour water into a crooked vessel is to spill it in vain.
—When the body is upright, a path stands. When the path stands, the flow follows.
"Upright Body, Standing Path......!"
Shouting the words out of nowhere, Jeong I-shin opened his eyes.
The dim interior of a hut greeted him.
"......"
It was a sight he had been waking to for a week now, but it was still not familiar.
Only, absurdly enough.
There was no resistance in him.
That was thanks to the temple bell and the verse formula that took the place of a wake-up alarm.
"This is driving me crazy. How long is it going to keep circling around?"
The day he first opened his eyes in this body.
Gongheon, who had handed him hellish pain, had said something.
Congratulations on having come to hone the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture.
Right. Honing.
To grind and to polish. How perfectly that phrase suited it.
The Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture had mercilessly ground and polished the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy who had, out of nowhere, opened his eyes in another world in another person's body.
And astonishingly, once about a week of that honing had passed, everything gradually came to seem like simply the way things were.
"I've already fallen in here, so what am I supposed to do?"
It felt as though his mind had been worn smooth, and also as though a solid wall had been raised.
Thinking about it calmly, it also felt like he had returned to the temperament he had while his grandfather and grandmother were alive.
GONG—
—Breath grows rough the more you press it. The tighter you grip it, the faster it flees.
—So let it go. Let it go and it evens out; even it out and it will not waver.
"Level Qi, Settled Mind. ......Argh! Seriously!"
Jeong I-shin, who had murmured it before he knew it, rose from where he lay.
The verse formula flowing this way and that through his head to some strange rhythm was distracting.
It was urging him: what are you doing, not moving yet?
Letting out a deep sigh, Jeong I-shin opened the door and stepped out.
CREAK—
The clearing was just as dim.
The thick fog spread far overhead let down only a trickle of light, worse than a dying incandescent bulb.
The murky fog encircling their dwelling was unchanged too, so his view was stifling.
Even a semi-basement was not this bad.
It was an environment perfectly suited to making a person miserable.
GONG—
—The mind crosses the line easily. Once it crosses, the whole body follows across.
—So set the mind first. When the mind stands, the coarse dares not cross.
"I know, I know."
Reciting the droning verse formula, he walked to the center of the clearing, where a monk with a benevolent face greeted him.
"Are you up?"
"Yes, did you sleep well, Monk?"
"I did. Now then, shall we begin?"
Gongheon. The monk who had passed the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture on to Jeong I-shin.
His build as he sprang to his feet was different again from before.
It was not the tremendous musculature of when he first saw him, but neither did he look like a scrawny chopstick.
A suitably sturdy build.
In a single week, Gongheon had recovered his body to about half of what it had been.
Jeong I-shin waved his hands hurriedly at the monk of grand physique approaching with gleaming eyes.
"W-wait a moment, Monk. Let me prepare myself a little......"
"Haha. The pain of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture is limited to the initiation, and yet you still fear it so?"
"......"
He was not wrong.
Reciting the verse formula now did not make his body hurt.
But.
'I still have to get beaten by you while I recite it.'
Guided sparring, he called it.
He had also called it the process of settling the divine art into the body, but this was a monk who did not even treat the blows landing on him during sparring as pain.
'He's...... a monk, right? Does everyone at Shaolin Temple train like this?'
As said, it had already been a week since he came here.
He had exchanged at least a few words with all four old men, so he had been able to roughly grasp what sort of world it was that he had woken into in a body whose name he did not know.
This place itself was a pit called the Bottomless Abyss, but the world spread out beyond it was called jianghu.
Shaolin Temple, the Namgung Clan, the Sichuan Tang Clan!
Famous names even Jeong I-shin knew, whose entire knowledge of martial arts fiction amounted to the Nine Sects One Gang, the Five Great Clans, and the Heavenly Demon.
The three old men were said to be figures from exactly those powers.
The old man named Yeo Hwi, who wore nothing but black, had said something about Deathshroud, but the name was unfamiliar and he soon forgot it.
And so Jeong I-shin learned that this world was a place where an unscientific power called martial arts lived and breathed.
It was astonishing and interesting.
And that was all.
It was literally a tale from another dimension, but the temple bell ringing endlessly through his head blocked any pointless thoughts.
GONG—
In the end, more frightening to Jeong I-shin than worries about another world, no, more important, was the training with Gongheon right in front of him.
"Now then, have you finished preparing yourself?"
CLENCH—
Still the merciful smile and the loving voice, and two fists that were neither.
"......Phew! Yes, I'm read— kuh......!"
The instant he answered, his body went flying. Along with pain in his abdomen.
He rolled across the ground past the four wooden chairs set at the center of the clearing.
As if mocking the sight, the verse formula in his head flowed on serenely.
GONG—
—What surges up always has its reason. Not because it is weak, but because it has no center.
—When the coarse is pressed down, it returns to its source. And when it returns, only then does it harden.
***
Watching Jeong I-shin fly this way and that above the clearing, Tang Mu-jeong spoke sullenly.
"A pointless thing to have done."
At that, Yeo Hwi chuckled and asked.
"Who? Sir Gongheon, who in the end succeeded in passing on Shaolin's greatest study? Or us, who offered up half our true qi for that transmission?"
"......Tsk."
The words 'both of you' caught in his throat and would not come out.
Tang Mu-jeong clicked his tongue out of habit and grumbled for no reason.
"Half-cripples have become full cripples. I doubt we shall enjoy even the lifespan left to us in one piece."
"By your own words, four such old men saved one young life, so it does not seem a pointless thing."
"......Anyone watching would think I was the assassin. The world ought to know that the previous Deathshroud Leader had such a gentle heart."
Tang Mu-jeong turned his head away as he said it, but Yeo Hwi did not give up and pressed on in a knowing tone.
"I was certain there had to be a story behind him. Is he not a child who fell into the Bottomless Abyss with lightning in his body? And to think even that was not all of it. How does that martial talent look to your eyes?"
"......"
In place of Tang Mu-jeong, who kept his mouth firmly shut, Namgung Baek, lying on the ground gazing up at the fog, tossed out a remark.
"A monster, what else."
At that unruffled answer, Yeo Hwi slowly nodded.
"I hear he has already set foot on the first stage. Which means the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture has settled into him completely. A divine art no one but Sir Gongheon has ever managed to enter, and that child has inherited it."
"Sparkles is still holding his sparkles too. Though it looks like the Scripture has them pressed down."
"Just so. He reined in the lightning in the end as well. In truth, is that not what matters most to us?"
Yeo Hwi and Namgung Baek carried the conversation back and forth for a good while.
Tang Mu-jeong, on the other hand, added not a single word and only watched the clearing.
Just then Jeong I-shin, having dodged Gongheon's fist, threw both hands up with a broad grin, and then took a palm strike and went flying through the air again.
'......A monster, is it.'
Namgung Baek's words were not wrong.
He had already confirmed it while helping Gongheon save the child.
Jeong I-shin's body had never touched the martial arts. That was why no one, not even Gongheon, had expected the transmission of the divine art to succeed.
It was simply that the child's detached composure, unclinging to life...... had shaken the hearts of old men crumbling away in the Bottomless Abyss.
That was why they had clutched their shattered qi centers and burned half their true qi.
And yet the child had miraculously taken the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture into himself and lived, and on top of that had laid the foundation of the divine art in a single week.
'His martial talent goes without saying...... and what he holds inside him is even more so.'
There was a power sealed within Jeong I-shin's qi center by the Scripture and the strength of the four of them.
Lightning. Pure lightning qi, endlessly close to true lightning.
When Tang Mu-jeong said that lightning could become a key to tear open the Bottomless Abyss, he had meant it.
If Jeong I-shin's lightning were raised well, it might be possible to tear through the fog of this Bottomless Abyss and return to the Central Plains.
But precisely because of that, Tang Mu-jeong shook his head.
As always, he wore a cynical smile.
"So you mean to make him our joint successor?"
"......"
"Teach him martial arts and ask him for revenge? Of that child, whose identity we do not even know?"
"Mu-jeong, what I mean is—"
"There is no need. I said the lightning could be a key, but when exactly would that be? He is a boy who nearly melted from the lightning qi he holds. It would take several decades at the least."
"Hm......!"
"Simply regard it as a contingency for the one chance in ten thousand and let it go. Our affairs must be settled by our own hands."
Tang Mu-jeong said his piece and turned his head away sharply.
Namgung Baek, who had been gazing blankly at him, tossed out a question.
"Then what if Sparkles can handle his sparkles right now?"
"What?"
"What'll you do if he wields the sparkles as his true qi?"
"Ha! What nonsense."
Tang Mu-jeong, still clicking his tongue, let slip a murmur in a voice too small for anyone to catch.
"If he wielded it so...... the Bottomless Abyss would hardly be the issue. It would shake the demonic dominion that has surely descended upon the world."
***
WHOOSH!!
A fist the size of a cauldron lid grazed the tip of Jeong I-shin's nose.
He jerked his head back in time to keep his nose from being crushed.
Unlike his roughly pounding heart, his mind was exceedingly calm.
'Thank goodness. It's a decent-looking nose.'
And the price of that calm stray thought was bitter to the bone.
His bones really did hurt.
THWACK!!
"Kuh......!"
The distance between him and Gongheon was clearly three meters, yet something struck his shoulder.
At a pain like being driven down by a hammer, Jeong I-shin clutched his shoulder and dropped into a crouch.
His face was so full of grievance that Gongheon soon withdrew his hand and came over.
With a deeply loving smile.
"Ho ho. You let your guard down."
Jeong I-shin stuck out his lower lip.
"It's a wonder it isn't shattered, Monk."
"The study of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture is not so flimsy."
"......How on earth did you do that?"
In truth, even now Jeong I-shin did not know in what way this sparring was helping him. He had not even asked to begin with.
It was simply that the Gongheon before him had unmistakably saved his life.
That there was nowhere else to go if he left this place.
That he did not want to go, either.
So he was simply staying.
"Could you teach me too? So that you can also take a...... no, I mean, I'm just really curious."
For that Jeong I-shin, something he was curious about had appeared for the first time.
The gesture Gongheon swung with that loving face.
That hand which unfailingly delivered horrific pain whenever he dodged a fist and opened the distance!
Martial arts fiction or not, striking without contact had to be cheating.
Perhaps he saw the grievance settled on Jeong I-shin's face; Gongheon smiled and said,
"It is called the Space-Crossing Palm. There is no reason I cannot teach it to you, but you have no inner arts at the moment, so it will take time."
"Space-Crossing Palm......"
The ring of the word was good.
A palm technique that struck across a span of space.
Naturally, a famous name came to mind.
That name even someone who knew nothing of martial arts fiction knew!
"Whoa, the Tathagata Divine Palm!"
He shouted it without meaning to. There was no particular significance to it.
But Gongheon's reaction was extremely intense.
"Ooooh......!"
"Wh-what is it?"
"To think that even in this day and age there is an earnest child who seeks the Tathagata Divine Palm!"
Before Jeong I-shin could react, Gongheon strode over and seized his shoulder.
The very shoulder he had struck with the Space-Crossing Palm.
"Agh!"
"I cannot understand why those who call themselves martial monks seek only the easy road. To chase nothing but utility and cling to techniques like the Great Strength Vajra Hand or the Hundred Step Divine Fist!"
"M-Monk. Please calm......"
"Ahh! Think how much time I poured into restoring the lost Tathagata Divine Palm! And all because it is a little, just a very little harder to master......!"
"Aaagh!"
Fortunately, Gongheon withdrew his hand before Jeong I-shin's shoulder shattered.
With the excitement of a moment before still on his face, he said,
"There are many studies I was never able to pass on to Shaolin. If the chance ever comes, I would like you to pass them on."
"......Me?"
"If you do, I shall teach you the Tathagata Divine Palm."
"Uh...... I......"
It had been a mere week, but Jeong I-shin had already grasped Gongheon's teaching methods perfectly.
'Studies he never passed on...... plural?'
Plural?
For the past week the sparring had been called a process to settle the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture into his body quickly.
A mere week to lay the foundation of the divine art perfectly.
It was a span so short that no one would believe it, but for Jeong I-shin it had been every day since he opened his eyes here.
Naturally, a daunted feeling came over him.
Did he really need to learn the Tathagata Divine Palm? It was not as though he was going to beat people up.
Right, refuse.
The moment he settled on that and opened his mouth.
CLENCH—
"Ngh......!"
Gongheon took hold of his shoulder with an exceedingly loving face.
"There is no need to feel burdened. You need not even regard this humble monk as your master. I too have realized a great deal because of you."
"N-no. Monk, first, this hand......"
CLENNNCH—!
"I-I've always wanted to learn it! Please let me learn it! Th-the Tathagata Divine Palm! Please!"
"Hahaha!"
Gongheon sprang to his feet.
His face was one of genuine emotion.
Gongheon gazed at Jeong I-shin for a good long while, then nodded deeply.
"An inner arts mind method must come first."
"......Even though I have the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture?"
At Jeong I-shin's answer as he rubbed his shoulder, Gongheon spoke in a serious voice.
"It was only because it was the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture that the lightning you hold could be driven into your qi center. In truth, even that would have been beyond me had the three benefactors not helped."
"......"
"It is fit to be called the most destructive power heaven casts down. To think that even the true qi of the Scripture can do no more than preserve your body."
What that meant was that the energy drawn in through the Scripture's breathing cultivation did not accumulate in the qi center.
The study had always been intended for guarding body and mind to begin with, but it had become still more so in order to keep watch over the lightning in his qi center.
"It seems we must weave a new mind art. With the existing studies, you would only be devoured by your lightning."
Of course, creating a martial art was no easy matter. A peerless master and a grand patriarch stood plainly in different realms.
That was why Gongheon intended to borrow the strength of his old friends.
Were they not men who were the world's best at being cantankerous, yet endlessly serious when it came to the martial?
And the way to stir ripples in a martial artist's heart was obvious.
"Rise. I shall teach you the Space-Crossing Palm."
"Yes? You said it was impossible for now since I have no inner arts......"
"Learn the theory, at least."
Jeong I-shin, who had risen without quite meaning to, listened quietly to Gongheon.
"The Space-Crossing Palm is a branch of the force-issuing methods that bursts power at an arbitrary point. It performs the principle of the internal heavy-hand method as a long-range strike, so it has a great many advantages. However, by the same measure......"
The more he listened, the more he felt that the Space-Crossing Palm was no ordinary lofty technique.
'Delaying the strike? ......What on earth does that mean?'
Even with Gongheon's wholehearted explanation, Jeong I-shin could not understand it at all.
He had lived a life that did not know the first thing about fighting.
Even after opening his eyes here, all he had done day and night was dodge.
Any aversion to striking a person...... had been dealt with by the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture; it was simply that, having never hit anyone, he could not understand it.
But.
'Like...... this?'
Because the sensation in the shoulder Gongheon had pounded was still there.
'To burst it from a distance......'
Because the gesture Gongheon had swung at him with that loving smile was vivid.
So he was able at least to imitate it.
RUMBLE—
All at once he felt a low resonance deep within his body.
Jeong I-shin, exactly as that feeling took him, swung his hand out hard.
For an instant his hand flashed bright.
KABOOM!
Tang Mu-jeong's chair shattered and scattered through the air. The ground was scorched pitch black.
Beyond the rising cloud of dust, he saw Gongheon's astonished face.
"......Huh?"
Was this not it?