Gongheon approached Jeong I-shin with his mouth hanging open.
The child had carried no trace of martial training.
In truth, once one spoke with him for a while, it became clear that he lacked even ordinary common sense.
An ailing child, then.
It was only natural that he had felt all the more concern for him.
And yet, astonishingly, Jeong I-shin's martial talent reached the heavens.
The Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture, which Gongheon had restored on his own.
Despite being Shaolin's greatest study, it was a divine art no one but Gongheon had ever managed to master.
Gongheon himself had passed it on with the heart of a man placing a wager, purely to save Jeong I-shin's life.
And yet Jeong I-shin had not only accepted the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture as though water were flowing, he had laid its foundation perfectly in a mere week.
But even so, and separate from all that.
Wielding the power of lightning with a human body was another matter entirely.
This was not a thing to be settled by talk of talent.
Gongheon asked, his white beard trembling.
"H-how?"
Jeong I-shin blinked blankly and said,
"W-well, I'm not sure?"
"......Would you lend me your hand for a moment?"
Gongheon's expression hardened as he took hold of Jeong I-shin's wrist.
Meanwhile the three old men, who had been watching from a distance, hurried over and shouted.
Tang Mu-jeong's reaction was especially violent.
"Y-you, what have you just done......? Do not tell me you wielded the lightning. Gongheon, answer me. What in the world has happened here?"
"......Haaa."
While Gongheon, urged on by Tang Mu-jeong, groped for words with a stunned face, Namgung Baek — who had at some point taken hold of Jeong I-shin's other wrist — spoke first.
"It really has gone down."
He shoved his face right up close, grinning from ear to ear. Those crystal-clear eyes were full of wonder and interest.
"Sparkles, did you really swing your sparkles around?"
Jeong I-shin was aware that Namgung Baek called both him and the lightning he supposedly carried Sparkles.
But as for whether he had swung the lightning around.
"Well...... I'm not sure?"
"Huh? Lightning or not, if you wielded it then it's your true qi. And you don't know? Are you an idiot?"
"......"
The question of whether he was an idiot, coming out of Namgung Baek's mouth, carried a strange resonance.
Jeong I-shin badly wanted to argue back, but sadly no fitting answer came to mind.
What was true qi in the first place?
Just then, Tang Mu-jeong, who had belatedly taken Jeong I-shin's wrist, nodded.
"An idiot indeed."
"......Excuse me?"
"It is hard to believe, but the traces where the lightning passed are this distinct. If a power this mighty went back and forth through your body and you did not know it, then even calling you a blithering idiot would fall short."
"......"
Seeing the eyes of Jeong I-shin, still vacant, Tang Mu-jeong narrowed the space between his brows.
"Even a commoner who knows nothing of qi could feel a force of this size, and yet this is...... you might as well be a blind man with his eyes open."
He examined this part and that part of Jeong I-shin's body over and over, then let out a deep sigh and raised a hand.
"The young ones of the great clans would understand better than you. Tsk! Now, do you see that chair over there?"
"Yes."
"Swing."
"Sorry?"
"Swing, you brat! The way you did when you smashed my chair!"
At Tang Mu-jeong's sheer force, Jeong I-shin swung his hand reflexively.
RUMBLE—
And he felt it clearly.
No, in truth he confirmed again what he had already felt a moment before.
The lightning slipping out of his qi center and stretching out along his hand. The qi.
KABOOM!
"My chair!"
Namgung Baek's face crumpled as he looked at his own chair, shattered to pieces.
Tang Mu-jeong did not spare him so much as a glance and finished his words with an expression still full of displeasure.
"That is your true qi."
"Ah!"
"Ah, nothing. If you understand, then go and cut wood this instant, you brat!"
***
The next day.
Jeong I-shin sat down on the floor of the clearing and waited for Namgung Baek.
He had been told that whenever he left their dwelling he had to be accompanied by one of the old men without fail.
There was someone assigned to survey the area outside the dwelling each week, and this week it was Namgung Baek.
Gongheon, who had intended to keep him company until Namgung Baek arrived, asked casually.
"Do you know the phrase 'Shattering Evil, Revealing Truth'?"
"No. It's the first time I've hear—"
"It means to break what is wrong and bring forth what is right. In murim it generally refers to a force that crushes down wicked things, and that force is called the power of Shattering Evil, Revealing Truth."
Gongheon poured out the words as though he had known Jeong I-shin would answer that he did not know.
"Martial arts that handle dharma power were extremely few to begin with, and as the demonic path rose to power, those who inherited them dwindled further."
"Is that s...... hm?"
"And the lightning you hold contains a power to which no dharma power can compare. It is at a level one may call not merely shattering evil, but destroying evil, destroying demons. So, child."
"Y-yes. Monk."
He was fairly certain he had heard something unsettling in the middle of that, but Gongheon seized his shoulder with an exceedingly serious face and the moment passed.
Gripping Jeong I-shin's shoulder tightly enough to crush it, Gongheon said,
"I have said it many times already, but hold the lightning you possess dear. It is because your body differs from an ordinary man's that you carry lightning this way. That is not a merit of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture. It is your power alone."
"Didn't I almost die from it?"
"That was because you had no intent to handle the energy. It worries me that you seem no different even now, but from here on the true qi of the Scripture will aid you."
Gongheon talked for a long while about how tremendous a power the lightning was.
But as Jeong I-shin listened quietly, a strangely grating point kept repeating.
"With your lightning, perhaps even the Iron Demon's body-protecting enhanced qi would be rendered useless. Had we struck that demonic fiend down sooner, Wudang's losses would have been far lighter. And the skull of that Seven-Joint Demon Palm bastard......"
Setting aside the violence of the monk's language, the image of this place called murim seemed a little different from what he had pictured.
Jeong I-shin called out to Gongheon, who was about to burst the skull of yet another demonic fiend whose name he did not know.
"Um, Monk. There's something I'm curious about."
"Ask me anything."
"Those demonic fiends...... why are there so many of them in jianghu?"
Was the usual flow not that a group called the orthodox sects held sway, and the bad ones were branded public enemies and cut down?
Even Jeong I-shin, who had not a scrap of knowledge about martial arts fiction, knew that much.
But Gongheon's answer was outside his expectations.
"Well, that is because we lost the Great Orthodox-Demonic War."
"......Sorry?"
***
BANG! BAAANG!
Every time Gongheon drove his fist into empty air, a sound like a drumhead splitting rang out.
It was an astonishing sight, but Jeong I-shin's mind was elsewhere, taken up by the words Gongheon had left him with.
'Demonic dominion?'
The Demonic Cult, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
They were groups Jeong I-shin roughly knew of.
When he had asked whether they were a place where bastards crazed for power gathered, he had been told that was correct.
The problem was that the murim of the present day had fallen into the hands of those madmen.
How many demonic fiends had Gongheon lamented not being able to burst the skulls of?
To think this was a land where such bastards walked with their heads held high.
'The end times.'
He shrugged with that brief impression.
'Of course, it has nothing to do with me right now.'
For Jeong I-shin, who had no way of leaving the Bottomless Abyss, it was not a matter worth much thought.
He folded up the worry cleanly and was watching Gongheon's movements when it happened.
RUMBLE—
Deep inside his body, in the place he now knew to be his qi center, a tremor was felt once again.
He and the lightning were still on distant terms. So he simply watched quietly, and then, was the thing not gradually twisting this way and that?
Something was different from before.
It was not asking to be released the way it did when he used the Space-Crossing Palm.
This unfamiliar neighbor was pointing somewhere, over and over.
'......North?'
At that thought, which had come from nowhere, the lightning astonishingly quivered all the harder. As though to say he was correct.
'And what about the north?'
His puzzlement was leading into one question after another when it happened.
RUUUMBLE—
All at once heaven and earth shook.
The floor of the clearing and the murky fog encircling the dwelling both began to tremble finely.
Jeong I-shin's head turned toward Gongheon of its own accord. One look at his face and Jeong I-shin knew at once that this was an emergency.
That was how bad Gongheon's expression was.
"It is the Demonic Wind!!! Child, come here as well!"
The instant Gongheon shouted and dropped down in the center of the clearing, WHOOSH! Wind lashed in from every direction.
Soon the brief cloud of dust settled, and he saw that the old men had already seated themselves in a ring around Gongheon.
"Damn it! Not even a month has passed, and already?"
"The cycle is growing shorter."
"Whoaa! It's coming, it's coming! Ah, Sparkles! You come too!"
Namgung Baek flapped his one remaining arm.
Jeong I-shin scrambled over and took a place between Gongheon and Namgung Baek.
He wanted to ask what was happening, but the old men's faces were so grave that he only worked his mouth soundlessly.
Then Yeo Hwi looked at Jeong I-shin and spoke.
"In origin, this Bottomless Abyss is a pit lying at the harshest and deepest point of the Enshi Grand Canyon, at the western end of Hubei Province."
"Ah! Yes!"
"There are several reasons it is called the Bottomless Abyss, but the greatest is the pillar of demonic qi that surges up once every couple of months."
"A pillar...... of demonic qi?"
"Yes. I would like to explain further, but...... there is no time."
With the brief remark that he would understand once he saw it for himself, the four of them straightened their postures and closed their eyes.
At the same moment qi rose from their shoulders like heat haze, and the air around them sank heavily.
THUD!
'Hup!'
Jeong I-shin's eyes went round. It was neither painful nor uncomfortable, but he could feel plainly that the density of the air had risen enormously.
The energy rising from the four old men's shoulders wove together in an instant, then slowly began to rotate.
WHIRRR—
The qi swelled steadily in size as it wrapped around the clearing and the huts.
Jeong I-shin watched, dumbstruck, and in a moment the rotating current of qi had covered the dwelling entirely.
At that instant.
CRAAAAASH!!!
A pitch-black storm swept over the area without so much as a warning.
ROOOOAR—!!!
The fog that had previously encircled the dwelling had been murky, but never black. The storm that had just struck was different.
It whirled with a texture so black it seemed on the verge of turning sticky.
"What in the world......"
Everything had been new since he opened his eyes in this place, but this was of another order entirely.
The viciously black wind wound around the membrane of qi encircling the dwelling, lashed it, hammered it, and finally surged upward.
It was a whirlwind of enormous scale.
CRAAASH—
The black wind, blowing in from he knew not where, hammered the membrane around the dwelling without pause.
And the more it did, the more two forces became distinct.
A force that wavered like a candle set before the wind, and a force that seethed as though it could not stand to hold still a moment longer.
They came from Gongheon's qi center and Jeong I-shin's, respectively.
"Guuurgh......!"
KRRRUMBLE—!
The former finally vomited black blood, and the latter let out a long cry the likes of which he had never heard until now.
"Monk Gongheon!"
Jeong I-shin ignored his own qi center, which had begun to rage, and looked Gongheon over.
For all the menace of his muscles, Gongheon kept vomiting blood.
The front of his yellow kasaya was stained dark red in an instant.
"Wh-what do I do?!"
There was no answer to Jeong I-shin's shout. All four of the old men had screwed their faces up, but none of them opened his mouth.
'No, they can't speak.'
Perhaps they must not open their mouths, the way he had not been allowed to while taking in the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture; or perhaps they had no room to spare for speech.
Either way, it was plain that this was no ordinary situation.
He could even dimly guess the reason it had come to this.
'Don't tell me......'
The four old men were pooling their strength to resist so as not to be swept away by the storm of demonic qi.
It did not look like something they were going through for the first or second time. Which meant they had weathered it easily until now.
In that case, the reason Gongheon was vomiting blood now had to be some new variable.
'It's because of me!'
The reason Gongheon's vitality had waned so badly was obvious. Only a week ago his frame had been twice what it was now.
It was because he had passed the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture on to Jeong I-shin. This had happened before he could recover.
CRACK—!
A chilling sound came from the sky above the clearing.
He saw a hairline crack form in the membrane of qi rotating in time with the storm's flow.
"......Oh no."
Yet even in the middle of it, Jeong I-shin's mind was still. It remained so even as his heartbeat climbed higher and higher.
GONG—
The temple bell ringing over and over held his mind firmly in its grip.
It was a clear mirror and still water imposed from outside him, but the effect was the same.
Jeong I-shin reached an answer in an instant.
"It's because of you...... so you help too."
He said it a little shamelessly.
He faced the thing he had been working to ignore.
He withdrew the true qi of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture that had been wrapped around his qi center.
He unbound the lightning that had been raising hell inside.
KRAKOOOM!
A long cry burst out as though it had been waiting for this.
The lightning stirred through his whole body once, then rushed for his grip.
CRACKLE—!
Jeong I-shin's right arm was wrapped in pure white lightning qi in an instant.
"Whoa, shit."
He let out a sound of amazement without meaning to.
He had touched no proper martial art apart from the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture, but he could feel far too easily that the pure white lightning qi wrapped around his hand was no ordinary thing.
"Phew."
Jeong I-shin let out a short breath and set his right hand at his waist.
It was not a stance he had learned on his own. It was a motion Gongheon had carved into his body.
His body moved by itself.
Along with the thought that this had to be the ultimate form of rote education.
"Hup!"
He drove his hand out.
'It should help at least a little.'
His thoughts went exactly that far.
CRAAACK—
A pure white shaft of light shot into the sky.
BOOOOM—!!!
A hole was torn through the pillar of demonic qi that had been sweeping the entire floor of the Bottomless Abyss and surging skyward.
ROOOAR......
The storm that had been lashing them without mercy gradually lost its momentum.
Unlike its uproarious arrival, the storm of demonic qi scattered exceedingly quietly.
It had happened in a single strike. A heavy silence settled over the clearing.
Three and a half pairs of eyes flew over and fixed themselves on Jeong I-shin, who stood there with his mouth hanging open.