KABOOOOM—!
It was a sound one might well have called artillery fire.
Jeong I-shin blinked and looked at the place where he had swung his sword.
The wall dozens of meters across that had blocked every side. One face of it had vanished cleanly.
Easily tens of thousands of spiderlings had evaporated.
"......Whoa, I thought a bomb had gone off."
White smoke was rising from the wooden sword. Even that looked like the aftermath of gunpowder.
Just then, the remaining wall heaved.
SKKKKSH!
Beginning with the Human-Faced Spider taking a step back, the wall started to withdraw.
He was rubbing his forearms at that skin-crawling sight when a shout burst out from a distance.
"What do you think you are doing?!"
Tang Mu-jeong was running toward him in utter consternation.
Jeong I-shin smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head.
"Haha, it wasn't that impressive. Have I become a martial artist without noticing? I think I got a realization from what you said, Elder Tang. Why was I tiptoeing around when I'm the landlord!"
Jeong I-shin looked at Tang Mu-jeong with shining eyes.
Did you see the cannon shot come out of my sword?
I just don't do it, but if I set my mind to it!
"Y-you idiot boy!!"
Jeong I-shin's elated heart, which had been spreading its wings of imagination, plunged to the ground.
Tang Mu-jeong snatched his wrist and growled.
"Who was it?"
"Sorry?"
"From whom did you learn to use true qi in such a manner?"
"Uh...... no one."
"Yes, I imagine so. There could not be another in this world who uses true qi so stupidly."
"......"
Tang Mu-jeong let out a sigh and spread his palm wide.
As he opened his mouth, he folded one of his five fingers.
"Listen well. The inner arts held in your qi center are not a bowl of rice soup."
"......Rice soup?"
"I mean that you do not scrape them out down to the bottom of the bowl."
"Ah."
His face crumpling a little further, Tang Mu-jeong folded another finger.
"The qi center is not merely a place where inner arts accumulate; it is where your essence dwells...... hah, never mind. Thanks to the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture your innate true qi was not damaged. And the lightning in your heart seems to have moved as well."
"Ooh......"
"You need only bear this in mind. That you will never again expend all of the true qi in your qi center."
"Yes! But what do the fingers mean?"
He had just folded two more fingers, leaving only one.
Tang Mu-jeong clicked his tongue and folded the last remaining little finger.
"It means it is time for you to go and learn firsthand what happens when your qi center is emptied."
"What does that me—"
The world went dark.
***
A ceiling that was familiar by now greeted Jeong I-shin.
"......Heavy."
On the bed he had made himself, Jeong I-shin could only blink.
His body was as heavy as lead.
An extreme drained feeling he had not once experienced since becoming something like a martial artist!
Naturally, what Tang Mu-jeong had said just before he passed out came back to him.
'Did I burn through all the true qi in my qi center? With that one strike?'
The lightning and the true qi of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture.
It had been a sword drawn the moment he realized that everything he had quietly pushed away was wholly his own.
It might be nothing to anyone else, but for Jeong I-shin it was, literally, a realization from another dimension!
But the emotion that had welled up like that had ended up creating a memory he would rather bury.
His face went hot in an instant.
He could not bear remembering how smug he had been inside over having used qi as he willed.
'A man who cannot unfold a single sword technique properly.'
He wanted to scrub his face with dry hands, but his body would not budge, so he only shut his eyes tight.
To forget his shame, Jeong I-shin turned his contemplation on his body.
Sure enough, two or so drops of true qi had gathered again in his qi center.
The lightning circling his heart was in relatively better shape.
Both still had the same presence, but with a landlord's heart he felt a little sorry toward them.
HUMMM!
He was about to end his contemplation at the lightning's tremor, which might have been comfort or might have been reproach.
Then the true qi of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture popped out of his qi center.
The thing shot up in an instant, made a couple of circuits around Jeong I-shin's ears, and returned to the qi center.
Just as he was wondering what on earth that had been about.
The sounds around him gradually began to grow louder.
Among them was one sound that came through most clearly of all, and it was the sound of someone approaching Jeong I-shin's hut.
'That voice is......'
"Oh, come on! Explain it properly, would you? You said his eye was fine up until then?"
"......I have told you more than ten times now. That is enough."
It was Tang Mu-jeong and Namgung Baek, who spent half of every year bickering with each other.
Jeong I-shin was inwardly relieved at that ordinary exchange.
Tang Mu-jeong did not have that madness-tinged, precarious voice from the northern forest.
"Really the last time! Just one more time, the very last! I'll hear it this once and then back off. The truth is, revising the sword forms isn't going the way I want. But when I heard our Sparkles swung a sword like that, inspiration just came bubbling up!"
"......Hah. Fine. This is the last."
Tang Mu-jeong poured out the words like a man drained of every last drop.
"It was as though I were seeing that sword you have sung about your whole life. And he swung it with nothing but a blank look on his face. Yes — strength, weight, hegemony, softness, speed, bluntness, illusion...... it was none of them."
"Huuuh...... I can't believe it."
"You throw a fit even when I tell you. In any case, that is how it looked to me. It was clumsy, but it seemed a single sword that encompassed every sword. That is all."
"Mm! Thank you! If your inner demons get dangerous, tell me. If you can't shake them off and you fall, I'll cut you down myself!"
"Get lost."
Soon the footsteps approaching the hut became one set.
Jeong I-shin found it hard to calm his pounding heart.
'Heh.'
Something in his chest itched and the corners of his mouth twitched for no reason.
At Tang Mu-jeong's unexpected praise he had not even heard the rest.
Really now, if strength had returned to his body he would have slapped his own cheek to get a grip!
CREAK—
The door opened and Tang Mu-jeong came in.
"Ah, Elder Tang...... uh, huh?"
Jeong I-shin, who raised himself to greet him, was startled twice.
Once that his body moved now.
And once again that Tang Mu-jeong had both eyes covered with cloth.
SLAP!
"What do you think you are doing? Are you boasting that you recover quickly?"
Tang Mu-jeong clicked his tongue at the sight of Jeong I-shin abruptly slapping his own cheek, then dragged a chair over and sat down across from him.
The whole sequence of movements was so natural that he did not look like a man with covered eyes.
Jeong I-shin asked carefully.
"Elder Tang, what happened to your eyes......?"
They had certainly been as usual right up until he lost consciousness.
Which meant the right eye had been fine.
So did that mean it had happened after he collapsed?
The Human-Faced Spider had seemed to withdraw, but this was the Bottomless Abyss, where nothing would be strange.
Could it be that while guarding him as he lay unconscious......
"It has nothing whatsoever to do with you, so do not entertain pointless thoughts."
"Gah."
"Tsk. Your heart is making a terrible racket. How can you leak your presence so easily?"
He was told his heart was pounding so hard that his thoughts were plain to read.
To that Jeong I-shin answered without a care.
"Why would I hide something like that from you old sirs?"
"......"
As though he had heard an answer he had not expected in the slightest, Tang Mu-jeong parted his lips several times and then simply pressed them shut.
When Tang Mu-jeong fell silent, Jeong I-shin's fussing grew steadily louder.
"How on earth did it happen? D-don't tell me you can't see at all?"
Left as he was, he looked ready to start shouting outright.
Tang Mu-jeong let out a short sigh and shook his head.
"......It is fine for now. Do not make a fuss."
"For now? Then that means you could lose your sight completely, doesn't it? Forget this, we need to right now—"
"Stop talking nonsense and sit down. It happens from time to time."
"No, there are things that can happen from time to time and things that can't. Your eyes aren't some basement light bulb that comes on when it feels like it and switches off when it gets bored."
"......?"
While Tang Mu-jeong sat bewildered, Jeong I-shin sprang up and walked to the door.
He had to tell the other old men at once and find a solution.
The moment he took hold of the door handle, a thought struck him.
'Wait, is there any chance the other old men didn't know?'
He had even walked over here with Namgung Baek.
When his thinking got that far, he heard a snort of laughter behind him.
"If you understand, come and sit. You can move about thanks to the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture, but the essence that was badly shaken will not have fully returned yet. Ah, you did not understand, did you? It simply means to rest for a while."
Sitting down across from Tang Mu-jeong, Jeong I-shin asked carefully.
"You are Elder Tang, aren't you?"
"What?"
"You're speaking far too kindly."
"......"
Even with both eyes covered by cloth, Tang Mu-jeong looked straight at Jeong I-shin.
He seemed to be clenching his back teeth, so Jeong I-shin hastily changed the subject.
"I'm sorry for collapsing with no plan at all. I'm alive thanks to you, Elder Tang."
"......Hah. I know you have only just stepped into the martial, but with anyone else that could truly have been dangerous. You had best take this as a lesson and be mindful in handling true qi."
"Yes, thank you for the advice."
Then, after a brief silence, Tang Mu-jeong opened his mouth.
It was a truly grave voice, one Jeong I-shin was hearing for the first time.
"Do you remember what I said about talking once we were back?"
"Yes."
"......Then. There is something I am curious about regarding you."
He was startled again, as much as he had been by the grave voice.
Until now everything Tang Mu-jeong had said to him had been nothing but scolding.
And now something he was curious about?
Tang Mu-jeong asked.
"Is there nothing you are curious about?"
"Sorry? You're curious about whether I'm curious about......"
"Hsss. Stop talking nonsense. I mean, is there nothing you are curious about concerning the four of us, concerning our past? You have not once asked us anything. What is the reason?"
Jeong I-shin let out an inward sigh of relief.
He had been worried about what he would do if asked about his hometown.
He could lie, but for some reason he did not want to do that with these old men.
'Compared to that, this is nothing.'
Tang Mu-jeong's question was far too easy to answer.
At first he simply had not been curious.
The world itself had been more unfamiliar to him than the four old men.
The old men had certainly seemed to have stories, but they did not seem likely to be greater stories than his own, having been dropped into murim out of nowhere.
And after his mind settled through honing the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture.
"If it were something I needed to know, you would surely have told me, wouldn't you?"
Just as they had taught him how to survive in the Bottomless Abyss.
If it were necessary, they would tell him. That was his thinking.
Of course, beneath it lay an absolute trust in the four old men.
They were the men who had saved him when he was already dying, so there was no reason not to trust them.
"......"
When speaking of sincerity, there are times when a single plain sentence lands harder than tens of thousands of long-winded words.
For Tang Mu-jeong, this was one of those times.
'Preposterous boy.'
Whether it was a merit of the Sinew-Transforming Marrow-Cleansing Scripture or simply the way he was, a boy who nodded along to everything with a vacant face.
A boy who did what he was told, never idled, and went about everything faithfully.
And who, on top of that, knew how to properly respect his elders.
'Strange boy.'
Even now the sense of him watching for signs, worrying that this old man's eyes might have gone wrong, was vivid.
'Being struck down by the Human-Faced Spider turned out to be a good thing.'
The northern forest, the White Silk Web Forest, is a demonic realm that stirs the impure hearts of men.
Beyond its boundary was filled with demonic qi in which no human could live.
Ordinarily that power never leaked outward except on days when the Demonic Wind blew, but this time the Human-Faced Spider seemed to have pulled some trick.
Tang Mu-jeong knew his own inner demons. His left eye had lost its light because of them, so he could hardly not know.
Even so, he had not feared the Human-Faced Spider. A mere spirit beast could not shake the mind of a peerless master.
'And yet it was shaken.'
Put simply, it meant he was crumbling.
His mind, of course, and his body was no exception.
Nor was this a story about him alone.
Gongheon and Namgung Baek, who had already begun passing their studies to Jeong I-shin, were weakening rapidly as well.
And Tang Mu-jeong had come to understand the reason they did not stop.
'There will not be enough time.'
Tang Mu-jeong untied the cloth covering his right eye.
He felt the flinch from Jeong I-shin, who had been staring blankly at him.
Tang Mu-jeong spoke with deliberate flatness.
"Do not make a fuss."
"......Yes."
What color are my eyes now, I wonder.
The left eye, which had wholly lost its light, is faded to ash.
Then what of this eye, which is slowly recovering its light?
Jeong I-shin's shape gradually grew distinct.
'I lost an eye for failing to see people properly, and I regain an eye in order to see people properly.'
Inner demons were truly impossible to pin down.
Tang Mu-jeong spoke to the boy who was still watching him with a gaze mixed with worry.
"They were not the ones forging you."
"......Sorry?"
"It was you who has been holding those fools together."
At Tang Mu-jeong's grave voice, Jeong I-shin responded as he always did.
"Uh...... me?"