“…….”
The boy, blood dripping from his nose, looked up at Black Spider. He was clearly as startled as the other boys had been. He had simply been unable to flee quickly, having been left lying there alone.
Black Spider slowly approached the boy. The boy clenched his teeth and glared at the approaching spider.
It was already too late to run. With a resolute face he swallowed hard, and then squeezed his eyes shut. From his expression alone, he might have been steeling himself for death.
The situation recalled his old encounter with Gaeddong-i in the forest. This boy did look younger than Gaeddong-i had been then, though. Nine years old? Ten?
Well, in any case.
Black Spider examined the boy's condition for a moment, then loosed the Wood Spiders from his side. The wooden spider dolls approached the boy with a clacking sound.
CLICK!
The back of Wood Spider Unit 5 opened, and clean cloth and pounded medicinal herbs and the like popped out from inside.
The other Wood Spiders each seized these in their mouths or forelegs and began wiping away the boy's nosebleed and the rest.
Startled, perhaps, by the unexpected touch, the boy opened his eyes in confusion. Then he saw the spider dolls milling about in front of him, disinfecting and wiping his wounds.
A moment later, seeming finally to understand the situation, he let out a small sigh of relief. But then his eyes sharpened and he staggered to his feet.
His attitude said he had no need of such help.
Having risen on his own, the boy stared at Black Spider for a while, then spat out the blood pooled in his mouth. With it, a broken tooth popped out.
“...Thank you.”
The boy bowed his head to Black Spider. Then he turned at once and staggered away.
Black Spider did not bother to follow him, of course. Through his divine awareness he already knew that the boy was not badly hurt — nothing so serious as a broken arm or leg.
In the first place.
The reason Black Spider had come here was not necessarily to save that boy either.
He had not been entirely without the intention to intervene should things worsen, but fundamentally he had approached simply to observe the boys' fight from closer up.
The trouble was simply that the disciples, who had heard rumors of Black Spider but never seen him in the flesh, had been startled by the sight of him and bolted.
This was to some degree Black Spider's own mistake. The problem was that, living in Yulu County and in the Grand Heaven Sect's annex, he had grown far too used to humans not fearing him.
Unless he carried Gok Hon on his back, Black Spider was still nothing but an enormous, terrifying monster.
In any case.
Black Spider went back over the boys' scuffle he had glimpsed. He traced the movements of their swinging arms and legs, the dynamics of them.
It had been a one-sided beating of one boy by many, of course, yet strictly speaking it was undeniably an extension of sparring.
Indeed, the ostensible justification of the children doing the beating was just that.
Sparring.
A kind of combat carried out with no intention of killing and devouring the opponent, purely to measure each other's skill and improve one's technique.
Such a concept was hard to find among the beasts of the Eight Peaks Forest; from all Black Spider had observed so far, only humans adopted this training method to systematically forge body and mind.
In any case, this training method called sparring could be found very commonly within the Grand Heaven Sect.
Disciples sparred against others of similar generational standing and skill, analyzed the results, and picked apart the factors behind victory and defeat.
By grasping their weaknesses and strengths in this way and striving to improve, the whole of the Grand Heaven Sect seemed, in effect, to grow through sparring.
Since the very concept of sparring involved striking each other, of course, a certain amount of bodily damage inevitably followed.
The Grand Heaven Sect had steadily practiced sparring even while accepting such losses, so it was easy enough to guess how high humans' trust in this training's efficiency was.
In any case.
If there was a problem, it was that sparring was a training method Black Spider could not possibly attempt alone.
To begin with, sparring was not something one could do by oneself.
And above all, sparring in martial arts required a ‘human body.’
Black Spider was a spider.
But he was also a Puppet Master.
So from the next day on, Black Spider kept a close watch on the Grade 4 disciples training and sparring on Training Peak — and above all on that small boy who had been beaten alone the other day.
Meanwhile, he also began gathering materials for making puppets through Do Hyeon-gu.
“Hm, a request from my one and only nephew-disciple. That much is hardly difficult.”
Do Hyeon-gu did hold the office of an elder, after all. He also received a monthly posting stipend from the main house, so he had no small amount of money on hand.
Rare materials like thunderstruck jujube wood were another matter, but he was in a position to obtain ordinary puppet materials with ease.
Before long, all sorts of materials were delivered to the room where Black Spider stayed. Most were basic stock such as wood, metal, and leather, and some were materials for finishing.
A broad workbench for the work and assorted tools of various sizes and specifications were delivered as well, as though he meant to build a workshop outright.
SCRAPE, SCRAPE.
The wooden spider dolls bustled about, crafting something. Whenever great strength was needed, Black Spider's main body moved to handle the material.
Several weeks later, Black Spider was able to complete a small humanoid puppet.
The puppet was made basically of blocks of wood, and since he had not concentrated on rendering its appearance, its overall impression was as empty as a scarecrow's.
Its drive joints were left plainly exposed rather than hidden, so that even from a distance one could tell at a glance that it was a doll; peculiarly, a yellow sash was wrapped about its waist.
The color of that sash followed the belts the Grand Heaven Sect's disciples wore according to grade, and since this puppet wore a yellow sash, he had named it the Grade 4 Disciple Puppet.
For something that had even been given a name, however, the puppet itself had no particularly notable function.
It was, quite literally, a marionette, built to follow the basic form of the human body to an extreme so that it could freely perform any movement a human could.
For that very reason, where reproducing human movement was concerned, its function was superior even to Gok Hon's.
In truth, since Gok Hon had been born a deformed combat puppet, it occasionally showed ranges of motion different from an ordinary living body's.
The Grade 4 Disciple Puppet, however, performed exactly and only those movements a human could perform, and that was what Black Spider had wanted.
SNAP!
The Grade 4 Disciple Puppet moved at Black Spider's manipulation. Watching its movements quietly, certain scenes came faintly to mind.
At times, the sight of the boy cornered and beaten alone.
At other times, the sight of that same boy barely striking back in the midst of it and doggedly holding out.
Various other utterly clumsy movements were realized through the puppet as well; these were Black Spider imitating the motions he had grasped while observing that small boy.
***
And time flowed on. Spring passed, summer arrived, and autumn came. Several months had already gone by since Black Spider came to stay at the Grand Heaven Sect.
The Grade 4 disciples who had entered in spring had grown fairly presentable by now.
With early winter soon to come, the promotion examination for Grade 3 disciple was near at hand, so a certain resolve had settled into the eyes of the Grade 4 disciples who had seemed like mere children not long before.
Among those Grade 4 disciples, the one whose growth stood out most clearly was none other than a certain small boy.
Unusually short and small of build for his age. Yet his eyes alone were fiercely alive, so that looking at him was like looking at a small but savage weasel pup.
That disciple's name was Yeon Pung, and he was the boy who had been beaten by his fellow Grade 4 disciples in a corner of the sect that day.
He was still small, but on the strength of his distinctly venomous temperament he had doggedly held out alone even when his peers dropped away exhausted from training, so the instructors had come to keep a fair eye on him.
And so, though Yeon Pung had once been ostracized by his peers for his prickly nature and even subjected to a group beating under the pretext of sparring, none of the Grade 4 disciples dared treat him carelessly now.
And now Yeon Pung's standing had been made plain: before this small boy, an unusually large boy knelt clutching his nose.
“Yeon Pung, victory!”
The large boy's name was Seok Cheol, the one who had played the ringleader among the disciples who had beaten Yeon Pung as a group; over the past several months he had shot up in size until he stood a full head taller than his peers, and his skill was genuinely excellent, so that he was counted the best of his year.
Today, however, Yeon Pung had won an overwhelming victory over that Seok Cheol in a sparring match, which in effect proved that Yeon Pung was now the finest of the Grade 4 disciples.
Even so, Yeon Pung's expression was hardly bright. Though he had repaid an old grudge with satisfaction, he wore a sullen, dissatisfied look.
The reason was simple. Yeon Pung did not want to stop at this. He wanted to reach higher.
In fact, the Grade 3 promotion examination was judged not on a curve but against an absolute standard. However overwhelmingly one beat one's peers, promotion was impossible without meeting the instructors' absolute criteria.
Moreover, to enter as a disciple of the Sword Sect, treated as the mainstay even within the Grand Heaven Sect, one had to prove overwhelming talent.
After all, the name First Sword Sect of Gangryu could not be allowed to become an empty title.
And the boy Yeon Pung's goal was precisely to enter that Sword Sect, and for that, merely knocking a few peers about was not enough to give him confidence.
To advance to the next step he needed a better opponent. The problem was that among his peers there was no longer anyone better than Yeon Pung.
He wanted to move forward, but there was no stepping stone to set his foot on.
Grumbling inwardly, he was on his way back to the dormitory.
There was certainly no sign of anyone on the quiet path, yet somehow Yeon Pung suddenly seemed to feel a gaze upon him.
When he turned to look, a spider stood squarely in the corner of the alley over there.
There was nothing to be startled by now. Yeon Pung had lived at the Grand Heaven Sect for several months, and he had heard enough rumors about the great spider called Black Spider that lived in the annex.
He had also actually faced this spider once before.
Back when he had been beaten to the ground by Seok Cheol's gang around here, that spider had disinfected his wounds.
There had been no further contact with the spider since, yet oddly, Yeon Pung now had the feeling that the spider had been waiting for him all this while.
Then Yeon Pung noticed a marionette made of wooden blocks standing blankly beside the spider.
The marionette's appearance was so crude that it looked thoroughly slapdash, and yet, looking closely, its body was worn here and there, as though it had been handled for quite some time.
In any case, the puppet dipped its head this way once in a polite bow, then abruptly took up a stance.
A familiar stance. It was the basic form of the elementary fist arts that all Grade 4 disciples learned upon first entering the sect.
Yet it was oddly clumsy. Like a young disciple who had only just entered and learned the forms.
In any case, watching it, Yeon Pung realized. He understood the business for which the spider had been waiting for him.
“...Haha, unbelievable.”
A laugh came out of him on its own. Of all things, he'd never imagined a day would come when a spider challenged him to spar.
And him, no less, whom none of his peers could match any longer.
The boy Yeon Pung took a stance as well. Now that spring had passed, summer had gone by, and autumn had come, the boy's stance was no longer clumsy as before.
In short, the boy held the advantage in skill over that puppet.
In combat, it was most advantageous to start from a favorable high point and carry it through to the end.
Without hesitating, he decided to strike first and take the opening point.
“Haap!”
So Yeon Pung lunged and the puppet responded. It flailed clumsily in defense, but Yeon Pung's fist drove through the gap and struck an exposed weak point.
CRACK—!
Hard! Of course it was! He had struck hard wood with a bare fist, so naturally it hurt more than striking a human body.
Strangely, though, the puppet seemed to feel pain as well. It writhed and stepped back as though the blow had truly landed, and then its stance shifted a little.
By the look of it, it had grown somewhat more accustomed to the fist arts.
At that, Yeon Pung sneered. He had a rough sense of it now. The spider before him was manipulating the puppet and adjusting the difficulty for him.
It had started at an easy level, and after taking one solid hit it had begun raising the difficulty accordingly.
That was fine. That much he could still handle well enough. Yeon Pung pressed his offense, and as he'd expected, he scored again.
Then the puppet's momentum shifted once more. Its stance sank low.
Familiar. Far too familiar a feeling. Yeon Pung suddenly felt as though he were looking into a mirror.
Keeping their distance and making light movements to hold each other in check, the motions of the two bodies matched exactly.
Only then did Yeon Pung realize.
Every stage the puppet had shown until now had been himself.
First, around spring. Himself, clumsy in his earliest days at the sect.
Then, around summer. Himself, whose stance had gradually begun to take proper shape.
And now that autumn had come, the puppet was imitating exactly the momentum of himself, first among his peers.
In short, the puppet was reproducing his growth up to this point. It had captured the growth of a single human being in its movements.
How can such a thing be possible? Yeon Pung had never in his life seen such a feat.
It was bewildering. And yet, somehow, it was also enjoyable.
After all, he'd been feeling stifled precisely because there was no one left among his peers to step up over — and now he could face himself.
If he beat that puppet now.
Then wouldn't that mean he had taken one more step forward than he was now?
At that, Yeon Pung's expression turned serious. Into eyes half irritation and half enjoyment, an inborn ferocity mixed itself in.
And facing him, Black Spider gathered his divine awareness as well.
Over the past several months, Black Spider had used the Grade 4 Disciple Puppet to reconstruct Yeon Pung's growth exactly. Through it he had traced the very trajectory along which Yeon Pung's martial arts grew.
Now it was time to enter the stage beyond that. For Yeon Pung and for Black Spider alike.
And so the two young martial artists clashed. There was no victor and no loser. Their fists crossed and slammed hard into each other's faces, and both bodies lost their strength and collapsed at once.
The puppet was unharmed, of course. Black Spider had merely perceived the impact transmitted to its body through his divine awareness, calculated it, and staged the damage a human body would take along with the reaction that followed.
He examined the fallen Yeon Pung's face. Blood was again streaming from both nostrils.
CLICK!
Wood Spider Unit 5, hanging at Black Spider's side, drew a clean cloth from its back plate.
Such days went on, repeating themselves.
Autumn passed and winter came.