It was something from so long ago the memory was hazy.
One night, having woken in the middle of the night, Jin Cheong-un heard a strange sound coming from the training chamber.
'A thief.'
He grabbed a wooden practice sword, crept over, and attacked without hesitation.
—Hand over everything you've got if you don't want to die! You thief!
An instant later, Jin Cheong-un was stunned.
Not only had the wooden sword been blocked, but the thief turned out to be his master.
The master had been standing alone in the still, pitch-dark training chamber.
And there, he saw a black pit.
In the floor of the training chamber—which should have been perfectly flat—there was a passage leading underground, one that nobody knew about.
—Cheong-un.
The master had always carried a peculiar air about him, but that night his demeanor was unlike anything the boy had seen before.
—When the time comes, you will understand. Until then, keep this a secret.
Looking back now, the master had seemed far too calm. Almost as if he had been caught on purpose.
Jin Cheong-un had been too young then to do anything but answer.
—For free?
After reaching a dramatic compromise over a few pieces of candy, Jin Cheong-un kept his word and said nothing.
In truth, he had simply lost interest and forgotten. He figured that since the master was a man, he was probably hiding erotic paintings from the children, and left it at that.
'But thinking back, it was strange.'
Why would a rural martial arts school need a space like that?
To hide something, obviously.
So he needed to find out. The problem was......
"Hrrgh! Huff!"
Face beet-red, Jin Cheong-un threw the shovel down.
"Secret, my foot. At this rate, I'll dig my own grave."
FLOP!
Jin Cheong-un dropped where he stood and looked around.
Neat, square stones lay scattered everywhere. Nearly a handspan thick, they were none other than the flagstones that had lined the training chamber floor.
'A man that fastidious wouldn't have done this in the middle of the night by hand.'
There had to be some kind of mechanism.
But without knowing its location, the only option was to tear up every last stone.
"Hah!"
Jin Cheong-un rose to his feet, eyes blazing.
"Let's see who gives out first."
CRACK!
He jammed the shovel under a flagstone and levered it up.
THOOM!
Grabbed it with his hands and flipped it over.
CRACK!
Again.
And then, in a single moment.
SHIFT!
"......!"
Jin Cheong-un hurled the shovel aside and dropped low.
This one was different.
Far too light compared to the others. On closer inspection, it was fractionally thinner, its edges filed smooth.
As though made to be lifted easily.
'Here.'
Jin Cheong-un swallowed hard and hooked his fingers into the gap.
SLIIIIIDE.
The stone lifted with absurd ease.
And beneath it, a door revealed itself.
CREEEEAK!
Jin Cheong-un threw the door open—and froze.
"I expected a cellar at most."
What lay beyond the entrance was not a storeroom but a long passage leading somewhere.
***
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Footsteps echoed through the narrow, seemingly endless passage.
Jin Cheong-un gauged the direction and narrowed his eyes.
'At this angle, it must be heading toward the mountain behind the school.'
When building secret vaults in the martial world, it was common practice to extend the passage deep beneath a mountain or far underground.
Martial artists with keen senses might detect a hollow space beneath the surface, after all.
'But that's something only wealthy great sects and prestigious houses do.'
No matter how he looked at it, this was not the kind of construction a destitute rural school should possess.
And that was not even the end of it.
Jin Cheong-un glanced upward.
'Night pearls, no less.'
Not the cheap kind that only glowed after soaking up sunlight, but the genuine article—pearls that shone on their own.
At this point, all he could do was marvel.
'Master, were you secretly wealthy?'
He had seemed to live so frugally, yet had he been a hidden millionaire all along?
Then again, for a simple villager, the man had always carried a curiously refined bearing.
"Wait."
Jin Cheong-un paused.
"Then could this place be—?"
Where the master had stashed his secret fortune?
STOMP STOMP STOMP.
Jin Cheong-un's pace noticeably quickened.
After walking for some time, he stopped dead.
'A door.'
A door of ink-black hue.
Its surface was covered in intricate carvings—closer to a work of art than a door.
TAP! TAP!
He knocked, and instead of metal, a dense, stone-like thud resonated.
Jin Cheong-un clicked his tongue in amazement.
'Dark iron.'
Pound for pound, it would cost as much as gold—and someone had made a door out of it.
This was the place. Something was behind this door.
Heart swelling, he seized the handle and pulled with all his might.
CLANK!
"......?"
CLANK! CLANK!
"What's wrong with this thing?"
CLANK! CREEEAK!
"HNNNGH!"
He braced one foot against the wall, face flushing crimson as he heaved. It did not budge.
"What kind of door......"
Jin Cheong-un released the handle, expression hollow.
If it had even twitched, he could chalk it up to lacking strength. But it had not moved a hair.
Was there some mechanism preventing it from opening?
How was he supposed to open this? Don't tell me it cannot be......
'No.'
After preaching mental fortitude to his students, he could not very well give up.
He would claim the master's legacy, no matter what.
If brute force was not enough, then he simply needed more force.
'I'll draw it out.'
The Sea of Qi acupoint. The lower qi center.
The unknown true qi coiled there like a slumbering serpent.
"Hooooo."
Jin Cheong-un breathed in deeply.
Carefully. More carefully still.
As if blowing a gentle breath onto a fragile ember, he stimulated the true qi with exacting precision.
HISSSS!
Before long, pale wisps of heat haze began to rise from Jin Cheong-un's body.
They looked like plumes of smoke billowing from a roaring fire.
Inner fire. The reason the terminology of inner arts cultivation borrowed the language of controlling flames was precisely this: handling inner arts was like handling fire within the body.
But.
Fire can sometimes become an uncontrollable inferno.
FWOOSH!
"Gkh."
A sudden, strangling pain seized his chest, and Jin Cheong-un bit down hard on his lip.
The inner power had leapt of its own accord—not into his arms, but into his lungs.
This was precisely why channeling true qi without knowing the method was dangerous. A fire slipped from its master's control could blaze and leap wherever it pleased.
In the martial world, this state had a name.
Qi deviation.
'That'll do.'
But this had been his gambit all along.
'Even if fire catches, as long as I can put it out in time, what's the problem?'
Anyone watching would call it insane. He was essentially setting his body on fire and riding the edge until the last possible second.
But it did not matter.
He had spent every waking moment outside of eating and sleeping on martial arts. Surely he could control the energy within his own body.
'Of course it's dangerous. And because it's dangerous......'
He would do it in one burst.
The instant Jin Cheong-un seized the handle with crushing force.
WHOOSH!
The inner power was sucked into the dark iron door without the slightest resistance.
CLICK!
Then came the sudden sound of something engaging.
Jin Cheong-un pulled the handle, dazed.
CREEEAK!
It opened.
Effortlessly, at that.
"......"
The inner power he had strained to summon fizzled away.
Jin Cheong-un stared at the door, crestfallen.
'Was that a qi-reactive mechanism?'
Had it responded to his true qi?
To determine who was permitted to open it?
Resentment surged. Would it have killed someone to write instructions somewhere? Here he was, risking qi deviation to force his inner power out......!
"No, no. Right. It opened. That's all that matters."
Jin Cheong-un let out a deep sigh and extended a foot through the doorway.
Or rather, started to—then stepped back and stared at the door.
Why.
Why did the pattern carved into the great door feel so strangely familiar, as though he had seen it before?
***
Age reveals what youth cannot see.
What had the master needed most to run a school while taking in orphans and beggars?
Love, of course.
A student grows into an adult nurtured by a master's love.
'And love springs from a heavy purse!'
Feeding children, housing them, teaching them—it all cost money. How many students had even paid tuition? How had the man managed to run a school at all?
Therefore, this hidden chamber must surely be piled high with the master's boundless, ocean-deep love—sparkling, glittering love!
No, it had to be!
And yet, why!
Why on earth!
"......There's nothing here."
The space was not particularly large.
In what amounted to a small stone cellar, there were only a few pieces of furniture, including several bookshelves.
But then, something beside one of the bookshelves caught his eye.
'What's this?'
A chest! And an enormous one at that!
Jin Cheong-un dashed to it in a single bound.
'I believed in you, Master.'
What could be inside? Gleaming gold? Shining silver? Lustrous porcelain? Antique jade carvings?
Jin Cheong-un opened the lid with the utmost care.
GLINT!
A glint? Silver?
Excitement seized him, and he threw the lid wide open.
"......!"
Jin Cheong-un's eyes trembled.
The trembling spread to his neck, his shoulders, his hands.
"What is this?"
Silver, indeed.
The problem was that the enormous chest contained a grand total of two coins.
'A solid dark iron door with night pearls, all for two measly coins? It's not even as if he spent the rest—why would you put just two silver coins in a chest this size?'
Hold on.
Spent the rest?
'Come to think of it......'
In that instant, old memories flashed through Jin Cheong-un's mind.
Students who caused incidents as regularly as meals.
The master, bowing his head in apology everywhere he went.
And the fat coin purse clutched in the master's hand......
CREEEAK. THUD!
Jin Cheong-un quietly closed the chest.
Then he nodded with perfect composure.
"What is wealth, really? How could a student covet his master's fortune?"
Money was not important.
He had simply wanted to confirm everything connected to his master now that he was carrying on the Blue Cloud Martial Arts School and rebuilding it. That was all. Truly.
"......Then again, there's no sense letting perfectly good silver go to waste."
He reopened the chest, slipped the two coins into his coat, then straightened up.
Only then did his surroundings properly come into focus.
There was no money, but there were other things.
'Are these martial arts manuals?'
One of the five bookshelves was packed with bound volumes.
Jin Cheong-un plucked one out at random and flipped through the pages.
"......"
He paused.
These were not martial arts manuals.
They were...... diaries.
The second day of the third month, Year of the Metal Monkey.
Un and Jin quarreled again today. Was I too harsh? Should I have been gentler?
I cannot help but think I am a poor master when my students will not heed me.
The children have finally finished the Thousand Character Classic. They will need to complete the Four Books and Five Classics to become upstanding adults.
The weather was fine today, so I took the children for an outing to the mountain behind the school......
After reading through the diaries at length, Jin Cheong-un carefully pulled out the very last volume.
I hope that when the children grow and walk their separate paths, they will think of this place as home.
I pray, from the depths of my heart, that they will someday return and be family to one another.
"......"
Jin Cheong-un gazed quietly at the bookshelf.
A bitter smile escaped him before he knew it.
'So he really did raise us with love.'
The diaries numbered not one or two, but what looked to be several dozen volumes. Every character across every page was steeped in worry, concern, and love for his students.
'......Not quite the haul I expected.'
Jin Cheong-un nodded serenely.
'But this kind of legacy is not bad at all.'
With an oddly lightened heart, he turned to leave.
That was when something grazed the edge of his vision.
'What's that?'
On a bookshelf somewhat smaller than the rest.
Unlike the diaries, there sat a volume wrapped in silk. Jin Cheong-un carefully unwound the cloth.
[The Eight Desolations]
A single volume, its cover bearing three weighty characters.
He flipped the page in a rush. Several more characters greeted him.
[Volume One]
[Sovereign Heaven Art]
Sovereign.
Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, Earth.
The first of the Eight Trigrams—the character signifying heaven.
That character implied that this was not a complete martial art unto itself, but that seven more volumes existed within the same system.
Jin Cheong-un's pupils shook.
'What the master taught me was not the Eight Desolations, but a martial art called the Blue Cloud Art.'
Yet the mnemonic verses were the same.
No—they were more complete.
As though only a portion had been taught on purpose.
"......"
Jin Cheong-un slowly surveyed the hidden chamber.
As a secret guard, he had encountered the martial arts of countless sects and come to know all manner of hidden histories and secrets.
Yet the name "Eight Desolations" was one that even he was seeing for the very first time.
***
By the time Jin Cheong-un emerged from the hidden chamber and finished restoring the training chamber floor, the sky was already growing dark.
'I went through every last diary, just in case.'
There had been nothing about the manual's origins.
But he soon noticed something peculiar.
The bookshelves were far too numerous for the number of diaries. Would anyone really need that kind of space just to store journals?
Jin Cheong-un held up the manual.
'The Eight Desolations.'
The true qi that had settled into his body was most likely this.
But why had the master never said a word?
Come to think of it, he had known remarkably little about the master. They had all been too young to wonder about someone else's past.
So......
'Right, no amount of fretting will tell me anything now.'
Jin Cheong-un stretched wide, shaking off his reverie.
"Let's eat."
He had skipped lunch and worked straight through, and his stomach was about to eat his spine.
Right now, the mysterious manual mattered far less than the dinner table Jeong So-so would have prepared.
He had given her some money, so tonight there would be meat, right?
'If it was that delicious with just vegetables, then with meat......!'
He arrived at Jeong Manor in a single bound.
But just as he was about to kick the gate open, Jin Cheong-un slowed his steps.
He had spotted an unfamiliar man loitering in front of the gate.
"Ah, there you are."
The man, dressed in a scholar's attire, offered a clasped hands greeting.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Baek Seo-gun, chief steward of the Black Tiger Gang."
"The Black Tiger Gang."
"Yes, the Black Tiger Gang."
Baek Seo-gun smiled amiably.
"I have been waiting for you. Miss Jeong insisted her master needed to be present and would not let me inside. Might we step in and have a brief conversation?"
The remarkably courteous tone earned a nod from Jin Cheong-un.
"Come in."
Jin Cheong-un ushered Baek Seo-gun in first, then followed him through the gate of Jeong Manor.
And then.
CLICK!
He bolted the gate shut.
Baek Seo-gun flinched.
"......Why the gate?"
"Pay it no mind. Just locking up."
Jin Cheong-un stared holes through Baek Seo-gun as he asked.
"What is it you wish to discuss?"