Chapter 115: Steps of Mastery

If I took charge of martial arts at the Bright Fate Escort Agency, Baek Mu-ho took charge of teaching the general knowledge for running the escort agency. This was also content that Ju So-ran was required to acquire.

Perhaps because it was the first day, Baek Mu-ho did not teach much, as Ju So-ran joined the training ground about half a double-hour later. And upon hearing the training I ordered, her face turned pale.

“Today we are going to look primarily at stances, so there is no need to be too scared.”

“Y-yes!”

“Well, to put it another way, if your stance is a mess, it means it will never end.”

“Heee…”

Ju So-ran’s face stiffened like a plaster statue.

While conversing with Ju So-ran like that, I also checked on the training behind us.

“O-seong, Yuk-so. The angle of your arms is low. Breathe a bit slower. Widen your stride too!”

“Yes, sir!”

Perhaps because they still had strength left, their replying voices were energetic.

“…Wow! He must have eyes in the back of his head.”

“Indeed.”

I showed enough leeway to even engage in small talk.

“Since So-ran has newly joined, I will show a demonstration once more. Look carefully, from the breathing to the angle of the arms, and where the center of the body moves from and to.”

To those kids, I kindly showed the movements consisting of sixteen once more.

Ju So-ran and the five ducklings stared intently at my movements so as not to miss even a single breath.

I encouraged them to familiarize themselves with the movements before their concentration broke.

If a stance deviated significantly, I showed them the movements again to make them practice repeatedly.

Even though I did that, it took more than half a day to acquire all the movements.

“Blegh! Ugh! Cough!”

“Phew! Gasp! Pant!”

When I declared the end of today’s training, they collapsed on the ground, unable to control their trembling legs.

“Do not let down your guard. If you relax like that, everything you learned today will fly away.”

“Hieek!”

Even before my words ended, those whose waists had grown slack jumped up like mudskippers.

“There is a limit to the body, but there is no limit to the spirit. The spirit must always be ahead of the body! Even when eating meals, even when sleeping, a part of your head must always be awake. It is a matter of course if you are a martial artist.”

It is a harsh thing to always keep a thread of your nerves sharp.

But if you are a martial artist, you must do it.

“Ah…”

At the harshness of the standard I demanded, their faces, which had been soaked in the sense of accomplishment of having done it, contorted.

“If you are going to give up, I recommend doing so before tonight passes.”

I drove in a wedge.

***

The expressions of those who were sweating profusely, including Ju So-ran, made me feel as if I were looking at Baek Mu-ho or Beom-gak who practiced martial arts while coming all the way to this Bright Fate Escort Agency.

Their eyes were bloodshot to the point of looking red.

Their expressions contorted fiercely.

“Anyone watching would think they are practicing demonic arts.”

[Then you should call Beom-gak. That fellow, he performed proper Horse Art ( – ).]

“…That is not funny, Master.”

Master Zhang Sanfeng made a silly joke, perhaps because there was nothing to see and he was bored.

Since it was basic training repeating simple movements, it could well be boring from the perspective of watching.

“Whew… Whew…”

Well, from the perspective of training to death, it would be a situation where blood was spilled and teeth were gritted.

[Since it’s like refitting bones anew, it must be painful.]

“I know it well.”

Change is accompanied by pain. If you reject that pain, you can only end up running in place in the end.

If such a person goes out into the martial world holding a sword, they won’t last long before their neck is flown off.

If you cannot overcome it, it is better to sit down instead.

“Yuk-so, your breathing is disrupted. Ten more times.”

Breathing is the driving force of movement. If breathing is disrupted, the center is ruined and the body shakes. To state the obvious, Yuk-so’s movement was a mess.

Training with messy movements is not training.

It is merely torture.

Clatter!

At the words to do it ten more times, Yuk-so dropped the wooden sword he was holding.

The added number was only ten times, but those words snapped the thread of concentration that was barely being maintained.

“Pant… Pant…”

As he sat down with bloodshot eyes, he looked as if he was crying.

No, he might have already been crying. His face was covered in sweat, so it was just not easily visible, but tears might have been mixed in that sweat.

Yuk-so asked with his head lowered.

“Do we… pant… really have to do this?”

Yuk-so was rejecting the change that made his body painful. It was partly because he was young and found it hard, but it was also because he was rejecting change in a corner of his heart, preventing him from adapting.

Since his body and will played separately, there was no way he could endure the harsh training.

To make him a proper martial artist, that disharmony must be resolved.

‘Or else I must make him give up.’

At any rate, in a situation like this, it was not something to blindly push forward.

In fact, in a situation where the basics are being established, it is better not to give any room to think of useless things.

If you know the reason, thoughts move; and if thoughts move, you cannot immerse yourself.

But in a situation like this, it is different.

You must make him understand.

“Everything has a skeleton. There must be an axis that serves as the center to keep it from shaking. Martial arts are the same.”

“Is… pant… what we are doing… pant… that kind of thing?”

“Yes, what you are doing right now is building the skeleton of your martial arts. You are learning how to move your body with precise stances.”

“In real combat, isn’t showing such a cookie-cutter movement rather a disadvantage?”

It seemed he wanted to argue by any means.

At Yuk-so’s words discussing real combat, I let out a chuckle.

“Then do you move with only bones?”

“That’s…”

“You build the basic skeleton, and then you put flesh on it. Until now, the martial arts of the Bright Fate Escort Agency lacked that proper basic, the skeleton.”

“…”

“In the end, if you don’t have a proper basic, you have to increasingly rely on improvisation. When the level is low, it won’t make much difference, but as time passes, the difference between someone who put flesh on a proper skeleton and someone who has no proper skeleton is bound to widen.”

Obey, Break, Transcend.

Martial arts can only reach the stage of breaking rules after passing through the stage of keeping what must be kept first. And only in the process of re-combining what was broken do they finally reach their own flow, leaving the rules.

“This is orthodox martial arts. It is painful and difficult, but it is the right path. Because it is painful and difficult, it is the right path.”

It was the root of the martial arts I wanted to convey.

Let’s return to the right path.

Although it pricked my conscience to speak when I had achieved my results at an absurd speed through my masters, even I had crossed the boundary of death several times. Therefore, they were words I could say.

Whether my words reached him sufficiently, Yuk-so, who was panting heavily, gradually began to steady his breath.

To steady his breath meant that he was beginning to control himself. It meant that he had cleared the disharmony that was inside him on his own.

“It means pain is not entirely wrong.”

“That is a decent way to put it.”

Yuk-so seemed to have a talent for speaking in a sophisticated way.

It might have been fine if he had held a brush instead of a sword.

But what was held in Yuk-so’s hand right now was not a brush.

“I’ll do it.”

With hands that were messy from blisters bursting several times, he gripped the wooden sword fallen on the ground.

“Since you said this is the right path.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. And… I also don’t want to be separated from my brothers.”

Perhaps thinking it was a childish thing to say, Yuk-so blushed.

[Fresh.]

[This is also not bad.]

My masters, who were watching with interest, also gave favorable reviews.

“You brat!”

“Look at our youngest, how cute.”

It was not only my masters, as the other duckling brothers clung to Yuk-so and ruffled his hair.

Ju So-ran and Myeong Il-seo also came close and patted his shoulders.

It was an action to take advantage of this opportunity and rest even a little.

“What did I say would happen if you relax your guard?”

“Hup!”

Since it would be troublesome to let them loose too much, I ended up saying a word. It was not yet time to relax comfortably.

Everyone slithered back to their places.

But their expressions looked much more at ease. Everyone had faces that looked as if they had laid down a heavy burden.

‘To them, this path must be the right path.’

Do they say that if you go alone, you go fast, but if you go together, you go far?

They had a tighter bond than I thought.

Perhaps the path they would walk would turn out to be longer than expected.

‘Putting that aside…’

While watching the warm affection of the Bright Fate Escort Agency, I felt a certain unpleasant sensation.

‘A gaze?’

It was a feeling as if someone was spying on me.

A gaze of someone with a certain intention?

‘There is nothing, though?’

I stared in the direction where the gaze was felt, but nothing was visible.

“Was it my imagination?”

However, Yi Hwa also frowned and stared in the direction I was glaring, just like me.

***

In a mountain where human trace was rare, located a full three hundred ri away from Huihua County, Jong In-geol’s messenger contorted his face.

“Sigh…”

In front of the messenger, Taoist Master Guak sat cross-legged.

With his eyes closed, he had a talisman stuck to his forehead, and something indistinguishable as a drawing or a character drawn on the talisman wriggled like an eyeball.

Whoosh!

“Ugh!”

For some reason, the talisman stuck to Taoist Master Guak’s forehead instantly burned into ashes.

Sensing that it was not a normal situation, the messenger cautiously scanned Taoist Master Guak’s complexion.

“A-are you alright?”

Taoist Master Guak snapped his eyes open with a heavily contorted face.

“You asked me to kill that bastard?”

“Yes?”

“The guy at the Bright Fate Escort Agency, no, that existence. You asked me to kill that, right? The young martial artist named Yeon Cheong-un, I mean.”

“Ah, yes. I did.”

“I see. That’s a relief. We can treat the request as non-existent.”

“…Yes?”

“What your master requested of me was to kill a young man. That would strictly refer to a human, right?”

“What on earth are you talking about…?”

The messenger could not understand what Taoist Master Guak was talking about.

“That thing is not human, you retarded piece of shit!”

His elegant figure was nowhere to be found, and harsh curses burst from Taoist Master Guak’s mouth.

“You bastard! How dare you drive me to my death? Are you trying to kill me with a borrowed knife?”

Furious, Taoist Master Guak’s eyes rolled back.

Sensing danger, the messenger tried to run away, but it was too late. The talisman Taoist Master Guak drew and threw from his sleeve stuck to the messenger’s face.

“Argh! Gasp! …Blegh!”

In an instant, insects poured endlessly from the messenger’s seven orifices.

With a shriek, the messenger, who was throwing up insects, stopped moving.

Having killed the messenger in an instant, Taoist Master Guak looked around restlessly with uneasy eyes.

“Damn! To think such an existence could exist? Does it make sense? Spirits and divine spirits prostrate? The Land Deity who ate the offerings I presented acts as if he doesn’t know?”

Moreover, he had even met eyes with him, as if knowing everything.

Taoist Master Guak understood that intention.

This was a warning.

It was like a tiger snorting at a yapping puppy. Since it was not even worth killing, he had let it pass.

He was lucky.

But there would not be a second opportunity.

“To avoid sudden calamity, it would be best to leave the secular world for about ten years.”

Taoist Master Guak packed his belongings.

In the middle of doing so, seeing the corpse of the messenger Jong In-geol sent, anger surged once again.

Because of Jong In-geol, he almost died. Although he killed the messenger to vent his anger, his rage did not subside.

“Right, you should suffer once too.”

Taoist Master Guak resolved to present a giant middle finger for Jong In-geol.