Chapter 510: Karma Drips Along the Thread of Life and Death (12)

Qing’s tongue rolling out Wang Mang was downright wicked.

Because Qing had drunk her way through the classics with the best scholars in the Central Plains—Hanlin Academy types who studied while they poured—she wasn’t talking out of ignorance. She knew exactly what she was saying, which made it vicious.

Wang Mang wasn’t “red” so much as a plain tyrant.

Whatever his intent, he tried to run the country however he pleased, wrecked it, a rebellion blew up, and he died for it.

Then Jong Jeongpil answered.

“Hmm. Do you not know Mohism? Under a universal equal-sharing system, everyone is everyone’s teacher and student. Hm, yes—now that I think on it, this is precisely Impartial Care, Impartial Care applied to the martial.”

“Oh. So you do know Impartial Care....”

Qing was a little surprised.

She hadn’t expected him to know Mohism.

I toss out Wang Mang and you counter with Mohism—why?

Mohism were the ancient, primitive anarchists.

Anarchism skews half-red by nature, so calling them ancient proto-reds isn’t entirely wrong.

Impartial Care means a person who is infinitely equal toward all.

Because you must love everyone in the world with perfect fairness, you deny betrothal and blood ties. Marriage is banned.

You don’t distinguish between your child and another’s; every child is your child. Communal child-rearing.

If you own property you’ll grow jealous, and you’ll favor those who give more.

Private property is banned.

Only, unlike the reds, it isn’t “state ownership.” It’s everyone’s. If you need it, you just grab it—no “yours” or “mine.”

“Mm, not quite.”

In truth, every creed is a pseudo of every other.

“Pseudo” means “similar yet not the same.” If you try to explain one with one, you run out of words fast.

And this isn’t the place.

People train martial arts to get stronger than others; what sense does it make to share your insights and hoist each other up with a one-two-heave?

I’ve seen the far future; that one didn’t work. It didn’t merely fail—it collapsed into a joke.

Stop chasing what won’t happen. Wake up.

You can’t say that out loud.

It would only sour the mood.

And they wouldn’t listen anyway.

People only understand after they try and fail and think, “Ah, this doesn’t work.”

So what then?

Change the line!

“I respect your intent, great hero—but the method is wrong.”

“Wrong? Not merely different?”

“Yes. Wrong.”

Qing’s slanting posture straightened, spine rising like a bamboo stalk cut true; a shimmer lit her eyes.

Seo Mun Surin’s “A Lady Takes the Great Road,” second move.

Sit with dignity anywhere.

For reference: first move is Walk with Dignity, second is Sit with Dignity.

Then what’s the third?

Qing once tried to guess, and got a flick on the forehead for daring to “lie down in public like a shameless hussy.”

Looking back, that flick felt mild; she’d only just entered the Divine Lady’s Gate then, and there wasn’t much affection yet.

Come to think of it, the master was strict at first:

Walk like a man? Flick. Sit like a man? Flick. Talk like a man? Flick, flick.

Huh. Did she give up on me eventually?

Mm. I miss my master.

The third move isn’t “lie down,” it’s Speak.

Speak with dignity anywhere.

A true voice comes from a true posture, she said, and that’s where power lives.

“First: if the whole world is to train, study, and advance together, the method cannot be wicked. Even if, far off, the martial world becomes one school, those unified by a wicked demonic art will become a blight—no, a great calamity—upon the world.”

“Why so?”

“Because to those outside the martial world, you will be no more than a band of evil thieves—officials and commoners alike. Take the Heart-Plucking Art. If we’re all ‘brothers-in-arms,’ do you mean we should spare our own hearts and rip out the hearts of commoners or clerks instead?”

“Indeed. I take your meaning. But pure cultivation is clutched tight by the greedy—by those who already have, yes, the entrenched. By what means are we to persuade them?”

“By no means at all. Every divine art has a weakness; once it becomes widely known, it endangers the very one who learned it. Never mind the visions the schools guard—think of the individual, and the family bound as brothers and sisters under one master though not of one womb. Even beasts look after their own blood. How will you wring human unfeelingness into feeling with words?”

“Then what should we do? They have monopolized the divine arts for ages, and as you say, they’ve built a fortress for themselves. If so, is it not impossible to oppose them and acquire those arts?”

“That—”

“Ah! I think I know without hearing it. It is the very specter you named. If the dispossessed unite, then no matter who owns what divine art, it’s useless; once they burn the fat pigs’ fortress and topple every wall in the way—only then will the true world of the martial be born, will it not?”

All at once, the air turned revolutionary.

Oh no. He’s a problem uncle.

Good thing he came along. If he’d just left, I’d be seeing his name on my mission window later.

Crisis number whatever: the Red World.

Or “Revolt of the Red Guard Warriors.”

Or, since we’re talking communal training—“Communal-Ownership Doctrine,” “Paratroopers’ Revolt,” what, are we doing some kind of special-forces kung fu?

“No. A blade is the handiest tool for taking lives and chaining endless grudges. With that method you will never build a unified martial world; blood and grievance will return, and an eternal scrum of factions splitting and merging will devour everything.”

“Then? What am I to do?”

“Was any divine art divine from the start? Every divine art began small. The old schools refined them over generations into the essence of a single lineage. So—why not create that small beginning yourself, great man?”

“I am the beginning.”

Jong Jeongpil fell into thought.

Then, as if settling it, he shook his head.

“Even if I begin now, those who are centuries ahead—when will I ever catch them? And the entrenched will not wait; we’ll only grow apart at the same pace.”

Qing was speechless.

You know that—and you say this?

What crime did the people centuries ahead commit that they should be hauled down by the latecomer tugging their hair?

Granted, if they did commit crimes, tug away.

But did the Nine Schools and One Sect commit crimes like that?

When the officials and the Evil Path alike were stuffing their bellies, the one group that kept even the bare minimum of order was the Martial Alliance.

Qing hid her thoughts and smiled with ominous meaning.

“No. The entrenched will meet their appointed defeat sooner or later.”

“Why—why so?”

“In the great schools, when they teach divine arts, they select the most precious of their disciples and pass it on in secret, lest it leak. As the years pass, the number of true holders shrinks; the art falls out of practice and vanishes.”

Bit by bit it has become a place for fewer and fewer prodigies—and will keep becoming so.

And what of the world’s young talents, howling with thirst for higher study?

The more the owners of divine arts dwindle, the more the training itself falls out of practice and disappears, the more people will suffer a fiercer drought and hunger.

“So in the not-distant future, everyone will rise from their seats with fists clenched. A true world martial—equal roads under heaven—will unfold. Will you, great hero, prepare for that future when it comes? As a pathbreaker laying a ledge road across cliffs, you might even live to see the world martial take shape.”

It was plagiarism from red logic.

Swap “great schools and prodigies” for “capitalists and workers” and you’ve got their world revolution.

And at the same time, it was the final persuasion.

It’s going to happen anyway, and even a lifetime of yours might barely inch it.

So don’t waste strength on what won’t budge. Let it go.

Will you be the Foolish Old Man, or the Wise Elder?

In legend, the Foolish Old Man tried to move a mountain. Knowing he wouldn’t finish in his generation, he willed the great work down the line. Foolish—but grand in intent.

The Wise Elder who mocked him—never mind that he opened with “idiot” when a kind word would do, so he wasn’t much of a person—

still had the wisdom to give up what won’t happen and enjoy life.

At that, Jong Jeongpil sprang to his feet.

He brought palm and fist together and bowed deeply.

It was the Central Plains’ fist-and-palm salute.

“I doubted you for a moment, but you are, indeed, a giant with a vast design within. So I, Jong Jeongpil, humbly beg your counsel.”

Oh hell, I’m going to lose it.

What part of my half-baked babble turned this uncle so red?

Ah. So that’s why they call it a specter.

It bewitches a normal man until he’s crimson and dripping—of course the whole world fears it.

“One: gather comrades who share your aim. If you offer your martial first, those comrades will do the same.”

Two: if you share your martial learning and exchange insights, each person’s incomplete art will grow a little more complete.

And once you make it known, those moved by it will gather.

Three: the scattered arts of the world will collect, be supplemented, and merge—until at last a study worthy of being called a divine art emerges.

“From there it will race across the world like wildfire on a dry mountain. Only then will we stand level with the entrenched—equal atop the rampart we all built together.”

“O—oh! Indeed! Are you a divine being!? At last I, Jong Jeongpil, have found a great enterprise worthy of the rest of my life! At last I know how to fill this empty life. Not to achieve the goal myself, but to live as the preparation for its future attainment!”

In a blink, his blunt speech flipped to honorifics.

He was so moved he sprayed spit, raving with admiration.

Except—

Qing hadn’t actually told him anything.

Because if you add Qing’s one-two-three and her conclusion, it all meant this:

Then just found a school.

Gather comrades who share the aim?

One of the Five Vagabonds, the Solitary Blade, says he’ll teach you his arts—people will mob you, aim or no aim.

Every drifter who hears will stampede your way.

Everyone completes the martial together?

Schools without a secret “ultimate” have always done that. That’s how it’s been.

Which is to say, it’s not that different from the countless schools already in the Central Plains.

The only quirks would be loose entry limits and {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} a membership fee paid in your own martial—after which you can enjoy the school’s martial without limit.

Ancient houses complete a divine art and then cherry-pick true talent to raise peerless masters; your twist is to not hide it and open the lot.

But when does a divine art appear?

In Jong Jeongpil’s lifetime, all he’s really doing is founding one school.

He wanders alone and that’s why they call him Solitary Blade?

Fine. From now on change it to Comrade Blade, People’s Blade, Our Blade, Redblade, Not-Solitary-Anymore Blade, Founded-a-School Blade—take your pick.

And there’s no way he’ll stand by and watch the “together-made” arts get misused.

So—congratulations—a righteous-school sect is born.

Clueless, the Solitary Blade simply burned with the zeitgeist he’d suddenly “awakened” to.

Qing had to clamp down, jaw trembling, to keep her lips from curling into something truly wicked.