Chapter 670: The New Semester Has Begun (4)

Yu Seonyeop sat alone after Qing left and thought it over in silence.

He’d heard the Great-Mother senior say, “Haa... my disciple, I only recited the mnemonic of the Day-Sun Fine-Heart Sutra and the child came back the next day with attainment. I am troubled as a teacher for having been of so little help.”

She said it gravely, but stripped down it meant, “Look how brilliant my disciple is!”—so Yu Seonyeop had simply taken it as a master bragging about her disciple.

He hadn’t known that “the next day” meant, without exaggeration, literally the next day. The aptitude must be extraordinary.

Abbot Muak, too, had heaped on praise—saying the next world-number-one would not come from Shaolin.

Even so, Yu didn’t place too much weight on that. Wasn’t there a tint of the old pride in the very phrasing—that up to now, it had always been Shaolin?

Yes, she reached the Flower Realm at a young age; it’s astonishing and marvelous, but the state that touches the profound is another matter.

Even the Dagger-Sword Lord lingered in the Flower Realm for over thirty years, and among seniors half a tier above, except for the world’s ten great experts, they’re either in the Flower Realm or already dead of old age or other causes.

People tend not to believe things that stray from common sense unless they see them with their own eyes and experience them themselves.

But Yu Seonyeop had now witnessed it!

So this is a true genius!

How does one flip through a secret manual—just a rustle, a rough skim—and perceive that the art itself is unfinished?

Yu Seonyeop had gained a solid instructor.

Qing’s vision went dark.

In truth, it wasn’t a situation that called for such despair.

Even if you’re a martial instructor, how are you supposed to transmit the true intent from a manual someone just tossed at you?

The Righteous-Proper Martial Academy’s term wasn’t long to begin with; the idea was to grasp it roughly and then pass on the forms.

Hence instructor, not master.

An instructor—a public official whose job is teaching.

But Qing didn’t know. As always.

She’d never worked as an instructor, and she’d never learned from one either.

Back home when she did her stint under the military registry, “instructor” was properly read “labor overseer.”

As for “academy,” the only concept Qing had was “school”—for adults, surely; so, a university?

Of course, a university is not an institution for adults only.

But where Qing comes from, it was like that: if you didn’t go you were treated as odd; it felt less like advanced/practical study in one discipline and more like the graduation itself placing you at the starting line—so, a school you attend when you become an adult.

And then there are those virtues teachers are supposed to have.

Something for the students! For the students!

Not by the students, perhaps, but in any case!

“Mmm. Like this?”

Qing roughly set the first motion of the sword formula.

Up to now, when Martial-Arts Idea jammed things in by force, Qing executed the most perfect form of any motion—but trying to just learn it like this was... murky.

The hardest part was not knowing whether this present motion—extending the blade like this—was right or wrong.

Because the wording in the manual wasn’t precise.

It would be nice if it specified exactly how to grip, where to place the center of mass, what angle in degrees to maintain, at what miles-per-hour to swing, and the exact positions of feet and hands.

But the lines in the manual went like this.

“The First Path: hew the rift that links heaven-vault and earth-deep by the road that descends from the Big Dipper to the Central Plains.

Its course is like a falling star, and yet it leaves a lingering resonance like the builders who leave roads behind; this is the First Path, the finest among the Five Paths.”

...What on earth is that supposed to mean?

What kind of martial art is road-paving? Hey, Mister Road-Bureau? Stop the nonsense and lay the road?

Even so, Qing’s sword flow carried some power and looked plausibly like a proper motion.

If you trace the channels the inner-energy passes through, you can roughly picture which parts you’re training to use; focus on that and follow along, and you get something resembling a stance.

There were even drawings, though pitifully few.

Mm. If there were a video it’d be perfect to mimic. As it is, the drawings—one each for front, mid, and back—do help, but still.

Oro Sword Formula.

Downward cut; diagonal cuts left and right; horizontal cut; thrust—five sword routes taken one by one to make the Five Paths, the Oro.

And the technique links those five routes into incessant chain-attacks.

Truth is, Qing is already a Flower Realm expert.

Put a sword in her hand and even if she just swings roughly, once she wraps it in steel-qi she has the destructive power to slice anything clean.

On top of that, her own sword arts are drilled into the body to perfection, so at a glance it looks like a splendid sword art.

But then it isn’t the Oro Sword Formula, is it?

It’s just the form of the Oro Sword Formula—if that—while the substance is a Moon Maiden Sword move or the Hundred-and-Eight Forms, only with the wrapping changed.

This... mm, this won’t do.

I should understand it properly and teach the base form. I shouldn’t teach motions mutated to my way.

And if I do it my way, hardly anyone will be able to follow in the first place.

Qing’s swordwork also rests on that human-transcending body; if lesser hands copy it carelessly, they’ll strain muscles and pop joints.

Something... something.

Rather than the manual, I wish I could get solid instruction from someone who really knows this art.

That’s the nature of external training.

The part that truly needs a master’s hands-on guidance is external work—the way you extend limbs and wield a weapon.

As for internal heart methods, the difficulty isn’t that high even if you learn from a book.

You circulate it, and if you think, Ah, this is bad, my insides ache, I feel off—then you stop at once, tweak the paths the inner-energy flows, and even if you sometimes get it wrong and spit a little blood and have to soothe a churned gut and waste some time, you eventually find the right way.

Of course, that’s for proper orthodox arts.

If it’s demonic work, it doesn’t end with just falling ill; you might end up racing through hills like a beast from botched training and even eating people.

Should I ask the Dagger-Sword Lord elder?

But he’s extremely busy.

And his eyes—how to put it—already relieved, or expectant? Either way, it feels awkward to say I don’t really know...

Mm. Anyone out there?

Someone I could consult about training...

“Oho! Sword-Friend! You were practicing sword drills? As expected of you! Well then, shall we have a bout!”

Namgung Sinjae hurled his travel bag aside and yanked free a Namgung-House special Black-Ironwood Wooden Sword.

Arrive, not even unpack, not even take a room, and propose a spar straightaway—truly behavior worthy of Sword Fang’s clan.

Qing’s eyes flashed.

Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao appears; speak of a tiger and the tiger arrives; play a flute and a snake comes out—

the man who shows up naturally, right on cue!

“What, you’re a squad leader too, Sword-Friend?”

“Of course! The sword-talents say they’ll form a sword squad with the resolve to learn the sword—how could I refuse the severe and upright justice of the sword by joining them!”

Somehow, he seemed a little worse off than the last time she saw him.

That was because Sword King Namgung Daero—the one who kept Namgung Sinjae’s Sword-Fang symptoms from worsening—was away.

Naturally, Qing didn’t know.

How would she know another family’s circumstances?

More to the point—what timing!

“Sword-Friend, by any chance do you know the Oro Sword Formula?”

Namgung Sinjae bared pure white teeth in a mischievous grin.

“Of course. Who wouldn’t? A martial art forged roughly two hundred years ago by the Absolute Sword Society.”

“Absolute... Sword Society?”

Qing tilted her head.

A very cool epithet, but she didn’t remember hearing it. What, the number-two of his era?

No, even number-twos are usually famous.

Even number-twos are usually famous!

Maybe number-three?

Seeing that face on Qing, Namgung Sinjae added an explanation.

“Ah—the Absolute Sword Society: a swordsmen’s circle that existed within the Alliance. A gathering of renowned swordsmen whose names shook the martial world. But mm—their initiation rite was said to be rather harsh. Later, the one who would become the Heavenly Martial Emperor joined.”

Namgung Sinjae shook his head and continued.

“And that was the end of them. A pity.”

It was an Alliance legend: they hazed the newcomer, got beaten like dogs, and even took down the society’s signboard.

“At the time, the eminent sword elders set out to make a sword art that encompassed the five subtleties entire. Fascinating, no? I once applied to read it, but with so many sword schools entangled the permission never came through—”

All the senior swordsmen who’d joined—as Namgung Sinjae put it, the sword elders—ended up as joint co-authors, and there was no way to get every last approval; he’d given up.

Qing’s face lit up.

If he’d come as a squad leader, that meant he was an academy trainee; in the end he’d learn it anyway—so doing a little advance study couldn’t be a problem.

“Oh? Sword-Friend—you’re interested?”

“Of course! Do I even have to say it!? You too—wait... Sword-Friend, don’t tell me—”

“Yes, I have the manual right here!”

“Oho! That’s our Sword-Friend!”

“Then—Sword-Friends’ bond!”

Qing lifted her sword in a flash; Namgung Sinjae, delighted, crossed his wooden blade against it.

The so-called “Crossing Blades,” a... something only for Sword-Friends.

“Actually, I’m here as an instructor.”

“What!? You?”

“What’s this? What do you mean by that very surprised reaction?”

“Hrmm. You are a proper expert of Harmony, so you’re fully qualified, but...”

“What’s this? Why are you trailing off?”

Qing narrowed her eyes; Namgung Sinjae coughed and changed the subject.

“No, I mean—can’t you tell how sincere I am? Look at this.”

“And why? That’s a flute.”

“Exactly. That’s how serious I am.”

“...?”

Namgung Sinjae could not fathom where a flute intersected with sincerity.

But to Qing’s roots, this was grave and weighty.

Everyday traditional clothes! And the recorder!

The very emblem of the most fearsome teacher!

Would Qing have bothered to pack those heavy rubber school slippers that ate dust and rolled around for nothing?

A teacher with a recorder is the symbol of strictness; it was Qing’s very resolve as a Junior Division instructor at the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy not to show a soft side.

Of course, that terrifying Junior Division instructor business evaporated before it even began.

“In any case—they told me to teach the Oro Sword Formula to the trainees this time, but it’s really not easy to learn from the manual alone.”

“Ah, so that’s settled? Well, it’s a sword study too good to leave moldering in the archives.”

“Mm. They said it’s unfinished.”

“That could be. Saying it uses five subtleties also means there’s no single subtlety at the center. Come—let’s not just talk. Let’s look! The manual—let us look at the manual!”

Namgung Sinjae cried out as if he couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Let me see the manual,” his eyes gleamed, a mad light seeming to shine out.

From the travel bag rolling on the ground’s point of view, one might wish: Could we maybe unpack first?

Mm. It is reassuring having a Sword-Friend.

At least when it came to swordsmanship, Namgung Sinjae was a brain.

When it came to swordsmanship—when it came to swordsmanship alone—there wasn’t a swordsman in the Central Plains, mm, not a swordsman—

there was no peerless expert like this Sword-Friend?

There was no lesser novice like this Sword-Friend?

Put differently: outside the swordsmanship department, it was hard to speak of his intelligence.

So what of it.

When the body is strong, the head has it easy.