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"Well met again, Yang Family's Young Miss!" Hyun-Woo bowed after the scholar's introduction. "Please forgive my rudeness, for not giving you my name this whole time. This one is Yi Hyun-Woo, of Goryeo." As she left the inn to speak to the caravan's master, Hyun-Woo turned to Jin and bowed to him as well. "I would be glad to work with you, Sir Jin! If it were not for this perchance meeting, I feel I would not have found this opportunity. Let us meet again on the morrow!"
With things soon settled for the evening, the young man found himself alone in one of the inn's cheaper rooms as the moon began to rise in a darkening blue sky. His sword lay in the corner as he sat on the floor--for the room had little more than a bedding pallet and a cushion seat, lacking even a table or chairs. There was neither fireplace nor even a candle. But the lack of light did not bother Hyun-Woo; he had spent most of his life in the dark, after all. And he did not need to see for this particular task--or at least, not for this part of it.
To My Descendants - The Inheritance of the Azure Cloud, The Art of the Flashing Sword.
One book held yellowed pages of dry parchment, bound between two thin slats of wood with rusted iron rings. The other book, held open by Hyun-Woo's palm, instead held slips of bamboo sealed together to create flexible tablets. And in Hyun-Woo's other hand, a very small knife with a dyed deer-horn handle scraped and chiseled at the bamboo like a scholar's ink brush.
For as long as he could remember, an ache had persisted in his bones. It was not the same kind of debilitating, crippling pain that he experienced when he was still sickly and frail--rather, like a muscle that needed to be stretched or a joint that needed to be popped, the aches merely tugged at his awareness until he did something about them. He had to walk a certain way--keeping his steps light and balanced, his movements smooth. He had to use his cane as more than just a tool to haphazardly knock into things in his path--it had to be an extension of his arm. And he had never once questioned why he had these aches, until the night his legs had insisted he get up from the bed and walk towards a distant mountain.
The Azure Flash Sword soothed the aches like nothing else, and in a way it soothed Hyun-Woo's heart as well. But still, they arose from time to time, and he found himself happy for them. Now, he knew neither his fingers, nor his thoughts, could rest this night until he had completed this page. From ink, to carving--from the sight he had been blessed with, to the senses he knew he could rely on even if the heavens ever saw fit to blind him again. For that fear, too, still ate away at him in the moments where he found himself all alone, and far from home. But as his fingers traced each character, feeling the same words, the fear would ease.
From ink, to carving. From his mind to his body. From knowledge to memory, and from memory to instinct. His mouth moved silently as he allowed the teachings to flow through him, the same way he allowed Qi to traverse his Meridians.
Breathing and Walking is a key concept in Martial Arts of all kinds. Though it affects physical fitness, it is also a reflection of one's connection to the world. One's breath, in a sense, comes from the Heavens, and one's feet stand firmly upon the Earth. When one can Breathe and Walk properly, their entire being forms a Circuit to conduct the natural energy of Qi...
Scratch, scratch, scratch. Yi Hyun-Woo blew dust away from the channels in the soft wood, and traced it with his finger to be sure the characters were accurate. His eyes remained closed as his breathing stilled...
Step Movements, or Reduced Earth, are general techniques attained by Breathing and Walking. To cut down the distance between opponents in an instant is more than mere quickness. To disappear, and reappear in a blink as the Xian do requires that you are aware of the opponent...
And now Hyun-Woo did open his eyes, in order to turn the yellowed pages of the original Sage's tome. He knew exactly the page needed even without seeing it, for he had read the book more times than he could count. But his eyes sought the faded, painted image spread across two pages. The technique's title used similar characters to what he had just inscribed: Earthward Step.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. Qi entered his lungs with the breath, and parted like a hair passing over a freshly honed blade. The "positive" mass filled the Governing Vessel; the "negative" cloud flowed down the Conception Vessel. Up through the top of his skull, and down the back of his spine--down through the Middle Dantian into the Lower Dantian, and the sea of Qi within it waiting to be boiled, purified, like water in a furnace. The two Qi continued to circulate, like two stars orbiting the center of his being.
A deep thrum, like a tuning fork below the range of the human ear, hummed within his bones...
The Next Morning
Hyun-woo and Jin found themselves turned away at the gate. It was honestly to be expected. They were both, in all honesty, no-names who found themselves in possession of a placard denoting the job. They didn't exactly go through the recruitment process that everyone else did. Perhaps they could have gotten away with it if they had a strong reputation or connections, but neither did. As such, the guards outside of the escort agency seemed to try to shoo them away. It wasn't until a familiar voice called to them that things turned more favorably...
"Please forgive my rudeness, Young Miss." Hyun-Woo said, unusually prickly given what they'd seen of him so far. Holding his sword by the mouth of its scabbard, he folded his left palm over the handle and hilt in the same fashion a martial artist would salute with the palm and fist clasp. He bowed deep at the waist, before springing back up to look the caravan master in the eyes. "But I cannot allow myself such a boon! It is only right for this good sir to put the quality of his hires foremost--to achieve my goal non-meritoriously doesn't sit well in the stomach!" He bowed again, extending his arms in further salute. "Please allow me to demonstrate my skill, if it will assuage your worries about my qualifications!"
The caravan master looked from the white haired boy to the little scholar, then to the other white haired boy who already had two shoulder-loads of rice. With a roll of his eyes, he made a "tch!" sound and gestured to one of the other third-rate warriors accompanying the convoy.
"Make it quick." he told the man, before crossing his arms and glaring at Hyun-Woo. "If it turns out you stuck your hand too far down the gift horse's gullet, too bad."
"Thank you for the opportunity, sir!" Hyun-Woo thrust his sword into his belt for a moment, and happily picked up two more sacks of rice to deposit on the ever helpful Jin's shoulders. "I shall just be a moment, Sir Jin!"
"Confident runt." grumbled the man who'd been picked for the competition. He too unloaded the rice bags onto Jin--whose legs might be starting to shake at this point.
As the two warriors squared off, Hyun-Woo now holding his weapon loosely near his left hip, some of the others who had already loaded their cargo gathered to watch.
"Kid's got a sword. Even if he ain't much, is it fair?" muttered one.
"Dong Yu's an apostate monk." shrugged another. "Raised in Shaolin--I hear his Iron Body is pretty good for a third-rate, cause he used to do the performances. You know, the one where they bend a spear with their necks? A non-cultivator probably couldn't even draw blood."
"Thank you for teaching me, Senior!" Hyun-Woo called across to his opponent. "I am Yi Hyun-Woo of Goryeo--and my style is the Azure Cloud Flash Sword! I am ready."
"Dong Yu, Shaolinquan--although I decided I liked meat and girls more than Buddha." The well muscled young man, whose head was still bald, certainly resembled a disciple of the legendary monastary. He popped his neck from side to side and took his stance. "Never heard of Azure Cloud Flash Sword. But I'm ready when you are, runt."
The caravan master leaned against one of the carts and spat to one side. He chopped a lazy hand through the air.
"Begin!"
Neither moved. One second passed. Then two. Hyun-Woo's hand still hovered over the hilt of his blade--he wasn't going to draw yet? One might think he had lost his nerve...if it wasn't for the look in his eyes.
Three seconds passed. Dong Yu's back foot edged slightly forward. Hyun-Woo didn't react.
I can feel the wind on my skin, blowing from his direction. The sun felt warm on Hyun-Woo's back, but it wasn't high enough to be in Dong Yu's eyes or offer any other advantage. Whickering horses stomped their feet--a porter slammed a box down on a cart. The vibrations traveled through the hard packed dirt under their feet. One man in the crowd took a breath--Hyun-Woo didn't startle when the shouting and jeering began.
Thirty seconds had passed. Dong Yu's nostrils flared.
"If you're not--"
Hyun-Woo's breathing stopped. In one-tenth of one second, it happened. He had felt the wind blowing against him die. The vibrations through the earth had passed over his feet. The men in the crowd had stopped talking.
Positive and negative Qi came together at the bottom of the sole of his foot. His body went completely limp, and he fell towards the ground having tripped over nothing. With no muscle holding him upright, every ounce of his strength went into the bottom of his foot and his hand fell naturally onto his blade. Like a wet towel drapes over a clothes rod, his fingers wrapped around the grip. His foot did not so much provide his own speed, so much as it redirected the speed of gravity itself. And when the grounding circuit broke away from the earth, the "spark" leaped.
In three-tenths of one second, Dong Yu had fallen prey to his own body's nature, a fitting irony for an apostate monk. He had blinked.
The Azure Cloud Sword flashed.
Yi Hyun-Woo's eyes were wide open as he stared into his opponent's from below. A single drop of blood welled up from a paper-thin line across the former Shaolin's adam's apple. The white haired boy's other foot still resonated with a stomp so heavy it made his knee shake. Over his shoulder, Dong Yu could see the spot where the swordsman's movement had begun--and the deep half-print carved into the dirt, by all the weight focused on only the forward motion.
One second had passed.
"Oh, thank goodness I was able to stop!" Hyun-Woo stepped back from the his sparring partner and flourished his sword to clean it. When Dong Yu looked down, he saw that the place Hyun-Woo stomped had a sliding trail behind it--the boy had killed his own momentum so as not to kill his opponent.
"...You dropped below my line of sight at the moment you stepped in." The apostate lifted one trembling hand to his neck, and wiped the red smear. The tiny cut was already clotting, and only stung because of his own sweat.
"Yes, sir. That is the Earthward Step technique of Azure Cloud Flash Sword." Hyun-Woo flipped the blade in his grip and once more saluted with his left palm clasped over its hilt. "Have I proven satisfactory?" Dong Yu turned his head--very carefully--towards the caravan master.
The man rolled his eyes, and jabbed a thumb back towards the rice cart. Dong Yu clasped his own fists, and bowed deeper to Yi Hyun-Woo.
"Thanks for training with me, Junior Brother. I won't forget Azure Cloud Flash Sword anytime soon!" He grinned as he straightened, and clapped the younger boy on the back hard enough Yi Hyun-Woo coughed. "Alright, get to work! We gotta go!" As he walked away, the murmurs began amongst the onlookers again, and Dong Yu heaved a shaky sigh while rubbing his neck again.
Hyun-Woo sheathed his sword, and breathed out slowly as he turned back towards Yang Mingmei and Jin. But with every step he took towards them, he shook a little more--and his smile grew a little wider. Then, cheeks trembling...he pumped both fists in the air.
"I did it! Sir Jin, Young Miss, did you see?! I won my first ever duel in the Jianghu!"
