- Training — The Martial Arts Manual
Soun read what Yi Hui had given him in one breath.
It was something Yi Hui himself had written.
The handwriting was terse and straight—stripped of ornament—driving forward in hard, rapid strokes that felt almost emotional.
If it had been someone else’s script, it might have looked rash.
But seen as the writing of a frontier commander, it carried the right kind of grit—upright and unbending.
It was a strong hand, the kind that seemed to transmit force just by being watched.
Like a sword cutting down an enemy.
He read it from beginning to end in one rush—then read it again.
It was a blade method containing inner cultivation and breath.
Using breath to extend the blade, strike, and block—those instructions were carved into each character.
There was no title.
Even the fixed “path” of the blade was not clearly laid out in a way that made it easy to picture.
Soun, who had once learned a Confucian-style sword method, read it again while imagining the form of this nameless blade art.
When a movement did not make sense, he reached for what he knew and bridged it with the old method.
Lines like “Keep the back straight; when cutting level as if parting water, draw the breath and smooth the body; when reversing, sever the breath and snap to a single point—then the blade points toward the sky” were easy enough to understand as words.
But turning that into a concrete sequence of motion was not easy.
He read it again and again until his body began to memorize it.
That was the nature of secret manuals—nothing enters all at once.
Each rereading revealed something new.
And when you thought you had grasped it, you found how much you had missed.
The text explained movement together with breath, but its directions were written in images—water, sky, mountain ridges, willow branches—so the shapes did not form cleanly in the mind.
If he could see it performed even once, his understanding would leap forward.
But trying to build the form from characters alone, the shape refused to settle.
Even so, as he read, his breath was already following along without his noticing.
Late at night, when everyone had fallen asleep, the temporary camp held only the drowsy footsteps of sentries.
Soun folded the manual—already read dozens of times—tucked it into his clothing, and stepped out of the tent.
“Where are you going? Not sleeping?”
It was Park Cheongyun.
If Soun moved, Cheongyun always tried to stop him.
He must have been half-awake; he muttered weakly as Soun rose.
“Just sleep.”
“I’m going to practice. I can’t bear not to. I should have risen more quietly… I’m sorry if I woke you.”
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“Yusaengwon. Tomorrow there’ll be another fight. You should get at least some sleep.”
“Yes. Just a little practice.”
Soun felt he wouldn’t be able to sleep unless he moved his body first.
It was the first time he’d ever held a different martial text in his hands.
He drew his heavy sword and left the tent.
Curiosity mixed with the itch to try—almost the feeling that he might succeed at once.
The moonlight was bright enough to make the earth feel uncanny.
The dry, harsh colors of day were gone; a luminous haze—like the Milky Way descending—reflected off sand and dust with a soft gleam.
The desert was more beautiful at night, and more humane.
He walked farther out so he wouldn’t disturb the others’ sleep.
“Thank you for your work. I’ll loosen my body over there for a moment.”
“Oh, it’s Yusaengwon. Yeah—yeah. You should’ve slept, you brat…”
Passing the sentry line at the far edge of camp, he found a place where a sand rise and low, brittle scrub blocked the view.
In his hand, the slightly shorter heavy sword he’d received from his father sat solid and sure.
He inhaled, held, exhaled—lifting his arms to help the breath—then paused again as if storing it.
He repeated that rhythm as he walked.
To anyone else it would have looked like a child swinging a stick.
But he moved forward with a set resolve.
At last he reached a quiet spot.
Before he even began, the characters rose one by one in his mind.
But unless you were a prodigy, turning characters into a living form was not easy.
Soun did not hurry.
Starting from the ch’amj?ng stance, he recalled each posture in order and shaped the form slowly.
He held a sword, not a saber.
He didn’t care.
A true martial expert might have laughed.
But he traced the saber’s path with a sword.
Saber method, sword method—wasn’t it all the same, a sharpened length of steel moving through air?
He held the blade level, lifted and struck forward, pressed down from above like Mount Tai pinning a nail, rose with a step forward, swept level again, lowered his stance and drew the blade back.
He advanced, stumbling, along a path completely unlike the Confucian sword form.
Since the shapes were uncertain anyway, he chose to focus on breath.
What difference was there between one downward cut and another, if the breath and force were wrong?
He believed what mattered more was the breath suited to each posture—how to adjust hardness and softness.
Drawing the full path was difficult.
Strike, press, slice, open, pull, then again—
Give him a long crescent blade or a staff and he might have moved the same.
Despite the cold wind, heat rose in his body and sweat streamed down.
The breath strained him.
The posture disrupted the breath.
So he slowed down—less concerned with the movement, more with making breath and posture match.
How long had he practiced?
At some point he felt a different strength lifting the sword for him.
As if the phrasing itself carried a strange pull.
When he gave himself to the breath, even the small connecting motions began to fill with force.
He had little time.
If he could, he wanted to keep going without end.
The sword that had scraped weakly from side to side began, through repetition, to take shape.
Some motions snapped outward like a life-or-death thrust.
Others sank like a wide lake.
He did not stop.
It looked less like martial arts than like a dance.
He didn’t know the correct shapes, so his body could only sway and waver.
But once breath was laid over it, angles began to appear—
even so, the whole silhouette still belonged more to a dancer than a fighter.
The hardest part was not knowing whether any of it was correct.
He could not tell if what he was doing was right.
But if, for a single step, he could forget himself—
if for ten steps he could forget himself—
then that was the shortest road into no-self.
That was what happened.
As he matched breath to each step, the wavering left no room for other thoughts.
Heat poured out of his body, sweat spilling as the next movement arrived without pause—
and in that chain, he forgot himself.
Was it the pressure—the thought that if he failed now, he might die?
Soun kept his mind tight and continued, and then he felt an odd heat bloom and plunged deeper.
He lifted the blade, struck, and swung again.
He didn’t feel tired.
Or rather—he didn’t know he was tired.
The heat wrapped him, as if protecting him.
He forgot time.
Dawn light began to seep in.
The eastern sky brightened—
and still he was swinging the blade, mindless, relentless.
A junior officer in charge of morning roll stepped out, noticed him, and shouted something—
but Soun seemed not to hear.
In the morning wind, dry branches rattled and skittered over the barren ground.
The officer watched quietly, then realized Soun had fallen into a trance.
Soun’s movements had stabilized.
The blade swung to the depth the breath demanded, reaching all the way through its arc.
Shallow when the breath was shallow.
Deep when it was deep.
Blade, body, and breath had become one—and danced.
“YUU—SAENG—WON!”
Only when the officer bellowed did Soun stop.
Heat still flooded his whole body.
He turned, face soaked with sweat.
It was hard to believe.
He had memorized, practiced, and slipped into that state—
all in a single night.
He couldn’t know how many times he had repeated it.
A bright clarity shone in his eyes.
In them lay a silence like deep water—like a monk who had broken through.
He had forgotten the passing of time.
He had not even known the day was coming.