CHAPTER 05
Across all times and places, rules and laws are like a spider’s web.
The flies and moths (the weak) get caught, while the birds (the strong) pass right through.
Unlike the first intake, who were bought with money, many of the second intake were descendants of the Six Sects.
If the children who were sold or kidnapped, like Danyeop, were the flies, then Ma Eun-rok, son of the Cha Sect’s master, was the bird.
Even after being admitted, Ma Eun-rok was able to meet his father inside the Tomb of Soldiers and Horses.
Not only him—every sect master’s, branch leader’s, and hall leader’s children were able to reunite with family during seasonal holidays.
They even received private teachings.
From his father, Ma Eun-rok was taught which martial skills in the tomb he should learn, and which ones he must avoid.
For example: Ilwol To-nap Secret, Hundred Willow Saber Technique, Seven Injuries Saber Method, Heavenly Changing Water, Lightning Kick, and Flying Willow Steps were essential to master.
But Dispersing Mind Skill (分心功, Bunshingong) was to be avoided at all costs.
Last year, when Ma Eun-rok found Bunshingong in the library and was tempted by the phrase “achievements doubled,” he secretly stole it and asked his father if he could learn it.
His father leapt up in alarm and forbade him.
“That’s dangerous nonsense! Even Wudang has the Yang Intent Skill, but their Taoist masters don’t train in it. It’s too profound—spend your whole life on it and you’ll get nothing. Worse, they say Bunshingong is a counterfeit text, just a poor imitation of Yang Intent. If the true skill can’t be mastered, how could a fake lead anywhere? You’ll just waste your years for nothing.”
After that, he returned Bunshingong to its place and never looked at it again.
At least, not until he saw Ha Yong-wol and Danyeop at the cafeteria today.
When Danyeop tucked Bunshingong into his robe, Ma Eun-rok sneered inwardly:
“Danyeop, may you rot in this tomb forever.”
Training in Bunshingong changed Danyeop’s daily routine.
Before, he spent an hour in the morning studying characters from the Thousand Character Classic, then spent the rest of the day at the practice hall training in the Heaven-and-Earth Saber Method.
But from the new year onward, at around 3 p.m. he began going to the library to read.
Because of Bunshingong.
For someone who was still stuck even on the Thousand Character Classic, Bunshingong was impossibly difficult.
He could read the words but not understand their meaning.
When he went to ask his teacher, the teacher just said, “That’s because you’re ignorant.” Then added:
“When desperate, the way will open. Read books until it does.”
From then on, Danyeop went in and out of the library as often as a mouse in a granary.
The younger students mocked him even more, but he ignored them.
After all, he was making no progress with the sect’s martial skills anyway—what difference did it make?
Spring came again.
He had been in the tomb eleven years, yet his progress remained stagnant.
As summer approached, the tomb buzzed again with the second intake’s graduation tests.
One day, Ryu Seol-ri ran up to Ha Yong-wol with gossip.
“Unni, did you hear?”
“What?”
“Senior Danyeop has been sneaking into the library since last winter.”
“And?”
“I finally found out why today. Wow, Martial Brother Ma is really awful!”
“What does Brother Ma have to do with it?”
“Last winter he gave Bunshingong to Senior Danyeop and told him to learn it.”
“What?! Bunshingong?”
Ha Yong-wol’s jaw dropped.
As the sect master’s daughter, she knew well about Bunshingong.
To her knowledge, it was a manual no one could actually train in.
“That’s right. Since he couldn’t understand it at all, he started reading every book in the library. How could Martial Brother Ma be so cruel to poor Senior Danyeop? Isn’t that just evil?”
“Are you sure he really did that?”
“I heard it from Brother Go and Brother Yeo. It must be true.”
Ha Yong-wol sighed and shook her head.
Ma Eun-rok, Go Jwa-ryeong, and Yeo Mu-seon were always together, so the story had to be true.
“They say Senior Danyeop hasn’t even finished Heaven-and-Earth Saber yet. Guess he won’t graduate this year either?”
“If he keeps on with Bunshingong, not just this year—he may never graduate.”
Ha Yong-wol suddenly leapt up.
Seol-ri, startled, blinked wide-eyed.
“You’re going to see Senior Danyeop?”
“If I didn’t know, fine. But now that I do, I have to tell him. Ordinary trainees can’t figure this out on their own—they’d never know unless someone tells them.”
“But if Brother Ma finds out you helped him, he won’t let it go.”
“Hmph! Let him try. Do you think I’m afraid of him?”
“Not you—Senior Danyeop.”
“It’ll be fine. The graduation test is only days away. Once he passes, they can’t bully him anymore.”
With that, Ha Yong-wol dashed out like an arrow.
Left behind, Seol-ri muttered in exasperation:
“Good grief, a fiery heroine indeed.”
Using her movement skill, Ha Yong-wol sped north through the tomb grounds.
Before long, a familiar place appeared, and her pace slowed.
Danyeop…
She had first met him ten years ago.
To be precise, when she was weeping with longing for her mother, he had simply been there beside her.
She was six then, he was five.
Whenever she missed her mother, she would secretly return to that spot, where she sometimes encountered him again.
But once she grew used to tomb life, she stopped visiting.
What remained was only a faint sense of pity toward Danyeop.
She guessed he would still be there, since unlike her—now a leader among the second intake—he was still alone.
And indeed, he was.
Just like ten years ago, Danyeop sat motionless before the cliff face painted with a map of mountains and rivers.
“Senior Danyeop.”
But Ha Yong-wol’s guess was only half right.
He wasn’t there simply because he was a loner.
Ever since last year, when Dan Bul-wi taught him the essence of Heart-Quieting Meditation, he had trained in it daily without fail.
And it had shown results.
After learning that “the mind lies within the breath,” his dantian had begun to change.
At first, striving to quiet his breath, he found it naturally sinking deeper into his lower dantian.
If the mind follows the breath, then indeed the mind had sunk to the dantian.
Then, when he tried not to consciously notice his breathing, something strange happened.
With every breath, a fine thread unraveled from his dantian, rising and falling along the Chong Meridian.
It was as though a tiny spool of thread lay inside him.
When he told Dan Bul-wi, he was scolded harshly:
“Nonsense! The Chong Meridian only opens after Ren and Du merge—and anyone who has done that is already a top master! Don’t spout absurdities. It’s just stray thoughts during practice. Empty your mind completely, fool! Can’t even walk properly, yet you’ve got delusions of grandeur!”
After that, Danyeop tried to empty all thought, imagining himself as nothing but a tree or stone.
But the thread only grew, mocking his efforts.
Each time he practiced Heart-Quieting Meditation, the thread grew larger.
Soon, even thinking of the meditation made his heart pound nervously.
How could training go well like this?
Then he recalled Bunshingong.
Its teachings seemed perfectly suited to his situation.
“When a person is born, the True Spirit (進神) resides in the Heavenly Eye (between the brows), while the Conscious Spirit (識神, thinking mind) resides below, in the heart.
The Conscious Spirit is easily shaken by emotions, but the True Spirit never wavers even slightly.
If the Conscious Spirit is the Martial Spirit, then the True Spirit is the Scholarly Spirit.”
Ultimately, Bunshingong was a method for training both the Martial Spirit (thinking) and the Scholarly Spirit (true self).
What caught Danyeop was the phrase “never wavers even slightly.”
So he revised his goal: “Calm my heart with Bunshingong, clear my head with Heart-Quieting Meditation.”
To grasp its meaning, he read book after book from the library.
Would it really work, like the teacher said, that desperation leads to breakthrough?
After devoting himself fully to Bunshingong, when he returned to Heart-Quieting Meditation, his heart no longer pounded.
Whether it was truly thanks to Martial Spirit and Scholarly Spirit, or simply psychological calm, he didn’t know.
From then on, he always practiced Bunshingong before meditation.
Even today, he was doing so:
“The Spirit is fire, and when intent arises, it moves.
Fire is flame, that is, light, and what moves is the True Spirit.
When you turn the light back upon the Heavenly Eye (回光返照), you attain the Dharma Body and command both Martial and Scholarly Spirits at will.”
With half-lidded eyes, Danyeop pondered what light was, and where it lay.
To shine it upon the Heavenly Eye, he first had to know what light was.
Just as Dan Bul-wi once said suddenly, “the mind lies in the breath,” Danyeop believed there must also be “light” somewhere within him.
Surely they don’t mean an actual candle…
Internal skills trained what was inherent, not physical flames.
Then the light must be inside me…
As he delved into this thought, a voice snapped him out of it.
“Uh, Ha… junior sister?”
In the tomb, seniors and juniors were strictly ranked by intake year, but in truth all trainees were like siblings.
So, a bit flustered, he called Ha Yong-wol “junior sister.”
She smiled, pleased by the title.
“Senior Dan, did I disturb your practice?”
“No.”
He shook his head. Bunshingong wasn’t such a rigid practice that interruptions were dangerous.
“That’s good. I heard you’ve been practicing something interesting lately.”
“You mean Bunshingong?”
“Yes. Is it true?”
“Yeah.”
“Please, stop immediately.”
“Huh? Why?”
“They say Martial Brother Ma gave it to you, right?”
“That’s right.”
“He only did it to make fun of you. Bunshingong is a fake, an imitation of Wudang’s Yang Intent Skill. It’s not even a genuine Xiaoyao Sect teaching.”
“What? A fake?”
Danyeop was shocked, so she hurried to explain further:
“It hasn’t been officially proven fake, but it probably is. The contents are far too absurd. Honestly, why would a true Xiaoyao secret manual be lying around in the market?”
But people only hear what they want to hear.
“Oh, so it’s not certain, right?”
“Ugh! It’s likely fake. Even Wudang Taoists don’t practice Yang Intent—they say you could spend a lifetime on it without success. Please, Senior Dan, stop. The graduation test is only days away. You must pass this year.”
“Thanks for worrying, but I’m not aiming to achieve greatness anyway.”
“If it’s not proper training, you could suffer qi deviation.”
“Haha, come on—you know as well as I do. I’m not even good enough to risk something like that.”
Since he had felt at least some effect from Bunshingong, Danyeop was unconcerned.
Ha Yong-wol frowned.
For a moment she thought, as Ryu Seol-ri had said: “Is he not kind, just… simple-minded?”
Disappointed, she spoke coldly.
“I’ve warned you. Whatever happens next is on you.”
“…Uh.”
Her clipped words made him shrink back, shoulders hunched.
She sighed softly, then turned and left.
Only after she had walked far did Danyeop lift his head and watch her back.
The girl who once wept like a child had become a heroine of the martial world—while he remained the same, useless as ever.
Sudden self-loathing washed over him, and he muttered unconsciously:
“What I need… is the True Spirit (進神).”
