Chapter 698: Instructor Bureau (2)

“Basics are nothing more or less than the right attitude.”

Qing follows with an explanation.

“The sword is the king of all weapons, a tool for one’s own completion, and the means by which a swordsman communicates with the world. Can seekers who train such a sword—swordsmen—show the sloppy attitude of marketplace bullies!?”

“No, ma’am!” “No!” “No, ma’am!”

There was no need to standardize their answers into the army’s clipped “Yes, sir.” Even in the army—well, is that really so important? Does using a particular sentence ending make enemies multiply or allies shrink? It’s just a trick for smashing people down with authority and coercing obedience.

“As the representative of all martial men, a swordsman must carry himself with dignity. Wash every day to keep body and mind clean, trim your hair and beard, and put your mind in order with neatness. Understood?”

“Understood!” “We will!”

Square your shoulders and walk with confidence. Keep your eyes forward—don’t drag your feet or stroll around with your hands clasped behind your back.

The more Qing’s “basics” went on, the more Namgung Sinjae and Moyong Juhee kept sneaking her side-glances with awkward faces.

“Do not sit or lie down with a slouch. That is a beggar’s posture, not a swordsman’s!”

The two of them remember how Qing eats her snacks: one arm hooked over the chair’s armrest, her torso tilted, half-sitting half-lying; legs flung out cross-legged, skirt stretched taut while she lounges and mumbles through a treat. And “don’t lie down”? This from the one who will flop with a theatrical groan on grass, rock, or dirt—anywhere that isn’t a mud pit?

“Your dress must be tidy. Wash and change into fresh clothes every day. Don’t toss things off just because it’s hot, and don’t go about in disheveled attire. Understood?”

Qing’s ecology, part two: when full, she loosens her belt so it flutters, sticks out her belly as if it were something to boast of, and even shows off the bulge—lest someone think she ate too little.

“Also, a swordsman’s sword is like a lifelong companion. Do not slight it just because it’s a practice wooden sword—keep it within reach at all times and share your sleep and meals with it!”

Qing’s ecology, part three: what Qing does with a sword—hunt game and dress it, scale fish and gut them, spear trash and flick it away, poke campfires just to scatter sparks, sometimes even dig up soil to pull herbs... Even a beggar wouldn’t abuse his staff like this—how much less a martial artist who uses a sword.

And yet Qing is not shameless enough to enforce rules on others that she herself does not keep.

Because Qing is not a single track. You cannot define the transcendent Qing by the lone identity of “swordsman.” She is a master who transcends weapons, using sword, saber, and fist; she also has solid skill as a carpenter and as a physician. Her cooking may look like a mess, but somehow it tastes good—so even as a cook she’s got a knack for it: a virtuoso of many crafts! Above all, she is a beggar with seasoned bones—a professional beggar—truly top-shelf beggar; in short, an absolute beggar-lass. Qing affirms all of this, and so she shows every facet of her identities without hesitation.

But the cadets? Former vagrants, third-rate drifters, this and that—aren’t they trying to cut ties with their past selves and make a fresh start as swordsmen of the Martial Alliance? The Central Plains’ laundry is done only by beating the grime out of it—so I will swallow my own stinging heart and become the laundry bat that pounds the filth out of these cadets! Such is the lofty resolve.

“Understood!” “Yeees!”

The cadets answer with gusto. There were lots of admonitions, yes, but it all boiled down to living clean, neat, and orderly—how hard could that be? Besides, the stylish orthodox chivalrous figures they imagine look exactly like Qing’s description: a tidy young gentleman with a single sword at his hip roaming the world to enact righteousness. Hearing Qing’s basics only makes their hearts race with the feeling that they’ve truly set foot in the orthodox martial world.

“So this instructor will simply teach the basics—if you keep the basics, I’ll grant instruction with the kindest, gentlest face. But tell me, mm—does any of this sound hard? Is it difficult to keep!?”

“No, ma’am!” “No!”

The cadets, as if it were obvious, chimed in and raised their voices.

But— Humans were not made to lose, and yet humans are made to feel comfortable in postures that are dirty, unkempt, crooked—bad for the body and harmful. So basics are in truth devilishly hard. It will take some time before the cadets realize that...

“Last point: when it’s time to work, you work; when it’s time to rest, you rest. In training, devote yourself to training; when it’s rest, rest easy! If you keep the basics, there will be no interference whatsoever with your breaks! That is all!”

“If you keep the basics, there will be no interference” is, mathematically, the same as multiplying both sides by a negative and saying “If you do not keep the basics, there will be interference.” But arithmetic is not a prized discipline in the Central Plains, and least of all among martial men—how could the cadets catch on? They just think, So that’s how it is.

Thus, the Oro Sword Formula—first class!

“The sword art you’ll learn is called the Oro Sword Formula. It began in the Martial Alliance Swordsmen’s Association’s Absolute Sword Drama; then it made a round of the Alliance’s eminent senior swordsmen, the Four Great Sword Sects and the renowned sword clans, evolving through countless hands. Now it’s our turn to carry on the Oro Sword Formula!”

“Oro Sword Formula!” “Absolute Sword Drama!” “Four Great Sword Sects!”

Exclamations burst here and there. They hadn’t heard of anything except the Four Great Sword Sects, but still—names like “Oro Sword Formula” and “Absolute Sword Drama” sound anything but ordinary.

“Oro takes as its essence a combination of five subtleties—Heavy, Quick, Gentle, and further, Shifting and Returning—so that it spreads in infinite directions. Only after you can skillfully handle the five subtleties does it display its full, ascending power. It shows its true might only when one surpasses one’s limits and awakens starlight; therefore it presents great difficulties for trainees who have only just entered sword arts.”

And how did the cadets feel hearing that? Even better! The Martial Alliance is the best! A martial art whose power blooms only after the super-transcendent—surely that’s an ascending type, what people call a steel-qi art. It’s hard, yes, but almost no one came to the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy without that level of resolve. No matter how hard, even if it takes pain that scrapes bone and slices muscle, we’ll learn it. Of course, that’s the ambition talking—if someone actually started scraping their bones, they’d fling the Go stones like Lord Guan who sobbed under the knife and bolt straight out.

“So this instructor will guide you to embody the subtleties through a focus on Heavy, Quick, and Gentle—engraving them into your bodies—and then, through completing the Three Roads, to master the entry process! Thus, the sword art you’ll learn is the Oro Sword Formula Entry—Three-Road Sword.”

“Three-Road Sword!” “Three-Road Sword!”

Ever since arriving in the Central Plains, I’ve kept feeling this: the people here have delightfully juicy reactions.

Qing continues the introduction.

The Three-Road Sword consists of three forms containing only the subtleties of Heavy, Quick, and Gentle—the Heavy-Road Sword, the Quick-Road Sword, and the Gentle-Road Sword—and the curriculum’s aim is to learn all three so that for each move you can wield every subtlety freely at will.

For example, the First Move is a downward chop followed by one rightward and one leftward cut. But once you’ve fully embodied the Three Roads, you can chop down heavy, then, with a gentle rightward slice, deflect the enemy’s attack, then with a quick leftward cut, target the enemy’s waist. Or you can chop down with Gentle to upset the opponent’s center from the very first exchange, then cut with Quick, and finish with Heavy. After mastering Heavy-Heavy-Heavy, Quick-Quick-Quick, Gentle-Gentle-Gentle, you freely convert to suit the situation—Heavy-Quick-Gentle, Gentle-Quick-Heavy, Heavy-Heavy-Quick, Gentle-Quick-Quick, Quick-Heavy-Gentle, and so on. Thus is completed a sword art that uses three roads.

It was Qing’s own interpretation, forged while she mixed constantly with the Short Blade & Twin-Swords Society’s swordsmen and studied with them. Even if it got smashed to pieces by the Heavenly Martial Emperor, the Absolute Sword Drama stood at the social pinnacle—a circle you joined only from at least Harmony. A group project wrought by the era’s top-tier swordsmen purely for fun—unfinished or not, it was new skill steeped with all sorts of ascending cadres.

How do you teach something like that to cadets? You need at least super-transcendent before you can even imitate it a bit in real combat.

Of course, the Martial Alliance had concluded that even a mere imitation of the outward form would be enough to make a fine show.

Among teachers, first postings are the most passionate; among homeroom teachers, the first homeroom is the most passionate.

“First you will learn the First through the Third Moves. However, since the Three-Road Sword is training to cross over into Oro, I’ve altered the move names so you can grasp them more easily.”

Thus, the moment Qing proudly presented to the world the crystallization of her effort—the first three moves of the Three-Road Sword’s first half!

Three-Road Sword, First Move. Strong–Weak–Weak.

Three-Road Sword, Second Move. Strong–Strong–Strong–Weak.

Three-Road Sword, Third Move. Strong–Middle–Weak.

Three-Road Sword, First Half. Strong–Weak–Weak, Strong–Strong–Strong–Weak, Strong–Middle–Weak!

Truly intuitive move names. The Oro Sword Art’s move names were needlessly grand and difficult—things like “Oro Sword Formula First Form ‘Scatter the Two Heavens Cut’,” all style and no use. Well, when the club itself is called the Absolute Sword Drama, what did you expect.

The cadets were, admittedly, a little disappointed. “Strong-Weak-Middle-Strong-Weak”... really?

But only for a moment—

“This instructor will demonstrate the sword art. First Move: Strong–Weak–Weak. I will unfold the three forms in turn—Heavy-Road, Quick-Road, and Gentle-Road.”

“......!”

It was the instant Qing raised her recorder.

Daylight dimmed. The veiled lady vanished; in her place, a single sword thrust high, piercing the sky’s end. So vast it blotted out the sun—the sword’s shadow draped over the world.

A technique whose weapon’s presence eclipses the martial artist, so the person is obscured—Divine Sword–Body as One.

A titanic blade that touched the far side beyond the sky fell to earth. The sound of its passage ripped the air like thunder, roaring and tearing at eardrums; a whoosh of wind swept through, raking the cadets’ hair.

And before the world, split on a slanting diagonal, had finished knitting back together—starlight pressed in from left and right. Under a heaven cleaved in two, a world whose waist had been cut twice seemed to slide along its severed edges, fragmenting and scattering in their eyes—

Scatter the Two Heavens. To shatter into pieces the heaven that has been cut in two. A legacy of the Absolute Sword Drama, recreated with the subtlety of Heavy alone.

“......” “......” “......”

The cadets could only stand there, mouths agape.

In the hush, Qing raised the sword again.

Once more, the First Move, Strong–Weak–Weak—this time with the subtlety of Quick, the Quick-Road Sword.

But nothing could be seen. Only the ssaeek-ssaek of wind’s late-arriving scream told them they had already been cut. At a third-rate or even second-rate level, even eyes that “saw” it couldn’t catch up; strength, after all, is what makes speed. It lacked the majesty of Heavy, but its speed was so sharp the senses could not follow.

After that, Qing unfolded her sword once more, slow this time. Slow—but soft. With motions that looked like anyone could copy, she fluttered, and only then did the elegant world-first beauty dancing a sword-dance come into view.

And when the demonstration ended, Qing lowered her recorder—the recorder?

Only then did the cadets realize the weapon Qing had been swinging was not a sword but a recorder. Then what, exactly, was that giant sword they had seen and felt?

Namgung Sinjae smiled wryly. A vision expressed by a martial artist in mid-Harmony. In other words, she had poured her own thought into the still-hollow Oro Sword Formula—so now, not only her realm but her very sword-power had leapt a stride beyond them all.

And another thought followed: does she have any intention of concealing that she’s in Harmony? Isn’t this a little too blatantly Harmony?