Chapter 870: You’ve Fallen for It (4)

“—No, no, that’s not it. I mean, not ‘not it.’”

Qing hurriedly pulled her words back.

“No” was too strong.

“I mean... if you really think about it, isn’t martial arts still something you learn to eat and live?”

“Hoooh?”

“Like, there’s that thing they call the living sword in Daoism, and for us it’s protection no matter what. Cultivate yourself, regulate your family, govern the nation, bring peace to the world—if you’re going to make the world safe, you have to protect your own body first.”

“Hmph. So you know how to wag your tongue. And?”

“So... isn’t martial arts ultimately a means? A tool? A way to protect myself with martial arts, and protect the people who matter to me. If I throw away the people who matter in order to learn the martial arts that protect them... isn’t that getting the order backward......?”

Just like Qing’s three wishes, martial arts to Qing were a means to protect herself—and to protect her people.

For that reason, even her personal martial arts could be something she’d be satisfied with, as long as it was enough to protect herself and her people.

The problem was that it wasn’t easy.

More precisely, the problem was this insane combination: primitive ancient Central Plains, energy as a cosmic mystery, and then a status window dumped on top of it all to blend together.

The crisis of her own existence—she’d gotten used to that part now, dulled to it, and she also held a certain conviction that this world wasn’t some artificial, manufactured virtual space.

But what if one day she opened her eyes and she was back on her homeland’s soil, in that cramped little room on the edge of an industrial complex?

The so-called “oh-fuck-it-was-a-dream” ending.

And it wouldn’t even be that strange.

What happened once could happen twice.

Just like she’d been dragged here one day, it wouldn’t be strange if she returned one day.

To protect herself from that, to finally settle things with the status window—Transformation Realm wasn’t anywhere near enough.

But the Martial-Heaven—Martial-Qing—Great Emperor snorted.

“You. Any dog or cow learns martial arts with that kind of mindset, and that’s why the martial world is a mess. Where do you get off sitting there spouting something that suffocating.”

“No, why?”

“What is a tool? If you get your hands on a sharp knife, you want to slice something with it. Even an ordinary woodcutter—if he gets a new axe, he gets excited and wants to climb the mountain right away. So what do you think happens when a martial artist is like that? They’re itching because they can’t swing their martial arts, so the moment some trivial thing catches their eye, they fling the blade—when they were about to launch a boat and the river just happens to be flowing, they think this is their moment, and blood gets spilled.”

“When you’re about to launch a boat and the river happens to be flowing” meant, in Qing’s hometown terms, getting slapped right when you felt like crying.

“That mindset—treating martial arts as a means—that’s exactly how demon men think. Then again, now that I look at you, were you ever an ordinary slaughter star? They say you can’t help what you’re born with—come to think of it, you weren’t even an ordinary demon man. A demon man among demon men, a great demon m—”

“Stop that. I told you not to do that.”

“Hmph. If you have a good blade, you want to swing it. If it cuts well, you get excited and swing it even when you don’t need to—that’s what people are like. So they oppress people with the martial arts they learned to ‘protect themselves,’ and then, just like you said, they start living off martial arts. Not living by working—living by putting a blade to someone else’s throat and taking what’s theirs. There’s no bandit more brazen than that.”

The Martial-Heaven Great Emperor’s eyes blazed.

If you wanted to describe that gaze kindly, it was unwavering conviction.

If you wanted to describe it badly, it was a kind of madness.

“Martial arts must not be a means—it must be an end. It is the ultimate orientation by which a person overcomes a person, and an untraveled destination no one has ever conquered. For a man of resolve, it’s also the gentlest of great ambitions—yet the one he can never tolerate not pursuing.”

“Huh?”

“What? What kinds of ambitions do you think a man of resolve is meant to have? If you aim for the world, the entire world turns into war and endless blood flows. If you aim to become the richest magnate under heaven, you’ll squeeze the blood and sweat out of countless commoners to build that wealth. If you aim for the highest position under heaven, you’ll have to pile corpses into an altar and set a jade throne on top of it. And all three are things martial artists commonly do—so is it any wonder blood and tears never dry up in this world?”

But what about self-cultivation—the desire to see the end of martial arts?

You simply train quietly, wanting to advance.

Not only was it the greatest challenge no one in the world had ever achieved, it was also a gentle challenge that harmed no one.

“Martial arts, in the first place, was originally one of the ascetic practices of the Buddhist tradition of Tianzhu. Bodhidharma saw it in Tianzhu and thought it truly good, so he spread it in the Central Plains. So originally, martial arts was practice meant to reach nirvana through one’s own completion—and yet you vulgar people only swing it for personal wealth and glory.”

“Mm.”

This was a view she’d never heard before.

And the more she listened, the more it sounded plausible.

Right—would a monk with merit as great as Bodhidharma really spread a technique for killing people and call it “good”?

More likely there had been a wondrous energy practice among Tianzhu’s disciplines, and Bodhidharma had seen it, brought it back along with Buddhist scripture, and spread it.

If you thought that way, then the origin of Central Plains martial arts wasn’t a killing craft.

It wasn’t even a self-defense technique to protect yourself.

It was a method of cultivation meant to reach nirvana.

But still—

Qing cautiously parted her lips.

“Not everyone has to have a dream that grand. There are people who are satisfied just living happily with me, my family, my friends.”

Qing had no interest in becoming the best under heaven, or breaking through the Natural Realm through cultivation and blasting past some ceiling to ascend to some higher world.

The Martial-Heaven Great Emperor snorted again.

“Hmph. What kind of spineless nonsense is that? If you’re born a person, you’re supposed to hold great intent and move with towering ambition. A life that can’t do that is pitiful self-satisfaction—and nothing but a worthless life.”

All of a sudden, Moon-Maiden floated up in Qing’s mind.

Current Central Plains martial arts might indeed trace back to Tianzhu’s discipline.

But the first martial art in the Central Plains had existed far earlier—wasn’t it Moon-Maiden’s Moon-Maiden Sword, a full thousand years before Bodhidharma brought martial arts over?

And Moon-Maiden Sword had been nothing but a nameless child playing around with monkeys, stick-fighting as a game.

More than that—Moon-Maiden had been the sole owner of martial arts at the time, practically the absolute one of her era, and yet what she wanted was simply to live happily with the lover she loved, under a peaceful world.

Not some grand goal like conquering the world or ascending to heaven.

Unfortunately, Moon-Maiden’s end hadn’t been good.

“It’s not worthless. It’s just ordinary. And it’s natural. Some people might feel happy in the process of achieving that kind of goal, but ordinary people just feel happy seeing good things and eating good food with their people. And if you’re not harming anyone, then if you’re happy, that’s enough. People don’t have to achieve something huge.”

But the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor snorted again.

“Hmph. That’s nothing but an excuse from people who have no confidence they can achieve anything in life. Pathetic behavior—giving up early because you decided you couldn’t do it anyway.”

Qing let out a deep sigh inside.

It was always like this.

People who achieved things often looked down on those who didn’t.

A rich man who made it looks down on the poor. An academic authority looks down on the ignorant.

Or those gym guys who can lift, like, three-by-five hundred—three different lifts, total around eight hundred geun—looking down on fat people or skinny people.

But being fat wasn’t a sin, and it wasn’t something you always had to lose—if you were satisfied and happy, wasn’t that enough?

If you said you’d just live like that and die, then... well, if you got diabetes, you probably wouldn’t be happy, so you’d need to manage it a bit—

No, was that looking down on plump people too? Tsk, tsk. About to die tomorrow and still not managing yourself, this is—

If only you’re happy, then that’s enough...... right?

Just then, an irritated tongue-click snapped Qing out of her thoughts.

“Tsk, tsk. How did I ever end up tied by fate to a wench like this. Fine. There’s nothing to do, so get going.”

“Ah. What about the form?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said there’s nothing to do. What, am I supposed to grab you and beg you to learn? If you’re a wench who says you’ll just live moderately and die, what use is it to pass down a lifetime of study to you? If I said I was picking someone to carry on my study, people under heaven would swarm like locusts and fill an entire city.”

Qing thought.

Ah. He’s sulking.

Looks like she crossed the line because her chest flared and she got heated.

Without realizing it, she got too into it.

But... okay. That’s that, and still—

“Then, Elder. Are you really my mental image? What kind of mental image sulks— I mean... if what you said is true, you said you’re someone like an illusion I made from my mental image after reading the sword intent from the sword trace. But then you suddenly say you’ll teach me.”

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

This wasn’t the Martial-Qing Great Emperor—it was absolutely the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor.

But the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor remained calm.

“Then you should ask your heart. If you see my form and your heart dislikes it and hesitates, then isn’t it natural that the me you made doesn’t want to teach you either?”

“No, I really want to learn.”

“A person’s true heart is sometimes difficult even for themselves to realize. You read from the sword trace the root of the form, that mental image—Sever Bonds, Cut Love, that heartlessness, the unfeeling within it—and you feel it, don’t you. That it doesn’t match you.”

Qing scratched the back of her head hard.

Fuck. Lately she had been thinking that.

Is it true? Martial-Qing Great Emperor, Martial-Heaven Great Emperor—what are you?

The Martial-Heaven Great Emperor let out a heavy sigh.

“Haa... you. Effortless study is not some treasured family blade. In the end it’s nothing but a shortcut. Do you think the great seniors who first achieved their realms relied on methods like that? No. Every one of them opened a new horizon of martial study with their own study—an unknown new world for later students to walk.”

“Effortless?”

Qing echoed him, but the Martial-Heaven Great Emperor continued like he hadn’t heard.

Uh—this mood, what is it—

“Martial study, by nature, is the work of fitting martial arts to yourself and honing it into a sword inside your heart. The one who forges your sword is only you. Even if you take someone else’s sword into your heart, it cannot become your sword.”

“Wait, you’re already going in—”

“Effortless study is nothing but a vulgar trick, peeking at an answer key and copying it as-is. So the studies you have are never truly yours.”

At the same time, Qing drew her sword.

No—her sword was drawn.

Her hand moved on its own, gripping the sword, pressing down on her chest, stretching it straight out past her opposite forearm.

“Even imitation works if it’s perfect. But now it seems your head’s grown thick enough for distracting thoughts. So when you go to the next Broken-Sword Cliff, even if you read the sword trace, you won’t be able to imitate the form.”

“Th-then—”

“So either set your resolve to dedicate your life with the heart to achieve transcendence through your true study... or you must hold a blazing furnace inside your heart, hot enough to melt someone else’s sword and refine it into yours. Only then will you touch the next study of the Solitary Nine Swords.”

At the same time, her arm snapped out.

A sword arc extending level with the ground.

Solitary Nine Swords, Fourth Form.

Sever Bonds, Cut Love.

A heartless mind that regards every bond as mere baggage and cuts it away cleaves the world—sharply slicing the point where heaven and earth meet.

Now the world was split in two.

And yet this was a task that a being standing between heaven and earth was, by all rights, meant to accomplish.