- Morning Study – Lee Hee’s Martial Art
It was not as though the boy had reached a realm beyond obstruction.
To Lee Hee, it looked like reckless disorder of the highest degree.
He returned So-woon’s sword and drew his own dao.
The pale blade, polished clean, caught the morning sun and scattered a fearsome radiance.
“Watch closely. It will differ greatly. I should have shown you before you began. I was late.”
Lee Hee unfolded the blade method.
With a single swing, a domineering and unyielding force spilled outward.
He turned his body in a full rotation—thrusting, cutting, striking, leaping, then twisting at an angle to whirl the blade like a windmill.
Dust flared in all directions through the space he occupied.
Each stroke was precise and concise.
He bounded lightly, and the movements felt supremely efficient.
It was as if no effort were spent.
The man himself was present within the method.
He was one who made difficult things seem easy.
So too his blade art was clear and forthright.
So-woon watched without blinking.
Lee Hee slowed his movements as much as possible for the boy’s sake, yet the method remained swift and forceful.
By the time one might drink a cup of tea, the sequence was complete.
Lee Hee ended without shedding a single bead of sweat.
“Did you see?”
“Yes, General.”
“It differs, does it not? From yours…”
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“Yes. It differs greatly.”
“What do you think? Why does it differ? It is the same martial art. Why has it changed?”
“I bound myself to the characters and handled what I did not understand carelessly. Or… I do not know. I tried to follow it as written, yet I cannot understand why it became so different.”
“What will you do? Relearn it? Amend what you have done? Or continue as you were?”
“I… do not know…”
“You wretch!”
Lee Hee shouted.
So-woon’s body flinched.
When a man wavers, it is best to strike him into clarity.
A loud command forces a decision where there is only haze.
Right or wrong, one must decide to move.
If he lost his own path while failing to acquire a new one, it would have been better never to learn at all.
“You altered it at will before. And now you claim you do not know?”
The rebuke struck like thunder.
“I hurried too much. Yet I gained something in doing so. I will follow your path, General. But what I have practiced these past days—I cannot bear to discard it. I would keep it separate.”
“Ah? You gained some insight?”
“Yes. Though the path was imprecise, I let it flow and focused on the breath. When it said snap, I snapped. When it said draw in, I drew in. When it said pull back, I pulled back. Aligning with the breath, the form shaped itself thus.”
“Where does it say that?”
“The entire art you gave me was about breath. That is how I read it.”
“The entire mnemonic was breath? Not blade formula, but breath?”
Lee Hee felt something strike the depths of his mind.
All of it was breath…
“Yes. Whether that is correct, I do not know. But that is how I saw it.”
If the boy merely claimed he had seen it so, what could be said?
He did not assert correctness.
He simply practiced according to his understanding.
It meant he had even interpreted the descriptions of physical movement as breath.
Where it said to flip the body like turning over, he had flipped the breath itself.
“I see. Very well. Then now regard it not as breath, but as movement and form. Perform what I have shown you. Master it. Later, combine the two. Perhaps… you may be able to do that.”
Lee Hee did not know the true origin of the masterless art he had inherited.
Perhaps the boy’s reading was closer to its root.
And a part of him wished to reinterpret every mnemonic as breath and begin again.
It was the curiosity of a martial man.
“Yes, General.”
“Now.”
Lee Hee barked.
“Yes?”
“Now means now.”
“Understood.”
So-woon began to move.
Lee Hee stood beside him and traced the form as well.
To say they “drew” the form might be apt—like painting a beautiful dance in air.
They moved side by side, alike yet different, and alike again.
In the chill dawn field, general and youth stood shoulder to shoulder shaping the art.
A breath escaped Lee Hee’s lips.
The path of a master…
Perhaps it was beginning.
Hope swelled within him.
With that hope, his body grew light.
The heavy dao softened and turned graceful.
So-woon’s movements, once mere dance, gathered strength and sharpened into swiftness.
And another thing occurred.
The subtle truths of his family’s sword art—once incomprehensible—rose unbidden in So-woon’s mind.
What had resisted him before came at once into clarity.
It was as though the meaning of living itself shone in sudden illumination.
Lee Hee corrected several points and withdrew.
The sun had risen.
Morning.
Thin strands of smoke rose from the cooking pots into the cold air.