248. The Martial World Under Heaven — Wudang
When Soun demonstrated Taijiquan, the eyes of a man on the far side of the awning flashed.
He looked like a beast, crawling on all fours with his hands and feet planted on the ground.
He was a young man, barely past twenty.
He had been the one who twisted his lips into a sneer at the word Taijiquan.
Soun took a few short steps, quickly came to his side, and quietly matched his movements.
"Are you from Wudang?"
"Huff, huff… yes."
"You must be curious. How I know Taijiquan."
Crawling on all fours made his breathing rough, and his whole body strained with effort.
He drew in ragged breaths and answered in short bursts.
Soun walking beside him and speaking looked almost like a prank.
Had Soun's manner lacked courtesy and respect, the man before him would surely have lost his temper.
"Huff, huff… yes."
"If you walk down the road in the morning, even the old ladies in the village are doing Taijiquan. It would be stranger not to know it."
It should have ended as simple curiosity.
Yet something twisted inside him.
Soun strolled at an easy pace beside the young man crawling on all fours and murmured softly.
It sounded almost as if he were teasing him.
Across the young man's forehead, a clear horizontal mark remained, the trace of having worn a Daoist cap for many years.
Taijiquan was the most widely spread art.
In every village, at dawn, old people gathered to practice it together.
That was Taijiquan.
"If you are moving upside down like that, how do you think the principles of Taijiquan should flow?"
"Huff, huff, huff… am I in any state to think about that right now? I cannot even memorize one paltry formula, and this is what I have become…"
"You are blocked because you are trying to memorize it like an exam candidate.
Carve the formula into your body and let it flow.
As if you were unfolding Taijiquan.
Place Taiqing upon your shoulders and breathe out.
Let your four limbs move with the flow of your inhalation.
Yes. That is it.
Now think of Wuxu and draw your body inward.
This time, you must breathe in.
Do you not feel it?
Your body knows when to breathe in and when to breathe out.
Bind the breath together with the movement.
Hold on to that sensation."
The man who had been crawling like a madman while gasping for breath suddenly came to a complete stop.
Still crouched on all fours like a rabbit ready to spring, he gathered his entire mind around the principle of enlightenment that had just brushed past him.
The words Soun had given him, the same principle he had explained to Jimin moments before, rose clearly in his mind.
If he followed it, a path seemed ready to open.
If he missed this moment, it felt as though it would scatter away on the wind.
He froze in place and did not move at all.
"So that is how it is…"
He muttered toward the place where Soun had passed, then began moving on all fours again.
His gait was clearly different from before.
The panting vanished, and his breath locked into his steps.
Breathing in and out, drawing up and letting flow down, he moved one step after another like a machine.
A four-legged machine.
Like a child just learning how to crawl, his clumsy movements still looked awkward at first.
A trace of rough breathing still lingered at his lips.
The amusing part was that even after his punishment ended, he continued crawling on all fours for the entire day.
Whether it was thirty laps or fifty, no one could tell.
He went far beyond that.
Round and round he went.
Even when his palms split open and blood seeped out, he did not stop.
His clothes became covered in dust and dirt until he looked no different from a beggar wandering the marketplace.
When someone grasped an insight and immersed himself in it, Soun took his hands off.
That was his rule.
"That is enough, move over here."
"Rest for a while."
He did not even say such things.
Anyone who interfered at such a moment would not be left alone.
Such chances did not come often.
A single small realization could change a person.
Such moments were not given many times in a lifetime.
When they came, they had to be seized.
They might come only once or twice in an entire life.
Do not say that no chance ever came to you.
The world is fair, and the chance must have come.
At that moment, you were simply busy doing something foolish.