"Some martial artists are naturally blessed and gifted. Other martial artists are diligent and hardworking. Even less martial artists lust for the thrill of battle and the rush of combat. But, disciples, the most paramount of these are the martial artists that enjoy challenge and striving, and wield their weapon so that others need not raise it at all."

  From the Sermons of the Conquering King

  Koago Sajaninu looked slightly taken aback. His mouth slightly ajar.

  But this was all an act.

  This was what he wanted to happen. He wanted a disciple to pass down martial arts to during his downtime. He needed someone that could handle the pressures of being an Adamantine of Ending, and an agent of the Fallingstar Petals.

  He sighed and said: "Only if you promise me that you will wield your martial skills for the greater good." Koago knew he was pretty skilled at feigning this kind of thing. Long he had decided that instead of being a martial hero traveling and wandering the streets and rivers of the Realms Belligerent, he would be the termagant master of martial arts. The sifu of errant and aspirant martial heroes in the Realms Belligerent.

  But he had only gotten to that conclusion and decision relatively recently. And Xing would be his first disciple.

  Xing bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. When she spoke, her voice quivered and broke, the edge of shatter. "If avenging my family is not the greater good then I am afraid this world is too wicked for me to live in."

  "Good," said Koago, nodding. With a slight smile and hop to his feet, he said: "But before we begin, let's get you fed first. You're skin and bones!"

  Things rushed on quickly from there. Xing was a smart lady. And she was a dancer—she knew the locomotions of the body. She knew the twists and dynamics—and thus knew how to move her body in ways that would be conducive to the pulls and pushes of a martial arts kata or the arts of fighting. It was a common misconception to not categorize martial arts as a performance art, but it is! It truly is.

  To truly prepare Xing for what she was going to do, Koago taught her the basics of fighting. The essential movements for punching and low-kicking, in the style of Koago's own base martial art: Diamat Sword.

  Diamat Sword, which was the shorter version of Dialectical Materialism Sword—with Dialectical Materialism being the philosophical basis for the sword art—grew out of the First World Revolution after a number of masters came together to create a Sword Art that infantries, skirmishers, and shock troops could wield in the battlefield and in personal engagements. It was a martial art that became relentlessly effective in its application. Whatever did not work with one swordmaster's art was thrown away. And to consummate the Art, the masters fought each other to the death using the fundamentals they had developed.

  In the end, two masters won in a stalemate. First Raptor and Yagatasa the Bladeharmonic. They decided that having two masters to the art would be emblematic and indicative of the core philosophies of Diamat Sword. They went on to work for the International Revolutionary Army and taught Diamat Sword to the blademaster branch of the people's armies. In time, Diamat Sword became so easy to teach and so many people became learned of the art that when thinking of sword techniques, one usually would imagine the techniques and philosophies of Diamat Sword.

  Before going on forward, it would be prudent to know that the Sword is one of the 21 Warrior Arms—the great and revered weapons of the Realms Belligerent. Sword is a categorizer. When one says Sword, one is meant to think of a long, double-edged weapon used for slashing and sometimes trusting. This means single-edged blades are often not considered "swords" in the Utter Islands. Instead they are called Longknives or sometimes cleavers.

  So Diamat Sword accentuates this ideology. It believes that for every stroke, there are always multiple outcomes. And multiple factors go into the "collapsing" of outcomes into a single one. Each outcome has, within itself, its own negation—the outcome of a sword slashing might contain its own negation of the sword being parried, or the sword being blocked by armor or caught by chain. This is the core tenet of Diamat Sword. The Sword contains its own negation.

  So the first teaching of Diamat Sword are attempts to end violence before it can even begin. Either by radiating Killing Intent, or softening Killing Intent to the point that one seems harmless and tender.

  Many people skip this step. Koago taught it at every turn.

  The next teaching went into sword usage. It is important that the disciple learn the intricacies of a real blade immediately. From this arises reverence and skill. Two important dialectical components. To have skill causes an arising in ego. To have reverence curbs the ego. And thus the sword is upheld.

  Diamat Sword attacks are straightforward. Starting with proper slashing techniques, thrusting techniques, blade alignment, parries and deflecting, and proper blade manipulation. Diamat Sword does not like wasting movements—every thrust can be converted into a slash, or into a nick, or into a deflect. Every slash can be transformed into a deflection or a second slash or power generation into a parry. All things are connected, in dialectical conversation with each other. Everything constantly grasping and ungrasping, negating and negating the negation.

  Through learning the Dialectics of the Sword, one attains sublimation.

  When Xing asked what Dialectical Materialism meant, Koago answered: "Simply, it is the idea that all of reality arises from the interaction and contradiction of material forces. It is the dialectics of matter. Of real things. Diamat has mostly evolved now, did you know? Nowadays, the foremost Masangwanists, Communists, and Anarchists have moved Diamat up to Diarealism—Dialectical Realism. Understanding that some immaterial things—such as the spirit, karma, and such—are real things but are not matter, but forces. And more importantly, matter is not the final substance. Nothing has any substance. All things are empty. Thus, materialism took a turn, around 11500, so relatively early. Realism is concerned with what is real, whether it is matter or not. And in this we advance the march of erudition, science, and philosophy."

  Xing tapped her forehead. "I think I get it?" But she didn't. Not entirely. Not yet, at least. The idea of dialectics... Koago did not truly reveal that to her just yet.

  Soon enough, in just two months, Xing Naramao had become well attuned to the arts of Diamat Sword. While she practiced Diamat Sword, she ate special meals that roused and stoked the fires of her Ardor Furnace. Soon her Cultivation Womb began taking shape.

  "Master," Xing asked once as they ate. A special dish, concocted of dragon teeth and angel feathers and celestial avian harpstrings cooked in a slow simmering broth seasoned generously with herbs and spices. And of course served with rice. "I have been meaning to ask... what sect are you a part of? From which martial sect did you learn of Diamat Sword?"

  Koago put down his chopsticks. "Well, the first thing you must know is that the founders of Diamat Sword never kept secret the truths of Diamat Sword. So they never established a sect for it, and thusly many of the Sword Arts work off of Diamat Sword as a baseline. This means Diamat Sword is not confined to any single sect. Ah, but if you must know, I am part of the Ultramystic Sect, which makes me an Ultramystic."

  "Ultramystic Sect... what is their specialty?" She had read all about martial sects of the Realms Belligerent from the storybooks and late night tales. She was leaning on her knowledge of such tropes to quench her burning fire curiosity.

  "Communist Nirvana," said Koago. "We wish for the liberation of all sentient beings through communal cultivation. Our Cultivation Womb—Limitless Violence—comes from the great revolutionary Omniscient Dattreya Wairini herself. We cultivate Gnosis and Loving-Kindness for everyone, and resort to militancy—to martial arts—if need be."

  "So you are like... monks? Of the Law? Or perhaps of Rutra?"

  Koago shook his head. A small smile formed on his face. "We are more like... anti-monks. We revel with life, suffuse ourself with the fabric of pleasure, passion, and suffering to fully understand the Whorl and in so doing destroy the conception of the Whorl in our minds."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "The Whorl...?"

  "The Whorl of Life, Existence, and Suffering."

  Xing looked down on herself once again. All this time, she was just a simple dancer and performer. She never thought she would be talking about such deep philosophy and metaphysics with the likes of a martial master. But then again, life is inherently unpredictable, and they figured that for them to truly become great they must ride life's river.

  "I will need to cultivate my mind as well, it seems," said Xing. "These things feel beyond me..."

  Her guro shook his head. "Nay, Xing Naramao. You will have to realize that these enlightenments are realizations that you already know, inevitably and indubitably. Do not worry about the world, you will win it. Take your time and the world will reveal itself to you, because you are the world."

  Xing scratched her head. "But I have no propensity for intelligence. Isn't it so that some people are naturally just smarter than others?"

  "In the beginning, perhaps," said Koago. "And their upbringing no doubt influences how they view intelligence, and what capacity for reasoning they can attain. But all beings can attain the same level of intelligence. And even then, true intelligence—superintelligence—is something unconceptual and therefore irrational. It cannot be arrived upon with pure knowledge and reason."

  Xing bowed slowly. "I see. Does this mean I will have to take refuge in the Law?"

  Koago smiled. "You do not have to if you do not wish to, but many of our tenets recognize the Reality of the Law."

  Xing was surprised by two things—first, that she could follow the conversation (she has long been conditioned that her place in this world is that of performance, and all knowledges of the performances, and not to dabble too much in the arts of philosophers and alchemists and sorcererrs) and secondly that she did not have to convert. She had grown up largely religious-less, but at every turn she met mendicants and missionaries who tried to convert them willfully and completely to the Faith of Yenjanism. Her parents were, in truth, both Yajists. Her mother was born into a Yajist family, while her father had no official religion, only doing the rituals of his land and village. To get married, her father had to become a Yajist.

  Thusly, she had grown up with an intimacy with the tenets of the Yaji, and of the Immortal Road. She seemed that Yenjanism would be incompatible with what she had grown up with, though many of the missionaries would tell her that the Road is but another name for the Allcaring, otherwise known as God.

  She bought into none of it. How could she, when she follwoed the tenets of nature? And the tenets of Yenjanism called for the mortification of the flesh, when the tenets of Yajism called for the cultivation of the body? To create a vessel of immortality, while the flesh is mortified while being called the temple?

  "Come," said Koago, rising to his feet and drawing his blade once again. "Let us continue the lesson."

  A few days later, Xing would become interested again in the philosophical aspects of the martial world, of the Realms Belligerent. She asked: "Master, what does Dialectics mean, in truth?"

  "Riposte!" And Xing did so. She asked this in the middle of a sparring session, which was a very humorous point to ask the question. Koago, however, found it incredibly apt for the topic.

  Xing did riposte. It was a wonky one, but a riposte all the same—she caught the incoming blade with the flat of her own blade to swat it away, and then cut forward. Unfortunately, the angling of her blade caused the slap away to be weak, and Koago would've skewered her through if she hadn't minded her own footwork. She stepped diagonally to the right (after slapping the blade away to the left) just as she cut through, slicing through Koago's neck.

  Or, slightly bruising it at least. In sparring, they worked with blunted edges.

  "Good. Sloppy, but that is the point of training." Koago turned and twirled his blade. "Dialectics is the core of many things. In fact, one might say it is the core of the world. Dialectics is the positive expression of Violence. It is one of the fundamental truths of all of reality."

  Koago raised his blade. It gleamed in the light. The straight sword was made in such a way the blade was made in a diamond shape. This meant that the flat of the blade was raised in the middle, splitting it down the middle. The setting sun's gleam reflected off of one half of the blade-flat, and shadow dominated the other half.

  He said: "Tell me, Disciple Xing. What do you see?"

  Xing furrowed her eyebrows, confused. "I see... a sword. Gleaming off of the sunlight...?"

  "Yes. But see the blade. See how one part gleams with light, and the other gleams with shadow?"

  "Ah. Yes. My mother spoke to me about the interplay of light and dark. The truth of the Road is the two Essences of all things: the Light Ya and Dark Ji."

  "Yes. Exactly. The Yajist Tenet of the Two-Essence Road is one of the closest pre-modern concepts for dialectics. Now, looking at this blade, is the blade light? Or is it dark?"

  Xing set her jaw. She hesitated answering—was this some kind of rhetoric trick? When Guro Koago waited for her answer patiently, she eventually said: "The blade is... light?" But that's not right. The blade is a blade. It is a sword.

  "It contains light, but it is not light."

  "Right. The blade is a blade still, even with its body cut in light and dark." Xing said this in a half questioning manner.

  Koago, though, smiled. "Yes. Even with light and darkness, it is neither light nor darkness. It is both and neither at the same time. It is still a sword, but it is also the light, and it is also the dark."

  "Is this possible, guro? That one thing have multiple essences? That one thing be many things at once?"

  Koago smiled, and then turned the blade to the side. Light reflected off of the mirror-clear blade. "Not only is it possible, it is the ground of all reality. This is what dialectics is: the art of contradictions causing the investigation, discussion, and reasoning until a new contradiction is arrived at. In dialectics, all things have an opposition and a solution. And that solution inevitably changes the opposition. In dialectics, the solution to the contradiction is part of the original thing ultimately. Together, they are three things in one, and all things at once. A sword reflecting light is light, dark, and sword altogether. This is how the world moves. This is why time exists, and why forward movement exists. Because of the fundamental truth of opposition, contradiction, and difference.

  "There two truths to this world—first is that all things are fundamentally empty or void of inherent susbtance, and the second is that anything that could be misconstrued as substance always has some other reason for its effect, some other cause for its existence. This existence arises because of something. This is Dependent Origination. The arising of things from the interacting with other things... that is also in its essence, dialectic. If something arises from something, then what has arisen is the dialectic sublimation of the first thing. We will never be able to account for all the processes that causes sublimation, but anything that causes a sublimation is a negation. And finally, it must be noted that existence itself is dialectic. The fact that something exists means that nothing has been negated to create something. We are the dialectical sublimation of the idea of nothingness.

  "Dialectics is not about a thesis being countered by its antithesis, and then finding its synthesis in the violence that ensues within that. If anything, dialectics is the violence within it. It is the discursive process of all things, null and void of any starting point. Of any concrete metaphysical ground."

  Xing Naramao crossed her arms and thought. "So... from what I am hearing, it is similar to the concept of the Yaji. The Road contains Light Ya and Dark Ji. But the universe is not composed of just Ya, and not just composed of just Ji. It is composed of both, and truly all things are composed of both, and it is in a constant flux. But also the thing that contains Ya and Ji is both made up of Yaji and also transcendent of it. And more importantly, the interplay and interaction of opposing forces creates the universe."

  Now it was Koago's time to furrow his eyebrows. He said: "That's... a surprisingly close conception. The interplay between Ya and Ji is the Dialectics. The violence between them. That is why it is considered to be the closest thing to the ultimate reality of Violence."

  Xing smiled. "I know a thing or two about doctrine," she said. Which was true: as a performer, they got to travel around more than she thought she would be able to. Though the farthest they'd ever gotten from Selorong is Southern Shen, in the nether regions of the Jhongxiya continent. There they'd met many Yajist priests and monks working on their temples and ritual furnace pots. One of the Yajist priests invited their troupe to eat, and there Xing learned a great many about the ideas of Yaji. She couldn't quite understand it at first, but the abbess of that Yajist monastery—Abbess Xen'ong Zhishī—had taken an extra long time for some reason to help her reach an understanding of the deep knowledges of that doctrine and that teaching. Though the Yajist Code ultimately eluded her (Xing had the sinking suspicion that Xen'ong wanted her to take the black-robe and join her in the monastery), she came away with a more enlightened brain, a mind cultivated. "Though not a lot, and the doctrine of the Law is not something I am intimately familiar with. Only thing I know is that it is one of the most popular faiths in the Utter Islands, along with Rutraism and Yenjanism."

  Koago nodded, smiled. A swelling sense of pride billowed from him. Lilac eyes shone in the darkness—what he wanted to happen will happen. "I am filled with a pride for you, my disciple. Before we return to sparring, let me be clear.

  "Dialectics is both a process and a Law. At its base, it is nothing but the process for discursive action and investigative inquiry to prove something's truthfulness or realness. This is dialectics as it is used in the fields of rhetoric and communication.

  "At a higher, more philosophical level, it is the metaphysical fundamentality of interaction and negation. That all things are constantly interacting, negating, and inevitably changing. It is the fact that violence arises from one's self and will return to one's self.

  "And finally, with this realization, one realizes that as dialectics states that the new form of something is both separate from its origin and ultimately part of the wholeness of its thing of origin, one realizes the truth of nonduality. All things are an interdependent web of interpenetrating bloody spears, never unlashed, particles in the longest explosion ever known to man."

  Xing nodded. She readied her blade. She had gotten used to wielding it, she had similar experiences wielding dancing batons. "How does this apply to martial arts, master?"

  "The Diamat Sword applies the principles and philosophies of the metaphysical truth of Dialectics. Thusly: every strike has a negation. No matter how strong the strike. And from the negation arises a new strike—let it be yours. But respect your opponent's weapon, and respect your opponent's Art."

  Koago rushed forward, blade cutting a horizontal line. "Ready yourself!"