Martial Arts is a fundamental method for progression, requiring only the Heart, unlike Heaven or Earth cultivation which needs a spirit root or bloodline. In the Head Realm's mortal world, this is largely unknown, as one needs to be at least Five Energies Returning to Origin to get the spiritual root.
All realms until the realm of Five Energies Returning to Origin have an early, mid and late stage. They are commonly seen in the world of Yanguo, and can be found everywhere. Beings at this level are respected in the wider world of Yanguo. In the mortal world, these are exceedingly rare, and have very few reclusive masters.
Stages of Martial Unity
Martial artists progress through various stages, each marked by unique abilities and understanding of intent. Here's a breakdown of these stages:
Early Stage
Begins to peer into the world of intent as two colors (red: opponent / blue: wielder).
Middle Stage
See both Red and Blue lines simultaneously. Martial artists in this realm are widely respected in the mortal worlds.
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Peak Stage
This stage is considered to be mostly unattainable for the people of the mortal world, and there are few people in history that've attained this realm. At this stage, one can run away from a Qi Building stage cultivator.
One can attain this stage by understanding that all intent is essentially the same.
- Early: See and understand Purple (see all intent as one & the same), allowing one to view and read their opponent's intent more directly and meticulously and ensuring that all of one's movements and techniques are flawless.
- Middle: Discover colors of the 7 Emotions and infuse them into one’s own intent.
- Late: Discover the infinite variations of colors (7 Emotions)
At this stage, one views the world of intent beyond the boundary of the self. While Peak artists only see red and blue, martial artists in this realm can see infinite colors in the wider world, and can imbue emotions into their Martial arts to make it seem alive.
It's said that reaching Five Energies Converging to the Origin requires reading all emotions, but in truth, reading every emotion is impossible. This is considered by the mortals of the Head Realm to be the ultimate peak of Martial Arts. There were very few people in history that had attained this realm, and was considered a myth by most. It is at this realm that one becomes capable of fighting against Qi Building practitioners.
They develop understanding that the seven colors of emotions combine and form an infinite array of intents. Using this, they awaken the divine consciousness, and obtain the Five Elements Spiritual Roots. With this, one is capable of being a heaven tribe cultivator.
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They absorb the 5 fundamental spiritual energies (Five Phases) equally and rebuild the body balancing the 3 dantians and the Spiritual Root. Using this, Martial artists can finally make up and get the Spirit Root that cultivators are born with. Their bodies are now optimal for using Martial Arts, and can be considered more of an Enhanced Human rather than a regular human.
This realm triggers a transformation in their body and spirit. The flow of their Qi in their body becomes so pure it can slow down the aging process within thier body, by staving off celular decay and boosting celular regeneration within their body. This stage was exclusively created by Kim Young Hoon.
In the history of the world, no one else has ever made this stage, and the only two people that have attained and surpassed this realm are Kim Young Hoon and Seo Eun Hyun. Can create an inner dantian that converges with Earth tribe methods.
You could say that this is where martial artists truly depart from the rest of humanity.
Karate - a popular form of martial arts.
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The Martial Body
Unlike all other breakthroughs, the squire breakthrough is artificial. Specifically, it's a procedure. It involves continuously irradiating and healing an apprentice to create evolution at a cellular level; most cells die, some mutate, and the strongest cells survive. The result of a successful procedure is the creation of the Martial Body from the strongest mutated cells.
The procedure is incredibly painful, usually the worst pain a martial artist will experience in their life, and can take anywhere from hours to a few days (it seems that it takes longer for stronger apprentices). Unlike other breakthroughs, this one can be attempted whenever, even on weak martial apprentices and humans.
The catch is that humans and weak apprentices are practically guaranteed to die from it and only the strongest apprentices have a reasonable chance of survival. A successful procedure creates the martial artist's 'Martial body'. The martial body is the power behind this realm.
On top of that, more advanced countries like Kandria tailor the martial body to the martial artist's needs (like giving a speed-oriented martial artist a lighter body) and produce superior martial bodies in general (i.e. multiple times stronger purely in terms of raw physical parameters). This has the unfortunate side effect that martial artists at squire level and above from less advanced nations are at a significant disadvantage.
Their lesser procedure produces a weaker body less suited for the martial artist. A weaker body is an obvious disadvantage, but it's also important to remember how pivotal uniqueness and individuality are when considering the body can't be customized as much.
Summing up the above, to break through, you need to be in a country that has the procedure, the more advanced the better. If you want to survive, you need to develop the uniqueness of your martial art. Considering that you will receive a highly customized body, you should be certain that you don't pick a body you will regret later, so you should only go forward with the procedure once you're certain about what you want.
After becoming a squire, you'll need to spend a while (probably several months) acclimating to your new power. Squire bodies can shred through normal humans just by casually moving around, so squires have to learn to control their power. A squire would be hard-pressed to lose against a UFC fighter because their bodies are too tough to be damaged by a human's attacks, even without defending themselves.
Furthermore, they are faster, stronger, have better perception, can live for hundreds of years, are unaffected by diseases that would kill a normal human, and more. At the low end, you have a martial artist who can obliterate the strongest apprentice one-on-one, can swim through the air, is a threat to normal humans by just moving around, and could likely singlehandedly take on a modern Earth military.
At the peak of the squire realm, one martial artist was capable of traveling long distances at Mach 3, dealing with other strong martial squires capable of all of the above with little effort, and enduring a low senior-level attack which you could roughly equate to a massive bomb capable of destroying a decently sized hill. The martial body is highly customizable and allows martial artists to do strange and unique things like freezing attacks, manipulate their bodies, or specialize in one aspect like speed or power.
First, squires need to adapt to their new strength by getting used to their power. Most apprentice techniques are less or not effective at the squire level, so usually squires need to update their techniques. After getting used to their new bodies, squires should focus on developing their bodies, creating new techniques highly suited to their Martial Body, and getting combat experience.
The body of a squire is fundamentally different from that of an apprentice or a human in a way that can't be recreated by training. Techniques that are valuable at the apprentice level don't work as well for such ridiculous bodies, and squires usually have to recreate their fighting style at this new level. The Martial Body is so superior in every way to a normal human body that a squire really can't lose to an apprentice.
Here's a summary of the key differences between an apprentice and a squire:
| Feature | Apprentice | Squire |
|---|---|---|
| Body | Normal Human Body | Martial Body (Highly Customizable) |
| Strength | Limited by Human Potential | Superhuman |
| Techniques | Standard Techniques | Customized to Martial Body |
| Longevity | Normal Human Lifespan | Hundreds of Years |
| Vulnerability | Susceptible to Diseases | Unaffected by most Diseases |
Ethnographic Arts
There is longevity to the ethnographic arts: a report referred back to over the years, a photo that captures a critical moment and still resiliently fresh truth, a chart of a common practice that renders it momentarily foreign and, as a result, suddenly intelligible. In cruder words, ethnographic analysis has a longer shelf life than, say, traditional market research. The latter requires tending, updating, refreshing to keep the demographic or other categories replete with a fresh cast of characters.
Ethnography: understanding culture through observation.
There is a mastery of the ethnographic arts. For the last twenty years, I have practiced on all sides of the ethnographic practice - as a student and academic, as a consultant and now as a corporate practitioner. Now, given the recession, I hire ethnographers to unearth the social practices of the elderly in Turkey or daily lives of farmers in rural China. I have become, I confess, an armchair anthropologist.
As a result, I have had the necessity of discerning what makes some ethnographic practice masterful and long lasting and some not. Documentary finesse is a deceivingly simple act of exchange. As ethnographers, we display trappings of our work (research goals, methods and documentary equipment) in exchange for a record-able moment of truthfulness.
Not everyone can walk into a tiny Shanghai apartment with two video cameras and in the meager few hours allotted to us as corporate ethnographers make the occupants feel so at ease that they share intimate nuances of their lives. I have seen the flip side, a photo of a field researcher setting up her field recording equipment in front of stunned farming couple in rural Sichuan. The pair could not see the researcher for her large digital still camera on tripod and glossy laptop.
Edward Ives in a classic on the participant observation method insists the interviewer intimately know his documentary equipment, in his case the tape-recorder and in Faulkner’s case the video camera.3 This familiarity, he argues, is necessary so that the technology does not get in the way the interviewer’s real work, the interview.
Yet, Ives goes further to insist on a code of ethnographic conduct. For him, the interview is an intimate affair, closer in spirit to marriage or companionship (but definitely not therapy). It is also a mutual exchange: audience for narration, in his case.
Over the past few years, I have seen that what is exchanged during fieldwork (during observation or interview) goes beyond an audience and tale. Not a simple trade in gifts or cash, the ethnographic exchange deals in a currency on par with Georg Simmel’s idea of a higher social unity, sociability.4 As ethnographers, we give audience to a particular social performance. We initiate the particularity with research plans and goals.
Sociability is an ideal measure of human social engagement. According to Simmel, it is deeply democratic, pleasurable and more about unity than individuality. As a measure of exchange in ethnographic practice, it is evidenced in the light touch, a collaborative engagement that actively downplays the power and presence of the fieldworker and showcases the social performance of those studied. From the ethnographer, it requires more social grace than social presence.
I have seen this grace at play in remarkable snowball recruiting. While in Mexico, I watched a frequent research partner and consultant, Luis Arnal of in/situm, ease his way into a conversation with a father of two who was paying for his second daughter’s coming-of-age party dress.
Even without the benefit of Spanish fluency, I could witness the artful social dance whereby Luis charmed himself into the conversation, shared his and my plight (the study of extended family events), learned that of the father and his two daughters (the upcoming coming-of-age ball), and ultimately got us invited to the younger woman’s upcoming party (conveniently timed within our fieldwork schedule). It looked like magic: it was not.
Luis’ congeniality, honesty and enthusiasm opened the possibility whereby the father and his daughters could not only consider inviting us but actually want to invite us to their party. I have also seen instances where such grace was impossible.
I hired a team of sociology graduate students in eastern China for the same project but different context: factory laborers off-duty social lives in metropolitan China. In this case, the socio-economic cards were stacked against the graduate students as they struggled to engage with the young laborers.
They did not have the social wherewithal to be able to downplay their obvious advantage. The graduate students’ sympathy was not empathy and the laborers rightfully sensed a veiled disrespect. In contrast, for the same project and same site (PRC), I also hired a relatively inexperienced non-Chinese ethnographer, Elisa Oreglia, who had what my colleagues and I dub “the ethnographer’s nose.”6
Oreglia’s intuition on who to engage and how, her ability to empathize and, frankly, then middling Mandarin fluency opened the possibilities for deep, evolving social exchanges that continue to this day. I heard evidence of the honesty, openness and resulting richness of her engagements in her voice on our weekly phone calls. I saw it in the photos she gathered and field notes she wrote. She documented not only the lives of these women, but also the rich and genuine playfulness of the women’s - researcher and researched - engagement.
Unlike market research, ethnography is less concerned with individualized truths. The exchange occurs in broader social and cultural terms. Our ask is for a truthful social performance, one that enacts social and cultural dynamics not isolatable facts of individual behaviors.
Oreglia’s work revealed an emerging complexity of our work: the need to document in a cyber rich world of self-documentation. The hotel attendants, masseuses and waitresses she interviewed actively participated in a rich Chinese world of digital social networking. QQ had already formed an empire of online playgrounds, avatars, messaging and more. The women’s mobile phones had more photos of themselves than of others.
This gets us to the last step in documentary finesse - the less romantic work of documentation. If our audience and interest invite the ideally sociable exchange, it is up to us to document and catalogue. The social magic of the interview, as we know, is ephemeral unless captured and made accessible for our and other’s interpretation.
Decisions must be made at the outset and along the way as to what counts as “data” - field notes, photographs, observation formats, audio recordings, video tapes, etc. Yet I find we collectively drop the ball here. Best case scenarios are when I receive a clearly labeled and cross-referenced folder of photos, audio recordings and field or interview notes along with the next higher order of abstraction, the field reports.7
Depending on how familiar and confident I am with my vendor or collaborator, I want more or less detail. The documentation is a tangible expression of the quality of the research engagement. Its richness should invite further analysis, not shut it down because it was too threadbare. Documentation gives us as ethnographers the tools to take others alongside for the journey from the familiar to the unknown and back again. The finesse comes in capturing telling social performances so that that journey changes us and our audiences. Without it, we simply record but do not transform.
Several years back, I insisted a friend and I take a ten hour bus ride from central to western Oaxaca, Mexico. I needed to know where we had come from and where we were going, I explained. The bus’s slow pace, the shifting scenery, even the physical discomfort would prepare me for new places and new people. I could arrive less encumbered.
The physical journey for me readies my senses and awareness to the unfamiliar. While rarely pleasant, the ethnographic journey from home base to field and back serves a purpose. Our craft is necessarily embodied. The physical transport, the emotional complexities, the infuriating logistics recalibrate our senses. The passage of time and place allows a less violent shedding of the known and smoother transition into the role of the fieldworker.
These experiences ground and calibrate our analysis. They also open opportunities for change - our own and our stakeholders. The transition happens in reverse upon return. Long flights allow thoughts to meander. Memories of home remind of preset expectations and a need to resume prior dialogues.
Victor Turner analyzes similar transitions in his studies of Ndembu “rites de passage.” While he ascribes these rituals to “small-scale, relatively stable and cyclical societies,” I find his description of such rites apt to the relatively standardized corporate practices of research, including ethnography.8