CLACK! CLACK-CLACK-CLACK—!
Two iron balls spun in Woo Geom-san's hand like wheels on an axle.
The fingers that had once been broken at the bone and crushed at the muscle — so numb they could barely feel a thing — now moved as smoothly as if oiled.
Woo Geom-san moved the iron balls freely using nothing but the sensation in his fingers, without even looking at them.
Clear proof that the feeling in his fingertips had returned in force.
Even after disembarking from the ship, Woo Geom-san had not let go of the iron balls for a single moment.
While walking, he rolled them without fail. In the evenings when he rested, he practiced threading the needle eye.
The result: he could now move two iron balls at will, and when threading the needle eye, he succeeded three or four times out of every ten attempts.
Compared to when he had first picked up the needle and thread, this was a dramatic improvement. But Woo Geom-san was not satisfied.
His goal was to freely manipulate three iron balls in one hand and to succeed at threading the needle on every last attempt out of a hundred by the time they reached their destination.
Walking correctly had become familiar to him as well.
Following the Flow.
He now had a clear sense of what it meant to follow the current.
When he walked the way Baek Ho-yang had taught him, he could feel the flow of qi.
Walking correctly meant not resisting that flow, but moving with it.
The more accustomed he became to breathing correctly, the stronger the flow of qi felt.
Woo Geom-san had come to a realization.
That the two disciplines were not separate things.
The two were connected as one, and could not be properly mastered if practiced independently.
They had to be cultivated together.
What mattered most was the right state of mind.
Non-action in accordance with nature.
Do not force. Follow what arises of its own accord.
'Do not forcibly circulate qi. Entrust yourself to the principles of nature. The wind blows of its own will, and water flows to lower ground. Qi is the same — do not try to grasp it. Let it flow.'
Attempting to accumulate qi in his damaged qi center was a fool's errand.
No matter how excellent the mental formula, any qi he gathered would leak away.
If that was the case, then there was no reason to cling to the notion of storing qi.
The qi center was merely a passageway that qi drifted through.
When needed, he simply had to borrow the qi passing through.
His understanding was still too shallow to manipulate qi as freely as he envisioned, but the concept itself had taken firm root.
That was the turning point.
The moment he began to feel at ease.
The burden that had been pressing down on his chest lifted, and he found himself breathing and moving a little more freely.
Naturally, walking became far more comfortable.
As though this way of walking had always been his own.
A smile formed on Baek Ho-yang's lips.
He found joy in witnessing Woo Geom-san's progress.
'Did my master feel this way too?'
The face of his master, long since passed from this world, rose in his mind.
The memory was too old to be vivid, but he recalled that whenever his master looked at him, the old man was always smiling.
Just as he himself was now.
'This is a fine thing.'
Walking with Woo Geom-san had taught him something: that a road walked by two was far more enjoyable than one walked alone.
The realization that even at his age there were still things to learn made him happier still.
Just then, Woo Geom-san, walking beside him, spoke up as though something had just occurred to him.
"Grandfather!"
"What is it?"
"Where exactly are we headed?"
"You mean our destination?"
"Yes!"
"Have I not told you yet? We are going to Mount Cheonbaek."
"Mount Cheonbaek?"
Woo Geom-san tilted his head in puzzlement.
It was a name he had never heard before.
"True to its name, it is a vast rocky mountain shrouded in thick mist throughout all four seasons. Surrounded by other towering peaks, with nothing but narrow passes for entry, it is nearly inaccessible to outsiders. Aside from the people who live nearby, almost no one even knows it exists."
"It sounds incredibly remote."
"That it is. As remote as remote gets."
"How did you come to know about a place like that?"
"It is this old man's homeland. I was born and raised in a village deep within Mount Cheonbaek."
"Oh!"
"To reach the nearest city from there, you have to cross nine peaks. That should tell you how remote it is."
"How did you manage to live in a place like that? It must have been terribly difficult."
The Woo Manor where Woo Geom-san had been born stood at the heart of the waterways.
Situated where the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal intersected, it was only natural that people and goods converged there.
Dozens, even hundreds of people passed through Woo Manor every day; not a single day went by without visitors.
The manor and its surroundings bustled constantly with people.
Everything needed for daily life was within arm's reach, and even what was not could be procured within a day.
Having grown up in such an environment, Woo Geom-san could scarcely imagine how harsh life must be in a mountain hamlet hemmed in by nine peaks.
His grandson's words drew a smile from Baek Ho-yang.
"Indeed, it must have been hard. But back then, I did not know it was hard. My parents were both alive, and I had friends. Everything was lacking, yet the laughter never stopped. My parents and the village elders all worked tirelessly so their children would never go hungry. They cleared steep mountainsides to build rice paddies and tea fields — you can imagine how hard they must have labored."
"That really does sound grueling."
"And yet not one of them showed a hint of hardship. They fed us with rice from the paddies and sold tea from the fields in the city to buy whatever was needed. Just think how treacherous and exhausting that journey must have been. Still, not once did any of them wear a look of suffering before their children."
Throughout the telling, the smile never left Baek Ho-yang's face.
He was already well past eighty.
He had left his homeland at twenty, which meant he had not set foot there in nearly sixty years. Yet when he closed his eyes, the scenery of those days arose as vividly as ever.
Woo Geom-san asked cautiously.
"Then how did you come to learn martial arts? Being in such a remote place, you would have had no connection to the Quanzhen Sect."
"At the time, my master was traveling in search of places with favorable qi. His wanderings eventually brought him to Mount Cheonbaek, where he discovered me romping about with my friends."
Baek Ho-yang had been twelve years old at the time.
His master, recognizing Baek Ho-yang's talent, remained in the village and taught him martial arts.
"I did not understand it then — why he stayed at Mount Cheonbaek to teach me. Only later, looking back, did I realize: it was because the environment was ideal for laying the foundations of martial arts."
The qi of Mount Cheonbaek was pure.
Touching the sky above, with almost no human presence to disturb it, the mountain had preserved its original purity.
Baek Ho-yang's master had recognized this and made sure the boy's foundations were built there.
And so Baek Ho-yang spent eight years at Mount Cheonbaek before departing at the age of twenty.
"And you never once went back after that?"
"No. So consumed was I by Quanzhen's martial arts that I could not return even once. No matter that I had renounced the secular world to become a Daoist — toward my parents, it was an unforgivable sin."
Regret shadowed Baek Ho-yang's face.
In his youth, thoughts of his parents and siblings had not even crossed his mind.
Learning and training in martial arts had been burden enough.
By the time his martial arts neared completion, one thing after another had held him in place.
And so the years slipped by, until he was past eighty.
Sixty long years without once visiting his homeland — and he had grown old.
When he had taken Woo Geom-san as both disciple and grandson, the thought of Mount Cheonbaek had not come to him by accident.
He knew that if the mountain where he himself had built his foundations was the right place for his own training, it would also be the ideal setting for teaching Woo Geom-san.
The chances that his parents or siblings were still alive were almost nil, but if he could at least see their descendants, he felt he could pass from this world with no regrets.
They say that even a beast yearns for home when death draws near.
A Daoist who had trained for nearly seventy years was no different from a beast in that regard.
"What is the Dao, that I cast aside even the bonds of blood for its sake? I cannot fathom it now. You must never do the same. You must never make the mistake of turning your back on your own flesh and blood for the sake of the Dao."
"Yes! I will take those words to heart."
Woo Geom-san replied firmly.
Fate had led him to Baek Ho-yang's side, but not a single day had passed without thoughts of his family.
He had left Woo Manor precisely to protect his flesh and blood.
The bond he shared with his siblings ran deep.
He walked with Baek Ho-yang now, but he was certain that someday he would return to Woo Manor.
After that, the two continued walking, exchanging many more words along the way.
Before they knew it, the sun was sinking low on the horizon.
As Woo Geom-san scanned for a place to camp, his eyes lit up.
A sizable village was visible in the distance.
"There's a village over there."
"So there is."
"Looks like quite a few houses. I bet they even have an inn."
"Very well. Let us rest comfortably at an inn tonight."
"Heh heh."
Woo Geom-san gave an abashed grin.
They had been sleeping outdoors ever since disembarking from the ship.
He was used to it by now and roughing it was not all that hard, but after spending night after night on bare ground, tonight he wanted to sleep on a soft mattress.
The two entered the village.
"Oh! It's even bigger up close than it looked from a distance."
"At a glance, there appear to be over a thousand households."
A village of more than a thousand households was by no means small.
Even assuming a family of four per household, that meant some four thousand people. For such a settlement to exist this far from the main roads was quite a concentration of people.
"Hmm."
As Baek Ho-yang surveyed the village, he let out a low murmur.
Something discordant had caught his eye at the village center.
Red roof tiles jutting skyward and a colossal stone Buddha carved from rock loomed above the surrounding rooftops.
Woo Geom-san spoke carefully.
"Don't tell me that's a temple?"
"It certainly appears to be."
"I've never seen a temple sitting right in the middle of a village before."
Just as Daoist temples were typically tucked deep in the mountains, Buddhist temples, too, were almost always found in remote hills. Even the closest ones stood at a village's outskirts or some distance away. For one to sit squarely in the heart of a village like this was highly unusual.
"The people of this village must be deeply devout."
Baek Ho-yang's expression was far from settled as he spoke.
It was not a normal sight, but he was merely a passing outsider — he had no grounds to question why a temple stood in the middle of their village.
After staring hard at the temple for a moment, Baek Ho-yang looked away.
"Let us find an inn."
"Right!"
Fortunately, finding one was easy.
Three inns stood along the main road at the village crossroads.
The two entered the largest of them: the Great Fortune Inn.
"Welcome!"
A young server greeted them.
"Do you have a room available?"
"Yes! We do."
"Good. Please prepare tonight's dinner and tomorrow's breakfast along with the room."
"Two meals for two people, that would be......"
"One moment. Only prepare one serving."
"Pardon? But there are two of you......"
"My stomach has been giving me trouble, so I will not be eating."
There was no need to reveal that he was substituting meals with fasting pills, so he gave a casual excuse.
The server accepted this without suspicion.
Baek Ho-yang settled the bill, then spoke to Woo Geom-san.
"I will head up to the room and rest. You eat and come up after."
"Yes, Grandfather!"
Woo Geom-san answered politely.
With that, Baek Ho-yang retired to the room, leaving Woo Geom-san alone in the dining hall.
Fortunately, there were not many guests, and plenty of empty seats remained.
Woo Geom-san took a suitable seat and surveyed the interior.
From the outside, the inn had looked fairly large, but the inside was shabby.
The pillars, tables, and chairs were so worn they appeared to be several decades old at least. Perhaps because of that, most of the guests in the inn were elderly — long-time regulars, from the look of it.
They sat in small clusters, murmuring among themselves.
From the nearest table, the voices of several stout men drifted over.
"The Red Lotus Festival is already tomorrow. I can't wait to see who gets chosen this time."
"I hear the Holy Monk himself will preside over the ceremony for this Red Lotus Festival."
"Then the White Crimson Holy Maidens are sure to appear as well."
"Just thinking about seeing those angelic faces — I'm excited already."
"Heh heh."
"Who do you think will be chosen this time?"
For some reason, the eyes of the men engaged in conversation were shot through with red, and a jaundiced tinge showed on their faces.
Woo Geom-san mulled over what he had heard.
'Holy Monk, Red Lotus Festival, White Crimson Holy Maidens?'
Something about it rubbed him the wrong way.