Woo Geom-san and Baek Ho-yang happened to glance behind them.
Far in the distance, the village where they had spent a single night was visible. A massive blaze was rising from its center.
Woo Geom-san recognized at once that the flames were coming from White Crimson Temple.
"The temple's on fire. Do you think the villagers set it?"
"Most likely."
Baek Ho-yang nodded slowly.
Today had been the day of the Red Lotus Festival.
The villagers had come expecting to see the handsome Holy Monk and the beautiful White Crimson Holy Maidens — only to be greeted by a hideous, decrepit old monk and withered crones.
The fury of the village men, upon learning that the women they had coupled with were not beautiful maidens but grotesque old hags — that was easy enough to imagine.
Whether the aged Holy Monk and crones would survive was something neither of them could say.
What was certain was that White Crimson Temple, their base of operations, would be reduced to ash and never rebuilt.
Baek Ho-yang began walking.
"Leave the village's affairs to its people. We have our own road to walk."
"Right!"
Woo Geom-san nodded and fell in behind Baek Ho-yang.
Despite the ordeal of the previous night, his routine had not changed.
He breathed correctly, walked correctly, and rolled the iron balls in his right hand.
The only difference from before was that breathing had become far easier.
Each time he breathed correctly, he could feel internal and external qi flowing in and out through his qi center.
Without any conscious effort, qi used his body as a passageway and flowed on its own.
As a result, walking no longer felt as strenuous as it once had.
Observing the lightness in his step, Baek Ho-yang spoke.
"Without intending it, you have stepped into the stage of Stillness of the Empty Mind."
"Stillness of the Empty Mind?"
"The entry stage of the Transcendent Heart Formula. It means that qi flows naturally without one needing to exert effort. Ordinarily, it takes at least five years of correct breathing to reach this stage — yet you have leapt past that barrier in a single bound. I suppose this is what they mean when they say misfortune turns to fortune."
The defining feature of the Transcendent Heart Formula was that one had to feel the flow of qi with the entire body.
Rather than forcibly channeling qi through a mental cultivation formula, what mattered was perceiving how qi flowed in its most natural state.
This, however, was not easy for those who had already learned conventional cultivation formulas or martial arts.
A cultivation formula, after all, was a discipline refined and improved over generations to extract maximum efficiency from minimum effort.
Learning one was hard enough, but forgetting what had already been mastered was harder still.
Having already internalized a method that yielded peak efficiency, abandoning the familiar and starting anew was a feat few warriors could manage.
For this reason, even within the Quanzhen Sect, those who had truly mastered the Transcendent Heart Formula were rare.
Woo Geom-san, on the other hand, had a shattered qi center that made it impossible to use any formula he had previously learned.
Yet his qi sensitivity was remarkably sharp.
Even without conscious intent, he perceived and responded to the flow of qi with keen awareness.
It was a talent far from common.
Perhaps the Transcendent Heart Formula was simply a perfect match for him.
But learning to breathe correctly did not mean one could immediately enter the stage of Stillness of the Empty Mind.
It normally took a minimum of five to ten years of dedicated training to reach that threshold.
Yet Woo Geom-san had skipped ahead and arrived there in a single leap.
It was an unintended result of overcoming the aphrodisiac called the Heavenly Pleasure Pill — but without his own ironclad willpower and relentless effort to support it, this miracle would never have been possible.
"Though you have entered the stage of Stillness of the Empty Mind faster than most, if you grow lazy in your training or let arrogance creep in, you will end up neither here nor there. Whenever one enters a new stage of martial cultivation, one must train all the harder to make it truly one's own. Do you understand?"
"Yes! I will not waste a single moment and devote myself to training."
"Good. That is enough."
Pleased with Woo Geom-san's answer, Baek Ho-yang smiled.
And in truth, from the moment they left the village, Woo Geom-san did not neglect his training for a single instant.
He breathed correctly, walked correctly, and rolled the iron balls between his fingers.
The two iron balls had now grown to three.
CLATTER—!
Three iron balls meshed like gears in Woo Geom-san's palm.
By day he rolled the iron balls; by night he threaded the needle eye — healing his broken hands bit by bit.
Through this endless effort, Woo Geom-san's hand movements had grown quite natural.
He had not yet recovered the grip strength he once had, but the fine motor control of his fingers had nearly returned to its pre-injury level.
Still, Woo Geom-san did not ease up on his training.
The daily routine of walking with Baek Ho-yang was itself his training.
Two months passed before the two finally arrived at their destination.
"Wow!"
Woo Geom-san's jaw dropped at the vast mountain range stretching endlessly before him.
Countless peaks clustered together as a single massive body.
The overwhelming sense of mass and scale dwarfed any mountain range he had ever seen.
Thick clouds clung to the mountains' midsections, obscuring the summits entirely.
Woo Geom-san spoke, looking daunted.
"People actually live up in mountains that high?"
"They do. Even in those lofty heights, there are villages, and many people making their lives."
Before Baek Ho-yang's eyes, he could almost see his younger self — romping through Mount Cheonbaek with childhood friends.
Decades had passed since he left his homeland, yet he still remembered his friends' faces with perfect clarity.
Whether they were still alive was another matter.
"Let us climb."
"Right!"
"The path is treacherous. Be careful."
Mount Cheonbaek's terrain was so rugged that the trails were equally perilous.
Even people accustomed to mountain paths could slip and plummet down a sheer cliff with a single misstep.
Woo Geom-san nodded and followed Baek Ho-yang.
The mountain trail was brutally steep from the very first step.
Without Baek Ho-yang leading the way, it would have been hard to believe anyone used this as a path at all.
The going was so rough that before long, Woo Geom-san's face was flushed and his breath coming in gasps.
But he let the shortness of breath be, and let the heaviness of his legs be. He simply left them as they were.
Breathe correctly, walk correctly — and the rest would take care of itself.
Instead, Woo Geom-san focused on the energy of Mount Cheonbaek.
Just as Baek Ho-yang had said, the mountain was saturated with an exceptionally potent energy.
The sky-piercing grandeur of the peaks seemed to be the source.
When Woo Geom-san opened his qi sensitivity, the energy pervading Mount Cheonbaek responded.
Through his breathing, the mountain's qi began flowing in and out of his body.
The intensity of it startled even him — he had never felt anything this powerful.
Qi moved through his channels as freely as if strolling through its own home.
Left to flow unimpeded, his breathing and stride stabilized.
At last, Woo Geom-san found himself with the leisure to take in his surroundings.
Mount Cheonbaek was even more rugged and beautiful than it had appeared from a distance.
He could see why it bore a name meaning "foremost beneath heaven."
'This truly is a place where immortals might dwell.'
The cloud-wrapped summits looked fit for celestial beings, and the bottomless gorges seemed to harbor eerie presences in their depths.
Merely stepping foot in Mount Cheonbaek made him feel as though his body and mind were being cleansed.
That was when it happened.
"Oh dear."
Baek Ho-yang's sudden exclamation snapped Woo Geom-san to attention. He looked ahead.
His expression shifted to dismay.
An enormous mass of fallen boulders had formed a veritable mountain before them.
Baek Ho-yang murmured.
"It seems there was a landslide."
"The path looks completely blocked."
Just as Woo Geom-san said, the boulders were heaped so high that no trace of the trail remained.
Baek Ho-yang moved closer to examine them.
A single boulder was bigger than a respectable house.
Such boulders were stacked in layers too numerous to count.
A warrior with movement techniques could leap over them without much trouble, but for ordinary people, the height was insurmountable.
Baek Ho-yang inspected the surface of the boulders.
Green moss had begun to creep across them.
"Judging by how little moss has grown, the landslide could not have happened very long ago."
"How long ago, do you think?"
"Three or four months, perhaps."
"Hmm. Then the villagers must be isolated."
"This is not the only path down the mountain, so they would not be completely cut off. But having to take the long way around the range would multiply the travel time severalfold."
"That is unfortunate."
The longer one spent on the mountain, the greater the danger.
Especially on a mountain as treacherous as Mount Cheonbaek — the risk became unspeakable.
For ordinary villagers, it was a punishing ordeal.
"I worry about how the people are getting by."
"Let's hurry up, then."
"We will have to climb over this boulder field. Take great care not to fall."
"Yes!"
Woo Geom-san answered with resolve.
The thought of scaling those colossal boulders was frightening, truth be told. But turning back now to find another route would be far too wasteful.
One way or another, they had to climb over.
Woo Geom-san steeled himself and began ascending the boulders.
Unlike Baek Ho-yang — who could clear several massive boulders in a single leap — he had to inch his way up.
Scaling the boulder field was an immense challenge for Woo Geom-san.
With Baek Ho-yang by his side he would not die, but that did not mean the danger had vanished.
Still, Woo Geom-san trusted himself.
He trusted the effort he had poured in over the months spent at Baek Ho-yang's side.
Woo Geom-san emptied his mind of everything else and focused solely on climbing.
The moss-slicked rock surfaces were treacherous; he nearly slipped and fell several times. But each time, he caught his balance with uncanny precision and overcame the crisis.
Baek Ho-yang climbed from a short distance away, watching over him.
He dearly wished he could carry Woo Geom-san and climb the mountain himself.
For him, it would not be difficult in the least.
With his ability, he could vault over this boulder field and reach the village in an instant.
But that would do nothing for Woo Geom-san's growth.
He was worried about the villagers who had been isolated for months, but there was nothing he could do for them right this moment.
In the end, the most he could accomplish right now was to confirm that they were safe.
He could not forfeit Woo Geom-san's opportunity for growth merely to check on their well-being.
Countless training methods existed in the world.
Over long ages, many had studied and devised ways to push the body to its limits.
But none were as effective as climbing a mountain.
Mountain climbing built endurance of wind and lung, developed muscles in balanced harmony, and sharpened the body's coordination.
Scaling a near-vertical rock face was even more effective.
It was the ultimate form of training — one that demanded every last muscle in the body without exception.
For someone like Woo Geom-san, whose body's harmony had been shattered by multiple severe injuries, no better training existed.
Sweat poured from every inch of Woo Geom-san's body as he ascended the boulder field.
Beads of perspiration stung his eyes, but he did not so much as furrow his brow.
There was no room to wipe sweat away.
A moment's lapse in concentration could send him plummeting, so he channeled every nerve into the climb.
Fierce heat radiated from his entire body.
Baek Ho-yang watched in silence.
To his eyes, the surrounding qi was clearly visible — streaming in and out of Woo Geom-san's body.
Mount Cheonbaek's qi was treating the boy's body as a playground, frolicking through him at will. Perhaps because of this, Woo Geom-san's movements were growing faster by the minute.
Watching him, Baek Ho-yang murmured to himself.
'I may need to teach him the second stage of the Transcendent Heart Formula sooner than I expected.'