The home of Village Chief Baek Do-gyeong was the largest in the village.
Three buildings with more than ten rooms between them.
Baek Do-gyeong's family used the largest of the three.
It was a house he and his parents had built together.
The two buildings in the rear had been built by Baek Ho-yang's parents. They were too old to use now, but thanks to Baek Do-gyeong's diligent upkeep, they were still in good condition.
Baek Ho-yang looked around the interior.
This was the very house where he had lived as a child.
The memories of those days were preserved here, intact.
The pillars and furniture still bore the marks left by him and his siblings.
Baek Do-gyeong spoke with an apologetic expression.
"The house is a bit run-down, but it should be livable."
"Thank you. For maintaining this old house so well."
"Please, it is nothing. This place holds our family's history. Of course I had to look after it."
"Thanks to you, I can rest easy."
"You must be exhausted. Please rest. Tomorrow and the days after will likely give you little chance to."
Outside Baek Do-gyeong's house, a crowd of villagers had already gathered.
The outsider who had arrived after decades had turned out to be an elder of the Baek family — and they could not bring themselves to leave.
Living together in this remote place for so many years had forged deep bonds.
An elder of the Baek family was no stranger to them, and naturally they were curious.
For now, they were too self-conscious to barge in, but by tomorrow they would surely approach with open familiarity and a barrage of questions.
Baek Ho-yang could guess their hearts. He simply smiled and said nothing.
Baek Do-gyeong bowed to the two of them once more and went outside.
Left alone, Baek Ho-yang went inside the house.
Sixty years had passed since he left his homeland, yet the interior was preserved exactly as it had been.
Not a speck of dust sat on the furniture — testament to how meticulously Baek Do-gyeong had maintained the place.
Baek Ho-yang opened each door, examining and touching every corner.
Woo Geom-san watched in silence.
When at last he had inspected the entire house, Baek Ho-yang said:
"I will take this room."
The room he indicated was the one where his parents had lived.
In this small room, they had raised all their children.
For Baek Ho-yang, it was a space that held immeasurable meaning.
Woo Geom-san was given a small room near the entrance.
It was barely large enough for one person to lie down, but Woo Geom-san was perfectly content.
The size of the room did not matter.
What mattered was having a space to call his own.
After rolling around in the tiny room for a bit, Woo Geom-san stepped outside.
As he emerged, his gaze fell upon a massive dead tree standing in one corner of the yard.
It looked like the tree that had been struck by lightning and killed.
Woo Geom-san was drawn to it as though by a spell.
Years of exposure had left the dead tree's surface smooth and bleached white, as if dusted with snow.
He leaned his back against the base and sat down.
He did nothing at all, yet strangely, his mind felt at ease.
As Woo Geom-san gazed blankly at the sky, butterflies drifted into his view.
Dozens of them rode the breeze around the dead tree.
"There are so many butterflies."
White ones, black ones, swallowtails — the variety was remarkable.
As if honey had been smeared on the bark, the butterflies would not leave the dead tree, circling endlessly.
The sight of butterflies in every color riding the wind was so beautiful he could not look away.
A few bold ones even alighted on Woo Geom-san's shoulders.
He let them stay.
Clinging to him like ornaments, fluttering only their wings — they were endearing.
Woo Geom-san left the butterflies where they were and gazed up at the sky.
He did nothing.
He did not even have the thought of doing something.
He simply accepted this moment, without a single thing on his mind.
SHAAAA—!
In that moment, a gentle breeze swirled around Woo Geom-san.
It caressed his body softly, circling him.
The butterflies perched on him were swept away by the wind.
External qi, carried on the breeze, flowed into Woo Geom-san's body.
After gently brushing against his qi center, the qi surged through every last corner of his channels.
Though unintended, a vast qi pathway had already been carved inside Woo Geom-san's body.
The pathway — opened by the force of the Heavenly Pleasure Pill — traced a great circuit through his entire frame.
Born of crisis and shaped by nature, the pathway was unobstructed from end to end.
The external qi that had flowed in completed its circuit and was naturally expelled.
Once expelled, it lingered around Woo Geom-san's body.
The natural qi was impossibly gentle.
The butterflies rode its softness, orbiting him in lazy patterns.
It looked as though the butterflies were performing a dance with Woo Geom-san at its center.
Baek Ho-yang, having finished tidying his room, stepped outside — and witnessed the scene.
Even he could not suppress his awe.
"Well, well. That child has already begun stepping naturally into the stage of Qi Merging with Nature. Extraordinary. Truly extraordinary. Even the Quanzhen patriarchs would never have witnessed a sight like this."
The essence of Qi Merging with Nature lay in a technique called Inhaling Wind, Exhaling Water.
When breathing in, breathe as the wind does. When breathing out, exhale as water flows.
Wind and water were the freest and most harmonious forces in nature, and the technique was modeled after them.
To force the circulation of qi was to create blockages — and so the practice of qi had to follow the forms of nature.
Yet here was Woo Geom-san, without anyone teaching him, naturally mirroring the essence of Inhaling Wind, Exhaling Water.
Once the technique became second nature, the circulation of qi would grow freer, and the channels within his body would gradually widen.
For now, the qi flowing through Woo Geom-san's body was exceedingly faint — but at the height of mastery, it would swell into a torrent as mighty as a waterfall.
Seizing the moment, Baek Ho-yang resolved to pass on the full essence of Qi Merging with Nature to Woo Geom-san.
He sat down beside the boy and spoke.
"Breathe in as freely as the wind, and breathe out as gently as water. The wind does not try to smash through a wall — it goes around. It may seem slow, but in the end, the roundabout way is the fastest. Water flows from high ground to low, and all the world's principles are bound by this truth. Let your awareness reach toward the sky, but root your senses in the earth — and no movement shall stray beyond this."
Lost in a state of total absorption, Woo Geom-san breathed exactly as Baek Ho-yang instructed.
He harbored not a shred of doubt.
He simply breathed as he was told.
With each breath Woo Geom-san drew, the butterflies' dance grew more resplendent.
***
"Ungh."
The first thing Woo Geom-san saw upon opening his eyes was the blazing red sun.
It had risen above the eastern horizon, casting its hot light.
Caught off guard, Woo Geom-san shielded his eyes and squinted.
"What? Why is the sun......"
"You sat up through the entire night, so naturally the sun has risen again."
Baek Ho-yang's voice came from right beside him.
Turning, he saw Baek Ho-yang seated against the dead tree.
"Then I was here all night?"
"You were."
"And you did not wake me?"
"When my grandson has entered the State of Self-Forgetting, how could I possibly disturb him?"
Even Daoists who trained their entire lives rarely experienced the State of Self-Forgetting more than a handful of times.
To sink as deeply into it as Woo Geom-san had was rarer still.
That was why Baek Ho-yang had stayed by his side through the night, guarding his immersion from being broken.
Thanks to this vigil, dew had settled thickly on his hair and shoulders as well.
"Sitting all night has left my whole body stiff. I need to walk a bit."
"I'll come with you."
Woo Geom-san rose alongside Baek Ho-yang.
Indeed — his lower back and legs tingled numbly, and a good walk seemed the cure.
The two stepped outside together.
It was early morning, yet the villagers were already hard at work.
People were visible in the terraced paddies built along the hillside and in the fields near the creek.
Baek Ho-yang and Woo Geom-san strolled through every corner of the village, taking it all in.
Their feet carried them naturally toward the northern peak at the village's edge.
Tea fields had been cultivated along the steep slope.
They had been planted in Baek Ho-yang's grandfather's time.
The fields looked several times larger than when he had left.
The terraced rows of tea bushes blanketing the hillside were a sight to stir the heart.
"Grandfather!"
Baek Do-gyeong, working in the tea field, spotted Baek Ho-yang and came running.
Beside him was a tall, handsome young man in his early twenties.
The young man bowed his head in greeting.
"Your humble descendant Baek Wol-sang pays his respects, Great-Grandfather."
"You are Do-gyeong's son?"
"I am."
"A handsome young man. The very image of your father."
"Thank you."
Baek Ho-yang's words were apt — Baek Wol-sang was indeed handsome.
Tall, with broad shoulders, he looked as though he could handle himself in any fight.
Baek Ho-yang introduced Woo Geom-san to him.
"This is my adopted grandson, Woo Geom-san. By generational standing he would be your granduncle, but treat each other casually."
"Would that truly be appropriate?"
"Geom-san would not wish to be called granduncle either."
No sooner had Baek Ho-yang finished than Woo Geom-san spoke up.
"Would it be alright if I call you 'elder brother?'"
"Then I will call you by your name."
"Thank you, Brother Wol-sang!"
"Glad to know you, Geom-san."
Baek Wol-sang clasped Woo Geom-san's hand with a grin.
Watching this, Baek Do-gyeong chimed in with mock exasperation.
"Yesterday I told him to call me 'elder brother,' and today he is calling my son 'elder brother.' So now my son and I are the same generation? This is utter chaos."
"I will call you 'Uncle' instead."
"Tsk. I would have preferred 'brother,' but what can I do? I cannot be the same generation as my own son."
And so, in haphazard fashion, the three sorted out their generational standing.
Baek Ho-yang surveyed the tea field.
"The tea fields have grown several times over since I left."
"The village's young men have poured themselves into cultivating them."
"They must have worked terribly hard."
"They earned their reward — but whether we can sell the harvest in time is another question."
"What do you mean?"
"The landslide has blocked the road, so delivering the tea means taking the long way around. Whether the merchants will still be waiting by the time we arrive — that, I cannot say."
The merchants had given the village where Baek Do-gyeong and his people lived a name: Cloud Village.
The tea grown in the pure energy of Mount Cheonbaek was so exceptional in quality and flavor that it was prized as a premium tea.
The merchants called the harvest Cloud Tea, and three times a year they traveled to a village at the mountain's base to purchase it.
Their visits were on a fixed schedule — and if that window was missed, the next opportunity would not come until the following harvest.
Because the village depended on selling its tea to buy the goods it needed, making it to the lower village by the appointed date was essential.
"Could you not simply set out earlier?"
"That would mean moving the harvest forward, and an early harvest would lower the tea's quality. Then we could not command a fair price, and fewer merchants would bother to come."
"I see."
Merchants traveled all the way to this remote place precisely because Cloud Tea was exceptional.
If the quality dropped, they would have no reason to make the journey.
For that reason, moving the harvest forward was out of the question.
Nor could they ask the merchants to come later.
The tea merchants operated on fixed itineraries of their own.
They dealt in a wide variety of goods from all regions — rashly moving a schedule forward or back was not something they could do.
This was why Baek Wol-sang and the village's young men were growing more anxious by the day.
The task of transporting the tea and bringing back the supplies the village needed fell to the able-bodied young men.
And Baek Wol-sang was the leader among them.
Naturally, the weight on his shoulders was heavier than anyone's.
"You must have many worries."
"I have spoken carelessly and troubled you, Great-Grandfather."
"You have not."
"This is our problem to solve. Please, do not concern yourself. Take your time and enjoy the sights. We should return to our morning work."
Baek Wol-sang and Baek Do-gyeong went back to the tea field.
Woo Geom-san watched Baek Wol-sang and the village's young men laboring under the sweat of their brows and spoke.
"Is there no way to get the tea sold on time? They're working so hard......"
"Let us think on it. There must be a way to help."
"Yes!"
Baek Ho-yang gazed at the sky.
The fact that they had arrived at the village at this precise moment did not feel like coincidence.
"Even a dead end has its cracks, and no matter how high the mountain, a path to its summit exists. If we look, we will find a way."