Early morning on Cheonliang Mountain. The mist hadn't lifted yet.
Baki was moving through the clearing with his eyes closed.
His steps were unhurried, but every one of them landed somewhere deliberate — somewhere only he could see. A punch went out, came back, a sidestep, another punch. Eyes shut, but his body moved like there was a real person in front of him.
'He's taller than me, longer reach too. Charging straight in is pointless. I need to stay outside his comfortable range. And those hand blades...'
Sweat dripped from his forehead and hit the ground.
'Good. This feels right.'
The corner of his mouth moved. He muttered under his breath, "Now we're talking."
"Is Baki-hyung losing his mind?"
Vin Jin had just come up the mountain path. He stared at the man throwing punches at empty air and turned to Mary, who was already watching nearby.
Mary lowered her voice. "Don't break his concentration. He's shadow fighting."
"The hell is that?"
Baki stopped and pulled a towel off a nearby rock, pressing it over his face. "It's fine. You can talk normally."
"Okay," Mary said. Vin Jin asked, "Where's Teacher, Baki-hyung?"
Baki glanced toward the wooden house for a moment. "Wait for the others to get here first."
Before long, Jewoo, Taebong, Wooseok, and Hyungjae came up one by one.
Baki looked around at all of them. "Teacher isn't feeling well today. I'll be running your training."
Taebong immediately asked, "What happened to Teacher?"
"We'll talk about that later," Baki said. "Let's get started."
---
"Vin Jin! Taebong! Keep up!"
Baki was out front, wooden frames strapped to his back, packed with stones. Easily over two hundred pounds. He moved like he wasn't carrying anything.
Behind him, Taebong and Vin Jin were grinding up the steepest section of the mountain, each of them hauling around sixty pounds, legs starting to give.
"How... the hell... are you not even... breathing hard..." Vin Jin forced the words out, his feet barely cooperating.
"I'm not Seongji," Baki called back without turning around. "I can't teach you ssireum. But I can train your body. That's what we're doing right now."
At the summit, Baki dropped his load and turned around.
Vin Jin, Jewoo, Taebong, Wooseok, Hyungjae — they went down one after another. Even Mary, the strongest of the group, was bracing on her knees, breathing hard. This was new territory for all of them.
Vin Jin lay flat on his back looking at the sky. "When... when did you start training like this?"
Baki looked out at the distance. "When I was younger than you. So you should all be fine. Stop complaining."
---
Back at the base of the mountain.
Everyone was spread out on the ground, limbs twitching.
Baki stood in the middle of them, hands in his pockets. "Alright, that's training for today. I enjoyed this, so I'm thinking about doing it every day. What do you say? Seongji handles techniques, I handle the body. Clean split."
Every face in the Cheonliang fam went pale at the same time. They shouted in unison, "NO!"
Baki scratched his head. "Tch. You really don't know what's good for you."
He turned and walked into the wooden house, came back out carrying a post wrapped in rope, and drove it into the ground. Then he stuck small paper slips on it at various heights and angles. Each one had something written on it. Temple. Liver. Floating rib. Throat. Side of the neck.
Mary studied it. "Baki-hyung, what is this?"
"Weak points," he said. "I've been working on a style built around targeting specific points on the human body."
He settled into his stance, then exploded forward. His fist shot out and hit the slip marked "Temple" dead center, stopping before it broke through. Then four more in rapid succession, each one landing on a different slip, all precise. The post wobbled. Not one slip was crooked.
"Got the idea fighting a wild boar," he said. "Four hundred pounds of muscle. I couldn't outpower it, couldn't damage it going straight through. So I had to find the soft spots. Behind the ear, the joints, the tissue that doesn't have bone behind it."
Mary frowned. "But hitting these spots on a person — couldn't that kill them?"
"It could," Baki said. "That's exactly the point. I'm not just training to hit these spots. I'm training to know exactly how much force crosses the line — and to stop just before it."
His finger came forward and stopped a hair away from the side of Mary's throat. She hadn't seen him move.
"Carotid sinus," he said quietly. "Hit here and blood pressure collapses in an instant. The body decides it's dying and shuts everything down."
Mary touched her neck slowly. "Where did you learn all of this?"
Baki smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Seongji's a good friend. Just, for some reason, he stopped sparring with me."
---
"Jewoo, how much do you think that weighs?" Hyungjae asked.
Jewoo stared at the boulder Baki was crouching in front of. "Has to be at least three hundred kilos."
Baki pressed his fingers into the gap at the base of the rock, closed his eyes, and evened out his breathing.
Then he pushed.
His legs drove upward, his back straightened, and the boulder came off the ground — slowly, impossibly. The veins across his arms and neck stood out. His teeth were clenched hard. The rock climbed to his chest, then his shoulders, then both arms shook as he pressed it overhead and held it there.
"Ten. Nine. Eight..."
He reached zero and let it drop. It hit the ground and left a dent.
Baki breathed twice, color in his face, grinning. "Again."
The Cheonliang fam stared at each other.
Taebong whispered, "Is he even human..."
Baki's eyes snapped over to him. The grin widened. "What was that? Looks like you've all recovered nicely. Perfect timing — come help me with something."
The chill that ran down Taebong's spine was immediate. He slowly turned to the others. They slowly looked away.
---
"Come at me," Baki said, standing in the middle of the clearing. "All of you."
Jewoo let out a shout and charged first, dropping into the ssireum stance Seongji had taught him. "Today I'll show you what the Cheonliang fam is made of!"
Baki slid one step to the side. His finger drove toward Jewoo's flank and stopped with three-tenths of the force still held back.
Jewoo's legs buckled. He went to one knee, the air seeming to vanish from his lungs. He looked up and realized nobody else had moved yet.
"One person charging into someone stronger than them," Baki said. "That's just suicide. Did Seongji not even cover the basics?"
Taebong and Hyungjae heard that and came in from both sides at once. Baki stepped back half a pace, angling himself so the two of them ended up blocking each other's lines. His palm drove into Taebong's gut, his elbow swept across Hyungjae's temple — both pulled at the last moment.
Both of them went down.
"Ha. So this is what Seongji's students amount to."
Mary came in low, weight dropped, going straight for the throw. Clean technique. Baki turned sideways as she grabbed his arm, and in that moment his fingers pressed a precise point on the inside of her wrist. Her grip lost half its strength instantly, and he slipped out.
"Your technique is solid," he told her. "But every technique has a counter. You need a backup."
Mary rubbed her wrist and said nothing, brow tight.
Last was Vin Jin, coming in with a flurry of punches — fast but all over the place. Baki kept everything on the outside. The moment Vin Jin overextended, Baki grabbed his shoulder and pressed him straight into the ground.
Baki frowned. "What the hell was that? Why are you fighting like you've got no bones?"
Vin Jin was face down in the dirt, voice cracking. "Because this is literally my first time training!"
Baki stared at him. Then he scratched the back of his head and laughed awkwardly. "...Oh right. You only joined yesterday."
---
The sun was nearly down.
Baki stood on a rocky ledge partway up the mountain, looking out toward Cheonliang village below.
Footsteps came up behind him.
Seongji walked over carrying two cups of tea and held one out.
"Thanks for today," Seongji said.
Baki took it and drank. "Those kids are good."
He turned and looked at Seongji for a moment. "Especially Vin Jin. That kid has something. Make sure you draw it out."
Seongji nodded slowly. "Sounds like he made an impression on you."
"Maybe," Baki said. His eyes went back to the village below.