Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 9: Reading a Book a Hundred Times Reveals Its Meaning (8) Yeon So-wol repeated the breathing technique and the Soft Willow Art over and over.
He practiced until the cycle became as natural as breathing, something he could maintain whether he was awake or asleep.
Even when a deathly fatigue washed over him, and even when he shuddered from the agonizing pain of his muscles knotting as if his entire body were being torn apart, Yeon So-wol did not stop. He continued to breathe; he continued to move.
Ten days passed in that state.
Then, Lee Yu-baek's voice drifted in from outside the door.
"Ten days have passed. Are you still alive?"
"...Yes."
Yeon So-wol swallowed his surging anger and sorrow, answering in a low voice.
"What kept you going?"
"I kept my heart absolute."
"And what made your heart absolute?"
Yeon So-wol gritted his teeth. The words formed on their own, forcing their way out of his throat.
"Hatred. I hated myself for not being able to master a single breath, and I loathed my body for screaming in pain at every movement. But more than anything, I hated this world—and I hated you for making me like this."
"······."
The voice outside the door fell silent.
Just as Yeon So-wol was about to snap back with more, the voice returned.
"Your heart is not yet absolute."
"What?"
He was flabbergasted. Yeon So-wol stomped toward the door.
"Do not get excited."
"How can I not be excited right now—!"
Clatter!
He shoved the door with all his might. It was locked with a latch and chains, but it was ultimately just a crude wooden door. As he pushed, a small gap opened, revealing the world outside.
"······."
Yeon So-wol froze.
Through the crack in the door, he saw no one. He scanned the ground, but there wasn't a single footprint to be found.
It was another hallucination.
Lee Yu-baek had lost his master to a mad senior disciple who had succumbed to an Inner Demon. There was no way he would have come here.
"Ah."
Yeon So-wol slumped down, leaning against the door.
"Aah..."
He clutched his forehead.
"I can't go on like this."
He scrambled to his feet and pulled out the meridian chart Lee Yu-baek had given him.
"He said the limit of this closed-door training is until I understand the Twelve Standard Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians on my own."
Yeon So-wol made up his mind to end this horrific training as quickly as possible.
His physical condition was a wreck. Though he had been catching snatches of sleep lately as the breathing technique became more familiar, he was still waking up every ten minutes.
"A perfect condition is never going to come anyway."
Yeon So-wol gnashed his teeth.
"Let's do this."
With bloodshot eyes, he stared intensely at the meridian chart.
It wasn't a map of blood vessels, lymph nodes, or a neural network, yet the lines stretched densely throughout the human body in the drawing. Yeon So-wol looked at it again and again, but he couldn't get a feel for what it actually was.
"He could have at least given me an explanation..."
Reading a book a hundred times reveals its meaning.
Repeat the Soft Willow Art and realize it on your own.
"What kind of archaic study method is this...?"
Students in the 21st century didn't study in such an ignorant fashion. Time wasn't something to be wasted. If you listened to a proper lecture, grasped the key points, and studied intensively, you could understand things much faster and more accurately. Why use such a primitive method?
It was an outdated obsession with mental fortitude.
'It's just a way for lazy, incompetent teachers to gaslight their students.'
But such complaints were meaningless now. Complaints only mattered when there was an alternative or the luxury of time. Yeon So-wol shoved his rising frustration deep into his gut and focused.
He had to put his whole heart into the training. If he let his guard down for even a second, he didn't know when an Inner Demon or Qi Deviation might seize him.
"First, I'll start by memorizing this by heart."
He wasn't just memorizing the drawing.
"I'll memorize it while firmly engraving where each part is in my actual body."
He had to be able to feel it physically. To the point where, even if he were poked anywhere while sleeping, he could immediately identify it: Ah, this is the Gokji Acupoint of the Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian; this is the Daechu Acupoint of the Governing Vessel; and this is the Gihae Acupoint of the Conception Vessel.
In Yeon So-wol's standards, that was what it meant to "memorize." It was an active and progressive way of learning, incomparable to mindlessly reading something a hundred times.
"Hoo. Hooo..."
While maintaining the breathing technique, he pinched his thighs whenever his eyes drifted shut, memorizing the meridian chart.
The three Yang meridians and three Yin meridians of the hand. The three Yang meridians and three Yin meridians of the foot. Together, these were the Twelve Standard Meridians.
The Conception Vessel, which runs along the front of the body through the abdomen, chest, and chin. The Governing Vessel, which runs along the back of the body through the waist, back, and back of the head, over the crown to the philtrum. The Penetrating Vessel, which pierces the center of the body, rising from the anus to the top of the head. The two Linking Vessels. The two Qiao Vessels. And the Girdle Vessel.
Together, these were the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
"...What on earth are these? They're not blood vessels, and they're not nerves."
'Back on Earth, this was all pseudoscience...'
Yeon So-wol quickly shook his head to clear the irreverent thought. This wasn't Earth. He had to believe there was something there and investigate it seriously.
After confirming several times that he had memorized every meridian and acupoint on the chart, Yeon So-wol stood up.
"Hooo... Ssssp. Hoo."
Continuing the breathing that was now completely ingrained in him, he slowly began the movements of the Soft Willow Art.
"Hoooooo!"
Gathering Fire.
One can grow a fire by blowing soft breaths onto a small ember. Similarly, one can grow a fire internally by breathing into the body.
'But how is that possible? It's not like there's an actual ember inside my body.'
Yeon So-wol exercised the curiosity unique to a 21st-century person and observed the process minutely. His sensitive Qi Sense, which even Lee Yu-baek had admired, began to shine.
'Ah. Breath isn't just air. There's an unknown energy mixed within it. Something similar to the Essence, Qi, and Spirit inside my body.'
Air entered the lungs and left them, but that energy was sucked into the lungs, passed through them, and sank deep into the body. Yeon So-wol observed its flow and movement even more carefully.
'I see. It flows here and there through the breathing and the movements.'
The energy that had sunk into his body flew up again like sparks, following the rhythm of the Soft Willow Art, and scattered throughout his body. And wherever it touched, a small ember was born.
'It's getting warmer. Gradually.'
Yeon So-wol began to consciously guide the energy entering through his breath. And then he realized.
'Ah. This is the fire.'
The energy mixed in the air was as hot as a spark. When he gathered them in one place, they soon became a blazing fire. Yeon So-wol was seized by a slight sense of awe.
'The world was full of fire.'
The atmosphere was filled with something like hot sparks, though their density was low. By drawing them in through breath and condensing them, he could light a fire inside his body.
'But why is the world filled with these sparks?'
A concept he had learned in Earth Science class suddenly came to mind.
「Cosmic microwave background radiation. The heat released during the Big Bang that spread throughout the entire universe.」
"Ah."
An intuition flashed through Yeon So-wol's mind.
"Could these sparks be the residual heat left over from the creation of this world?"
Come to think of it, Lee Yu-baek had said something similar.
'A person's Essence, Qi, and Spirit are borrowed from Heaven and Earth; originally, they are incredibly pure and full of vitality. But from the moment of birth, they gradually cool and become clouded by Turbid Qi until they finally become unusable. When the Essence, Qi, and Spirit completely cool, turn turbid, and stop, only then does a person reach death.'
Looking at it this way, a person's 'life' was like the 'residual heat' remaining from the heat of their creation.
"If that's true for people... couldn't it be true for the universe as well?"
Perhaps this universe was also still full of the residual heat from its creation, and that was why it was alive. Yeon So-wol didn't know it yet, but this was exactly what people called the Innate One Qi.
The Innate, meaning the singular energy that existed before the birth of the universe.
"And we can use that to revive the cooling Essence, Qi, and Spirit within us."
He had been tired, struggling, and terrified the whole time... but Yeon So-wol suddenly felt excited. This feeling of gradually uncovering the secrets of this completely unknown world was intoxicating. The more he knew, the more the fear that had filled his heart seemed to subside.
"As expected, knowledge is power. Yeah, you need something like this to be a martial artist."
Yeon So-wol focused his mind even further and observed the movement of the energy.
Whoosh—
He grew the condensed flame as much as possible and moved it cautiously.
"It must never stop, even for a moment."
If he left the heated flame in one spot, only the Essence and Qi of that area would grow hot. If he neglected it, Yeon So-wol himself would become the next protagonist of the bizarre stories Lee Yu-baek had told him.
"Hoooo. Hsssp!"
Yeon So-wol used the breathing and movements of the Soft Willow Art to keep the flame he had lit inside his body moving. Like hot steam flowing through boiler pipes to heat a room, he sent the flame gathered by his breath to various parts of his body and then retrieved it, gradually warming his entire frame.
Then, he suddenly realized.
"Ah. This... this is the Twelve Standard Meridians!"
As he guided the flame, he felt that its path was consistent. The passages through which the fire traveled—those were the meridians of the Twelve Standard Meridians that Yeon So-wol had memorized so diligently.
"But why is the flow so poor?"
Yeon So-wol frowned. The flame he had gathered through long periods of breathing would scatter and become hard to trace after circling his body only a couple of times. Then, Yeon So-wol had to gather the flame all over again.
He focused his mind once more to introspect. This time, it was to see exactly how the flame was passing through the paths of the Twelve Standard Meridians.
"······Ah."
It didn't take long for Yeon So-wol to realize the problem.
"The roads are a total mess."
The twelve major meridians were the paths through which the hot fire had to pass. But currently, those paths were frozen cold, blocked by sticky, dried-up waste, and the heat was even escaping elsewhere through impurities that had pierced the walls.
Among them, there were places where particularly sticky waste almost completely blocked the way. The flame managed to seep through the gaps and pass somehow, but every time it did, the heat diminished significantly.
Losing heat to the cold passages, scattering heat while passing through blocked passages, and even venting heat through punctured passages—it was only natural that the flame couldn't be maintained for long.
"This is terrible."
Yeon So-wol looked down at his body with a horrified gaze.
"Was my body always this much of a wreck?"
Suddenly, the words of the old man, the Demon Slayer he had seen on his first day here, came back to him.
"Is this why he called it sewage water?"
Yeon So-wol introspected his own body with a look of disgust.
'I want to get rid of this...'
It hadn't mattered when he wasn't aware of it, but once he noticed, it became unbearable.
'It's really bothering me.'
To think it was this dirty. To think it was this broken. The waste even seemed to wriggle as if it were alive.
'I hate this!'
Yeon So-wol introspected the waste inside his body with intense loathing. He wished he could squeeze out all the waste and impurities like popping a pimple.
Just then, his Qi Sense touched an unusually large piece of waste.
"Hmm?"
Yeon So-wol suddenly thought that the waste looked flat. It was as if 'wisps of thread' were fluttering from the flat waste.
"What is this...?"
Since it was inside his body anyway, he didn't need to physically touch it. Yeon So-wol reflexively snapped that wisp of thread.
Sssssssss—
At that moment, white steam rose from Yeon So-wol's mouth and nose. It had a savory aroma.
"It's gone."
A lump of waste that had been stickily blocking the passage had vanished. The passage was still cold and embedded with impurities, but at least in that section, the flame passed through much more smoothly.
"I could do this too?"
He quickly focused his mind again. He introspected.
Waste. Impurities. He looked to see if there were any more that felt flat, with fluttering wisps of thread.
"There is."
A smile spread across Yeon So-wol's face. It was perhaps the first joyful smile he had worn since falling into this world.
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