71
At dawn, a thin mist lay across the wide plains of Liaoyang.
As sunlight seeped over the snow, pale steam rose quietly in the cold air.
Yi In-jung stepped out of his tent at his usual hour.
The time was the same, the place unchanged.
Yet the air of that morning was unmistakably different from the day before.
An indescribable current had altered the entire plain.
Behind him, at the training ground, Park Seong-jin stood.
He held neither sword nor bow.
Facing the empty air, he was governing nothing but his breath.
Each time his shoulders lifted and slowly sank, the fine snowflakes trembled.
Yi In-jung stopped walking.
It was not sound.
The energy reached him first.
The rise and fall of breath was touching the space itself.
Long, clear, unbroken.
It was a different texture from the firm, rough breathing he himself had once taught.
It was a deep, supple breath—like wind blowing out of the mountains.
Park Seong-jin opened his eyes.
There was no wavering in his gaze.
"Commander," he said,
"I think I finally understand a little. Why the breath… moves before the blade."
Yi In-jung did not answer.
He simply stepped forward and stood beside him.
The two men gazed silently across the plain in the same direction.
The wind passed, leaving faint traces upon the snow.
"Yes," Yi In-jung said at last.
"When the breath changes, the person changes. That is study."
He looked at Seong-jin.
The fear that had lingered until yesterday was gone, replaced by a clear, settled resolve.
The body was still young, but the mind had grown one layer deeper.
"From now on, fight with yourbreath."
"Yes."
It was a short reply.
Yet within that single syllable lay the weight of a long passage of time.
Yi In-jung did not smile.
Only the tension that had rested on his shoulders quietly slipped away.
Then, in the distance, a rooster crowed.
Morning was fully opening.
The snow-lit plain turned golden, and the two men's shadows stretched long across it.
==---
The Infinite Moment
Park Seong-jin took up his sword.
It was a movement he had performed countless times—
the same stance, the same form, the same place.
But the sword of that day was different.
He first steadied his breath, and only then moved his feet.
Breath went first; the body followed.
The breath opened the path, and the body naturally came after.
There was no true before or after—
but if one were to divide them, that was how they fell.
As the sword cut through empty air, the wind of the plain moved with it.
Neither fast nor exaggerated.
The motion was restrained, the flow gentle.
With each cut, the rhythm of Heup–Ji–Pawas distinct.
In inhalation, energy gathered.
In stillness, the world halted.
And in exhalation, light spread from the sword's tip.
When he struck downward, it was heavy like thunder.
When he drew back, it was quiet like the wind across the fields.
The sword was no longer a mere piece of metal.
It was a living current, gathering the surrounding energy and returning it again.
When he stopped in the final posture, time itself paused.
Snow, wind, sound—all vanished.
Only his inhalation and exhalation resounded,
like the pulse of the world itself.
At the end of that brief stillness, he felt a sensation of crossing some boundary.
Even when I do not move,
the world is moving with me.
"At the end of stillness… there is eternity."
He quietly sheathed the sword.
Outwardly, nothing had changed.
Yet the one standing there was no longer the same person.
His breath had changed.
His mind had changed.
And that mind was altering the weight of the blade.
From afar, Yi In-jung watched him.
There was no smile, no expression of awe.
Only in a very low voice, almost to himself, he murmured,
"Now… that blade could cut even a mountain."
The wind over the plain stirred once more.
With it, the energy of a new generation was quietly rising.
The Experience of Immersion and Nabip(納入)
Martial practice is repetition.
Park Seong-jin did not stop at a single execution.
Once, twice, three times—
the sword continued without break.
He repeated the sequence dozens of times in less than a single gak.
There was no rest, no hesitation.
At first, the movement was trapped within the rigid frame of military sword forms.
A straight line was a straight line.
Force was simply force.
But as repetition accumulated, the frame slowly loosened.
Straight lines flowed into curves.
Force transformed into current.
When the sword moved, the air resonated.
That resonance did not scatter—it returned and struck his body,
as if the world responded to the sword, and the sword answered back.
Once more, and again.
He felt that he was advancing.
Yet it was not movement through distance.
Something deep within his body was quietly expanding.
Not growing larger in volume, but widening in space.
Not "I am becoming stronger,"
but "my entire existence is being elevated."
He did not stop.
His breath remained even.
His gaze did not waver.
The flow of the sword became breath.
Breath became time.
From that moment on, he forgot himself.
He moved without thought.
He breathed without awareness.
Name, judgment, purpose—all vanished.
The world faded, leaving only body, air, and blade.
Watching from afar, Yi In-jung quietly stepped back.
This was a place where words were unnecessary.
A boundary teaching could not reach.
This was no longer a stage of learning.
It was arrival.
Time passed.
Park Seong-jin continued his sword practice for nearly a full sijin.
Yet he did not feel time passing at all.
His body grew hot,
and that heat circulated like blood, lifting his entire being lightly upward.
He did not yet know—
that this heat was not mere warmth.
It was Nabip(納入).
What he had exerted was returning to him.
The sweat he had shed,
the breaths he had repeated,
the movements he had passed through—
all were seeping back into him.
"Memorizing" was not enough to name it.
"Realizing" did not reach it either.
It was the way the body remembers the world.
The long years of accumulated study were finally transforming
into internal power that could manifest through a single breath.
Study disappeared.
Only power remained.
To explain it in words would only blur it.
So there was only this to say:
In that moment, within Park Seong-jin's body,
the time he had lived was moving—
as breath.
---*+++