397.
The sun slanted low, and Park Seong-jin sat alone in the courtyard.
Across the lake, the wind brushed through pine needles, their soft collisions blending with the distant cries of waterfowl.
On the battlefield, every sound led to death, but here, every sound felt like a living thing.
He slowly steadied his breathing.
"心若空谷 氣自成川…"
"If the mind is like an empty valley, qi flows of its own accord like a river…"
As he was about to enter seated meditation, the battles surged back like waves.
Blood spraying from sword tips, the screams of enemies, the killing intent that had cut through bodies filled his senses.
Yet the wind of this place gradually wiped those memories clean.
Into that clearing, lines of inner cultivation seeped in.
"不離一念 不住一念…"
"Do not cling to a single thought, yet do not depart from it."
His breathing deepened, and the qi beneath his navel settled heavily.
He repeated the lines again and again, yet their meaning did not come easily.
The definitions of the words were clear, but they had not yet been embodied as true cultivation.
This stillness differed in nature from the sensations he had gained by forcing himself forward on the battlefield.
Is this the place I am meant to reach?
Park Seong-jin did not move until the sun had fully set.
Oh Sun-gun's Visit — The Hermitage's First Companion.
A day passed.
Nothing happened.
Park Seong-jin remained seated.
The wind drifted by, and strands of mist slid down along the tree trunks.
Within that quiet, he encountered himself as he had not in a long time—empty.
Because of the sudden stillness, a long ringing echoed in his ears.
Then he heard movement below, grass brushing along the mountain path.
Moments later, a young man appeared, panting as he stuck his face out from behind a pillar of the hermitage.
"Haah… Captain…"
Park Seong-jin sprang to his feet.
"Oh Sun-gun, how did you get here?"
Oh Sun-gun bent at the waist, drawing breath in and out as he spoke.
"What do you mean, why… I was ordered to provide lodging and meals here… haah…"
Park Seong-jin scratched his head.
"There's no need. Food is plentiful here."
Before he could finish speaking, Oh Sun-gun collapsed flat onto the ground.
Moments later, he sprang back up.
It was Oh Sun-gun's peculiar constitution—revived after only the briefest rest.
Park Seong-jin pointed toward the surrounding hills.
"Look. There are wild greens and mountain herbs everywhere. If we need them, we can gather them ourselves—"
Oh Sun-gun cut him off sharply.
"No. People need proper meals. And Captain, you are the pride of the Second Detachment. There was an order to pray for your attainment, and that's why I was chosen. I'll be coming back and forth to provide what's needed for the time being."
Park Seong-jin furrowed his brow slightly.
He remembered that muttering habit that threatened to break concentration.
"Listen, Oh Sun-gun. A single doe of rice is enough. You don't need to come every day."
"Please don't say that. You are a pillar of the state. I will attend to you."
Without waiting for a reply, Oh Sun-gun jumped up and began inspecting the hermitage from corner to corner.
His muttering soon followed.
"Hm, what's this? You can't leave it like that."
Tap—he immediately moved it aside.
"Why is this wood left here to attract insects? It should be cleared."
"Why hasn't this place been cleaned? This is a place of study—there's no standard at all."
Seeing the overgrown brush around the hermitage, he immediately grew agitated.
"Why is the grass this thick? This should've been done in advance. Aigo, I'll do it."
The moment he drew his blade, he began hacking down the grass without mercy.
Park Seong-jin watched in silence, then quietly slipped out of the courtyard.
"Seong-jin, I'll take care of the firewood. We'll grill meat for dinner."
"…Understood. Thank you, Sun-gun."
The noisy muttering continued to drift up from below the hermitage.
Because he was the nephew of Oh Jin-cheol, a unit commander, he spoke with confidence, and they were close in age.
He claimed to be a year older, though no one had ever checked his identification tag.
From the moment of introduction, his face had clearly wanted to play the role of an older brother.
Park Seong-jin followed a narrow rocky path behind the hermitage upward.
At the edge of a rock outcrop, he spread a thick cushion and settled himself.
A gentle breeze passed between stone and brush, brushing his collar.
Above him, white clouds drifted slowly across the blue sky.
At that moment, the clear air of Mount Guwol and the quiet heartbeat he had first learned there resurfaced vividly.
No different.
From afar came Oh Sun-gun's muttering.
"Why leave the charcoal here to get damp… aigo, I'll handle it…"
Park Seong-jin smiled.
It was a smile rarely seen on the battlefield.
He slowly closed his eyes.
His breath sank, and his qi settled.
Even with sounds, noise, and muttering layered together, his mind cut through the gaps and sank once more into deep stillness.
He began, in earnest, the study of the Upper Dantian.
—*
The Moment the Upper Dantian Opens.
All night, mist filled the valley.
It was so quiet that the mountain's breath itself seemed palpable.
Park Seong-jin sat motionless at the edge of the rock.
Below, Oh Sun-gun washed rice, split firewood while muttering, and at some point fell fast asleep.
In the army, sleep is a tonic.
When time allows, one claims it willingly; even without asking, the body shuts down the moment it pauses.
The long campaigns must have weighed heavily on Oh Sun-gun—he often hid himself in sleep regardless of place or time.
Park Seong-jin left him be.
There was no need to force anything upon a soldier.
Provide supplies on time, lessen nagging and labor—that was enough.
They rest, eat, and move as they will, then rise again on their own when the time comes.
In the stillness of midnight, Park Seong-jin sat in meditation, breathing evenly.
His body did not stir, yet within, a single spark slowly began to glow.
As faint dawn light spread along the eastern ridgeline, the density of the air subtly changed.
The wind stopped.
The birds fell silent.
"..."
With his eyes closed, Park Seong-jin realized that the change had begun not outside, but within himself.
His thin, steady breathing suddenly—and very quietly—ceased.
A brief stillness just before the next inhale.
In that instant, a blocked channel leading to the Upper Dantian trembled faintly.
It was neither the chest nor the abdomen.
Deep behind the brow, between eye and ear, a small, transparent ripple stirred the depths of silence.
Tok—
Like a small pebble dropping into water, the sensation echoed down to the floor of his awareness.
No light appeared.
No sound rang out.
Yet something had undeniably occurred within.
It was not qi that had risen up through the body.
It was qi that bloomed of its own accord deep within the head.
In that moment, every sensation sharpened.
Oh Sun-gun's snoring from below the mountain rang clearer than the wind.
Even the grain of a single pine needle fallen on the rock touched his awareness without sight.
The tension resting in his arms and legs slowly loosened.
It was not that his body grew lighter, but that the weight of the world itself seemed to sink.
Park Seong-jin murmured silently to himself.
So this… is the Upper Dantian…
He had handled meridians and blood channels through countless battles, yet this was his first time experiencing qi blooming so deep within the mind.
Space widened, and consciousness unfolded without end.
It widened further.
It felt like flying endlessly over a vast green plain.
Words he had once exchanged with Song Yi-sul surfaced.
"Where is the mind?"
"In the head, or in the chest?"
"You'll know once you reach that realm."
Only now did he understand why those words had been so simple.
This sensation seemed to arise somewhere between head and heart, yet it settled in neither.
The mind is not in the head.
Nor is it in the chest.
It rests at the center of moving qi.
A faint tremor spread once more from the back of his head.
Then, from a place that had sunk deep below, arose the sensation of observing himself.
The angle of perception was different.
Ordinary awareness looks outward from somewhere within the body, but this awareness stood far removed from it.
It was neither looking down from above nor peering in from outside.
It was an inward vantage, looking outward.
Two layers of awareness overlapped naturally.
His body sat upon the rock,
while another self, somewhere within the mist, observed that seated figure.
A single strand of wind brushed his face.
Its texture reached his senses with several times the clarity of before.
His fingers tingled, and warmth spread faintly across his brow.
Within the Upper Dantian, a single point of light began to condense.
It had not yet burst.
It had not yet fully opened.
It pulsed faintly, as though drawing breath in the depths of existence.
Yet Park Seong-jin knew with certainty.
Something is opening, right now.
From afar came the crowing of a dawn rooster.
Though there were no villages nearby, the sound rang out.
Park Seong-jin wondered if this was not an outer sound at all,
but the sensation of dawn reproduced within,
or perhaps the world offering him its most familiar sound in order to wake him.
The edges of the mist turned silver.
Only then did Park Seong-jin slowly—very slowly—open his eyes.
The world approached him with new contours.
The rough grain of stone, droplets clinging to the tips of grass, sunlight spreading through the mist.
After gazing at that scene for a long while, he murmured softly.
"…So it begins."