The Master's Grace (Part 3)
Oh Hyun-seok had first met Seo Eun-hyun on his very first day at work.
It was when Seo Eun-hyun had entered the company building, bewildered and lost about where to go on his very first day.
Oh Hyun-seok had stepped in to help him.
Why?
He remembered that moment now.
The polite junior who had greeted him with a bright smile and said thank you.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Oh Hyun-seok’s wings had burst from his arms, fallen from his body, and flown behind him to support his back.
The Changryeong Seonggwang Ochae Daebop.
First wing.
Ku-rung! Ku-ruruung!
Oh Hyun-seok stared at Seo Eun-hyun after feeling the power gathered in his fist.
“Even a mere graze would be dangerous.”
“I see that.”
“You don’t have to dodge. It would be better to meet him head-on with a technique you’re confident in.”
“A technique I’m confident in…”
Seo Eun-hyun smiled faintly and raised one hand.
“It still seems too early to pull something like that from me.”
“Hahaha…”
Still…
He had changed.
That tone carried absolute confidence.
And those deep, profound eyes.
Every action of Seo Eun-hyun felt unsettling in some way.
He did not know why.
But Oh Hyun-seok sensed that Seo Eun-hyun had somehow broken at some point.
He did not know the real reason.
He had always been good at reading people’s emotions.
“Well, take this.”
Oh Hyun-seok activated the energy in both arms even more, thrusting his blue-fueled fist at Seo Eun-hyun.
Ku-gugu-gugu!
The heaven and earth seemed to flip as the space before his eyes distorted.
An overwhelming gale of power flew toward Seo Eun-hyun.
Taat!
Yet Seo Eun-hyun walked calmly.
And he slipped out of the range of the strike Oh Hyun-seok had thrown.
Even a graze.
No, a strike that could not be avoided even if one stayed within its range.
But when Seo Eun-hyun waved his hand toward the void, he had completely escaped the influence of the power.
He cut it.
Oh Hyun-seok’s eyes sparkled as he realized what Seo Eun-hyun had done.
He was like a sword in human form.
Every time he waved his hand, the faint flows of power flowing through the void were sliced away, carving out a path for Seo Eun-hyun to escape.
But Oh Hyun-seok grinned.
Only one of his two hands had thrown the attack.
The other one remained!
Ku-gugu-gugu!
Blue lightning surged again from Oh Hyun-seok’s hand toward Seo Eun-hyun.
Right after he dodged… Could he really dodge this?!
Yet Seo Eun-hyun dodged Oh Hyun-seok’s strike as if it were nothing.
And in an instant, Seo Eun-hyun stood before him.
He extended his palm.
Thuung!
It was not a particularly strong force.
Yet something mysterious was mixed into that strike, shaking Oh Hyun-seok’s insides.
Ting!
Oh Hyun-seok felt a sword-like sound ring inside his body.
Fuuk!
Before he could even react, Oh Hyun-seok spewed blood from his seven orifices and fainted.
Too… strong.
Seo Eun-hyun had become far beyond anything he could follow.
* * *
“So, this is… no! That’s a file for a meeting! The files the department head gave me are to be gathered here.”
“Ah, thank you!”
Ah, this is…
Oh Hyun-seok blinked.
But he soon understood.
This is a dream.
Before he fell into this world.
Memories from when he had been at the company.
“No, this isn’t that… Let me see. I’ll show you.”
“Yes, I’m sorry!”
It was himself from the early days of employment, nervous while learning his work, and Oh Hyun-seok himself teaching him.
In the early days, I made a lot of mistakes.
He had even knocked over his coffee into Oh Hyun-seok’s documents while organizing papers.
At that time, I was quite angry.
Oh Hyun-seok rummaged through his memories.
Looking at the documents, this must be after that coffee incident. My face looked bad for a long time, so I was tense after that.
Oh Hyun-seok sighed faintly as he remembered the past him scolding the Seo Eun-hyun who made mistakes.
“Eun-hyun, come here for a moment.”
Oh Hyun-seok smiled as he looked back at the scene from a third-person perspective.
Ah, even at this time… I remember.
“Yes, Manager Oh.”
He took Seo Eun-hyun to the smoking room.
The two stood smoking together for a moment.
“How is company life going for you, Eun-hyun?”
“Yes, it’s satisfying…”
“Bullshit.”
“Uh…”
Oh Hyun-seok laughed and patted Seo Eun-hyun’s shoulder.
“I get it. No matter what a superior does, they cling to every little thing and find fault. That colleague from my generation, Jeon Myeong-hoon, is a bastard. He relies on the vice-president’s name and doesn’t work, just goes around playing. They say he got into a huge fight with Min-hee last time?”
“…”
Seo Eun-hyun looked flustered by Oh Hyun-seok’s overly candid gossip.
“As a superior, constantly finding fault is a little sorry. But while I’m teaching you to learn the work perfectly, I have to keep picking at you. And… honestly, that guy Jeon Myeong-hoon makes me seethe every time I see him. What can I do? We can’t do anything about him. And from what I see, those kinds of guys usually end up leaving the company on their own after causing some problem. So don’t worry too much.”
“Th… thank you.”
“Yeah. Honestly, who doesn’t know that we don’t work in our department? He’s not a bad person. Maybe he’s just too used to being pampered. There are people like that.”
Oh Hyun-seok chatted with Seo Eun-hyun while badmouthing Jeon Myeong-hoon.
It was no wonder people became close so quickly with backstabbing.
The Seo Eun-hyun who had been scolded and scolded now looked quite bright.
“And about Min-hee… I think it’s because your thinking styles clash too much. You should understand her. From what I see, there’s truth in what she says, but it seems your way of thinking is just too different.”
“Yes, I understand. But when our duties overlap, we argue a lot, so that must be the issue.”
“Haha, from now on I’ll be careful so the two of you don’t overlap in duties. Ah, and…”
Crick.
After snuffing out the cigarette, Oh Hyun-seok dusted his hands and said,
“If you ever have a hard time in the future, let’s take a cigarette break together. Come out with me and we can talk.”
“…Thank you.”
With that, he left the smoking room.
* * *
“As expected.”
Blink!
Oh Hyun-seok opened his eyes.
“It’s someone else.”
His whole body still ached.
He compared the face of Seo Eun-hyun he had seen in the dream to the face of Seo Eun-hyun throwing an unemotional strike at him, but it felt completely different.
Thud, thud, thud!
The surroundings shook as Changhoza walked toward him.
Oh Hyun-seok looked around. It was the training ground.
It seemed not much time had passed since he fainted.
“Are you all right, Hyun-seok? You lost again today.”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Oh Hyun-seok shook himself and stood up.
“I can now unfold the Cheongjeon Method. It can only be unfolded when one has reached the Core Formation stage. But after just ascending to the middle stage, I can finally unfold it…”
“It is thanks to Master’s careful teaching.”
He smiled and looked at Seo Eun-hyun beyond Changhoza, who was watching them calmly with transparent eyes.
“Hey, Seo Eun-hyun!”
Oh Hyun-seok passed Changhoza and said to him.
“As expected, I can finally tell. You’ve changed way too much from before, right?”
“Well, the environment has changed, so people have changed too.”
“Hmm, it feels like the change in you is too extreme. Do you really not want to talk or chat with me?”
“…I’m sorry. There are too many things to do, so I don’t seem to have the time.”
Taat!
After speaking, Seo Eun-hyun unfolded the Cloud-Piercing Technique and flew far away.
Changhoza walked up to the still-dazzled Oh Hyun-seok and laughed heartily.
“That guy is probably training hard too. Don’t be too down about it.”
On top of that, Oh Hyun-seok felt a strange feeling and laughed.
Back then, I was the one comforting my juniors, but now I’ve become the one receiving comfort from my disciple.
“…Training is good, but even so, I feel like you’re not talking to me, who was your old colleague, much anymore.”
“Not talking…”
Changhoza seemed to think about something and laughed loudly while slapping Oh Hyun-seok on the back.
“People of our Changcheon Gaebyeokmun originally trust conversations done with fists the most. Just keep training until you can have a proper fist-to-fist talk with that guy.”
“…Haha, I see.”
A too naive muscle theory.
Yet somehow Oh Hyun-seok found those words comforting.
Fist conversations…
He did not know it was a “fist conversation,”
but in recent sparring matches with Changhoza, he had sometimes felt something.
Something like lines between them that appeared faintly.
By following those lines, he could know the opponent’s attacks and the best path.
And as he followed them, he sometimes felt the opponent’s emotions.
He must be talking about that.
He recalled the sensation he had felt following those lines.
The lines felt when sparring with an opponent. But of course… sparring only works when both are equal.
Seo Eun-hyun and he were too far apart.
Sparring could not be established.
So what was he to do?
Become stronger.
Until he could talk properly with Seo Eun-hyun.
Until he could talk on equal footing.
Oh Hyun-seok looked at the sky and resolved to become even stronger.
* * *
Time flowed imperceptibly, and another ten years passed.
By now, Oh Hyun-seok had completed the initial stage of Core Formation.
Ku-gugu-gugu!
The energy in his entire body flowed smoothly without any awkwardness.
It was utterly natural, as if nothing was strange.
Uu-wooong!
Light flowed from Oh Hyun-seok’s body.
He opened half-closed eyes, and rays of light flowed from them.
Core Formation Initial Stage. Heavenly City Wall.
Inside his golden core.
Spirit stars symbolizing the Changryeong Seonggwang Ochae Daebop flickered there, hardening the constellation symbolizing the great law.
Uu-woo-wooong!
Oh Hyun-seok murmured while receiving the heavenly world energy transmitted from beyond the sky, far from his body.
“There is no adornment in Fate.”
There were four realms in the Core Formation stage.
Core Formation Initial Stage, Heavenly City Wall: Its form is its rate of fate.
Core Formation Middle Stage, Grand Micro Enclosure: Its governance is its respect for fate.
Core Formation Late Stage, Purple Enclosure: Its cultivation is its benevolence toward fate.
Core Formation Grand Completion, Celestial Phenomena Sequence Field: Its mission is its righteousness.
The Heavenly City Wall perfectly organizes the flows of life and fate flowing throughout the body without blockage, allowing the qi flowing in the body to be viewed as the people and completely controlling them.
Thus, pure life force without concealment flows through the entire body,
and one obtains a form of fate without adornment or concealment.
The Grand Micro Enclosure releases the qi and blood of the entire body to connect with the outside, and harmonizes the body with heaven and one’s own fate, making oneself a sacrificial altar for fate.
After controlling the qi treated as the people flowing in the body, the stage of controlling qi by borrowing the power of fate and making one’s body an altar and a nation to summon ministers and govern the body.
The Purple Enclosure levels the ground and builds the altar, finally becoming the high priest who connects heaven and earth.
After controlling the people and summoning the ministers, one becomes the king and perfectly controls the nation named oneself.
Because one has mastered one’s life force to the extreme, one can recover the body even if the neck is cut off or the entire body is torn apart, as long as the golden core remains.
And the final one.
The Celestial Phenomena Sequence Field stage follows the Heavenly City Wall, Grand Micro Enclosure, and Purple Enclosure, transforming into the high priest to perform rites toward fate.
From this stage onward, one can interfere with one’s own life force as well as the life force of external objects and others, and since it is the stage just before Nascent Soul, one begins to grasp a certain “rank” or “position” in the world.
These four stages corresponding to the Core Formation stage are understood as:
The form of fate is without adornment (Its form is its rate of fate).
Respect in receiving fate (Its governance is its respect for fate).
Benevolence in cultivating fate (Its cultivation is its benevolence toward fate).
Righteousness in commanding fate (Its mission is its righteousness).
It seems like these verses of the Core Formation stage are like the process of a human receiving fate.
At first, one gazes at fate without adornment.
Next, one receives fate, and then becomes one with it, living with benevolence.
In the end, one commands fate.
That is why the capital is called “Heaven-Reversing”.
One looks up at the sky, approaches it, performs rites, and serves the sky.
But at some point, it becomes another sky and commands the sky—the Heaven-Reversing.
Taking the sky as master and eventually becoming arrogant enough to surpass it.
That is the greatest arrogance of the Capitalist.
It was a heaven race approaching fate.
And Oh Hyun-seok had recently begun practicing the Capital Method and felt a strange feeling.
The Capital Method is taking the sky as master and eventually commanding it. Yet why… the more one practices the Capital Method, the more…
All Capital Methods seem to treat the sky as an “alive” object.
And if the sky is truly an alive existence, is it right to simply leave behind those rebellious people who seek to surpass it? Leaving behind the Heaven Tribulation, something that can be overcome with the power of divine objects, is it truly the end?
Then.
If truly the sky were an alive existence,
what would happen when those people reached the realm surpassing even the sky?
Oh Hyun-seok sank into such thoughts while contemplating the golden core settled inside him.