Beyond Talent
"To go beyond talent, there are three things you need. One of them is a body that will never collapse so long as your will does not break."
"Another is eyes that can see."
"I do not mean sight alone. The five senses. And beyond them, even the sixth. You must open the Mind's Eye that encompasses all of it."
As always, Seong Seorin spoke to her disciple in a clear voice that seemed to seep all the way into his soul.
"Now. Look."
Then, after putting some distance between them, she slowly thrust out her fist.
It was a punch extended slowly, without a sound.
Slash!
Yet while Seonwoo stood there motionless, the cat behind him suddenly stiffened, its tail and fur bristling.
...The cat had seen something Seonwoo had not.
"Did you see anything?"
"No."
Seonwoo shook his head, and Seong Seorin nodded.
"Yes. That is only natural, so there is no need to feel sorry. Now then, look again."
Seong Seorin drew back the fist she had extended and thrust it out once more.
Boom!
"...!"
Seonwoo's eyes widened, and his heart lurched.
This time, he had seen it.
The Form that filled the world around Seong Seorin.
It was not merely a fist traveling in a straight line. Within that motion dwelled countless possibilities that blanketed the world.
Seong Seorin could send that extended fist anywhere in this world.
Anytime, anywhere, in any form.
And those possibilities had appeared before Seonwoo's eyes as something that filled the entire world.
"You must be able to see this with your own eyes."
Seong Seorin's voice pulled Seonwoo back from the spectacle that had swallowed his vision.
"At first, you will focus on your eyes, but you cannot stop there. You must mobilize every sense you possess, and then go further still and open the Mind's Eye."
"And once you can see, you can know. And once you can know, you can act."
"Creating the body that can act. The Compliant Body. That, together with your physical tempering, is the training you must undergo from now on."
A Compliant Body.
Seong Seorin said the goal was to create a body that moved exactly as one intended while, at the same time, opening the Mind's Eye that could truly see.
"The foundation of this training is not difficult. You will reproduce the punch I just showed you."
"That punch... from me?"
"Yes. There is nothing to worry about. Am I not here?"
Smiling, Seong Seorin stepped to Seonwoo's side.
As if the space between them had vanished, she was suddenly right there.
Then Seong Seorin moved as though gently embracing Seonwoo from behind.
Boom!
"...!"
Seonwoo's heart jolted again.
His senses had suddenly surged past the point of control.
The beat of his heart.
The movement of his organs.
Even the blood flowing through his veins felt vividly clear.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
An amount of information no ordinary human could endure crashed through his brain like a tsunami.
"Breathe."
If he had not obeyed Seong Seorin's command and breathed while reciting the formula of Yeon-shin-geuk-gi-gong, his brain truly might have burned out.
Still holding him from behind as he breathed, Seong Seorin began shaping his posture with both hands, each movement exquisitely precise.
She was not merely moving his body.
She was building the posture muscle fiber by muscle fiber, in a realm impossible for normal human senses to reach.
And Seonwoo could feel all of it with senses that had risen far beyond the human limit.
"It will be difficult, but endure a little longer."
"With this, you will be able to catch up to the speed of geniuses."
Following Seong Seorin's words, Seonwoo focused.
He poured every nerve into the posture she had created.
And as he felt awe at his own fist gliding forward, he knew without question that this was the very same punch Seong Seorin had shown him.
A fist.
A fist imbued with countless possibilities had been reproduced through Seonwoo's body.
Hoo...
And while he was still caught in that wonder, the senses that had touched a realm beyond humanity receded.
"Now, focus."
Before that sensation could scatter completely, Seong Seorin seized hold of Seonwoo's mind.
Then she extended her fist again. It was the very same fist she had shown twice already, the same fist she had ordered Seonwoo to reproduce.
"Did you see it?"
As she drew her fist back, Seong Seorin asked.
Seonwoo hesitated for a moment before answering.
"...No. I didn't see it."
At that answer, Seong Seorin smiled faintly.
"Yes. But it must have felt as though you were about to see something."
"Yes."
Seong Seorin nodded in satisfaction at his reply.
"Exactly. That is it."
What Seonwoo had just experienced was Seong Seorin concentrating her force and stimulating his senses to their utmost limit.
An ordinary human's brain would have burned away from that alone, but Seonwoo, who had learned the tempering art of Cheonma Shingong, had endured it.
And by enduring it, he had been tempered instead.
On top of that, by experiencing and maintaining those senses, he could train himself to open the Mind's Eye.
And through those heightened senses, he could glimpse the unfathomable realm of martial arts contained within Seong Seorin's Form.
It was, quite literally, a training method that could fulfill everything Seonwoo needed right now.
"With this, you will be able to lay your foundation within ten years."
This training was the reason Seong Seorin could confidently say that in ten years Seonwoo would build his foundation, a foundation measured by her standards at that.
It still felt impossibly distant, but Seonwoo nodded and answered, "Yes."
What he had just experienced was so extraordinary that, just as she had said, even Seonwoo, who had repeated countless failures, could feel that maybe he truly could do it.
"For the next ten years. Can you continue forward?"
"Yes. That's the only thing I'm good at."
"Good!"
And so Seonwoo began his training with his master.
Rustle.
A hundred years passed.
Rustle.
The cat swayed its fluffy white tail as it watched the training ground.
Swoosh.
Seonwoo extended his fist.
It was unbearably slow, and it was not aimed at an opponent but at his own training.
"Good. You're doing well. Now look carefully this time."
"Yes, Master."
Swoosh.
Praising her disciple, Seong Seorin thrust out her own fist.
"Did you see it?"
"...Yes. But I couldn't see anything new."
"Yes. That's fine. Let's try again."
Rustle.
The cat swayed its tail again as it watched the familiar sequence unfold.
It was a scene it knew well.
Not once or twice, and not for a year either.
It was a scene it had watched for a full hundred years.
"Yes. Well done. That's all you need to do."
...Is this really right?
That was what it thought as it watched Seong Seorin praise her disciple exactly as she always had.
A hundred years, to Seong Seorin as she was now, amounted to no more than a passing instant in the flow of time.
But that did not change the absolute weight of those years.
And from a human perspective, it went without saying.
Watching someone do the same training without change for a hundred years, and watching Seong Seorin answer that with nothing but praise...
It couldn't help but wonder whether this was really how it was supposed to be.
"That human has no talent."
At the deep voice from beside it, the cat turned its gaze.
A large, strikingly handsome man stood there, with dull blond hair, golden eyes, and a massive frame of bronzed muscle.
Despite his huge size, there was something sleek about him.
In a sense, he was a neighbor.
One of the very few beings permitted to enter this place, the Heavenly Demon's domain. They were close enough to exchange greetings.
So although he had appeared suddenly, the cat accepted it naturally and asked,
"You think so too, don't you?"
"I do. That human is undoubtedly talentless. So much so that he would go down in history for it, and not in a good way."
Ordinarily, a genius who went down in history was, to the eyes of ordinary beings, something incomprehensible in itself.
A being that cast common sense aside as if it meant nothing and performed miracles like they were the most natural thing in the world.
The opposite of that, a dullard, was standing right there.
"Yes. Very good."
...And he was receiving lavish praise from the Heavenly Demon, the greatest martial artist of all ages.
"Let me ask, just in case. Have I been corrupted by the grudge in this place and gone insane?"
At the blond man's question, Baekseol shook her head firmly.
"From where I stand, and I'm perfectly sane, you seem perfectly sane too."
He was the human who had shocked all of Hanwa by being acknowledged by the Heavenly Demon herself and taught martial arts by her.
And yet after watching him for the last hundred years, it truly felt like cognitive dissonance was setting in.
Even after seeing it all with their own eyes, they could only think, How can someone be like that? His training had shown so little progress.
His physical tempering, at least, was worthy of acknowledgment.
Only barely enough to scrape a passing mark, but still.
But in every other area, in his training of the Mind's Eye and the Compliant Body, he repeated the exact same exercises every single day.
"Can someone really be that lacking in talent?"
"Maybe the universe needs someone like that to balance out a genius like Unni."
"Is that so?"
While the cat and the handsome man were passing judgment on Seonwoo like that...
Swoosh.
Seong Seorin's eyes suddenly met theirs.
Her gaze had been fixed on Seonwoo the entire time, and yet somehow their eyes had undeniably met.
At that instant, both of them felt the absolute gap between themselves and her, and a chill broke out across their skin.
It wasn't as though they had openly badmouthed him.
They had cut off their voices so he wouldn't hear, and they had controlled their expressions perfectly.
They had been taught manners so thoroughly that anything less would have been unthinkable.
The blond man, in particular, had been taught those manners physically, so in that regard he was beyond perfect.
So he had thought he had done nothing wrong.
Ah...
Then it hit him. He had spoken bluntly of her disciple right in front of his master. Seong Seorin might well be angry.
Cold sweat streamed down his back.
The blond man in particular now looked like he was seriously deciding whether to run for his life or drop to his knees.
Snicker.
But then Seong Seorin simply let out a soft laugh, and both of them finally breathed again.
"Let us rest for a while."
"Yes, Master."
Drip.
As Seonwoo answered, his whole body was soaked through, as if he had taken a shower in sweat.
On the surface, it looked like he was merely extending his fist slowly, but in reality he was pouring his entire mind into it, controlling every last muscle fiber as he moved.
One punch cast in order to contain the Form Seong Seorin had shown him demanded exertion like sprinting at full speed again and again in the span of an instant.
And he had repeated that hundreds of times. There was no way he could avoid exhaustion.
He was at the point where he ought to collapse on the ground and gasp for breath.
Swoosh.
But Seonwoo overcame that inner temptation and maintained the breathing of Yeon-shin-geuk-gi-gong, and Seong Seorin smiled again in quiet satisfaction.
"Yes. Good, my disciple."
It was truly boundless affirmation.
Boundless praise.
It had always given Seonwoo strength. It had always been the driving force that kept him moving forward.
"Thank you."
But now, the smile he returned carried a faint bitterness.
Seong Seorin did not pretend not to notice.
"Yes. You seem troubled."
And Seonwoo did not hide it either.
"Yes. I can't help it."
"There is no need to reproach yourself. That too will become nourishment."
"However, yes. You must not leave it untended until it grows beyond measure and turns into a Heart Demon, my disciple."
"Yes."
"I think it would do you good, here and now, to look back upon the path you have walked."
As she said that, Seong Seorin's gaze drifted naturally to one side, where the cat and the blond handsome man were standing.
By the time Seonwoo's eyes followed hers and reached them, she spoke.
"Let us have a spar."
"Pardon?"
"?"