The Path Reached at Last
Seonwoo breathed in.
Calm, yet so deep there seemed to be no end to it, his breathing felt like something no outside stimulus could ever shake.
His eyes had deepened in the same way, as though giving that stillness visible form, and they tracked every ice arrow Baekseol fired.
Step.
At first, he evaded by taking a single step when the arrow had drawn about half its trajectory.
Then, before six ice arrows had traced even a quarter of their paths, he had already avoided them all.
Step.
And now, the instant they were fired, he stepped at the exact same moment and slipped past them.
Watching the path Seonwoo drew with every step, Baekseol stared in shock.
...Because it was a path she knew.
The level of martial arts Seong Seorin had limited them to in this spar.
What lay within those bounds was familiar to Baekseol as well. She knew the trajectories of those forms.
And Seonwoo, the moment he saw the form of the ice arrows Baekseol fired, was dodging them with the most optimal counter-trajectory.
He drew the exact path that could do it, in the exact span of time required.
Inhale—
Doing it again and again, he slowly closed the distance between them.
If this had been a spar between person and person, then it would have looked like this:
An unending stream of attacks, and Seonwoo ghosting through them with the barest minimum of movement as he advanced.
Worse still, he was closing in while dodging before his opponent had even fully launched the attack.
How?
It was impossible.
This was a spar in which Baekseol, whose gap over Seonwoo was so vast that even comparing it to heaven and earth felt inadequate, had lowered herself to his level.
And more than that, both of them were using forms from the martial arts they had learned from Seong Seorin.
They both knew each other's forms in full.
Then the positions should have been reversed.
Even if they wielded the same weapon and used the same methods, wasn't the difference in realm immeasurable?
Even with the level restricted, the depth of the forms used within that restricted level should have been completely different.
Then why—
Crack—
Inhale—
How is Seonwoo dodging my attacks like that?
The positions had reversed.
If anything, Seonwoo's forms were overwhelming Baekseol's.
She was experiencing it herself, and still she couldn't believe it.
Craack—!
So she sent out a move in earnest.
Three ice arrows shot forth.
Each one traced the highest-level trajectory possible within the limits imposed on them.
Two ice arrows became two arms, each drawing a different path from left and right, at different times.
That alone was lethal.
But the hardest move was hidden behind it.
Even if both hands were used to block, in that very instant, a knee would naturally drive up from below into the vital point left exposed.
A trajectory no longer limited to a mere form, but completed into a true technique.
To be honest, at this level, it was an attack balanced on the edge of being outright unfair.
Inhale—
But the moment Baekseol's eyes met Seonwoo's, she became certain the attack would fail.
Because Seonwoo's deepened eyes were seeing this too.
Tsut—
The ice arrow driving in from outside his field of vision on the left—he simply twisted his shoulder and let it pass.
The very first move of the technique, the one meant to seize and control the opponent, missed with absurd ease.
No different from the ice arrows he had dodged before.
At the same time, he lightly flicked aside with the back of his hand the second ice arrow, the one that should have been impossible to evade, while naturally bringing the right side of his upper body forward.
He didn't put force into it. He only pushed naturally, and the ice arrow's course bent away and flew past his shoulder.
It should have collided.
But the back of his hand, extended at the exact moment and position required, redirected the flow of force without resistance.
And when the third ice arrow surged up toward the place his twisted upper body had occupied, it too had already become a missed attack.
That was the end.
Tap.
The final step.
Before the third ice arrow had even fully missed, Seonwoo straightened his posture and stepped forward once—his hand had already reached the distance where it could touch Baekseol.
Baekseol saw that hand clearly.
But there was no way to stop it.
It had reached her before the technique she was using had even finished collapsing in failure.
It was Seonwoo's overwhelming victory.
The moment his hand reached her, Seonwoo asked, "Can I pet you?"
-...Only three times. And not the belly.
"What a shame."
Shrrk.
Her voice was sullen as she answered.
Swish—
But her tail, gently swaying, somehow looked pleased.
As promised, Seonwoo petted Baekseol three times and stepped back.
Swish—
And as soon as his hand left her, Baekseol's tail flicked as if her mood had suddenly soured. She turned to Seong Seorin and asked,
-What happened?
It was a result she couldn't understand.
The gold-haired man, who had watched in silence, wore a face that said he couldn't make sense of it either.
He too was one of the strongest beings in Hanwa.
He could read Seonwoo's realm as clearly as if it were laid out on his palm.
That was why he truly, truly couldn't understand this result.
Seonwoo had displayed an overwhelming dominance completely out of line with his realm.
With Baekseol, the gold-haired man, and even her disciple's gaze focused on her, Seong Seorin smiled and said,
"When the first ten years we promised had passed, I acknowledged my misjudgment."
-Yes.
"Indeed. I remember it well, because it was the day I realized even you, Elder Sister, could misjudge something."
"Haha. That's true."
It was something Seong Seorin could never forget either.
Something comparable even to that "misjudgment" in the imperial palace during her lifetime.
"Huff, huff. Lady Seong. To say that I love you..."
Ah.
She remembered it again.
The imperial palace she had visited to punish those corrupting the nation.
Yes. It should have been nothing more than a visit, but in that palace Seong Seorin had, for the first time in her life, broken into a cold sweat.
Only a little, but she had been tense too.
Because of the Third Prince, who had blocked her path with an oily face and a leering grin and launched a confession at her.
No.
Seong Seorin immediately shoved that memory into the deepest corner of her mind.
It was wrong to even let it surface in connection with her disciple.
This misjudgment, unlike that one, had brought Seong Seorin nothing but joy.
She had told her disciple before that ten years would be enough to build the foundation needed to surpass the wall of talent.
But she had been thoroughly mistaken. Even after ten years, he was still only taking the first step.
He would need to invest vastly more time into the fundamentals.
That had been Seong Seorin's judgment.
And at the time, she had said this only to Baekseol and the gold-haired man.
If Seonwoo had heard those words back then, he could only have been shaken.
And in fact, even now—
Though he tried not to show it, Seonwoo's face revealed the stir in his emotions clearly after hearing them.
Seeing straight through her disciple's heart, Seong Seorin smiled softly.
"Disciple. Why do you think I said that if I had met you in life—if I had taught you then—I would have lamented that I could not lead you to greatness?"
It was a question, but without waiting for an answer, Seong Seorin continued.
"Because your talent was lacking? No. No, that is not it. I would have lamented because of my insufficiency, and the insufficiency of time."
"Because you were lacking, Master?"
"Hehe. Yes. More precisely, because there would have been no way to make up for the lack of time."
"You... only reach the path by advancing deeply."
"Deeply..."
"Yes. Anyone can move forward. And moving forward quickly as well... that is possible for the many common people called geniuses."
"But, Disciple, do you think the path of those who move on so carelessly would be deep and clear? How vividly do you think they remember the road they passed?"
"In that regard, Disciple, you are different."
"Slow, clumsy, and sometimes forced to turn back and walk again. But because of that, the path you have walked is solid and clear. More than anyone else, you have carved it into yourself."
Countless wrong answers made the right answer deeper.
"A path is not merely something one advances along. It can also be deepened as one goes, Disciple."
"Instead of traveling far along a shallow road, you advanced little by little along a path that was deep and clear."
Then Seong Seorin turned her gaze toward Baekseol and the gold-haired man.
"Could either of you do it? Could you walk without rest a path where you repeat thousands, tens of thousands of wrong answers, and use them as nourishment to move forward a single step at a time?"
-Ah...
Baekseol shivered.
At last, she understood why Seonwoo had overwhelmed her in the spar.
It was, if anything, natural.
Baekseol had simply walked a path quickly, in one go.
She had never pondered over it.
She had known it naturally, so there had seemed no need to.
...No.
She had thought she knew it, but that was not true knowing.
To truly know, one had to be like Seonwoo.
One had to understand the "one" that included not only the single right answer, but also the countless wrong answers that led to it.
Within a single step, there had been tens of thousands of steps.
That was how Seonwoo had walked.
Over a hundred years, slow but deep, steadily accumulating it all.
Which meant this spar had been, from the beginning, Baekseol getting completely cheated.
The length had been the same, but the depth had been utterly different.
There was no way I could've won.
"...That is a path I could never walk," the gold-haired man said quietly.
"Yes. My disciple advanced along a path engraved deeply and clearly by such steps."
"So if it had been during my lifetime, how could I not have lamented?"
This was a road by which, within the lifespan given to a human, one could never reach realm.
If Seonwoo had also possessed the sort of talent ordinarily called genius, along with the talent to walk such a path, the story would have been different.
But those two gifts were nearly impossible to coexist in one person to begin with.
So in life she could only have lamented, but—
"The greatest fortune of all came to me, for this place is Hanwa."
"A dimensional rift that has even slipped free of time."
Here, there was no constraint of time.
And her disciple—
Her disciple, born with a talent the world would never see again—
"Disciple. You, who keep moving forward without rest no matter how far—what you are doing is right. I guarantee it."
"You are the one with the makings to surpass even me."
Cheonma Seong Seo-rin declared it with certainty.
And in that dimensional rift, untouched even by time—
Step.
Three hundred years passed.
Seonwoo stood upon the gray earth and breathed.
That calm, bottomless presence resembled the deep sea itself.
And inside him—
A force surged like the very moment a star exploded.
Heavenly Demon Qi.
The very same Heavenly Demon Qi his master had once shown him was now racing through Seonwoo's meridians.
A ferocious energy savage enough to devour even a dragon in fear.
Yet even with such power raging within him, Seonwoo did not waver.
Because by now he knew well that even Heavenly Demon Qi could not bring him down so long as his will remained unbroken.
And so, at last—
Seonwoo succeeded in grasping the Heavenly Demon Qi in his hand, just as the master in his memory once had.
"Splendid."
His master, Cheonma Seong Seo-rin, watched and smiled in deep satisfaction at the sight of her disciple finally reaching the path.
Then she said,
"Now it is time for you to descend the mountain."