A Fateful Encounter on the Snowfield (6)
I opened my eyes to a world that wasn’t the cave at all.
Everything around me was pitch black.
“Huh…? I can talk?”
I was sure I’d become a penguin and lost the ability to speak, yet here I was—talking.
“So… this isn’t reality?”
If I was exhausted and dreaming, it actually made sense.
“My body… it’s a penguin.”
I’d expected a human form in a dream, but no—this was still a penguin.
“What kind of dream is this…?”
I sighed and looked around.
Then
“Huh?”
In the distance, something faint glowed.
“What is that?”
A pure white dot?
I didn’t know what it was, but I decided to head that way.
“Walking will take forever…”
I pressed my belly to the ground and pushed with my feet, scooting forward.
After what felt like ten minutes, I paused to check how far I was.
“Still nowhere near it…”
The dot hadn’t grown any bigger.
“Hmm… if this is a dream, I can make it whatever I want, right?”
I stopped moving and thought it through.
“If I train in a dream, will my real-life skills level up too? I’ve seen things like spiritual cultivation where realms jump in stories like that.”
Since I couldn’t decide, I just tried it.
“First… let’s recreate the Freeze Beam.”
That was pure luck—almost getting eaten by a polar bear before I succeeded. If I could use it on my own…”
“I’d lose one less threat…”
It had started from the Ice Soul Divine Palm, spreading internal energy from my palm.
“Start simple… what exactly is ‘spreading’?”
The word carried different meanings depending on context.
In math it meant a value exploding toward infinity or shrinking to zero, or how a vector field radiated from a single point.
In physics it meant heat, light, energy, or air flowing outward from one spot.
Generally it meant thoughts, emotions, or energy reaching outward or bursting forth.
From those three angles, if they all overlapped, it spread.
Basically, spreading meant spewing something out.
Breaking down the characters: bal meant to spread, to emerge, to arise.
san meant to scatter, to disperse, to sprinkle.
“Hmm… but I wasn’t just spraying internal energy, was I?”
The one time I’d succeeded, it had happened on the exhale.
“Was the timing off? Or something else?”
After mulling it over, I still had no perfect answer, so I gave it a try.
“So… I need to open a path for the internal energy to rise to my throat…”
I tried the same method again, but
“It’s not working?”
Instead of a beam, only freezing cold gushed out.
“What went wrong?”
I’d done everything the same way, yet this time I only got cold.
“There must be some difference… but I can’t figure it out.”
“Ugh… this way I’ll never be able to use it later…”
I tried to shake my head, but the penguin body made it impossible.
Then
“Huh? The dot… it got a little bigger.”
The target had grown slightly.
What exactly was inside that dot…?
Thinking that, the white shape began to swell.
“This is…”
What I’d thought was a dot wasn’t a dot at all.
The white form grew until it fully revealed itself, and the moment I saw the truth, I froze.
“An iceberg…?”
What stood before me was a massive ice mountain.
All around was absolute black, yet only that glacier glowed with pure white light.
“Why an iceberg…?”
I walked right up to the glacier I could almost touch and placed my flipper on it.
“It’s cold… wait, no—something feels different.”
Placing my flipper on the ice felt exactly like someone resting a hand on my belly. The moment I pulled away, the sensation vanished.
“What… could it be? That old man’s internal energy?”
The vast amount of qi he’d left me—probably enough to form a glacier if it belonged to the same Ice Soul Divine Art.
“Haha… so the old man might have been the palace master of the North Sea Ice Palace…”
Even if he were the master, carrying a complete technique would be understandable.
I slowly studied the glacier.
“Made entirely of internal energy… no impurities or trapped air pockets.”
Even an iceberg is still ice—compressed snow from glaciers, with air locked inside.
This one was so transparent it looked almost the opposite.
“The tip of an iceberg… that’s why I can’t control an internal energy this huge.”
In martial arts, one needs a complete body and mind.
The word sim originally meant heart or mind, sin meant body, and the middle gi—in wuxia terms, it’s qi or internal energy.
“I’m weak in heart and body, but I have a lot of qi, so I can only use part of it to balance things out.”
As I thought that, I noticed something strange in front of me.
The glacier I’d been able to touch moments ago was now fading.
“Wait…”
I reached out, but nothing was there.
The mountain melted away like it had never existed, and at the same time the surrounding black space began to tremble.
“What…?”
My body felt heavier.
Not my body—more like my consciousness was slipping away.
Like someone was dragging me out of here.
“Is it already over…?”
A pang of regret hit me.
I hadn’t checked everything or properly sorted what I’d learned, yet the light ahead grew stronger.
Black space cracked open, and a familiar sensation spilled through the gap.
Cold air and a faint breeze.
“……”
I closed my eyes for the last time.
“Kya!”
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes again.
Cold air rushed into my lungs.
I stared blankly at the cave ceiling for a while.
The familiar cave shape.
The cold air wrapped around me.
And my still-penguin body.
“……I’m back.”
I slowly moved my body.
“Thankfully, I recovered.”
I didn’t know how long I’d slept, but my stomach growled with hunger after using up all my energy to heal.
“First, let’s hunt.”
I stood up and headed out of the cave.
Outside, the sun was shining brightly.
“Let’s hunt quickly.”
I pressed my belly to the ground and pushed slowly toward the sea with my feet.
A moment later
“Kya!”
“I ate fifteen fish again—amazing!”
“No matter how much energy I used to heal, I might end up turning into a pig instead of a penguin…”
As I thought that, another groan came from somewhere.
“Huh?”
“Is that an animal?”
If it was an animal, I should just ignore it, but
“Maybe like last time—an injured person…”
I decided to investigate.
I moved slowly toward the sound.
“Is someone here again?”
I hadn’t expected to find another injured person by chance, but
“Of course I could just walk past, but if it’s like the old man, helping makes sense.”
“I can’t just leave them.”
I kept scanning the surroundings while moving toward the groans.
At first, nothing was visible—snow-covered wide expanse, biting cold wind, and faint waves mixed with the breeze.
The kind of environment where hallucinations were believable after two months of being alone in the cave.
“Did I imagine it?”
Thinking that, I turned back toward the cave when I heard it again.
“……ugh…”
A tiny sound. I turned toward it.
Behind a rock buried under snow lay something collapsed.
“A person…?”
I approached carefully.
The moment I saw the face, I stopped.
A man.
Long white hair scattered over the snow, striking blue eyes contrasting his ghostly pale skin.
But right now, his condition mattered more than his looks.
His clothes were torn in several places, and cuts covered his body—especially on the arms, where blood had already frozen.
He didn’t move.
“He’s not critically hurt, but…”
Still, leaving him was out of the question.
I checked the surroundings—no obvious tracks left by wind.
“How did he even get here?”
This place wasn’t easy for humans to reach. No village nearby, no place boats could stop.
“Maybe like the old man, he has a story too.”
But that could wait.
First, I needed to check if he was alive.
I moved closer and carefully examined him.
He was breathing—thankfully.
“Sigh…”
I let out a relieved breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Just knowing he was alive was already a relief.
The real problem was how to carry him.
My body was still a penguin.
If I were human, I could easily pick him up, but now that was impossible.
“Dragging him is the only option.”
I grabbed the edge of his coat with my beak and slowly pulled back.
It wasn’t easy. The snow helped with the pull, but one person was heavier than I could handle.
“I thought learning internal energy cultivation would make my body strong, but apparently I still have a long way to go.”
Pushing with that thought, I moved a little at a time.
One step.
Then another.
Time blurred. After what felt like forever, the cave finally came into view.
“We made it.”
I carried him inside and laid him in a spot sheltered from the wind.
I brushed the snow off, checked his wounds again, and realized they weren’t life-threatening.
“I should have some food ready.”
I brought over the fish I’d caught and placed them beside him.
He couldn’t eat them yet, but if he woke up, they’d be helpful.
I finished preparing and looked at him.
“White hair and blue eyes…”
That kind of appearance was rare here.
Like the old man before him.
And this man too.
It felt like I kept running into people who didn’t belong in this frozen world.
I sat beside him and waited.
How much time passed?
“……”
The man’s fingers twitched.
I lifted my head immediately.
His eyes opened slowly.
Blue irises scanned the cave until they landed on me.
He stared at me for a moment, mouth opening as if to speak, but no sound came out.
He simply closed his eyes again.
“He’s still not fully awake…”
I left the sleeping man behind and began flipping through the martial arts manuals, wondering how to adapt them to my penguin body.