Hellish Physical Training
The cold that poured from my body froze the air around me, and frost scattered along the path I had just walked.
Silence hung over the area.
When I slid my sword back into its scabbard, I heard something hit the ground.
I turned around to find my eldest brother staring at me in stunned disbelief.
The wooden sword in his hand had been split cleanly in two, one half rolling across the floor.
“Huh?”
“I’ve lost, Father.”
At Han Yugeom’s words, Father threw back his head and laughed.
“Kwahaha. Looks like the youngest won after all!”
At Father’s declaration, the spectators began to stir.
“Did you see that just now?”
“If that had been a real blade, he wouldn’t have kept so much as a bone.”
“I’m not sure even most sect elders could guarantee a win against that...”
Under all those eyes trained on me, I hurried back to my seat.
Father returned as well, looking amused, and called out to everyone.
“It wasn’t an official spar, but it was a fine match that let us see the youngest’s true potential.”
“B-but the attacks were all directed at me, and I only know how to cut. I still think Yugeom is better suited to being the Young Palace Lord.”
“Of course! It wasn’t a bout with the position of Young Palace Lord on the line, and more importantly, if Yugeom had been allowed to attack too, you wouldn’t have stood a chance! Still, you worked hard.”
Father reached out and patted my head.
With his firm words, everyone’s mood shifted into one of acceptance.
My eldest brother winked at me and returned to his seat.
“Today is a day of remarkable growth not only for the Young Palace Lord, but for the second and third sons as well, so I am in an excellent mood. Everyone, enjoy yourselves!”
With Father’s words, the banquet finally began in earnest.
I felt burdened by the attention around me and moved toward a quieter place.
During gatherings like this, I usually headed for the frozen lake behind the Ice Palace, a place no one would normally bother visiting.
I sat there looking out over the lake and thought to myself.
That footwork is stronger than I expected. Training alone is one thing, but after sparring with someone, I can really feel the difference.
Still, no matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t see any way I could beat the Cold White Divine Sword my eldest brother had shown me.
Just as I was thinking that I wanted to become stronger, I sensed someone behind me.
“Ahem. I watched your match earlier.”
“And you are?”
“It was a strike that seemed to have been thought over for a very long time.”
The figure drew closer, and the face of a man with a weighty air about him came into view.
I hadn’t seen him when I was greeting everyone earlier.
“Thank you for noticing. But I still think I’m lacking.”
“What do you think is lacking?”
“Well... I just had the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to beat my eldest brother’s swordsmanship.”
The mysterious man fell into thought, then opened his mouth.
“I’ll tell you what you need.”
He sat down beside me and began explaining things carefully.
“That sword of yours—did you create it yourself?”
“How did you know?”
“I’ve never seen a blade shaped like that, nor a stance quite so unusual. Even if I look like this, I know quite a lot.”
The man laughed heartily and continued.
“And if you keep thinking on your own, you’ll eventually hit a limit. When that happens, you need to broaden your view by listening to others’ opinions and learning different things.”
“Broaden my view...”
“But what you need most right now isn’t broadened view.”
“Then what is it?”
At my question, the man smiled faintly and answered.
“Physical training.”
“Physical training?”
“You’re still young, which means your body hasn’t fully formed yet. So rather than worrying about improving your martial arts right this instant, or drilling techniques endlessly, what matters more is building your body.”
I had never even considered physical training from that angle.
For me, training had always meant swinging my sword over and over and thinking about how to swing it more powerfully.
“If you keep training in that state, the slashing technique you showed earlier will grow stronger. But that’s all it will become. A body trained only that way can actually become a poison to any other movement or swordwork. Then, even if you later widen your perspective and hear the advice of others, you won’t be able to bring real change to your swordsmanship.”
“Thank you for such valuable teaching. May I ask your name?”
“What a polite little one you are. I’ll tell you my name when we meet again. I have a feeling we’ll run into each other.”
The mysterious man laughed heartily and disappeared.
I even asked Father who he was, but Father only laughed and refused to tell me.
Instead, he said the man’s words made sense, and from now on he would personally train me. That expression on his face was the only thing that gave me a sense of dread.
And from that day on, the real hellish training began.
I woke up at dawn to run, and after breakfast I held a horse-riding stance while reciting my mental cultivation method.
After lunch, I climbed the rocky cliffs behind the mountain and even swam in the frozen lake.
At first, I couldn’t even hold the horse-riding stance long enough to finish the time, and I slipped off the cliffs halfway through the climb. But as time passed, it became manageable, and later I could handle twice the training load without breaking a sweat.
In that way, I continued the hellish regimen for more than two years.
My unusual training became famous even in the North Sea, and as I climbed cliffs and swam across lakes, people jokingly gave me the epithet North Sea Divine Dragon.
People began telling time by watching me, saying that when I climbed the mountain, the divine dragon was ascending to heaven.
While I was training like that, many things changed in the Ice Palace as well.
The biggest change was that my eldest brother had now inherited part of the Palace Lord’s authority and had effectively begun taking on some of the Palace Lord’s duties.
He would have inherited it someday anyway, but because Father, who was utterly distant from state affairs, kept dumping work on my eldest brother, he looked a little pitiable. Still, the brother himself seemed happy, as if he took it as proof that Father trusted him that much.
Another change was my eldest brother’s engagement.
Of course, he was already over twenty, but what surprised me was that his betrothed was his childhood friend.
In my mind, people of such high status would probably enter marriage alliances with other powerful families, but our family was different.
In that sense, I couldn’t help wondering why someone like Father had married Mother, the most beautiful woman in the North Sea and the heir to its largest merchant guild.
So many changes had taken place in the Ice Palace, but my own martial arts had not improved much.
I still had nothing resembling a proper finishing move beyond my footwork-based sword draw, and from the beginning Father had only watched over my physical training, never saying a word about martial arts themselves.
To be sure, my draw technique felt sharper and faster than it had at the Young Palace Lord appointment ceremony, but beyond that I had failed to create any move that used internal energy, unlike my eldest brother’s Baekmumancheon or my second brother’s Ice Armor Technique.
Perhaps sensing my concern, Father spoke to me as the new year approached.
“Yugang, you’re already fifteen. Time really does fly.”
Then he handed me a letter.
I read it with a puzzled expression.
It was an invitation from the Heavenly Sect.
The letter said that the Heavenly Sect’s young lord had turned fifteen and wanted to interact with the outside world, so he wished to invite me, the son of his friend and someone of his own generation.
The Heavenly Sect... Father’s friend from the Young Palace Lord appointment ceremony!
I remembered Cheon Muhyeok, whom I had met years ago at the appointment ceremony.
“I think if you go to the Heavenly Sect, you’ll be able to gauge your own skill and perhaps gain new insight. Still, I’ll leave the decision to you.”
Father seemed to want me to go.
I had also recently begun to feel the limits of physical training, so I accepted readily, thinking that broadening my horizons would help.
“Then I’m going too!”
My second brother raised his hand and made his case.
“I’ve been worried because I haven’t made much progress lately either, and wouldn’t it be safer than sending the youngest alone?”
He said that, but his face clearly showed he was itching to go on a trip.
Perhaps worried about sending me alone, my parents agreed to let my second brother accompany me.
And so our journey to the Heavenly Sect began.
From the North Sea, the Ten Million Great Mountains where the Heavenly Sect stood were not as far as I had expected.
“You know, the Ten Million Great Mountains we’re heading to are named that because they’re such a huge range, with something like ten million peaks.”
My second brother was excited, explaining one thing after another.
“The Heavenly Sect is closer to a religious order, and they worship the heavens, especially the moon rather than the sun.”
“The moon, not the sun?”
“Yeah. I think they feel the moon is more important because, after the sun disappears and the night turns pitch black, it’s the moon that gives off that gentle light.”
“I see...”
“There’s a bit of old history behind it too, though. Actually, the Imperial Court is the place that treats the sun as sacred.”
“The Imperial Court? They worship the sun?”
“Right. But the story goes that someone from that Imperial Court was exiled to the Ten Million Great Mountains because of some incident. He turned his back on the sun that had abandoned him, then looked at the moon, which had shone its light on him in the darkness, and declared, ‘The moon is the true heaven.’ That’s supposedly how the Heavenly Sect was founded.”
“Ah...”
“Well, that’s just something I heard somewhere. There’s also the explanation that because it’s the Ten Million Great Mountains, they called it the Heavenly Sect, and another saying that since the sect lord’s surname is Cheon, they came to be called the Heavenly Sect.”
My second brother knew far more interesting stories and history than I had expected.
The whole way to the Heavenly Sect, the trip was so enjoyable thanks to all the new and entertaining stories that I barely even thought about swordsmanship or martial arts for once.
He even knew a great deal about events and rumors from places far from the North Sea, such as the martial arts tournament held in Zhongyuan and fearsome outbreaks of epidemic-like diseases.
We kept talking about this and that until at last the Ten Million Great Mountains came into view.
So that’s the Ten Million Great Mountains...
The sheer scale of the mountains made me feel a little overwhelmed.
If this really was the summit of the mountain, the moon might actually seem close enough to touch.
Then, all at once, I became uneasy.
Don’t tell me we have to climb this mountain all the way to the top?
When I looked up, I was struck speechless by the unimaginable height of the distant peak.
I pushed my worries aside and started up the mountain after my brother.
After climbing for several hours, we reached a wide stretch of flat land so vast it was hard to believe it could be on a mountain at all, along with something that looked like a village.
At the entrance, the words Heavenly Sect had been written in enormous characters.
“We’re finally here. This is the Heavenly Sect.”
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