Shouting Labor from the Center of the Cave (3)
In an instant, the uproar spread—and the rage of the beast-worker union showed no sign of dying down.
If there had been someone like Sect Leader Yun or Dam So-dam, someone with enough authority to rein them in, they would have come up with a proper solution. But both of them were away, busy with their cultivation.
Even Baek Sang-ah would have been enough to keep this from turning into a disaster, but she was nowhere to be seen.
That left only Hyeongeuk.
“Kraaah! Master, Senior Sister!”
“Oppressor Hyeongeuk, answer our demands at once!”
But Hyeongeuk had no ability to calm the union’s furious public sentiment.
He was immediately overpowered by the bodies of the Ungyu Sect disciples, forged by long years of labor, and there was no way he could beat the mole-beasts at their own burrowing magic with mere spells.
[The sign had been painted over with bright red lacquer.]
That red color meant the following:
“This is our blood and sweat!”
“The blood we spilled to carve out all these spirit stones!”
“Come on, Senior Brother Hyeongeuk, why don’t you try it yourself!”
Hyeongeuk, once the ruler of Ungyu Sect’s laborers, was dragged down from his throne in a single stroke.
The muscle-bound disciples and mole-beasts surrounding him thrust a pickaxe into his hands.
“A-after doing this, can you still call yourselves cultivators!”
“Hah. Weren’t you doing the same thing, Senior Brother?”
“Labor is sacred! Join us!”
“Guarantee a five-day workweek!”
One of the mole-beasts even solemnly erected another wooden placard beside them.
[Labor is the Dao.]
Hyeongeuk fell into despair.
“Move your arms faster, Senior Brother! Just like you always ordered us to!”
“King, kingking!”
And just like that, he became a laborer too, forced to swing a pickaxe.
Under the watchful eyes of the cultivator-beast union, Hyeongeuk kept his body moving without a moment’s rest.
For every hour of pickaxing, he was allowed ten minutes of rest. The cycle repeated until deep into the night.
Clang! Clang!
The sound of pickaxes rang through the cave walls.
Hyeongeuk was already soaked through, his clothes drenched in sweat.
As the days dragged on, the once-clear look in his eyes grew steadily dull.
“Labor, blood, freedom, unity, pickaxe, hammer….”
After a few more days, Hyeongeuk had begun to mutter things almost by instinct.
And then, at last, he reached his limit.
He stopped mid-swing, hoisted the wooden sign high, and shouted, “W-we can’t keep doing this to each other!”
Hyeongeuk cried out.
Every eye among the cultivators and mole-beasts turned to him at once.
“What?”
“What are you saying, Senior Brother Hyeongeuk?”
“Think about it. We are all laborers in the same boat, comrades sharing the same soul. If we tear one another apart, what will change?”
“R-right!”
“Think about it! Who is the real tyrant oppressing us? Even if I swing this pickaxe here, the fact remains that we still have to mine the spirit stones!”
Hyeongeuk had awakened as a revolutionary.
As his short, fiery speech continued, the laborers of the cultivator-beast union cheered.
“We have to solve the root of the problem!”
“King, kingking!”
“Let us all follow Senior Brother Hyeongeuk, the revolutionary of red Ungyu Sect!”
“Come on, let’s go to Ungyu Sect! Let’s win back our freedom with songs of labor and blood!”
They marched out of the cave, chanting words like “labor,” “blood,” and “pickaxe.”
Then Hyeongeuk caught his foot on something and stumbled.
Startled, he glared down—and saw a soft, plump tail sticking up from the ground.
It was clearly Baek Sang-ah’s, except for one strange thing: only the tail was poking through a hole in the earth.
“This is…?”
Just as Hyeongeuk instinctively reached to grab it, the tail slipped swiftly back inside before his hand could close around it.
A moment later, Baek Sang-ah’s head popped up from within.
“Huh?”
The cultivator-beast laborers and the Hyeongeuk leading them all stumbled backward in shock.
Baek Sang-ah blinked at them.
“What are you doing?”
“W-well….”
No one dared answer carelessly.
Come to think of it, it had been Baek Sang-ah who found this cave in the first place; it was practically hers.
To complain about the cave’s conditions, right in front of the Foundation Establishment cultivator who had unearthed it, would have been no different from suicide.
And the mole cultivators, thinking of Rangi, couldn’t so much as make a peep.
“W-what have you been doing, Senior Sister?”
“Getting closer to the earth.”
Baek Sang-ah slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again. Her face was smeared with dirt.
“Hold on a moment.”
As soon as she said that and dug in with her legs, her body shot upward in a single explosive motion, shattering the pile of rock around her.
She was covered in dirt from head to toe, yet there was not the slightest trace of filth in the grace of her figure.
Baek Sang-ah lowered her head and looked at their sign.
“The right not to work?”
She dusted the dirt from her body with a few light pats and said quietly, “A revolution?”
“N-no, that is….”
Cold sweat ran down Hyeongeuk’s back.
“I know. Revolution. Marx.”
“M-Maruku-su?”
“Yeah. Marx.”
“If it’s not rude to ask, may I inquire what that is?”
“I’m not sure either. But he’s someone remembered by history. Through revolution.”
“I-if he’s remembered by history, could he perhaps be a high-ranking cultivator?”
“Maybe.”
Baek Sang-ah pursed her lips for a moment, thinking.
She and the earth had already become quite familiar. Even just now, Hyeongeuk hadn’t noticed her presence until the very moment before he touched her.
That meant she had succeeded, to some degree, in syncing her consciousness with the flow of the land.
So it was time to move on to the next stage of cultivation.
Revolution means going against the current from below to above. They said that was defying heaven. So… revolution is cultivation too?
If that is what you think, then I suppose it is.
After finishing her thought, Baek Sang-ah reached out toward Hyeongeuk.
“Then I’ll do it too. Revolution.”
In that instant, the cultivators and beasts were all dumbfounded.
Hyeongeuk, trying to gather his thoughts, said, “I-if Senior Sister joins us, it’ll be a tremendous help to our laborers.”
“Mm. What do I do?”
“We’ll stage a show of force. At Ungyu Sect!”
Baek Sang-ah thought about it carefully, then nodded.
“To Ungyu Sect.”
“To Ungyu Sect!”
“For the freedom of labor!”
As a result, Dam So-dam and Sect Leader Yun, who had been in the middle of their own difficult cultivation, were struck by a bolt from the blue.
Because the area near the sect’s main gate had suddenly grown noisy, one of the Yun disciples went outside to see what was going on.
And there were the disciples and mole-beasts, all gathered together, chanting something about labor and freedom.
“What do you all think you’re doing!”
“Even laborers need time to rest!”
“This red lacquer is our blood! What meaning is there in spirit stones grown from the blood we spilled!”
“What are these idiots even doing…?”
Hyeongeuk, the labor leader, glanced back and forth between Baek Sang-ah and the Yun disciple, reading the room, before stepping forward.
Just having Baek Sang-ah there was like gaining an army of ten thousand elite troops, and his confidence surged.
Sect Leader Yun could not help but study her face as well.
As always, she wore that blank, indifferent expression. At first glance, she even looked a little dazed.
As the head of a sect, he quickly realized that she was not especially involved in this matter and barked, “Your junior sister is on the verge of achieving the great completion of the Qi Refining Realm and is preparing the rites to enter the Foundation Establishment Realm, and you think this sort of nonsense matters right now?”
At that, the union members started muttering among themselves.
“R-rites?”
“Already…?”
“Wait, so Senior Brother Hyeongeuk is out here staging a revolution because Senior Sister So-dam reached the great completion of Qi Refining?”
Even the mole-beasts seemed to catch the mood. In a flash, they turned silently away and dug into the earth to hide.
Baek Sang-ah looked at Hyeongeuk and said, “Bad. You.”
“Pardon?”
Hyeongeuk was reduced to a floating duck egg in the Yellow River, helpless and alone.
“So it was you, Hyeongeuk. You’re the one leading this foolishness. I’m going to have a serious word with you today, so come along!”
It was rare for Sect Leader Yun to get angry.
That alone showed how important the matter of preparing Dam So-dam’s rites really was.
The other Ungyu Sect disciples, who had been carefully reading the room, scattered as quickly as the mole-beasts had, leaving Hyeongeuk behind.
The union fell apart in an instant.
In the end, only Hyeongeuk remained.
With his shoulders slumped and his face full of despair, he trailed after Sect Leader Yun.
The revolutionary’s downfall.
Oh? That child So-dam. Truly a talent worth coveting. When you first arrived here, she was only in the middle stage of Qi Refining, and now she has already reached great completion?
She said she was going to enter Foundation Establishment. Then I should watch too. I have to reach Foundation Establishment. To enter that cultivation cave.
Even your thoughts are becoming so admirable. You’re right. Merely watching Dam So-dam’s rites will surely help you as well.
Baek Sang-ah watched for a moment as Hyeongeuk was dragged away by the sect leader, then shook her head and went back inside.
By now, Dam So-dam’s qi had grown strong enough to be felt clearly even from the sect courtyard.
“Unnie!”
“So-dam.”
“What’s going on here? Ah, did Sect Leader ask you to help with the rites?”
“No.”
“Then…?”
Dam So-dam looked more gallant than usual.
Her frame had not grown at all, and she was still a thin little thing with no muscle to speak of, but there was a hardened resolve in her face.
More than anything, she was wearing martial robes that were neat and properly fitted, instead of her usual shabby training clothes.
“I heard you were going to Foundation Establishment. So I came to watch.”
“I see. I’m glad Unnie came to see it.”
“Mm. Be glad.”
“They say the day of the rites has to be the clearest night under heaven, when the lights rise into the sky.”
A cultivator’s rites were a matter of receiving heaven’s permission for one’s realm.
Whether one was worthy of ascending from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment—that was what heaven would judge and permit.
Of course, even if permission was not granted, one could still defy heaven’s will. But when ascending from Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment, heaven usually granted it rather easily.
In other words, as long as the day was right, the rites for entering Foundation Establishment were mostly a formality.
“The proper day for the rites is called Cheongcheon Mugwa Yeon, the Night of the Clear, Untainted Sky.”
By then, Sect Leader Yun had entered the cultivation chamber and added to Dam So-dam’s explanation.
“The heavenly qi must flow without obstruction, so the sky must not be overcast. The rites are performed on a night when the lights awaken, so that permission may be sought.”
Baek Sang-ah blinked.
“On top of that, the principle of earth, which corresponds with So-dam’s spiritual root, must align with the flow of heavenly qi.”
“Complicated.”
“As is the way of enlightenment. Though I’m sure Senior Baek understands it far better than I do.”
“So when is it?”
At her question, Sect Leader Yun unfolded the Celestial Pattern Table lying on the desk.
On the yellowed paper, the constellations of heaven, the movement of the moon, and the paths of wind and cloud had all been recorded in dense detail.
With graceful fingers, Sect Leader Yun pointed to the large celestial chart laid out in the center of the chamber.
His gaze was deeper and more composed than usual, and his voice carried the occasional pride of one who could read the currents of heavenly fate.
“First, the sky must be clear. Literally a ‘blue sky.’ Only when the heavens are free of turbidity can heavenly qi descend to the earth without obstruction.”
He traced a line with his finger along the movement of the constellations and the flow of yin and yang.
“But clarity alone is not enough. It must be a night when the sky has opened its eyes fully. A full moon or a new moon, when the energy is abundant, is not suitable.”
“Why not?”
“If the amplitude of qi is too great, it causes conflict. Therefore, it must be the night of the waning moon.”
He nodded and pointed to one particular date.
“Also, earth is the energy at the center of the five phases. It is the force that receives all things, settles them, and keeps the center of their principles.”
“Then?”
“The earth qi flowing from the spiritual veins and the heavenly qi must be exactly equal, so that a center is formed. That is the proper time.”
At last, Sect Leader Yun pointed to one point on the celestial chart.
“So, this day. One year and six months from now—that is the most suitable date.”
All that remained was for Dam So-dam, now in the great completion of Qi Refining, to continue her cultivation until the rites were held.
One year and a half—long or short, depending on how one looked at it—passed by in a blur.
Baek Sang-ah, just as she had in the cave, became intimate and one with all manner of natural things in the same way as before.
And at the end of it all, the day of Dam So-dam’s rites finally arrived.
“Please, heaven….”
Sect Leader Yun quietly joined his hands and prayed to the heavens.
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