Training. And the Beginning.
Training. And the beginning.
Dujeonseongi was one of the secret arts of the Moyong Clan, a truly singular technique that sent an opponent's attack back where it came from.
Even for me — someone who had watched and learned countless martial arts in my previous life — the technique seemed nothing short of miraculous. And so was the principle behind it.
It returns the opponent's attack. But an "attack" carries so much within it: the hardness of steel, the sharpness of a blade, internal energy, killing intent, the shock of impact. All of that is packed into a single swing of the sword. Stopping it would be hard enough — actually returning it seemed so absurd I couldn't even fathom how it was possible.
And yet Dujeonseongi did it. Through the rotation of qi.
It flows.
I closed my eyes and focused. Internal energy poured out of my dantian and spread through my entire body. Slowly, I draped it over my sword as well.
Thick, clinging qi began to coat the blade, layer upon layer, until the sword was completely shrouded and gave off a deep blue light.
Shaaaaa.
I had only wrapped it in qi, and yet it felt as though a blade were spiraling around the sword. I allowed my lips a brief curl of satisfaction, then sent the qi seeping into the sword's core and set it spinning.
From the outside, it was simply a sword wreathed in energy — but inside, it was whirling furiously. That was the hidden principle of Dujeonseongi.
And now I would build a sword technique around that principle. When I received the opponent's attack and struck back, I would carry their force inside my own blow. Better yet, my goal was to make the rotation constant. That was the technique I meant to create.
Imagining a real opponent, I moved my body. The sword cleaved through empty air. There was nothing there, but I fought as though my life depended on it.
How do I maintain it?
No matter how hard I concentrated, the rotation broke partway through. Colliding with the enemy threw it off, and striking out on my own threw it off as well.
It had been the same at Byeokrando. Even at the peak of my focus, the rotation had shattered, and I hadn't managed to return every attack.
Is my concentration lacking?
No. It's shameless to say it about myself, but if there's one thing I trust, it's my focus. Otherwise I never would have survived nearly thirty years in my past life.
Then what was missing? I conjured phantom enemies and drilled endlessly, but no answer presented itself.
Even in the middle of thinking, the rotation of the qi on my blade kept snapping. If it merely slowed, that would be fine — I could just spin it up again. But a complete break was unacceptable. Restarting the rotation took time, and if it broke at the decisive moment, that break would be my death.
That was exactly why I hadn't used Dujeonseongi since my Reverse Sense had first awakened at Byeokrando. This unstable technique couldn't come close to matching it — let alone surpassing it. That was why I believed that completing this technique would take me one step further along the path.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
Ansong, who had finished packing the gear at some point, settled down beside Seonhwa, who was crouched on the ground. Seonhwa flinched slightly under Mujin's presence and answered quietly.
"It looks like he's fighting."
At her answer, Ansong's brow narrowed faintly — not out of displeasure, but because it was close to the truth.
"It's beautiful. That sword."
Seonhwa pointed a finger at Mujin's blade, which gleamed deep blue, casting light in every direction.
She stared at it for a long moment, then rose, picked up a wooden training sword, and took her stance.
"Haaht!"
Whuum!
It was a vertical cut with no trace of sharpness to it whatsoever. But Seonhwa wasn't discouraged. The goal was right there before her eyes; all she had to do was keep working.
The moment she swung the sword with that thought in mind, something rare flickered in Ansong's eyes. He couldn't yet tell whether she had talent — but at the very least, he could tell she wasn't the type to give up easily.
How long had I been swinging the sword? A day? Perhaps two had already passed. The rotation broke at the slightest provocation, and the enemy before my eyes still refused to vanish.
Something is missing. No — is it really just missing? Could it be outright impossible? Maybe I'm wasting my time chasing something absurd.
Maybe I'd make more progress doing something else with these hours.
But despite my thoughts, I kept swinging, and slowly the sword stopped feeling like my own body. How should I put it — as if I were watching my body move from somewhere far away.
It was my first time experiencing this, so I had no idea what to call it. I'd never trained like this in my past life either, so maybe I was doing it wrong all along.
In my past life, I grew stronger through fighting.
Bandits had been an enormous help, especially. In those days, when I had no proper martial art to speak of and threw myself at everything armed with nothing but Reverse Sense, bandits made ideal opponents.
They came in numbers, and there was a bounty for dispatching them. They solved my food, clothing, and shelter too — so setting aside their crimes, I suppose I owed them a strange debt of gratitude.
Well, I was weak in the beginning too.
People only have a time when they're strong because they also had a time when they were weak, don't they?
.....Huh? The beginning?
What was that? A spark suddenly went pop! in my head. Was it because of the word "beginning"?
I couldn't tell. You know how it is — you had something to say, and the moment you open your mouth, it's gone. I couldn't recall it now, only remember it later, which was endlessly irritating.
I'll remember eventually.
I brushed it off carelessly and looked down at my body. It was nearing its limit. My palms were covered in the torn remains of blisters from who knew how many thousand swings.
One more measure of time and I would probably collapse. And if I collapsed, would this state end?
While my body kept swinging, the part of me watching from far away lay sprawled out in perfect ease, waiting for the collapse — and suddenly my head started to itch.
That maddening feeling of something being almost within reach and yet not. The itch grew unbearable, and I stretched my hand up toward my head to scratch it.
And in the very instant my fingers touched my hair, light flickered before my eyes and my mind snapped into crystalline clarity.
"Heuk...! Haah...!"
I kept swinging. The enemy before me was fading, little by little. Just a little more and it would be gone.
I forced my collapsing body to move. I shredded the enemy desperately, but at the last moment, just before vanishing, it reassembled itself.
Son of a bitch.
The enemy I had imagined was a wall. A wall I had to break through to reach the next stage. And it had nearly fallen, only to hold at the very end.
What about the rotation? It broke less often than at first, but it still broke. I poured in more focus to keep it spinning, but no matter how much time passed, the enemy didn't disappear.
Had I taken the wrong path, after all?
Even a single goal has many roads leading to it. Some are dead ends; some run in a straight line. And the road I was on now looked like a dead end — one that stopped just a breath away from the goal itself.
Should I give up?
My heart was wearing thin. My body had been exhausted plenty of times before, and it didn't matter. But this was the first time my heart had ever worn out.
Or maybe I could rest a bit and start again—
No. That's just an excuse. Rest a bit and try again? A lie. I couldn't let myself be deceived by words like that. What I needed wasn't rest — it was conviction. The certainty that I could tear down this enemy, this wall.
Every time weakness crept into my heart, I swung harder. And still, the enemy did not disappear.
And neither did the single word circling in my head.
Beginning.
Why? Why did that word keep circling?
No matter how I turned it over, I couldn't see it. Fine, then — let me start with what I did know and think it through slowly.
I was swinging a sword right now. A sword wrapped in qi. That qi was rotating, and the qi in my body was flowing.
Then what if I set the qi in my body rotating too? The enemy began to fade again. But it didn't vanish completely. Just like before, the breaks had lessened dramatically — but they hadn't disappeared.
Wrong path again.
Was there truly no other road?
I searched my body from head to toe with inner vision. And there it was — a sphere blazing like the sun.
The dantian. And the beginning.
What if — just imagine it — the rotation started from the dantian itself? What if that spinning qi then flowed through my body and sword as always? Then I wouldn't have to keep restarting the rotation; all my focus could go solely into maintaining it.
I drew every last thread of qi back into my dantian at once. The enemy, which had been attacking in a frenzy, froze on the spot — and then, unlike the way its body had simply faded until now, it began to crumble.
This was the way.
With conviction in hand, I spun the qi in my dantian harder than I ever had in my life. A vortex finally formed, and the moment I felt it was ready, I let the qi flood into my body.
Shaaaaaa.
It felt as though that sound was coming from inside my own flesh. With a rush of cool clarity, I turned the qi toward my sword this time.
Vrooom.
And now the sword itself sang. Unlike when I had first begun this training, I didn't bother holding back the grin climbing up my cheeks. I threw all of my focus into one thing only — keeping the rotation alive. And the enemy collapsed, shattering apart and leaving just its upper half behind before it, too, crumbled away.
This should finish it.
Listening to the sweet ring of my blade, I drew it down in a single stroke. The enemy's body, which had been passing through my sword from the very beginning, burst apart like glass. Leaving not even wreckage behind, it simply ceased — and where it had stood, only light remained.
The itch that had plagued me was gone, replaced by sheer refreshment. My body was wrecked, but this was the best I had ever felt. If not this, I couldn't name a moment in my entire past life that had felt better.
I opened my eyes, grin still plastered across my face, and turned around.
"So? What do you think?"
I said it to Ansong, whose mouth was hanging open in a perfect 'Hwaah.'