Breathing Through the Divine Technique
He swung his arms, checking his condition.
He was not fully recovered—there was still a faint creak in the joints—but nothing that would hinder his movement.
Time to begin.
Over the past few days of dedicated recovery, he had committed the divine technique’s formulas to memory. He could recite them with his eyes closed now.
Not all of it, though.
Everything he knew was confined to the First Realm—the opening stage of the technique he was about to learn. It was a rank that applied only to this divine art, and the fact that it was the beginning did not mean it could be taken lightly. Without the knowledge he had already obtained, he doubted he would have grasped even half of it by now.
It was difficult enough to match a true divine technique, and he found himself looking forward to just how powerful it would prove to be.
He settled into a cross-legged seat.
A divine technique—more precisely, a heart method—was composed of three principal parts. As he had already noted, the verbal formulas came first; next were the qi circulation pathways and the breathing. The three were not separate concepts. They were organically linked, and only when all of them came together did a heart method become complete. In nearly every case, the absence of even one element meant the art would fail to manifest properly.
He recited the formulas inwardly as he breathed.
A clean, refreshing sensation began to spread through his body, as though he were breathing with his entire being.
The essence pores have opened.
Every person absorbed natural energy unconsciously simply by living, drawing it in through every aperture of the body—especially in places where that energy ran thick. Entering a heart method was, in essence, learning to do that process deliberately. Concentration was everything. A single lapse mid-flow would instantly tangle the situation and end in failure; sometimes the result was severe internal injury, so caution was essential.
Still, once the essence pores were open, he was halfway there.
To complete a proper initiation, he would have to hold this state for a set duration and guide the energy through the full circulation pathways of the body—the Small Heavenly Cycle.
He frowned, reining in the energy that wanted to thrash about on its own and forcing it to move in sequence. At the end of that path lay the region below the navel—the lower dantian.
The boy felt a heavy, solid sensation settle there.
Natural energy can’t be touched or eaten. You can only sense it through a faculty beyond the five senses, so I can’t be certain it’s seated correctly.
Nothing seemed wrong, though, so he decided it was fine enough.
He exhaled and opened his eyes. Sweat had run from his crown down his whole body from the intensity of his focus, leaving him faintly sticky and uncomfortable.
He rose from his seat.
His strength felt drained, yet paradoxically, everything else about his condition was the best it had been in recent days.
Before I started, my arm was still trembling a little…
Now it felt as though he had fully recovered.
Did the internal energy that settled in the dantian affect the body? Or was it the energy moving through the circulation pathways?
Either way, a good result was a good result. He had gained power; the sensible next step was to try using it. He moved at once.
He extended a hand and called on the energy.
A faint ash-gray aura shimmered across his skin—localized only at his fingertips. Even that did not last long before it vanished. In terms of time, perhaps the span of ten breaths.
Then a crushing wave of exhaustion hit him.
“Hah—hah!”
It feels about as hard as running without rest for a full half-hour. My heart’s pounding too.
Rest restored his condition soon enough.
If I hadn’t known better… The drawback feels strange. Almost like hunger? That hollow feeling must be from completely draining the energy—and that was after using it for only a moment.
Absolute quantity of internal energy clearly mattered. For the time being, he would have to diligently accumulate qi so he would be ready for any unexpected situation.
Of course, resting a little first seemed wiser for now.
How much time has passed?
His sense of time was off, so he could not say precisely—but a considerable span had definitely gone by.
His stomach growled, announcing its hunger. He soothed it with whatever food he had on hand and returned to thinking about the divine technique.
Eumjangdokgyeong—the Scripture of the Hidden Yin Poison.
What Gu Mang-gyeol had left behind was truly remarkable. Even at the mere First Realm, four distinct properties were already fused into the internal energy.
Using them freely right now is… impossible. I’m still lacking too much. I should take meaning simply from the fact that I’ve entered the art at all.
If this was the beginning, how far would it go once he delved deeper? The prospect was exciting. He did not think he would be disappointed.
There’s still a long road ahead. The gap between me and the Black-clothed Man I met before entering this place is even greater.
Ultimately, he had something he wanted. Beyond Gu Mang-gyeol’s wish that he become the foremost of his age, there was a dream the boy had carried since childhood.
But a mountain stood in the way first—a goal he had set by instinct the moment he began learning martial arts.
If someone struck first, you repaid the blow.
In that sense, the Black-clothed Man had entered his sights. Even without a method, he would never have given up; he would have found him someday. Now that a means of gaining power had been given to him, harboring a personal grudge and seeking revenge seemed more than justified.
The best outcome would be to defeat him fairly, face-to-face, through martial skill alone. But if that proved impossible, he was prepared not to be choosy about the means. Before he was a martial artist, he was himself—and that came first.
Besides, growing stronger was only possible if he stayed alive. He considered the thought only natural.
The boy greeted the new morning in high spirits and drew a breath of the outside air—not through his nose, but through the essence pores of his entire body. The training so far had not been wasted; the motion came with a natural ease that banished the last of the night’s sleep at once.
Once a little of the fatigue had fallen away, he planted his hands on the ground and began bending and extending his elbows, over and over. Heat built through his body as the repetitions mounted—a process of waking the muscles, he supposed. It seemed to work better on an empty stomach, so he had been doing it for several days now.
From there he gripped the upper frame of the hut’s doorway and, chest open, pulled himself up and down. He could not manage as many this time, finishing at roughly ten before dropping down. His limbs were already feeling lighter.
Lastly he breathed through his nose and ran out toward the meadow, taking a light stroll while he felt the nature around him. The whole routine lasted a little over half an hour. Training his body this way had brought clear definition to his abdomen and thickened the muscle across his frame. Even without internal energy, he suspected he could now best most grown men in a fight—though he had no intention of testing it.
“It’d be nice if I could eat some kind of meat. Everything else is fine, but there are a few inconveniences.”
Was that too greedy a complaint? Well—this place was perfectly suited for quiet training.
Focus on the advantages, not the drawbacks. Even this meadow is overflowing with medicinal herbs, and the energy is denser than almost anywhere else. Finding a place better for accumulating qi would be hard. You’d probably only manage it on land some great sect treasures and hoards.
He had a rough idea of what this place was, though he could not pin it down with certainty. What he did know was that day and night did not exist here. Because of that, he could not tell how much time had passed—yet the amount of qi he had stored had still grown meaningfully. Simply drawing up his internal energy, he could now sustain it for nearly two full hours: dozens, even hundreds of times what he had managed at the start.
I’ll do it again today. Working up a sweat and then accumulating qi seems more effective. Maybe the efficiency rises because the waste has been flushed out?
The odds that this was actually true were very low—but believing it made it feel true, and even a feeling was not a bad thing.
He settled into a cross-legged seat and began. At once the air around him stirred. A fierce wind rose with him at its center—every gust a wave of energy. Of that vast flow, he absorbed only a handful. But that handful was clearly growing.
By the time he finished, the turbulence had subsided. The energy in his dantian felt a little larger than before. He could not measure exactly how much he had stored, but it was no small amount.
Morning work done? Time to fill my stomach and get to the next task. I’m starting to get sick of grass.
There was nothing else to eat, so he had no choice. The environment was beginning to tempt him to abandon training altogether and leave—but there was still too much to do and far too much he lacked, so he forced the thought down.
One of those tasks, he meant to handle now.
Pill refinement was a difficult study. One of the reasons alchemists were so well treated in the murim was precisely how hard the craft was to learn. Even reaching a modest level, though, would be worthwhile. It would let him earn his keep anywhere—even without proper refining materials.
Or rather, there was a method that used materials available everywhere. It was the foundation of alchemy itself: the technique he was about to practice—Jeongryeon.
Jeongryeon was the handling of natural energy through alchemical method, giving tangible form to something that could neither be touched nor seen. When it was completed in a rounded shape, as with ordinary refinement, the result was called a Wondan—an Origin Pill.
Jeongryeon required neither materials nor preparation. All that was needed was knowledge, and a body in working order.
The boy let out a quiet snort of laughter.
Will I succeed today…?
For the he-had-lost-count-th time, he began the attempt once more.