Ch#15
Concern, my foot.
This was definitely a new form of harassment.
A maid should only have to do a maid’s work. Why on earth did I have to practice martial arts?
“Bend your knees a bit more and lower your stance. Put strength into the tips of your toes so your lower body doesn’t wobble. It will be easier if you imagine yourself taking root in the ground.”
Am I a plant?
Taking root? What nonsense!
I was truly on the verge of death from this horse stance training that had been going on for nearly an hour.
As if to prove his words from yesterday were no empty promise, Jeok I-geon ordered me to train the moment I brought him lunch.
They say an unlucky person will break their nose even if they fall backward, and that was exactly my situation.
It was only the day before yesterday that I was taken hostage by a spy from the Murim Alliance and barely escaped with my life, yet that very incident had become a shackle, leading to this disaster.
He claimed he was doing this out of concern for me, but hmph! Who was he trying to fool!
This was all for Jeok I-geon’s own sake.
He had finally gotten a quite useful personal maid after a long time, only for her to almost die on her very first day.
At that moment, the only things that probably flashed through Jeok I-geon’s mind were hand-cut noodles and rice balls.
He must have decided that upgrading my capabilities was essential if he wanted to keep receiving high-quality service.
Jeok I-geon was not the type of person to worry about anyone.
He only cared about usefulness.
A sweet, metallic taste rose in my throat, but I bit my lip and focused on holding the horse stance.
Sweat was already pouring down like rain. I was gradually losing all sensation in my lower body.
If I had known it would come to this, I should have broken my own leg last night.
“……”
Wow, why am I only thinking of this brilliant method now?
If I had done it the day I received orders from Madam Gwak, things wouldn’t have escalated to this disastrous point in the first place.
I was disappointed in myself for not being more daring.
“How can you train when your mind is so full of idle thoughts? Clearing your mind is also a form of training.”
Damn it, can’t I even think freely now?
As an avid fan of martial arts novels, I knew that the horse stance was the absolute basic of basics.
But there should be a limit. Making a complete novice like me hold it for nearly an hour on the very first day is just too much, don’t you think?
It was a stroke of luck that I had learned a bit of martial arts from my grandmother, otherwise I would have collapsed onto the floor long ago.
“Um, Young Master. How about we stop here for today?”
Perhaps feeling sorry for me as I struggled, Cheon Gang made a cautious request to Jeok I-geon.
“She has already been exhausted lately. I am worried she might fall ill if she pushes herself further.”
“Fall ill?”
“Yes. Seol-ha is an ordinary person who doesn’t know martial arts, is she not? Look at her legs. They have been trembling for a while now; she has already far exceeded her limit.”
Ah, that was indeed a comment worthy of my favorite character.
To think he would speak up against the terrifying Jeok I-geon for the sake of a mere maid like me.
I felt so grateful I could almost cry.
“You seem to be quite close with my maid.”
“…Pardon?”
“Calling her by name when you’ve only met her a few times.”
“Ah, that is because there was no other suitable title…”
Isn’t a name meant to be called?
Why is he nitpicking over something so trivial?
“Since we are on the topic, let me ask you a question as well, Cheon Gang.”
“Please ask, Young Master.”
“How long do you think a woman with no knowledge of martial arts could endure the horse stance?”
“Well, that would depend on individual physical conditions, but wouldn’t it be fifteen minutes at most?”
“Then, how much time has passed here?”
“Seol-ha has… already… exceeded nearly an hour.”
A look of bewilderment entered Cheon Gang’s eyes as he looked at me.
And only then did I realize Jeok I-geon’s true motive.
I finally understood why he had brainlessly forced me to do the horse stance, and what he ultimately wanted to hear from me.
What a sly bastard.
Ah, whatever!
Since I was going to have to confess anyway, I gave up on the horse stance and collapsed heavily onto the ground.
Leaving aside the pouring sweat, my lower body from my waist to the soles of my feet throbbed as if it were about to break.
“Will you still deny that you’ve never learned martial arts?”
The way he narrowed his handsome eyes while asking me made him look like a wicked demon.
“Actually, I did learn a very tiny bit.”
“Is that so?”
“But my level is so insignificant that I wouldn’t dare boast about having learned it anywhere. You could say it was just a bit of self-defense. I never intended to deceive you, Young Master.”
“If that’s the case, the energy inside your body is far from insignificant.”
I wondered what his true intention was, talking nonsense like that since yesterday.
Was he trying to tease me? I barely had any internal energy to use because my dantian was only the size of a bean.
“Since you truly seem to be unaware, I shall tell you. The energy scattered throughout the fine meridians of your entire body is easily equivalent to sixty years of internal energy, if not more. I do not know why that energy is dispersed across your whole body instead of being gathered in your dantian, but if this state continues with your current physical condition, it will surely bring ruin. Therefore, you must gather that energy into your dantian immediately.”
“Huh? No, what on earth does that mean…”
At Jeok I-geon’s serious explanation, not only was I shocked, but even Cheon Gang, who was standing beside him, gasped in surprise.
Sixty years of cultivation meant exactly sixty years of internal energy.
To put it simply, it was the equivalent of having sixty years of internal energy inside my body.
“Have you taken any spiritual elixir recently?”
“No. An elixir would obviously be incredibly expensive, so how could I…”
I was someone who had never even been near a spiritual elixir in my entire life.
Weren’t those things usually obtained by the protagonists of novels through some miraculous encounter?
“Then you must have consumed it without knowing.”
“As you saw before, my staple diet consists of rice balls.”
And even then, I hadn’t even been able to eat today because of this training.
“Think carefully. If it wasn’t you, then someone else must have fed it to you.”
The meals for the castle’s maids were prepared from the leftover ingredients of Jamigwan.
Of course, there was no way a spiritual elixir would be mixed into that.
If so, the only other food I had eaten was what my grandmother prepared for me, but that was mostly just noodles or dumplings.
Could Grandmother have put a spiritual elixir in the noodles?
Without saying a word to me?
This possibility was also highly unlikely.
“Heh, amusing. Consuming an elixir without the person themselves even knowing. We will look into that later. For now, sit cross-legged.”
“…Here?”
“I leave the guarding to you.”
At Jeok I-geon’s command, Cheon Gang stepped back a few paces, warily scanning the surroundings.
“I will open the path, so follow me.”
Though I didn’t even understand where I was supposed to follow him, I sat cross-legged without a single shred of resistance under Jeok I-geon’s sharp, piercing gaze.
“From now on, I will open your Baihui acupoint. Although I am helping, you must do the actual work. You must gather the energy scattered across the fine meridians of your entire body into your dantian and make it entirely yours. Can you do it?”
“I-Is that perhaps the clearing of the Conception and Governor Vessels, or something like that?”
“What we are about to do goes beyond the Conception and Governor Vessels; it is the opening of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians (奇經八脈).”
Skipping the Microcosmic Orbit and going straight to the Macrocosmic Orbit?
“Heavens! I heard that’s the shortcut to becoming a master!”
“Why, do you dislike it?”
Dislike it? I love it!
“Since you did not open it yourself, you can consider this the entry stage. What comes next depends on your own training. When your training is sufficient, you will be able to open the Baihui acupoint on your own, commune with the energy of heaven and earth, and even undergo a physical rebirth (換骨奪胎).”
Oh my god, is this for real?
A physical rebirth for me!
A physical rebirth meant, in other words, being a master who had reached the Realm of Demonic Transcendence (脫魔之境) or the Profound Realm (玄境).
How much had I yearned for the masters of the Murim whenever I read those novels?
What I wanted to try most of all was using the lightness technique to travel vast distances in a single bound.
But that was really possible?
And Jeok I-geon was going to do that for me?
For me?
Was the food I served him really that impressive?
“Now that you seem to have calmed down, let us begin.”
Would I be crazy to think that Jeok I-geon’s hand resting on my back felt exceptionally warm?
Just as I was questioning my own sanity, an unfamiliar energy penetrated my body.
It was a cold, sharp, and somehow eerie energy.
It felt ticklish and bizarre, as if bugs were crawling inside my body.
When my body flinched in response, a thunderous scolding fell upon me.
“Do you wish to live the rest of your life as a crippled invalid! Focus your mind!”
T-That absolutely cannot happen!
I could tell without asking that this was an incredibly crucial moment for me.
I corrected my posture, recited the mnemonic of the cultivation technique I had learned from my grandmother, and focused my mind.
This is the path.
Amazingly, as I circulated my qi, I could feel the path I needed to take like a compass. I followed that path without any obstruction for some time.
Then, at some point, I was blocked by an invisible wall.
It was the Yangtze River acupoint, the very first acupoint of the Governor Vessel.
‘I have to break through this.’
Following the whisper of my instincts, I concentrated my energy on that spot.
Contrary to my intense anxiety, the beginning wasn’t that difficult.
Pop!
I passed through lightly, as if tearing Hanji paper.
After clearing the Yangtze River, Yosu, and Yoyang-gwan in that manner, I reached the Mingmen acupoint, where Jeok I-geon’s energy was waiting.
As if his time had come, he snatched up my energy and began to surge through my Governor Vessel like a tempest.
Ugh.
I clenched my teeth to suppress the groan threatening to escape.
An immense pain washed over me, but if I lost my focus here, it would lead straight to qi deviation (走火入魔).
How could I foolishly miss out on a miraculous opportunity that had finally come my way?
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The energy, rising with enough force to shatter my spine, shook my head.
From then on, I suffered from a horrific headache, as if my head were being struck with a hammer.
Just as a fleeting moment came when I felt I could endure no longer—
Crash!
My head rang violently for an instant, as if my brain were about to explode.
‘Ah…!’
The headache vanished as if washed away, and an indescribable clarity enveloped my body.
With that memory as the last, I lost consciousness as if falling asleep.
