Not long after the morning commotion, the instructors began arriving one by one.
Most of them were Immortals who had been carrying out missions in the capital, so coming to Seongmu Academy was not difficult.
The one who came to teach me was one of Blue God's disciples, a thirty-seven-year-old man.
"Greetings, Young Master. It has been a while."
"You've been well all this time, I trust?"
I greeted him politely and welcomed him warmly.
White-Robed Immortal Park Dongjun.
It was truly fortunate that this man had come.
'I was worried someone from Lee Geon-ha's side might show up.'
At present, the Blue God clan was divided into two factions.
One faction followed my grandfather, the clan head and pillar of Blue God.
The other followed Lee Geon-ha, who was all but certain to become the future clan head.
Most of the younger generation followed Lee Geon-ha, while those who were a bit older or who took pride in the life of a martial warrior followed my grandfather.
Among them, the man standing before me—Park Dongjun—could be called the most loyal of the loyal.
A graduate of the Blue God Academy, he devoted himself to the clan and even fought alongside my grandfather on the battlefield where he would later meet his end.
Assigning someone like this meant that my grandfather's expectations for me were that high.
"Congratulations on your admission to Seongmu Academy, Young Master."
"Thank you. And please speak comfortably, Immortal. You are my teacher now."
"Haha, a teacher is too much. I'm merely an instructor."
After exchanging pleasantries, Park Dongjun turned his gaze to Sanghyeok standing beside me.
"So this must be Young Master Seoha's friend."
"My name is Han Sanghyeok. I'll do my best to learn."
Sanghyeok bowed properly, observing all due courtesy.
As he did, a bluish bruise briefly showed through the gap in his clothes.
There was no way I wouldn't understand what it meant.
'You must've had it rough.'
I had adjusted the One-Sword Style training time to run from Sinsi (3 p.m.) to Yusi (5 p.m.) so that Sanghyeok could attend both classes.
That meant he had been learning Heavenly Thunder Twin Swords at Unseong just until a short while ago.
In other words, those bruises were all acquired during that time.
'They must have continued beating him under the guise of training.'
Even so, Sanghyeok showed no sign of hardship, which made me feel proud of him.
Park Dongjun, seemingly grasping the situation roughly, smiled faintly as well.
"Yes, please become good friends with Young Master Seoha."
"You don't need to speak formally to me."
"He's your friend, so I can't do that. Don't worry. I may speak politely, but the training will be strict."
"Yes! I'll work hard."
"Shall we begin right away, then?"
I nodded.
Since Sanghyeok was putting in that much effort, there was no reason to waste time.
And I, too, wanted to start training as soon as possible.
In truth, before regressing, I had never trained in the One-Sword Style.
What kind of training method would it be?
As I was thinking that, Park Dongjun took out a familiar-looking sword.
No, calling it a sword was inaccurate—it was more like a rod.
"You already know, don't you, Young Master?"
"How many geun is that?"
"Fifty geun (30 kg)."
Phew. What a relief.
If it's only fifty geun, it's no problem at all.
Perhaps he noticed my thoughts.
"It seems you're misunderstanding something."
Park Dongjun wore a smile that felt oddly unsettling.
"This is for your friend. Please take it."
"...."
Sanghyeok accepted the fifty-geun sword and looked at me with a baffled expression.
"Seoha? What is this? Is this really a sword?"
"Don't ask. I'm serious right now."
"Why?"
"Because that one's yours."
I'm nervous.
If Sanghyeok's sword weighs fifty geun…
'How heavy is mine going to be?'
At that moment, disk-shaped weights began to be attached to another sword.
Just by looking, each weight was twenty-five geun (15 kg).
One by one, until a total of four were attached.
After firmly securing them, Park Dongjun handed it to me.
"I heard you graduated from one hundred geun, Young Master Seoha. So I prepared one hundred fifty geun separately."
One hundred fifty geun (90 kg).
Now I had to swing this.
"Ah..."
I thought that entering Seongmu Academy meant saying goodbye to my grandfather's merciless training.
To think I'd run into it again here.
I sighed unconsciously, then steadied my mind.
I was already facing it, and there was no running away.
'If you can't avoid it, enjoy it.'
This, too, would become flesh and blood.
After half a shichen of intense warm-up exercises, Sanghyeok and I began the actual lesson.
"The One-Sword Style consists of seven basic forms and footwork. It's a simple and honest martial art. Let's start by learning the footwork."
There are many ways to kill an enemy with a single strike.
You can launch a preemptive attack at a speed that's hard to react to, or evade the enemy's attack and aim for an opening.
But no matter how perfect the decisive strike, it's useless if it doesn't reach the opponent.
That's why, in the One-Sword Style, footwork is both the beginning and the end.
For that reason, my grandfather put more emphasis on footwork than on forms, ultimately creating footwork that was perfect in both offense and defense.
It was called Gongsi Daebo.
Footwork that waits for the moment of attack.
Using footwork to evade the enemy's attack, disrupt their balance, and seize the moment to strike.
Park Dongjun handed Sanghyeok and me the secret manual of Gongsi Daebo and said,
"Please practice the basic footwork written in this booklet one thousand times before the next session."
"Yes, a thousand times would—"
I nodded unconsciously, then stared at Park Dongjun with wide eyes.
"One thousand times? I heard that right, didn't I?"
"You heard correctly."
"But the next session is the day after tomorrow."
"Yes, that's why it's one thousand times. You have plenty of time. If your proficiency has improved by the next lesson, I'll teach you the first form, Dragon Flash."
"...."
Park Dongjun looked at us as if there were no issue at all.
Seeing that expression, I realized one thing.
'I get why he was loyal to my grandfather his whole life.'
They were the same type.
Sanghyeok and I were dancing in the training hall.
"So here, you step forward with your left foot, then bring your right foot in with Insert Step…"
Wobble.
My center of gravity wouldn't settle properly.
This was something I needed to train until I could do it in my sleep.
Already, the road ahead felt bleak.
Meanwhile, Sanghyeok—
"Hey, this is easy."
He was already smoothly executing half of the basic footwork.
Ah… so this is the difference between a genius and an ordinary person.
But I can't give up.
I'll make up for it somehow with 180 years of experience.
Time passed, and the second day arrived.
The training hall was crowded.
All the cadets were practicing what they had learned on the first day.
But when evening came, everyone left like the ebbing tide, and Sanghyeok was also wrapping up his training.
"Let's go eat."
"I'm not going. I'm nowhere near a thousand yet."
"Then you'll starve?"
"You can't starve. Eating is training too."
When training, eating leisurely at a place like the dining hall is a luxury.
So to save as much time as possible, I had prepared rice balls.
"Will that really be enough? They look like they won't taste good."
"You're saying my rice balls taste bad?"
Such blasphemy.
Even while being chased by Rakshasas, I made sure not to skip meals.
In the process, I perfected rice balls made from wild rice and various medicinal herbs, even discovering the golden ratio.
If my grandfather was the pinnacle of warriors, then I had reached the absolute extreme of rice balls.
"Just try one. You won't be going to places like the dining hall anymore."
Sanghyeok took the rice ball with suspicion and took a bite.
Immediately, his eyes widened.
"T-this taste! It's like the grains of rice are dancing in my mouth!"
Delicious.
A phrase often used to describe heavenly taste, but it was nonsense.
"It's not that good."
If rice grains are dancing, that just means the rice was cooked wrong.
Regardless of his phrasing, we devoted ourselves to training, saving even the time spent eating.
When Haeshi (9 p.m.) arrived, all the other kids returned to their dorms.
They had a lot to study, and considering stamina, going further wouldn't be efficient.
Sanghyeok also returned to his room with tears in his eyes.
He wanted to reach a thousand, but he had to study and train Heavenly Thunder Twin Swords as well.
In a way, he was even busier than me.
Soon, I was alone in the empty training hall, continuing my practice.
I had been tempered by the Ten-Thousand-Year Hasuo and my grandfather's extreme endurance training.
There was no way this level of training would exhaust me.
As if even rest was a waste of time, I repeated the basics of Gongsi Daebo for the 850th time.
After a long while, just as I finally reached one thousand repetitions, someone quietly approached from behind.
"Finished?"
"Were you watching?"
"Yeah. You're working hard."
Yoo Arin stood there, her complexion once again looking worse, just like yesterday.
The world itself is governed by the balance of yin and yang, but that's only when viewed as a whole.
During the day, yang energy is strong, but at night, yin energy grows dense.
Compared to the relatively fine state she'd been in during the day, her condition had deteriorated sharply.
"Looking at your face, we should do this quickly."
"Yeah. Please."
Yoo Arin and I sat facing each other like before.
"Last time, I used your wrist to show you, but the best way is to place our palms together. Is that okay?"
"Yeah. Here."
Yoo Arin extended her palm upward.
Without meaning to, the phrase 'jade-like hands' came to mind.
Why am I getting nervous over something like this?
After taking a deep breath, I placed my hand over hers.
"Just infuse qi into me like yesterday. Slowly."
"Okay."
Yoo Arin closed her eyes and began transferring qi, while I accepted only the yin energy, stacking it up bit by bit.
It felt strange somehow, but I couldn't afford to make the same damned mistake as yesterday.
That aside, the amount of yin energy flowing in was enormous.
Was it still not over?
I immediately sent it to my heart to convert it into yang energy to maintain balance, yet it kept pouring in endlessly.
As a result, my cultivation of the Extreme Yang Divine Art was increasing rapidly, but—
After quite some time had passed—
Yoo Arin, whose complexion had improved, opened her eyes and asked worriedly,
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Ah, yeah. I'm fine."
I said that, but in truth, I wasn't.
Cold sweat was pouring down.
When yin energy exceeds yang, a chill spreads through the body, making it tremble and difficult to concentrate.
"Wait a moment. Let me focus."
I sent the remaining yin energy to my heart as well, converting it into yang.
With such an enormous amount of yin flooding in at once, my heart seemed to be shouting, 'Are you insane, human?'
But perhaps because it didn't want to die either, it quickly produced yang energy, and I stood up again and released it.
A process that had taken one minute yesterday dragged on for five full minutes.
That meant Yoo Arin had an immense amount of yin energy.
After releasing the yang energy, I collapsed down beside her.
This was truly an unexpected stroke of luck.
According to my original plan, I would have gathered internal energy all day, then extracted only the yin portion, converted it to yang, and released it—repeating the process.
The problem was that this method had a huge drawback.
I wouldn't have time to accumulate internal energy.
No matter how hard I gathered it, I'd have to convert and release half of it as yang, which was essentially a massive loss.
I'd been 고민ing over how to solve that, but thanks to Yoo Arin, a huge burden had been lifted.
Now I could accumulate internal energy and train at the same time.
I could become a master much faster.
"I really am lucky."
"Huh?"
"No, it's nothing."
I smiled at Yoo Arin and said,
"Then shall we meet at this time every day?"
"Huh? Yeah. That would be nice."
Monitoring Yoo Arin daily while training the Extreme Yang Divine Art—wasn't that killing two birds with one stone?
"But..."
But?
A sense of unease immediately crept in.
Usually, bad news follows after a 'but,' so I couldn't help but tense up.
And what she said next caught me even more off guard.
"Do you still have those rice balls?"
"Huh?"
Rice balls, all of a sudden?
"The ones your friend was eating. They looked good..."
"Ah, yeah. I've got some left. Want one?"
"Yeah."
What is this now?
Well, Sanghyeok's reaction had been pretty dramatic. She must have been watching from the corner.
Rice balls aren't anything precious, and they were my proud creation, so I could hand them over without hesitation.
Yoo Arin took the rice ball, bit into it, and said,
"...It's good."
Yoo Arin eating a rice ball under the moonlight.
Watching that scene, I slowly turned my head away.
I should make a lot more rice balls.