Chapter 9
Three days flew by in a flash.
Father must truly have been displeased, because it was hard to see him. He’d take his bow and head into the mountains at dawn, then return only after sunset, carrying game over his shoulder.
He often stopped by the market, but when he came back, he was dead drunk and carrying one or two suspicious bundles.
“Father. Did you get this drunk because of me?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“What’s in there?”
Father hid the bundle out of my reach.
“What is that?”
“Grown-up business.”
That’s suspicious.
“You should worry about your training.”
Every night, there was no peace in my parents’ quarters.
Perhaps they couldn’t sleep, because their lights never went out.
It seemed best to pretend I hadn’t noticed.
On the morning I was to enter seclusion, Father was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Father?”
Mother hesitated before answering.
“It seems he can’t bear to watch.”
“……Is he very angry?”
“It’s a little different from being angry.”
Mother tidied my hair. Just as she had when I was little, she tucked the hair by my temples behind my ears and retied my rumpled ribbon.
Even so, it seemed he really couldn’t bring himself to accept it.
He was sending me off without even showing his face.
“You may not know this, but your father is rather taciturn. Try to understand.”
“Really? He doesn’t seem that way at all.”
“He changed little by little after you were born. Hehe.”
Mother slipped a ring onto my finger.
“It’s a ring that’s been passed down since your great-great-grandmother’s time.”
“Is it all right to give me something so precious so suddenly?”
“When did I say I was giving it to you? I’m lending it to you.”
“It’s precious, so you have to return it, all right? Though one day, once you’re married, it’ll rightfully be yours.”
So she was telling me to come back alive.
“Marriage? You’re talking about something so far off.”
“Being able to talk about the distant future is a good thing.”
Mother held my hand tightly.
“Whether you gain enlightenment or not, I don’t mind. But you must come back. To this mother, your growing up healthy is far more important than your becoming an immortal.”
“Yes, I’ll remember. I’ll be back soon.”
“Be careful, and be careful again.”
I headed for the detached building where I would undergo seclusion.
It was a shame I couldn’t see Father, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Now I’d find out whether the Five-Element Return-Flow Method I’d devised was nothing but a delusion—or a cultivation method capable of turning this world upside down.
I had to manage to sense all five kinds of spiritual qi, gather them in my dantian, and make them circulate.
‘When I finish seclusion, will I be a cultivator?’
It didn’t feel real, but with my palms damp with sweat, I opened the door to the detached building.
And I froze on the spot.
The detached building I knew was no longer empty.
Neatly stacked along one wall were bundles and jars as big as I was.
There were bundles of dried meat, a luxury food, tied together.
And not only that, there were hard-baked travel rations, scorched rice, and all kinds of dried fruit, sorted by type.
“Wow!”
Each large jar was filled with clear water, and the lids were sealed with several layers of clean cloth and coated with wax.
That wasn’t all.
In the corner were changes of clothes folded by season, cloths for wiping away sweat, thick padded quilts, and thin blankets.
“Who… did all this… and when?”
There were lamps and oil, spare candles, clean cloth, a basin for washing water, a chamber pot, and even ash and powdered herbs to keep the smell down.
A small medicine box contained pills, salve for wounds, dried ginger, and bitter herbs said to ward off sleepiness.
There was enough to last at least two months, even by the most conservative estimate.
I muttered, my mind more or less blank.
“What is all this…… Preparing for winter or something?”
Only then did the past few days’ scenes flash through my mind.
Father, going hunting far more often than usual.
His back as he headed to the market even after sunset.
The way he came back with something wrapped in a bundle, then cleared his throat for no reason whenever I came near.
Father had quietly prepared everything so his daughter could endure without going hungry or getting cold.
The man who’d tried so hard to dissuade me, insisting seclusion was dangerous, had been quietly paving the way for his daughter with his own hands.
A small, folded sheet of paper lay atop the stacked provisions.
When I unfolded it with trembling hands, the page was filled with clumsy writing, each character pressed down firmly.
「To our daughter, So-ha.
If you’re reading this, it means your father didn’t have the courage to see you off. I’m sorry.
I’m not good with words, so don’t hold it against me if I can’t put all my feelings into this letter.
I’m still against this seclusion. Completely against it. Do you understand?
But please understand this much.
All my life, I’ve wanted our So-ha to live happily and joyfully, without worries or troubles in this world.
I feel the same way even now. But it seems a child’s life doesn’t always go according to her parents’ wishes.
You know, So-ha? Back when you were only as big as my palm.
You probably don’t remember, but you were a child who hardly ever cried.
At first, I was worried, but it turned out you were simply faster than other children.
In the blink of an eye, you were toddling around on your own two feet and had already finished the Thousand Character Classic. You were a prodigy among prodigies.
And to tell you the truth, we were secretly so grateful that we didn’t have to spend our nights losing sleep to a baby crying, like other families.
Those days feel so vivid even now….
And now you’ve grown up so big, with your head on straight, and you’re giving your father a hard time. You little rascal. Still, this is your first act of defiance, so I’ll let it slide just this once. Next time, you’ll get nothing from me.」
‘I’ve been building up my praise points diligently. This is the time to cash them in.’
「So-ha. Seeing the determination in your eyes, your father finally understood.
You’re already ready to leave your father’s arms behind.
So instead of stopping you, I decided to pave the way for you.
It’s all right if you fail and don’t become an immortal.
It’s all right if you don’t become the greatest under heaven.
For me, just seeing you eat well and smile brightly is enough to make me happier than the whole world could contain.
You’re the treasure Heaven gave us. Do you understand?」
‘Dad, anyone would think I was getting married or heading out into the jianghu.’
「I beg you, please come back safe and sound.
If anything happens, call for your father as loudly as you can.
Even if I have to run all the way to the afterlife, I’ll come protect you.
The father who loves you more than anyone in the world.
I love you, So-ha.」
“I love you too.”
I couldn’t move for a long while.
It felt as if a stone were lodged in my throat, choking me up.
Hot tears welled in my eyes, but I held them back and instead hugged Father’s letter and Mother’s ring tightly to my chest.
“Still, you prepared way too much. Haha.”
I wiped my eyes and firmly bolted the door from inside.
Outside, Mother personally affixed a talisman to it.
When the old man who sold talismans heard I was going into seclusion, he strongly advised me to follow a few rules while training.
〈First Commandment (第一戒). Do not remove the seal carelessly.〉
Affix a seal bearing your handprint to the inside of the door.
And check it often to make sure it’s intact. If the seal is undisturbed, it means no one has entered this room.
‘Hmm… So this is what they call a control group.’
〈Second Commandment (第二戒). Do not speak to apparitions.〉
Even if you see someone or hear their voice, never answer. Even if it’s your father or mother, do not let yourself be deceived.
‘What is this, some kind of rules-based horror story?’
〈Third Commandment (第三戒). Doubt your enlightenment.〉
If a sudden joy wells up in you during your training, as though you’ve understood everything, question it first.
The greater the enlightenment, the greater the trap.
As you can see, it’s said that as seclusion training deepens, the body and mind begin to waver. It’s not merely a matter of seeing illusions like ghosts.
They call this a heart demon (心魔), and the ancient immortals devised precautions against it.
The key was that you absolutely had to be alone during seclusion.
The reason, apparently, was that the sensations perceived by your five senses were the only standard you had for distinguishing truth from falsehood, or something like that.
I didn’t understand it very well, but I committed it to memory as best I could.
I’m actually good at memorizing rules.
After tidying up the room, I sat cross-legged and closed my eyes.
I straightened my back, relaxed my shoulders, and tucked my chin in slightly. The lamplight flickered faintly in the room.
There wasn’t a sound outside the door. Perhaps Father hadn’t gone far and was standing somewhere nearby.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
My home was here, waiting for me.
That single fact was enough to keep me from fearing the darkness.
‘Now I’m all alone. This is something I have to make my way through myself.’
The blueprint for the Five-Element Return-Flow Method, which I’d completed over several days, was clear in my mind.
I would draw in spiritual qi from outside, seal it in my dantian, then make it circulate in the order of mutual generation.
The theory was perfect.
I’d also devised a way to deal with qi deviation.
All that remained was verification.
I slowly drew in a deep breath.
“Hoo.”
I started with the Water Qi Art’s breathing method. Long and calm, like deep water settling. Inhale, hold, and slowly exhale, hundreds of times.
After one shichen, the feeling below my knees disappeared, and by the second, my back felt as if it were about to snap.
Even so, I didn’t stop.
「A mind free of distractions (心無雜念)」
Cast aside selfish, distracting thoughts.
「A clear mirror and still water (明鏡止水)」
Empty your mind like a clear mirror and still water.
「Mind and body as one (心身一如)」
For body and mind were never two separate things.
Empty yourself. Empty myself.
And if I kept emptying myself, again and again…
I would become Heaven and Earth, and Heaven and Earth would become me….
…….
….
This isn’t working.
“I can’t. Wait a second. Just one second.”
I give up! I surrender!
The dignity of a cultivator?
I simply flopped onto my back.
“Aah……this feels amazing.”
I never knew lying flat on my back could be so moving.
In my previous life, there were times I’d lie in bed, staring at my phone and mindlessly moving my fingers.
I’d scroll through videos that did nothing to help my life, tell myself, ‘I really need to go to sleep now,’ then put it off for another hour.
Now I had no phone, and no Wi-Fi.
I wish I could at least browse the internet.
I rolled onto my side and raised one hand into the air.
I wiggled my thumb as if I were holding a phone.
“……What am I doing?”
What a reality check.
Graduate student Kim Muyeol.
Scrolling through the air while training in seclusion in another world.
It seems the disease of human civilization doesn’t get better even across dimensions.
I rolled around from side to side, then flopped onto my stomach.
“I want to use my phone! I miss the internet.”
I rested my chin on my arms and kicked my legs up behind me, wiggling them back and forth.
It was a pose I often struck when looking at my phone in bed in my previous life.
‘A physicist who studies particle physics invented the internet, too. Should I try installing the internet in this era?’
The internet, a network connecting the whole world, isn’t some kind of magic.
In fact, it relies on undersea cables laid across the ocean.
It’s all just sending and receiving light through fiber-optic cables.
The question is how to lay the infrastructure….
‘No, wait. If I can use spells? Supernatural powers? I don’t really know what they’re called, but couldn’t I communicate over long distances with them?’
After indulging in one delusion after another,
“Ugh.”
I quickly corrected my posture before long.
This lump of fat was getting pressed down, and it was terribly uncomfortable.
I still forget sometimes.
That my body is different from before.
It’s uncomfortable when I run, too, and if I bend over even a little, I feel gravity with my entire body—this damn chest.
If I’d been born a woman, it would’ve been a blessing.
But as someone whose mind was a mix of man and woman, all I could feel was uncomfortable when my eyes went to these soft, wobbly lumps of fat before my pretty face.
My gaze naturally drifted downward.
Ahem, what did it matter? This was my body, no matter what anyone said….
Down the valley formed by those curves, lower and lower….
I looked at the place where something fairly substantial had once been.
“Ah, I need to pee.”
As I relieved myself, I got lost in thought.
Did I still miss the fact that I didn’t have it?
At first, the empty space had felt so strange.
It wasn’t exactly inconvenient to be without it, but whenever I belatedly realized it was gone, I felt a strange sense of loss.
Like realizing the key that was always in your pocket had disappeared.
Like reaching for your pocket when you didn’t have your phone.
An empty space where you expected there to be something, but felt nothing at all.
“Still, the human ability to adapt is terrifying.”
While I was at it, I remembered the first time I wore a skirt.
The feeling of air slipping between my legs had made me freeze on the spot.
‘What is this? Why does it feel so empty? Why is it so breezy? Is it okay to go outside wearing this?’
After I was told several times that my gait looked strange, they forcibly corrected it.
When word reached my mother that I’d been sitting with my legs spread and keeping the village boys awake at night, she took drastic measures.
She gave me what was practically indoctrination, drilling into me how to behave and speak like a young lady from a noble family.
It felt like I’d been put under hypnosis.
I lightly felt around my chest.
‘This is constricting, too, but now I’d be even more uncomfortable without it.’
A heuyi is an undergarment that supports the breasts, like a bra in my previous life.
It felt like the cloth was binding and holding them in place. It probably wasn’t as bad as a medieval corset, but it was hard to breathe.
I didn’t really understand why it was necessary, since I’d never had a girlfriend.
But once I entered puberty, I naturally came to understand.
From an early age, they’d kept growing, and now weren’t they practically the size of bowling balls?
It got to the point where, without a heuyi, I’d perform a spectacular phantom dribble that would put Messi and Jordan to shame.
On top of that, they hurt whenever they bounced.
I had no choice but to wear one.
But I was in seclusion training now, wasn’t I?
There was no one here.
I was alone in this room.
“……Good.”
I carefully loosened the ties of my outer robe.
“Haa…….”
A long breath escaped me without my meaning to.
And then came an incredible sense of release.
“This is it. This.”
Once the pressure on my chest was gone, I could breathe much more deeply.
I’d found the source of the discomfort.
‘Surely being in your natural state is when you’re closest to Heaven and Earth, right?’
I shed the trappings of a young lady, loosened my clothes until my undergarments were almost showing, and settled into a comfortable position.
Now that I didn’t have to worry about fussy etiquette and such, it was finally bearable.
I tore off a little dried meat and drank some water to replenish my strength.
With my back warm and my stomach full, self-loathing welled up in me.
‘I really am an ordinary mortal full of auspicious distractions.’
I’d rested enough!
I straightened my posture again.
I’m not moving until I’ve put in fifteen hours of actual cultivation.
“The principles of Heaven….”
I emptied my mind as I recited passage after passage from the Qi Guiding Art.
‘I don’t know. Am I… Ryu So-ha or Kim Muyeol…?’
How much time passed like that?
The chirping of birds, the sound of crickets, and the dragging footsteps of straw sandals gradually grew less frequent.
As if there had never been anything at all….
‘…….’
I entered such a state of trance that I forgot who I was, where I was, and even what I’d been doing.
Then something came to the skeptical physics student and lovely young lady.
It was so faint that I thought I’d imagined it. But it wasn’t a cold night breeze.
The coolest of the five strands, one thread of Water Qi (水氣), flowed in like a strand of silk.
Like cold saline being injected into a vein with a syringe, it moved toward my lower abdomen in time with my heart’s pumping.
“……It’s there. It really is. Something’s tickling…! Kyahaha.”
“……It’s there. It’s really there. Something tickles…! Kyahaha.”
But the joy lasted only an instant.
The other four, which had been lying dormant, all woke up the moment I sensed the Water Qi.
Soon, five beasts began to literally bite me to pieces.
As if they’d found a delicious meal after a long time….
“Haaah… Haaah….”
Just then, as sweat poured down me and I panted involuntarily,
Knock, knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
A moment later, someone’s voice came from outside.
“It’s your father. It’s the appointed time. Are you all right?”
At the sudden sound of Father’s voice, I broke out in goosebumps.
‘Dad…? No, that old man warned me. Could this be it?’
A heart demon…?
But anyone could hear that it was Father’s voice.
‘I haven’t even done anything yet. How could a heart demon already have come…?’
The spiritual qi I’d managed to feel gradually scattered amid my agitation and unease.
It must be the time Father said he’d come by.
But why did it have to be right now?
‘I’m screwed. I’m screwed. Even if Dad came, I can’t miss my chance. I’ll focus, even if I get scolded.’
“Ryu So-ha? So-ha. Why aren’t you answering?”
In an instant, goosebumps covered my whole body.
That person.
No, ‘that thing’—
It absolutely wasn’t my father.
Why not?
Because my father never calls me ‘Ryu So-ha.’
‘I almost answered without thinking. I was told not to.’
「Second Commandment (第二戒). Do not speak to apparitions.
Even if you see someone or hear their voice, never answer. Even if it’s your father or mother, do not let yourself be deceived.」
So it wasn’t just some ordinary rules-based horror story.
“So-ha? Ryu So-ha! Answer me! Didn’t Dad tell you? So-ha?”
‘You’re not my dad. Get out of here!’
“So-ha? So-ha! Ryu So-ha! So-ha. Open the door for me! So-ha, it’s your father. I miss my daughter so much. I’m sorry, Dad’s sorry. Are you angry because Dad hasn’t shown his face? Can’t you hear me, So-ha? Ryu So-ha.”
“Ugh…….”
The fake Dad kept calling my name without end: “So-ha.” But it wasn’t my father’s voice anymore—just an endless, maddening chant of my name.