The Battle for the Heavenly Sword - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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25
The Hegemony of Sword and Rain
The house of the Village Chief, Baek Do-gyeong, was the largest in the village.
It consisted of three buildings and boasted more than ten rooms.
Baek Do-gyeong’s family used the largest building among them.
It was a house built through the combined efforts of Baek Do-gyeong and his parents.
The two buildings located at the back had been built by Baek Ho-yang’s parents. They were so old that they were no longer in use. However, because Baek Do-gyeong had maintained them diligently, they were still in perfectly fine condition.
Baek Ho-yang looked around the interior of the house.
This was the very house where he had lived during his childhood.
The memories of those days were preserved completely intact within this home.
Traces of him and his younger siblings remained vividly upon the pillars and the furniture.
Baek Do-gyeong spoke with a deferential expression.
“Though the house is a bit shabby, it should be fit to stay in.”
“Thank you. To think you maintained such an old house like this.”
“Not at all. This place holds our family history, so it is only natural that I should look after it.”
“Thanks to you, I will be able to get some good rest.”
“You must be exhausted, so please rest quickly. From tomorrow onward, it will likely be difficult to get proper rest for a few days.”
Outside Baek Do-gyeong’s house, many village people were still gathered even now.
They could not easily bring themselves to leave, captivated by the fact that the outsider who had arrived for the first time in decades was actually an elder of the Baek family.
When people lived together for so long in such a remote area, deep bonds were bound to be forged.
Since an elder of the Baek family was no stranger to them either, they were deeply interested.
For now, they were holding back out of caution and refrained from barging in, but by tomorrow, it was certain that they would approach closely and unleash a barrage of questions.
Baek Ho-yang also guessed what was on their minds, so he merely offered a gentle smile and said nothing to turn them away.
After bowing to the two of them once more, Baek Do-gyeong stepped outside.
Once they were left alone, Baek Ho-yang walked deeper into the house.
Although sixty years had passed since he left his hometown, the inside of the house was maintained exactly as it had been in the past.
The complete absence of dust on top of the furniture showed just how meticulously Baek Do-gyeong had cared for it.
Baek Ho-yang opened the room doors, thoroughly examining and touching every single corner.
Woo Geom-san watched Baek Ho-yang silently.
Finally, having inspected the entire house, Baek Ho-yang spoke.
“I shall stay in this room.”
The room Baek Ho-yang pointed to was the space where his parents used to live.
In this tiny room, his parents had raised all of their brothers.
To Baek Ho-yang, it was a space that held great meaning in many ways.
Woo Geom-san was given a small room located near the entrance.
It was tiny, barely large enough for him to lie his single body down, but Woo Geom-san was extremely satisfied.
The size of the room did not matter.
What mattered was that he now had a space of his own.
After rolling around in the small room for a while, Woo Geom-san stepped outside.
As he came out of the house, he noticed a massive withered tree standing on one side of the yard.
It looked like the very tree said to have died after being struck by lightning.
Woo Geom-san approached the withered tree as if entranted.
Perhaps because it had been dead for a long time, the surface of the withered tree was smooth yet stark white. It looked almost as if snow had piled upon it.
Woo Geom-san sat down, leaning his back against the base of the withered tree.
Even though he did nothing at all, his mind felt strangely at peace.
As he stared blankly at the sky, a butterfly entered Woo Geom-san’s field of vision.
Dozens of butterflies were fluttering around the withered tree, riding the wind.
“There are so many butterflies.”
From white butterflies to black butterflies and even swallowtails, the variety was diverse.
As if it were coated in honey, the butterflies did not leave the withered tree and kept flying around it.
The sight of the multicolored butterflies dancing on the wind was so beautiful that he could not tear his eyes away.
A few butterflies even boldly came down to perch on Woo Geom-san’s shoulder.
Woo Geom-san quietly left the butterflies on his body alone.
It was cute how they clung tightly to his body like ornaments, moving nothing but their wings.
Leaving the butterflies as they were, Woo Geom-san stared blankly up at the sky.
He did nothing.
He did not even possess the desire to do anything.
He simply accepted this moment without a single thought.
Whoosh!
At that moment, a gentle breeze swept around Woo Geom-san.
The wind softly caressed Woo Geom-san’s body as it swirled around him.
The butterflies that had been clinging to Woo Geom-san’s body were swept away by the wind and detached.
The External Qi carried by the wind began to flow into Woo Geom-san’s body.
After softly caressing his Dantian for a moment, the External Qi soon rushed through every single corner of Woo Geom-san’s Energy Channels.
Although it was unintentional, a massive pathway for Qi had already formed within Woo Geom-san’s body.
The pathway, which had been forced open by the medicinal power of the Heavenly Pleasure Pill, was taking a massive circuit throughout Woo Geom-san’s entire body.
The Qi pathway, created naturally during a moment of crisis, was cleared smoothly without a single blockage.
The energy that flowed in from the outside completed a grand circuit of Woo Geom-san’s body before being naturally expelled back outside.
The energy expelled in that manner floated around Woo Geom-san’s body once more.
The energy of pure nature was incredibly gentle.
Riding upon this soft energy, the butterflies hovered all around Woo Geom-san.
It looked almost as if the butterflies were performing a group dance centered around Woo Geom-san.
Baek Ho-yang, who was stepping outside after tidying up his room, witnessed that very sight.
Faced with a spectacle he had never seen before in his life, Baek Ho-yang could not hide his admiration either.
“Oh my! That child is already stepping naturally into the realm of Qi Transformation into Nature. This is a miracle, a true miracle! Even the Patriarchs of Quanzhen would never have witnessed such a sight.”
The core essence of Qi Transformation into Nature was precisely Inhaling Wind, Exhaling Water.
When inhaling, one breathes in like the wind; when exhaling, one breathes out softly like water.
Since water and wind are the most free and harmonious elements in nature, this art was modeled after them.
If forced to circulate, it will become blocked, so the utilization of Qi must be learned in a manner that responds to nature.
Yet right now, even though Baek Ho-yang had not taught him, Woo Geom-san was naturally mimicking the core essence of Inhaling Wind, Exhaling Water.
Once one becomes accustomed to Inhaling Wind, Exhaling Water, the circulation of Qi becomes free, and the Meridians within the body will gradually widen.
Right at this moment, the energy entering and leaving Woo Geom-san’s body was extremely faint, but once he reached Grand Completion, it would form a massive torrent like a waterfall.
Seizing the momentum, Baek Ho-yang resolved to firmly impart the core essence of Qi Transformation into Nature to Woo Geom-san.
He sat down beside Woo Geom-san and spoke.
“Inhale as freely as the wind, and exhale as softly as water. The wind does not try to force its way through a wall; it swerves around it. It may seem slow, but taking the detour is ultimately the fastest way. Water flows from high places to low places, and all principles of the world do not deviate from this. Let your consciousness face the heavens while keeping your senses grounded on the earth, for no movement shall ever escape this.”
Fallen into a State of Selflessness, Woo Geom-san breathed exactly according to Baek Ho-yang’s teachings.
He did not harbor a single doubt.
He breathed precisely the way Baek Ho-yang guided him.
Every time Woo Geom-san breathed, the group dance of the butterflies grew more spectacular.
***
“Ugh!”
When Woo Geom-san opened his eyes, the very first sight he saw was a sun as red as a blazing fire.
The sun, revealing its form high above the eastern sky, was radiating a scorching light.
Faced with this unexpected situation, Woo Geom-san shielded his eyes with his hand and furrowed his brow.
“What is this? Why is the sun…?”
“You stayed up the entire night, so it is only natural that the sun is rising again.”
Baek Ho-yang’s voice drifted over from right beside him.
Looking to his side, he saw Baek Ho-yang sitting with his back leaned against the withered tree.
“Then, have I been out here all night?”
“That is correct.”
“Without you waking me up?”
“My grandson entered the State of Selflessness, so how could I possibly disturb him?”
Even the Taoists who spend their entire lives in Cultivation Training rarely experience the State of Selflessness more than a few times.
For someone to fall as deeply into it as Woo Geom-san did was rarer still.
Therefore, Baek Ho-yang had stayed by his side through the night to ensure his immersion would not be broken.
Thanks to that, a heavy layer of dew had settled upon his own head and shoulders as well.
“Sitting down all night seems to have stiffened my entire body. I should walk a little.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
Woo Geom-san also stood up, following Baek Ho-yang.
Indeed, his waist and legs felt numb, making him feel like he needed to walk to stretch them out.
The two of them stepped outside together.
Even though it was early morning, the village people were already working diligently.
People could be seen both in the terraced rice paddies built along the hills and in the fields near the stream.
Baek Ho-yang and Woo Geom-san looked around every corner, taking in the entire scene.
Their footsteps naturally headed toward the northern peak on the outskirts of the village.
Along the steep incline, a tea plantation had been established.
It was a tea plantation that had been maintained since the time of Baek Ho-yang’s grandfather.
It seemed to have grown several times larger than it was when he left the village.
The tea plantation covering the mountain ridge was deeply moving in its own right.
“Great-uncle!”
Baek Do-gyeong, who was working in the tea plantation, spotted Baek Ho-yang and came running over.
Beside him was a tall and handsome young man in his early twenties.
He bowed his head toward Baek Ho-yang and greeted him.
“Your great-grandson, Baek Wol-sang, greets Great-uncle.”
“Are you Do-gyeong’s son?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are handsome. You look exactly like your father.”
“Thank you.”
Just as Baek Ho-yang said, Baek Wol-sang was handsome.
He was tall with broad shoulders, looking as though he possessed quite a bit of strength.
Baek Ho-yang introduced Woo Geom-san to Baek Wol-sang.
“This is my adopted grandson, Woo Geom-san. By bloodline generation, he would be like an uncle to you, but just treat him comfortably.”
“Would that really be alright?”
“Geom-san wouldn’t want to be called an uncle either.”
No sooner had Baek Ho-yang finished speaking than Woo Geom-san chimed in.
“May I call you big brother?”
“Then I shall call you by your name comfortably as well.”
“Thank you, brother Wol-sang!”
“Glad to meet you, little brother Geom-san.”
Baek Wol-sang smiled and took Woo Geom-san’s hand.
Watching that happen, Baek Do-gyeong cracked a joke.
“Yesterday he told me to let him call me big brother, and today he calls my son big brother. Does that mean my son and I are of the same generation now? This lineage is turning into a total mess.”
“I will call you Uncle.”
“Tsk! I prefer big brother over uncle, but it can’t be helped. I can’t be in the same generation as my son.”
Just like that, the generational titles among the three of them were loosely settled.
Baek Ho-yang looked around the tea plantation and spoke.
“The tea plantation has grown several times larger than it was when I left.”
“The village youths all poured their efforts into cultivating it.”
“You must have gone through a lot of hardship.”
“We ought to receive a proper reward for our hardships, but I am not sure if we will be able to sell it in time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The road is blocked due to a landslide, so we have to take a long detour to sell the tea. I don’t know if the merchants will wait for us until we arrive.”
The merchants referred to this village where Baek Do-gyeong and the others lived as Yunjung Village.
The tea grown while embracing the Essence and Qi of Cheonbaeksan possessed such excellent quality and flavor that it was treated as a famous premium tea.
The merchants called the tea harvested from Yunjung Village as Yunjung Tea, and they came to the village down below Cheonbaeksan three times a year to buy this tea.
The timing of their arrival at the lower village was fixed, and if they missed this window, they would have to wait until the next harvest.
Since they could only purchase the goods necessary for the village by selling the tea, they absolutely had to arrive at the lower village within the designated period.
“Could you not depart a little earlier?”
“To do that, we would have to push forward the harvest time, but doing so would degrade the quality of the tea. Then we won’t get a proper price, and the number of visiting merchants will decrease as well.”
“I suppose that is true.”
The reason merchants traveled all this way from afar was because Yunjung Tea was just that outstanding.
If the quality dropped, they would have no reason to make the effort to visit this remote region.
Because of this, they could absolutely not move the harvest time forward.
Yet they could not tell the merchants to come later either.
This was because the tea merchants also operated based on a fixed schedule.
Since the merchants handled various goods from different regions alongside tea, they could not easily advance or delay their itineraries.
For this reason, the worries of the village youths, including Baek Wol-sang, were deepening.
Transporting the tea and purchasing the goods needed for the village was the responsibility of the sturdy young men.
And Baek Wol-sang was the captain who led the village youths.
Naturally, his worries were bound to be deeper than anyone else’s.
“You must be carrying a lot of anxiety.”
“I have spoken of unnecessary worries and disturbed Great-uncle’s peace of mind.”
“No, it is fine.”
“We will take care of this matter on our own, so please do not trouble yourself over it, Great-uncle. Please take your time looking around. We will finish up our morning work.”
Baek Wol-sang and Baek Do-gyeong returned to the tea plantation once more.
Woo Geom-san looked at Baek Wol-sang and the village youths working up a sweat as he spoke.
“Is there really no way for them to sell the tea in time? They are working so hard…”
“Let us start looking for a way from now on. Surely there must be a way to help them.”
“Yes!”
Baek Ho-yang looked up at the sky.
This was because returning to the village at this specific time did not feel like a mere coincidence.
“There is always a crack even in a dead end, and no matter how high a mountain is, a path to climb it always exists. If we look for it, a path will surely reveal itself.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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