346.
The Study of Companions**
On one side of the camp, other warriors were studying as well.
They studied while fighting, studied while working.
They treated their seniors like needles—watching them closely, learning from them, questioning them.
When they encountered a place with a good boundary, they laid out wine and food, prayed to mountains and streams, and asked the heavens about the road upward.
A small dojo at one edge of the encampment.
While the dawn air was still cold, warriors were already moving there.
Some split firewood, some drew water, some fed the horses.
Even so, in the gaps between tasks, they adjusted their stances and steadied their breathing.
Their daily lives were simple.
Work.
Fight.
Study.
Then work again.
Yet within that simplicity, decades of martial skill had slowly fermented.
Watching them, Park Seong-jin thought,
They don't learn sitting at desks.
They learn by moving, by living.
One warrior looked at a younger man's posture from behind and said,
"Your waist is dead. If the waist collapses, the blade collapses."
The junior corrected himself at once.
Another senior passed by and tossed out a comment,
"You're lifting too much. That's not your waist—that's your shoulders."
A third senior approached, looked at both of them, and laughed.
"You're both wrong. It's not the body—it's the breath first.
If the breath breaks, martial skill is finished."
The junior flushed, and the three laughed together.
Seeing this, Park Seong-jin couldn't help smiling.
They know their seniors like needles, and learn by pricking each other with them.
That kind of relationship couldn't be found in books.
It was living study—carried by the body, by failure, by jokes, by scolding.
Some days passed gently, even when nothing special was done.
On such days, the warriors brought out wine, fashioned a small ritual stand, and bowed to the mountains and the heavens.
"Today, a boundary opened."
It meant someone had crossed a threshold.
Who it was didn't matter.
Someone's breathing had deepened.
Someone's blade no longer wavered.
Someone's heart had held fast instead of collapsing.
That alone was a boundary.
At such times, they poured wine toward the ridgelines and asked the sky,
"Where is the next road?
How far may we climb?"
It wasn't empty ambition.
It was the sincerity of those searching for the way.
As Park Seong-jin walked on, he saw two warriors practicing real combat forms in a corner.
More distinct than the clash of blade and spear were the low words exchanged between them.
"If you stop there, you die."
"I know. But if I go any further, your hand will cut me."
"That's why we match our speed."
"Right. We grow only if we live together."
The words struck him squarely in the chest.
They were seniors, comrades, sometimes rivals—
and above all, companions on the Way.
Park Seong-jin understood then why his martial skill had grown so quickly among them.
A word, a laugh, a gesture—each was reshaping his body.
People who walk the same road.
Sometimes pulling, sometimes pushing, sometimes colliding, sometimes standing silently at one's side.
Suddenly, he felt it clearly.
"The foundation of warriors who defend a country is them."
What held up the world was not a great general's command, nor a king's banner,
but the hearts of people who reached out and held each other's hands.
He had forgotten this for a long time.
The words of those with higher rank had sounded louder.
He had pushed things forward according to the will of power.
He hadn't listened deeply to what his companions meant by timing.
Heavenly cycles turn and return, forming new times,
yet he had treated yesterday and today as the same day.
Walking slowly, Park Seong-jin realized,
I ran too much alone.
I tried to climb alone.
But on this battlefield were hundreds of hands, hundreds of breaths, hundreds of hearts together.
He gripped the hilt of his sword once.
A deeper, softer warmth flowed through his hand than before.
"Let's go slowly," he said to himself.
"This isn't a road meant to be walked alone."
Martial skill is not a path of solitary awakening.
It ripens naturally within the shared lives of hundreds of warriors.
Park Seong-jin now felt this not with his head, but with his body.
As night deepened, the wind outside the tents grew quieter than in the daytime.
Yet this stillness was not comfort—it was silence holding one more breath.
When human breathing is forcibly reduced, the wind thins as well.
Song Yi-sul had been biting his lip for a long time.
Memories of past failure and the scars left by breaking his own upper dantian surfaced.
So did his master's voice from long ago, heard while gazing at the sky on Mount Guwol.
The words had not been "Do not cross."
They had been "Do not cross—pass through."
Only now did he fully understand their meaning.
Swallowing his words several times, Song Yi-sul finally called out,
"Seong-jin. Come here. Let's study something a little different today."
Park Seong-jin approached.
Song Yi-sul's gaze was deeper and calmer than usual—
no excitement, no playfulness.
An old resolve had settled beneath his eyes like aged wine.
He took out a small piece of paper and unfolded it.
The old writing was faint and blurred, the paper fragile enough to crumble.
Traces of having been carried close to the body were more deeply ingrained than time itself.
He pointed to a passage with his finger.
心若空谷 氣自成川
不離一念 不住一念
動中守靜 靜中含動
是爲天路
Park Seong-jin swallowed his breath.
It carried the same grain as his master's words on Mount Guwol.
Different words—yet pointing to the same place.
Song Yi-sul explained each line, slowly.
His words were brief; the silences between them were long.
"When the mind is like an empty valley, qi naturally becomes a river."
"It means neither forcing it to flow nor blocking it."
"Do not leave a single thought, yet do not dwell in a single thought."
"If you cling, it becomes greed. If you discard it, it becomes emptiness."
"Within movement, guard stillness. Within stillness, contain movement."
"This is the road to the heavens."
Park Seong-jin felt the silence after the words sink deeper than the words themselves.
It was not the silence of one trying to teach,
but the silence of one who had already crossed.
"Seong-jin," Song Yi-sul said,
"Recite it."
Park Seong-jin closed his eyes slowly, steadied his breath, and chanted.
"If the mind is like an empty valley, qi naturally becomes a river."
"Do not leave one thought, do not dwell in one thought."
"Within movement, guard stillness; within stillness, contain movement."
"This is the road to the heavens."
The first line groped for meaning.
The second followed with the heart.
By the third, the voice flowed on its own.
Song Yi-sul listened quietly.
It flowed like wind, rippled like water.
"Good," he said.
"Don't try to force the qi."
He placed a hand on Park Seong-jin's back.
The palm was warm, the fingertips steady—
as if he had always known that place.
"Let the energy carry you."
Park Seong-jin's breathing gradually evened out.
Qi entered and left the dantian softly, and a faint warmth rose.
"There," Song Yi-sul murmured.
"That's where breath stops being strength and becomes a path."
Park Seong-jin perceived it.
Breath flowed, becoming a small river running up and down the spine.
The energy neither surged nor pressed.
It simply flowed.
Movement arose without movement.
Within stillness, a subtle tremor bloomed.
Within movement, guard stillness. Within stillness, contain movement.
He did not grasp at the realization.
His body knew that the moment he grasped, the flow would cloud.
Song Yi-sul watched in silence.
Park Seong-jin's qi was steadier and more refined than his own had been at that age.
I was impatient, he thought. This child flows like water.
A flicker of fear passed—
Will the scars of my inner method mark him too?
But a deeper hope followed.
I stopped midway.
This one may reach the heavens.
Song Yi-sul spoke one last time.
"Seong-jin, inner method is not text."
"It's a road."
"What I gave you were only words."
"You must walk that road yourself."
"It is practice."
He slowly withdrew his hand.
Park Seong-jin opened his eyes.
They were deeper now, quieter.
A light like flowing water rested within them.