Chapter 1353: That’s Just How He’s Made. (3)
Whooosh!
The surrounding scenery warped and stretched. Chung Myung, who had kicked off the ground, accelerated even more and shot forward.
‘This way?’
Chung Myung squinted slightly, changed direction, and accelerated further.
A distinct scent at his nostrils was guiding him.
As he followed the scent, conversations from the past flashed in his mind as vividly as if they were yesterday.
I told you I don’t need this kind of thing, right?
Just learn it like you’re told. Once you learn it, you’ll find plenty of uses for it!
I’m not a dog—what would I do learning how to smell things?
When it came to smelling liquor, you were nothing but a dog.
What, you bastard?
A low smile naturally tugged at Chung Myung’s lips.
Even through the thick scent of grass, the fragrance he clearly felt was none other than the Tang Family’s secret Ten Thousand Mile Pursuit Incense.
The incense used by the Lower District Sect or the Beggars’ Union to track people. Those trained in the corresponding qi arts never lose this scent; though it won’t be smelled from Ten Thousand Miles away as the name suggests, it can easily track for at least several dozen li.
‘Good thing I got it from the Tang Family lord ahead of time.’
Of course he had to endure Tang Gunak’s strange look when handing over the Thousand Pursuit Incense, but this was well worth the risk and trouble.
He’d hidden the scent on that slow-witted Dong-Ryong, so there was no worry about losing the trail. Just running after the scent would naturally rejoin him with the lead.
Without slowing his running speed, Chung Myung glanced down at his hand. He clenched and opened it a couple times and nodded with satisfaction.
Despite having fought for quite a while with a weakened body, he felt less tired and instead more invigorated. If his condition upon leaving the cave had been about seven-tenths of his usual, now it should be rated at least eight-tenths.
‘Better than I thought.’
Of course, in the past Chung Myung also benefited greatly from Taoist-lineage internal qi flowing through his body.
His ability to bear countless wounds and sometimes life-threatening injuries and still fight to the end was, when examined, thanks to the Taoist internal qi’s excellent healing and recovery properties.
But the recovery rate his body now displayed easily surpassed even those expectations.
Each time he swung his sword and drew up internal qi, the pure qi flowing through him pushed out dross and waste and restored his damaged body, as if it were repairing the house he lived in by itself.
‘Natural...’
The clearest and pure qi under heaven might mean internal qi closest to nature. Then it makes sense, nature is like that. Even if it crumbles and decays, over time it returns to its true form; isn’t that nature?
Yes, like Mount Hua right now.
Thud!
Chung Myung’s foot lightly touched the ground. Though he didn’t exert great force, the inner energy flowing through his leg lifted his body slightly.
It was a strange sensation.
His body moved leisurely as if on a stroll, yet the world before his eyes swept past him at extreme speed. When two mismatched sensations coexist, the familiar senses become entangled and blurred.
Whooosh!
Each step made his body accelerate faster.
Soon Chung Myung’s eyes, having reached speeds no longer visible, gradually lost focus.
‘Man is also part of nature, but actions imbued with will are artifices. Nature rejects artifice and returns to the primordial. Thus nature excludes man.’
Something indescribably deep began to fill his unfocused eyes.
‘But, if people are part of nature, then human will is also nature’s will—why reject that will as artifice? Things with will and things without will. Even animals’ actions have will...’
Thoughts flowed like water. The stream of thought, whose beginning and end couldn’t be known, soon flowed like a mighty river and soaked into him. His senses expanded and blurred at once; the world became both clearer and more faded.
The boundary separating me and the world kept blurring.
It flowed and flowed. But ultimately the current led back to the beginning.
The Taiji circle shape where yin and yang meet. But that form soon fell apart into a distorted circle.
‘A circle is equality. No beginning, no end, infinitely continuous. Life is an end and a beginning, a closure and a continuation at once...’
“Huh?”
Chung Myung suddenly opened his eyes wide. After blinking a couple times, his face contorted.
“Damn it! I’m losing it!”
He had just entered the realm of enlightenment. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d stepped into that realm.
Gaining enlightenment is like crossing a wall. For a martial artist, it’s an indescribable triumph.
Originally, the walls faced when mastering martial arts are twofold: the physical wall and the mental wall. His body hadn’t reached past levels yet, but his mental realm clearly was going deeper than before. However...
“Huh?”
But why did I snap out of it?
Normally enlightenment doesn’t break so easily once entered. Usually you feel a lack at the end of contemplation and withdraw on your own. But now it was as if something forcibly blocked him...
Twitch. Twitch.
Chung Myung’s toes groped at empty air.
Only then did Chung Myung realize nothing had been under his feet for a while. The vast open sky stretching before him came into view belatedly.
“The sky...?”
The ground sprawled far below. Behind him loomed a sheer cliff from where he didn’t even remember leaping.
Wow, I jumped from there to here. I really leapt a long way...
“Aaaaaaaah! Hey, you lunatic!”
Chung Myung’s body began to plummet rapidly.
But no matter how he flailed his limbs, there was nothing to grab or reach. How could he catch a cliff now more than thirty paces away? He’s not the Monkey King.
“Eek!”
As the ground rushed up at terrifying speed, Chung Myung frantically emitted intangible qi. The recoil slowed his {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} fall a bit.
Then a tall pine branch flashed into Chung Myung’s sight. At the sight of that thick protruding limb, his eyes sparkled.
‘I have to grab it!’
Pushing strongly off the air and rolling his body to the side, Chung Myung stretched his hand with all his might. The moment his fingertips touched, he snatched the thick branch at once.
‘Got it, got it...’
Snap!
“Huh?”
Kuuuuuung!
In the end Chung Myung’s body slammed face-first into the ground, trembling pitifully before going limp.
Thud.
A broken pine branch rolled indifferently beside him.
Thankfully he wasn’t dead; a breath hissed from his nose. Dry dust puffed up in little clouds.
“Uuuugh...”
He painfully propped himself up with both hands and lifted his face from the ground. Blood gushed freely from his nose.
The tree had snapped, but it had slowed his fall, so he didn’t die. Whether that’s something to be grateful for, he had to think on that.
“...Uuuugh.”
He set his twisted nose and wiped away the blood. The dark-red nosebleed dripped to the ground. Chung Myung sank down where he was with a woeful face.
“This...”
They say an unlucky man breaks his nose even falling backward—unlucky indeed, falling off a cliff even when entering enlightenment...
“If I get enlightenment twice I’ll really die and go to the underworld! Does this make any sense? Does it?”
I said I wanted to transcend, not go straight to the afterlife!
“Why does enlightenment come while I’m running?”
Chung Myung couldn’t help his regret and scratched his head vigorously.
If it hadn’t been for the cliff he could’ve grabbed something, but the cliff that appeared in front of him forced him out of enlightenment. The more he chewed over it, the worse he felt.
Of course Chung Myung knew he didn’t need to cling to that fact. Enlightenment that has once come will return again, so he could wait patiently. If you keep yearning and clinging, enlightenment drifts further away.
He knows. Knows very well. The problem is...
“Aiiiooo! It’s such a waste I’m gonna die!”
Chung Myung rolled on the ground entirely, foaming at the mouth.
If knowing were doing, would that be Chung Myung? Even knowing, his stomach twists—that’s Chung Myung.
Even if he advanced mentally a bit now, he wouldn’t immediately recover his past martial prowess to effortlessly shred Jang Ilso and the like, but it would have made things noticeably easier!
“Why of all places is there a damn cliff there! That’s why when people build paths they should just level mountains and fill rivers to make everything flat!”
Your Heavenly Excellency. That’s a Taoist.“Kyak! Shut up!”
Chung Myung spat fire into the air.
“If you’re a person you should know when to butt in and when not to! You’re not fanning a burning house—whenever trouble starts you don’t know where to sit and always stick your butt in first!”
Gesturing angrily at the sky, Chung Myung flinched and stopped. He realized with a sudden nostalgia how long it had been since he’d heard Chung Mun’s voice so vividly in his ear.
“...Tsk.”
Feeling a bit awkward, he scratched the back of his head. Being human, after crossing the Ten Thousand Great Mountains his mood seemed to relax.
“Live long enough and you get all sorts of experiences.”
With a snort he dispelled the awkwardness and swiftly launched himself after the now much-fainter scent. His body moved like the wind again. Nothing was notably different from before, but the thread of enlightenment did not readily return.
He smacked his lips in regret, but he had no choice but to shake off his longing and keep running.
‘But...’
A strange light bloomed in Chung Myung’s eyes as he ran on in silence.
‘What was that?’
A current that flowed majestically like a river. Its start and end bent to meet each other. Like the Taiji where yin and yang harmonize. But those yin and yang soon broke down their boundary and became one.
It was the primordial circle. Or something that should be called the Void.
Chung Myung knew the concept of Void, but this was the first time he’d seen its form in the realm of images. This fact would surely guide him one step further.
But that was not what Chung Myung was thinking about now.
Just before being forced out of enlightenment, he had clearly seen.
A sign that the eternally turning circle’s flow was transforming into something.
‘There is definitely something behind it.’
It might be a place Chung Myung had not yet reached. No, perhaps something no one had ever reached, not even conveyed conceptually.
Understanding the meaning of that circle might open it. A way to confront an absolute might that couldn’t be touched, a method to contend with a godlike being.
His fingertips trembled faintly.
‘But...’
A momentary, inexplicable complexity gleamed across Chung Myung’s face. If his conjecture was right, that circle would be supremely auspicious, a deep, deep truth encompassing all he had learned and the root of the world. It would surely be so.
‘But why, does it feel ominous?’
Why did his heart grow so heavy despite approaching what he’d sought? What could be behind it? What was he destined to see...
“Tsk.”
Lost in thought, Chung Myung clicked his tongue lightly and shook his head.
“I get full of myself.”
Shaking off the unsettling feeling that had crept into his mind, Chung Myung put more strength into his legs with a fresher expression.
‘Thoughts later. For now, just do what needs to be done.’
His feet briskly hammered the ground, following the scent.
As he cut through the forest leading into towering mountains, a cloudless blue sky watched over him, warm yet indifferent.