Chapter 341. Seated at Home, Circulating the Small Heavenly Cycle
To settle his mind, Youngwoo laid a thick cushion on the wooden floor and sat down.
He had washed and changed his clothes, yet the smell of blood still seemed to linger on his fingertips.
He drew in a long breath and slowly let it out.
Just then, one of the servants hurried over.
"Is there anything you need?"
Youngwoo opened his eyes.
"If I need something, I will call. Otherwise, please leave me alone."
He had nearly asked that no unnecessary people be allowed in, but the words seemed too harsh, so he softened them.
The servant appeared to understand at once and bowed.
"Understood."
Youngwoo suddenly asked,
"Your name?"
"Deoksu."
He seemed to be someone who had traveled with the household, though Youngwoo did not remember him clearly.
Too many faces had passed before him since entering Liaoyang.
Youngwoo studied him for a moment, then nodded.
"Thank you for today. I will leave things to you."
"Understood."
Deoksu, who had been attending to Youngwoo from close by, gave him a full bow.
He did not hurry away, but paused for a breath and lowered himself carefully.
It was a slow, respectful gesture.
There was something in that cautious movement that seemed to express as much sincerity as he knew how to show.
A thin breeze passed over the clean, polished wooden floor.
Youngwoo sat cross-legged on a thick cushion like one used in a temple.
He straightened his back and tucked his chin slightly.
Both hands rested together before his lower abdomen.
It was a familiar posture.
He began the Small Heavenly Cycle as though performing it for the first time, despite having repeated it countless times before.
He closed his eyes, lightly touched the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and drew a thin breath in through his nose.
He did not pull the breath in forcefully.
He simply allowed the air of the courtyard to seep naturally into his body.
But his body today was different from usual.
The muscles of his shoulders were heavy, like ropes soaked in blood, while his elbows and wrists still carried the memory of gripping a sword throughout the night.
His thighs remembered both the stirrups beneath his feet and the stone streets inside the city.
The soles of his feet still seemed to retain the sensation of stepping across blood-slick stone.
Though he sat perfectly still, every part of his body seemed to be speaking at once.
He had traveled a long road and fought a brutal battle.
When he inhaled, pain came first from between his ribs.
He could not even remember when or how he had been injured there.
In the chaos of the fighting, he had killed more men than he could count.
Something like this hardly even qualified as a wound.
When he exhaled, the deep muscles behind his shoulders pulled with burning heat.
Whenever he tried to lower his awareness into his dantian, his right arm seemed to cry out in pain from all the sword strokes it had made.
Cutting.
Driving forward.
Striking downward.
Cutting again.
The movements of the night remained buried in his flesh.
Youngwoo quieted his mind and listened to each of those sounds.
The cries of the body were, in the end, merely ripples arising along the paths through which qi flowed.
He made his breathing finer.
Instead of allowing the breath to rise into his chest, he guided it down below the navel and kindled a tiny ember deep within his lower abdomen.
At first, it was faint.
The spark in his dantian flickered like a flame barely surviving inside wet firewood.
Youngwoo gathered his awareness around it as though watching the ember directly.
With each inhalation, he gathered his qi.
With each exhalation, he slowly released the turbid energy thrown into disorder by battle.
One breath cooled the heat in his shoulders.
Another quieted the trembling in his wrists.
Before long, warmth gathered in his lower abdomen.
It felt heavy like a round pearl, yet still like a clear drop of water.
Without hurrying, Youngwoo guided it downward toward the Huiyin point.
As the warmth passed through the depths of his pelvis, the lower back that had remained stiff throughout the night slowly loosened from within.
The qi passed the tailbone and began rising along the Governing Vessel.
At first, it moved slowly, like a cart climbing a rough stone road.
The fatigue of battle seemed embedded in every joint of his spine.
When it reached the Mingmen point, a hot sensation struck his lower back, and muscles that had been hunched tight for hours seemed to exhale one after another.
Youngwoo lengthened his breathing further.
Within the darkness behind his closed eyes, a thin line of light seemed to appear.
Unbroken like a strand of silk, it climbed along his spine.
When it reached the middle of his back, the impact of parrying blades the night before returned to him.
A needle-like pain stabbed between his shoulder blades.
He directed his breath into that place.
As the breath reached it, the pain changed shape.
What had been sharp became dull.
What had burned became merely warm.
The qi passed the Dazhui point and climbed into the back of his neck.
The shouting of the battlefield and the beating of drums seemed to return inside his ears.
He could not allow himself to sink into memory.
He had to breathe the present.
If he sat there replaying whatever memories rose to the surface, as though watching the battle again and again, nothing would come of the cultivation.
Youngwoo drew even those sounds into his breathing.
As the qi crossed the Jade Pillow, the back of his head cooled.
When it reached the Baihui point, a clear sensation seemed to open gently above his head.
It felt like standing on a high mountain ridge and meeting the cold wind before dawn.
His body remained exhausted.
But his awareness seemed to rise one step above that exhaustion.
He remained there for a while.
The space between inhalation and exhalation lengthened.
His heart, which had been raging like a blade, recovered its rhythm.
The trembling in his fingertips also faded.
Memories of blood, iron, and fire slowly sank deeper into his mind.
Youngwoo turned the qi forward again.
The clear current descending from Baihui passed across his forehead and between his brows, flowed down past his nose and philtrum, then entered his throat and descended along the Conception Vessel.
When it reached his chest, the killing intent that had surged there during the fighting remained caught like a hard knot.
He did not force his way through it.
Instead, he released a long breath and slowly dissolved it, like ink spreading through water.
The qi descended through Shanzhong and Zhongwan.
The dust and exhaustion swallowed the previous day seemed to stir somewhere deep in his belly.
At last, the current returned to his lower abdomen and gathered once more within the dantian.
One circuit was complete.
Youngwoo immediately began a second cycle.
This time, the path was smoother.
During the first circuit, his body had screamed from place to place.
Now those screams had faded into low groans.
The trembling in his muscles settled into the rhythm of his breathing, while the heat in his joints gradually melted into the warmth of his dantian.
By the third cycle, the path within his body had opened.
From Huiyin to Mingmen.
From Mingmen to Dazhui.
From Dazhui to Baihui.
The current connected like a flowing stream.
The qi descending again across his forehead and chest before returning to the dantian was clearer as well.
Warmth spread even into the fingertips that had gripped the sword through the night.
The tension faded from Youngwoo's face.
The muscles around his mouth and eyes relaxed, and his shoulders lowered slightly.
Outside, he could faintly hear the household cleaning the damaged estate.
Somewhere, a wooden door closed.
People exchanged a few quiet words.
All of it seemed distant, as though heard from beneath the surface of water.
The qi in his dantian was no longer a tiny ember.
It had become a quiet brazier.
Its warmth remained in his abdomen, spread into his waist, then moved through his back and shoulders.
His body was still heavy from battle, but that heaviness had changed.
It was no longer scattered pain.
It had become fatigue he could endure.
The energy thrown into disorder while wielding the sword was returning to its proper place.
Youngwoo released one final, long breath.
At the end of the exhalation, it felt as though a last handful of the killing intent he had carried through the night left his body with it.
He brought both hands together before his dantian and remained still for a moment.
The Small Heavenly Cycle within him quietly closed.
When he opened his eyes, the empty courtyard lay before him.
Morning light rested thinly along the edge of the wooden floor.
Beside him, the cleaned hwando gleamed coldly.
Youngwoo slowly opened his fingers.
The fatigue had not disappeared.
But his center had returned enough for him to take up the sword again.