The renovation was finally finished.
Wol lay flat on his back on his worn sleeping mat, staring up at the dark wooden ceiling. His ten-year-old muscles ached with a deep, satisfying exhaustion. For the past seven days, he had worked alongside Cha Sung and Nari, painting walls, sanding tables, and breathing life back into the dead stall.
I did what I could, Wol thought, listening to the quiet rustle of the wind outside. I painted the signboard. I set the supply line. Now, it is up to them. I hope it goes well.
But setting up a front is only the first step, Wol thought, staring at the cracks in the wood. Money will only take me so far. If I am going to find the truth about my father, if I am going to survive the things coming... I need strength. I need to be better than I ever was.
His eyes grew heavy. The ache in his small body pulled him downward into the dark.
He fell asleep.
****
He was dreaming.
Wol knew this immediately, not because of any feeling of weightlessness, but because he was standing in a place that defied the logic of the Murim world he knew.
What is this place? he wondered, looking around. The architecture... it's incredibly ancient.
It was a sect. Three massive, sprawling buildings laid out in a perfect geometric formation — two flanking the sides, and a towering central hall at the back. The woodwork was painted a deep, artistic red that hadn't faded with time. The eaves curved upward in a style he had only ever seen sketched in the absolute oldest, most fragile scrolls of the Alliance archive.
A seamless, clear stream ran through the centre of the courtyard, crossed by a pristine stone bridge. Along the banks grew beautiful trees with pure white leaves and blooming white flowers.
It was breathtaking. It was also completely empty.
No people. No sound of training. Just the quiet rustle of the white leaves.
Wol walked forward. Near the entrance stood a massive stone slab, the kind sects used to engrave their names and founding principles. But as he looked at it, the characters were blurred, swimming before his eyes like ink dropped in water. He passed under the main wooden board above the gate. The name there was dulled out, completely unreadable.
He walked past the stream toward the training ground.
This place was not as pristine as the trees. The earth was violently scarred. Deep, chaotic gouges were carved into the dirt and flagstones — the unmistakable signature of heavily compressed sword strikes. Discarded weapons, wooden and steel, lay scattered haphazardly.
In the center of the training ground lay a single sword.
It was an ordinary iron sword, worn at the hilt. Yet it felt intensely, uncomfortably familiar. The way the man with white hair had felt familiar on the battlefield.
A dream, Wol thought, observing his own hands. They were the thin hands of a ten-year-old.
But he remembered the red field. He remembered the man who had spoken directly into his mind.
Wol knelt down and closed his hand over the hilt.
The air snapped.
The empty training ground vanished. Instantly, the courtyard was filled with the sharp, rhythmic shouts of hundreds of people.
"Ha! Hu!"
Young disciples, all around the age of sixteen, wearing identical black-and-red training uniforms, were moving through forms in perfect synchronization.
Wol stumbled. Or rather, the body he was in stumbled.
He looked down at his hands. They were no longer the thin, under-nourished sticks of a ten-year-old. The hands holding the sword were broad, veined, and lined with thick calluses. His arms were larger. His perspective was higher.
He tried to move, but his body was not listening to his command.
"Cheon Ryong!" a sharp voice barked from the front of the courtyard.
Before Wol could react, the body moved completely on its own. Wol tried to speak, tried to shift his foot, but he was locked inside. He was a mere observer trapped behind the eyes of a boy named Cheon Ryong.
Cheon Ryong stepped forward into a stance.
Wol's mind, molded by twenty-four years of studying forgotten martial arts manuals, went entirely quiet as he analyzed the movement.
It was perfect.
Martial arts relied on forcing Qi through the body to enhance muscle power. But this stance didn't force anything. It blended raw, physical power with internal Qi so seamlessly that the distinction between the two vanished.
The footwork was peerless. Wol could literally feel the boy's center of gravity settling into the earth. Though the body was completely still, the balance was so sharp that an attack from any of the eight directions could be countered instantly.
The martial arts I practiced in my past life... Wol thought, a cold sweat breaking out in his borrowed mind. It was absolute trash compared to this.
Across the yard, a senior disciple stepped forward as a sparring partner. He didn't waste time with a greeting. He swung his sword, and Qi erupted from the blade.
A cross-shaped compressed energy shot across the air directly at Cheon Ryong's chest.
Sword Qi.
Wol's mental heart raced. He knew what Sword Qi was. In the current era, coating a blade in aura was the hallmark of a first-rate master. But physically projecting Sword Qi through the air? That was the domain of sect elders and generational geniuses.
The kid throwing the attack couldn't have been older than sixteen.
To do it with such ease, such perfect flow... it was monstrous.
The cross-shaped Qi shrieked through the air. Wol's instincts screamed to dodge, to roll, to parry the flat of the force.
Cheon Ryong did none of those things.
Instead, the boy pulled his sword straight back, bringing the flat of the blade horizontally across his vision. For a split second, Wol caught a partial reflection of the boy's face in the polished steel — sharp, piercing eyes and a chillingly calm expression.
Before Wol could study it, Cheon Ryong thrust forward.
It wasn't a heavily powered strike. It was relaxed. Casual.
At the very last fraction of a second, a spark of crimson Qi flared — not coating the whole blade, but concentrated solely and entirely on the very tip of the weapon.
Clang — CRACK.
The crimson tip struck the exact dead-center of the cross-shaped attack. The projected Sword Qi shattered like cheap glass, dispersing into harmless wind.
Wol's mind reeled. The first kid throwing Sword Qi was a genius. But Cheon Ryong? The level of control required to condense Qi to the size of a needlepoint and crush an opponent's technique at its structural root... that was something beyond common sense. It was impossible.
"Good," a deep voice echoed from somewhere.
Before Wol could search for the speaker's face, the vision broke. The edges frayed into darkness, swallowing the white trees, the shattered Qi, and the boy named Cheon Ryong.
Wol's eyes snapped open.
He was staring at the moldy wooden ceiling of his bedroom. Morning light was bleeding through the cracks in the walls.
He was breathing heavily, his small ten-year-old chest rising and falling. He could still feel the phantom sensation of that perfect footwork, that terrifyingly efficient crimson thrust.
That wasn't my body, Wol thought, waiting for his pulse to slow. But I remember the muscle memory. The rhythm. I felt it.
He sat up slowly, crossing his legs on the mat. He didn't question the logic of the dream. He had died, regressed forty-five years in time, and brought a mysterious book in his head. Dreams teaching him sword techniques were the least of his impossibilities.
The book. It had to be the book.
He closed his eyes and sank his awareness deep into his mind.
There it sat, just as it had for the past month — the dark, red-black tome that radiated a quiet, heavy pressure.
But today, it was different.
The cover was open.
The first page was revealed.
Wol focused on the text. The old scripture language that had once taken him years to decipher in the archive now flowed into his mind with complete clarity. He didn't just read the words; he understood the intent behind them.
It was a breathing technique. A completely unique method designed to open the Dantian.
But as Wol read through the internal circulation pathways, his invisible eyebrows furrowed.
This is incomplete.
He read it again, carefully. It wasn't incomplete; it was just insane.
In the established Murim world, martial artists formed the Lower Dantain first. It rested below the navel and served as the absolute foundation. Once a master reached the peak of their life, they might attempt to open the Middle Dantain near the heart, and finally, the mythical Upper Dantain in the mind.
This book completely ignored the Lower Dantain.
The breathing technique explicitly instructed the practitioner to gather Qi and forcibly drill directly into the Middle Dantain located in the chest.
Suicide, Wol thought bluntly.
Trying to form a Middle Dantain without the anchor of the Lower Dantain would cause the gathered Qi to run wild, shattering the heart and exploding the ribs from the inside out. It went against the fundamental laws of martial arts.
Wol sat in the quiet dark of his mind, staring at the page.
If it was anyone else — even a sect elder — handing him this manual, Wol would have thrown it in the fire.
But this was the book that brought him back from the dead. This was the book held by the man who had laid waste to an entire army, and a man who had just shattered projected Sword Qi with a casual flick of a crimson-tipped blade.
Perhaps the knowledge was erased, Wol theorized. Or forcefully hidden.
He had only read vague, archaic myths about ancient 'heretics' wiped out by the Royal Family a thousand years ago. But he knew, with complete certainty, that the terrifying martial art he had just witnessed in the dream was powered by this exact Middle Dantain method.
Wol opened his physical eyes. The sun was fully up.
He let out a long breath. He didn't have a teacher. He didn't have a sect to protect him if he crippled his own meridians. But he had twenty-four years of bitter regret, and he had made a promise to himself not to be weak again.
"If it wants me to start with the middle dantain," Wol said to his empty room, "then we start with the middle dantain."
He shifted into the required breathing posture to begin.
He spent the entire next week attempting exactly that. After his morning routine of fishing and quickly delivering the catch to Yeonhwa-ru's back door, he locked himself in his room, spending every remaining hour attempting the breathing technique.
Not a spark. Not a stir. Just the blank, frustrating silence of an empty vessel. The absolute concentration the manual demanded was the exact reason he had neglected the noodle house during their opening week.
He soon realized his error. The method wasn't failing; his body simply couldn't handle it yet. Before he could build the middle dantain, he needed to forge the vessel. He needed a proper body.
And he also owed Nari an apology. She had been waiting for him with the ledgers, and he hadn't shown up once.
That evening, Wol finally visited Yeonhwa-ru, finding the place booming and Nari thoroughly annoyed with him. After promising to bring her sweets from the travelling merchant, he returned the next morning.
He brought the paper bag of expensive honeyed treats just as he had promised. Nari snatched them with a bright, triumphant grin, her anger completely forgotten. He spent the entire day there, running orders and observing the flow of the shop.
When it was time to leave, Cha Sung packed him a wooden box full of new snacks that Nari was trying to convince her father to add to the menu. Wol accepted them quietly, gave a small nod, and headed home.
The next day, Wol's true training began.
He bought raw grains, medicinal herbs specifically designed for healing internal organs, and heavy iron sand. His secluded, run-down house was the perfect place to train without drawing the eyes of the city's martial artists.
"This will do," he said, looking at the materials.
He fashioned crude but heavy weights for his wrists, his ankles, and his waist.
"Now let's start."
He knew he was not in the best shape to start with the weights immediately. Even though he had made them, it was necessary to loosen up the muscles and joints before he could start the real training.
Maybe for two or three days, he thought.
He strapped the ankle and wrist weights on and started to run around the house. It gave him enough struggle, but not too much for the body to handle initially. The first round was pretty bearable, but as he started the second round, the reality hit him.
This body is in worse shape than when I was in the archive, Wol thought, his lungs burning.
He stopped and let out a heavy sigh.
"If I tried to force and open up the middle dantain with this body, I would have really died..."
He didn't take much time on his stop and continued. The pace was slower this time, and his breathing was controlled to preserve stamina and maximize his energy efficiency. That was the best choice.
After he finished running, he fell onto the ground for a small break, and then started with push-ups, stretching, and core work, one after the other.
He continued not because it was easy, but because it was necessary.
He didn't have the luxury to stop, as his path forward was one where he couldn't afford to be weak.
The young body struggled violently at first. By nightfall of the first week, he was essentially a living corpse. He would physically crawl across the floor to the doorway where Cha Sung's packed wooden box of food sat waiting. He would force the food down his throat, boil the bitter medicinal herbs to soothe his internally bruised organs, and drag himself onto his sleeping mat.
The routine set in like iron.
Weeks turned into a blur of exhaustion.
Every two weeks, he would dedicate a single day to rest. On those days, he visited Yeonhwa-ru, brought Nari her sweets, and sat quietly in the corner of the booming tavern.
Am I getting attached? Wol wondered once, watching Nari happily recount the week's sales to him while Cha Sung sent over cuts of beef.
He realized he wasn't doing it out of a sense of obligation. Those bi-weekly visits were a natural anchor — the only genuine peace he found outside the brutal rhythm of his training.
It kept his mind from fracturing under the pressure of his own isolation.
Other than that single day of respite, he never stopped.
Months passed.
And then, years.
Wol did not stop.
***
By his third year of training, his sixty percent cut of Yeonhwa-ru's exploding profits and his daily fishing had accumulated into a small fortune. Before Shin Daesok's men could even sniff out the secret river alcove, Wol approached the city registrar through an underground broker and purchased the entire stretch of wasteland outright.
He fenced it off.
He now legally owned his treasury.
The boy who had been nothing but skin and brittle bones faded. He grew taller, his back lean and corded with muscle. The daily routine evolved perfectly into extreme physical conditioning.
He shifted his core exercises drastically, focusing entirely on body control — spending hours doing handstand push-ups and single-finger balances until the ground was slick with his sweat.
Alongside the physical torture, he never stopped attempting the breathing technique for the Middle Dantain.
For the first three years, he felt absolutely nothing.
In the fourth year, the silence broke.
He began to feel a faint, elusive heat residing in his chest. It felt hidden, deeply coiled, as if a great energy was locked away in chains.
Now, he was fifteen.
Wol finished his final set of handstand push-ups.
He dropped his legs, flipping perfectly to land silently on his bare feet, and stretched his back.
The muscles along his spine coiled and shifted, thick and defined from four years of relentless training. He was tall for fifteen. His hands were no longer soft; they were hard and rough like worn leather, yet completely unscarred and devoid of deformities. His arms were broad, mapping clean lines of veins that pulsed with quiet power.
He let out a heavy, controlled breath.
He sat down in his usual meditating position in the centre of the room. His mind went entirely blank.
He turned his focus inward, finding that familiar, chained heat in his chest.
For years, he had aggressively tried to pull it out, to force it into submission. It had never worked.
Today, he was completely calm.
He didn't pull the feeling.
He simply embraced it, pushing it gently, inviting it to step forward rather than dragging it into the light.
Don't force the water, he remembered his father saying once by the river. Let the stream find its own path.
The chained heat shuddered.
And then, something gave.
A profound warmth bloomed in the dead centre of his chest.
It didn't explode; it flowed.
A steady, continuous stream of thick warmth began moving up and down his sternum. It didn't taper off. It grew denser, the warmth condensing until it felt like a physical sphere of sheer light rotating inside his heart.
Wol recognized the feeling of Qi from his past life.
But this was fundamentally different.
The internal energy he had known was coarse. It had to be violently whipped and commanded through the meridians by the user's sheer will, or else it would disperse.
This new Qi was blindingly pure.
And more shockingly, it didn't need to be forced.
It moved through his body of its own accord, acting almost as if it had its own awareness. It found the optimal pathways, cycling through his veins and meridians in a perfect, continuous loop.
A loop, Wol realized, his mental eye watching the Qi coil and flow without end.
He had done it.
He had formed the Middle Dantian.
Wol opened his physical eyes.
The moment his eyelids parted, his balance completely collapsed. He fell forward, his face hitting the wooden floor.
A vile, overpowering stench hit his nose.
It smelled like rusted iron and tangy, rotted meat.
Wol grasped his arms, wiping a thick, black sludge that was rapidly oozing from his pores, coating his skin entirely in a layer of filth.
He stared at his stained hands, his mind blanking for a second before a forgotten piece of archive knowledge slammed into his thoughts.
Bone Cleansing. Marrow Purification.
It was an absolute myth.
A legend written in the oldest, most exaggerated scrolls claiming that upon reaching a true state of physical and spiritual harmony, the body would physically expel all mortal impurities, fusing the flesh and Qi into a single, flawless vessel.
Wol had always read those passages and assumed they were poetic metaphors designed by arrogant sect founders to sound impressive.
It wasn't a joke, Wol thought, wiping the black sludge from his eyes.
The feeling inside his body was miraculous.
The purity of his muscle fibers, the effortless flow of the endless Qi in his chest — it was incredible.
If he commanded the Qi, it moved smoothly, without the slightest fraction of resistance.
He leaned against the wall, catching his breath.
If the sects knew what this breathing technique truly did, Wol thought grimly, there would be an ocean of blood spilled to claim it.
He finally understood why the White-Haired Man's path had been erased from history.
A technique that bypasses the Lower Dantian and instantly forces Marrow Purification at the age of fifteen breaks the very foundation of the Murim world's balance of power.
Wol looked down at his filthy hands and slowly curled his fingers into a tight fist.
The Sword Qi, Wol realized, remembering the impossible, needle-point crimson spark the boy Cheon Ryong had manifested in his dream.
With Qi this pure, and control this flawless... I can do that too. Things that took fifty years of bitter training just became a matter of practice.
The impossible was now just a stepping stone.
He peeled his sludge-soaked, ragged trousers off.
He needed a bath immediately.
He looked toward the corner of the room.
Folded neatly on a small wooden crate lay a set of crisp, dark-grey martial arts robes.
Nari had sent them over during his last bi-weekly visit.
"You look like a beggar who shrunk his clothes in the wash," she had scolded him, shoving the neatly bundled fabric into his chest.
Wol hadn't paid attention to his attire.
He had worn the same patched robe for twenty-four years in the archive.
But looking at himself now, his ten-year-old child's clothes had ripped at the seams, completely unable to contain his sharply grown, fifteen-year-old frame.
He picked up the dark-grey robes, grabbed a towel, and pushed the back door open, walking out toward the river to wash away the dirt from his body.