735 — The Thought of Withdrawing
Hearing that something similar had already happened,
Park Seong-jin let out a low sigh.
It was a line he had heard before,
a truth he had already known.
If nothing changed even after people spoke,
then his own words could not easily carry weight.
He understood that clearly.
He also understood how hollow it felt
to repeat what everyone already knew.
That realization drained him more than it comforted him.
Lee In-jung slowed his steps and said,
"From now on, don't say such things in front of His Majesty."
Seong-jin answered with silence.
He could not tell whether that silence meant agreement, resignation, or abandonment.
Even he could not separate them.
But inside him, one decision was quietly hardening.
He would reduce how often he presented himself before the King.
The simplest way to lose a person
was to stop speaking to them.
And the King, too, made another choice.
That choice—without necessarily intending it—
became a flow that pushed away
the one helper who could read the board.
Seong-jin recognized it
and still added nothing.
A voice left in a place it could not reach
rarely meant anything.
He even pictured a future in which,
even if Goryeo leaned and began to fall,
he might not intervene.
A thought flashed through him—
perhaps Pyeonunja had already seen even that.
He defined himself as a martial man.
Not one who designs society,
not one who judges history.
And yet, when the lives of common people looked too harsh to his eyes,
he believed the society should be adjusted.
Even without a perfect solution,
he stood on the side that said
the injustice in front of him must be corrected.
He looked quietly into himself.
There was no revolution there.
No overthrow.
What he wanted was reform without violence.
To preserve the state called Goryeo,
repair its institutions,
reduce the consumption of blood,
and move toward a slightly better order—
enough to carry another five hundred years.
He knew it would not be easy,
and still he did not let that wish go.
Calming the Hollow Feeling
When he needed to tame the emptiness,
he chose to move.
Without a word, Park Seong-jin threw his body westward.
His steps grew lighter with each stride,
until at some point it felt as if the ground itself
was pushing him up.
His lightness skill (gyeonggong) was already a stable current.
His breath remained even.
In an instant, he reached Guwol-san.
Guwol-san was a mountain
into which human time seeped slowly.
Ridges overlapped like ancient waves.
The forest was so deep that even sunlight
seemed to lose its way before settling.
Tall firs and pines held up the sky.
Water ran between rocks, winding as if a dragon had turned its body there.
An old tradition was said to live in that mountain.
That dragons gather their breath,
that the mountain itself breathes,
and humans survive only by borrowing the space beside it.
Perhaps for that reason,
the moment he stepped in, worldly thoughts peeled away—layer by layer.
Seong-jin followed the trail toward an old temple.
It was a forgotten place, rarely named,
a temple said to keep the Pae-yeop-gyeong.
The bell had fallen silent long ago.
Moss had taken the courtyard.
Yet the worn stone steps,
and the handprints left on pillars,
still told of a place once filled with study.
He went deeper.
His master's hermitage.
Neglect had left the door creaking,
and a thin layer of dust lay over the room.
But the meditation cushion remained.
The old wooden practice sword on the wall
still held its place.
Seong-jin stood in the center.
Memories returned like water—
the master's back he used to watch from here,
the cold dawn air as he steadied his breathing day after day.
Then a thought surfaced.
Perhaps the place he ought to remain
was not the palace, not the training yard,
not the center of the world—
but here.
A place where no one demanded,
and no one loaded him with expectation.
A place where he could sharpen the sword,
and polish the mind,
with mountain and forest and wind as companions.
He sat quietly in the hermitage.
He did not decide anything yet.
But merely knowing this place still existed
made a corner of his chest settle.
The mountain did not speak.
And that silence filled the space
like a deep consolation.
The Sword Remembered
Seong-jin drew his sword.
It felt as natural as the repetitions he had done here
not so long ago.
Hesitation vanished.
Thought did not interfere.
His body called up memory first.
When his foot met the ground,
the mountain's energy climbed into his waist.
From waist to shoulder, shoulder to arm, it released.
The sword rose as if led,
cut the air,
and plunged down—
Kwaang—
The wind split.
For a moment, a blank space formed
where the blade had passed.
He moved on immediately.
He cut, turned, sprang, descended, and drove in on the diagonal.
The motions were large and clean.
The flow did not break.
The arcs of his blade
raked through mountain mist
and coiled between rock and tree.
Each thrust carried his whole body with it.
It was not only the arm's strength,
not only the legs' movement.
His entire body continued as a single sword.
With every lift, his spine pulled taut.
With every strike, the earth answered.
When his heel planted, dirt scattered.
Pine needles shook loose in showers.
He was smiling.
His breath was fast,
yet his rhythm did not collapse.
Heavy thoughts and doubts
scattered down the mountain
along the path of his blade.
Then his spinning body stopped at once.
The sword point rested against stone.
Power still lived inside the blade,
and the steel hummed low—
Woong—
The resonance spread into the mountain.
It felt as if Guwol-san, long asleep,
had recognized him again.
Seong-jin lifted the sword once more.
Bigger.
Cleaner.
More unrestrained.
In that moment he was not a palace warrior,
not the kingdom's general.
He was his younger self—
the Seong-jin who had swung the sword without fear
before his master.
The mountain received it without a word,
and the sword's energy kept moving—endlessly alive.
The Little One That Walked In
As he was about to sheath his blade,
the grass rustled faintly.
Ajang-ajang—
There was no other way to describe the gait.
It walked on four legs,
but the front two were shaped like a child's hands—
short, round,
and oddly careful in how they touched the ground.
It made him smile before it made him wary.
Its body was plump.
Its fur was astonishingly clean.
A soft ash-gray coat, untouched by dust,
caught the sunlight and shimmered gently.
It looked as if warmth would transfer
the moment one laid a hand on it.
A living vitality seeped quietly between those hairs.
Seong-jin realized at once.
This creature had moved in response
to his own energy.
"Is it something that guards my master's remains?"
The thought flickered, then settled.
This place was under a formation.
Layers of wards overlapped—
a space that did not permit
human or beast to enter.
Seong-jin widened his sensing.
Mountain and forest, rock and air—
even the unseen currents of the ward—
he traced them calmly.
The formation remained intact.
He felt no disturbance,
no sign of force,
no mark of anyone prying it open.
Then the conclusion was clear.
This being had not "passed through" the ward.
It possessed a nature
that the ward did not count as a target.
An yeongmul—a spirit creature.
The moment that recognition settled,
the small thing stopped in front of him.
It tilted its head like a person would,
then stared intently at the hand holding the sword.
Its eyes were larger than a human's,
unusually clear.
There was no fear, no wariness.
The gaze felt as if it had known him for a long time.
Seong-jin lowered the sword slowly.
The mountain kept its silence.
The formation held its stable current.
And the master's hermitage
quietly contained the scene.
Within all that stillness,
the little spirit creature looked at him
as if it belonged there—
as naturally as breath.