Chapter 369. Back to Guangyou Temple — A Time of Stillness
Youngwoo came and went through the temple as though it were his own home.
He rode his horse all the way to the room he had newly been given and tied it there.
After putting away the dumplings, he headed for the Mahavira Hall.
Just as the day before, he entered the empty hall.
Snow had wrapped everything outside in white.
The temple courtyard lay submerged beneath it, and slender icicles hung from the ends of the eaves.
The cold was beyond words.
Every breath came out in a pale cloud.
Youngwoo brought over a meditation cushion and settled himself.
At first, sitting inside the unheated hall, cold crept up through his knees and toes.
But once he straightened his back and tucked in his chin, the center of his body found its place again.
This was when he needed to practice.
He was always complaining that he had no time, yet whenever quiet time finally came, he wasted it because he could not draw his attention back from the world outside.
People postponed cultivation because they were busy, then scattered their minds because they had become idle.
Youngwoo sat in meditation and enjoyed a rare stretch of stillness.
Time was another name for space.
Once an empty space opened around him, quiet time seemed to lengthen with it.
No one disturbed him.
No one called for him.
There were no urgent military affairs demanding his attention.
He breathed.
Observed.
Circulated his qi.
Slowly, like a memory that had slept too long, his body began to awaken.
A heat like a ball of fire rose from deep within his lower abdomen.
It gathered in the dantian, spread through his waist, climbed along his spine, then flowed through his shoulders, arms, and fingertips.
At first it was like a tiny ember.
As his breathing deepened, it grew into a round, contained warmth.
Hot, but not violent.
Strong, but not unruly.
The fatigue and pain remaining throughout his body gradually loosened wherever that heat reached.
Youngwoo watched himself in a kind of quiet daze.
He did not force the qi upward.
He did not pressure places that felt blocked.
He simply watched where the breath went, where the qi reached, and where the mind wavered.
So the afternoon passed.
A temple without a single pilgrim.
The thought suddenly occurred to him.
How had such a deserted temple managed to sustain itself all this time?
Most temples did not maintain themselves through ordinary worshippers alone.
They survived through donations from a handful of wealthy households.
They became family temples for those patrons, conducting memorial rites and prayers in exchange for relatively easy support.
There was nothing inherently wrong with that.
Temples had to eat too.
They needed firewood, candles, and incense.
It simply meant that people like Youngwoo did not attract much attention.
Whether an armed warrior came to sit for a while or a wandering traveler stopped to bow, no one bothered overly much unless that person looked capable of making a large donation.
Thanks to that, it was quiet.
And Youngwoo rather liked it.
No one questioned him.
No one tried to keep him.
No one tested the depth of his devotion.
There was only the empty hall, the cold floorboards, and the faint smell of incense before the Buddha.
How pleasant it was.
Outside, the affairs of the world continued to pile up like snow.
Inside this hall, however, a single breath was the whole world.
In the silence, he looked inward.
Every acupoint seemed so clear that he could almost grasp it by hand.
As his qi circulated, he felt a kind of spiritual bliss.
Cultivation had become easier now.
No.
That was not quite the right way to put it.
Rather, the results of practice had become visible.
When he practiced, he could see himself change.
He could almost touch the progress with his hand.
It would be more accurate to say that he could clearly feel himself advancing.
When he steadied his breathing and circulated his qi, he could tell exactly where something opened and where something remained blocked.
In the past, it had felt like groping along walls in darkness.
Now it was more like carrying a dim lantern through the pathways inside his own body.
He should have examined what had changed after opening the middle dantian.
But he had never had the time or freedom.
He had only kept moving forward.
Always forward.
As though something terrible would happen if he ever stopped.
Behind that was an unspoken compulsion disguised as diligence.
There had always been a fear that if he slowed down, stopped for a while, or turned his attention elsewhere, all the cultivation he had built might scatter.
It had felt as though, once lost, it could never be regained.
As though even a single day of rest might collapse the skill accumulated over years.
That too was a kind of obsession.
At the level of a beginner, or during the first steps into cultivation, perhaps such pressure was necessary.
Like whipping a galloping horse, one had to force an immature body and a wandering mind onto a single road.
At first, the road had to be made that way.
Only once a road existed could the body learn to follow it.
But now things were different.
Now it was more important to stop and observe.
His practice had to move from always running forward to illuminating the path already traveled.
He needed to watch where the qi flowed, where the mind shook, and what the body remembered.
Of course, he could not allow trivial concerns to consume his time.
If every small obstacle in the road stole his attention, he would simply be dragged back outside again.
But the reflection he needed now was different from distraction.
He had to examine the path of his cultivation, see where it had twisted, and where it had deepened.
It had never been a straight road.
He had limped along it.
Sometimes he had pushed forward through blood.
Sometimes he had endured through fear.
Sometimes he had gone ahead believing he understood things he did not yet understand.
Now he needed to look back on that crooked, winding road.
In the past, some had called opening the middle dantian the Realm of Transformation.
Others said that opening the upper dantian meant entering the Profound Realm.
But those were less strict laws than names people had attached to depths of cultivation that could not otherwise be seen.
Opening the middle dantian did not automatically make one a master of the Realm of Transformation.
Nor did opening the upper dantian necessarily mean reaching the Profound Realm.
Youngwoo regretted that he had experienced small moments of insight but had never been given time to revisit them.
He had moved from battlefield to battlefield.
There had been no chance to deepen his cultivation.
Only now was he finally able to sink into stillness.
After sitting for two sijin, he rose and loosened his body.
The abbot came in.
"Ahaha. Do you need anything?"
"Ah, yes. It is freezing. Please light the stove."
"Hm. I thought you had reached the state where neither heat nor cold can invade?"
Youngwoo stared at him.
"Where in the world did you hear something like that?"
"Everyone is saying it. They say the hero of this battle is a master of the Realm of Transformation."
Youngwoo shook his head.
"I am practicing this hard because I want to reach the Realm of Transformation. Please just light a fire. Surely you have some firewood?"
The abbot gave a dry cough.
"Who do you think used to make the largest donations to a great temple like this?"
"Hm. Liao nobles?"
"Exactly. And now all of them have been driven away. Who are we supposed to live off now? This is the time to conserve what we have."
"Ahhh. It is cold. Truly."
"If you concentrate properly on your cultivation, you will forget the cold. At the very least, you ought to be capable of that much. Ahaha. Am I wrong?"
Youngwoo had nothing to say to the abbot's interpretation.
Trying to cultivate made every lack painfully obvious.
Before, it had been hunger.
Here, it was cold.
"Until a few days ago it was tolerable, but after the snow came..."
"Oh, stop making excuses. If you have no money, then at least you have time. Why not go gather some firewood? They say helping cultivators brings merit, do they not?"
The abbot made a suggestion.
"Then shall we take a cart tomorrow and go gather firewood?"
"That should have been done in advance."
"You think I was idle? I have been so busy I could barely breathe. Tomorrow morning's communal work will be gathering firewood."
With that, the abbot left.
Before evening, Youngwoo returned to the guest room and ate the dumplings.
The bell rang to announce the evening meal, but he did not go.
Instead, he returned early to the hall and took his seat again.
He remained in meditation until the evening service began.