Episode 7. We have plenty of time.

by God of Music · 2026-08-31

The giant old man took Mu-hyeon away.

To be precise, he literally carried him.

He tucked him under his arm like a piece of luggage, leaped over several clouds, and then set him down on top of an unknown cliff. Clouds lay beneath his feet, and below that was a precipice whose bottom was invisible.

"I am Old Man Paecheon. At one time, every fist in the Northern Lands was under me."

The old man finished his introduction with that single line and immediately got to the point.

"Your foundation is shattered, so we'll rebuild it from the ground up. Stand."

"Where do you mean?"

"There."

It was the edge of the cliff. A spot where half of his heel hung in the air.

From that day on, Mu-hyeon practiced stake-standing in that spot all day long. If his legs trembled, Old Man Paecheon would fly in from somewhere and smack him on the head.

"You're wavering! Plant your roots in the ground!"

"There's no ground here!"

"So you're saying you can't do it?"

"...No, sir. I will plant them. Even in the air."

"Good. That answer is half the battle."

Old Man Paecheon's training was always like that. He made him run on clouds, punch under a waterfall that flowed upwards, and repeat the same fist form thousands of times under a sky where stars lay low.

Once, he molded a beast out of clouds. It was an unnamable creature, as big as a house with six legs.

"Wrestle it."

"That thing, sir?"

"Yes. If you knock it down, you can sleep for today."

It was his first mistake to think that since it was made of clouds, it would be soft. The moment he first collided with the beast's shoulder, Mu-hyeon thought he had crashed into a rocky mountain. If he grabbed it, it slipped away like mist, and if he let go, it engulfed him like a landslide. That day, Mu-hyeon died and came back to life about three times, and when he finally tripped the beast by one of its hind legs, he couldn't speak and asked with gestures if he was done.

"Done? Tomorrow, it'll be two."

Patcheon-noin said that and indeed created two more the next day.

"Don't push with force. That's not something you can defeat with your strength. Push where it collapses, and kick where it tries to stand up. Borrow the opponent's strength. That is the essence of the fist."

He learned by being hit and mastered by rolling. From a certain day, he began to see the collapsing grain in the beast's body, and once he saw that, he also saw the grain in human bodies. Before Patcheon-noin threw a punch, his shoulder spoke first, and then his foot spoke.

"This is Patcheon-gwon. Patcheon, meaning to suppress the heavens. I've already lived up to the name, so you just need to imitate it."

Just imitating it made his bones ring three times and his flesh burst ten times.

When night came, what Mu-hyeon called night, he was then seated before the man in the do-po.

Teacher Wi-gi. He was said to be a master of Go, even among immortals.

"Why must I learn Go?"

When he first asked, Teacher Wi-gi looked at Mu-hyeon with a look of pity.

"The clearest depiction of the flow of the universe's principles is the water on the board. If you only learn how to fight and not how to read the flow, someday you will be consumed by yourself."

Those words were surprisingly true.

As he began to vaguely see which stones would die and which would live, and where to abandon to save the whole, his daytime training changed. He could see the path of Elder Paecheon's punches. Even if he couldn't dodge them all, he knew which way to get hit to make it hurt less.

"You've only gotten better at finding tricks."

Elder Paecheon clicked his tongue, but Mu-hyeon didn't miss the smile in his eyes.

He learned Go by losing.

He lost the first hundred games without even knowing how. He lost the next hundred games knowing where he lost. After that, he stopped counting, but one day he suddenly saw Teacher Wi-gi's hand pause for half a beat over the board.

Mu-hyeon won that game.

"...One more game."

Teacher Wi-gi said only that and swept up the stones. Mu-hyeon lost the next game badly. He lost the game after that too. But from that day on, Teacher Wi-gi uncrossed his arms when playing with Mu-hyeon.

Once, in a game that was already lost, Teacher Wi-gi subtly moved a stone.

"Did you just take back a move?"

"I merely adjusted where I placed it."

"Do immortals also take back moves?"

"It is precisely because I am an immortal that I do. Humans live their entire lives regretting a bad move, but I play the next game in the time they spend regretting."

His words sounded plausible, but that day Teacher Wi-gi was hit with a staff by Old Mother Okheo. The reason was that there was nothing he wouldn't do in front of a child.

His spiritual energy was the slowest to improve among them.

"The internal energy you picked up at Mount Hwasan is like treasure gathered and stored in a jar. Spiritual energy is different. It's like dipping your hand into flowing water. If you try to grasp it, it slips away, but if you let go, it flows in."

He understood it with his head, but his body wouldn't obey. When energy gathered, he would instinctively clench his fist, and when he clenched, the flow would stop. His old mother's staff fell on his crown countless times.

"It's because he's lived his whole life without anything. He doesn't know how to let go of what he gets his hands on."

"...I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's a sad thing."

His old mother said that, and didn't pick up her staff that day.

It was much later that he stopped clenching his fist. There was no particular trigger. After countless times of letting go and countless times of re-immersing himself, one day he simply let the water flow between his fingers. Then, his lower dantian stopped being a jar and became a rapid. The energy didn't stagnate but circulated, and the more it circulated, the clearer it became.

And so, Mu-hyeon's days became strangely busy.

In the morning, he learned Kwoncho while being beaten by the old man Paecheon, and in the afternoon, he was held by the old woman Okheo and learned how to regulate his meridians and absorb immortal energy. At night, he sat before Master Wi-gi, fighting off sleepiness, and gazed at the Go board.

Only the seat of the old man in white was empty.

Hyeonhwa Jin-in. He heard that name from the old woman Okheo. When he heard that the sword of Hwasan originally branched off from his enlightenment, Mu-hyeon couldn't close his mouth. The sword of the sect he had protected for nearly ten years originated from that cold old man in front of him.

However, Hyeonhwa Jin-in did not teach Mu-hyeon. He didn't even give him a glance.

Mu-hyeon didn't ask either. He merely listened to the sound of the sword of light, which echoed from afar, every night.

On the days when the immortals ascended to the celestial realm, the only thing Mu-hyeon, left alone in the immortal realm, had to do was one thing.

Training.

More training.

At first, that silence was terrifying. The endless fog and clouds, the floating pavilion, and the profound stillness where only I remained, were enough to drive a person mad.

But as time passed, something strange happened.

The solitude became comfortable.

A sip of spring water from the immortal realm would keep him from hunger for days, and as he sat on the clouds, regulating his breath, he could feel the texture of breathing he would never have known in the human world. When the stars descended lowest, he practiced grasping the energy of the void with his bare hands, and where waterfalls surged upwards, he tried to split the water streams with just the intention of his fingertips.

There were days when it worked, and more days when it didn't. Even on the days it didn't, he didn't get angry.

The day the water stream first split was, coincidentally, a day when no one else was around. The upward-surging waterfall parted into two streams at the will of his fingertips, then rejoined the moment Mu-hyeon was surprised. He was so happy that he jumped up and down several times on the spot, but when he told the returning Elder Paecheon about it, the elder replied indifferently.

"So, when did you split it the second time?"

"...Not yet."

"Once is a coincidence, twice is skill. Go and split it."

It took a long time again for the second time. However, the third time was in seven days, and the fourth time was on that very day. The time it took for coincidence to become skill kept decreasing compared to the first time.

The loneliness had not completely disappeared. When the time spent alone grew long, he occasionally yearned intensely for the evenings of Hwasan. The tedious afternoons in front of the guest hall, the clamor of the marketplace, the lantern at the crossroads. His grandmother's dry hand stroking his back by the brazier. And Jin-gon.

At such times, he would practice thrusting. He would continue until the longing subsided, and once it did, he would do a little more. At some point, the longing was no longer hindering his training but rather pushing it forward. Having a place to return to meant having a place where strength could be applied.

"If you don't know, just keep doing it until you understand."

His monologues increased.

"Because there's plenty of time."

He found himself uttering the very words that Old Man Paecheon had spoken when he first arrived here.

When the immortals returned and saw him like that, they would hold their bellies and laugh.

"When we first brought him, he was half-dead chick, but now he's quite human-like."

"No. Not yet. That fellow has developed an unnecessary flair in his punches these days."

"Still, he's better than before. At least he doesn't doze off while playing Go."

"Look at him. He's even talking back."

It was true. At some point, Mu-hyeon had started talking back to the immortals' taunts. When he first arrived, they were people he couldn't even make eye contact with. Now, if Old Man Paecheon boasted, he would retort, "You said it was thirty sheets last time. Today it's fifty," and if Master Wi-gi wanted to take back a game he had almost won, he would ask, "Do immortals also take back moves?"

"The rascal, he's smiling now."

One day, Old Mother Okheo suddenly said.

"Excuse me?"

"When you first came, you would smile cautiously, even when you laughed. Now you just laugh."

Mu-hyeon didn't know how to respond, so he just smiled. As the old mother said, he just smiled naturally.

Old Man Paecheon chimed in from the side.

"Do you think only his laughter has grown? That fellow, these days he hums a tune while dodging my punches."

"It wasn't humming. It was the sound of catching my breath."

"Look. Just look at him talking back. At first, he could only say 'Yes, yes,' two words."

"Yes, yes."

"That, that fellow."

Master Wi-gi covered his mouth with a fan, and Old Mother Ok-heo laughed aloud. Laughter filling the misty pavilion had, at some point, become not uncommon.

Master Wi-gi had once said something like this while playing Go.

"Your Go has changed."

"In what way?"

"At first, you played only to not die. Now, you play to save. Not just your own stones, but the entire board."

Unsure if it was a compliment or not, he remained silent, and Master Wi-gi added, placing a stone,

"Both are the moves of a coward. However, the former is a small coward, and the latter is a big coward. A big coward is useful."

He couldn't see his own face without a mirror, but Mu-hyeon knew. His back had straightened. His voice had grown louder. His words no longer trailed off. He was still afraid. Old Man Pae-cheon's punches were still terrifying, and Old Mother Ok-heo's staff was also frightening. However, his body now understood that being afraid and cowering were different things.

He couldn't tell how much time had passed.

It was a place without day or night. But his body told him. The palms of his hands, which had stopped blistering and bursting, his feet, which could step on any Kwoncho even with his eyes closed, the depth of the energy that circulated through his lower dantian with a single breath. If counted by human reckoning, it would be decades. That much time had passed.

Yet, Mu-hyeon did not age. He did not tire. The empty vessel continued to expand, and everything, from swordsmanship and martial arts to qi and the principles of Go, flowed in as it was poured.

One day, Jade Hollow Old Mother looked at him and said,

"Now I can see a little."

The Heaven-Shattering Old Man snorted.

"Not even close. That much doesn't even reach my heel when I was young."

"Boasting. When you were young, you hadn't even filled half of what that child has."

The voice came from an unexpected place.

It was the white-robed old man. Leaning against the pavilion railing, he looked down at Mu-hyeon with eyes that seemed to have been watching for an unknown duration.

Mu-hyeon instinctively bowed. Hyunhwa Jin-in turned without returning the greeting. However, before he disappeared into the mist, a remark he muttered to himself reached Mu-hyeon's ears.

"…Still, that much should not disgrace the name of Mount Hwa."

That night, Mu-hyeon went to the edge of the clouds as usual.

He did the very first thing, not martial arts, not breathing, not Go. Half a step with the left foot. Relax the shoulders. Straighten the waist. And forward.

It was a thrust.

Even after decades of learning, the end of each day was always this one move. Now, this single motion carried immortal energy and the weight of martial arts, but the motion itself was exactly as he had learned it in the clearing that day. While doing this, Jin-gon was by his side. Joo Myeong-soo's staff, Wang Cheol-san's scolding, and the evening breeze of Mount Hwa.

It was after he had completed the countless thrusts, too many to count.

"Foolish fellow."

He turned to see Hyunhwa Jin-in standing there.

"After decades of learning from four immortals, have you still not abandoned that humble single move?"

Mu-hyeon wiped the sweat from his forehead, caught his breath, and replied.

"This one move saved my life."

"..."

"I learned many flashy techniques. But since this was the first thing I learned, I don't know how to discard it."

Hyeon-hwa Jin-in remained silent for a long time.

The fog passed between the two of them several times. Eventually, the old man shook his sleeve and turned away. Then, with his back to Mu-hyeon, he said.

"Come here at this time starting tomorrow."

"...Yes?"

"Draw your sword."

Mu-hyeon's eyes widened.

"Don't make me say it twice."

The white-clothed back disappeared into the fog. Mu-hyeon stood there for a long time. In the sky, where there was no day or night, a single star had descended unusually low.