Episode 8. Whose Sword Is Your Black Sword?
by God of Music Β· 2026-08-31
Hyunhwa Jin-in's teachings were, as expected, of poor quality.
"A sword is a path before it is a tool."
The first day began plausibly enough.
"Now, look at this path."
A sword of light was drawn in the air. Moo-hyun's admiration was brief; the next moment, the sword split into ten, a hundred, a thousand strands, covering the sky.
"Avoid them all and find the path."
"...Pardon?"
"Oh, you can block them, of course."
"Is that all?"
"If you don't die, you pass."
From that day on, Moo-hyun developed a condition where his spine would chill every time Hyunhwa Jin-in smiled and said, "As long as you don't die."
Still, he learned. He learned not to die, and as he didn't die, things began to become clear. Even amidst a thousand strands of sword rain, there was a path. Which sword was real and which was a shadow, where was the cliff and where was the gate. Teacher Wi-gi's Go became his eyes there, Elder Paecheon's feet trod the path, and Old Mother Okheo's breathing opened up space within it.
Hyunhwa Jin-in was a master who offered no praise. However, very occasionally, on days when Moo-hyun's sword found its true trajectory, the silence would lengthen. Moo-hyun decided to interpret that silence as praise.
As he learned, he realized something. The swords of the disciples he had observed over his shoulder at Mount Hwa were distant descendants of this sword. Even if it was the same plum blossom, Mount Hwa's plum blossoms bloomed with a few branches broken. He could see where they were broken. One day, he uttered those words aloud and was hit on the back of the head by Hyunhwa Jin-in for the first time, not with a wooden sword, but with a palm.
"This sword has been passed down by human hands for hundreds of years. It's not broken, but worn, and as much as it's worn, it has saved lives. Do not speak of it carelessly."
Though the old man said that, the black sword he drew in the air that night did not disappear as quickly as usual.
Once, while teaching a sword technique, Hyunhwa Jin-in's hand stopped.
"..."
"Jin-in-nim?"
"You're holding it wrong."
He corrected his grip. Still, the old man did not take his eyes off Mu-hyeon's hand for a while. Then, very softly, he spoke as if to himself.
"A long time ago, there was a child who always held it exactly like that."
"...Which disciple are you referring to?"
"Not a disciple."
That was the end of it. The old man drew the sword again, and that day's lesson ended half a shijin earlier than usual. Mu-hyeon did not ask further. He only recalled something he had heard in the pavilion a long time ago. Two hundred years ago, someone said something exactly like that. He didn't have the courage to ask if 'that child' from back then and 'that child' from just now were the same.
And so, more time passed.
He learned the flow of divine energy from Okheo Nomo, the essence of the fist from Paecheon Noin, the meaning of the sword from Hyunhwa Jin-in, and the eye to read the board from Wi-gi Seonsaeng. Now, the four immortals unanimously agreed that there was nothing more to teach him.
By human standards, his level was already beyond comprehension. However, Mu-hyeon had no standard to measure it by. Since only immortals were by his side, his strength was always at their feet. Mu-hyeon genuinely believed that he still had a long way to go.
However, his progress stopped there.
His body grew stronger. His energy deepened, his sword became faster, and his fist became heavier. But all of it couldn't harmonize into one. When he wielded his sword, the momentum of his fist scattered, and when he used his fist, the flow of his energy became murky. If he tried to force them together, his whole body ached as if it were twisting.
That day, too, Mu-hyeon sat alone beneath the black cliff at the edge of the immortal realm.
He inhaled, exhaled, and circulated his energy. He tried to put his sword, fist, and energy into one flow. And as always.
Thump.
A bursting pain spread from inside his chest, and dark red blood flowed between his fingers.
It was another failure.
It was when he gritted his teeth.
Suddenly, the fog stopped.
Even the flowing immortal energy seemed to freeze, becoming still, and a deep shadow fell over the black cliff.
He raised his head. And his breath caught.
An old monk stood on the cliff.
The tattered robes hung heavily despite there being no wind, and his face was rough and menacing, as if he had stepped out of an ancient mural. His deeply sunken eyes gleamed strangely. It was Mu-hyeon, who had spent decades among the immortals. Yet, his instincts knew first.
That one is different even from the immortals.
The old monk opened his mouth.
"You are that fellow. The one who can neither live nor die, clinging to the immortal realm."
It was a voice like thunder.
"Clumsy."
It struck like lightning. The old monk took a step off the cliff. It was empty air. But he didn't fall. With each step he took, as if treading on invisible stairs, Mu-hyeon's chest felt crushed.
The old monk came right before his eyes.
"You only contained it, but couldn't digest it."
His lips moved, but no answer came out.
"You only learned, but couldn't discard it."
The old monk's eyes flashed.
"You've picked up a lot, but not a single one of them is yours yet."
Those words cut deeper than a sword. He wanted to refute. He had trained to death. He had learned by breaking himself. But before him, all his thoughts seemed pathetic.
The old monk asked.
"Whose sword is your sword?"
He couldn't answer.
"Whose fist is your fist?"
Silence.
"Whose path is your path?"
His lips trembled.
"They are all someone else's."
The old monk raised his hand. Mu-hyeon expected a palm strike. But the hand approached quietly, very slowly, and with a single finger, touched Mu-hyeon's glabella.
Thud.
The world shattered.
In his mind, swords broke, fists crumbled, meridians snapped, and go boards overturned. The sword light of Hyun-hwa Jin-in, the might of Pae-cheon No-in, the immortal energy of Ok-heo No-mo, the board of Wi-gi Seon-saeng. Everything he had accumulated over decades collapsed all at once.
"Aaaargh!"
His body was fine, but his soul felt torn. Everything he had held onto slipped through his fingers.
Amidst the sound of collapse, only the old monk's voice was clear.
"Break."
It was a single word. That one word contained both thunder and fire.
"Break the forms of others, break the will of others, break the path of others."
"Then... I... !"
"Only then will your own stand."
An intangible shock surged once more.
His dantian emptied. No, it wasn't emptying. The turbid things that were mixed within were collapsing. Just as a wide foundation is revealed after kicking down a haphazardly stacked stone tower.
Amidst the collapse, Mu-hyeon finally held onto one thread.
It was neither sword, nor fist, nor energy, nor principle.
The one heart that sought to move them all. The will to live. The will that never broke. An empty foundation that could contain anything because it had nothing.
That was the moment.
The things that had shattered and scattered began to move again. This time, they didn't intertwine forcibly. Swords flowed as swords, fists resonated as fists, and energy circulated as energy, quietly interlocking around an invisible axis.
The old monk faintly curved his lips for the first time.
"Now, you're starting to look a bit like a human."
As he finished speaking, the old monk's form began to blur like mist. Mu-hyeon urgently reached out his hand.
"Great Master! What in the world..."
Instead of disappearing, the old monk raised a hand and drew something in the air. A stream of light, neither gold nor white, but murky yet clear, drew a pattern that looked like characters or a diagram modeled after human bones and sinews. It was a scripture.
"Yeokgeun."
The moment those two words fell, the scripture of light pierced Mu-hyeon's chest.
His bones cried out, muscles twisted, and every single meridian burned. It felt as if his old body was being completely peeled away, and a new body was being molded beneath it.
"How can you hold a new vessel without changing the rotten frame?"
A series of chilling cracking sounds erupted throughout his body. It hurt. It was more agonizing than any training he had ever endured. But he knew. This was not pain; it was rebirth.
"I am not giving you my martial art."
The old monk said from within his almost vanished form.
"I am merely opening a door so that your body can receive the heavens on its own."
When Mu-hyeon raised his head, spitting blood, only a trace of the old monk remained.
"Great Master! At least your name!"
From beyond the empty air, the last voice echoed.
"Do not be bound by names."
And a moment later, low and heavy, once more.
"If you survive, you will know for yourself."
Silence descended.
Mu-hyeon knelt, gasping for breath. His entire body was drenched in blood and sweat, but his insides were completely different from before. His energy flowed and condensed on its own, without being forcibly gathered. It hadn't grown larger; it had deepened.
The immortals who had been watching from afar approached one by one. Ok-heo No-mo gasped softly.
"Surely..."
Pae-cheon No-in's eyes widened.
"That face..."
Wi-gi Seon-saeng mumbled, toying with an overturned go stone.
"Bodhidharma..."
No one could say more.
Mu-hyeon slowly closed his eyes. Then he saw. He saw the path within his body, and beyond that, the entire space of this immortal realm floating and swaying on a massive pattern. And on that pattern, a faint misalignment.
It was a rift.
"The way back... is not entirely gone."
At Mu-hyeon's words, the surroundings fell silent.
Pae-cheon No-in crossed his arms.
"Just because you see a path doesn't mean you can cross it."
"I know."
Hyun-hwa Jin-in's gaze settled, coolly.
"It's not just that there's no guarantee. Between the mortal realm and the immortal realm, there is no sequence of time as humans reckon it. Even if you open the rift and cross, you cannot know when you will land."
Wi-gi Seon-saeng rolled a go stone between his fingers.
"It could be the very next moment after you left."
Pae-cheon No-in blurted out.
"Conversely, it could be a hundred years later, a thousand years later."
Ok-heo No-mo added softly.
"It could even be a world where humanity has vanished entirely."
Silence fell.
Mu-hyeon closed his eyes. He imagined himself falling alone into a world where no familiar faces remained. A world where Yu Cheong-ak, Wang Cheol-san, Jin Gon's mother and siblings were already dust. He was scared. Even after decades of training, this fear was of a kind he had never experienced before.
Then Ok-heo No-mo spoke.
"But child. When you will land is not for you to decide, nor for us."
"..."
"Heaven decides. You are the one whose destiny has not been severed and is caught in this rift. If there is still a place for Heaven to use you, you will be placed where you belong."
He had heard those words once before. On the day he first drifted here, beyond his half-conscious state. He didn't understand their meaning then. Now he did. The fear didn't disappear. He merely became able to walk while holding that fear.
Mount Hwa-san came to mind. The peaks under the red sunset, the boring afternoon in front of the guest hall, the smell of people in the marketplace. And the back of Jin Gon, descending into the darkness of the village below Mount Hwa-san, where a few lanterns flickered.
There was a place he had to go, and a promise he had to keep.
Mu-hyeon clasped his hands together.
"I know the danger. Still, I will return."
Pae-cheon No-in chuckled.
"Now you're more like a human."
Ok-heo No-mo clicked her tongue but didn't stop him.
"Foolish fellow. It's those who don't know their place who go far."
Hyun-hwa Jin-in said softly.
"No. That child doesn't not know his place. He knows, and yet he intends to go."
Wi-gi Seon-saeng smiled faintly.
"That's even scarier."
There was no preparation for departure. He came empty-handed, so he would leave empty-handed. But as Ok-heo No-mo checked his appearance one last time, she suddenly stared intently at Mu-hyeon's face.
"...But this fellow, why is his face like this?"
"Pardon? Is something wrong?"
"You've gotten younger."
"...Pardon?"
"You look like you're barely twenty. And a face I don't recognize."
Mu-hyeon, bewildered, ran to the spring and looked into the water. An unfamiliar man looked back at him. The shape of his eyes and nose bridge was clearly his, but the tan of a decade as a gatekeeper was gone, the rough texture of calloused skin was peeled away, and the drooping corners of his eyes were calmly straightened. His skin was as white and taut as a freshly peeled pear. In terms of age, he was a young man just over twenty. But it was a completely different face from the twenty-three-year-old gatekeeper.
And that other person was ridiculously handsome.
His features were perfectly placed as if measured with a ruler, and the lines of his forehead and chin flowed as if drawn with a brush. His gentle impression remained, but on top of that gentleness, there was an icy nobility. It was the kind of face that even Mu-hyeon, who had lived his whole life without looking in a mirror, could recognize at a glance. A face that nine out of ten people would turn to look at in the marketplace.
"When the bones find their place, the face also finds its way."
Pae-cheon No-in added nonchalantly.
"That was his original appearance. It was just covered by a decade of tan and worries."
"I, I don't need a face like this."
"Don't say you don't need it. The day will come when your face will be worth something."
"W-what happened to me?!"
Pae-cheon No-in replied calmly.
"Since Yeokgeun reset your bones and gave you new skin, your body has been remade in its best form. The tan, calluses, and years have all been stripped away."
"My age is the same, but my face is completely different!"
"Inside, you're almost fifty. It's going to be hard to count."
Wi-gi Seon-saeng covered his mouth with a fan and added a remark.
"You'll have some trouble when you go back. You'll have to pretend to be a thirty-year-old adult with that face."
Ok-heo No-mo gently tapped Mu-hyeon's shin with her staff.
"Don't look at it only negatively. Child, even those who know you won't recognize you now. On the path back as one who died, that might be better."
Mu-hyeon stared at the unfamiliar man in the water for a long time, but the man didn't back down.
The farewell was not long.
"I will not forget the kindness you have shown me."
As Mu-hyeon bowed deeply, Ok-heo No-mo waved her hand.
"Quiet. Repay it when you're alive. And if you truly return, do check on our connections remaining in the world."
Pae-cheon No-in laughed and responded.
"Yes. If my fist lineage still remains, don't disgrace it. And next time you come back, let's clash fists."
"The sword lineage as well."
Hyun-hwa Jin-in said only that one line. But the eyes with which he looked at Mu-hyeon had settled with a different warmth than when he first arrived.
Wi-gi Seon-saeng left a final remark.
"First, confirm if the place you are returning to is truly the world you knew."
Those words strangely lingered in his heart, but Mu-hyeon didn't ask further.
He stood at the edge of the immortal realm's cliff. It was the same empty air as when he first arrived, but now he could see it. The point where the fabric of space was thinnest. He raised his hand and precisely touched one of those threads.
Ssssss.
The air cracked as if a fine line had appeared. From beyond the thin, faint rift, an indescribable energy seeped out. And beyond that, countless scenes flashed by.
A burning fortress. A collapsed mountain gate. A tombstone buried in weeds. A land covered in white snow. An old sword stuck in front of someone's grave.
He couldn't know which of those worlds he would reach.
From behind, Ok-heo No-mo's voice was heard.
"I'll ask you one last time. Will you still go?"
Mu-hyeon didn't look back.
"Yes."
Pae-cheon No-in laughed loudly.
"Good. That's a warrior's answer!"
He heard the sound of Wi-gi Seon-saeng silently placing a stone on the go board.
Click.
"I will return alive."
He didn't even know to whom he was speaking. To the immortals, to the people of Mount Hwa-san, or to that house in the village below Mount Hwa-san.
Mu-hyeon threw himself into the rift.
The world turned upside down. Up and down vanished, front and back collapsed. Sound, light, and memories pierced his body all at once. Even in the agonizing pain of being torn to shreds, he held onto only one thing.
I will return.
Absolutely.