The next morning.
They were at the edge of a forest, some distance from the Eunwoldan.
There was no path.
A place people rarely went.
A spot where the leaves had hardly been pressed down.
The air was still cold.
Miryeong lightly opened and closed both hands.
Her fingertips still did not feel like her own.
Rangnan stopped a few steps ahead.
Without looking back, he surveyed the surroundings.
“Here will do.”
Instead of answering, Miryeong took another step forward.
The earth beneath her feet sank shallowly.
The wind brushed past.
The wind had always been there,
but today she felt the “wake of the wind” first.
Miryeong drew in a breath.
Then let it out very slowly.
Rangnan waited for that breath.
He did not rush her.
Miryeong lifted her gaze.
Rangnan swept his eyes once over Miryeong’s face,
then nodded almost imperceptibly, as if confirming with his eyes alone.
“Don’t try to do it like yesterday.”
Rangnan spoke in a low voice.
“You’re not drawing out power. Draw out the sensation.”
Miryeong bit her lip lightly.
The scene from yesterday rose to her throat—
and was swallowed down.
Rangnan lowered his palm.
As if pressing down on the earth.
As if calming the air.
And then,
he continued calmly.
“Now, draw out the sensation from that time.”
Miryeong closed her eyes.
She inhaled,
and slowly exhaled.
In time with that breath, the wind gathered around Miryeong.
It was not a harsh wind.
Nor a wind that shook things.
A quiet wind.
Only enough to make the edge of her garment stir slightly,
and her hair sway slowly.
Within that stillness, Miryeong did not try to see only the “wind.”
The places the wind passed through.
The air.
The atmosphere.
Miryeong slowly opened her eyes.
At first, nothing seemed different.
But the moment she drew in one more breath—
she felt it.
Heat and cold.
Not playing separately within the air,
but overlapping.
As if thin layers of cloth had been stacked one atop another.
Miryeong unconsciously curled her fingers slightly.
‘What I’m touching isn’t the wind, but...’
Miryeong’s eyes slowly turned white.
A white that swallowed light, like glass.
And at the edges of her irises,
the boundary began to take on a faint green.
Rangnan did not move a single step.
He only watched the change in silence.
Miryeong tilted her head ever so slightly.
The sensation of air piling up in layers grew clearer.
If she reached out, it would not be pushed away,
but “shaved” down.
Then Rangnan spoke in a low voice.
“Maintain it like that.”
“Do not mix emotion into it.”
Miryeong steadied her breath once more,
then slowly looked toward the giant tree beside her.
An old tree with thick bark
and heavy, drooping branches.
Miryeong did not try to “break” that tree.
She merely tried to confirm it.
Miryeong raised the edge of her hand and drew it sideways, very slightly.
At that moment—
a vermilion light flared for an instant like an ember at the center of Miryeong’s eyes.
Very faintly.
And it was not the wind that split first,
but the air.
A long, shallow line appeared on the surface of the giant tree’s trunk.
It was not a wound as if struck by an axe.
It was a precise line, as if drawn by a blade.
At the edges of the wound, the air rippled strangely for a moment.
It warmed,
then cooled.
Heat and cold briefly mingled before settling.
Miryeong lowered her hand.
Rangnan immediately said,
“Remember this.”
“It is not a power to be used violently.”
“Slowly. Precisely.”
“You shave it away.”
Miryeong’s eyes slowly returned to their original color.
The white, the green, the vermilion.
All vanished without leaving a trace.
Miryeong paused to steady her breath and checked inside her head.
This time, no headache came.
“Good. We stop here.”
At Rangnan’s words,
Miryeong slowly lowered her hand.
Miryeong looked at her own hand.
The sensation from a moment ago still lingered at her fingertips.
Her fingertips still felt dull, as if they belonged to someone else.
Miryeong thought quietly.
I have to rein this in myself.
If emotion comes first,
then it won’t be the power that falls apart first. It will be me.
And if that happens, someday I could destroy not only myself,
but the people around me as well.
With that thought, Miryeong silently followed behind Rangnan.
Neither of them spoke.
The air of the forest became ordinary again.
The wind no longer felt layered,
and the sound of leaves shaking returned to being just sound.
From a certain point on, there was the smell of lamplight,
and from afar, the sound of metal striking metal could be heard intermittently.
Rangnan did not stop.
His steps were headed straight in one direction.
As Miryeong followed behind him,
Rangnan said shortly,
“We’re going straight to the training ground.”
Instead of answering, Miryeong only nodded.
—
The corridor was dark and quiet.
But beneath that quiet lay a sound that never broke.
The sound of iron clashing against iron.
The sound of feet kicking off the floor.
The sound of breath breaking off, then resuming.
The closer that sound drew, the slightly faster Miryeong’s steps became.
Rangnan stopped in front of the door.
Beyond the door, once more,
a short impact rang out.
One step behind him, Miryeong quietly drew in a breath.
Now, it was no longer Miryeong’s turn.
It was time for Bido’s to begin.
—
Bido continued the same training every day.
She moved her sword with Mireukwin attached to it.
Maintaining it, enduring it,
and, at the very end, making it “touch” once.
It was not something that happened simply because one could do it.
The same motion had to lead to the same result.
On the first day, when one side came alive, the other died.
If she attached Mireukwin, the sword line grew dull,
and if she revived the sword line, the sensation of blocking scattered.
Just before the sword made contact,
Bido’s breathing wavered first.
That wavering made the tip of the sword shift ever so slightly off course.
Rangnan did not speak at length.
“Do not be greedy for duration.”
“Only the moment it touches.”
Bido nodded and repeated the same motion again.
Identically.
But doing it identically was the hardest thing of all.
Bido repeated the same motion ten times, twenty times.
Even when the blisters on her palms burst, she did not wrap them in bandages.
If she wrapped them, the sensation would change.
Each time, just before the tip of the sword touched, her shoulder stiffened first,
and that stiffness disrupted the Mireukwin.
She began again from practicing how to exhale “together.”
Counting the length of each inhale inwardly,
she endured, trying to create the same rhythm even once.
Sweat fell from her brows, dotting the sand like points.
On the second day, Kallen became her opponent.
As an opponent she had pierced through once before,
Kallen was even colder.
When Bido came in, Kallen would receive her only once,
then immediately change the distance.
Once, it touched.
The instant the tip of the blade grazed him, Kallen’s breath lagged by one beat.
The second time, it missed.
A subtle shift in the direction of her toes let the sword line slip away.
Kallen said shortly,
“Once, you managed it.”
“It’s what comes after that.”
Rangnan cut it off there as well.
“Good. Next.”
From the third day on, Yeonhwa and Taejin alternated standing against her.
The two of them had more combat experience than Kallen,
and that experience revealed itself more in “rhythm” than in “strength.”
Yeonhwa did not give Bido even a moment to see an opening.
If it seemed an opening might appear, she folded it away herself and withdrew.
Once, she deliberately came in close and made Bido believe she “could reach,”
then immediately erased the distance.
Bido thrust out the tip of her sword with Mireukwin attached,
but only cut through empty air.
Yeonhwa’s voice flowed low.
“That opening you just saw.”
“I was the one who showed it to you.”
Bido did not answer.
She had no breath to answer with.
Instead of answering,
Bido raised her sword again.
Taejin, on the other hand, pressed without breaking off.
If Bido retreated once,
Taejin was already in front of her.
When the pressure dragged on, Bido’s concentration split first.
Even before her sword line wavered, her breath broke.
Taejin shoved Bido back once and said,
“Fights are long.”
“You create the decisive blow.”
“But right now, you’re the one getting tired first.”
Bido gritted her teeth and raised her sword again.
The sword cord was soaked with sweat, and her palm was slippery.
Even so, she did not let go.
Several more days passed.
For a while, the training ground smelled the same.
Sweat, metal,
and the faint lingering scent of “ordered air.”
Bido gradually learned how to change “maintenance.”
Not holding on for a long time,
but attaching it only at the necessary instant, then detaching it cleanly.
Instead of spreading Mireukwin thinly,
she learned to hook it onto a single point the moment the sword line touched.
Seeing that, Rangnan for the first time did not speak at length, but threw out only one line.
“Yes.”
“Right now, you are not ‘enduring.’ You are ‘stamping it in.’”
In her spar with Yeonhwa, for the first time, Bido entered not according to the rhythm Yeonhwa created,
but with her own rhythm.
She read in advance where Yeonhwa would withdraw and set the tip of her sword “ahead” in that direction.
It touched.
To be exact, it grazed.
At that graze, Yeonhwa’s toes lagged by one beat.
Yeonhwa stopped in place and lifted the corner of her mouth ever so slightly.
“Yes.”
In her spar with Taejin, even after the first “decisive blow,” her breath did not completely collapse.
She could not create a second,
but the posture to create a second remained.
Taejin stepped back once and said shortly,
“Not bad.”
That evening,
Rangnan stood before Bido as she cleaned up the training ground.
Bido’s shoulders drooped heavily,
and her breath was still rough, but her eyes did not waver.
Rangnan said,
“This much will do.”
Bido nodded, but her body did not feel light.
She had thought reaching this point would be the hardest part.
But then Rangnan brought out what came next.
“From now on.”
Rangnan’s gaze lowered to Bido’s sword.
“This is the heart of the sword.”
Bido swallowed her breath.
Rangnan continued,
“Not blocking, but binding.”
Bido knew those words in her head.
But her body could not accept them.
Because the word “binding” seemed far too easy.
And the fact that it seemed easy
meant she did not yet truly understand it.