365The wind lay still.
Reconnaissance
The wind lay still.
Smoke from the campfire rose straight into the sky,
and the air around it held a deep, unbroken silence.
At the center of that silence stood those who had erased their own presence,
each binding their breath tight, unmoving.
Park Seong-jin stood several paces from the fire.
His body did not stir.
Yet the air around him bent—almost imperceptibly.
It felt as though the world was avoiding him.
No—
as if it were revolving around him.
The wind curved away from his position,
and even the heat of the fire flowed past his side without touching him,
as though an unseen curtain had been drawn.
"They're here."
He spoke so softly that the words barely existed—
and at that instant, the darkness rippled for the first time.
The first presence to reach him was light and long,
a blade-thin pressure that sliced at breath itself
without ever drawing steel.
It was the chill of a sword's tip, felt before the blade appeared.
Then came a second force—
heavy, collapsing inward,
like a great hammer pressing down from above.
A pressure built on raw strength.
Last of all, Seong-jin caught a tremor far to the rear.
The third master.
His presence was not concealed—it was erased.
Breath, heartbeat, even the residue of intent had been neatly excised.
What remained was a stillness so complete it felt placed there.
Seong-jin counted without thinking.
"Three."
A single strand of wind crossed the dark.
Seong-jin did not draw his sword.
Instead, he raised his index and middle fingers together,
forming a sword-seal in the air before his eyes.
It was a gesture of stillness—
a command offered to space itself.
In the next heartbeat,
a shadow burst from behind.
A silent palm strike fell from above.
The air surged like a sudden flood.
Seong-jin twisted his waist—only slightly.
The palm wind grazed past him.
The campfire flattened for an instant,
and a single strand of his hair was severed midair and drifted down.
Distance.
Precision.
Control.
To generate such force with bare hands—
a true master.
"Hoh…"
As Seong-jin redirected the strike with his finger-sword,
a man in the darkness murmured with interest.
Not surprise.
Amusement.
The second master moved.
The ground trembled—just barely.
It was not a step, but something closer to a drop from above,
a heavy descent.
"A tester of strength."
Seong-jin rested a hand lightly on his sword hilt.
He did not draw—
yet the scattered residual energies around him recoiled as one.
The attacker surged forward,
releasing a violent tensile force.
Sand exploded upward, rushing toward Seong-jin in a rolling wave.
It was not a sandstorm.
It was pressure—
inner force dragging the sand along with it.
Seong-jin did not move.
He inhaled—deeply.
In that instant, his breath split the surge.
A thin line appeared at his feet.
Boom.
The sand wave struck that line and divided cleanly in two,
flowing past him on either side
like a river breaking around a stone.
His robes remained perfectly aligned,
their folds untouched.
Only then did the second master breathe in.
"…Flow reversal. I've never seen such control.
How did you do that?"
The third master moved.
Seong-jin felt it at the deepest edge of his awareness—
his heartbeat delayed by half a beat.
The body recorded danger before the mind did.
"An invisible blade…"
A thread of air passed beside Seong-jin's right hand.
It was not steel—
it felt like a line,
a razor-thin seam cutting through space itself.
For a moment, the path it traced looked empty.
Seong-jin brought two fingers together again
and twisted the invisible line.
Thup.
A short, dull sound—
as if the air itself had been bent.
In the darkness, the third master's body shuddered—
so slightly that only another master would have noticed.
"You bent the void…
No—space itself?"
The question was spoken like a note taken by an observer.
Pure curiosity, nothing more.
All three masters halted at once.
Only the campfire flickered,
as if listening in their place.
Slowly—very slowly—
they retreated.
"This one cannot be killed by our hands."
There was no frustration in the words,
only a conclusion drawn for the night.
A line had been set.
Some things did not require tasting to understand.
The ancients knew a man's level
from the vibration of his footsteps alone.
It was not kindness that kept great masters from clashing—
it was recognition.
One did not need to fight to know who stood above.
The three masters brought by Zhu Yuanzhang
vanished back into the dark.
They had measured, weighed, and withdrawn,
lines drawn quietly in their hearts.
Seong-jin watched them go
and felt a brief chill.
Had they charged,
the night would have opened into countless variables.
He would not have fallen—
but some of the martial squad might have been wounded.
When the hostile pressure finally dissolved,
Song Yi-sul stepped out from behind a tree.
"Seong-jin. You alright?"
Seong-jin exhaled once and answered calmly.
"I'm fine."
He looked back at the campfire.
"They came to find out how much I was worth—
and then they left."
Song Yi-sul's expression hardened.
To measure and withdraw
meant only one thing.
Next time,
they would return with tools chosen precisely for him.