Chapter 341. Seated at Home, Circulating the Small Heavenly Cycle
To settle his mind, Youngwoo laid a thick cushion on the wooden floor and sat down.
He had washed himself and changed his clothes, yet the smell of blood still seemed to linger on his fingertips.
He drew in a long breath and slowly let it out.
Just then, one of the servants hurried over.
"Is there anything you need?"
Youngwoo opened his eyes.
"If I need something, I'll call. Otherwise, please just leave me alone."
He had nearly asked that no unnecessary people be allowed in, but the words seemed too stiff, so he put it more gently.
The servant seemed to understand immediately and bowed.
"Understood."
Youngwoo suddenly asked,
"Your name?"
"Deoksu."
He seemed to have been one of those who had traveled with the household, though Youngwoo did not remember him clearly.
Too many faces had passed before him since entering Liaoyang.
Youngwoo studied him for a moment, then nodded.
"Thank you for today. I appreciate it."
"Understood."
Deoksu, who had been attending to Youngwoo from nearby, gave him a full bow.
He did not hurry away. He paused for a breath and lowered himself carefully.
It was a slow and respectful bow.
There was something in that cautious movement that seemed to convey as much sincerity as he knew how to give.
A thin breeze passed over the clean, polished wooden floor.
Youngwoo sat cross-legged on a thick cushion like one found in a temple.
He straightened his back and tucked in his chin.
His hands rested together before his lower abdomen.
It was the posture he always used.
He began the Small Heavenly Cycle again, as though for the first time, despite having repeated it countless times before.
He closed his eyes, lightly touched the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth, and drew a fine breath in through his nose.
He did not pull the air in sharply.
He simply allowed the air of the courtyard to seep naturally into his body.
But today his body was different.
The muscles in his shoulders felt as heavy as ropes soaked in blood, while his elbows and wrists still held the memory of gripping a sword throughout the night.
His thighs remembered both the stirrups of the horse and the stone streets inside the city, while the soles of his feet still retained the sensation of stepping across blood-slick stone.
He was merely sitting still, yet every part of his body seemed to be crying out.
He had traveled a long road and fought a brutal battle.
When he inhaled, pain came first from between his ribs.
He could not even remember where or how he had been hurt.
In the chaos of the fighting, he had killed more men than he could count.
An injury like this hardly even qualified as a minor wound.
When he exhaled, the deep muscles behind his shoulders pulled with burning heat.
Whenever he tried to lower his awareness into the dantian, his right arm seemed to cry out from the pain of having swung the sword all night.
Cutting.
Driving forward.
Striking downward.
Cutting again.
The movements of the night remained embedded in his flesh.
Youngwoo quieted his mind and listened to each of those sounds.
The cries of the body were, in the end, only ripples arising along the paths through which qi flowed.
He made his breathing finer.
He guided the breath that wanted to rise into his chest down below the navel and kindled a tiny ember deep in his lower abdomen.
At first, it was faint.
The ember in his dantian flickered like a flame barely surviving inside wet firewood.
Youngwoo gathered his awareness around it as though watching the ember itself.
With each inhalation, he gathered his qi.
With each exhalation, he slowly released the turbid energy thrown into disorder.
One breath cooled the heat in his shoulders.
Another quieted the trembling in his wrists.
Before long, warmth gathered in his lower abdomen.
It felt heavy like a round pearl, yet still like a clear drop of water.
Without hurrying, Youngwoo guided it downward toward the Huiyin point.
As the warmth passed through the depths of his pelvis, the lower back that had remained stiff throughout the night slowly loosened from within.
The qi passed the tailbone and began rising along the Governing Vessel.
At first, it moved slowly, like a cart climbing a rough stone road.
The fatigue of battle seemed lodged in every joint of his spine.
When it reached Mingmen, a hot sensation struck his lower back, and muscles that had remained hunched tight for hours seemed to exhale one after another.
Youngwoo lengthened his breathing further.
Within the darkness behind his closed eyes, a thin line of light seemed to appear.
Unbroken like a strand of silk, it climbed along his spine.
When it reached the middle of his back, the shock of parrying blades the night before returned to him.
A needle-like pain stabbed between his shoulder blades.
He sent his breath into that place.
As the breath reached it, the pain changed shape.
What had been sharp became dull.
What had burned became merely warm.
The qi passed Dazhui and climbed into the back of his neck.
The shouts and drums of the battlefield seemed to echo again inside his ears.
He could not allow himself to sink into memory.
He had to breathe the present.
If he sat there replaying each memory as it surfaced, watching the battle again and again in his mind, nothing would come of the cultivation.
Youngwoo drew even those sounds into his breathing.
As the qi crossed the Jade Pillow, the back of his head cooled.
When it reached Baihui, a clear sensation seemed to open gently above his head.
It felt like standing on a high mountain ridge and meeting the cold wind before dawn.
His body was still exhausted.
But his awareness seemed to rise one step above that exhaustion.
He remained there for a while.
The interval between inhalation and exhalation grew longer.
His heart, which had been raging like a blade, recovered its rhythm, and the trembling in his fingertips subsided.
Memories of blood, iron, and fire slowly sank deeper into his mind.
Youngwoo turned the qi forward again.
The clear current descending from Baihui passed over his forehead and between his brows, flowed down past the tip of his nose, through the philtrum and throat, and descended along the Conception Vessel.
When it reached his chest, the killing intent that had once surged there remained caught like a hard knot.
He did not force his way through it.
Instead, he exhaled slowly and let the knot disperse like ink dissolving in water.
The qi passed through Shanzhong and descended to Zhongwan.
The dust and exhaustion he had swallowed the previous day seemed to stir somewhere deep in his belly.
At last, the current returned to his lower abdomen and gathered once more within the dantian.
One circuit was complete.
Youngwoo immediately began a second cycle.
This time, the path was smoother.
During the first circuit, his body had screamed from place to place.
Now those screams had faded into low groans.
The trembling in his muscles settled into the rhythm of his breathing, while the heat in his joints gradually melted into the warmth of the dantian.
By the third cycle, the paths within his body had opened.
From Huiyin to Mingmen.
From Mingmen to Dazhui.
From Dazhui to Baihui.
The current connected like flowing water.
The qi descending again across his forehead and chest before returning to the dantian was clearer as well.
Warmth spread even into the fingertips that had gripped the sword throughout the night.
The tension faded from Youngwoo's face.
The muscles around his mouth and eyes relaxed, and his shoulders lowered slightly.
Outside, he could faintly hear the household clearing away the damage to the estate.
Somewhere, a wooden door closed.
Someone exchanged a few quiet words.
All of it seemed distant, as though heard from beneath the surface of water.
The qi in his dantian was no longer a tiny ember.
It had become a quiet brazier.
Its warmth remained in his abdomen, spread into his waist, then moved through his back and shoulders.
His body was still heavy from battle, but the nature of that heaviness had changed.
It was no longer scattered pain.
It had become fatigue he could endure.
The qi thrown into disorder while wielding the sword was returning to its proper place.
Youngwoo released one final, long breath.
At the end of the exhalation, it felt as though a last handful of the killing intent he had carried through the night left his body with it.
He brought both hands together before his dantian and remained still for a moment.
The Small Heavenly Cycle within him quietly came to a close.
When he opened his eyes, the empty courtyard lay before him.
Morning light rested thinly along the edge of the wooden floor, while the cleaned hwando beside him gleamed coldly.
Youngwoo slowly opened his fingers.
The fatigue had not disappeared.
But his center had returned enough for him to take up the sword again.