After saying goodbye to everyone, Dokgorin, Nguyen, and I followed Baek Yujin into the empty building.
“…Where is this?”
“This is one of the lodges owned by the main school. Don’t worry; no one else can enter aside from us.”
As she spoke, Baek Yujin took off the straw hat she was wearing and placed it on the table while looking at Cheonma.
“Well then, Kan, you can head back now. You must be busy, so you can’t stay here indefinitely.”
“Yes. I’ll see you in a month, Madame.”
Bowing his head, Cheonma put down his belongings and quietly left the lodge.
I watched Cheonma’s departing back with pity and turned to Baek Yujin.
“Is it really okay to treat Cheonma like that?”
In response, Baek Yujin pulled out a scroll from her robe and said nonchalantly, “To me, he’s more like a son than a Cheonma. And after living as long as I have, the other person’s status doesn’t matter much. I judge solely based on their essence.”
If he had any issues being treated like a child, he would have spoken up long ago, so there’s no problem.
“……”
So, their relationship is kind of like a family bond?
Seeing her assert that confidently, it seemed that Cheonma himself didn’t have any particular complaints, contrary to my thoughts.
“Anyway, if everything is ready, let’s set off.”
As the conversation wrapped up, Baek Yujin said that and unfolded the scroll.
*
I merely closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again to find ourselves standing in front of a hut, just like in a painting.
“Welcome back!”
It seemed like Wolhyang had just come back from the fields, greeting us with a warm expression, her head wrapped in a white scarf like a rural woman.
“How much time has passed since we left?”
“Not much. The time scale is still set the same as the outside world.”
Immediately after, Wolhyang took off her scarf and asked, “Have you had lunch?”
“Yeah. I grabbed a quick bite while wandering around to buy things outside.”
I replied and handed her what I had bought while wandering the market earlier.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a gift. Since you seem to work a lot in the fields, I thought it might be helpful, so I brought it.”
What I handed her was a common straw hat.
“Oh… Thank you.”
Caught off guard by the unexpected gift, she looked at the straw hat in surprise and then bowed her head.
“Why not try it on now?”
“Uh, should I?”
After hearing Baek Yujin’s suggestion, Wolhyang held the straw hat in her hands but hesitated before putting it on her head.
“Ah.”
Come to think of it, there’s no hole for her ears to come out.
Noticing the same thing, Dokgorin, who was watching the scene, asked Wolhyang for the straw hat for a moment and made two round holes for her ears.
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
Receiving the straw hat from Dokgorin, Wolhyang put it on right away and shyly asked us, “How do I look?”
Baek Yujin gave a thumbs up and said, “Cute.”
I completely agreed with that opinion.
As Dokgorin and I nodded in agreement with Baek Yujin’s words, Wolhyang, feeling bashful, pulled the straw hat down with both hands to cover her face.
Even though she is definitely hundreds of years old as a spirit, she was adorably cute.
“Hehe.”
Baek Yujin winked playfully at Wolhyang and said to us, “Well then, let’s stop chatting and get moving. We need to put the things we brought into storage.”
“Ah, okay.”
Fortunately, since we teleported right in front of the hut, it wasn’t too difficult to move our belongings.
Others helped out, too.
Once we had put all the food we could eat into the storage, Wolhyang perked up her rabbit ears and said to me, “Now I will explain the ins and outs of Myoseondong, so please follow me.”
Since I hadn’t really wandered outside much except for the yard while staying here, her words were like music to my ears.
Hearing that I wanted to look around, Dokgorin tried to follow, but Baek Yujin stopped her from behind.
“You’re going to play with me.”
“What?”
“After all, you said that reaching super-ultimate is just a process. So, until you become Hwa-gyeong, I’ll personally train you.”
“…I can manage on my own.”
Dokgorin flatly rejected Baek Yujin’s offer and tried to follow me, but she didn’t let her go easily.
Swish!
“What are you doing?”
“Just having some fun.”
With undetectable speed, Baek Yujin jabbed her fist in front of Dokgorin’s eyes and giggled in response.
“Stop with the childish banter.”
Just as Dokgorin said that and placed her hand on top of Baek Yujin’s fist to prepare to push it down, something happened.
“?”
Like a lie, Dokgorin flipped over and fell flat on her back.
Even the ultra-skilled Dokgorin was oblivious to Baek Yujin’s movement.
“What the…”
Only when Dokgorin finally grasped the situation and raised her upper body with a cautious gaze did Baek Yujin, standing on one leg, giggle and ask, “Are you finally feeling like having a go?”
“…Very well. I will face you.”
Pop!
Both Dokgorin, now ignited with fighting spirit, and Baek Yujin disappeared somewhere.
“You’re young~”
Wolhyang muttered with a voice that sounded almost like a grandma while folding her arms behind her back and looked towards me.
“Then, let’s hurry along too.”
*
Myoseondong was much larger than I had imagined.
It was hard to believe it was an artificially created space, as a variety of flora had naturally formed.
Mountains, waterfalls, rivers, forests.
It was like a nature expo or something?
Seeing the harmonious intertwining of things that normally couldn’t be found in the same place left me in awe.
“Is that sky and sun real?”
As we walked side by side along a path through the forest, I asked that and Wolhyang chuckled and shook her head.
“Don’t be silly. Technically, the clouds and sun floating in the sky are like the shadows of the moon reflected in the water. They may appear visible but have no actual entity.”
“Ah.”
So, it seems to be something like a mirage.
“Then how vast is this space? What’s beyond that horizon?”
“The actual space is about a hundred li in radius, and beyond that, there’s nothing. It’s simply that acknowledging it as a visually confined area would make it feel stifling, so we made it look like it exists, similar to the sun in the sky.”
As she said that, Wolhyang suddenly halted her steps.
“We’ve arrived.”
“Eh?”
The place where she stopped was a clearing in the middle of the forest.
Like it had been intentionally set aside, there were wooden training dummies and logs lined up that you would typically see at a training center.
“What is this…?”
When I looked at it with a questioning gaze, Wolhyang blushed and said, “I made this at the request of the sage. It seems Chilbok will need to train here for the next two years.”
“Oh, I see.”
After feeling like I was on a little tour and suddenly encountering a training ground, my mind briefly stopped.
Thinking of it as the place where I would train going forward naturally sparked my curiosity, leading me to ask as I looked around at the equipment in the training ground, “But how did you make something like this? It must take a ton of time to do it alone.”
“Oh, this is something you can make just by thinking about it.”
With a nonchalant expression, Wolhyang gestured, and—bam!—a log appeared out of nowhere.
“!?”
I was startled, alternating my gaze between the log and her.
“Indeed, a spirit is truly a spirit. Creating something from nothing!”
Wolhyang chuckled and explained what she had just done.
“To be precise, it’s not a real log but a replica made from my spiritual power. Since this is my constructed space, it’s possible, but outside, it would be absolutely impossible.”
Saying that, Wolhyang lifted the fallen log back up and suddenly said to me, “Alright, Chilbok. Why not hit this log with all your might?”
“Eh? Out of nowhere?”
“Yes. I want to see your current strength.”
As she said that, Wolhyang stepped back a few paces.
It was an oddly abrupt request, but thinking there might be some reason behind it, I took my stance without hesitation.
I activated all my energy and hit the log with a punch as hard as I could.
Bang!!
With a refreshing sound, the log shattered into pieces.
I may have failed to make a clean hole like my master Tang Hochang, but I distinctly felt the power of my punch had increased compared to before.
“Ahh—”
Feeling quite satisfied, I turned around to see Wolhyang staring intently and seriously at what had once been a log.
“Um… how was that?”
Noticing the strange atmosphere, I carefully asked, and Wolhyang replied while picking up the wooden pieces from the ground.
“You’re much weaker than I expected.”
Cough!
As her cold declaration pierced my heart, I clutched my chest, and Wolhyang explained, “Oh, I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”
That’s even worse!
