Chapter 368
Second question.
Where does the Way reside, and where does the road lead?
Unhwi also had an answer for this.
“The Way resides in emptiness.”
He paused, drew a breath, and continued slowly.
“The road heads toward actuality.”
Another tremor ran through the chamber.
This time it was stronger.
A faint light began to seep from a crack in the wall.
“Master...” Chief Seong called in a trembling voice, but Unhwi shook his head.
“Quiet.”
Chief Seong fell silent.
The third question.
Who am I, and who are you.
This one was harder.
If Unhwi had no memories of a prior life the answer would have been clear.
But he was a reincarnate.
As long as those memories lived inside him, this question could never be simple.
Who am I.
Am I the Seol Unhwi of the past life?
Or the Seol Unhwi of this life?
Both? Neither?
And who are you.
The maker of this hidden realm?
Or the one who solves the riddle?
Unhwi recalled the lines of the Tao-Beginning Innate Heart Method.
Void and substance join to form true emptiness.
Right and wrong fuse, attaining the Way.
After long thought, Unhwi spoke slowly.
“I am past and future.”
He stared at the wall where light spilled.
“You are teacher and student.”
Kuuuu—!!
The chamber shook violently.
The wall began to split.
More precisely, a door hidden within the wall revealed itself.
Dust fell away as if it had been sealed for ages.
Chief Seong recoiled in alarm.
Even when fierce battles had once raged here the wall had cracked but never broken.
To his eyes it had looked like any ordinary stone wall — so why had he not sensed it before?
Had someone muffled people’s senses so they could not perceive it?
When abnormal things occur repeatedly, they are intended.
It was certain.
The maker of this hidden realm was a supreme master.
One who had reached the end of the Martial Scriptures and perhaps beyond.
Chief Seong looked at Unhwi at once.
Unhwi watched the light beyond the doorway with a calm expression.
Master... what will you do?
The path ahead was clearly not the usual road of martial men.
It was harsh, convoluted, yet he always walked it.
It was almost admirable.
Unhwi regarded the faint light streaming from beyond the door.
It was neither blue nor red — a transparent glow, like moonlight.
Along with the light came a voice — or rather an intentional presence.
Chief Seong asked cautiously, “...Will you enter?”
Unhwi was silent for a moment.
An endless road.
A step with meaning.
It was no different from the path he had walked in his past life and in this one.
“I will enter.”
Unhwi said.
He walked toward the door.
Chief Seong followed behind.
The moment they passed through, the world changed.
It was no longer the stone chamber.
It was a small room.
Walls, ceiling, and floor all fashioned from white jade.
In the center sat a small pedestal, and on it lay a single scroll.
Unhwi approached and picked up the scroll.
He unrolled it.
The first line read:
Tao-Beginning Innate Heart Method — True Volume.
It was the genuine volume.
Unhwi’s eyes shone.
What he had burned earlier had been...
“So that was only the preface.”
He read the scroll slowly, and then his breath caught.
This is...
The Tao-Beginning Innate Heart Method.
Here lay its true core.
Not merely how to perceive and receive heaven-and-earth qi, but how to make it wholly one’s own.
How to pass between void and substance.
How to encompass right and wrong.
And—
Transcend the Martial Scriptures.
Unhwi continued reading. Each passage brimmed with deep enlightenment.
As if the teaching of a master who had cultivated a hundred years.
No — more than that.
Around the middle of the scroll was a passage:
Heaven and earth bear spirit; all things have nature.
Spirit is not spirit; nature is not nature.
Only the mind creates them; only the will completes them.
Unhwi pondered the lines.
“Mind creates, will completes...”
Heaven-and-earth qi, then, was not ultimately external; it began in one’s own mind.
To realize that was to truly wield the Tao-Beginning Innate Heart Method.
He read to the end.
In the last chapter, in small script, it said:
I have poured the life of my strength into creating this heart-method.
Yet I could not reach its extreme.
I hope those after me will accomplish what I did not finish.
And the final line:
—Byak Do-cheon, final brush.
Unhwi closed the scroll slowly.
“Byak Do-cheon.”
He spoke the name quietly.
It had appeared again and again.
No matter how he thought about it, the name tied him not only in this life but in the last.
Unhwi was certain in his heart.
Byak Do-cheon lived.
And he knew who that person was.
Soon the entire room glowed.
A soft, warm light wrapped Unhwi like a nod.
When the light faded, only the scroll remained in his hands.
The room was empty.
Chief Seong looked around and asked, “...Is it truly finished now?”
“No.”
Unhwi folded the scroll into his robe and continued, “It’s only the beginning.”
He turned and left.
As soon as they exited the chamber, Unhwi began to stagger.
Chief Seong caught him quickly.
“Do not overexert yourself...”
“Chief Seong.”
“Yes, master.”
“As we said earlier, we will descend to the lower village.”
Chief Seong nodded and supported Unhwi toward the passage.
Suddenly he asked, curious.
“Master.”
“Hmm?”
“How did you solve that earlier riddle... I still don’t understand.”
Unhwi smiled wryly.
“I don’t know if my answer was the correct one.”
“Huh?”
“I only spoke the answer I thought.”
“...But the door opened.”
“It opened.”
“......”
“There was probably not a single right answer,” Unhwi said.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there only one principle to the world?”
Unhwi looked at Chief Seong and said, “Byak Do-cheon did not want a single correct answer; he wanted someone with their own answer. Not a vague reply, but one filled with conviction.”
Chief Seong understood.
“...Truly, you are the master.”
They both chuckled softly.
A cold wind brushed their faces as they stepped outside.
Unhwi looked up at the sky.
He had gained more than he expected.
Unhwi had fused the Tao-Beginning Innate Heart Method with his Blood-Demon Heavenly-Hand Heart Method to form the Vast-Empty Immortal-Blood Heart Method.
Using ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ the refined illusory qi from that synthesis, he had been acting — yet the original Tao-Beginning method had been incomplete at the outset.
Now that he possessed the true text, his task was one:
To utterly reconstruct his own heart-method.
The two set foot on the path down the mountain.
Unhwi wondered.
For what purpose had Byak Do-cheon made a place like this?
And what had he failed to accomplish?
But if one walks this road, one will someday know.
So Unhwi and Chief Seong entered Baekhwa Hamlet.