Chapter 164: The End of Childhood (23)

“...So this is the fasting pellet storehouse.”

Cheonjeong muttered in dismay.

Soyak looked up at him from beside him.

“Couldn’t we call the others to help?”

“No. They’re all training. What kind of Eldest Brother would I be if I couldn’t help with something like this?”

A person ate three meals a day.

A year had three hundred and sixty-five days.

In other words, a person ate roughly a thousand meals each year.

And someone entering closed-door training replaced every one of those meals with fasting pellets.

There was no telling how long Soyak would remain inside, but it was customary to bring more than enough.

Unless the person entered after promising to emerge within a set number of years...

They would prepare roughly ten thousand fasting pellets, just in case.

If no enlightenment came after ten years, that was generally considered the end of it.

Ten thousand fasting pellets...

A single pellet was smaller than a child’s fist.

Ten thousand of them, however, was another matter entirely.

Their combined weight and volume were far greater than one might imagine.

Just as Cheonjeong grasped the enormity of that number and steeled himself, a voice came from behind them.

“You were here?”

It was Eun Jeong.

He stood with his arms folded, watching Soyak and Cheonjeong as though he had expected them to come.

The two greeted him respectfully with cupped fists.

He waved away the formality and spoke.

“They’re quite heavy. Heavier than they look.”

“Are they?”

“Well, carrying them could be considered training in its own right.”

Eun Jeong watched for a moment, then hoisted an entire sack onto his shoulder.

Cheonjeong’s eyes widened.

He knew that sack contained a thousand fasting pellets.

Of course, lifting it would not have been impossible with internal energy...

But Eun Jeong had picked it up without using any at all.

“I’ll help you carry them.”

“How did you...?”

“Remember this, Cheonjeong. I am an adult more than ten years older than you.”

Only then did Cheonjeong nod.

A sack of fasting pellets might be impossibly large and heavy to him, or to Soyak, who was even smaller and more slender.

But Eun Jeong was a grown man who had spent years cultivating martial arts and tempering his body.

To him, it was merely a somewhat heavy load.

After watching him lift it so easily, Soyak grabbed one end of another sack.

She was about to hoist it onto her shoulder when Cheonjeong stopped her.

“Soyak. It’ll crush you.”

“...Oh.”

Cheonjeong already had one sack on his own shoulder.

From the way his face alternated between red and pale, it was clear the sack was heavier than he had expected.

That was only natural.

Fasting pellets were extremely dense.

A single pellet smaller than an infant’s fist had to replace an entire meal.

How tightly must the ingredients have been pressed and hardened?

Moreover, fasting pellets were generally eaten only when someone intended to devote a long period entirely to training, without sparing attention for anything else.

To purify the body for cultivation, one had to abstain from food touched by flame.

The pellets were made solely from grain, dried vegetables, salt, and a few spices.

To produce any sense of fullness from such ingredients, they had to be compressed with tremendous force.

“...Soyak.”

“Yes, Eldest Brother?”

“Could you support the back of this a little?”

In the end, Cheonjeong asked for help.

He could bear the sack’s full weight, but maintaining his balance at the same time was apparently too much.

Soyak nodded and held up the rear of the sack with both hands.

And so...

They began the journey to the training cave, which could be reached only by traversing the edge of a steep and treacherous cliff.

*****

“...How in the world did you prepare for your own closed-door training, Master Eun Jeong?”

Cheonjeong stared at Eun Jeong in disbelief.

The three of them now stood looking down at the entrance to the training cave Eun Jeong had passed on to Soyak, halfway down the cliff beneath a bridge.

Every other training cave they had passed on the way had been beside the path.

Naturally so. The route had been laid out to pass by the existing caves.

Eun Jeong’s cave was different.

It had been discovered only after the path had already been built.

Hidden beneath a bridge crossing the cliff, it looked like a narrow crack in the rock at the very edge of nowhere.

“How else? I carried everything over one piece at a time.”

Eun Jeong chuckled, then leaped off the bridge with a sack of fasting pellets still on his shoulder.

Using his lightness arts, he landed lightly at the cave entrance.

Cheonjeong, who had only just reached the upper edge of First-Rate and had yet to cross the threshold of Apex, could not hope to imitate such a feat.

Soyak’s situation was not much different.

Her realm was more than sufficient to perform such lightness arts—provided she could first lift the sack and move with it.

But she could not even raise it through physical strength alone.

Lightness arts allowed a martial artist to move as though their body had no weight...

They were not magic that reduced the weight of whatever one happened to be carrying.

After placing the sack inside the training cave he had given Soyak, Eun Jeong returned to the bridge and hoisted the sack Cheonjeong had carried.

Then he smiled at him.

“I’ll carry the sacks into the cave. You bring them as far as the bridge.”

“...Understood.”

Carrying each sack from Mount Hua’s storehouse to the bridge was certainly no easy task...

But at least it was not impossible.

Soyak accompanied Cheonjeong on every trip, helping him bear the weight of each sack.

By the third, Cheonjeong’s shoulders and legs had lost so much strength that Soyak had to take half the load herself.

Naturally, the weight pressed just as mercilessly upon her body.

They carried over the remaining eight sacks, bringing the total to ten.

Only after all ten thousand fasting pellets had been moved did the two collapse onto the bridge.

“...I’m really going to die... Are you... all right, Soyak...?”

Soyak could not even answer.

She barely managed to nod.

Yet she did not look remotely all right.

Her entire body was drenched in sweat, and strands of hair clung to her neck, making her look almost pitiful.

Eun Jeong quietly looked down at them.

“Did you learn anything from this?”

Cheonjeong tilted his head at the question.

Soyak, however, nodded.

This sequence of physical labor had taught her one thing with certainty.

It was not enough to call it enlightenment...

But it was sufficient insight to determine the proper direction of her efforts.

“...I did.”

“What was it?”

“My body is unsuited to training centered on physical strength.”

Cheonjeong smiled faintly.

There were many geniuses in the world.

Half of them fell before ever reaching their full potential, often for absurd reasons.

As one of the geniuses who had survived, Eun Jeong wanted Soyak to understand one thing.

Effort spent overcoming one’s weaknesses was futile.

Even after pouring time and effort into correcting a weakness, one would barely reach the level of an ordinary person.

And a weakness overcome only enough to become average...

Was of no help whatsoever in surviving this brutal world.

The brighter one’s talent shone...

The closer it came to reaching heaven...

The more one had to sharpen one’s strengths and turn them into weapons.

Soyak had realized that.

“At most, I have another six years of growth ahead of me. No matter how well I eat, sleep, and train... my naturally small frame and slender bones will never become large and thick.”

“One’s muscles and bones are determined at birth. You are correct.”

“My natural gift does not lie in overwhelming physical power, but in delicate and precise technique. And no matter how hard I try now, there would be little point in attempting to enlarge my frame.”

Eun Jeong smiled in satisfaction and nodded.

Then he crouched until his eyes were level with hers.

“Correct. You were born small and slender. I would prefer that you not waste your time on pointless strength training inside the cave. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“There is no need to thank me. I am not your master. Consider it merely a word of advice from Master Eun Jeong.”

Eun Jeong carried the final sack they had brought into the training cave and returned.

Then he effortlessly lifted Cheonjeong and Soyak, seating one upon each shoulder.

Clearly, strength bordering on the monstrous was his own natural gift.

“You two may rely on me a little. That is enough for today. Go back and rest.”