As Prophet - Chapter 97
Only Krnovel
Episode 97. Would you like to dream another dream?
“Now, where will you go, Master?”
“I plan to go to the main temple first. I plan to spend some time there examining the remains of my teacher.”
“I heard that you have two teachers.”
“When I was young, my teacher passed away, so he entrusted me to his close friend. I stayed there until the summer season.”
“Aren’t you going there?”
“That’s… … I’ve had a few accidents in the summer, so I’m worried about what I’ll get in trouble for.”
The monk smiles brightly.
“Do you feel like you’re going crazy?”
“Not to that extent, phew… … . Anyway, I’m going to try to avoid it.”
“It seems like it’s difficult for you to speak.”
“There’s nothing to worry about, but I’m worried because you suddenly left. I don’t want to look back… … Even the teacher said I shouldn’t look back… … .”
“There is still a connection. Don’t take it too seriously. What comes will come, and what goes will go.”
“Oh! What a good word. What should be the attitude of a human being there?”
Suddenly, he asked an important question. He asked about the attitude of a human being, or rather a mountain man, who sees the world coming and going. Do-saeng answered briefly.
“You must not be tied down.”
“Kyaha!”
Dalcheon clapped his hands and cheered for the obvious answer.
“That’s right, that’s right. You shouldn’t be tied down.”
“I shouldn’t say that to a master who has reached the extreme, but since you are still young, I said that.”
“thank you.”
Dalcheon leaned forward, touching the edge of the floor.
“Are you saying you’re going to Taebaeksan?”
“Yes. Why do you keep asking that?”
“I’m going to go find it.”
“Oh, I don’t mean to offend guests.”
“And I will spread the word. The throne in the mountains, the true Taoist has returned.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense.”
The alcohol that had only moistened his lips was fragrant. Dalcheon drank the remaining alcohol in several sips, savoring it. It really felt like he had returned to the mountains.
Unable to refuse the request to go to sleep, I went upstairs to catch some sleep and left at dawn.
Even though his martial arts skills are low, he has an eye for the old man. Do-saeng immediately realized that Dal-cheon had suddenly returned and was completely unprepared. Just because it’s popular, he doesn’t just carry a sword. Starting with supplies for sleeping out in the open and small tools for hunting and gathering food, he had to carry quite a lot of things, but Dal-cheon was clearly on his way with nothing.
Do-saeng, who was still awake, saw him off. He gave him a bag of tea leaves that he said tasted good, a leather pouch containing medicinal liquor, and some dried food that he had not been able to take with him because he was in a hurry to leave.
Dalcheon, carrying a bundle on his back, ran along the mountain path like the wind, eastward and eastward again. The sky was bright, so the distance he jumped was wider, and with the art of shrinking the land, he soon moved away from the places where people lived. In the middle, a small village appeared here and there at the foot of the mountain, but it was as soon as he saw it that it disappeared behind him.
* * *
News of Dalcheon’s departure was delivered. When he got up from his bed and coughed, he heard the eunuch of Daejeon running and reporting, and he touched the floor.
“I was too busy. I lost a good person.”
“I am ashamed, Your Majesty.”
“Who brought the news?”
“The instructor of the academy sent a messenger to deliver the message, and Baek Sa-ban came running at dawn to deliver the message.”
“Your Majesty?”
“They are still in Hanyang. It seems that many of the guards were injured in the last night raid and are still there.”
“In the color box.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You loser, you should have grabbed him by the leg.”
“… … Were you given the position for the sake of the Grand Prince?”
“It will benefit someone, but we don’t know who. How can we know the future?”
He was a king who would never let me talk about succession. Anything that would eat away at my power would be unacceptable. Even if the power that would remain after my fall were to be put to the test now, I would immediately cut it off. No, he might have been caught up in the fun of weighing and judging the two, trying to determine their weight. He should have completed the succession while he was still of sound mind, but he was reluctant to give up power, so he kept delaying it until the bastard became king. Still, he was a king who would never give it up.
“What about the school?”
“It is said that he ordered that it be closed and that all that His Majesty had given be returned.”
“What’s the big deal? Hey.”
The king was truly regretful. He regretted that he had pressured him so hard because he thought he was the king of the mountains. If he had treated him a little better and persuaded him gently, that is, if he had approached him in a way that he would have accepted, he might not have left.
It was wrong to give official positions to Confucian scholars who were studying hard to get official positions, and to provide what was needed for the school. If it were a seowon, they would have accepted it gratefully and expressed their gratitude, but a true Taoist does not wait for favors.
It was a time to reaffirm that what he wanted was not the things of the world.
“Ah, what can I do? A good person is gone… … .”
“If it’s that good, then please treat it well.”
The king smiles bitterly. The eunuch’s soft words are moist with the things he has seen and felt.
“Did Jim push you too hard?”
“I am sorry, but in my opinion, he was a very pure person. He did not want anything that Your Majesty could give him. He did not need wealth or fame. Even the things he needed were for the school. To teach the children. It was not for his own personal use.”
“What should I do?”
“For mountain people, there is something called a bonsan (head mountain). How about having the local official find it?”
“where?”
“I heard that it is Taebaeksan Mountain and Sobaeksan Mountain. It was originally in Taebaeksan Mountain, but I heard that it was moved to Sobaeksan Mountain after the teacher passed away.”
“They’re both white.”
“When I was young, I studied in Taebaek, and after my teacher passed the Uhwadengseon, I studied in Sobaeksan. It is said that Baek Ui-hyeong, who passed the military service examination this time, studied in Sobaeksan and was called Sa-hyeong.”
“I see. It’s not the Daejeon Naegwan, it’s the mountain Naegwan.”
“I was very interested. If I had the chance, I would have liked to hear a word of encouragement. Something like a guideline or lesson that I could carry with me for the rest of my life.”
“Oh my! Even someone like you thinks that way, but this king only thinks of the power he can wield. Oh my, what a pity.”
“If you give me the order, I will find it somehow.”
“What did I do wrong? What did I hate about leaving?”
“If we were to serve him as a teacher, we should have listened to his words, not his talents… … .”
“Was it? He told me to fly and show off my skills by doing martial arts. I thought it was okay since he did it so quickly.”
“majesty.”
The eunuch is better than the king. No, it’s not that he’s better. He could have seen it from another place. The king looked down at the eunuch in the main palace. A eunuch who can’t dream of anything else once he enters the palace. He’s still a eunuch even if he goes up. Even if he earns money, he has nowhere to spend it. He dreams of saving and saving up to buy a house in his own home, then taking in an adopted child and living like a common family. That’s all there is to life. The life of the eunuch who served for a long time and died in the place where the retired eunuchs lived said that he wanted to hear his words.
“Do so!”
“It will be as you command, Your Majesty!”
* * *
The ruins of his teacher are where he grew up as a child. The old hut is leaning as if it might collapse. New greenery is creeping up and blooming on the roof that has turned black from not being renovated for years.
The front porch, covered with white dust, was completely white, and it was not a good place to sit, perhaps because it had been battered by wind and rain. The cypress fence surrounding the house, like a country house, was in ruins here and there, and newly planted thorn trees had invaded the yard. The paper on the door was tattered and could not block the wind, and the kitchen door, which had been used for many daily tasks, was barely propped up on the doorknob.
“Phew.”
I sighed. After looking around the house, I went up the mountain. I marked the rock where the clothes and shoes left by the master who had ascended the mountain were.
How much did he burn the Master’s clothes and belongings and cry? For three days, he sat there doing nothing. Dalcheon bowed toward the east at the Master’s place where he had ascended without leaving behind even the remains.
“Master, I am here.”
He shouted softly in the wind.
‘Now you’re back. Welcome. Would you like to have another dream? … .’
The words that the Master always used to say were coming back to me as a combination of some action that was happening in my mind, but it seemed as if some being, the Master who was omnipresent in the bright and wide air, was speaking. It seemed as if He was in the air.
“yes.”
It would be a good thing, but if I could become a god and fly to the sky, it would be a really good thing, but I would cry in a time that no longer exists. They said that existence changes form and method, but does not disappear… … . If you don’t speak and don’t breathe, aren’t you not a human?
I came down from the mountaintop, leaving behind my old sorrow. I sat down in a blank spot on the veranda and waited for time to pass. The shadows cast by the sunlight on the left side of the house facing south stretched long, and while I was absentmindedly staring, darkness came.
The night in the mountains is cold. The wind blows and the cold air bites into his collar. Dalcheon does nothing. He does not study or recall memories. He sits still, without dreams or hopes, without any thoughts.
‘True study is not trying to do anything.’
The old words of the master rang in my ears. Was he trying to teach me the way of non-action? He said not to even think. He said that if I stay still, the thoughts that arise on their own create stories, and that chasing memories and creating other thoughts that torment my mind are all useless.
‘Knowing that you are useless is the beginning of learning.’
His voice is still heard, as if he were sitting beside you, guiding you. It is not coming on the wind, but as a sound of the soul, approaching and permeating you as if whispering tenderly right next to your being.
Of course, I wanted to show the teacher the things I knew, the time I lived that way. No, it seemed like the teacher was already proud of me. It seemed like he was looking at the young soul who had spent time without the teacher with warm and proud eyes.
He was from Yeongheung, entered the mountains in the year of Imjin, studied under the Taoist monk Heon-eung, and attained enlightenment at the age of twenty. He entered Taebaeksan Mountain and never left it, but was admired by many mountain people from the Three Kingdoms and the Eight Provinces.
He had the virtue of kindly teaching many mountain people of each mountain, so when he climbed the mountain, hundreds of mountain people wished him a good future.
Dalcheon shook his head as he thought about the epitaph. He is not dead, so what’s the use of writing it down? … He thought. No, his words and teachings need to be engraved. Because they are still breathing in my heart.
The house where he lived during the time when it was not popular was in decline. The deserted yard was overgrown with grass, but the teachings were still alive and breathing. Dalcheon thought of carving them into a rock. If it could last a thousand years, it would be a great standard for future generations, and if we recall his teachings, wouldn’t the Taoist law be passed down for eternity?
When the wind died down, Dalcheon got up. The moon rising over the eastern mountain was clear and clean like the face of a beautiful woman who just came out of the wash. He put some old firewood in the stove, lit it, and stared at it blankly. The red and yellow energy tickled his face, and the warm energy melted his soul that had traveled a long way. He searched the kitchen, put some old oil in a kerosene lamp, lit it, and went into his room. He roughly wiped the room with a rag that was so hard it would crumble, and sat cross-legged on the seat opposite where his teacher was sitting.
The time that had passed passed by without a care. I let the countless thoughts that my memories spit out flow by and observed them absentmindedly. I let the good and bad things I had done drift away so that they would no longer bother my mind.
Was it a time to reflect on the past studies? Dalcheon sat like a stone Buddha and spent the whole night without moving. The fatigue from running a long distance in one breath melted away with his breath, and the bad memories of the lower world disappeared like dust. When even the happy and good memories were flowing away, the dawn light seeped in through the perforated paper window.
He sat up, shook his body, and then took his sword out into the yard. It was neither the sword the king had given him nor the sword he had been using. It was a wooden sword he had received from his teacher when he was young. Each square side of the sword was beautifully engraved with magic and painted in a variety of colors. The colors had not faded even after many years.
“Phew.”
I looked around the yard, practiced the Paldan Geum toward the eastern sun, spread my arms toward the sun, breathed, practiced the chamjang for quite a while, and then swung my sword. I did it slowly, as if I was practicing the basic first steps of the three laws, so it felt like I was dancing rather than practicing swordsmanship.
The surrounding space twisted and turned into a Taegeuk pattern, then stretched out in all directions in the shape of the Bagua. The sword struck in six directions, making a whirlwind sound and emitting countless subtle sounds in millions of different forms.
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