The Embodiment.

That should be a good description of this situation. It was a little different from creating a new concept or taking one step further forward from his current realm. After all, Kang Jin-Ho had already done that.

The martial concept he had thought up and the martial art he had conceived had already taken root deep within Kang Jin-Ho's consciousness.

A demonic cultivation method surpassing all the other demonic cultivation methods! The martial art that would help Kang Jin-Ho eventually surpass his old self! Although it wasn't fully structured and couldn't be used just yet, Kang Jin-Ho's martial concept had repeatedly undergone the refinement process to gradually gain a vague-but-still-tangible guideline.

However, physically bringing his concept into reality was a different quandary altogether. In a way, it was not too dissimilar to how creating a perfect blueprint for a skyscraper was not the same as building the perfect skyscraper according to that blueprint. Those two tasks faced very different sets of difficulties.

Up until now, Kang Jin-Ho had not physically tried out the martial art he had conceived. But now, he had little choice but to risk it in the middle of this urgent situation.

Qi flooded in through Kang Jin-Ho’s wide-open baihui point. And then… it was an explosion!

It felt like fireworks of all colors and sizes were going off inside his head. Floating outside his own body, which allowed him to freely observe nature's qi, helped Kang Jin-Ho perceive the essence energy a little bit more clearly.

But that also meant a flood of energy dozens of times greater than usual was assaulting Kang Jin-Ho's head. He was taken aback by this unexpected development.

“Kkueh-uph…!”

Kang Jin-Ho could vividly hear his body reflexively gasping in pain. It felt like his head was repeatedly exploding. Despite the pain, however, his consciousness grew even clearer. He could see his head sucking in nature's energy.

This energy traveled down his neck to race toward his dantian. However, it stopped just before the destination and didn't even try to advance any further. This was where the real challenge would begin.

There must have been many powerful experts in the past who attempted to absorb qi while simultaneously expelling it. However, it was clear no one had overcome this wall. And now, Kang Jin-Ho also found himself standing before this imposing wall.

All the energy entering Kang Jin-Ho couldn't find a path to travel and began quaking powerfully. These unstable energies raced to all parts of his body to shake him around before traveling to different body parts to repeat the process.

Which meant Kang Jin-Ho’s physique… was distorting and twisting!

Crunch, crack!

His bones began breaking into pieces.

Splat!

Kang Jin-Ho's skin split apart along with a loud, dull noise. Blood began spurting out. And he observed this scene with calm and withdrawn eyes.

The pain his body experienced was transmitted in full to Kang Jin-Ho's consciousness. Which wasn't all that surprising, considering having an out-of-body experience didn't mean the consciousness had been fully separated from the physical body, after all!

Besides, he wasn't even having a real out-of-body experience, anyway. His soul was still residing perfectly well inside his body. This spectacle was nothing more than his subconscious taking all the disparate sensations his body felt and creating vivid imagery for him to better observe the unfolding phenomenon.

As such, there was no need to panic. This turn of events was well within expectations, after all!

Everyone else would stop here. That should have been the usual thing to do. If this phenomenon continued on unabated, a cultivator's body would balloon up until it eventually exploded. Unstable qi coursing through one's body was no different from powerful toxins. No, the better description would be… Such qi was a ticking time bomb!

These bombs going off inside the body meant even the toughened physique of an expert would get ripped apart like bits of paper.

Kang Jin-Ho carefully and slowly regulated his breathing. He was trying his best to remain stable and not to rock his body too much.

He was fully aware of the danger of losing his calm here. Lose his cool, and he wouldn’t get to finish anything.

Of course, this task would not be a cakewalk. That was because… Kang Jin-Ho was like a towering inferno deep inside!

Even though he tried to put on a facade of calmness and disinterest on the surface, he knew his inside was burning hotter than anyone else on this planet. Not to forget, most of his cultivation was almost all demonic in nature. And the demonic arts turned those learning them into short-tempered berserkers, didn't they?

From his nature to the martial arts he mastered, Kang Jin-Ho's circumstances prevented him from staying calm and collected most of the time. But now, he had to remain calm no matter what!

He must enter the state of the "Clear Lake As Still As A Mirror"!

Kang Jin-Ho gradually suppressed his quaking mind. As if to hinder him, countless thoughts began tormenting him.

Worries about whether or not Jo Gyu-Min and the Seongsim kids had safely escaped from this place…

Worries about the fate of the people still trapped inside the aquarium…

Worries about the aquarium's hole growing larger and larger and vomiting out more and more water outside…

Worries about the shaking building and all the flickering lights…

And even the physical pain getting worse with every passing second!

With all these factors combining to disorient him, maintaining a calm, clear mind should've been next to impossible. Yet, Kang Jin-Ho was pulling it off.

His consciousness, honed into a treasure blade-like state, deflected and cut away the hindrances one by one. He began forgetting things, one… by one. His worries, his concerns… Even the situation he was in.

Having forgotten about practically everything, Kang Jin-Ho focused his entire being on observing the current situation.

‘Is it impossible, after all?’

𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Things weren’t looking good. Qi was gushing out from Kang Jin-Ho’s dantian. And the forceful nature of that qi was preventing the nature’s qi he had absorbed from approaching his dantian.

However, that seemed rather obvious. It was impossible to inhale and exhale at the same time, after all!

Without a clear separation of the two actions, the absorbed qi simply didn’t have the chance to enter his dantian. In that case, what should he do?

‘Should I separate the two actions, then?’

The first countermeasure he thought of was straightforward. He’d simply stop. Or, more precisely, he’d repeat the cycle of inhaling and exhaling in a brief window of time. Doing so shouldn’t affect the process of emitting qi too much. Kang Jin-Ho would be changing what was constant into rapidly intermittent, after all. Even then…

‘It’d be incomplete, though.’

It’d be nothing more than a lie. He’d be lying to himself that he had done it, that there was no need to do more.

It would be no different from solving this situation with the strength he already possessed. Kang Jin-Ho didn't want that.

No, what he wanted to do was build a perfect foundation. A foothold he could use as a springboard for him to advance even further in the future!

To achieve this goal, what should Kang Jin-Ho do now?

‘...My dantian!’

The problem lay with his dantian. Or, the fact that absorption and emission of qi must happen in dantian first! That was the source of the problem. And the only way to solve this problem seemed to be… dividing his dantian in half. So one side could focus on accepting the new incoming qi, while the other side focused on emitting what was stored within.

...Exactly like a human heart, then.

‘Is it even possible, though?’

Kang Jin-Ho had no way of knowing. No one had trodden this path before, so no one could tell him whether it was possible or not.

A small mistake now could lead to the complete and utter destruction of everything he had built up until this moment. If his dantian blew up while being 'divided', and he blacked out as a result, Kang Jin-Ho would most definitely succumb to the water pressure and drown.

Even then, the corners of Kang Jin-Ho’s lips curled upward.

‘Wouldn’t that be funny?’

To think that the final moments of Kang Jin-Ho, a man who had reached lofty heights in martial arts and haughtily looked down on the rest of the world… would be drowning in the water of some fish tank!

If the experts of Zhongyuan who knew Kang Jin-Ho’s feats heard that, they might clutch their guts and laugh nonstop for three days and nights straight. However… So what?

Kang Jin-Ho even abandoned this train of thought, too. This task couldn't be performed while harboring fear and hesitation in his heart. Even if the odds of success were less than zero, one must remain confident of success.

That was how Kang Jin-Ho did things. That was his way! And when he finished steeling his resolve…

The viewpoint instantly changed.

Kang Jin-Ho, who had been contemplatively observing his body and the unfolding situation, was instantly sucked back inside. His consciousness and physical body became one once more.

Just as the sensation of water droplets pelting his face registered in his brain, Kang Jin-Ho closed his eyes. He suddenly gained a renewed appreciation of how imposing and immense this power was. This power of nature, that was. And he was also reminded how terrifying nature could be.

Martial arts’ ultimate goal was to become one with nature. Humans couldn’t lift Mt. Tai or withstand a fierce storm. Humans couldn’t push the ocean back or force the river to flow backward. At least, that was what Kang Jin-Ho constantly heard during his cultivation journey.

He was also told to become one with nature, to become nature itself. However, Kang Jin-Ho could never really agree with those beliefs.

The cultivators of ancient Zhongyuan saw nature as the object of worship and awe. However, as a man from the modern era, Kang Jin-Ho fundamentally saw things differently from them. To a modern man like him, nature was not something to be worshiped or become one with. No, it was something to be overcome!

A human might not be strong enough to lift Mt. Tai, but he sure could fly over it. A human might not withstand a storm but could build structures strong enough to do so.

A human might not push the ocean back but could utilize it instead. A human might not force a river back but could certainly change its direction.

This was what it meant to advance. To progress. Humanity’s progress allowed it to conquer things that previously seemed unconquerable. But now, Kang Jin-Ho must yield and conform to nature?

‘No!’

That was not what Kang Jin-Ho wanted. No matter how imposing and impossible something looked, it must be conquered someday. That was humanity’s way!

Kang Jin-Ho kept his eyes closed. Then, he focused on himself. The one thing he must control was his own body.

As if he could touch it…! His dantian felt so real and tangible to his senses. Dantian was supposed to be real, yet it wasn't. It was supposed to be formless yet also fully realized. It was supposed to exist somewhere below a person's abdomen. And Kang Jin-Ho… unhesitantly cut it in half.

Dantian was shaped like a sphere. A perfect sphere that didn’t actually exist in reality… And Kang Jin-Ho’s perfect sphere was invaded by a single crimson line.

This crimson line indifferently split the gray spherical space into two equal halves.

But then, the sphere began distorting and twisting. And it began crumbling.

As if to say what Kang Jin-Ho was attempting to do was impossible, that he'd lose everything by continuing with this path, this sphere madly rocked and trembled about. At the same time, extreme pain akin to a red-hot branding iron repeatedly stabbing his gut ruled over Kang Jin-Ho's senses. His body reacted to this pain first and began shivering like a lone leaf against the winds.

Kang Jin-Ho was intimately familiar with all types of pain, yet he still shed cold sweat from how intense this pain was.

This… was undoubtedly a warning. A warning from his own body that said this idea was crazy. That it was impossible and that everything would end in vain.

His own body was rebelling against him through the means of the worst-possible pain a human being could experience!

Even then, Kang Jin-Ho remained resolute.

Saying he didn't give up made little sense in this case, since Kang Jin-Ho never thought about giving up from the get-go. If he had not started anything, fine. However, once he started it, there was no such thing as retreat in his vocabulary!

Even if the result was fated to be an absolute nightmare, Kang Jin-Ho would never back down from his decision. That was his way!

And so, his dantian, it… was splitting. Not just his dantian, though, but even the world. Everything around him.

Something extraordinary happened when the crimson line almost finished splitting Kang Jin-Ho’s dantian.

Energies tumbling around in a turbid mess began dividing into two halves. On one side was pure-white qi with not a speck of impurity. On the other side, blacker-than-black qi dark enough to seemingly suck in everything settled in. It was like staring at two liquids settling in separate layers inside a tank.

Energies that had no choice but to intermingle in a disorderly fashion until now began occupying their own territories as their world split apart. And then… They began viciously repelling each other.

While repelling each other, these energies gradually finished defining their territories. The perfectly-separated two spaces started distorting again before settling into symmetrical-yet-not-really shapes.

Kang Jin-Ho immediately recognized this shape. After all, he had seen it numerous times throughout his life, so how could he not?

A space, now perfectly divided by black and white energies, with these energies pushing each other back and being pushed back themselves… The world called this shape as…

‘...Taegeuk!’

[1]

Kang Jin-Ho's dantian was now shaped like 'Taegeuk.' But that was merely the beginning.

All the energies racing throughout his body as if to blow him apart suddenly poured into his dantian. It was as if they had finally found where they were supposed to go. The pure-white part of his dantian accepted the energies rushing in.

This half of Kang Jin-Ho’s dantian purified all these disparate and turbid qi strands before uncaringly pouring them into the black half next door.

The black half of the dantian instantly dyed the pure-white qi pitch-black before sending this energy to Kang Jin-Ho’s hands.

Just like how a human heart pumped blood in and out seamlessly and almost simultaneously, Kang Jin-Ho's dantian began accepting and emitting external energy almost at the same time!

Kang Jin-Ho’s eyes suddenly flew open. Even though the falling water mercilessly rocked his body, a slick smirk still formed on his lips.

‘I’ve… done it.’

Yes, he had done the impossible. Finally, he…

He had achieved it.

1. Taegeuk is a Confucian icon symbolizing cosmic balance. It represents the constant interaction between yin and yang. It appears on the South Korean national flag as a sphere with red and blue halves. ?