The rabbits of Mount Tai were not rabbits.
They were demons.
Long-legged.
Ears like blades.
And above all else—cunning.
Whenever Pung Hyeon closed the gap with the Grass-Skimming Step, the creatures would kick off a sheer cliff face two or three times and launch themselves into the air, twisting direction mid-flight.
Places where no human foot had any business landing.
These rabbits landed on them anyway, and bolted.
"Those aren't rabbits!"
"Those are just flying squirrels!"
Day one.
He didn't catch a single one, let alone five.
He went to bed hungry.
Day two.
He gritted his teeth and caught two.
Still nowhere near five.
He went to bed hungry again.
Morning of the third day.
Pung Hyeon crouched between two rocks, clutching his empty stomach, watching the rabbits flee into the distance with a hollow stare.
And then it hit him.
Chasing them was never going to work.
They were always half a beat ahead. As long as he was the one giving chase, he could spend days staring at nothing but their retreating backsides.
"…Then."
Pung Hyeon's eyes narrowed.
"Stop chasing."
For the entire rest of that day, he didn't pursue a single rabbit.
Instead, he *watched* them.
Which rocks they used to change direction. Which gaps they ducked into. Which patches of grass they liked to cut across.
Once those patterns started to feel familiar, Pung Hyeon stopped following and started arriving first—planting himself ahead of where the rabbit was going.
Not a chase.
A cutoff.
One stride of the Grass-Skimming Step, and he materialized like a ghost in front of their escape route.
The half-breath the rabbit froze in surprise.
That was the moment he reached out.
That day, he caught all five.
That night—the first time in his life he'd eaten five pieces of warm rabbit meat with a bowl of millet rice—Pung Hyeon was so happy he nearly cried.
"Master. I finally caught five today."
"I know."
Cheonbija was sprawled out on a sun-warmed rock, picking his teeth, and answered without looking up.
"But do you actually think that's your real ability?"
"…Pardon?"
"Any clever little schemer can figure out how to cut off an escape route."
Cheonbija sat up.
"The problem is your feet. They still land first and think second."
A chill ran down Pung Hyeon's spine.
"Instead of emptying your weight in the instant your foot touches the grass, you plant your whole foot down and then scramble to pull the energy up after the fact."
"That's why you're half a beat behind the rabbits."
He was exactly right.
Disturbingly, skin-crawlingly right.
"…How do I fix that?"
"You don't fix it."
Cheonbija tapped his own temple with two fingers.
"You forget it."
"As long as your brain is issuing the order—*now send the energy to the tips of your feet*—you'll always be one beat slow. By the time the command reaches your feet, the rabbit is already gone."
The old man's gaze turned serious.
"Your body has to be light before it even touches the grass, without routing through your head at all. Stop thinking. Carve it into your cells."
From that day on, Cheonbija's training got one degree more brutal every single day.
"Today, blindfolded."
"Today, left hand tied behind your back."
"Oh, it's raining today—even better. The more slippery it is, the better the training."
Every morning Pung Hyeon faced some new circle of hell and unleashed a torrent of curses under his breath.
*This old geezer's hobby is killing people.*
But the more he cursed inwardly, the more his *thinking legs* slowly became *unthinking legs*.
Even in the darkness behind a blindfold, his soles read the texture of the ground first.
Even on rain-slicked rock, his toes had already shed their weight before they made contact.
The warmth in his energy center no longer needed his command.
It rose on the inhale, flowed down through his thighs on the exhale, through his calves, through the soles of his feet—an unbroken trickle, like a thin stream of water.
Like a river that had always been there.
About two weeks in, one evening after he'd caught his five rabbits with ease and returned to camp, Pung Hyeon asked offhandedly:
"Master. About the Grass-Skimming Step—is this it? I feel like I could catch just about any animal at this point."
Cheonbija paused mid-peel on a roasted sweet potato.
Then he let out a short, dry laugh.
"Is this it? Kid, you've barely learned to pretend to step on grass."
"…Grass?"
"Grass-Skimming Step. Grass. Skim. Step. Exactly what it says—footwork that walks on top of grass."
Cheonbija chewed a half of the sweet potato and pointed a finger at the sky.
"Now then. What is the name of our art?"
"…Cheonroe Divine Steps."
"That's right. Cheonroe. Heavenly thunder."
For just a moment, the old man's eyes shed their usual slyness and went somewhere far away.
"You, who now walks on grass—will one day walk on lightning. A day will come when you run with heaven's thunder beneath your feet. When that day arrives, there will be nothing in this world that can keep up with you."
Pung Hyeon swallowed without meaning to.
For the first time, it occurred to him that the techniques of this absurd little sect might actually be something extraordinary.
"W-when does that happen? The lightning-walking."
"Hard to say."
Cheonbija tossed the rest of the sweet potato into his mouth.
"If you survive."
"…If I survive?"
"…For now, go catch the rest of your rabbits."
*…It's always rabbits.*
Pung Hyeon was turning away with a pout when something stopped him.
Something strange.
The old man's eyes—usually slick with rambling nonsense and easy smiles—were fixed on some point far beyond the mountain, quiet and sunken.
Like a man remembering something he'd left behind a very long time ago.
A debt, maybe. A person. Or a sin.
"…Master?"
"Stop dawdling and go to sleep."
"Tomorrow you'll be suffering twice as much."
When Pung Hyeon rubbed his eyes and looked again, the familiar sly grin had already returned to the old man's face.
So completely that Pung Hyeon almost wondered if he'd imagined the whole thing.
And so another month passed.
Pung Hyeon could now catch five Mount Tai rabbits in under a quarter hour with his eyes closed.
"Master."
"I am genuinely sick of rabbits."
"I've eaten so much rabbit that I think I smell like one."
"I'm pretty sure I've developed a twitching nose."
"Oh yeah?"
"Perfect timing, then."
Cheonbija nodded with great satisfaction.
"You've graduated from rabbits."
Color flooded back into Pung Hyeon's face for the first time in a while.
"So now I can finally eat a real meal like a normal human being—"
"Starting tomorrow, it's deer."
"…Pardon?"
"Rabbits you can catch if you're just fast enough."
"But deer are fast *and* they don't get tired."
Cheonbija showed his yellowed teeth in a wide grin.
"A sprinter like you won't last a hundred steps behind a deer."
"Just you wait."
"You'll soon understand that rabbits were paradise."
Watching that grin, Pung Hyeon felt it in his gut.
The phrase *a real meal* might not be coming back into his life anytime soon.
And that grim premonition, as always, had never once been wrong.