When he opened his eyes.
Pung Hyeon had no idea where he was.
His pack had been untied.
Darkness in every direction.
Not a single star.
The damp smell of earth.
And then.
A raw, animal stench hit him like a fist.
He was inside a cave.
And then.
From somewhere in the dark.
Two yellow lights.
Slowly rose.
……Eyes.
Two amber irises, each the size of a grown man's fist.
Below them.
Saw-blade fangs flashed white in the blackness.
A tiger.
Every muscle in Pung Hyeon's body locked up.
His mind went blank.
His legs turned to stone.
He couldn't even form the thought to run.
Only instinct.
Every tiny hair on his skin.
Screamed *I'm going to die.*
There was no master here to protect him.
No roasted sweet potato.
No rambling nonsense.
No pipe.
Only a starving predator and a starving boy.
Sitting across from each other in the dark.
*That insane old geezer…… He actually wants me dead……*
The tiger let out a low growl.
The sound rolled along the cave walls.
And vibrated straight through Pung Hyeon's bones.
Then.
A massive shadow.
Without a sound.
Launched itself at him.
In that instant.
Pung Hyeon.
Did not think.
No—
There was no time to think.
All those agonizing days chasing rabbits, hunting deer—
everything that time had carved into his body
bypassed his mind entirely
and detonated.
The hairs on his skin stood on end the moment danger registered.
His soles read the ground on their own.
The inner energy in his energy center
poured into his feet
before he ever gave the order.
A massive paw
slammed down on the spot where his head had been.
CRACK—
Rock shattered to powder.
But Pung Hyeon's body.
Was already gone.
His body had read the tiger's attack before it landed—
traced the invisible line that killing intent drew through the dark—
and folded away without a sound.
One light kick off the cave wall.
A step on the falling dust.
And he slid clean over the tiger's enormous back.
And in that moment.
From the tips of his feet.
A faint.
Blue flame.
Sparked.
CRACKLE—
In the instant that absolute terror dragged his inner energy past its limit,
the *thunder* written into the very name of the Cheonroe Sect
revealed itself for the first time—
a pale blue afterimage grazing the soles of his feet.
Pung Hyeon had no time to register what it was.
Only.
Something his master had said once
flickered through his mind.
*You who tread on grass. One day, you will tread on lightning.*
*Is this…… that?*
That was as far as the thought got.
The tiger was furious.
Maddened by prey that kept slipping away,
it roared hard enough to shake the cave walls
and swung its paw.
But Pung Hyeon.
Never once touched those claws.
Because he never tried to fight back.
Because his only goal
was *not to get mauled to death.*
If he'd tried to win, he would have died long ago.
But Pung Hyeon had never intended to win.
He just wanted to live.
That single desire
made his evasions smoother and smoother,
and the tiger's attacks
kept finding nothing but air.
Blue afterimages
traced thin lines through the dark.
Step.
Fold.
Slip.
Step again.
The boy's body became a single streak of blue wind,
weaving through the predator's domain.
How much time passed.
When pale dawn light began seeping through the boulder-blocked cave entrance,
the tiger, exhausted to its core,
finally growled and fell back.
Humiliated in its own territory,
unable to catch a single meal through the night,
the great beast dragged its tail
and disappeared into the depths of the cave.
Pung Hyeon.
Collapsed right there at the cave entrance.
His whole body was caked in sweat and dirt,
and his fingertips wouldn't stop shaking.
But.
He was alive.
Without so much as a scratch.
And only then.
Pung Hyeon saw it.
At the tips of his own feet.
Still faintly rippling.
A blue residual heat.
"……What is this."
"Thunder energy."
Outside the cave.
Cheonbija, perched on a rock and peeling a roasted sweet potato,
answered without a care in the world.
He'd apparently been sitting there watching the whole thing all night.
"You—you old geezer! You actually threw a person into a tiger's den!"
"Boy, the way you talk to your master… I threw you in because I knew you wouldn't die."
Cheonbija split the sweet potato in half and tossed one piece through the gap in the rocks to Pung Hyeon inside, then spoke.
"Listen well."
"Fast legs are only half of escape. The other half is knowing you need to run before the blade ever leaves the hand. Not knowing it in your head—knowing it in the hairs on your back. Today, your hairs woke up. From this day forward, a disciple of the Cheonroe Sect will read the moment death reaches for them from behind before it ever arrives! Ha ha ha!"
Pung Hyeon.
Caught the warm sweet potato.
With hands that still wouldn't stop shaking.
He was furious.
He was terrified.
He wanted to cry.
But strangely.
The bite of sweet potato in his mouth
was sweeter than anything he had ever tasted in his life.
That was what being alive tasted like.
While Pung Hyeon chewed the sweet potato in a daze,
Cheonbija.
Quietly looked down at the faint blue heat still lingering at the boy's feet.
And then.
In a voice too low for Pung Hyeon to hear.
He murmured to himself.
"……But for lightning to show itself this soon. This kid. I expected it, but this is far too early."
The old man's eyes.
Flickered for just a moment.
With something unreadable—
somewhere between warmth and worry.
Like a man recalling some long-ago promise.
Or some long-ago fear.
But Pung Hyeon.
Was too absorbed in the sweet potato
to catch a word of it.
"Master. Is there another one?"
"No, you little punk. That was the last one."
Cheonbija dusted himself off and stood.
Then.
As he ambled down the mountain,
he left one last remark behind.
"Rest. Three days."
"After three days—the last animal."
"……The last one?"
Pung Hyeon's eyes snapped wide open.
*Last* meant
the end of this hellish animal training.
"That's right. Ground beasts end today."
Cheonbija didn't even look back.
He just gave a lazy wave of his hand.
"The last one. Is something that flies."
Pung Hyeon.
Stared blankly through the gap in the rocks at that insufferable master's retreating back.
Rabbits.
Deer.
Tigers.
And now.
Something that flies.
*No way.*
That sinking, dreadful premonition
crawled up his spine once again.
And as always,
it showed no sign of being wrong.