"Today," Chun Ma said with quiet conviction, "we temper the body."
The room smelled like sweat and dust again. The others barely made it through the door before he started drawing strange diagrams on the whiteboard. None of them made sense. Lines. Circles. Arrows pointing to clouds.
Woo-jin squinted. "Is that… a cabbage?"
"No," Chun Ma said. "That is the core. The center of energy. All motion must radiate from here."
"It looks like a sad vegetable."
"Silence."
Earlier that day, Chun Ma had experienced something deeply disturbing.
P.E. class.
They called it "track day."
The teacher had barked orders. Laps around the field. Sprints. Stretches. Some kind of football drill where half the class stood around pretending to care.
To Chun Ma, it was chaos. No order. No purpose. No clarity of motion.
"These movements are pointless," he had said out loud.
The coach had glared at him. "You can sit out if you're going to keep mumbling to yourself."
"I am observing."
"You're weird."
That one hit him harder than any sword slash.
Weird?
He once split a mountain with a palm strike.
Now he was weird?
Back in the storage room, Chun Ma ordered the four disciples into a line.
"Today," he said, "we train footwork."
"Again?" Woo-jin sighed.
"No skipping."
"You keep saying that, but I like skipping."
"Skips break stances. You cannot build power with spaghetti knees."
Woo-jin leaned toward Seo-jin. "He said spaghetti knees."
Seo-jin was busy holding a phone behind his back, recording the whole session for later "analysis" (but mostly for laughs).
Hana stepped forward.
"Alright. What do we do?"
Chun Ma nodded. Finally, someone serious.
"You follow my lead. Watch carefully."
He slid into a deep stance. Hands raised, feet light. Then he began a flowing, strange series of steps. Like dancing, but rigid. Like walking, but floating.
To him, it was the Iron Cloud Step.
To everyone else, it looked like a lost uncle trying to play DDR on silent mode.
Woo-jin leaned over again. "I feel like he's summoning a spirit animal."
"He kinda is," Hye-rin whispered. "Except the animal is embarrassment."
Still, they tried to copy him.
Hana was the first to start mirroring the movement properly. Not perfectly, but close. Her body adjusted naturally. Her breath slowed.
Her eyes focused.
Chun Ma noticed.
"You," he said. "You almost felt it."
"Felt what?"
"The ground breathing under you."
Woo-jin blinked. "Bro, that's not a thing."
But Hana looked at her feet. For just a moment, she thought—maybe. Just maybe.
After training, they all slumped against the wall again.
Woo-jin wiped sweat off with his shirt. "This is the worst gang ever."
"We're not a gang," Seo-jin muttered. "We're a sect, remember?"
"I feel like we need a cooler name. Like... 'The Roof Crew' or something."
"Pass," said Hye-rin.
"Iron Disciples?" Hana offered.
They all stared at her.
"…What? It sounded kind of badass."
Chun Ma stood at the window, arms folded.
"We are not a gang. We are not a club. We are a legacy reborn. You just don't see it yet."
"Right," Woo-jin said, stretching. "And I'm secretly a dragon prince from another dimension."
Chun Ma blinked.
"…You could be."
"No, I was joking—okay never mind."
The next day, Woo-jin returned to the group with a new kid.
"Guys, this is Min-jae," he said. "He owes me money and needs a place to hang out. Figured I'd bring him to the weird cult."
"We are not a cult," Chun Ma said firmly.
Min-jae raised an eyebrow. "Why does the club room smell like menthol and despair?"
"Silence," Chun Ma said, stepping forward. "State your body age and injuries."
"Uh... what?"
"Your core. Is it stable? Do you suffer from energy clogs? Have you aligned your breath with the sky pulse?"
Min-jae slowly turned to Woo-jin.
"You dragged me into a cult, didn't you?"
"Yep."
That night, Chun Ma sat again on the rooftop.
The city glittered below, cold and buzzing. Drones blinked in the sky. Voices echoed from nearby apartment windows.
He looked at his open palm.
So weak.
His body still lacked the strength of his past life. But something was beginning. Something faint. Like a tiny flame catching wind.
The system returned.
⎛System Notification⎠
Disciples: 5 (1 Pending Acceptance)
Hana – Latent Potential: Stirred
Progress: 9%
Warning: Outer World Detection Rising
He didn't understand what that meant yet.
But he would be ready.