1 You Stinky Brat!
"Dreams, the manifestation of our will, our hopes and wishes, are like grains of sand in our palms.
If we relax our hand, they flutter away with the wind, lost in some faraway forgotten place, and if we hold them too tight, they crumble to dust, lost yet again from our grasp.
Or perhaps it would be better to call them water, for they churn our thoughts like the sea does with foam, promises of their deepest desires, ultimately returning to the waters.
They are a beautiful and powerful thing, dreams, for when they grow, they can turn darkness to light, and when they shatter, they can tear worlds apart."
"But, Senior brother Lee, doesn't that mean they are very dangerous, then why do we have the [108 strums of the Dreamers heart] as the core scripture of our sect?" Dongjae asked, sitting up straighter on the mat as he looked inquiringly at their senior, confused by the contradiction.
"That's because-"
"Our founding ancestor, the Great Sovereign Enchanting Fairy, had used her divine gift [The Heart of Joyful Sorrow] to create the Intangible divine physique, which can help refine ones body into an astral form, allowing the practitioner to shape-shift their body to the form of the soul, intangible and ethereal, at will. Of course, that legendary realm is something that even the founding ancestor could not achieve. However, just cultivating it to the second layer can give u immense benefits." interrupted Min ah, cutting off her irritating classmate "If you spent half the time you do eating you'd have touched upon the second level, not like the idiot fatty you are right now."
"Hehe, you know me best Noona~"
"Aishhh, do you think this is something to laugh over?! Come here you stinky brat, if I don't spank your fat bottoms red today then i will write my name backwards from now!!"
"Dongjae, Min Ah, stop!!!"called out Lee jeong ahn, but the two didn't listen, too busy chasing and being chased to notice the exasperated sigh from their senior brother. None of the other disciples paid them any attention - such a scene was routine on Norae mountain, after all.
******
Norae mountain was one of the hundred peaks of the Celestial Note sect, with exactly 99 disciples residing in its eaves. It was just an ordinary mountain, home to the lowest disciples and workers. It was situated on the outskirts of the sect, a days walk away from Pang Doshi.
Pang Doshi was a city of merchants and traders filled with adventures and youths aspiring to pass the trials and join the sect so they could etch their names in history as heroes and leaders.
Every day at dawn and dusk, the workers of Norae mountain would travel down to the forest behind to gather herbs and resources for their cultivation, as well as travel to Pang Doshi to purchase the daily necessities for the Sect. It was a grueling task that more than one disciple called out "BS" for, yet in the name of "polishing their minds", the disciples of Norae Mountain were tasked to handle these day to day affairs.
All was going well, or as well as things did for people on Norae mountain, until they took an unexpected turn. That is, when one day Min ah chased Dongjae too far into the woods, and the woods began to stir. An encounter too bizarre to be called fortunate or misfortunate happened in the woods that day, and it changed the lives of the siblings, and all the people of Norae mountain, forever...
