CHAPTER: Chapter 28
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Chapter 28
“Are you all right?”
Despite Uncheon’s question, she retreated instead of answering and curled in on herself.
Like an injured beast driven to the edge of a cliff.
“…You are someone I have not seen in the Inner Archive.”
Her lips were blue and trembling, but the wariness contained within her voice was as sharp as frost.
“I am Uncheon, a warrior under Hall Master Gal Muheun.”
“…You do not need to worry about me.”
At a glance, she looked precarious.
Unable to control the Yin Qi swirling inside her body at all, white breath scattered like frost every time she breathed.
‘She is overexerting herself.’
Instead of answering, Uncheon looked at the old scroll trembling in her hand.
“Severed Meridian Affliction. And the Yin Qi has penetrated all the way into your marrow.”
“…How do you know that?”
Her voice was still full of wariness.
However, Uncheon spoke calmly, yet with words that carried weight.
“I can tell that much at a glance. I also suffer from a congenital Severed Meridian Affliction.”
Her blue eyes widened.
“Th-That cannot be. If you had Severed Meridian Affliction, you could not be standing so perfectly fine at your age…?”
In that instant, the strength left her hand, and the old scroll fell to the floor with a soft thud.
Rustle.
The unfurled scroll was filled with bizarre letters he had never seen before.
Uncheon slowly bent down and picked it up.
‘…Is this writing from the Western Regions? Or an ancient script?’
The characters were so difficult to decipher that they looked like worms crawling across the page.
However, the notes left in the margins caught his eye.
[By causing Extreme Yin and Extreme Yang to collide, one bursts open blocked acupoints… Amid the broken ruins, a new path shall open… This is called the Union of Two Extremes.]
Uncheon’s brow narrowed.
From the notes alone, he could see through the vicious principle behind it.
‘This is madness. This is not a treatment method, but something worthy of being called Demonic Arts.’
It was the complete opposite of the Daoist Principle that followed harmony and natural order.
To make a fragile body into a battlefield and force opposing energies to collide within it.
This was not the idea of healing a body, but of shattering it.
“Do not tell me you intend to learn this.”
At Uncheon’s questioning, she urgently reached out her hand.
“Give it back…!”
However, Uncheon lightly drew his hand back and shook his head.
“This is not a cure. It is suicide. Striking acupoints blocked by Extreme Yin with Extreme Yang in order to force them open? Do you truly think your body can endure that impact?”
“……!”
Her lips trembled.
She knew.
She knew that this was a gamble with her life at stake.
However, she no longer had any other choice.
“Do not… concern yourself with me. This is the only method left now.”
Her voice carried the cold venom of one who had nothing left to lose.
With eyes like a wildcat’s, she hurled herself forward to snatch the scroll away.
DASH—!
The sight of her looking as though she might collapse at any moment from illness vanished without a trace.
Her form, closing the distance in an instant, was strangely fast.
WHOOOSH—!
The moment she stretched out her arm, a fierce cold wind surged between the bookshelves.
The Yin Qi inside her body, which had lost all control and run rampant, became a sharp blade at her fingertips and began freezing the space around her.
‘This will be dangerous if it continues. The archive will be damaged as well.’
It was a coldness that seemed as though it would necrotize flesh like the flames of hell if it touched him.
However, instead of dodging, Uncheon stepped forward.
Tap.
Uncheon’s hand precisely caught her wrist as it shot forward like frost.
“……!”
Her blue eyes filled with shock.
The man before her was receiving the cold that could freeze one’s bones the instant it touched them, barehanded and without the slightest concern.
“Let go! Unless you want to freeze to death too!”
She screamed and poured out the Yin Qi she had been suppressing.
White frost began to form over the back of Uncheon’s hand.
Pain like tearing flesh climbed up through his wrist, but Uncheon’s expression remained calm.
“Because I do not want to die.”
Uncheon murmured in a low voice.
“That is why I struggle.”
Along with his words, an alien energy flowed into her body through the wrist he was holding.
It was not internal energy accumulated in the dantian.
It was life force that Uncheon had opened, strand by strand, through the Life-Prolonging Breathing Method he had created himself in order to survive his cursed constitution of Severed Meridian Affliction.
True Origin Qi.
That warm, heavy energy gently enveloped her cold Yin Qi, which had been running wild.
Ssssss—.
Like a heated iron plunged into cold water, white steam rose from the place where the two energies met.
Though energies of different natures should have collided and repelled each other, it was instead like spring sunlight melting the frozen earth of bitter midwinter.
Uncheon’s energy did not suppress the rampaging cold. Rather, it opened a path so that it could scatter naturally.
“Ah…….”
A thin gasp escaped her lips.
It felt as though the icy thorns constricting her heart were melting away.
For the first time since she was born, she experienced breathing without pain.
High above the ceiling, in the darkness, the old man’s eyes gleamed strangely.
‘Ho… look at that boy. To calm so easily a seizure that even the Life-and-Death Exalted One finds difficult to settle once it runs wild?’
Even the watcher, Cheon Gyeon, could not recklessly intervene when she ran rampant.
If he touched her incorrectly, the suppressed Yin Qi could explode and sever her heart meridians.
Whenever she ran wild, the most he could do was protect the books from the cold and call the Life-and-Death Exalted One.
Yet unexpectedly, the newcomer had stepped forward and stopped her rampage.
‘What is that…? It is a method I have never seen even in the Inner Archive. No wonder Gal Muheun treats him specially.’
Uncheon’s True Origin Qi carefully caressed her Yin-Cold Qi as though soothing it.
“…What… is this?”
She blankly looked back and forth between her wrist and Uncheon.
A faint hint of color slowly returned to her blue lips.
“It is not internal energy…?”
The ferocious cold that had been trying to devour her until moments ago had been controlled by a boy she had never seen before.
And with a body that suffered from the same Severed Meridian Affliction as her.
“Could it be… True Origin Qi?”
Her eyes trembled.
The fundamental life force one was born with.
‘To handle it like this… How in the world…?’
Once her breathing regained stability, Uncheon slowly withdrew his hand.
“This is only a stopgap measure. I merely calmed it for a moment. As for a fundamental cure….”
“I know that much.”
She turned her head and snapped back curtly.
However, her fingertips, which had stopped trembling, and the faint color that had returned to her pale cheeks could not lie.
“…Do not misunderstand. I could have calmed myself even without your help.”
It was pride.
A precarious pride that seemed as though it would crumble the moment she leaned on someone else.
Uncheon did not know her name, but he was certain of her identity.
A patient suffering from severe Severed Meridian Affliction, entering and leaving the Inner Archive, a forbidden zone of the Demonic Cult, as though it were her own home.
If even Gal Muheun and Cheon Gyeon were overlooking her dangerous actions, there was only one answer.
‘…This woman must be the granddaughter of the Life-and-Death Exalted One. To think I would meet her first before meeting the Life-and-Death Exalted One himself.’
Uncheon gave a faint laugh and stated the truth without touching her pride too harshly.
“That must be true. After about two hours, it would have settled on its own.”
“…….”
“However, during that time, your heart meridians would have frozen, your lifespan would have been shortened further, and the precious medical books on the shelves would have suffered cold damage and crumbled.”
It struck the mark.
She bit her lip.
There was no way she did not know the damage her rampage would cause.
After a moment, she opened her mouth in a voice that seemed to crawl out of her throat.
“…You are right.”
She raised her head.
The wariness in her blue eyes had softened slightly.
“You said your name was Uncheon, correct? I am Seolyeong… Thank you. I did not want to cause trouble.”
Uncheon picked up the old scroll lying near his feet and spoke.
“That must also be why you tried to learn this reckless and dangerous Demonic Art.”
Uncheon’s gaze deepened.
He handed the scroll to her and quietly added.
“Because you no longer want to be a burden to anyone.”
“……!”
Seolyeong’s blue eyes shook greatly. Uncheon had struck precisely at her most painful wound.
It was the deepest and darkest part of her heart, something she had never wanted anyone to discover.
Her grandfather was the greatest physician of the Demonic Cult, the Demon Physician, and an Exalted One called the Life-and-Death Exalted One, who governed life and death.
‘Because even Grandfather could not cure my illness….’
Watching her grandfather, who was called the Life-and-Death Exalted One, set aside his medicine and sink into despair.
That was a punishment greater than the pain of dying from illness.
“You have a talent for seeing through others. To an unpleasant degree.”
Seolyeong accepted the scroll with a bitter smile.
However, she no longer hid it in her robe.
Instead, she stared straight into Uncheon’s eyes.
“You are right. I… no longer want to be Grandfather’s burden. Even if I die from Qi Deviation while learning this Demonic Art, perhaps that would be better.”
Uncheon saw desperate resolve in her eyes.
A struggle that was prepared for death. No, one that would not hesitate even before death.
It was not simply for her own sake.
‘…Because she could not bear to watch her grandfather, a physician, despair, she reached even for Demonic Arts?’
Uncheon’s gaze rested on her trembling fingertips.
Rather than the madness of the Demonic Cult that Uncheon so hated, it was the desperate survival instinct of a human being standing at the edge of a cliff.
“It is easy to cast off a burden through death. Cowardly easy.”
“What did you say?”
“You may die and free yourself from being a burden, but those left behind will carry the heavier burden of guilt for the rest of their lives.”
Seolyeong’s eyes shook violently.
She was not ignorant of the weight her grandfather would have to carry.
“Prove it by living. Prove that you are not merely a burden, but hope.”
It was also a vow Uncheon had engraved into himself.
His dead senior and junior brothers of Gonryun.
On the shoulders of the survivor rested their deaths, and also the hope called Gonryun’s future.
“…Not a burden, but hope.”
Seolyeong chewed over his words like an incantation.
In her dying eyes, a faint but unmistakable spark of life flared.
“I will remember that.”
After putting away the scroll, Seolyeong gave Uncheon a light bow.
Because if she stayed there any longer, she felt as though she might burst into tears.
Seolyeong left the bookshelves as though fleeing.
‘The granddaughter of the Life-and-Death Exalted One….’
After Seolyeong left, silence returned to the Inner Archive once more.
Uncheon stared for a moment at the place where she had disappeared, then moved his steps back toward the medical book section.
He had spoken confidently before her, but inwardly, Uncheon sighed.
‘In the end, does this mean that even the Demon Physician, said to be the greatest physician of the Demonic Cult, could not find a solution to Severed Meridian Affliction?’
The path to a cure seemed distant.
However, he was not merely disappointed.
‘If I later meet the Life-and-Death Exalted One alone, the fact that I examined her condition today will become a decisive card.’
***
After that day, Uncheon became a ghost of the Inner Archive.
He saved even the time he would have spent eating and read through every medical book he could find.
Rustle.
Every time he turned a page, a cool coldness clung to his fingertips. It was a trace left behind by Seolyeong.
The desperate notes written densely in the margins of the books were proof of how fiercely she had longed for life.
[When Yin Qi reverses through the dantian, press the Yongquan acupoint to calm it… Failed.]
[The principle of fighting poison with poison… The risk is too great.]
Her handwriting trembled, and on some pages, stains had spread that could have been traces of freezing, or perhaps tear marks.
‘…She walked all these paths alone?’
Uncheon clicked his tongue.
‘She researched desperately….’
Like him, she was a fellow patient who had struggled with all her might to survive Severed Meridian Affliction.
‘Is this what it means to pity another with the same illness?’
In fact, she must have suffered far longer than Uncheon, who had only felt the pain of Severed Meridian Affliction for a little over a year after his reincarnation.
It was then.
Uncheon had been frowning slightly before an ancient book written in difficult characters that seemed to have come from the Western Regions.
Thud.
Someone casually threw a thick pile of books onto his desk.
It was Baek Rihyeon.
“What is this…?”
“…Books I have annotated. She also learned the language of the Western Regions from me. Ask if you do not understand.”
Baek Rihyeon crossed his arms and deliberately wore an annoyed expression.
Under normal circumstances, he would have picked a fight, saying that a newcomer was acting insolent.
“Are you helping me?”
“…Do not misunderstand. It is not because I like you.”
Baek Rihyeon abruptly turned his head away and snapped curtly.
“It is just… since you also suffer from Severed Meridian Affliction, I am helping because it might be of even the smallest use to her.”
His words were thorny, but the books he had handed over were key materials that could precisely scratch the part where Uncheon had been stuck.
“…Thank you.”
Uncheon answered briefly and buried himself in the books.
Baek Rihyeon quietly stared at Uncheon’s back.
Complicated emotions were reflected in his eyes.
‘His talent, the Hall Master’s favor, and even the illness she suffers from….’
It was jealousy toward a boy who possessed everything he had wanted, or had wished to reach.
However, a wish greater and more desperate than that jealousy must have been what made him help Uncheon.
‘…Please, find something. As long as she… can live.’
After watching Uncheon for a while, Baek Rihyeon quietly disappeared into the darkness.
***
The smell of aged paper and the dusty scent of wisdom accumulated over thousands of years.
In that silence, Uncheon was immersed in reading the medical books from the Western Regions that Baek Rihyeon had given him.
That stillness was broken by the sound of hurried footsteps approaching.
“Uncheon, you have a guest.”
When Baek Rihyeon stepped aside, a familiar giant of a man appeared behind him.
A man panting roughly and sweating as though drenched in rain.
“…Instructor Ma Chung?”
Uncheon closed the book and rose.
A Head Instructor from the Hidden Demon Cave had come personally to the Inner Archive in broad daylight?
More than anything, Ma Chung’s expression was not that of someone who had merely come to ask how he was doing.
“Damn it. Even though I had the Chief Instructor’s emergency summons, the gatekeepers stopped me. I lost unnecessary time.”
As soon as Baek Rihyeon made way for him, Ma Chung urgently grabbed Uncheon’s shoulder and lowered his voice.
“There is no time. Listen carefully. This is not good news.”
Ma Chung’s expression hardened gravely.
“The Inspectorate bastards are targeting you.”
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