New Disciples
"So you've been recovering here all this time?"
Dohyeon looked at Jeon Woo-chi, who at some point had returned to looking perfectly whole.
"Recovering, more or less. Truth is, I just ran away here."
Jeon Woo-chi spoke bitterly as she gazed down at her cup of liquor.
"It was a hiding place to heal my body after Gangrim got me. I took that spell from the outer realm, so I tried studying the outer realm itself — but it didn't get me anywhere."
"And so all that remains of you is a lingering thought-form."
"Something like that. Couldn't find any way to restore a soul."
Jeon Woo-chi shrugged with a careless air.
The direction she had pursued wasn't wrong — she had simply never found a means of restoring a soul.
For years she had tried to heal herself, but it amounted to pouring water into a shattered vessel over and over again.
No matter how much she restored her body, the soul was gone, so spiritual power wouldn't flow; the hollowed-out flesh rotted away almost as soon as it mended. Worse, her torn soul kept leaking her vital energy, and her remaining lifespan dwindled by the day.
"In the end I accepted death and split off what little of me remained, leaving it behind as a thought-form."
"To pass the art of Seonsul down to later generations?"
"Nah. I wanted to screw with them."
And here I thought a legendary Taoist would carry some grand purpose for the world. Turns out she's no different from an ordinary person.
Having talked with her like this, she seemed no different from any woman in her twenties — how on earth had she ended up fighting the forces trying to resurrect an outer god?
Considering how few kind accounts of Jeon Woo-chi appeared in the history books, she must have fought against the entire Taoist establishment too.
"You'll have to stop those bastards yourself anyway. The moment an outer god revives, hell on earth begins."
"But haven't you never actually seen an outer god yourself, Lady Jeon Woo-chi? A whole thousand years have passed. Surely the gap can't have widened that much?"
"And this is what they mean by brave through sheer ignorance. Fine — I'll show you the memories I dug up about the outer god."
Hmm. I handle the monsters in the Magyeong rifts easily enough already. Is it really that dangerous?
Jeon Woo-chi rose from the wooden bench and approached Dohyeon.
"You may feel dizzy for a moment. Try not to vomit."
"Wait a second. What are you trying to—"
Jeon Woo-chi's index finger pressed against the space between Dohyeon's brows.
In an instant, the pristine white mindscape flipped over.
The sky was black.
Not dark because it was night.
It was as if the sky that should have occupied that place had been carved out whole — nothing existed there at all.
Dohyeon stood in the middle of a wilderness stained with blood.
Thousands of Taoists had arrayed themselves in formation.
A colossal sealing array blanketed the entire mountain range. Pillars of spiritual power pierced the heavens.
The miracles of the world had gathered in a single place — sorcery, Taoist arts, formation magic, onmyodo, voodoo, and more besides.
So this is what a war of the gods looks like.
If they set their minds to it, they could probably destroy the planet.
At that moment, a slender fissure split open in the middle of the black sky, and the abyss peered through.
Then the world began to scream.
The rivers flowing across the ground surged upward into the sky, and the shadows of the Taoists standing unharmed convulsed violently and began vomiting blood.
"Guaaaagh!"
Thousands of miracles guttered out, and monsters came swarming from every direction.
Nothing in the modern era could compare to their ferocity and size.
But Dohyeon's eyes never touched the ground.
Instinct alone drew his gaze to the fissure in the sky.
Something beyond it was moving. Trying to come out.
Can that thing even be called a living creature?
An existence merely perceiving it was overwhelming.
A being for which the word "god" fit all too well—
Crack!
"Hrk—!"
Dohyeon came back to his senses and stumbled backward.
His stomach churned and his skull felt like it was boiling. Blood streamed from his nose as he sank to one knee.
It had been nothing more than an illusion, yet the mindscape couldn't withstand the shock — the pristine white world swayed and buckled.
"What was that?"
"A memory I received from a ruin. Whoever left it asked that anyone who might forget the past and try to undo the seal be stopped."
Before Jeon Woo-chi had even finished speaking, the white space heaved and began to crack.
The water's surface spread at his feet blurred like mist, and the edges of the wooden bench slowly started to erase themselves.
Jeon Woo-chi looked down at her own hand.
The tips of her fingers were faintly scattering as well.
"Well, this is sooner than I thought. Not much time left."
"What do you mean?"
"Eh, this wasn't the only copy of me anyway. Here — take this."
Jeon Woo-chi swirled her hand, and a small pouch rose up from beneath the water's surface.
An aged pouch made of black silk.
"My treasure pouch. Everything I used while alive is inside. And this is the fan I carry."
Then, from who knew where, a fan painted with blue clouds appeared in her hand.
From the fan's end hung a small jade tablet engraved with a fox running across the clouds.
"Wait — aren't things received here just illusions?"
"Think of this as a kind of certificate of claim. It lets you take them out and use them once you're back in reality."
Jeon Woo-chi's body was now little more than a faint outline.
"Check the details when you get out. See you around."
The water beneath his feet shattered, and Dohyeon's body plunged into a bottomless dark.
The last thing he heard was the sound of Jeon Woo-chi's laughter before everything sank into blackness.
Dohyeon opened his eyes.
Cold air flooded deep into his lungs.
"Master!"
The instant the familiar voice reached him, someone seized his body and shook it hard.
"Ugh — hold on a second."
I come back from the dead and she's trying to finish me off?
When Dohyeon lifted his head, he saw Seo Yu-ri's face, drenched in tears.
"Waaah. I thought you were going to die."
"So we're outside the Magyeong rift?"
"Yes! You suddenly teleported and then we were just here."
Dohyeon slowly raised his upper body.
His skull rang as if it would split, but the pain that had felt like being torn apart was gone without a trace. His left arm, frozen and unmoving, worked fine again, and the flank that the Mountain Lord's spiritual power had been burning through bore not a single scar.
I really am fully healed.
A dead woman commanding Taoist arts of this caliber — how strong must she have been in life?
He looked around. Trees swaying in the wind, blue sky dotted with drifting clouds.
It felt as though it had all been a dream — but the unseen spirit of the academic hall, and the treasure pouch and fan resting in his hand, proved that everything had been real.
So much for my goal of opening a cafe and living an ordinary life. That evaporated in an instant.
Well — I made it back alive. I'll think about the rest later.
Dohyeon parted the mouth of the treasure pouch in his hand.
The black space inside rippled, and the blue fan was drawn inside in one smooth motion. He tucked the pouch itself into the front of his robe after it.
"Master, was that what you got for clearing the ruins?"
"I'll explain later."
"Wow, but I had no idea you could cast up to the 5th Tier, Master. What Rank Taoist are you, anyway?"
Even having just barely escaped a near-death crisis, Seo Yu-ri came bouncing over with a cheerful voice.
In a way, that's its own kind of Taoist art. How can a person be this relentlessly positive?
"Let's head back."
Dohyeon turned toward the flight spell — and found Kurahashi and Kwon Na-yeong staring straight at him.
Dohyeon flinched.
Setting aside the fact that Seo Yu-ri had just called him "Master," Kwon Na-yeong had watched him cast a 5th-Tier spell with her own eyes, moments ago.
It was far too late to hide it.
Seeing Dohyeon frozen in place, Seo Yu-ri hastily spoke up.
"Master! Kwon Na-yeong and Kurahashi say they want to learn Taoist arts from you too!"
"What?"
"It wasn't me who told them! I just said they should ask you themselves, that's all!"
Seo Yu-ri waved both hands as if protesting her innocence.
"I never said anything about the formulas!"
Apparently the oath kept her from speaking of the structure or methods of the spells Dohyeon had personally taught her. She must have simply reasoned that since a mere handyman like him had cast a 5th-Tier spell while waiting here, there had to be some secret technique behind it.
Dohyeon looked slowly at Kwon Na-yeong and Kurahashi, and neither showed any sign of denying it.
"Well, I have no intention of teaching."
At Dohyeon's words, the corners of Kwon Na-yeong's eyes twitched.
"I clearly watched you use a 5th-Tier spell. Where exactly did you see that formula? As I understand it, anything 5th Tier and above is classified as high-tier magic — it shouldn't even exist in the library."
Kwon Na-yeong stepped forward and pressed him with sharp eyes.
"Haha. I happened to see it once while cleaning out a research lab."
"If you enable me to cast spells of the 3rd Tier or higher, I'll show you the upper-tier formulas from my family's secret records."
Dohyeon's eyebrows rose slightly.
"That would let me cast high-tier spells legally, wouldn't it?"
He would certainly be crossing stronger people before long, so the right to legitimately use upper-tier formulas was a substantial gain. Invoking the name of the Andong Kwon clan would be a nearly unassailable excuse.
But does Kwon Na-yeong really have that kind of authority?
Whether she caught the doubt in his eyes or not, Kwon Na-yeong spoke with a wounded look.
"People get the wrong idea, but I am the Andong Kwon clan's treasured jewel, you know. Authority like this is more than enough."
"I heard you were the child the family cast out."
"Nobody cast me out!"
Kwon Na-yeong flared up, voice rising.
"Anyway — I will do it. I absolutely will!"
"Well, it's not a bad offer. Come visit again — with Seo Yu-ri."
"I-if you can just let me handle a shikigami, I can open my family's records to you too."
Kurahashi, who had been watching all of this intently, shuffled forward and edged into the conversation.
Do these kids think I'm some kind of Doraemon?
Ugh, whatever.
He pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead.
Dohyeon repeated several times that he would do his best but could guarantee nothing — and somehow ended up telling all three of them to come find him.
When he came to his senses, his secret disciples had grown to three.
Oh, what the hell.
He decided to sort out the rest once he was back at the academic hall.
But there was one thing Dohyeon hadn't considered.
Clearing the ruins of a Taoist as famous as Jeon Woo-chi was, in effect, a guarantee that one had reached the level of a 5th-Rank Taoist at minimum. Granting partial access to their family archives in exchange for private instruction from such a Taoist was by no means an expensive price.
Especially for those two.
Unable to properly cast spells, they could barely attend classes, let alone set foot in a research lab.
Even if Dohyeon couldn't solve their problems, simply forging a connection would be a gain — and if he made a name for himself, that link would become a powerful asset when they eventually returned to their families.
As Dohyeon stepped onto the flight spell, Kwon Na-yeong and Kurahashi's eyes narrowed in unison and met in midair.
I'll be the one to win Master Dohyeon's teaching first.
Even Seo Yu-ri began to tense up at the atmosphere — she had just realized that this could mean less instruction for herself.
Wait a second.
Seo Yu-ri's face went rigid.
In her excitement, she had personally brought two rivals on board.
"Master!"
Seo Yu-ri hurriedly claimed the seat beside Dohyeon.
"What's gotten into you?"
"I'm your first disciple, right?"
Dohyeon tilted his head, utterly baffled.
She was the one who had added the disciples — and she was the one feeling the crunch now.