A Pure Art of My Own
Jeon Woo-chi circled around Seo Yu-ri for a long while.
The natural qi Seo Yu-ri had taken in was flowing smoothly through her meridians, raising no conflict whatsoever.
So stable that no one would have believed this was her first time using the Pure Art.
“Grandmaster?”
“Hold still for a moment.”
Jeon Woo-chi pressed her fingertips to Seo Yu-ri's wrist.
Light spilled from the tiny fingertips and slowly traced its way along Seo Yu-ri's meridians.
“Strange.”
“What is?”
“Her comprehension is abysmal.”
Seo Yu-ri's face stiffened.
“Her control over spiritual power isn't particularly delicate, either.”
The stiffened expression grew even darker.
“Her interpretation speed is ordinary. If anything, I'd say it leans toward slow.”
Without answering, Jeon Woo-chi reached out into the empty air.
This time, energies of different natures were jumbled together far more intricately than before.
“Try spreading the Pure Art with these energies.”
Seo Yu-ri closed her eyes with a sulky look.
Then, one by one, she began pushing out the natural qi that had gathered at her fingertips.
After watching her for a long stretch, Jeon Woo-chi drifted back over and addressed Dohyeon.
“This child has little talent for understanding spells or learning Taoist arts. Of course, that's purely by my standards.”
“Is that so?”
“But when it comes to sensory intuition, she's overwhelming. The perception that distinguishes the natures of natural qi, the instinct that predicts what will happen when different energies collide—in that regard, she's practically precognitive. Better than even me.”
The storage room fell silent.
Seo Yu-ri was watching Dohyeon's reaction, and Dohyeon kept his expression carefully bland.
He had made up his mind to share the Pure Art generously, but with her succeeding first, he apparently couldn't help feeling self-conscious.
Still, Dohyeon didn't hold any real resentment about the situation.
He had graduated from the belief that he was the protagonist of the world back in middle school, after all.
Then again—if his own master said this girl's talent surpassed his, wasn't she a once-in-a-century genius?
“However. It is only her senses, mind you.”
Jeon Woo-chi wore an ambiguous expression.
“Sensation is absolutely essential to the Pure Art. Natural qi changes in nature and quantity every single moment, so knowing the spell isn't enough to wield it.”
“Then why is that a problem?”
“That child doesn't understand what she's feeling.”
Jeon Woo-chi pointed at Seo Yu-ri, who was still sorting through the natural qi.
“She can't explain why she pushed out a certain energy, or what she mixed with what, or how much. She's moving on nothing but a sense of right or wrong.”
“But she's sorting accurately right now, isn't she, Master?”
“Only because the amount she's handling is small. What do you suppose happens when the volume of natural qi grows, or she meets an energy she's never felt before?”
Dohyeon looked over at Seo Yu-ri sorting the natural qi.
Even now, there was no hesitation in her movements.
But if the amount of qi she absorbed at once grew tenfold, a hundredfold, replacing every step of the calculation with sheer instinct would surely break down.
“The biggest flaw with that approach is that when she gets it wrong, she has no idea what went wrong. She doesn't know the basis of her own judgment, so she can't correct it, and she can't adapt it to new conditions. The moment her senses waver, the Pure Art will collapse right along with them.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Seo Yu-ri looked up at Jeon Woo-chi with a woebegone face.
Truthfully, even her success with the Pure Art had been achieved with Jeon Woo-chi's help, so she had little confidence she understood it at all.
“Study, of course. And practice steadily. Well, even so, at this level she should make it to 5th Rank without too much trouble.”
Perhaps because the shock of learning his disciple might be an even bigger genius than himself had already faded, Jeon Woo-chi flopped down onto her fan and continued lazily.
“Intuition is fast, but it can't be explained, and what can't be explained is hard to repeat. There's no guarantee today's method will work tomorrow. That's why she must drag that intuition as far into her conscious mind as she can.”
“Yes, ma'am!”
“First, try running the spell without my help.”
With that, Jeon Woo-chi settled into an even more comfortable position atop the fan.
She rolled over a few times, then called out to Dohyeon.
“By the way, disciple.”
“Yes?”
“When are you making my drink?”
Jeon Woo-chi let her arm dangle limply over the edge of the fan.
“I lectured for far too long. I'm so exhausted I can't move a single finger.”
“...I need to practice too, you know.”
“You already succeeded once, so it'll come easily. But I need my drink right now.”
Dohyeon sighed, set down the scroll, and got to his feet.
“I'll make what you asked for earlier.”
“That's the spirit!”
Dohyeon headed for the cooking station he'd set up in one corner of the storage room.
The simple tools and ingredients he'd bought while studying café drinks sat neatly arranged there.
The storage room was quite large, so Dohyeon had furnished it here and there, dividing it up into something like separate rooms.
As he crushed ice by hand, Dohyeon sank into thought.
'Draw sensation up into the realm of consciousness, huh.'
He certainly understood the structure of the Pure Art.
Gather natural qi, refine it, then convert it into his own spiritual power through the meridians.
The problem was the refinement stage.
The composition of natural qi shifted with location, weather, and time of day.
Both the total quantity and the ratios changed, so the spellcaster had to sense the surrounding energy each time and find the ratio and composition their own body could accept.
Jeon Woo-chi had made that judgment consciously, through accumulated experience and talent built up over centuries before she'd gained the Pure Art.
Seo Yu-ri leapt over every step of the calculation with her innate intuition.
But Dohyeon possessed none of the sensory gifts those two had.
'Honestly, spiritual power as an energy still feels foreign to me in the first place.'
It had been less than a year since he'd come here from the world he used to live in.
Setting aside senses and talent, his experience was hopelessly lacking.
You could even call it a deficit in his fundamental understanding of spiritual power.
'Wait, though. Do I actually have to do the sorting myself?'
Dohyeon's hand stopped crushing the ice.
Compare natural qi against his own spiritual power.
If the collision worsened, reduce the proportion of the energy he'd just added.
If it drew closer, keep adjusting in that direction.
Give up on hitting the right answer on the first try, and instead shave down the error every time he missed.
'That's just regression analysis.'
Dohyeon slapped his own forehead.
To think he'd forgotten even this most basic AI technique just because he hadn't studied it in a while.
Take the wavelength of his own spiritual power as the target value.
Set the difference between the refined natural qi and his original spiritual power as the error.
Dohyeon set down the drink he'd been making.
'Let the spell do the studying for me—I just need the end result to match.'
He pulled out a blank scroll and spread it open; a brush appeared in his hand.
From behind him, Jeon Woo-chi was saying something or other, but he ignored it.
Drawing on memories of his past life, the brush tip darted rapidly across the scroll.
A spell that continuously observed the surrounding environment and corrected its own values until the result approached the target.
The first run would demand trial and error, since there'd be no training data, but if the results were stored, each subsequent run would grow progressively faster.
In essence, an artificial intelligence for refining natural qi.
“Disciple.”
Dohyeon studied the overall structure he'd drafted, then began layering the complete spell over it in the empty air.
“Disciple?”
By the time he finished drawing, dense blue spells had taken up position all around him.
“Let's at least finish the drink you were making first...”
Dohyeon ignored her and reached a hand toward the center of the spell.
Vmmm.
The spell-scripts filling the space around him lit up one after another, in sequence.
Following the layers Dohyeon had constructed, they began searching for the optimal equation to reshape natural qi into Dohyeon's spiritual power.
“Ugh.”
Spiritual power drained from his dantian at a frightening rate.
It wasn't supposed to require that much in the first place, but Dohyeon's spiritual reserves—short of even 1st Rank—were the problem.
I really do need to eat that spirit herb soon and build them up to a decent level.
'But if I can just get through one full cycle, the natural qi entering my body will refill my empty dantian on its own, and it'll fuel itself from then on.'
After countless rounds of correction, the natural qi was finally refined enough to begin flowing into Dohyeon's meridians.
Kuaaah.
It was in a completely different league from the spell he'd hastily thrown together to capture the Mountain Lord.
Back then, he'd shoved energy in recklessly and been rewarded with nothing but pain; this time, the natural qi was drawn in to match Dohyeon's own spiritual power, and only a refreshing energy lingered through his body.
'So this is what a high-rank spellcaster's vision feels like.'
It was the sensation that, so long as this energy circled within him, he could do anything.
Dohyeon slowly raised his hand.
Along his fingertips, a bird made of blue flame bloomed into being and drifted lightly around the storage room.
The spells he'd only ever designed, never once executed, were now manifesting freely at his hand.
“What did you just do?”
Jeon Woo-chi had risen from her fan, her gaze locked on Dohyeon.
“I refined the natural qi to fit my body.”
“No—you didn't sense the natural qi and pick it out yourself, did you?”
“I modified your spell a little.”
“Show me the spell. One more time.”
“Sure, whatever.”
As Dohyeon swept his hand, his spell began drawing itself in the air.
Jeon Woo-chi read slowly through the spell, frowned, and spoke.
“I'm looking straight at it and I can't make heads or tails of it.”
Jeon Woo-chi read through the densely floating spell again and again.
Each individual script clearly belonged to the same system of spellcraft, and yet it was as if it had been written in a brand-new language—incomprehensible.
When she'd watched the flow of his spiritual power earlier, it hadn't followed any fixed answer; the spell itself had seemed to seek out the solution with every failure.
Jeon Woo-chi was unable to say a word for a long time.
She had wandered the eight provinces of Joseon and beheld countless geniuses and eccentrics.
Every now and then, visitors came seeking her legacy.
Even when those people created spells of their own, it was no more than strengthening existing spells or altering their structure.
But to hand the spellcaster's role over to the spell itself—to make the spell think for itself?
This was nothing short of creation.
Wasn't this the very domain of gods who bring forth life?
“Disciple, did you perhaps achieve reversal to youth in the womb?”
“Haha.”
Studying Dohyeon's reaction, Jeon Woo-chi let out an awkward laugh.
Well, to be fair, reversing to youth was a feat that existed only in legends.
“The very first disciple I ever took in... and he turns out to be a monster.”