Proof
A week had passed.
In that time, Seo Yu-ri had succeeded in receiving natural qi without any help from Jeon Woo-chi.
She still couldn't explain why she'd chosen it, but her instinct for handling natural qi was so preternatural that even Jeon Woo-chi clicked her tongue in admiration.
Kwon Na-yeong had begun her training in Seonsul around day six as well.
According to Jeon Woo-chi, that alone marked her as remarkably talented.
The product of the finest education and breeding Korea's most elite family could offer — and the verdict was merely "remarkable."
It was clear that Jeon Woo-chi's standards sat a fair distance from anything ordinary.
Kurahashi Shion's training, however, remained on hold.
Untangling her twisted meridians, Jeon Woo-chi had warned, demanded caution even from her.
For now, the best course was to gradually modify Shion's shikigami formulas so she could command her spirit servants using only her modest spiritual power, without stimulating the damaged meridians at all.
And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the week was gone.
Swish.
Swish.
Early morning at Daehan Seodang.
Dohyeon was sweeping the courtyard of Soeun Academy with a broom.
The vacation he'd been granted after returning from the Magyeong rift had ended the day before. Pulling on the laborer's clothes and picking up a broom for the first time in a while, he finally felt like he was back to his ordinary life.
Turns out cleaning really is the most peaceful work there is.
No life-or-death battles. No worrying whether his meridians might rupture. All he had to do was empty his mind and gather the fallen leaves scattered before him into one neat pile.
Over the past week he had invented a brand-new Seonsul for handling natural qi, and taught Taoist magic to four disciples who, not so long ago, would have found it hard just to meet his eyes.
What a huge favor we humble commoners have done.
Swish.
Dohyeon swept on, satisfied.
"Disciple."
A tiny voice spoke up from his shoulder.
While sweeping, Dohyeon casually checked that no one was around, then answered in a murmur. "What is it?"
"Hold your upper body still for a moment."
Perched on Dohyeon's shoulder sat Jeon Woo-chi's doll.
Since her true self was bound to the fan, she couldn't stray far from it, and she'd grown sick of sitting alone in the storage shed — hence this tagalong arrangement. She'd even deployed a perception-obstruction spell, learned from who knows where, which meant Dohyeon had to keep his own concealment formula running at all times.
Not that it was much of a burden; the spell refined itself automatically. Still.
"I told you to stay inside the fan."
"Watching from out here is the whole fun of it. By the way — the seodang doesn't seem to have changed much at all, has it?"
"That's called being historic."
"Old folks and their hatred of change, honestly."
At that remark, Dohyeon briefly calculated Jeon Woo-chi's actual age — then decided that voicing the number would make his day considerably harder, and held his tongue.
He shut his mouth and finished sweeping up the leaves. Jeon Woo-chi grumbled something or other; he paid it no mind.
Think of it as white noise, and it actually improved his productivity.
"Han Dohyeon-ssi!"
Someone was calling him from the academy entrance.
Dohyeon lifted his head.
Full honorifics — for a laborer?
Did I break something somewhere?
While Dohyeon was combing through his own past for crimes, a researcher came to a stop before him, catching his breath.
"Director Baek Da-eun is asking for you."
"Me?"
"Yes. She asks that you come to her private research office."
Why would a Saseong — the head of an entire academy — be calling for me?
Dohyeon leaned the broom against the wall.
"I suppose I'll finish this when I get back."
Three people were seated in Baek Da-eun's private research office, Baek Da-eun included.
Of the three, the only face Dohyeon recognized was hers. The others were Taoists who all looked well advanced in years — and judging from their robes and the badges pinned to their chests, practitioners of at least the 4th Rank, if not higher.
"There you are," Baek Da-eun said, seeing Dohyeon in. "Have a seat for now."
Dohyeon sat down on the sofa across from the two elderly Taoists.
Across the table, their gazes rained down on him.
Curiosity. Suspicion. And stares so openly disapproving that they barely bothered to hide it.
Dohyeon awkwardly folded his hands in his lap.
What is this?
"First, let me report on the ruins investigation."
Baek Da-eun set a stack of documents on the table.
"We surveyed the location your team provided, but found nothing at all."
"We emerged from that spot ourselves, sir."
"There is, of course, a possibility that we simply failed to find it. A space within a space — the number of Taoists in the entire world capable of realizing such a thing could be counted on one hand."
Naturally. Their master has departed — why would anything be left behind?
Jeon Woo-chi's whispered telepathy from beside him made it hard to concentrate, but Dohyeon did his best to listen.
"Enough dancing around it," an old man seated to the left of the table cut in, breaking off Baek Da-eun's explanation. "What they're saying is that proof of your story is required. That perhaps you killed the academy students and are covering it up."
The old man's name was Choi Mun-hyeok.
Saseong of Cheongryu Academy at Daehan Seodang, and a figure deeply entwined with the great Taoist clans.
"From the look of it, nothing but strays and rejects went into that place. The question stands — how exactly did you come out of the ruins?"
"Are you saying I am telling lies?"
"A laborer felling a spirit beast in the first place — you must admit the tale strains belief."
Laborer.
Choi Mun-hyeok put peculiar weight on the word.
To a man who had been born into a great clan, taught great clans, and lived his whole life among them, the old saying that a dragon could rise from a stream was nothing but a joke.
A dragon might rest briefly in a stream — but the loach wriggling within it could never become the dragon.
"Director Choi." Baek Da-eun's voice went cold. "Every member of the team gave the same testimony. A fabrication — why on earth would they do such a thing?"
"My read is this," Choi Mun-hyeok said. "A student died when the shikigami went berserk, and the blast happened to expose some hidden cache. And this fellow pocketed it."
"A hidden cache? I met the lingering will of Jeon Woo-chi myself and passed a legitimate trial."
"The shikigami that supposedly went berserk was unconscious at the time."
Choi Mun-hyeok gave a derisive snort.
"The child of the Andong Kwon clan, whose succession is already precarious thanks to her shattered danjeon. And this Seo Yu-ri girl — a commoner with no proper family name to speak of."
"What does any of that have to do with this matter?"
"Was it not he who put them up to splitting the treasures Jeon Woo-chi left behind?"
Choi Mun-hyeok had never intended to believe their testimony from the start.
The heir of a prestigious clan with a broken danjeon. A commoner with no backing whatsoever. A Japanese student who'd chosen Korea after failing to control her own shikigami.
To him, the three were no raiders of the ruins — merely failures who had latched onto a laborer to hide their own defects.
Hm. Want me to flip this table for you?
Please stay out of this.
If his master jumped in now, of all times, things would only get more tangled.
For all he knew, Choi Mun-hyeok was one of the hidden Outer God factions, probing him. Checking whether any trace of them had been left behind — that would be exactly the move.
Until he had power enough to spare, it was a fact he would have to keep buried.
"Then what is it you want, sir?"
"Simple." Choi Mun-hyeok extended an open palm. "Either return everything you carried out of that place to Daehan Seodang — or prove yourself, in a duel against one of my academy's students."
"That is utterly arbitrary."
Baek Da-eun fired back immediately.
"Under ruin protocol, anything obtained by passing a trial belongs to the raiders who passed it."
"Which is precisely why you must prove it happened."
Choi Mun-hyeok withdrew the hand he'd held out toward Dohyeon.
"If it was a true ruin, you could reasonably defeat a mere academy student. And if it was a cache where he simply picked up discarded items, then reclaiming them is only proper." He curled his lips into a sneer and looked Baek Da-eun up and down. "Unless, of course, you find yourself sympathizing with someone of similar... circumstances."
Choi Mun-hyeok was in the habit of reviling Baek Da-eun even in ordinary company — a woman from an unremarkable family who had clawed her way up to Saseong.
He liked to say a young woman had stolen her disciples' achievements and wormed her way up through cruelty.
Of course, Baek Da-eun had never once taken that lying down, and their feud was infamous enough that even the students knew of it.
Crack.
The teacup sitting on the table froze over and split apart.
A chill radiated from where Baek Da-eun sat.
"Retract that remark."
"My, my. A Saseong of Daehan Seodang who can't even keep a single manifestation formula under control. Aren't you due for an accident any day now?"
The two Saseongs' glares collided in midair.
"Which is why a duel would settle it, wouldn't it?"
"He might have passed on theoretical knowledge alone."
"A spirit beast he couldn't so much as handle? Then surely an academy student will be easy enough for him."
As the two talked past each other in perfect parallel, Dohyeon cut in.
"I'll do it."
"...So that's settled, then."
Baek Da-eun, who hadn't expected Dohyeon to accept so readily, chewed at her lower lip.
Her worry came from what she could sense of him: a mana capacity barely registering 1st Rank.
Yes, the report said he had felled the Mountain Lord — but surely fortune had smiled on him. He'd claimed to have burned through even his innate reserve of heaven-given qi, leaving no clear memory of the fight. Perhaps the spirit beast had simply vanished through sheer luck.
He was a survivor of one of those glitches that old ruins occasionally threw off.
Ugh. I wanted him in my academy so badly. If he loses here, I won't have grounds to bring him in at all.
"When would this take place?"
"Now."
Choi Mun-hyeok rose from his seat as if he'd been waiting for exactly that.
With Jeon Woo-chi shrieking telepathic protests at his side, Dohyeon stood up as well and followed the old man out.
"Disciple!"
Jeon Woo-chi's voice cracked with excitement.
"That old fossil had better lose to you!"
This will be over quickly.
The expression on Dohyeon's face as he walked was colder than it had ever been.
Dozens of academy students had gathered in the vast indoor sparring hall inside the academy grounds.
Dohyeon's opponent: Choi Yun-gyeom, a student of Cheongryu Academy.
Twenty-four years old, already licensed at 3rd Rank — a man all but formally recognized as Choi Mun-hyeok's direct disciple. A rising star of the Gyeongju Choi clan, courted by outside institutions who had to fight for the chance to recruit him.
Choi Yun-gyeom straightened his sleeves as he walked to the center of the hall.
"So it really is a laborer?"
"I can't even sense proper spiritual power off him."
"Yun-gyeom sunbae is practically 4th Rank in reality. I heard he just never bothered to file the paperwork."
"Seriously — if he'd just been honest from the start, none of this would've happened. He brought it on himself."
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Choi Yun-gyeom let his eyes travel over the laborer's clothes Dohyeon wore, and the corners of his mouth lifted.
"You could still make this easy on yourself. Confess now."
Dohyeon said nothing.
"Planning to tough it out to the very end, then?"
A 4th-Rank Taoist serving as referee attached protective talismans to both their backs.
"The match ends when a protective talisman activates or one of you yields. Spells up to the 5th Tier are safe, so don't hold back."
At the bell tolling the start of the duel, Choi Yun-gyeom casually opened a hand.
As scarlet spiritual power coiled and bloomed around him, admiring gasps rose from the onlookers.
Dohyeon extended a hand and activated a formula — and a flame the size of his palm flickered up.
"What is that?"
"Told you. He can't even cast a proper spell."
Even Choi Yun-gyeom shook his head, looking almost disappointed.
"That's all you've got?"
Dohyeon answered by moving a finger.
The blue flame stretched out long, and wings unfurled.
What had been a round blob of fire grew a head and a beak, its long tail feathers trailing through the air.
Hwaryeok!
Two blue firebirds lifted off from Dohyeon's fingertips.
2nd-Tier Construct Taoist Spell — Modified:Firebird.
Where dokkaebi fire could only travel in a straight line, the firebirds moved freely under Dohyeon's adjustments to the formula, carving graceful arcs through the air.
"He really did modify it!"
Behind him, Baek Da-eun cried out — and Dohyeon sent the firebirds hurtling at Choi Yun-gyeom.
"But this much gets you nowhere!"
Choi Yun-gyeom had no intention of going down quietly. In an instant he raised four ice spears and moved to intercept.
Swaee-aek!
The ice spears flew, each tracing a different trajectory.
But the firebirds simply tilted their bodies in midair. One threaded smoothly between two spears; the other dropped sharply in altitude and skimmed along the floor like a low-flying swallow.
"Khh—"
Choi Yun-gyeom threw up an ice wall in desperation. Instead of crashing into it, the firebirds banked at the last possible moment, wings flaring.
The two birds rode up over the ice wall and began circling above Choi Yun-gyeom's head.
He fired ice spear after ice spear skyward, but each time an attack rose to meet them, the birds scattered in different directions only to converge again on his blind spots.
"Wh... what is this?"
Choi Yun-gyeom chased the birds' movements with his eyes — then happened to look over at Dohyeon, and froze solid.
Dohyeon was not controlling the firebirds.
He wasn't even looking at them.
He was simply sketching a new formula in the empty air with both hands, preparing an entirely different spell.
Then whose commands were those birds following?
Had they become spirit beasts? A phoenix out of legend?
"No — they must be constructs made by spellwork."
Then what were those things wheeling above him, moving for all the world like living creatures?