Favor
The assassin tried to wrench free of Han Yuhyeon’s grip. The spiritual power rolling off Yuhyeon was only Qi Condensation 7-star. At the higher realms, talismans, implements, treasures, and spirit stones could flip a fight with a single variable—but down at Qi Condensation, realm was absolute.
By that logic, a Qi Condensation 9-star assassin failing to shake off a 7-star’s hand was a violation of every established rule.
“……You little bastard!”
The assassin poured spiritual energy into the wrist Yuhyeon had seized. Yuhyeon was faster.
He yanked the assassin’s wrist, drove the arm upward, and slammed shoulder and back into him—the body technique known as kao fa.
“Ghk—!”
Blood sprayed into the air as the assassin was hurled away. It wasn’t just internal damage. He had collided with the scales covering every inch of Han Yuhyeon’s body, and the front of him had been flayed nearly raw—flesh torn free in strips.
“…….”
The assassin smashed into the inner wall of the cylindrical sparring arena and crumpled. Instead of cheers, silence fell over the spectators.
Even those who weren’t late-stage Qi Condensation cultivators could tell there was a clear gap in spiritual power between Yuhyeon and the assassin. The result flew in the face of everything they knew, and for a moment no one had a word to say.
“……You son of a bitch.”
The silence broke when the assassin—who had been lying crumpled against the wall—spoke. Late-stage Qi Condensation really was different. From jawline to thigh, the scales had stripped his skin away, and yet his eyes still burned with murder. He had taken a solid hit, but he still had strength left.
“Looks like you learned some technique above your station—but that alone isn’t enough!”
The assassin pulled a handful of spirit stones from his storage pouch. The stones vibrated and flared with light, dissolving into spiritual energy that poured into his skin and the seven apertures of his face.
As the energy was absorbed, the ghastly wounds closed—not completely, but enough.
Here, too, the difference between the cultivation world and the murim was stark.
In the murim, a martial artist would never be allowed to swallow medicine that healed wounds or boosted internal energy mid-match. Martial skill was a sacred tool for righteousness; introducing outside variables into a contest of skill simply wasn’t done.
The cultivation world was different. This was a world of winner-takes-all. Martial skill here was nothing more than a means to victory. Spirit stones, talismans, and implements were all considered part of that skill. They were tools for winning, just the same.
“Heh heh. You should have killed me with that first strike.”
Having recovered some spiritual power and patched his wounds, the assassin smiled coldly. Han Yuhyeon, for his part, paid him no attention at all. At some point a talisman had appeared in Yuhyeon’s hand—pulled from his storage pouch while the assassin was busy with the spirit stones.
“Oh no! I’ve got an upper-grade spirit talisman I bought from Baek Talismans yesterday! In a situation like this, I’ve got no choice but to use it!”
“……?”
When Yuhyeon suddenly shouted in that stiff, theatrical tone, the assassin in front of him and the spectators alike stared in bafflement. Even the sponsor, Baekri-wan, looked utterly speechless.
"Absorb Qi, return to the origin."
"Primal energy fills to brimming."
⟨ Upper-Grade Spirit Talisman ⟩
Whether anyone cared or not, Han Yuhyeon chanted the incantation and tore the upper-grade spirit talisman.
Unlike the promotional footage, he hadn’t disclosed that this was an advertisement—so yes, it was stealth marketing. What of it? There was hardly going to be advertising law on the books in a cultivation world.
As the talisman tore, high-quality spiritual energy flooded into his body. Of course, absorption didn’t mean it all became his permanently. Energy from talismans and spirit stones was temporary.
If Yuhyeon’s spiritual power had been depleted, it would have restored him. Packed full as he was, it was like pouring more water into an already full jar. Still, there was a point to it.
If he immediately unleashed everything he was holding, the destructive power would exceed his own limits.
So the instant the upper-grade talisman tore, Yuhyeon charged the assassin. Caught off guard by a reverse attack instead of a defensive retreat, the assassin scrambled to draw up his spiritual power.
“You insolent little—!”
The assassin roared. One upper-grade talisman could never bridge a two-star gap. That this nobody would dare charge him just because he’d used a single talisman wounded the assassin’s pride.
“Die!”
Refusing to yield an inch, the assassin lunged forward. From nowhere, a pair of short blades spun into the air. As they whirled, fire erupted from the tips, leaving two rings of flame hanging in space.
“Fire Qi Imbuement!”
One of the watching cultivators recognized the technique and shouted. Fire Qi Imbuement—the art of imbuing a magical implement with the Fire spiritual root.
It was the stage at which a cultivator could apply their own spiritual root to an implement. The man was clearly eyeing the late stages of Qi Condensation. Bestowing one’s spiritual root onto another object like that was a rare skill at this realm.
Whoosh—!
The rings of fire carved swift arcs through the air toward Han Yuhyeon.
Among the five elemental roots, Fire held the highest offensive power. Layered with a Qi Condensation 9-star technique, the destructive force was anything but weak. When the flaming rings tore through the air, heat and velocity seemed to warp the atmosphere itself.
Any ordinary cultivator would have read the trajectory of those fire-blades and tried to dodge. The assassin who threw them fully expected that—and was already planning to alter their path.
Han Yuhyeon did something no one expected. He crossed both arms, ducked his head and body behind them, and charged straight in.
“What is he—?”
Even Baekri-wan, who had been watching calmly, shot to her feet in shock. To her late-stage Qi Condensation eyes, that was not a level of destructive power a mere 7-star could withstand.
Boom!
Diving headlong into the rings’ path, Yuhyeon inevitably collided with the implements. A thunderous crash erupted on impact, and smoke billowed thick.
While everyone was still reeling from the blast and the smoke, an even louder detonation tore through the arena. The sharper-eared among them could tell the source had shifted. The first crash had come from the center of the arena where Yuhyeon met the implements; this one came from in front of the inner wall where the assassin had been standing.
And unlike the first, this blast sent a shockwave that swept the smoke clean away in a single stroke. The pale haze was driven against the walls and scattered upward, and through the gaps the spectators saw a scene that left them stunned.
Han Yuhyeon, both arms scorched black—and the assassin, reduced to pulp, sprawled on the ground. The assassin’s entire face was a grotesque ruin of scale-gouged flesh. Not even the outlines of features remained.
His body still twitched and sprayed blood in spasms, as if it had not yet registered its own death. There was no life left in it, though—more like a chicken still thrashing after its head is cut off, or a frog twitching after it’s already dead.
“Hoo.”
Yuhyeon lowered his crossed arms and let out a breath. Only then did the last of the smoke rise fully into the sky, and the truth of the scene became unmistakable.
“……Impossible.”
Even Mun Il-pyeong, the referee, muttered without any thought of declaring a winner. No matter that Yuhyeon had used an upper-grade spirit talisman, this result lay outside any reasonable bounds.
“Waaaaah!”
“He won!”
Someone shouted. Yuhyeon glanced over—it was the same people who had earlier yelled at the referee to stop the match. The ones who had bet on him.
They were screaming because they had won money, but the excitement proved contagious. Other spectators began to roar as well.
“Waaaaaaaaah!”
“He’s insane—completely insane!”
People always go wild for an unexpected result. There was a reason underdogs always drew the loudest cheers in sports.
“……Winner: Han Yuhyeon.”
Only then did Mun Il-pyeong recover enough to announce the end of the match and the victor, his voice still dazed.
Yuhyeon clenched a fist and raised one scorched arm skyward—his own little victory ceremony. The crowd answered with even louder cheers.
Then Han Yuhyeon walked out of the sparring arena. Even after the star of the show was gone, the place remained a cauldron of excitement. While blood was mopped up, the corpse removed, and the gouged earth smoothed over, the Baek Talismans promotional video played again.
This match was brought to you with the support of Baek Talismans and includes paid advertising.
At the sound of Han Yuhyeon’s voice, people finally connected the dots: the scale-covered fighter who had just won was the same man who had named the talisman he used as a product of Baek Talismans.
Even cultivators who had ignored the video earlier began to watch it with focus.
“So if I just use that, I can beat a cultivator two stars above me?”
“A strong guy was using it—there’s got to be a reason!”
A few cultivators muttered among themselves, then stood up and left mid-match.
“By the way, where is this Baek Talismans place?”
“I think I saw it in some corner, but I can’t quite remember.”
“If we walk around, we’ll find it.”
One by one, cultivators started filtering out of the arena. Baekri-wan was speechless. Yes, her talismans were, on average, superior to the other junk circulating in this low-tier region—but that victory had not been won by a spirit talisman.
How could a single upper-grade talisman possibly bridge a two-star gap in realm? Han Yuhyeon had simply been a monster and crushed the man. Using that talisman would never turn anyone into Han Yuhyeon.
As one of the few late-stage Qi Condensation cultivators in Yeongil-ju, Baekri-wan had seen through the smoke exactly what happened. Yuhyeon had brutally blocked the flying implements with both arms and driven straight through, grinding the assassin into paste.
In Baekri-wan’s judgment, the only way that was possible was spiritual roots. The higher the root quality a technique demanded, the stronger the technique became—that was simple law.
But spiritual root quality usually scaled with realm, so even that assumption was strange. If he had been a single-root cultivator, an exceptionally high root would make sense. Han Yuhyeon was a Five Spiritual Roots cultivator. Nothing about him made sense.
“Where did you say Baek Talismans is?”
“At the western end of the stall street!”
The cultivators pouring toward the exits in a rush for Baek Talismans didn’t understand any better. Anyone who had cultivated even a little should have known better—yet they were stampeding off to buy on pure herd instinct, which struck her as thoroughly irrational.
What Baekri-wan didn’t know was that in a far-off world-line, in a country called South Korea, celebrities’ airport outfits sold out the moment they appeared. That was simply how consumer psychology worked.
“Shall we go as well?”
“Pardon? Ah—yes. Of course!”
Baekri-wan had lost all interest in the remaining matches and stood. Yuhyeon had fought so explosively that nothing that followed could possibly hold her attention.
Leaving the sparring arena, Baekri-wan headed for the Baek Talismans stall at the eastern end of the street where the vendors clustered. She had deliberately set it up in a low-traffic spot, so it was usually deserted—but now the front of the stall was a sea of people.
“Any more upper-grade spirit talismans?”
“Ah, the one that just sold was the last.”
“What! You’re already sold out?!”
The Talisman Workshop disciple minding the stall was sweating buckets as he dealt with the customers. He was the same disciple Baekri-wan had always seen dozing in his chair whenever she glanced over from a distance.
Having no idea what had happened in the sparring arena, he was left to handle a sudden flood of customers for reasons he couldn’t begin to guess.
“Pfft.”
Watching from a distance, Baekri-wan laughed out loud. The Talisman Workshop disciple attending her was inwardly stunned. At most Baekri-wan ever managed a silent smile, and she rarely smiled at all. The disciple had served her for over five years and had never once heard her laugh aloud.
“If you repay a favor this quickly, it puts me in a difficult position.”
Baekri-wan murmured. Even the disciple at her side couldn’t make sense of what she meant.