The Tiger's Song
I woke up at the crack of dawn, scratching at my bedhead with a yawn.
“Huaaam.”
A lot of things had happened lately, but the single greatest benefit of practicing Lian Shen Huan Xu was still the same: waking up in the morning feeling absolutely refreshed.
-Art thou awake?
-Purrrrr…
“Thank you, as always.”
-Hmph! I merely found the sight of thee scraping by on instant noodles distasteful to behold.
After eating the breakfast Fey had prepared for me, I sat down to cultivate the True Immortal Fire-Regulation Method. Practicing it upon waking and again before bed had become my routine. There was a time, out of impatience, when I tried training it all day long, but the efficiency was terrible. Hence my choice of twice a day, morning and night.
And that steady discipline had finally borne fruit — my meditative absorption had reached the Third Absorption. The Third Absorption was the stage where worldly rapture faded away and tranquility itself became the center of joy. The step beyond it, the Fourth Absorption, was a state of perfect equanimity beyond pleasure and displeasure, where no sensation could shake one's inner peace. Which meant I would attain true contemplation — the ability to pierce things as they truly were — and with it, the completion of Samadhi. In other words, the preparations for enlightenment would be finished.
In plain terms, that's Special Grade.
If my guess was right, the moment I completed Samadhi, reaching Special Grade was a foregone conclusion. The only problem was that there were probably tiers even among the Special Grades…
…One thing at a time. Becoming Special Grade first.
Gong No-sa, Cosmos, Jeong-myung-gyo, the Paranormal Administration Bureau. However strong those enemies were, however vast their organizations, once I became Special Grade I'd at least be able to look after my own hide. More than that, completing the True Immortal Fire-Regulation Method wasn't an ending — it was the beginning of a new kind of learning. And if my instincts were right, what waited at the end of that learning would be the signature technique and secret art symbolizing the Sword Immortal Lü Dongbin himself: the Cheondun Sword Technique.
If I mastered the Cheondun Sword Technique, even Gong No-sa would have nothing to fear over me. …Not that I had any idea what kind of sword art it actually was.
Judging by the name alone, it's probably a terrifyingly strong one. Whatever.
After finishing my morning cultivation, I headed to the warehouse hideout. I'd completed the lease transfer and received a spare key, so I could get in even without Lee Ha-ram around.
“Oh, Yi-yeon, you're here early!”
Choi Eun-ha arrived at the hideout right after me.
“Yeah, there's something I need to make.”
The warehouse hideout had long since become the official sorcery training ground for our Anomaly Suppression Squad. It was an indispensable space, especially for Yu Min-seo, whose summoning magic demanded a wide open area, and for Choi Eun-ha, who needed a proper workshop for her alchemy.
The reason I'd come today was to craft a ritual tool for sealing my contract with Fey. Originally I'd planned to use something easy to make — a peachwood sword or a horsetail whisk — but flimsy ritual tools like those stood a good chance of failing to withstand Fey's power. I was about to press ahead anyway, figuring something was better than nothing, when Paracelsus's Alchemy Workshop arrived at exactly the right moment. So I scrapped the old plan entirely and decided to forge a brand-new ritual tool from zero, using alchemy.
“Let's see here…”
I poured the silvery metallic liquid I'd stored in a glass bottle onto the workbench.
Sliiiiiide.
Silver-toned metal flowed like water, spreading across the bench. A flowing metal like this was easy to mistake for mercury, but of course it was nothing of the sort. The name of the metallic liquid in that bottle was Transmutation Silver — a fluid metal crafted by processing silver through alchemy.
Shhhk.
When I channeled my Do-ryeok into it, the Transmutation Silver that had been flowing like liquid clumped together into a perfect sphere. Transmutation Silver was a metal that freely changed shape according to its user's will — and depending on how you used it, it could make a fine weapon, too.
“Let's see… topaz powder… huh, I'm all out?”
“I've got some left!”
Choi Eun-ha pointed at her own workbench.
“Oh, I'll borrow that.”
Thwip!
I stretched the spherical Transmutation Silver out like a whip, snagged the gem powder off her bench, and reeled it back.
“Man, I wonder when artificial gem prices are gonna get any cheaper~.”
The whole reason I'd made Transmutation Silver in the first place was to build a metal ritual tool. No matter how spacious the hideout was, blacksmithing demanded too much equipment and too much hands-on labor. Hence Transmutation Silver — it let me skip the whole tedious process of heating iron, hammering it, and shaping it.
“This is what efficiency means!”
Kim Yi-yeon declared this as if it were nothing, and got to work with the silver. But from Choi Eun-ha's perspective, watching from the side, it was nothing short of absurd. The alchemy compiled in Paracelsus's Alchemy Workshop was divided into six grades by difficulty, from Grade 1 to Grade 6 — and Transmutation Silver was a Grade 5 creation. And this guy had just whipped it up with the mindset of “working metal is a pain, tee-hee~.”
And here I am, an idiot who made Fairy Powder and shrugged like 'guess I've got some talent, huh?'…
For the record, Fairy Powder was Grade 3. Overwhelmed all over again by Kim Yi-yeon's ridiculous talent, Choi Eun-ha nonetheless steeled herself and readied her own work. What she was making now was Transmutation Copper — a lesser cousin of Transmutation Silver.
She'd been at it for a while when something occurred to her, and she spoke up.
“Oh, by the way — are you okay going outside, Yi-yeon?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your face is plastered all over the place these days, you know?”
Cosmos's aggressive viral marketing, plus a very public anomaly exorcism on the Han River in broad daylight. Combine that with the name recognition Kim Yi-yeon had already built up and the unprecedented occult boom, and the chemical reaction had been explosive. At this point, it was hard to find a single corner of the internet not talking about Kim Yi-yeon.
“Eh, I've got ways of handling that much.”
“Well, it is you, so I guess you'll manage… but didn't you say Cosmos was your enemy?”
“Mm… about that…”
Kim Yi-yeon explained the misunderstanding Cosmos had developed about him.
“…Doesn't that actually make things worse? What if the world Cosmos is trying to build turns out to be some living hell, or a dystopia under Cosmos's thumb?”
“You think so too, huh?”
At her words, Kim Yi-yeon scratched his head.
“Still, living in Korea, it'd be hard to avoid getting entangled with them no matter what…”
“True.”
Cosmos was, by every measure, the largest corporation in South Korea — no, the greatest in the world.
“So what do you think?”
“About what?”
“What kind of world do you think Cosmos is trying to build?”
“Hmm…”
Choi Eun-ha agonized over the question for a long while. Understandably so — Cosmos was the world's greatest corporation. Whatever they wanted, most of it was already achievable through ordinary means right now. So what could such a company want badly enough to pursue through such abnormal methods? Whatever it was, there was a good chance it was something her teacher-figure had just called flat-out impossible through realistic means.
“Ugh, how the hell would I know? I mean, maybe the chairman, Jung Tae-min, just wants to become a god or something?”
While they were trading idle chatter like this, a call came through on Kim Yi-yeon's phone. It was Lee Ha-ram.
-Master! Everything you asked for is ready!
“Really? Then let's get started, shall we.”
The optimal method for accumulating merit, karma, and recognition was broadcasting anomaly exorcisms live. And to capture the public's attention, a run-of-the-mill exorcism wouldn't cut it. Fortunately, Seoul currently had an anomaly that was perfect for gripping people's attention.
Seoul's Four Great Urban Legends:
-The Bukhansan Maneating Tiger.
-Lostco [RESOLVED]
-The Man-Eating Hospital.
-The Suicide Train [RESOLVED]
Two legends remained: the Bukhansan Maneating Tiger and the Man-Eating Hospital. And starting now, I was going to put an end to the Bukhansan Maneating Tiger legend. The only difference from usual was…
“…Do you, uh, really have to promote it like that…”
-Yes?
“Never mind. Good work, Ha-ram.”
-Yes sir! Thank you! Oh, and I've pushed the promotion overseas as well!
“Overseas promotion, huh… will that even mean much?”
-It will! Reddit's already on fire talking about Daoist Kim.
The overseas site in the link Ha-ram sent was genuinely buzzing with discussions about me.
“Mm… this is your area of expertise, so I'll trust you with it.”
-Leave it all to me!
“So, final estimate — how many viewers do you think we'll pull?”
The more viewers, the more merit, karma, and recognition I earned. Especially since engraving the Golden Narrative left behind by those four — Lü Dongbin, Solomon, Nicolas, Paracelsus — would require a truly monstrous amount of recognition. Last time, during the Suicide Train exorcism, the livestream had even been picked up by mainstream broadcast news, netting me a hefty chunk of recognition. But even that was nowhere near enough to write the Golden Narrative. Which meant…
Recognition gathered domestically alone has a ceiling.
At first, I'd considered asking Cosmos for cooperation. But…
However much Cosmos insists it's my ally, as long as they're hiding the narrative they intend to carve into the world, they're not a true ally.
There would no doubt be situations where I'd need their help, but wherever possible, it was right for us to handle things with our own strength.
“Alright then, let's get going.”
“Should I come too?”
“Nah, you're fine, Eun-ha. You had your moment in the spotlight with the whole Suicide Train thing, didn't you?”
“Calling that a moment in the spotlight is kind of mortifying, honestly…”
“You started learning alchemy less than a week ago. That's more than enough of a showing. Once your Transmutation Copper is finished, you'll have at least minimal combat capability, so keep at it until then.”
“Okay~.”
Leaving behind Choi Eun-ha's half-hearted reply, I headed outside.
“All ready to go, Daoist Kim?”
“We're counting on you again today, Teacher!”
Momo, gripping the wheel of the Porsche, and Yu Min-seo in the passenger seat leaned out and greeted me.
“Hop in, Daoist Kim.”
“Momo-unni's driving is really good!”
Momo said with a bright smile. Ha-ram, who usually drove me around, was swamped with promotion and stream setup, so Momo had come in his place. But never in my life did I imagine Momo's car looked like that…
This is… not going to be easy…
But what could I do? As a license-less loser, if someone offered me a ride, all I could do was bow my head in gratitude and get in.
VRRRRRRROOOOOM!
“Buckle up tight.”
“Uh… yeah.”
I forced a smile as I fastened my seatbelt inside the pink-through-and-through Porsche.
“Here we go!”
The instant she said it, the Porsche shot forward as if showing off its zero-to-hundred.
A pink, criminally-cute Porsche tearing down the streets of Seoul. I'd never ridden in one before, so I hadn't known — was this girl always this reckless behind the wheel? It was night and day compared to Ha-ram.
“GYAAAH!”
“AHAHAHAHA!”
My terrified scream, hands clamped around the ceiling handle, wove a beautifully dissonant duet with Min-seo's laughter. After that ride in a Porsche of… questionable aesthetic choices, piloted by a driver with even more questionable technique, we arrived at Ui-dong, Gangbuk-gu — the neighborhood sitting right at the foot of Bukhansan.
“HUUUURGH—!”
“Are you okay, Teacher?”
“I'm… I'm fine… urp!”
After suffering through the lingering aftermath of motion sickness, I got down to seriously preparing the broadcast.
“You're trying to maximize viewer count, right?”
“That's right. I need to get my name out to as many people as possible.”
“I've promoted it as hard as I could within what I can do, but I'm not sure we'll pull the numbers we did with the Suicide Train case…”
The hundred-thousand-plus viewers from the last Suicide Train livestream had, in the end, been thanks to Cosmos's promotion. The odds of this Bukhansan Maneating Tiger exorcism drawing that kind of crowd weren't especially high.
“Well, we won't know until we throw ourselves at it.”
And so, in the spirit of “well begun is half done,” I started the livestream.
“Hello, everyone! This is Channel Kim Dosa!”
Oh, a strong start — the stream had barely been running and viewers had already broken thirty thousand.
“Some of you may have seen the notice, but today's stream is an attempt to exorcise the Bukhansan Maneating Tiger, the anomaly that's got all of Seoul talking lately. Yes — you heard right. Not an investigation. An exorcism. It lives in our very own Bukhansan, people. Since I'm here, I might as well finish the job.”
The viewer count was climbing at a brutal pace. Every time I delivered a line, the number swelled by a few thousand — sometimes ten thousand or more.
At this rate, can I hope for 100k like last time?
“Oh, a lot of you are saying the chat's suddenly flooding with English? Yes, I did push some promotion overseas, and it seems to have had an effect. What's that? You want me to stay your own little Daoist Kim forever? Sorry, folks — I want to grow bigger.”
Oh, it's climbing, climbing, climbing!
At this rate, we break 100k—!
“…Huh?”
Until now the count had risen in increments of ten thousand at most — but suddenly it started snowballing by twenty or thirty thousand per second.
And by the time I came back to my senses, the viewer count had blown past three hundred thousand.
“…What in the actual…”