Chapter 22
Chapter 22
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: Interlude
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In conclusion, the surgery had been put on hold.
They said it would be best to wait for Yul Han, the master of Yujin who had gone to Mount Song Shaolin, to arrive and make the call.
Sending a messenger pigeon from Mount Hua Sect to Shaolin Temple took a day to arrive. The distance from Mount Song to Shaolin was roughly 700 li, so even at top speed for a peak expert like Yul Han, it would take four or five days.
They figured they'd have to wait about five days, give or take.
Thanks to that, Wi Sowol was wandering around on her own for the first time in ages.
Neither the Weird Physician nor Jang Rok was with her.
The two of them had gone to meet the Mount Hua Sect leader.
Wi Sowol had wanted to tag along at first, but the Weird Physician had brushed her off, saying it wouldn't be any fun and that she should just poke around the Mount Hua Sect grounds on her own.
There wouldn't be any danger inside Mount Hua Sect territory anyway, and the disciples would be guarding anywhere she wasn't supposed to go, so she could roam freely.
Mount Hua Sect wasn't like Shaolin with its strict rules against women. They actually encouraged female disciples, so no one would bat an eye at a young girl like Wi Sowol wandering about.
But whenever Wi Sowol passed by, people stole glances at her.
Young girls were a dime a dozen in Mount Hua Sect, but there was only one weirdo wandering around in a beak mask stained with blood and a grubby apron.
Wi Sowol, however, possessed a robust obliviousness to such stares from others. She was simply savoring this rare free time she'd been granted.
'How long has it been?'
Since she'd had time all to herself like this.
Life had been relentlessly hectic lately.
Every waking hour had been spent learning or practicing something.
Studying medicine under the Weird Physician, hunting and cooking with Jang Rok... Even the brief respite before bed wasn't for rest. She'd pour it all into circulating the Great White Light True Qi to melt away and refine the yin energy of her Nine Yin Absolute Meridian.
She could've used two bodies and twenty-four hours in a day.
Was it because she'd always had tasks piling up, scrimping even on spare moments to seek out more knowledge?
Or was it just an extension of her past life's passive existence, swept along by the currents of the world without taking the reins?
Whatever the case, even with this free time thrust upon her, Wi Sowol couldn't quite grasp what to do with it.
She wandered aimlessly through the Mount Hua Sect grounds until a brilliant idea suddenly struck her.
"Ah...! Maybe I should check out the Compendium of Materia Medica?"
That was it.
With its sheer volume, it could easily fill up a few days.
Wi Sowol shivered with delight at her own five wits, which never failed to shine when she needed them most, and shrugged her shoulders.
'This'll be some quality time.'
Now she just needed to head to the library pavilion...
Wi Sowol stopped in her tracks and looked around.
Spotting a certain Daoist who was eyeing her in return, she strode right over.
Using the principles of Star Lodge Divine Traces, which folded the earth beneath her feet like origami, she closed the distance in just a few steps.
From the Daoist's perspective, he'd only been sneaking peeks when she suddenly closed in—he hastily turned away, pretending ignorance.
"You."
"Ahem. I wasn't staring. As a guardian of Mount Hua Sect..."
"Know where the library pavilion is? I've got permission."
Wi Sowol flashed the token Pure Void Daoist had given her for entry, and only then did the Daoist realize he'd overreacted, his face flushing red.
"Permission? The library pavilion... An elder's token? Why do you..."
"So, do you know?"
"Of course I... Yeah, sure."
He knew.
But was it really okay to escort this highly suspicious outsider to the library pavilion?
The elder's token looked genuine enough...
'It's not the martial arts archive, so it should be fine, right?'
The martial scriptures were kept separately in the Martial Classics Pavilion.
The library pavilion housed Daoist scriptures alongside secular books in circulation—no risk of Mount Hua Sect secrets leaking from there.
"Alright, fine. Follow me."
An elder had vouched for her, after all.
The Daoist grumbled but led the way.
The library pavilion they arrived at was a grand four-story building, still smelling of fresh reconstruction.
Wi Sowol gave the guiding Daoist a quick bow of thanks (a habit drilled in by the Weird Physician) and stepped inside.
A wave of paper and ink scent hit her immediately.
The incense and herbs stuffed in her beak mask apparently weren't enough to mask the thick bookish aroma.
"Who...?"
Had news of the outsiders in beak masks not spread yet?
The librarian Daoist eyed Wi Sowol warily, clearly unfamiliar with her.
Wi Sowol thrust out the elder's token like a medical license.
"Here for the Compendium of Materia Medica."
"Ah, right. Medical texts are on the second floor of the west wing."
The elder's token granted Wi Sowol access to the second floor.
'Second floor for medical books, huh.'
First floor: secular miscellany. Second: medicine.
The upper floors probably had their own themes too.
Daoist scriptures separate from other religious texts, and so on.
She'd normally never touch such books, but back at Zenith Temple, Wi Sowol had copied all sorts of Buddhist sutras.
Might be worth peeking at the Daoist ones sometime.
'But first, the Compendium.'
True to its fame, the Compendium of Materia Medica was prominently shelved for easy access.
Wi Sowol cracked open the first volume.
The prefaces—eulogies and endorsements from others, not the author himself—filled her eyes first.
'The way of medicine is one by which the gentleman preserves life and rescues the world, hence it is called the art of benevolence. Yet later generations view it merely as a craft, and lofty scholars disdain it. Did not Master Jia say: The ancient sages, even absent from court, dwell ever between physician and diviner. How could one deem medicine lowly?'
Spot on.
Wi Sowol heartily agreed with the preface writer.
These days, more scholars studied medicine, elevating the profession's status. But surgeons still had a long road ahead.
If sages stood between medicine and divination, famed physicians hovered somewhere between life and death...
Wi Sowol unleashed her innate brilliance with ferocious momentum, devouring the Compendium.
Her astonishing focus, fused with the certainty of safety, plunged her consciousness wholly into the pages.
No disturbance from nearby activities or clamor from below could break it.
Thus perfectly merged with her reading—body and book as one, a divine union of mind and text.
What yanked Wi Sowol back to the world was a small hand not unlike her own.
Thud.
"There you are! I've been looking everywhere!"
What?
Startled out of her trance, Wi Sowol blankly followed the hand's tug, rising to her feet.
A whopping thirty-one volumes of the Compendium towered on the desk.
She'd devoured them all from her seat.
But rather than marvel at that feat, Wi Sowol first felt irritation at the interruption—tinged with curiosity about how desperately urgent this intruder seemed.
Luckily for the hand's owner, the latter outweighed the former.
"Do you have any idea how long I looked?"
A shrill, piping voice.
Different timbre from Wi Sowol's, but the same girlish pitch.
'Huh?'
What reason would such a girl have to seek her out?
'Oh, right—the mask.'
She'd taken it off, figuring the corner seat was safe.
Reaching for the Weird Physician's beak mask, Wi Sowol paused at the girl's frantic air and lowered her arm.
'Master's looking for me, probably.'
If she'd enlisted Mount Hua disciples to help search, it had to be an emergency.
Had something happened to her master while meeting the sect leader?
Or were they rushing the postponed surgery now?
She didn't know why yet, but best to follow. Wi Sowol let the girl drag her along.
In case surgery awaited, she improvised a face covering by tearing a strip from her clothes to veil below the eyes, in lieu of the abandoned beak mask.
By then, the girl reached their destination and hollered in her shrill voice.
"Got her! Hurry up and get ready!"
Wi Sowol scanned her surroundings.
Unfamiliar place. She'd never seen it before.
Looked like a training ground...
Only then did she suspect a misunderstanding.
"What's going on?"
"What's going on? It's Seven Star Array time, duh. We have to win this round! Those guys have been so smug since they beat us last—huh?"
Before the girl could finish, a gaggle of other girls rushed over.
"Seonye is here!"
"Seonye my foot—call her junior sister."
"Junior Sister Seonye, I heard Seonhwa's feeling under the weather today... Oh, you heard too?"
"Classic Junior Sister Seonye. Heard about Seonhwa and already rounded up a replacement sister."
"So senior-sisterly."
"Huh? Seonhwa? Seonhwa's sick? I brought Seohyu..."
Why was there a Seohyu over there too?
Then whose hand was she holding...?
The girl—Seonye—sensed something amiss and turned.
Her gaze traveled from her own hand gripping Wi Sowol's, up along the arm, until it locked on Wi Sowol's face.
The girl stood frozen, staring blankly.
Blink-blink.
Her eyelids fluttered five times.
Then came a dazed voice.
"Uh... who are you?"
That was her line.
"S-sorry... really, I'm so sorry..."
Seonye, the 38th-generation disciple of Mount Hua Sect and one of the Three Great Disciples of her cohort, bowed deeply to the girl she'd dragged here willy-nilly.
She was so stunningly pretty, Seonye half-wondered if she was dreaming.
But she wasn't Seohyu, the junior sister Seonye had been seeking.
The mistake stemmed from the perfect match: similar build, long hair, holed up in the library buried in books. In her haste, she'd grabbed without checking.
Still, if it'd been a fellow Mount Hua disciple, she could've laughed it off as sibling antics.
But no Mount Hua disciple would have a beauty like this that Seonye didn't know.
Even with just her eyes visible, they were peerless—unlike any face in the sect.
If such a girl were a disciple, Seonye would've heard rumors even without meeting her.
And she had, in fact.
An outsider. A VIP with an elder's token, no less.
"So. What's the deal?"
Was this payback for ruining her reading time?
Seonye shuddered at the icy tone.
For some reason, she felt like dropping to her knees—but Mount Hua pride kept her upright, barely.
"W-we're doing Seven Star Array, but... I was looking for Seohyu and..."
"Seven Star Array?"
"Y-yeah, don't you know? It's like, this way, that way..."
To demonstrate, Seonye hopped about nimbly.
Wi Sowol read the exertion hidden in those hops.
'Seven Star Step?'
Mount Hua's basic footwork: Seven Star Step.
Seven Star Array was evidently derived from it.
"Ta-da! See? That's how it works."
Wi Sowol got the gist.
The kid had been recruiting for some Seven Star Array game-training thing, mistaken her for someone else, and dragged her along.
"Hm..."
What to do?
She could head back now, no harm done. But since she was here, maybe try this Seven Star Array once.
As Wi Sowol pondered silently, Seonye trembled like a leaf.
They looked the same age, yet she felt intimidated.
'I'm even taller!'
Just as Seonye forced down her pout and held firm...
"So, you're short a person?"
Meanwhile.
The Weird Physician was in the sect leader's upper palace abode.
Out of respect for the leader, perhaps.
His face, bare without the beak mask, was heavier than ever, shrouded in deep shadow.
"Sect Leader."
Mount Hua Sect Leader Yul Cheon set down his teacup at the Weird Physician's call.
"That disciple. Yujin's arm. Who did it?"
"Who else in Shaanxi could inflict such wounds on our Mount Hua disciples?"
Shaanxi was righteous faction territory in name and fact.
Mount Zhongnan and Mount Hua stood guard in south and east; to the west, Kongtong Sect covered the border with Gansu.
Surrounded on three sides by righteous giants, what foolhardy evil riffraff would encroach on this Confucian holy land?
Thus, any group bold enough to draw steel on Mount Hua in Shaanxi could only be fiends from beyond the pale.
Black flames erupted in the Weird Physician's eyes.
"Mad Struggle Cult...!"
That name.
A reverse scale for him, perhaps.
He spat it like grinding teeth, accompanied by the crunch of molars gnashing.
A thin trickle of blood traced his lips—had he bitten them too?
Sect Leader Yul Cheon exhaled deeply, the metallic tang mingling with the tea's aroma.
"They slipped in deep while Nether Luo Sect clashed with us. Kongtong and Zhongnan drove them back. But this is a signal of sorts."
"They're gearing up for the real move."
"Indeed. High time they stirred. They've gorged plenty on the silver flowing from the court into Shaanxi. I was just thinking of sending word to you—talk about perfect timing."
Mad Struggle Cult.
Loaches fouling Shaanxi's clear stream.
To pursue the righteous path as the superior vessel, these loaches must be exterminated to keep the waters pure.
A chilling killer's intent, unfit for a Daoist, glinted in Yul Cheon's eyes.
"You'll join us, right?"
Isn't that what these years have been for?