Eun Seolhwa's Foundation Banquet (1)
In a single fleeting instant, memories of the past swept through her mind like a panorama.
Her sister, who had smiled so brightly even in the face of every setback. Eyes burning with a near-mad hunger and longing for cultivation. The way she had thrashed with everything she had, even under the curse of a worthless talent.
The heavens were cruel.
She worked so hard. She wanted it so desperately, again and again… How could they, under the name of talent, so mercilessly crush a flower that had only just begun to bloom?
The cultivation world was not kind to the talentless. That held true even for a Pre-Qi Refinement cultivator who had the Golden Elixir Heaven Sect as her backing. A talentless insect like her would be banished from Earth the moment she turned twenty-one.
What sixteen-year-old Decia had been forced to face was Nain lying on a hospital bed, barely clinging to life, her body a ruin. Her face had been beaten past all recognition, and the arm and leg of her left side were simply gone. None of the other siblings had come.
Beside the bed, their mother, Eun Seolhwa, wore an expression cold enough to freeze the blood.
On paper, it had been an "accident." A senior at the first star of Qi Refinement "instructing" a junior still in the Pre-Qi Refinement stage. The sort of thing that happened so often in the lower schools of the cultivation world that no one even blinked.
They could never have known. They could never have imagined that behind Nain—who had been attending school like any ordinary student—stood a figure as formidable as Eun Seolhwa. By the cultivation world's own common sense, merely knowing of her existence should have kept them from even lifting their heads in Nain's presence.
And so Nain had been attacked. Power was only power once it was revealed. As the price of touching her, that "senior" and every school official involved simply vanished from the world.
Regeneration treatment had been easy enough. Her body returned as if nothing had ever happened. But a broken heart did not come back so readily.
From that day on, Nain shut herself in her room and never came out again. Decia could not understand it.
Why? How?
Her sister had endured far worse pain countless times before. She had willingly subjected herself to torment close to torture, and still she had never once let go of her hunger for cultivation.
She lets her heart break over a lost arm and leg? The body can be regenerated. She can just try again.
The sister I know is that kind of person.
But that question never reached Nain. Decia and Eun Seolhwa were both far too busy, and Nain refused to see either of them. And so, little by little, she faded from memory……
What… is this memory?
Nain scowled as scenes and recollections poured into her mind. Her head had already felt ready to split; now it ached even worse. And the problem was that she was not the only one falling apart.
"S-Sister. I'm sorry…… How could I—how could I forget something like this?"
Decia's eyes twisted. She was desperately holding back tears that threatened to spill at any second. The hand she had stretched toward Nain lost its purpose and wandered, trembling violently.
Guilt at having clawed open a wound that had only just begun to heal, and shame at having forgotten something that happened a mere three years ago, crashed over her at once. Decia sank to the floor.
Nain pressed her throbbing temples. The fragments that had been scrambling through her head slowly found their places.
That just now… wasn't my memory.
The viewpoint had been different. The one lying on the bed had clearly been her. The owner of the gaze watching that ruined body from the outside—
Decia's memory.
How could someone else's memories drive themselves into her mind? Memories that had not even existed in the first place. Even through the panic, Nain's thoughts kept turning until they snagged on a single point.
Looking back, everything had been strange from the start.
Her memories reached into the past. This was supposedly their first meeting in ten years, and yet Decia had called her "Sister" as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The ID check for the Two-Sided Cultivation World had gone through without a single hitch.
A sensation washed over Nain—as if the gears of the world had been forcibly forced into alignment. Now that she finally noticed it, the dissonance hit hard. How had she only just realized all of this?
Pou.
Every scrap of wrongness traced back to Pou. The way Decia's memories had flowed into her had to be Pou's doing as well. Of course, the events in that memory had actually happened.
But she had never once lost her will to cultivate because of them, and Decia had never visited her hospital room. Only their mother had come to see her—that was the whole of it.
Fitting the past… to match the present outcome?
Erasing the past in which she had been a man. Tampering with the electronic data on her ID. Even craftily rewriting the incident tied to her social withdrawal and panic. All of it shared a single common thread.
Results without causes.
She had suddenly become a woman. She had become a severe shut-in who could no longer leave her room. None of it had a cause.
More precisely, every single cause originated with Pou. The purpose was obvious: to forcibly shoehorn mismatched cause and effect back into place.
And in doing so, to ensure Nain would never draw the slightest suspicion from the world—as if she had always been this way from the very beginning.
……Wait. This is actually amazing?
Thinking about it, there could be no more perfect defense mechanism. Whether someone forced their way into her memories, dug into her past, or even tried to read the trajectory of her fate—Nain would never invite a single doubt.
What a treasure you are, our Pou!
She wanted to run over and tickle the little thing until it was exhausted. But Nain steadied her breath, which was only just beginning to settle, and turned her head. Decia was thrashing on the floor, guilt-stricken, clutching Geumhae in her arms.
Drip. Drip.
Clear droplets fell. She kept rubbing her eyes, but the tears would not stop. Geumhae diligently lapped at the corners of her eyes, drinking them up.
"Stop crying. It's not your fault."
"Sisteeer… hic, I'm—I'm so sorry…. I touched the place that still hurts again…."
Decia's voice was a wrecked, broken thing. Real grief born from a false memory. She could not tell the truth.
Because then I'd have to explain this entire situation.
Nain pulled the squashed Geumhae free of Decia's arms and gave her sister's shoulder a clumsy pat.
"I said I'm fine, seriously…."
But Decia's tears did not stop easily. The little sister who had always kept her composure in those memories was now sniffling like a lost child.
Did it plant not just the memory, but the emotions too…?
It was absurd. A sword cultivator who prized equanimity above all else, crying from guilt.
…Or maybe she just cares about me that much.
Either way, the soft tickle in her chest was the same.
"S-So, about that. Cia."
"Hic, yeah, Sister…."
"I said I couldn't go to the banquet, but that didn't mean there was no way at all."
At those words, Decia's shoulders went rigid. Her bright yellow eyes, ruined by tears, flew open. A tangle of emotion—How? Is that true?—stared back at Nain.
It was a fact Nain herself had only just realized. While sorting through her thoughts about Pou, one possibility had clicked into place. Nain cleared her throat with a little ahem and thrust forward the head of Geumhae, who was still lying there with a vacant look.
"She's going in my place."
"……Huh?"
"She's not just some doll. She's a clone formed from my spiritual power and energy."
Humm…!
With those words, Nain's left eye and Geumhae's right eye resonated, blazing with a brilliant golden light. Her vision warped. In the same breath, Nain's sight became Geumhae's sight.
Her right eye still saw reality as it was. But her left pupil looked at Decia through Geumhae's eyes instead of her own.
"Her name is Geumhae. Since she's a clone, shared vision is only natural."
As a mere Qi Refinement cultivator, she had not thought of it at once. A clone, formed by splitting off a portion of one's spirit, could of course share its vision with the original body. Nain cleared her throat again and puffed out her chest with pride.
"Well? This way I don't have to go, and she can still attend Mother's banquet, right?"
Decia's tears stopped with a soft plop. Her mind spun at full speed.
It was not impossible. It was entirely possible. And yet Decia let out a hollow laugh.
A Qi Refinement cultivator sending a clone? To something as important as the Foundation Establishment Banquet?
It flew in the face of every rule of common sense in the cultivation world. As the true personal disciple of the Golden Elixir Sect Master, Decia knew perfectly well. Even the Golden Elixir cultivators themselves never pulled a stunt like that at a Foundation Establishment Banquet.
Sending only a clone was considered extraordinarily rude.
It was the sort of thing you did only for a truly close fellow cultivator—or when you genuinely could not attend in person…. Decia stared at her sister, who was smiling with complete self-assurance. That look of quiet satisfaction as she stroked Geumhae, as if she had just delivered the perfect solution.
Pfft.
A laugh slipped out on its own. Then Decia flung her arms around Nain and crushed her close. Under the grip of a Peak Qi Refinement cultivator, Nain's delicate body shrieked as if it might break.
"Kyaaah, Cia! Sister's dying!"
"It's fine…. Something like this could never kill you."
She thrashed and twisted, trying to pry herself free, but she never stood a chance. In the end Nain half gave up and stared blankly at the empty air.
Seizing the moment, Decia pulled Geumhae into the hug as well. That warm, comforting embrace she had only known as a child—now she felt it twice over.
"This clone is really incredible. It's not just a clump of condensed energy… It really feels like you're right here in front of me."
Through the shared vision, the warmth of Decia's hands on Geumhae transmitted straight into Nain's mind. Feeling both her own body and Geumhae's at the same time, Nain tasted a strange, electric thrill.
…Well. Not bad.
Direct contact with people was still horribly unpleasant, but indirect contact through a clone was strangely comforting—almost like logging into a virtual reality. Nain closed her eyes in contentment.
Seollyeong Mountain, in the northern reaches of the Korean Peninsula, was a spiritual mountain whose peak rose more than 21,000 meters above sea level. A place of death where the temperature plunged past negative one hundred degrees Celsius and knife-edged winds never stopped howling.
It had once been the residence of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, but when Eun Seolhwa successfully advanced to that realm, its master changed.
At the very summit of the peak, a grand banquet hall had been prepared.
In the highest seat of all, Eun Seolhwa stood in languid boredom—then turned her head toward the entrance.
