Afternoon of the All-Diseases Piercing Needle
Afternoon at the All-Diseases Piercing Needle. Atop the rooftop one floor above the ninth story of a nine-story inn that the Murim Alliance had rented out near the Moyong family estate for several days—a secret garden invisible from below, accessible only via a hidden staircase from the ninth floor, offering a clear view of the surroundings. Three figures sat facing one another in that garden: one was the Murim Alliance Leader, Taesangjingun; across from him sat his disciple, a young woman named Jin-hyeon; and beside her was another woman with dark gray hair, who appeared only slightly older than Jin-hyeon. While Jin-hyeon dressed in the style of a woman her age, the gray-haired one wore the robes of a noblewoman in her mid-thirties to forties, quietly fiddling with her teacup.
"Listen here, Geomhu."
Taesangjingun addressed the woman—Geomhu—with utmost caution.
"What does Haedong Geomgak plan to do about this situation?"
"……"
Haedong Geomgak! A sect located on Mount Bota in Zhejiang Province, in the southeast of the Central Plains, and Geomhu's home sect. Its peculiarity was that, much like the Ami Sect in Sichuan, it was composed entirely of women.
"Geomhu. Answer me. I need to know as the Alliance Leader."
"……"
"Listen, Geum Jeom-rye."
"Quiet."
Geomhu's eyes widened at the Leader's words, issuing a sharp warning.
"Whatever that name means to you, I'd appreciate it if you didn't throw it around carelessly."
"……D-Damn it, mind your dignity."
"If it bothers you that much, just take a Rejuvenation Pill yourself."
Geomhu. Her real name was Geum Jeom-rye. But no one dared call her by it lightly; in the Central Plains martial world, she was known only as "Geomhu" or "Haedong Geomgak Leader." Or perhaps...
"Don't be angry, Master."
As Jin-hyeon called her, fellow sect members addressed her by the honorifics befitting their seniority.
"I'm worried someone might overhear, Hyeon-a. Isn't your master right here—this old man?"
"Heh heh, you make a cultivator of the Dao spew curses from his mouth. Does laying down a sheet of iron over your face come with Rejuvenation?"
"I've gotten younger, so I live young, Alliance Leader. Once you start acting old after youth returns, you age even faster. Hehe."
Geomhu gently grasped her hair on both sides, stretching it out into twin tails like a girl.
"Watching a woman twenty years my senior do that twists my guts. Geomhu."
"Oh my. Back when we first met—"
"If I'd known you were twenty years older, I never would've approached calling you 'big sis'!"
The Alliance Leader slammed the table with his palm, shouting, but of course, no sound leaked outward.
"Damn it. While some of us toil to clean up the martial world's messes, others rejuvenate and play little sister to their disciples."
"That's why I said, if it bothers you, take a Rejuvenation Pill, Alliance Leader."
"Ha, I should've stepped down from the Murim Alliance Leader position last year when 'she' was murdered."
Jin-hyeon flinched briefly at his lament.
"Are you referring to the Medicine Immortal, Master?"
"With both your masters here, just call me by title casually. Yes, our shared junior disciple Jin-hyeon. And the one called the Medicine Immortal..."
"The Demon Physician. The Magyo's doctor, possessor of the martial world's greatest medical arts and pharmacology."
Geomhu continued in a low voice.
"After returning from Mount Tai last year, she was murdered, turning Shandong Province upside down."
"D-Damn it, if you're going to use formal speech, do it right, or drop the pretense if you're acting your age. Geomhu."
"...There are various rumors about the background of the Demon Physician's murder, but doesn't it involve the Killing King?"
Geomhu's eyes sparkled like a child's as she pressed on.
"Few knew she was from the Magyo, but even among them, some harbored grudges against her. Right, Jin-hyeon?"
"Yes, Master."
"You survived thanks to her treatment and slipped into the shadows of the righteous sects as a latent poison bearer—you know better than anyone how hard it is to escape 'that' influence."
"...Yes."
Jin-hyeon placed a hand on her chest.
"Even the Heavenly Demon implanted Godok in his own daughter. Unless suppressed by overwhelming martial prowess and inner energy, one can only obey its commands."
"Exactly. Just as you suppress yours with the power of Taiji."
The Leader's gaze fell on the two swords mounted on the wall—black and white twin blades, the property of their owner, Jin-hyeon.
"Those who couldn't overcome the Godok and followed its orders... some among them even severed the martial world's future."
"No need to beat around the bush. The latent poison bearers saved by the Demon Physician and her disciple killed the heir of the Shandong Namgak family. Not just them—the Jongnam Sect, Hyeongsan Sect, Jinju Eon Clan too."
"...Yes. Indirectly, but enough justification for revenge. Enough, yet..."
The Leader shook his head, something nagging at him.
"The Demon Physician wasn't ordinary, and to be killed by the Killing King... it just doesn't sit right."
"They say she fell from a cliff on Mount Tai, and the Killing King jumped after her in pursuit. He even appeared around here shortly after."
"True. That's evidence of her murder too... though no body was found."
The Leader covered his face with his hand.
"A month before her disappearance, she left me a message."
"A message?"
"More precisely, she passed medicine to the White Tiger Captain and said it. Something like..."
The Leader stroked his beard, recalling.
"'The future's full of headaches, so Alliance Leader, retire early and return to Kunlun to cultivate—it's better for your mental health. Stop relying on these meds constantly.'"
"……"
"Don't doubt the Medicine Immortal's—er, Demon Physician's—medicines. She treated enemies who'd killed her parents if they were wounded, black or white sects be damned. That's why she's the Medicine Immortal. Her Demon Physician title came from treating Magyo folk."
"No one knows the true face behind White Face's mask."
Jin-hyeon murmured softly.
"...Who really knows."
"...Well, we just do our best with what's in front of us."
The Leader shrugged and lifted his teacup.
"Right now, about the Blocked Meridian Syndrome treatment—"
"Pardon the interruption."
Smoothly, a woman in a White Tiger mask—the White Tiger Captain—appeared behind the Leader.
"Urgent?"
"An emergency."
"Emergency...?"
"At the Moyong family estate."
Clatter.
"What happened at the Moyong estate?! Did that bitch from Jeomchang finally...!!"
Jin-hyeon's face filled with shock, but the White Tiger Captain shook her head.
"Jin-hyeon, calm down. White Tiger Captain, continue your report."
"...It might be hard to believe, but I'm reporting exactly what I saw."
"The White Tiger Captain hesitating? What on earth happened?"
"A side effect from the Blocked Meridian Syndrome treatment—the Extreme Yang Pill—has appeared."
Flinch.
"...Don't tell me that side effect made the Self-Inspecting Sect Leader attack Physician Seok...?"
"She hugged Physician Seok and patted his back, but no grabbing by the collar or charging at him regardless of Sword Saint or whatever."
"Then?"
"Rejuvenation... to virginity. That's what she said."
Flinch.
"I saw it myself. Yu Gi-yeon, the daughter of the Self-Inspecting Sect who took the Extreme Yang Pill... she's regressed to around twenty years old."
"That is."
Screech.
"Not Rejuvenation...?"
Geomhu slowly rose, dragging her chair.
"The Extreme Yang Pill's side effect is... Rejuvenation...?"
Flash.
"Back to her twenty-year-old self...?"
Geomhu. She looked far more like an elder sister to Jin-hyeon.
[At that moment, somewhere in another high tower overlooking the Moyong family estate.]
"......What a commotion."
A masked man in black robes shook his head.
"What now?"
"……"
Behind him, a woman clad head to toe in white, wearing a white fox mask, toyed with a wide sake cup.
"What now... is meaningless, Killing King."
"Even after stirring this chaos?"
The Killing King pointed toward the Moyong estate.
"The Blocked Meridian Syndrome treatment alone drew all sorts of masters here. If word spreads to old monsters desperate to shave off even a year, the world will plunge into turmoil, no?"
"...Heh heh heh."
"No way."
The Killing King's eyes narrowed above his mask.
"You orchestrated this chaos on purpose?"
"Even greater chaos will engulf the martial world."
The woman slightly lifted her fox mask, revealing red lips as she sipped lightly from the cup.
"Because the side effect from the Blocked Meridian Syndrome treatment won't end at mere Rejuvenation."
"What kind of side effect are we talking?"
"The bald will grow hair, the lame will walk again, those who've finished growing taller will grow as desired, and the aged who crave youth will regain it?"
"You."
The Killing King's pupils trembled.
"What have you created through 'him'?"
"Created. Not wrong, but..."
The woman turned to face him, crossing her legs. She grasped below the mask with her hand; with a click, it lifted.
"I merely allowed an existing talent to fully bloom."
Revealing smooth white legs, the maskless woman had hair, eyebrows—even irises—pure white.
"Perhaps a product of revolution defying nature's laws and providence itself, the essence of Heaven-Reversing. To those who take it, something in human form that crafts the most ideal state."
"That...."
"Whether it reverses time or summons some other miracle, I don't know. I call it the 'materialization of humanity's ideal utopia' in my own way... hehe. Got it?"
She waved lightly at the Killing King.
"I don't care for vague talk, so I'll put it simply and clearly."
The edge of her sole red lips curved up.
"A panacea for all diseases."
"......?"
"That child. Seok Mu-wol is a panacea incarnate."
A red flush bloomed on the woman's face.
"A human elixir sent by heaven to the mortal world itself."