The Murim Alliance
Word of Sanwol's latest venture—the construction of a Comic Tea House—soon reached the ears of the Murim Alliance.
Naturally, the high leadership was thrown into an uproar. As if it weren't bad enough that the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering had been utterly swallowed whole by the Nangahyeopjeon craze, the rising stars had long since lost all interest in the tournament. If this unprecedented enterprise known as a "Comic Tea House" succeeded as well, the prestige of the alliance would suffer an irreversible blow.
That simply could not be allowed to happen.
"We must arrange a face-to-face meeting with Artist Dokgo."
After a grueling council session, the alliance elders reached their verdict. They would make direct contact with Sanwol, the creator behind Nangahyeopjeon who had shaken Wuhan to its core—and in truth, continued to rattle it to this day. They drafted a formal missive to be delivered straight into his hands, extending warm congratulations on the comic's soaring success, professing their own keen appreciation for his work, and politely proposing an audience since the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering was just around the corner. Because official correspondence followed standard diplomatic templates, the parchment was inscribed in no time at all. All that remained was to dispatch the letter to Sanwol and await his reply.
"Then as for delivering this letter, we shall assign a First-rate warrior with free time—"
"No need. I shall go myself."
And that was where the complication arose—an entirely unforeseen hitch from the perspective of the leadership council.
"Alliance Leader? Just how long have you been standing there?"
"Well, I finished stamping all that infernal paperwork and had nothing better to do than wander about, when I happened to overhear your fascinating discussion."
In short, he had been strolling around out of sheer boredom, heard something amusing, and invited himself in. The only small comfort was that he had at least dispatched his mandatory paperwork before wandering off. Even so, the elders traded uneasy glances. The problem, quite simply, was that Geuk Cheonrang was the Alliance Leader.
The Leader of the Murim Alliance stood at the pinnacle of the martial world, serving as the figurehead for all righteous sects under heaven. He was meant to reassure the populace with an aura of noble dignity and unite the Orthodox factions through impeccable virtue and gravitas. Entrusting a man of such stature with the petty duties of a courier was absurd beyond measure.
"Pay it no mind," Geuk Cheonrang remarked breezily. "Aside from your deliberations, I've kept an ear to the ground regarding the rumors circulating the market streets."
Though he volunteered for the courier post with utter confidence, the elders remained thoroughly hesitant.
"I shall deliver the letter and persuade the boy in person. Besides, it gives me a prime excuse to verify whether the rumor about a mere youth ascending to the Peak Realm holds any truth."
Only then did a spark of realization strike the elders. He had no genuine interest in playing errand boy; delivering the message was merely a pretext to catch a glimpse of Sanwol for himself.
Geuk Cheonrang was a man who harbored insatiable curiosity for martial artists of peerless skill or anyone endowed with eccentric talents. By nature, he was a free spirit who lived to wander unburdened and savor life's whims. How else could a master of the Mid Profound Realm—the undisputed Number One Under Heaven—have lived as a masterless ronin? Ever since he was pushed onto the seat of Alliance Leader and brought to Wuhan, his roving instincts had been utterly suffocated. It was as though iron shackles and massive lead weights had been clamped to the limbs of a traveler itching to hit the open road.
The moment their thoughts connected, the elders began stealthily shifting their hands and edging their bodies, trying to tuck the missive out of sight. To a man desperate to slip past the gates of the alliance for a taste of freedom, that parchment was an airtight excuse.
Yet Geuk Cheonrang was the realm's supreme master, a transcendent of the Profound Realm. Having traversed the world as a wanderer, his wits were as sharp as his blade, and seeing through the petty schemes of the council elders was child's play.
"Ah!"
"A-Alliance Leader! You must not!"
In an instant, Geuk Cheonrang's distinct silhouette blurred and dissolved.
It was Transposition—the sublime art of instantaneous displacement. While ordinary practitioners merely vanished into a streak of high-speed movement, Geuk Cheonrang's cultivation was so terrifyingly profound, and the technique harmonized so flawlessly with his capricious temperament, that a tangible afterimage lingered in his wake.
Reacting half a beat too late, the elders desperately curled their bodies into balls to protect the letter. Confronting a master of the Profound Realm head-on was suicide, and attempting to flee was equally hopeless given his legendary lightness arts. Their sole recourse was to huddle like tortoises over the desk and pray he couldn't pry it loose.
"Worry not. I shall personally persuade Artist Dokgo and settle the matter."
Flashing a playful grin, Geuk Cheonrang twirled something between two fingers through the air. The gaze of every elder snapped instinctively toward his hand, only to widen in horror. Pinched lightly between his fingertips was none other than the very letter they had sworn to guard.
"Well then, I shall take my leave!"
"Alliance Leader!!"
"Please, for the love of heaven, halt!"
Geuk Cheonrang outpaced their frantic wails in a single breath. In broad daylight, the grand council chamber was thrown into pure bedlam as the supreme master of the Murim Alliance darted toward Dokgo Sanwol's estate. Whenever the wind ruffled his flapping robes, the dog-eared corner of Nangahyeopjeon Volume One peeked out from within his chest folds.
Much like every other martial artist in Wuhan, Geuk Cheonrang was an ardent devotee of the comic. Presented with an opportunity to meet the author in the flesh, he had seized upon the excuse without a second thought.
Why the Chief Strategist and those stiff-necked fools keep such a masterpiece at arm's length is utterly beyond me, he mused.
Of course, that was an admission he kept strictly to himself, lest the elders barricade the gates with their very lives.
Sanwol lived a busy life. Some might wonder why someone rolling in coin could possibly be busy, but in truth, his schedule was packed. It wasn't that he had an endless list of chores; rather, the few tasks he did have simply consumed an enormous amount of time.
He had hired specialized guards and servants to handle the transport of profits from Nangahyeopjeon. He had hired dedicated household staff to manage cooking, cleaning, and laundry. And since the Comic Tea House venture required a proper venue first, he had entrusted the entirety of the construction to Noh Sopyeong. At a glance, he looked like nothing more than an idle, nouveau-riche slacker who refused to lift a finger around the house or oversee his own business.
Yet Sanwol was absorbed in his true craft: pacing the plot of Nangahyeopjeon and illustrating Volume Three. The moment he set brush to paper, Sanwol became invincible—a living god walking among mortals in Wuhan. By now, his public reputation had ascended past mere admiration and trust straight into the realm of fervent worship, achieving a divine resonance that no artist before him had ever touched.
And there was one other matter occupying Sanwol's days.
"Ugh, so bitter."
Namely, scrunching up his face in disgust while shoveling down spiritual elixirs like his life depended on it.
Sanwol's internal qi reserves were lacking. In absolute terms, his internal energy was merely average, but for a master of the Mid Peak Realm, it was noticeably sparse. There were several reasons for this deficit, principal among them being that his cultivation followed a painstakingly honest, bare-bones orthodoxy. He practiced the Three Talents Heart Art—a basic manual that no one could call efficient even out of polite flattery—and had hardly ingested any rare elixirs in his youth. If anything, it was a minor miracle that his innate qi-channeling intuition and raw talent had carried him this far.
So Sanwol loosened the purse strings. Careless of the cost, he ordered his servants to purchase every premium internal arts manual and spiritual medicine they could find. Back in his previous life, video games were rife with whales who dumped endless cash into becoming overpowered—a practice colloquially known as pay-to-win, or in cruder terms, throwing stupid money around. Yet gamers often mocked such behavior precisely because video games were intangible fictions; blowing fortunes on ephemeral clusters of binary code looked like foolish vanity. But here, things were different. If Sanwol hurled mountains of silver at top-grade elixirs, swallowed them, and absorbed their medicinal essence, he grew objectively stronger. It was the brazen unfairness of the Central Plains: obscene wealth directly translated into raw, physical might.
"I have plenty of medicine, but the cultivation manual is such a disappointment..."
Having circulated the elixir's medicinal potency throughout his vessels, Sanwol wore a grimace. Because his internal qi manual was so rudimentary, his body hit an absorption ceiling of seventy to eighty percent at best. Furthermore, manuals containing transcendent divine techniques were not the sort of commodities one could pick up at a local stall. Nor could he simply switch to an internal art that was only marginally better than his own; martial styles possessed distinct philosophical roots that imparted vastly different properties to one's true qi. A careless transition risked clashing qi later on, potentially locking him out of mastering a true supreme martial art down the road.
Of course, one could always disperse the accumulated internal qi in one's dantian and start from scratch, but...
Yeah, no thanks.
Discarding his hard-won cultivation was the height of inefficiency. Even if regaining his former realm required only raw accumulation rather than fresh enlightenment, internal energy wasn't something you could just pump into your dantian like gasoline into a carriage tank.
Was there no better way? With the Late Peak Realm drawing near, Sanwol found himself plunged into an uncharacteristically solemn quandary. Reaching the Late Peak Realm required weaving Sword Qi into ultra-refined Sword Threads, a feat that his present internal qi was hopelessly inadequate to sustain. In other words, a martial artist lacking an exceptional internal heart art could never advance beyond the early thresholds of the Peak Realm.
No wonder there was an era when the Peak Realm was considered the absolute pinnacle of the martial path.
If only a serendipitous encounter would fall into his lap. Didn't all transmigrators confronted with such bottlenecks stumble upon some absurdly overpowered miraculous encounter and awaken on the spot? Where had the sacred Jianghu tradition gone, where transmigrators obtained transcendent fortunes and transformed into god-tier powerhouses?
Sanwol let out a deep sigh at the lamentable state of his Central Plains reality. Still, brooding alone would change nothing. Deciding he might as well practice a few sword forms to clear his head, he stepped out from his private cultivation chamber.
"Y-Young Master!"
"Elder Noh? What's the matter?"
Noh Sopyeong, who had been pacing anxiously back and forth in the courtyard, rushed forward with a radiant expression as if beholding his savior. Sanwol tilted his head, watching the old steward hurry over.
"The Leader of the Murim Alliance has arrived! I have escorted him to the reception parlor for the moment, so you must attend to him at once—!"
Before Noh Sopyeong could even finish his sentence, Sanwol was already sprinting toward the reception parlor. How could he not? It was the Murim Alliance Leader—the supreme titan of the Central Plains, celebrated across the realm as Number One Under Heaven and Wuhan's Number One Sword. A man of that caliber wouldn't simply drop by unannounced out of idle boredom, surely!
A brilliant glow washed over Sanwol's face.
It's finally here! My miraculous encounter!
To Sanwol, the Murim Alliance Leader was already nothing less than a walking, breathing cheat code.