Five Qi Converging at the Origin

It was a standalone residence.

There was a pavilion, and at its center I laid Myeong Hyeon down.

No one was around. In this place there was only me, Yang Il, and Myeong Hyeon, who was dying. Three people in all.

Yang Il raised his head.

"How is it you know of this? It is a thing no soul in this world knows."

"You've lived that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠long in the murim, and you still don't know?"

"I don't know? Don't know what, exactly?"

"There are no eternal secrets in the murim."

"……Cheeky pup. You're not some withered elder restored to youth—you've barely lived at all—yet you talk like a man three times your age."

"I want two things."

"Two things?"

"One is to heal every wound on this man's body. The other is to purge the demonic qi within him completely."

"……So he is of the demonic path, then."

"Does that matter?"

"I don't pry. But purging demonic qi is another matter entirely. Do you think it's easy?"

"If it were easy, I'd have sought out some other divine physician of the murim instead of you."

A crease formed between Yang Il's brows.

"……Hmph. You seem to know a fair bit about me. You even know what I despise most. A truly strange lad you are."

"I want to be certain. The two things I named—can you carry them out, for certain?"

"I can. But only on the condition that this 'it' you spoke of proves to be the truth."

I gazed at Myeong Hyeon for a moment.

"How much time does he have left?"

"If you mean this one's lifespan—exactly five sishin remain. Ten hours, no more."

"Then stretch it by two sishin."

"On what grounds?"

"I'll pay in advance."

"……Look at this one. Full of confidence, are you?"

I regarded Yang Il in silence.

"Let me make one thing clear."

"Speak, then."

"I know where the White Spirit Medical House relic you've been hunting lies buried. You've wasted more than ten years of your life searching this house for it, and you would waste ten years more. If I am the one who finds it, then I will have done you a great favor."

"……And?"

"If you find that relic and then stab me in the back, I will stake my life, the time I've been granted, everything I possess—and I will kill every soul whose name is bound to the White Spirit Medical House."

Yang Il, a master standing at the realm of Five Qi Converging at the Origin, flinched.

"Your wife. Your children. Every soul who follows you, every soul entangled with you—I will hunt them all to the farthest ends of the murim and put them to the sword. Not a single one spared. Do you understand?"

"……Look at this one…… A man who has never trained in demonic arts, yet his killing intent surpasses even that of the Slaughter Star itself. They call me the Mad Physician, but never once in my life have I slighted a debt of gratitude or grudge. Very well—as you say, if you truly know where that relic lies, then I'll say it plainly. This hunk of meat lying here will rise again as though he had never been wounded at all. Demonic qi? I'll scrape out every last strand of it. But listen here."

Yang Il strode toward me.

He stopped a handspan from my face. His body was enormous. I stand close to six feet, and he matched me exactly, our eyes level. Yang Il growled, low and thick.

"Should you not consider the reverse as well? If you have deceived me, then not only the one lying there—you will die too. And further, I will stake everything I am to kill every soul connected to you. The Asura Sword Sect? I'll tear down as much of it as my strength can reach. If fortune favors me, I may raze it to its foundations; even if fortune fails, I can shatter half of it regardless. Do you think you can bear that?"

A smile drew itself across my lips.

At last.

"You truly do live up to the name Mad Physician."

"……"

"Make yourself useful, then. Take his pulse or something."

"……Fine."

Yang Il silently lifted Myeong Hyeon's wrist, drove his qi into the man's body, then drew a needle case from his belt. Inside lay needles of every length; he selected five and planted one at the Baekhoe point on the crown of the head, one at the center of the chest, one at the dantian, and the remaining two near the heart.

"There. I have stretched his remaining five sishin by exactly two. Seven sishin from now, this one dies."

I turned away at once.

"Follow me."

"……You do know the way, do you?"

"Were you always this talkative?"

"……Cheeky pup."

"Spare me the chatter and follow."

I set off.

What Yang Il had spent his years hunting was the family treasure hidden somewhere within the White Spirit Medical House.

There was something that needed clarifying here. The heads of the White Spirit Medical House had always borne the surname Yang. The reason the house was called Baekryeong at all—White Spirit—was that the name had been taken from Mount Baekryeong, the mountain that rose beside it.

Yang Jun, the man who first founded this family, was the great-grandfather of its current head, Yang Il—a man of two centuries past. In other words, the history of the White Spirit Medical House stretched back a full two hundred years.

Before he died, Yang Jun left behind a single testament. It read:

But what this treasure actually was was never made clear, and the heads who succeeded Yang Jun searched for it again and again, only to come up empty-handed.

More than that, over those two hundred years the murim had been wracked by every manner of upheaval, and time to search was always in short supply.

And so the generations passed until Yang Il's own. Yang Il was curious. What on earth could it be, that it deserved to be called a treasure?

It began as curiosity, and it curdled into obsession. That single purpose—whatever it is, I will find it—was what had twisted him into the eccentric he became.

He had turned the White Spirit Medical House inside out and found nothing, and so he had turned to Mount Baekryeong and searched it as well. As far as I knew, Yang Il had only begun combing the mountain in recent years.

But I knew.

In my past life, gravely wounded, I had spent roughly two months at the White Spirit Medical House, and during that time, as my body mended, I had joined Yang Il in hunting for that treasure. We combed Mount Baekryeong. We combed the house.

And that was how we found it.

I glanced at Yang Il for a moment.

"Heh heh…… Is it trembling you feel, lad, now that your bluster stands a hair's breadth from being called a lie?"

"I will say it yet again—I will do no more than find the treasure. Whatever that treasure may prove to be, the pact between you and me must not be altered."

"Hahahaha…… Fear not, boy."

I regarded Yang Il, drunk on anticipation, with a level gaze.

I had warned him plainly.

Whatever the treasure was, I would only be the one to find it.

And so Yang Il and I made our way to the shrine.

This was the hall where the memorial tablets of the White Spirit Medical House's past heads were enshrined, and it was dreadfully gloomy.

"Why have we come here?"

"The treasure is here."

"……Impossible. I spent more than ten years searching for that thing—surely you don't imagine I never once examined this place."

"You never did it properly. That's why you never found it."

Yang Il was flustered.

"……I find myself wondering just what in the world fuels that confidence of yours. Well then—find it, if you can."

"There's no need to find it. It's right before your eyes."

Yang Il's brow knotted fiercely. His eyes were saying: what nonsense is this now?

I extended my index finger and pointed at the floor.

The shrine was spacious. And carved into its floor were the Four Guardian Deities—not gouged out carelessly, but worked with a master craftsman's meticulous hand.

The Four Guardian Deities.

The Azure Dragon. The Vermilion Bird. The White Tiger. The Black Tortoise.

Yang Il studied the guardians. He tilted his head as though no amount of staring would ever reveal the answer.

"Just where is it supposed to be, then?"

"Feel nothing off? No dissonance at all?"

"Dissonance?"

"The Azure Dragon in the east, the Vermilion Bird in the south, the White Tiger in the west, the Black Tortoise in the north. Don't look at them in scraps—look at the whole. Try gazing down over this entire shrine from above."

"……"

"Where is the Azure Dragon gazing?"

"……The Azure Dragon isn't gazing anywhere, it's just—"

"The Vermilion Bird?"

"……"

"The White Tiger? The Black Tortoise?"

"……Huh?"

Yang Il's eyes flew wide open.

It seemed he had finally caught on.

"All four of these guardian deities are gazing at a single point—a spot roughly two inches from the center of the hall."

I walked over and drove my heel down onto that spot.

Crack.

The ground caved in.

I stomped it once more.

Crack.

Then I tipped my chin at Yang Il. Come and look.

Yang Il approached on unsteady steps, and from the floor I had shattered beneath my foot, he lifted something out.

It was a small box.

"G-good heavens…… it was here…… all this time, it was here?"

Yang Il slowly opened the box.

And the moment he confirmed what lay inside, his brow crumpled violently.

A single sheet of paper.

"……What is this."

"What else would it be? The treasure your ancestor of the White Spirit Medical House left behind."

Yang Il flapped the paper in his hand.

"This is the treasure? Nothing but this?"

He was seething.

And understandably so.

The paper bore only a single character.

Emptiness.

The hand holding the paper trembled uncontrollably.

"……This cannot be the treasure. It cannot be. You are toying with me—that's what this is."

I let out a long sigh.

"You know full well that isn't so."

"……"

"We made a pact. Do you mean to break it?"

"……You've been spouting strange things this entire while…… So you knew all along what the White Spirit Medical House's treasure truly was."

Of course I did.

And in my past life, Yang Il had reacted in exactly the same way. He hadn't cursed me to my face, but he was so dumbstruck that he had collapsed right where he stood.

The circumstances of that life and this one were different, which meant the plan had to change as well.

I had calculated that subduing the Yang Il before me, then Seomun Hyeok waiting outside, and then the martial artists beyond him would take roughly five sishin in all.

That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was why I had extended Myeong Hyeon's life by two sishin.

I briefly considered drawing the Cloud Dragon Sword.

Not yet.

I spoke, quiet and even.

"Your ancestor wished to leave this to his descendants."

"'Emptiness'? He left his heirs this? This is a treasure?"

Tsk.

I sighed again.

I needed to save Myeong Hyeon, and this fool, utterly hostage to his own fury, was teetering on the brink of succumbing to his heart-demon.

"What is emptiness?"

"……What is this, out of nowhere—"

I reached out and plucked the box from Yang Il's hand.

"What is this thing called?"

"……A box, isn't it?"

I crushed it on the spot. Fragments scattered across the floor.

"Then what is this called?"

"……You…… just now……"

"'Box' is nothing but a false name we attached to it. Once it is broken, it forfeits its existence as a box. In other words—it possesses no fixed substance."

I held out the fragments remaining in my hand for Yang Il to see.

"And yet—if these fragments are gathered up again, smaller than before, yes, but a 'box' can be made of them. Nothing in all creation possesses a fixed and unchanging substance. Everything you can see, everything you hold—all of it amounts to nothing more than names we have attached. These fragments may become a box, or they may become powder, or they may become a memorial stone. Because all things exist bound together in relations of cause and effect, mutually dependent, they are without self—and because they are without self, they are empty."

"……An admonition, then. Do not cling—do what can be done."

"Interpret it however you please. And so……"

My voice trailed off.

A feeling was coming.

My senses were amplifying.

Of all times—now.

"……Yang Il."

"……What is it you want?"

"I kept my promise. Now it is your turn to keep yours."

"……Ha…… this is madness, it truly is."

"Will you keep it, or will you not?"

Yang Il heaved a deep, deep sigh, and answered.

"I will keep it. Though this so-called treasure is of no use to me whatsoever, from this day forward you are a benefactor of the White Spirit Medical House. A promise sworn to a benefactor cannot be brok—"

I didn't listen to the rest.

Silently, I folded myself into a lotus position on the spot.

I had known all of this already—but knowing it again was another matter entirely.

I had reached ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Realm of Harmony once before, and through that experience had awakened to all manner of truths—but I was not awakening to them now.

Those things were nothing more than memories. They were not enlightenment carved into this flesh.

Even if it belonged to the past—who was it that had defined it so?

I did.

It is not a thing of the past. It is a thing of the present, and a thing of the future. And it is a thing of the past as well.

Nothing in all creation possesses a fixed, unchanging substance. Not memory, not sensation, not the world, not qi.

All things are without self, and to be without self is to be empty. The very process of filling oneself—

that, too, is emptiness.

I entered circulation, just as I was.

I was dumbfounded.

Yang Il stared at the man before him with an expression of sheer incredulity.

What on earth was this man?

Mid-conversation, without a word of warning, the man had simply folded into a lotus position.

And now, above his head, five colors of qi—azure, crimson, white, black, and yellow—were spinning into five rings.

That was the Five Qi Converging at the Origin.

The realm a martial artist reaches upon standing at the very end of the Four Realms of Qi Condensation—and from there, at last, turning his gaze toward the Heaven-Earth Realms.

It was absurd.

"……What the hell is this bastard?"