The Sea Spirit and Ungyu Sect (3)
On the first night after arriving at Ungyu Sect, Baek Sang-ah stayed awake until dawn.
Of course, it wasn’t because she was nervous or having trouble adjusting to the unfamiliar surroundings.
Baek Sang-ah the shark simply didn’t usually sleep.
If she stopped swimming, her breathing stopped too.
So, like a shark, she would let only part of her brain rest, reducing her activity to the bare minimum and slipping into a kind of partial sleep.
Baek Sang-ah was no different.
[Even after taking a human body and being able to breathe properly, you still insist on resting only in part like a shark. Aren’t you being a little too greedy?]
Baek Sang-ah lay flat on the floor and lifted only her head.
Her tail made it impossible for her to lie on her back and look up at the ceiling.
‘But sleeping is scary. There’s nothing there.’
[I’m not scolding you. If anything, that’s a good thing for a cultivator. Then during the day you can learn the basic cultivation arts, and late at night you can learn this body’s divine perception arts.]
Soon, she stared blankly at the wall of the guest room.
At the moment, the only parts of her that were truly active were a portion of her brain, her eyes, and her mouth.
The rest, like a shark’s, was resting, leaving her body limp and slack.
“Do I just have to eat a lot?”
[What did you say?]
“You said it was the food spirit arts.”
The tip of the tail draped over her hips scraped idly against the floor, as if to show Baek Sang-ah’s boredom.
[I said divine perception, not food spirit arts. Has your hearing gone bad?]
“But I hear Muyeonja’s voice in my head, not with my ears.”
[Hah, stop saying useless things and listen carefully. The divine perception arts are the foundation for surviving as a cultivator from now on.]
“So it’s important.”
[Of course it is. And you’re fortunate. You’ll be able to learn the basic divine perception arts personally taught by a Great Immortal.]
Before Muyeonja had even finished speaking, Baek Sang-ah wriggled and shifted her position.
Lying flat on the floor had become uncomfortable, with her chest pressed between her body and the ground like a steamed bun.
[The divine perception arts are methods for tempering the mind. They are the power to pierce through things, read the flow of events, and comprehend principle itself.]
“Mmgh….”
[Only by mastering divine perception arts can you properly control spiritual power, build cultivation, and learn spells.]
“Keh….”
[In particular, if you learn divine perception arts, you won’t be dominated by another cultivator’s consciousness. Instead, you can seize their consciousness and easily gain the upper hand.]
Before long, the tip of Baek Sang-ah’s gently swaying tail fell completely still and draped over the bedding.
[Are you even listening?]
“Khrr….”
[Good heavens above…]
Muyeonja was at a loss for words for quite some time.
In the old days, what had cultivators been like?
They had knelt until their knees were worn raw and their palms burned, begging for even the slightest teaching from a Great Immortal.
Many had even died chasing after a chance to glimpse a Great Immortal’s cultivation in secret.
And yet Baek Sang-ah, standing before the chance to learn a Great Immortal’s divine perception arts directly, was acting like that. It was enough to make one’s mind twist out of shape.
[You wretch!]
“Kraang?”
Startled by the sudden roar, Baek Sang-ah’s tail shot straight up.
[This body is already half-infused with you, and yet you have the gall to pretend to sleep!]
“I—I was thinking.”
[And now you’re trying to hide the sky with your palm.]
Muyeonja let out a small sigh.
[I’ll think of the cultivation method that best suits you, so be ready.]
…….
…….
…….
The early bird catches the worm.
Then how quickly would Baek Sang-ah catch fish, if she didn’t sleep at all?
On a morning when the sun had not yet fully risen, the Ungyu Sect cultivator who woke first and stepped into the courtyard found Baek Sang-ah there.
More precisely, he found Baek Sang-ah in the courtyard pond, with a carp clenched in her mouth.
“Ah….”
The Ungyu Sect cultivator realized he had let out an unconscious groan and quickly shut his mouth.
Then he studied what Baek Sang-ah was doing.
“These aren’t very good. Not much nutrition.”
The cultivator blinked, looking at Baek Sang-ah, who was chewing on one of the prized carp he had raised with great care.
He rubbed his eyes, but no matter how hard he tried, reality did not change.
Baek Sang-ah was really standing in the pond, her tail swishing lazily through the water.
After hesitating over whether to speak, the cultivator asked carefully, “If I may ask, what are you doing?”
Baek Sang-ah turned her head sharply to look at him and answered with the carp still in her mouth.
“Mrrb, mrrbm.”
“If you don’t mind, could you please take the thing out of your mouth first…?”
Gulp.
The instant Baek Sang-ah swallowed the carp whole, a look of despair flickered in the cultivator’s eyes.
He had been separated from the ornamental carp he’d raised for so many years without even getting a chance to say goodbye.
Of course, he could not show that on his face.
The cultivator did not know that Baek Sang-ah had only just broken into the Qi Refining stage and was barely over ten years old.
From his point of view, this sea beast cultivator was already someone beyond the realm of ordinary mortals, almost like a mysterious being who had long since passed into the Core Formation stage.
In other words, he could not say anything carelessly.
“Phew… I tried eating it because I’d never seen this kind of fish before, but it doesn’t have much nutritional value.”
“I-it’s a species called ornamental carp.”
“Do you have any other fish?”
“Could you perhaps come out of the pond first? I’ll try to obtain some as quickly as possible.”
“Why?”
Even if she’d been malicious, that might have been easier to bear. But with Baek Sang-ah blinking at him so innocently, it was even more heartbreaking.
“Because those carp are for decoration, not food.”
“Huh? Fish are for eating. I didn’t know that. I taught you something.”
Then the cultivator’s eyes fell on Baek Sang-ah’s tail.
A shark tail.
He had never heard of a sea beast race among the marine creatures that were not dragon-kin, but there was no doubt that her origin was shark.
So there was nothing he could say in rebuttal.
“Thank you for the lesson, senior….”
“Next time, if you raise tuna or yellowtail, or dolphins or sea otters, you’ll be able to eat your fill.”
“I will certainly take that under advisement.”
“Aren’t you grateful?”
Only then did Baek Sang-ah climb out of the pond.
Wet footprints were left clearly behind her on the stone courtyard.
Meanwhile, the white robe she wore, the one she had taken from Hyeongeuk, was soaked through.
Clinging to her body as though it had shrunk by a size, the wet robe laid every curve bare.
Especially around her upper body, the thin cloth faintly revealed the pale skin beneath, and her tail tugged at the hem, awkwardly twisting the waist of her pants.
“This really is uncomfortable. It feels like I’m caught in a net.”
Baek Sang-ah tried tugging at the front of her robe with her hands, but the wet fabric only stuck to her body even more tightly.
Seeing her like that, the cultivator’s shoulders trembled.
Not because he had been struck dumb by her figure.
No, it was because he had clearly been told to prepare clothing yesterday, yet Baek Sang-ah was still wearing the same shabby outfit from before.
He was already doing his best to keep her satisfied, so there was no way he could let her displeasure build over something like this.
“Clothes, yes. Senior, I’ll fetch you clothes right away!”
The cultivator spun around in a hurry.
It was absurd for the sect master himself to run down to the village to buy clothing.
But for him, this was the only emergency measure that could get him out of the situation immediately.
“Please rest inside. I’ll be back in a moment!”
He decided not to look back until every last wet footprint and damp strip of robe had vanished from sight, and hurried out through the main gate.
As he walked toward the village, the cultivator thought miserably, ‘Tuna, dolphins, sea otters… where am I supposed to get those? If I can’t, then I’m the one who’ll be eaten. Great heavens, please, I beg you…’
Whether he knew the cultivator’s anguish or not, Baek Sang-ah was sitting on the edge of the pond’s stone rim, examining the fish.
That was when it happened.
As she stared at the fish and checked her own saliva, Baek Sang-ah suddenly sprang to her feet and looked somewhere in the distance.
Noticing her reaction, Muyeonja asked, [What is it?]
“S-someone’s there, I think.”
[Hm? Well, of course there are cultivators in the sect.]
“No, they’re coming. Someone.”
Yet unlike the twitch of Baek Sang-ah’s brows, Muyeonja felt nothing at all.
[Could it be your imagination? You haven’t even learned divine perception arts yet. How could you…]
“It’s real.”
The moment she said it, a door suddenly opened and a cultivator appeared.
“Huh?”
At the same time, Baek Sang-ah tilted her head.
It wasn’t one of the seven Qi Refining cultivators she had seen yesterday coming out of that doorway.
This was a face she had never seen before.
“A person? Oh my, she has a tail?”
It was a girl with a youthful face.
Judging by the aura she gave off, she was at most at the middle stage of Qi Refining, like Hyeongeuk, and by appearance alone she looked no more than in her mid-teens.
The girl’s eyes widened the moment she saw Baek Sang-ah, and she hurried over to her.
“And you’re wearing our robe? Are you a new disciple? How did you attach that tail? Is there really a cultivation method that can grow one?”
Pressed by the sudden barrage of questions, even Baek Sang-ah felt confused before she could make sense of the situation.
“Wow, you’re really pretty. Oh. Should I call you older sister?”
“Who are you? You.”
As Baek Sang-ah gently pushed away the girl’s face, which had drawn too close, the girl’s lips curled into a smile.
“You’ve come to Ungyu Sect and still haven’t heard of me? I’m the first disciple of Ungyu Sect, the legitimate direct disciple of Sect Master Ung, and a single Earth spiritual root.”
[A single Earth spiritual root in a sect this small…?]
While Muyeonja let out a low hum, the girl suddenly took Baek Sang-ah’s hand in both of hers.
“My name is Dam So-dam. You can call me Sister So-dam if you like.”
Baek Sang-ah stared at her as if she were something fascinating.
Unlike Hyeongeuk or the sect cultivator, who had both been wary of her, Dam So-dam was acting warm and familiar.
And Baek Sang-ah had the habit of asking about whatever caught her curiosity.
The moment Baek Sang-ah opened her mouth, Dam So-dam suddenly placed both hands on Baek Sang-ah’s cheeks and pressed down on them.
“Perfect. There weren’t any women in Ungyu Sect except me. I’m glad someone as pretty as you came.”
And there was someone who witnessed Dam So-dam squeezing Baek Sang-ah’s cheeks.
It was Hyeongeuk, just waking up.
“I’ll be in your care from now on….”
“S-Sister So-dam! J-just wait a moment!”
The instant Hyeongeuk saw the scene, he came rushing over with a face gone pale as paper.