Are You Prepared to Devote Your Life?
Baek Yu-yeon flinched.
Devote my life?
She was already doing exactly that, yet hearing it from Kang Hyun made the words land differently—almost as if a devil were demanding his price.
Her mind snapped into sharp focus.
Why is he asking me this?
A conditional question like that, she reasoned, always carried a premise of its own.
“Professor… does that mean…” She swallowed hard. “There’s a way to treat my sister?”
It was impossible. Professor Hwang Ye-rim had consulted renowned experts overseas and still found no answer. Yet Baek Yu-yeon wanted—more than anyone—to hear an affirmative from Kang Hyun’s lips.
“There is.”
“……!”
“But it might as well not exist.”
Confusion flooded her. What was that supposed to mean?
Kang Hyun continued. “To melt the cold qi of Guumjeolmaek in a single stroke, you’d need something on the level of a Solar Fire Carp’s inner core. But in this modern age, a divine treasure that supposedly lives for centuries inside boiling lava? No such thing exists.”
“Ah…”
A sigh escaped Baek Yu-yeon. Professor Hwang Ye-rim had said the same thing. To dissolve the cold qi clogging the nine major meridians would require an elixir of overwhelming yang energy. That was precisely why she had thrown herself into alchemy—because no such elixir existed in the world, she would forge one herself out of sheer stubborn will.
“So there really is no way…”
“I never said there was only one method.”
“Then is there another?”
“First, can I take a look at your sister?”
“My sister?”
Baek Yu-yeon hesitated. Her younger sister avoided people with extreme intensity. Years of illness were part of it, but more than that, she simply could not endure the gazes of strangers. Only their parents, Baek Yu-yeon herself, and Professor Hwang Ye-rim were ever allowed into her room.
And yet…
This professor knows something.
Look at everything Kang Hyun had already shown them. He had completed the formula for the Qi Circulation Pill. His grasp of martial arts medicine ran deep. He even handled Cha Yu-sik—the notorious troublemaker among the professors—like a child.
Baek Yu-yeon was ready to grasp at any straw. She was that desperate.
“…Follow me.”
A perfectly ordinary apartment in the heart of Seoul.
The moment they stepped through the front door, a middle-aged woman greeted them.
“Yu-yeon, what brings you home at this hour?”
Baek Yu-yeon’s mother. The gaunt exhaustion written across her face spoke of long years spent nursing.
“Mom, where’s my sister?”
“She just took her painkillers and finally managed to fall asleep. And the gentleman with you…?”
“He’s a professor from the Academy. I brought him to consult about Yu-seol’s condition.”
“Oh my, a professor! Let me at least bring you some tea.”
“That’s all right. I’d like to see her right away.”
At the mention of seeing her daughter, the mother hesitated—but Baek Yu-yeon quickly stroked her arm.
“Mom, I’ll take care of him. You rest.”
Leaving her mother’s worried gaze behind, Baek Yu-yeon carefully opened the door at the end of the hallway.
A wave of cold air washed over them.
On the bed, contrary to her mother’s claim that she was asleep, a girl sat half-upright, reading a book.
Oh?
A spark of interest lit Kang Hyun’s eyes.
Even the deathly pallor could not hide it—she was a beauty of staggering caliber. Skin so white it seemed translucent, features settled into a cold, quiet stillness. If a solitary, noble flower ever bloomed alone upon ice, it would look exactly like this.
Guumjeolmaek, no question.
A constitution said to gift overwhelming talent and soul-stealing beauty in exchange for an early death.
“Unnie?”
Sensing an unfamiliar presence, Baek Yu-seol lifted her head.
“Yu-seol, I’m sorry. This is a professor from the Academy. He insisted he needed to see you just once.”
In that moment, Baek Yu-seol’s gaze locked with Kang Hyun’s.
“……!”
Her clear eyes trembled finely.
The true reason Baek Yu-seol avoided people was something else entirely. Through another’s eyes, she could read their emotions—pity, worry, desire, possessiveness, curiosity… She wished those feelings could be pure, but most people’s were sticky and repulsive.
But this man…
He was different. Strange, even.
He’s… glad?
It was the emotion of someone who had finally found what he had been searching for all along.
Why?
She was still reeling from a gaze she had never experienced before when—
“Ugh.”
Baek Yu-seol clutched her chest without thinking, brows knitting. Her breath caught in her throat.
The instant she peered into the depths of Kang Hyun’s eyes, a horrific vision flooded in.
A living hell under a blood-red sky. Corpses piled beyond counting. A lone man standing in the center of that reeking mountain of corpses and sea of blood. Seven old men pressing down upon him from above, and the form of an overwhelming monster tearing open the heavens themselves!
“Hah… hah!”
Baek Yu-seol gasped for air, her body shaking like an aspen leaf.
She saw the traces of unimaginable agony. From childhood she had endured the ceaseless pain of a rare disease, night and day. Yet even she felt her own suffering turn trivial before the torment this man carried inside him.
What kind of life had he lived, to hold a living hell like that within his soul?
As she panted in confusion—
“I’ll take your pulse.”
Kang Hyun abruptly reached out.
Baek Yu-seol loathed physical contact from others. The touch of anyone outside her family usually sent her into hysterics, body curling away to hide. But this time was different.
“…All right.”
She offered her wrist so readily that Baek Yu-yeon, standing behind them, felt her eyes go round as saucers.
Yu-seol is giving her hand to a complete stranger?
Whether her sister was shocked or not, Kang Hyun impassively laid three fingers upon the girl’s slender wrist.
“Don’t try to steady your breathing. Stay as you normally are.”
“Yes.”
Silence settled. Only Baek Yu-seol’s shallow, unstable breaths filled the room.
How much time passed?
Kang Hyun withdrew his hand and spoke in a dry, flat tone.
“It’s advanced quite far. Once the heart meridian fully closes, it’s over. She has less than half a year left, from the look of it.”
Baek Yu-yeon’s heart plummeted. She already knew. Lately her sister spent far more time collapsed under painkillers than awake.
“I-Is there a way? Professor! Please!”
Baek Yu-yeon seized Kang Hyun’s sleeve and begged.
“I already said there is.”
“What?”
“But first.”
Kang Hyun fixed Baek Yu-seol with a direct stare.
“Do you want to live?”
Baek Yu-seol bit her lip.
Want to live?
Through the long years of illness she had wanted to give up countless times. Nights when she wished she could simply close her eyes and never wake again were beyond counting.
And yet—
The moment Kang Hyun asked the question, something hot surged up from the very bottom of her chest.
She wanted to live.
Not merely to keep breathing and cling to a thread of life—she wanted to run like the ordinary people on television. She wanted to sprint until her lungs burned, and walk on two healthy legs beside her sister.
“I want to live.”
“Good. That’s enough.”
With a smooth motion, Kang Hyun drew two worn ancient manuals from his robes and set them on the bed.
Extreme Yin Heart Method
Lunar Extreme Sword Art
The unique secret arts created by Seol Mu-wol herself.
“Learn these.”
“…You’re telling me to learn martial arts?”
“You’re smarter than most, so you’ll grasp them quickly. Start by studying the classical language carefully. Contact me if anything confuses you.”
Both sisters wore blank expressions. Instructing a patient who could barely walk without help to learn martial arts? Yet Kang Hyun’s face was so composed and serious that neither could find the words to object.
“How old are you now?”
“Nineteen. Three years younger than my sister.”
“Perfect. You’ll be able to enter the Academy as a freshman next year.”
Baek Yu-yeon nearly burst out laughing. It was absurd. The National Hunter Academy was a gathering place of monsters—people who awakened young and still failed the entrance exams after more than a decade of blood-vomiting training. And a patient who had spent her entire life in bed was supposed to master martial arts in a single year and enroll?
“Simply continuing to practice these arts will keep extending your life. The pain will ease as well.”
If an ordinary person attempted the Extreme Yin Heart Method, the blood throughout their body would freeze solid and kill them. It was a vicious art that demanded an immense innate yin energy. But when someone with Guumjeolmaek practiced it, the cold qi itself became fuel. Each circulation of energy loosened the blocked meridians, if only a little.
“I-Is that really true?”
“It won’t fully cure you, though. For a complete cure, you need the Suyo Formation.”
“The Suyo Formation? Some kind of array?”
“Yes. To deploy the Suyo Formation requires martial arts medical knowledge and acupuncture skill refined to the absolute extreme—and the Cheonmaegan.”
Strictly speaking the Cheonmaegan was not absolutely required, but he saw no need to mention that. Having it would simply make the formation’s power complete.
“Those eyes of yours that see the flow of qi, Baek Yu-yeon.”
“……!”
“From now on, don’t just show up at dawn.”
Kang Hyun shed his usual languid gaze and released the heavy presence of an absolute being.
“Come to my office every day and learn.”
Only then did Baek Yu-yeon understand.
The question he had thrown at her on the training ground.
— Even if it means staking your entire life?
This was what he truly meant.
Forget any thought of remaining under Professor Hwang Ye-rim. Come to me alone and learn everything. Stake your life on me.
It was a decision that required thought. Whether she could trust Kang Hyun’s words was one problem; turning her back on Professor Hwang Ye-rim was another that demanded resolve.
Perhaps he read that hesitation.
With a smooth motion, Kang Hyun pulled one final secret manual from his robes and tossed it lightly against Baek Yu-yeon’s chest.
She hastily caught it and checked the cover.
Compendium of Heavenly Meridians
The secret text of the Mad Hand. Every mystery of the human body was contained within its pages.
“If you truly intend to learn properly under me,” Kang Hyun said over his shoulder as he turned and stepped out the door, “memorize every single character of that within a week. Without a single mistake. Then I’ll take you as my disciple.”
An offer he could make only because she possessed perfect memory.
The sisters’ mother emerged with tea, but Kang Hyun politely declined and left.
The two sisters stared blankly at each other.
Three secret manuals lying there.
What even is all this?
A brief examination, and he had completely scrambled their minds before walking out.
“Unnie… who is that man?”
“Hmm…”
How was she supposed to explain?
Honestly, she wasn’t sure herself.
And yet—why did it feel as though missing this chance would leave her regretting it for the rest of her life?
So she answered.
“…Maybe the person who will change our lives?”