I Told Her to Pull Weeds and She Split a Boulder
Crack-cra-ck—!
Watching the frigid cold crawl all the way up to the main beam under a piercing, ear-splitting screech, I sat collapsed on the floor, clapping a trembling hand over my mouth.
Insane…… this is not okay.
It made no sense.
What exactly had I taught her, anyway?
It was nothing more than the abdominal breathing techniques I'd once looked up on YouTube to ease my herniated disc, liberally seasoned with all the nonsense about the lower dantian and the "sea of qi" I'd picked up from a decade of devouring martial arts web novels.
Was it seriously possible for a kid to turn an entire room into a sheet of ice overnight—freeze even the embers in the hearth—just because I'd taught her that garbage?
Huuuh― whoooo―.
Soyeon still had her eyes closed, furiously gulping down the icy qi into her small body.
I could feel it on my skin—each time the child inhaled, the temperature of the room dropped by several degrees. If I let this go until morning, two human-shaped icicles would be found dangling beneath the Cheonhae Sect's signboard.
I have to wake her up. Now, or she dies.
But I couldn't just reach out and touch her. What if I shook those frost-rimed shoulders and my fingers got frostbite and snapped clean off?
"S-Soyeon!"
My chattering teeth clacked together as I let out a shrill yell.
"Hey! Soyeon! Wake up!"
Only after I'd wrung my throat raw three times did the child's breathing stop.
Between her finely trembling lashes, her eyelids slowly lifted.
Then—instantly.
Flash—!
A thunderbolt-deep azure light split the air from the depths of her pupils.
It was a chilling gaze, like blue lightning tearing through the dark.
"Hik!"
I yelped and scooted my butt backward without meaning to.
The so-called light born in an empty room, the penetrating gaze—the marks of a supreme master I'd only ever heard about in martial arts novels—were shooting out of a little kid's eyeballs!
But Soyeon herself was blinking around with a dumbfounded look on her face.
"……Huh?"
The child raised her small hand, flexed her fingers open and shut, and tilted her head. Then she tapped her bony little palm against her chest, and pressed hard at the spot below her sternum.
"Huh……? Huh……?"
She shot up from her seat.
And then she inhaled until it felt like her lungs would tear.
Huuuuh―!
Whoooo―!
Once, twice, three times.
Even after gulping down that heaving, chest-pounding series of deep breaths, there wasn't so much as a hair's worth of the dry, wheezing cough that had racked her on the mountain climb yesterday.
"Master……!"
Soyeon's eyes went wide as fists.
"My…… my chest doesn't hurt at all! I can breathe deep and my throat doesn't itch!"
"……So it, uh, seems."
"Really! This spot…… it used to stab like an ice pick, but there's nothing!"
She was so beside herself that she started hopping in place—
—until her straw sandal slipped on the frozen floor and she nearly pitched forward onto her face.
"Ack!"
"Hey, kid! Watch it!"
At my panicked shout, Soyeon barely caught herself against the wall and reflexively hunched her neck down, shrinking her head between her shoulders.
"I'm sorry……! I got excited and didn't realize……."
Even so, the corners of her mouth were helplessly hooked up to her ears.
The flush blooming across her dirt-smudged cheeks wasn't the wary, grudging smile of a child reading someone's mood—it was simply a twelve-year-old, free of pain for the very first time in her life.
But the touching moment didn't last, because the next words out of her mouth were more than enough to drop my jaw all over again.
"Master! I can work now!"
"……What?"
"The fields! And I can chop firewood! No more coughing, so I can work outside all day long!"
"……"
She pumped her fist in the air, shouting like she owned the whole world.
Are you kidding me, you lunatic……
She'd just turned an entire room into a walk-in freezer radiating minus-twenty-degree cold, and the triumphant thought she came up with after her clean bill of health was fieldwork and chopping wood?
At this level of wasted talent, the heavens themselves would weep.
When I said nothing, Soyeon wilted like a plant at dusk and fidgeted sneakily with her fingers.
"I…… I can be a useful disciple, right? I can…… earn my keep……?"
Looking down at those desperate, wretched little eyes, I barely managed to keep my face in order.
Get a grip.
If I let my pathetic true self slip out here—"Huh? That actually works? Are you some kind of genius?"—the con man's career would end on the spot.
Because I was the founding sect leader of the Cheonhae Sect, the hidden master Cheon Yu-sin, the man who had transcended the mortal world.
"Ahem!"
I cleared my throat with a long, deliberate cough.
Then, chin lifted like a Taoist who had long since cast off worldly attachments, arms crossed, I gazed down at Soyeon with sagely serenity.
"You raise such a fuss over such a trifling little trick?"
"……Pardon?"
Soyeon blinked up at me with blank eyes.
"You have merely unblocked a few obstructed qi channels. Compared to the true martial learning of this master, it is the equivalent of disturbing a single grain of sand on a vast beach."
"A grain of sand……?"
Cold sweat trickled down my spine.
Chilling stuff for a complete civilian who didn't know where a qi channel was even located to be spouting. But a con only works if you commit to it with total confidence.
"Do not preen over a mere imitation of the Cheonhae Sect's foundational breathing. A walker of the great path does not flutter in excitement over every little thing."
"This is…… just an imitation……?"
Soyeon's mouth fell open.
The eyes that had been marveling at her own body moments ago were now blazing up at me with ferocious awe and fanatic devotion.
The weight of that gaze nearly choked me. She'd cured a lifelong incurable illness with a few breaths in one night, and the man who taught it was telling her that's just the basics? No wonder the kid looked at me like a living, breathing immortal.
"Master…… I'll train even harder! I swear I'll give it my everything, my very life!"
"……Yes, yes, calm down."
"I'll earn my keep too, I promise—"
"I told you not to mention earning your keep until your bones creak."
"……Yes, Master."
Soyeon clamped her mouth shut and bowed her head obediently.
Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a vicious, stabbing pain shot up from my toes.
Ah, damn it…… I can't feel my toes.
Looking down, I saw white frost caked black and thick all the way to the tips of my worn straw sandals.
I'd been holding it in to keep up the Taoist act, but if I stood here five more minutes, my toes would be necrotic from frostbite before my disciple ever made it out to the fields.
"Ahem! The stagnant qi in this room has grown thick. We shall go outside and attend to the courtyard."
"Yes, Master!"
Desperately clenching my thighs to preserve a dignified gait, I sprinted for the door. The fact that my footsteps sped up threefold the instant I crossed the threshold was, of course, not because I was scared.
Out in the courtyard, warm morning sunlight poured down like silk threads beneath a crisp autumn sky.
Warmth seeping back into my frozen body, I felt like I might live. I flopped down against the railing of the sunniest stretch of corridor and thawed my aching back and numb feet.
But the rest didn't last.
Soyeon, who'd been standing dazed in the middle of the courtyard, came shuffling over on little steps and started fidgeting nervously, watching my face.
Sideways glance.
Hands folded neatly above her navel, only her eyes rolling my way.
"What."
"Nothing!"
She shook her head violently, and three seconds later—another sideways glance.
"……If you have something to say, say it."
Only then did Soyeon open her mouth, fiddling with her fingers.
"Um…… Master, what should I do?"
"Do? Do nothing. Just sit there and soak up the sun."
"Work! You said if I'm not sick, I can work!"
She was like a puppy bursting with morning energy, desperate for something—anything—to do.
"Should I fetch water? Clean the stove? Chop some firewood?"
"No. Stay still."
"Then should I sweep the yard?"
"There's no broom."
"Then even with my hands—"
"Ah, for the love of—just. Stay. Still!"
I pressed hard at my throbbing temples.
What I needed right now wasn't an eager pair of working hands.
It was time to think.
I desperately needed to wrap my head around what exactly had gone wrong at dawn—and how the hell I was supposed to make use of that walking time bomb going forward.
But if I didn't throw her some task, the kid was clearly prepared to spend the entire day fidgeting at my feet.
That was when a corner of the courtyard caught my eye.
Scrubby mounds of weeds grown wild to half a man's height.
True to its ruin, the yard had been overrun by every manner of weed and thistle.
Right. I'll give her that.
Nothing kills time like mindless labor.
"Soyeon."
"Yes, Master!"
"You see that patch of grass in the corner of the yard?"
"Yes! You mean the weeds?"
I let out a long cough and intoned in a deliberately profound voice.
"The beginning of the martial path lies in putting one's surroundings in perfect order. Cast aside the stray thoughts in your heart, and pull up every last one of those weeds—down to the root."
"Cast aside my stray thoughts…… down to the root?"
"Indeed. Cleansing this master's courtyard is likewise a part of your training."
One hundred percent pure fabrication.
But Soyeon's eyes blazed like a martial artist who'd just been handed the secret ultimate technique of the murim.
"Yes! I'll rip them out clean, roots and all!"
Soyeon rolled up her sleeves with brisk efficiency and darted off toward the weed patch.
"Whew…… finally some quiet."
I leaned my back against a pillar and held my head in my hands.
Things have gone wrong. Thoroughly, catastrophically wrong.
My rosy future—suckering one gullible kid into doing the dishes while I lived the lazy life of a freeloader—had been shoved to the edge of a cliff overnight, all because of my freak-monster disciple who'd awakened ice-attribute martial arts.
Fine, I managed to bluff my way through the inner power thing. But what if she asks me to teach her swordsmanship or fist techniques next?
The moment my fraud as a master who could do nothing but kitchen-knife work was exposed, that frost-chilled fist might just cave my skull in.
Psst, shk―.
Psst, shk―.
From the courtyard came the sound of weeds being pulled, fairly rhythmic.
Soyeon was crouched down, working her hands diligently. Maybe it was her country farm-girl experience, but her hands were astonishingly fast.
Well, at least she earns her keep. It's not like I could throw out a kid that young anyway……
I was in the middle of idly organizing my thoughts when—
Psuuush―.
Crunch―.
The sound of the weeds being pulled had gone strange.
Not the tough tearing of stems, but the odd, brittle crumble of clumps of dry earth falling apart.
"……?"
I narrowed my eyes and looked out at the yard.
Soyeon had her small hands wrapped around the stem of a thick thistle.
Hssssaaaah―.
Huh?
For the briefest instant, a bluish glow flickered at her fingertips, and then white frost raced along the thistle stem like lightning.
Not just the leaves—the ground itself was cracking and freezing solid, the sound carrying vividly up to the corridor.
And then—
Shk―.
From between the frozen, crumbled clumps of dirt, the weed slid out perfectly, root and all, without leaving behind a single grain of soil.
It looked easier than pulling a carrot.
"That's weird……?"
Soyeon herself was tilting her head at the weed in her hand.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, Master!"
Soyeon turned around with a beaming face.
"The grass comes out so easily today! It's like the ground has gone all soft and loose!"
"……"
I stared blankly at the yard floor—frozen rock-solid and turned bone white.
It wasn't soft, you crazy little gremlin—you flash-froze the dirt with subzero cold and shattered it.
"Just like you said, Master, when I cast aside my stray thoughts and focused, the weeds came out on their own! The teachings of the Cheonhae Sect are truly amazing!"
"……Right. Truly amazing."
I fudged a noncommittal answer, figuring that pressing further would just shred my own sanity.
Is the leftover cold in her body leaking out? She hasn't learned to control it yet, so it's probably venting through her fingertips.
In that case, the energy would run dry soon enough and she'd go back to normal. How much inner power could a complete beginner spew out, really?
That was exactly what I was complacently thinking—
—at that very moment.
Soyeon moved to the corner of the courtyard, deep in the inner yard.
And there she stopped, standing stock-still.
"……"
A chill ran down my spine.
There, rooted in place, was a monster in a different league from any mere weed.
A massive boulder the size of a house—a monstrous stone.
And coiled around that boulder like a serpent, grown thick as a man's thigh, was a hideous kudzu vine.
When I'd first moved into this ruined compound, I'd tried to chop it up for firewood, given up after chipping my axe head, and left it alone. That exact monster.
Soyeon crouched down in front of the thick base of that enormous kudzu vine.
"Master!"
"Wh-what?"
"This is a weed too, right? Should I pull this one too?"
"Hey, wait a second. That's not a weed, it's—"
There was no time to stop her.
Her slender little hands clamped around the thigh-thick stem of the kudzu vine.
"Heave-ho!"
Hssssaaaaaah―!
For an instant, the air itself screamed.
A vicious blue-white cold incomparable to anything from the weed-pulling burst forth like a waterfall.
The cold engulfed the kudzu vine in an instant, swallowed the earthen ground that held up the courtyard, and then—reaching its climax—spread across the entire house-sized boulder!
Cra-ck! Krrru-ck!
"Huh……?"
Soyeon, sensing the strange turn too, faltered.
White frost bored into the rock's surface like lightning, and from deep within the bedrock came a horrible, bone-snapping screech of splitting stone.
I shot to my feet, white as a ghost.
"Hey! Let go! Let go right now!"
"Heaaaaave-hoooo!"
KWAAAAAANG―!
A thunderclap like a bolt from a clear blue sky shook the inner yard to its foundations.
And before my eyes, a miracle—no, a catastrophe—unfolded.
Crrrack, KWAKWANG!
The thousands-of-pounds boulder that six grown men couldn't budge split down the middle and collapsed miserably to both sides!
From the shattered seam of the rock, along with the flash-frozen clumps of earth, the house-sized kudzu root launched skyward, whole.
WHUMP―!
The entire courtyard lurched like it had been hit by an earthquake, and a thick cloud of dust surged all the way to the corridor.
"Koff! Kgh, koff……!"
Coughing through the dust, I looked out at the yard—and felt my jaw physically detach and clatter to the floor.
The center of the courtyard had been scooped out in a perfect circle, as if a shell had landed.
On either side, the bisected halves of the massive boulder lay tumbled about, and there in the middle of the dust cloud…… a twelve-year-old little girl stood dumbfounded, clutching in both hands a colossal kudzu root twice her own height.
"……"
A gust of wind swept through the silence of the yard.
Soyeon looked down at the giant root in her hands, then at the rock split in two, then back down at her own dirt-caked palms.
And then she stole a glance back at me, her face full of terror.
"……Master."
"……What."
My voice crawled into a hole.
"I……"
Tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes.
"I pulled up the rock too. I'm sorry…… sob……"
"……"
Watching the child sniffle and make the saddest face imaginable, roughly half of my brain cells burned out from overload.
Pulled up…… a rock……?
I'd told her to pull weeds, she'd split a house-sized boulder, and now she was on the verge of tears apologizing for pulling up a rock.
Do I scold her? Praise her? Or run for my life?
"I…… I was only trying to pull the weeds…… I put in a little strength and the rock broke…… I'm sorry for breaking your house, Master…… waaah……"
Soyeon flung the kudzu root aside and groveled on the ground, weeping.
As I stared blankly down at her pitiful form, the circuits in my head—which had been jammed—finally began to spin with ferocious speed.
Wait just a moment.
Where fear and shock had passed through, one razor-sharp, gleaming calculation struck like a bolt of lightning.
This kid…… is an absolute monster, isn't she?
She was a twelve-year-old child.
Until yesterday, she'd been a patient who couldn't walk a few steps up a mountain trail without nearly coughing up blood.
Then I taught her one night of abdominal breathing, and now she'd frozen a room and split a boulder in two pulling weeds.
A beyond-the-scale genius who took my improvised nonsense and sublimated it into high-dimensional martial learning, transmuting the cursed yin energy in her body into flawless inner power.
And me?
Zero inner power. Zero martial arts. A herniated-disc patient.
Was I supposed to train through blood, sweat, and tears to become a legendary master someday?
Are you insane? Why the hell would I do that!
It was exhausting, painful, and a pain in the ass.
What had been the whole point of founding the Cheonhae Sect and hooking a sucker in the first place?
So I wouldn't have to break my own back working.
So I could spend my life lazing around in my room, living off the rice someone else earned!
I don't need to be a master at all, do I?
If I can't do it, she can.
I don't need to fight anyone—my monster disciple just needs to punch the whole world to pieces.
Raise that little gremlin…… into the strongest under heaven!
The Murim Alliance Leader? The Demon Cult's Sovereign?
However high those bastards could fly, would they dare lay a hand on the master of a monster disciple who split mountains with her bare hands?
All I had to do was stand with my hands clasped behind my back, sip my tea, and go, "Heheh, my child has yet to master her strength control—a small discourtesy, I assure you."
Fine meat, warm wine, a plush silk blanket…… the world would come offering them on its own without my lifting a single finger.
"Hic…… Master, are you going to throw me out……?"
Watching Soyeon sob facedown into the dirt, the corners of my mouth curled upward beyond all restraint, splitting toward my cheekbones.
Throw you out? Throw out WHO? You're my lifelong pension and my premium insurance policy!
I hurriedly swapped my expression for one of grave dignity and cleared my throat.
"Ahem! Soyeon, raise your head."
"……Yes?"
The child looked cautiously up at me, her face smeared with tears.
"Would I cast out my disciple over a single broken boulder? On the contrary—you have cleared away the obstructing stone that marred this master's courtyard. As your master, I must offer my commendation."
"R-really……?"
"Of course. However…… your command of your strength is still clumsy, so you shall henceforth follow this master's teachings all the more strictly."
"Yes! If it's your word, Master, I'll follow it even if the sky falls!"
Soyeon wiped her tears and beamed up at me.
Gazing down at that innocent, guileless face, I savored the magnificent ambition welling up from the depths of my chest.
I'll raise her.
I'd raise her into the most terrifying, most monstrous creature in the entire history of the Central Plains Murim.
Because that was how I'd spend the rest of my life sucking on the finest honey in the world without ever lifting a finger!