2. The Eccentric Doctor of the Murim World Records Gallery

I stared at the comment for a long moment.

Right below it, the other bastards pounced without hesitation.

"Can I really trust this person?"

Honestly, I felt uneasy.

Then a new reply appeared from the one called Eccentric Doctor.

I mulled it over briefly, then began writing my reply.

I had blended the pain I'd just suffered with what I knew of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians.

For a while, no answer came. Even the other comments, which had been chattering away until moments ago, oddly thinned out.

And then.

My eyes narrowed without my meaning them to.

I tilted my head, nonplussed. I had no deep knowledge of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, so even being told it was strange, I couldn't grasp why.

But the moment I saw the Eccentric Doctor's next reply, my eyes flew wide open.

"Huh...?"

I caught myself starting to type a response and stopped.

An elixir mixed with Yang Qi?

One thing flashed through my mind.

Cheon Yu-hwa's backstory.

As the Heavenly Demon's only daughter, sickly from childhood, she had had every famed medicine and miraculous elixir from across the Central Plains scraped together to keep her alive.

That much was so famous even I knew it.

Only.

I couldn't remember ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what kinds of elixirs they had been.

Which meant I had to confirm it right away.

"Is anyone outside?"

I raised my voice slightly. Sure enough, no sooner had the words left my mouth than a figure carefully drew back the curtain and appeared.

"Yes, my lady."

It was the very woman who had scooped me into her arms and run. Whether she had been standing by this whole time, she was watching me with a worried air.

"Ah — what was your name again?"

"..."

Her expression stiffened for an instant. She looked at me with eyes that truly seemed concerned, then opened her lips.

"This girl is called Suran."

"Suran."

"Yes."

"Good. Suran — of the elixirs I've taken recently, were any of them strongly Yang in nature?"

Suran's eyebrows trembled. Apparently Cheon Yu-hwa had rarely called her by name.

"My lady, why do you ask this so suddenly?"

"Answer first."

"...Yes, most of them were. To suppress your intense Yin Qi, you have taken many elixirs blended with Yang energy."

I froze.

The realization struck me at once.

Is this really the problem?

As Young Cult Leader, she would hardly have gulped down rare spirit herbs and medicines on a whim. But even so — if the prescription had been wrong from the very beginning, then it wouldn't matter how she had taken them. It would all have been a problem.

"I have heard that your condition is an illness born of dreadful Extreme Yin Qi. For that reason, the Cult Leader himself has searched high and low for the world's famed Yang-imbued elixirs and—"

"Suran."

I raised a hand.

"Then how much of them have I taken?"

"Since your earliest days, you have taken what renowned physicians prescribed, so I do not know the exact count either. Only... you have consumed a very great many spirit herbs and precious medicines."

"Ha..."

A hollow laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

I had confirmed the situation; now I had to look to what came next.

"Got it. Go back out."

"...Yes. Call for me whenever you need anything."

Suran looked faintly puzzled, but soon withdrew.

I opened the gallery again at once.

This time the reply came fairly quickly.

The comment sounded like it came from someone who already knew the answer, and I was still only half-convinced.

I read the words slowly. I could roughly grasp the meaning.

They had tried to erase cold energy with hot — but the Yin Qi had never actually been pressed down; instead, opposing energies had likely piled up in separate corners of the body.

Other comments began piling up as well, but right now only the words of the one called Eccentric Doctor reached my eyes.

"I don't know whether I can trust this person."

And yet my gut was telling me something.

It was worth a try.

Slowly, gently, I laid a hand over my chest.

Atop the slight swell of my chest, a hand so pale it looked frost-nipped seized my gaze. A slender, delicate hand.

And staring down at that hand, I found myself grinding my lips together.

I absolutely cannot die.

I was still struggling to accept reality.

Why on earth had I become the Heavenly Demon's daughter?

Was this world really the world inside a game called Murim World Records?

I had no answer for any of it.

But the important thing was that, whatever happened, I had to survive first.

I slid my hand down to my dantian at once. I had trained seriously enough in the game, so I possessed at least a basic knowledge of the body.

Soon I pressed my fingers to the area around my dantian, beneath the thin robe.

Around here?

Two finger-joints below.

I pressed down.

Nothing. Not a thing.

"What is this?"

Tilting my head, I slowly drew in a breath.

"Hooo..."

And then—

Fwoosh!

"Hnk!"

Something hot surged up from deep in my belly like a burst of flame. At the same time, the frigid energy lingering in my chest spread wide in an instant.

I tore my hand away in a panic.

Thankfully, the welling pain did not last long. But one thing was clear: the agony I had suffered earlier had nearly replayed itself, exactly as before.

That horrific sensation from the seizure.

I posted a reply immediately.

A reply came shortly after.

I lifted my head.

"Suran."

The curtain drew back the instant I called.

"Yes, my lady."

"Have I ever taken the Fire Essence Pill, or Red Sun Ginseng, or anything of that sort?"

"Three days ago, you had a Fire Essence Pill brewed and took it. And today as well, you were scheduled to take a portion of the remaining Fire Essence Pill."

Goosebumps shot up my spine.

The one called Eccentric Doctor had said all of it would become poison in my body.

And had I not learned that fact, I would have swallowed another dose of poison today.

"From today on, I'm not taking any medicine with Yang Qi in it."

I shook my head hard.

Suran's eyes went wide.

"My lady. What do you mean, all of a sudden?"

"Exactly what I said. I'm not taking them."

"But the Fire Essence Pill is an elixir obtained at great pains. The physicians all say that if you skip even a single day, your Yin Qi will only—"

"Right now, taking the medicine seems more likely to harm my body further. So for the time being, I won't take anything with Yang Qi in it."

Suran's face hardened gravely.

I met her eyes and let out a long sigh.

The truth was, I had no certainty either. What I was about to do rested on a comment left by the gallery's Eccentric Doctor — a person whose face I had never even seen.

In any sane situation, it would have been madness.

But that Eccentric Doctor's answers were charged with an almost uncanny conviction.

If I was bound to suffer either way.

Wouldn't it be better to at least try?

"For now, I'll just stop taking them for a few days."

"But if the Cult Leader should learn of your situation—"

"That's enough. I'll take responsibility."

Suran hesitated, lips parting and closing, then carefully nodded.

"...I shall follow your command, my lady. I will see to it that the Fire Essence Pill and all of today's scheduled medicines are put away."

"Er — right."

Suran, who had been worriedly trying to talk me out of this only moments before, turned her stance on its head at that one firm sentence from me.

A strange feeling stirred in me despite myself.

So I can manage it when I actually set my mind to it.

I had expected a long wrangle over pulling the medicines, but it had been nothing of the sort.

Come to think of it, Cheon Yu-hwa's station was a tremendous one in its own right.

A short while later, Suran left the room.

I turned my gaze back to the gallery.

Seeing the Eccentric Doctor's comment, I couldn't help wondering who this person really was.

I hadn't expected much, but the answer was so perfectly transparent that a snort escaped me.

"Haah... I really don't know if I can trust this."

— The Murim World Records Gallery.

I still couldn't say precisely why this thing was visible to me, or why posts and comments kept appearing on it.

But if true masters of the Jianghu really were coming and going there...

then it meant I could obtain information I could never have learned on my own, in real time.

I'd figure it out once I put it to use.

The important thing was that, for the first time, I had hope.

At the very least, I would not be living as Cheon Yu-hwa knowing nothing at all.

Three days passed.

And in all that time, I did not feel even once the seizure-like agony of that first day.

"Well, it's not quite at the stage where I can be certain, but..."

With a soft swish, I swept a hand down through my fine hair and tilted my head.

Cheon Yu-hwa in the mirror gazed back at me, a faint smile playing on her lips.

It struck me as absurd how many times a day I studied my own reflection, and laughter slipped out of me again, unbidden.

"Whatever the reason, the point is I'm not hurting anymore."

The medicines I had been taking all this time had in fact been poison.

What that person called Eccentric Doctor had said was close to the truth.

At least, that was how it felt to me.

I gave my cheek a light poke for no particular reason, then quietly drew my hand back.

Honestly, I still hadn't adjusted.

To having become a woman.

To having become the Heavenly Demon's daughter, Cheon Yu-hwa no less.

I looked in the mirror several times a day, and I still caught myself wishing all of this were a dream.

But none of that was what mattered right now.

As I quietly gathered my focus, that familiar notification appeared, and I connected to the gallery as naturally as breathing now.

Beneath the translucent window, new posts came into view.

Countless posts, every one of them people simply saying whatever they pleased — it was the Murim World Records Gallery I knew, through and through.

And from three days of lurking, one impression had hardened: the people using this gallery did not feel like ordinary folk.

"In other words, everyone using this gallery is either a master of the martial world, or at the very least a person of murim."

Which meant the users weren't exchanging game information or chatting about a game.

The sense that every last one of them was talking about their own reality was overwhelming.

In fact, no matter how much I dug through the posts, not a single person treated any of it as a game.

"Maybe the very concept of a 'game' doesn't exist in this world."

Amid my tangled feelings, I quietly put up a post.

I had written the title with all the guileless innocence I could muster.

Well, I was looking for the Eccentric Doctor, so I judged that a very direct post was the right approach.

While a stream of worthless comments piled up—

A comment from the Eccentric Doctor appeared.

When I actually pulled up the user's record, it became even clearer.

"Eccentric Doctor... what is with this person's life? Do they just live on the gallery?"

But faced with those absurd figures all over again, goosebumps rose despite myself.

Even I could tell I was writing the most textbook newbie post imaginable.

My eyes narrowed in an instant.

"A way to handle Yin Qi?"

At the Eccentric Doctor's follow-up reply, my thoughts stopped dead.

"Bingbaek the Witch?"

Wait — the Three Venerables of the Demonic Cult?