Moon Shadow Ginseng (1)
It was morning.
The training grounds of Eden Camp still glistened with dew that had fallen through the night and had yet to dry.
“Hoo, hoo!”
“Hah, hahk! Hah!”
Harsh, ragged breathing filled the air.
Five shadows moved without rest. Hwang Dae-un repeated squats while shouldering a boulder that easily weighed over a hundred kilograms. Beside him, Baek Yeon-ho charged at full power into empty air with his shield raised, then stopped, repeating the motion for the hundredth time. Jang Cha-yul and Kang Si-a faced each other and continued their spar without pause.
Whiik! Kaaang!
The trajectories of spear and arrow clashed countless times in the air, producing sharp cracks of ruptured wind. Baek Do-hee ran endless circuits around them all.
Residents who had risen early to gather their farming tools for the fields paused at the strange sounds coming from the training grounds and drifted over one by one to watch. What they saw defied common sense.
C-crazy… those are people?
A person can lift a rock that big?
And those women—what the hell? The weapons sound like a sledgehammer pounding steel plate…
No, wait—can you even shoot arrows at someone like that? Guess you can. She’s knocking every one of them aside…
They had heard that Climbers could kill monsters. Looking at this, they finally understood why. The mere pressure radiating from the five of them was enough to choke the breath in a person’s throat. The residents unconsciously stepped back, then quietly scattered as if they had decided this was a domain they must never again trespass upon.
And off to one side of the training ground, Hyun Si-woon stood with his arms folded, watching everything. His eyes were as cold as ice. Having already reached Stamina 19 himself, there was no mercy left in that gaze.
This training had begun the previous day when the sun still hung high in the sky. A full day and a half. Not a wink of sleep, not a single proper meal. Only purified water and the barest minimum of nutrients as they drove themselves to the absolute limit.
Hyun Si-woon had begun the final sprint. The wall that had to be cleared before they could take the Moon Shadow Ginseng—Stamina 19. Until that wall was crossed, no one would be allowed to rest.
“Krrraaagh…!”
The first change came to Baek Yeon-ho. After one last charge he collapsed as if his body had simply given out, convulsing against the dirt and leaving long gouges in the ground.
“Hah, hah, hah, khaaah!”
He lay sprawled, gasping in agony, yet his eyes shone.
“I did it… Khahahat! I did it!”
Bang!
Baek Yeon-ho slammed a fist into the ground in pure joy. He had finally reached Stamina 19. His success was the signal flare.
Not long after, Hwang Dae-un hurled the boulder he had been carrying and roared.
“KRAAAAAAAAH!”
He too had broken through the wall. Two hours later Jang Cha-yul and Kang Si-a were rolling weakly across the dirt, panting. Only one remained—Baek Do-hee.
She staggered around the training ground on a body already past its limit. Her vision blurred; her legs felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds. The members who had finished did not leave. They sat and cheered her on.
“Just a little more!”
“Keep running, Noona!”
“Hwaaaahk…! Hahk!”
A hoarse cry tore from Baek Do-hee’s throat. Every cell in her body screamed for her to stop. She could not. If she quit here, her comrades would have to wait again.
Please, please, please just…
Her desperate wish burned the last of her will. One final step. The instant her foot left the ground, a warm, sacred energy bloomed through her entire body.
A stat has permanently increased.
Stamina:18 → 19
Thud.
Even the final runner, Baek Do-hee, collapsed. The entire team had reached the goal. Hyun Si-woon nodded.
“Good work, everyone.”
The end of a hellish training session.
“Rest well today. Tomorrow morning we take the Moon Shadow Ginseng. Be ready.”
The director’s office of the research facility.
Hyun Si-woon sat cross-legged. Before him lay a sheet of black silk, and upon it rested six roots of ginseng that glowed with a soft, lustrous light.
Moon Shadow Ginseng.
The moment he drew them from his inventory, a faint chill filled the room. The fragrance was clear and refreshing.
◈ Effect: Permanently increases Stamina by 3
◈ Trait: Effective only when Stamina is 19 or below
He had originally planned to simply chew them down. Then—
Tsk. The System is convenient, yet it is also utterly ignorant. To judge a precious elixir like this by nothing more than a crude number—Stamina +3…
Thanks to Ha-wol, they would take the ginseng properly, with full ritual. Not only for the Stamina, but for true advancement in martial arts.
Listen carefully, brat. Consuming an elixir is not merely nourishing the body. It is a sacred rite of receiving, whole and entire, the condensed energy and natural order contained within. Your body is a vessel. If you pour pure wine into a filthy cup, will the fragrance survive intact? First you must purify and empty yourself to the highest state. You must prepare so that not a single drop of the cold lunar essence dwelling in the Moon Shadow Ginseng is wasted.
Ha-wol’s teaching was solemn. Following her instructions, Hyun Si-woon first completed the rites of bathing and purification. He had wondered what meaning there could be in simply washing the body, but she said it was a process for sweeping away even the distractions of the mind. He decided to take her word for it.
“Hoo.”
Body and mind completely emptied, he settled once more into a cross-legged seat and regulated his breathing. Inhalation and exhalation moved through his dantian like quiet waves. The energy of the Moon Shadow Divine Art flowed leisurely along every meridian of his body—clearer and smoother than before. Ever since he had entered the realm of Flowing Water, his body had become incomparably purer.
How much time passed?
It is ready. Begin from the root and chew slowly. Do not hurry. Savor the energy on the tip of your tongue as though tasting pure spring water.
Without a word, Hyun Si-woon picked up one root of Moon Shadow Ginseng. A cool sensation traveled through his fingertips. He carefully placed the very tip of the root into his mouth.
Crunch.
The instant his teeth sank into the root, a pure fragrance filled his mouth and a cold energy like ice burst forth.
Whoa.
So this was Moon Shadow Ginseng? In the game he had simply gone nom and swallowed it…
The moment he carefully guided it down his throat, the change began. From his stomach a cold energy rose like billowing clouds. The chill that started in his dantian climbed his spine and slowly spread through his entire body.
From this moment it is real. Operate the Moon Shadow Divine Art and govern that chill. Do not resist it—accept it and make it your own.
Ha-wol’s voice was solemn, yet Hyun Si-woon felt calmer than expected.
This much…
It was bearable. Compared to the deathly agony he had endured to obtain the Thunder Dragon Spear, this chill was nothing more than dipping his feet into a cool mountain stream.
Ssssss…
He slowly operated the Moon Shadow Divine Art. His own energy gathered in the dantian began to blend gently with the cold essence flowing from the Moon Shadow Ginseng. At first the two streams of energy circled awkwardly, like different waters refusing to mix, but Hyun Si-woon did not grow impatient. Following the mental techniques of the Moon Shadow Divine Art, he simply opened the channels so the two energies could become one of their own accord.
Whooooosh!
A sensation like clear wind blowing through his body. The cold energy was no longer pain. Instead it flowed along his meridians, washing away the fine residual turbidity that had accumulated here and there.
The flow of energy is far smoother than usual.
The realm of Flowing Water meant making energy flow like water. Yet even flowing water had grades. If his energy before had been third-grade water, it now felt closer to second-grade.
Oh? Already adapted? Then expand that power.
At Ha-wol’s advice, Hyun Si-woon began sending the newly purified energy into the fine blood vessels of his extremities—fingertips and toes that he rarely reached in ordinary practice. Energy that once had to be forced now soaked in without the slightest resistance.
Paaaah…
A mystical sensation, as though his entire body were wrapped in cold moonlight. His consciousness sank deeper and deeper into a place of profound stillness. The noise of the outside world receded until only the clear river of energy flowing within him remained. That river soon grew as calm as a vast lake—a still lake of the mind that no external stimulus could disturb.
Hoh.
Ha-wol was startled by the sight.
Already… has he reached the realm of the Heart Lake?
The Moon Shadow Ginseng was not some legendary elixir spoken of in the same breath as Sky-Clearing Spirit Oil or Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. In a way it was an ordinary spiritual medicine. That he had achieved this much with it was purely thanks to Hyun Si-woon’s concentration.
Truly worthy of being this lady’s disciple. Not quite my equal in the past, yet he has talent.
Ha-wol folded her arms and smiled with satisfaction. In truth, Hyun Si-woon was far from a pure martial bone. In innate physical ability or affinity for energy, Hwang Dae-un’s mountain-like constitution or Kang Si-a’s keen spiritual sense were superior. Si-woon’s body, neglected for years, was a mediocre vessel full of blockages here and there.
But that brat possesses something no one else dares approach.
That ghostly sense. And a power of immersion so absolute he could turn his back on the entire world. Ordinary martial artists who took an elixir spent most of their effort simply not being overwhelmed by its power. They either ran wild with excess energy or lost themselves in pain and wasted the precious spiritual energy they had obtained. Hyun Si-woon was different.
His senses swept through his own body like a thousand tentacles. Which meridian trembled the slightest bit, which acupoint resisted the ginseng’s energy, even the exact form in which the two energies mixed inside his dantian—he felt it all as clearly as if he were watching with his eyes.
“….”
Hyun Si-woon had once possessed the ability to catch even the faintest frame-level changes on a game screen. Take an old battle-royale FPS as an example. Where ordinary players saw only identical textures of grass and trees, he alone saw something else: the sway of a leaf that did not quite match the wind’s direction; a few pixels of unnatural color overlapping a ridgeline; the momentary break in the flight path of a distant bird. With nothing more than that he had unerringly located enemies lying prone in ghillie suits hundreds of meters away.
That same sense was now turned inward. He shut out every external stimulus and poured his entire consciousness into the changes occurring inside his own body.
To imitate the realm of Inner Sight—something ordinary martial artists spend a lifetime training to barely touch—through talent alone…
Because of that, there was no waste. Not a single drop of the Moon Shadow Ginseng’s energy was spent carelessly; he found the most efficient path and made it his own. He did not smash through blocked acupoints with force. Instead he located the weakest point and gave it the lightest push, like reading the flow of a waterway exactly and breaching the softest part of the dike.
Not the crude art of Flesh-Cutting Bone-Severing, but the martial principle of Using the Enemy Against the Enemy. Not a rough power that trades bone for flesh, but the wisdom that uses the opponent’s strength to subdue them. Huhu. Indeed.
Ha-wol nodded. Precisely because he was not a martial bone, it was all the more impressive. He was not merely covering insufficient talent with overwhelming sense and focus—he was awakening the principles of the martial path in his own unique way.
This lady’s choice was not wrong.
With this disciple, she could complete her sword and reach the realms beyond. Ha-wol realized anew that watching Hyun Si-woon grow was a rather pleasant thing.