The Unexpected Arrival
Yeon Ihwa's house.
For several days it had been the place where Hwa Baek and Yeon Ihwa lived together. Once she shut herself away in closed-door training, and then Hwa Baek himself disappeared, the servants were left to keep the house.
With its proprietress gone, Jeokhwaru had decided on a temporary closure, and the dancers who worked there were given leave as well.
"...Is this the place?"
Dang Seryeong set down the large bundle she had carried on her back. Guided by Hwa Baek to a corner of the room, she unpacked, and an assortment of tools and medicinal ingredients spilled into view.
Hwa Baek spoke to her.
"Didn't think you'd come in person."
"We promised to work together. I mean to do everything I can, as far as my hands will reach. ...Though why the sudden informality?"
"Would you rather I kept it formal?"
"...Do as you please."
"Informal it is, then."
He switched registers without a moment's hesitation. Dang Seryeong studied him with a peculiar look.
"You've got a question written all over your face."
"...No. I was just thinking you're a strange man."
"Strange how?"
"In every way."
From their first meeting to the man standing before her now, all of it was a mystery—or so she went on. Hwa Baek answered with an uncomfortable expression.
"...It's easier if you just call it fate."
"I'm not the sort who believes in fate. And you're terrible at excuses, by the way."
She delivered the observation without heat, and finished the simple preparations for deciphering the pill-refinement method.
Dang Seryeong had not come alone.
"We'll be in your care."
Gu Noin, her wet nurse—the woman who had introduced Hwa Baek to her—had decided to follow Dang Seryeong and lend him her help as well.
"I'll be counting on you."
Hwa Baek returned the greeting, and the moment the courtesies were done Gu Noin set off to begin interpreting the refinement method for the Hyeongong Pill.
A little still remained to be explained about life in this house, but that could wait until there was time for it. Dang Seryeong and Gu Noin wasted none. They went straight into deciphering the method.
The book had been written centuries ago, in a language somewhat different from the present, and interpreting the refinement method took a full three days. As the work drew roughly to a close, Hwa Baek asked:
"Anything else you need?"
"No. The method itself is terribly unhelpful, but I've identified every material. I've already had the servants secure the supply."
Just as he had hoped, Dang Seryeong's ability was outstanding. A fluent command of a language centuries old. The social grace and authority to handle servants without effort. Eyes that had not wavered once, though she had gone several nights without sleep. Nothing about her fell short. She was nothing less than elite.
"Starting tomorrow, we'll finally begin refining the Hyeongong Pills. It may fail, so please don't expect too much."
Was this simply what one took for granted in the First Daughter of the Sichuan Dang Clan? Briefly impressed, Hwa Baek watched her back as she headed into the medicine room.
Remarkable. Truly.
For several days Hwa Baek watched them make the Hyeongong Pills.
To be clear, it was not because he doubted them. He simply had nothing else to do. A fair amount of time still remained before the preliminaries of the Sichuan Martial Tournament.
The way Dang Seryeong and Gu Noin made the pills was highly peculiar. They mixed unidentifiable herbs brought from Seonseon Pharmacy, and a bang of an explosion went off; then, just as they seemed to be pouring qi into the work, a deep, heavy breath of nature leaked from the spirit pill taking shape. What startled him most was that Gu Noin cast a shamanic art over the space where the pills were made. Every spirit pill formed within that art's domain shone a different color, and Hwa Baek had no idea what the colors meant.
Several days later, after passing through many processes and producing ten Hyeongong Pills, Dang Seryeong and Gu Noin were at last able to straighten their backs.
Hair a wild tangle and coated in dust, Dang Seryeong trudged out of the medicine room. Gu Noin, following behind her, looked no better—her already creased skin drawn thinner still, her condition plainly poor.
Hwa Baek met them.
"...You've worked hard. You ought to rest first."
He had called the servants ahead of time. He knew the two of them had gone days without a wink of sleep, chained to the Hyeongong Pills, and he wanted them able to rest the moment the work was done.
But Dang Seryeong refused the servants' hands.
"...He was a truly remarkable man. Old Master Hyeongong."
She went on as if muttering to herself. Her voice, speaking almost without conscious thought, was half heard and half not—yet Hwa Baek heard it clearly enough. Curses too vile to put in one's mouth, the sort she never would have spoken had she thought he could hear them.
She flung the Hyeongong refinement manual to the floor and held out her hands to the servants. As they led her off toward the bath, Hwa Baek quietly picked up the abandoned book.
A page had fallen open by chance, and a passage was written there.
You who come after and discover this method, take heed. There is no convenience without a price. To obtain the great, one must sacrifice the small that serves it. From of old, a person matures only by tasting life's bitterness and every manner of hardship.....................
"......"
Hwa Baek pretended he had not seen it, and turned his back.
After Dang Seryeong collapsed from exhaustion, she rose again a mere day later. As a master of the Peak Realm, her body was exceptionally sturdy, and she recovered quickly.
She slept deeply, woke, and at once examined the finished Hyeongong Pills. In theory they had been made without flaw, but confirmation was still necessary. She went back over every step of the refinement, then spoke.
"There doesn't seem to be any problem in the refining itself. I don't think there will be side effects that ruin the body, either."
Even so, an experiment was required to be certain. To that end, she said she would take one herself.
"You don't mind?"
"Of course not. If anything, I'm grateful."
Hwa Baek agreed readily. It was a spirit pill she had made, and they had agreed to cooperate—refusing would have been the stranger choice.
Dang Seryeong picked up one of the Hyeongong Pills she had created. The luminous color unique to spirit pills shone, and she admired it.
"A spirit pill... It's been a long time since I last took one."
While she was with the Sichuan Dang Clan she had consumed many spiritual medicines, but since running away from home she had not even tasted a decent wild ginseng. She had steadily trained her martial arts on the foundation of her innate talent, yet without spiritual medicine she had often felt the emptiness of internal energy that fell short of her realm.
"You look pleased."
"At heart, I'm a martial artist too."
She made no effort to hide the joy that rose from instinct. What it felt like to grow stronger by tempering one's martial arts—Hwa Baek would understand.
With that small gladness, Dang Seryeong sat cross-legged. She swallowed the Hyeongong Pill and immediately began to circulate her qi.
The pill's once-colorless energy deepened to a rich green beneath the art she wielded. A great volume of qi cycled through her meridians and gathered into her dantian, and the realm where mind, qi, and body stood as three in one began to change.
Energy, by nature, seeks the next stage once it finds its balance. Qi possesses an instinct not to remain where it is, but to evolve—and the green energy she held led her, already prepared, one step farther down the path.
A moment later, having gathered the qi circulating through her body and returned it to her dantian, Dang Seryeong opened her eyes.
Those eyes, a vivid green, held a faint radiance. Energy she had not quite managed to contain vented outward, exhaling a wondrous aura.
"...It's a remarkably fine spiritual medicine."
She began to recount the Hyeongong Pill's effects. First, some fifteen years' worth of internal energy had settled in her dantian. Thanks to the medicinal energy that had existed alongside the qi of nature, her fatigue had been washed clean away, and the nutrients she had lacked were replenished.
"The price is one thing, but it has plenty of effects beyond simply accumulating internal energy. Even so, it still falls short of a peerless spiritual medicine."
There were surely any number of spirit pills in the world more potent than the Hyeongong Pill. The Nine Sects and the Five Great Clans would possess elixirs several times greater, and beside those the Hyeongong Pill was ordinary enough.
"But for a martial artist, at least, there may be no better spiritual medicine in the world. Being able to take a spirit pill regularly, without limit—I've never even imagined such a thing, but honestly, it's cheating."
Hwa Baek gave a light nod. He had already expected as much, so his reaction was flat.
"Can you mass-produce them right away?"
"I can. Though it'll grind the maker's stamina to dust."
Dang Seryeong shot him a sulky look. A firm wish that he please not make her do it seemed written across her face.
Hwa Baek said:
"...I have no intention of mass-producing them just yet."
He had not even decided who would take them. Even if he did, that decision belonged to Yeon Ihwa, and recklessly mass-producing a spiritual medicine of the Hyeongong Pill's caliber could set off who knew what incident. So he patted Dang Seryeong and told her not to worry.
"Then we're done talking about the Hyeongong Pill for now. Are you heading straight back to Seonseon Pharmacy?"
"I should. If I stay here in the middle of Sichuan, it's only a matter of time before my clan finds me."
"You've worked hard. You're welcome to stay here for a while. To be honest, I'd rather you remained a little longer."
"..........What?"
"The preliminaries of the Sichuan Martial Tournament start today, don't they? If we're going to review that plan you've been devising for so long, it'd be better to go see it in person."
"Ah...... that......?"
"Yes. That."
"......."
For some reason, Dang Seryeong's brow twitched a good inch.
Hwa Baek noticed, and paid it no mind. Shaking off the stray thought, she considered it rationally and said:
"...You're right. It would be better to go."
Even if her clan caught sight of her, she would not be dragged off on the spot. The pretext to seize her would not exist until word reached the clan head's ears.
Before going out, she turned toward her room to throw on something light. Then:
"Ah. You come too."
She crooked a finger and called Hwa Baek.
"You need to learn how to use that handsome face of yours."