The Gate to Seon-gye
"Lord Doha… if I open the entrance to Seon-gye, I'm genuinely going to die…"
Ki Cheon-hwa was practically on the verge of tears as Doha dragged her along by the scruff of her neck.
How did he even know she could open the gate in the first place?
If word got out that a mere monster had opened the door to Seon-gye, the Immortals would come looking for her without fail.
"I once knew a demon who said that if he built a portal to Heaven, the angels would kill him. Care to guess what he chose?"
"…He opened the portal."
"Correct."
"…"
When Doha chirped out the answer with a bright, sunny smile, her lips puckered into a pout.
Who said something that unhinged with that kind of cheerful face?
When a mad emperor was threatening you right in front of your eyes, of course you opened the door!
Ah… I suppose I'm no different.
Having just glimpsed her own future, Ki Cheon-hwa teared up all over again.
She should have just gone deep into some remote mountain and stayed hidden. Instead she'd gotten hungry and wandered into the Sichuan region for no good reason…
"It should have been around here."
Doha glanced about.
They were currently on Yongmi Mountain — Dragon Tail Mountain — in the Shandong region.
Somewhere on this mountain stood a gate leading to Seon-gye.
The catch was that opening it required Taoist arts.
"Which way now?"
"Left."
"Want to die? It's right. Don't you dare lie to me."
"…"
If you already know, why even ask?!
He was navigating just fine on his own.
"That's a face full of complaints."
"Not at all. This is simply my usual expression."
"Want me to open up a few facial pressure points with the Point-Striking Technique? That ought to soften your smile a little."
Grin.
"There we go."
When she forced a smile, Doha nodded in satisfaction.
This was exactly the problem with foxes. Give them even a little slack and their behavior flipped on a dime.
"Um… may I ask just one thing?"
"What?"
"Why are you going to Seon-gye?"
If his reason for going was to thrash the Immortals, or kill them — or, failing that, to turn the entire realm upside down — then she truly could not open the entrance.
They would hold her responsible for opening the gate, after all.
"Do I have to report even that to you?"
"It's not a report. I'm just curious…"
"I just want to meet a few Immortals."
"So you are going to beat them up…"
"No. Ah… or am I?"
"…"
When Doha tilted his head and muttered to himself, Ki Cheon-hwa clapped a hand over her mouth.
He really was a lunatic.
He didn't even know what he was going to do himself!
"We'll talk, but if things go sideways, fists will probably fly."
"Mother… in the end, I will never become a nine-tailed fox. I will die first."
"It's not like that, so stop fretting."
"Every single thing you've ever told me not to worry about has turned into something to worry about."
"And yet they all work out fine, don't they?"
"What about the ten years I spent being hunted?"
She glared at him.
As she'd mentioned before, Doha had once spouted nonsense that spawned a bizarre rumor.
And what was that nonsense?
They say if you catch and eat a three-tailed fox, you'll gain eternal youth!
From that day on, dozens of hunters came looking for her every single day. Even sect elders and masters of the Transcendent Realm had joined the chase — she had been genuinely terrified.
"If only you hadn't spread that ridiculous rumor…"
"I had no choice back then. Without that rumor, those bastards never would have left the building."
Decades earlier, there had been an outfit called the Hwangdeung Escort Agency. Its master had snatched a treasure Doha was after and fled with it first.
That meant Doha had needed to infiltrate the man's building — but the problem was that the man was so cowardly he never went anywhere without three bodyguards.
At the time, Doha's own realm had been Super-Peak, while all three bodyguards were Transcendent Realm masters. Sneaking in unnoticed had been nearly impossible.
"That was when I found you."
Fortunately, the escort master's lifelong ambition was eternal youth. The moment he heard a rumor that a three-tailed fox had appeared, he ordered his bodyguards to go fetch it.
"All three bodyguards left the building, and I reclaimed my stolen treasure with absolute ease."
"All for something that trivial…"
"Trivial? The treasure I had to recover was extraordinarily rare."
What the escort master had run off with first was five drops of Gong-cheong-seok-yu.
A single drop of that legendary elixir granted sixty years of internal energy — and the man had bolted with five of them.
"Normally, wouldn't people say he found it first rather than that he stole it and ran?"
"True. But what if I found it first?"
Doha had briefly stepped away because he lacked an empty bottle to store the Gong-cheong-seok-yu. In that short window, the escort master had arrived with a bottle of his own and made off with the elixir.
"The escort master?! How did that man even know where the Gong-cheong-seok-yu was?"
"He'd heard the same rumor I had — that a spiritual elixir was somewhere nearby. We were both searching for it at the same time."
And as he'd just said, Doha had been the one to find it first.
"Anyway, thanks to you, the bodyguards vacated their posts, and I handled the job without a hitch."
"…So that's why Transcendent Realm masters kept hunting me."
Her expression turned sullen.
She'd always wondered why even masters of that caliber had suddenly started chasing her…
Rustle.
"Is that it over there?"
After walking for some time, Doha pointed to a boulder thickly blanketed in moss.
Originally there had been a hole beneath that rock, but the undergrowth had grown over and hidden it.
"That's the one."
"?"
At the sudden curtness in Ki Cheon-hwa's voice, Doha looked at her.
"Your tone and manner of speaking are a bit…"
"You're imagining things."
"I don't think I am."
Thud.
Doha released his grip on her.
Was she seriously sulking over being hunted for ten years?
"Do you have any idea how hard those ten years were for me…? Not a single word of apology…"
Her Taoist arts had kept her from dying, but constantly being on the run had been exhausting. She hadn't eaten properly. She hadn't slept deeply.
"That's why I repaid you."
"What repayment? You're not calling death threats a repayment, are you?"
"Your mother's remains."
"?!!"
"When I went to your den, they weren't there, were they?"
"Don't tell me…"
"I was the one who brought them."
Around the time Ki Cheon-hwa turned fifty, her mother had died and left her behind — still a fox with only a single tail.
Because of that, Ki Cheon-hwa had stayed in the nest, waiting endlessly for her mother to return.
Decades later, once her instincts had sharpened further, she finally understood that her mother was dead.
But knowing that much was all she could manage. She had no idea when or where her mother had died, and so she could not even find a trace.
Then one day, out of nowhere, the remains had been laid out neatly inside the nest.
"I don't know who killed your mother, or when she died either. I just heard that some rich bastard had the pelt and bones of a five-tailed fox. When I went to check, the remains carried the same energy as yours — so I brought them back."
Rustle.
Doha pushed aside the dense undergrowth as he recounted the old story.
He was sorry for getting her hunted, but from a nine-tailed fox's perspective, ten years was the blink of an eye. He'd figured she would be fine.
"Thank you…"
At last, the fox who had been silent offered him her gratitude.
Because of Doha, she had been able to reclaim her mother.
Why had he waited until now to tell her? He could have at least given her a hint.
Rustle.
"I knew this was the place."
When he cleared away the last of the vines, a cave entrance appeared.
It was wide enough for a grown man to enter without difficulty.
"Now, go ahe—"
Whoosh.
Before Doha could finish speaking, she stepped into the cave first.
"You'd better keep up. The interior is a maze — one wrong turn and you'll get lost."
"Your speech just changed."
"Hmph! This is how I've always talked."
Ki Cheon-hwa smiled, turned her back on him with a prim little toss of her head, and walked on ahead.
Rumble…
Boom!
"Ugh, how many hidden spaces does this place even have?"
Doha shoved aside a massive stone wall and let out a sigh.
Just getting this far, they had already passed four concealed chambers of this kind.
The entrance to Seon-gye couldn't even be opened without Taoist arts, so why go to all the trouble of making the approach this complicated?
"Maybe I should just blow the whole thing open."
"That's why I told you it was complicated."
Ki Cheon-hwa brushed past him and looked up at a statue bathed in descending sunlight.
That was the statue she had been searching for.
"There it is."
"That's the statue you mentioned?"
"Yes. See how the sunlight only falls on that one?"
"So it does."
Doha looked up at the ceiling and nodded.
He couldn't tell where the light was coming from, but it slanted down in a diagonal beam and illuminated the statue alone.
Swoosh.
"Huh…? Is this Mukcheol — Ink Iron?"
"Yes."
Running his hand over the statue, Doha's expression shifted to mild surprise.
Mukcheol was a mineral black as ink, radiating a chill similar to Cold Iron — and yet fundamentally different. Cold Iron was light and durable; Mukcheol was extraordinarily heavy. Compared to ordinary iron of the same size, it weighed roughly ten times as much.
That made it incredibly difficult to work. Even dwarves preferred not to handle Mukcheol. It wasn't a particularly remarkable mineral, and yet it was maddeningly finicky to shape.
"To carve Mukcheol this finely… I don't know who did it, but they must have been an extraordinary craftsman."
From a distance it had simply looked black, so he hadn't noticed. Up close, it was nothing like an ordinary statue. The wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, the veins on the back of the hands — even the pores had been rendered.
"The quality is… wow…"
Who on earth had made this? Just looking at it was enough to draw a gasp of admiration.
"Qual… what does that mean?"
"It's a thing. Exists."
Swoosh.
After examining the statue from every angle and marveling at it, Doha slowly stepped back.
Now it was her turn to open the gate to Seon-gye.
"The gate to Seon-gye opens behind that statue."
"It closes right away, so I need to go through fast — is that it?"
"Exactly."
If the gate stayed open too long, the Immortals might notice immediately.
Truthfully, doing something like this terrified her — but she desperately wanted to repay the man who had returned her mother to her.
Yes, she had spent ten years on the run. But the grace of reclaiming her mother far outweighed that.
"With this, I don't owe you anything anymore, right?"
"You never owed me anything to begin with."
"…"
At Doha's words, Ki Cheon-hwa shrugged.
Every time she saw him, he was impossible to pin down.
Swoosh.
Saaaaah…
She closed her eyes and unfurled her Taoist arts. A fragrant scent began to drift through the air.
That was the hallmark of Taoist arts — the sweet fragrance.
Shuuuuu!
KRA-KOOM!
As Ki Cheon-hwa opened the gate, a sound like rolling thunder filled the chamber, and a single pink portal took shape.
"I'm going, then."
Swoosh.
Doha offered a brief farewell and started walking.
"Lord Doha!"
"?"
"Take care of yourself."
Heh.
"Yeah. You take care too."
At her farewell, Doha let out a short laugh and stepped into the portal.
In all the decades he had known her, this was the first time Ki Cheon-hwa had ever been the one to say goodbye first.
Shuuuu!
KRA-KOOM.
As Doha crossed into Seon-gye, the pink portal sealed shut, and silence settled over the empty space.