We Have to Recruit Her First
That evening — the very evening her realm had ascended — Hye-yeon stood before a towering high-rise, gazing up at the peak of a skyscraper that seemed to climb into the sky without end.
To the ordinary public it was simply a company called Pajeok Group. To cultivators, it was the supreme head sect of the righteous path — Pajeok Gate.
True to the name "Group," it commanded countless outer sects beneath its banner, on a scale that would be no exaggeration to call one of South Korea's ten great conglomerates.
Hye-yeon lowered her head and stepped into Pajeok Group Headquarters.
As she made for the office on the fifth floor, the many cultivators of Pajeok Gate turned toward her as one.
And with a cupped-fist salute performed in perfect unison, they shouted,
"Assistant Manager Shin has arrived!!"
Hye-yeon's rank here was assistant manager. Only members at the fourth layer of Qi Condensation held the investigator rank.
A moment later, one young-looking man came dashing up to her at full speed.
"You're here, Senior."
"Staff Assistant Maeng Si-woo. Been keeping well? Are the new recruits settling in all right?"
"No problems to report, Senior. Although......"
Maeng Si-woo gazed at Shin Hye-yeon with eyes full of envious admiration and let his words trail off into vagueness.
Hye-yeon caught on in an instant to what he was trying to say.
"Oh, right. Foundation Establishment, First Layer."
"C-c Congratulations, Senior!"
Maeng Si-woo did not watch her streams.
Which was why he didn't even know the basic fact that she had swallowed a spirit pill and broken through to a higher realm.
She'd spent the better part of a few hundred years unable to escape the fourth layer of Qi Condensation, hadn't she?
Maeng Si-woo's own realm was the third layer of Qi Condensation. He had been watching for his chance to overtake Shin Hye-yeon with just a little more effort — and then she had gone and vaulted clean over his head into Foundation Establishment.
Inside, he was kicking himself with regret; in front of her, he had no choice but to keep his face bright and smiling.
Perhaps, if he asked, she would tell him how she had trained?
"You definitely felt a wall last time, so......"
"Is the department head in?"
But Maeng Si-woo's sentence never finished, scattering off into empty air.
"...She's in her office."
"Okay. You keep training hard too. You've got a long, long way to go to catch up to me."
Hye-yeon gave his shoulder a couple of brisk pats and hurried off toward the department head's office.
The light in Maeng Si-woo's eyes, fixed on her receding back, sank and went cold.
Hye-yeon, for her part, stepped into the department head's office — furnished no differently from any ordinary company's — and swept the room with her eyes, searching for someone.
"Hall Master Ok? Are you in there? Hall Master Ok~!"
The Transmission Hall — the hall that sorted outer disciples from inner and passed down the secret cultivation arts unique to Pajeok Gate. Its Hall Master was Ok Ye-rin.
But Staff Assistant Maeng Si-woo had said she was right here, hadn't he?
Just then—
"What brings you here?"
The voice came from behind her. Yet when Hye-yeon whirled around, there was no one there.
"Not there! Look down, I said. Down!"
At the little gesture, Hye-yeon felt a curious weight settle over her head and bowed it deep.
And there she was, sure enough — Ok Ye-rin, Hall Master of the Transmission Hall.
In the form of a toddler of about five, no less.
"...Aigoo, sweetie? Where's your daddy?"
"Don't be ridiculous!!"
One flick of those tiny fingers sent Hye-yeon flying, and she slammed into the wall and slid slowly down it.
Ok Ye-rin toddled over, planted her little arms akimbo, and looked down at her.
"What is your business? Without so much as a message? When you left the mountain, all you talked about was this 'streaming' or whatever it was!"
"That's not the point... Wh-what on earth has happened to you, Hall Master?"
Ok Ye-rin hiked up her sleeves, which kept slipping down her arms, and clicked her tongue in displeasure.
"It is the Soul-Origin Return Art! I developed it myself — a magnificent art that lets one grow as young as one pleases, if I do say so!"
"...Young is one thing, but isn't this too young?!"
Declaring that cuteness conquered all, Ok Ye-rin kneaded her plump cheeks in a trance of pure absorption. Leaving her to it, Hye-yeon slowly picked herself up off the floor.
Then Ok Ye-rin, who had been gazing rapturously at her prime-era self in the mirror, abruptly leveled a sharp glare at Hye-yeon.
"By the way. You......"
Hye-yeon knew at once what was coming.
'Of course — she's the Hall Master. She read my breakthrough at a single glance. Well, perhaps that's only natural. Looks like this conversation just got moved up the schedule.'
Wearing an expression of smug magnificence, Hye-yeon nodded slowly.
"That's right. My realm—"
"I knew it! You've gained weight! Just look at that donut sitting on your belly!"
"...It is NOT a donut!!"
"I have developed an Abdominal Regression Art as well, you know. Shall I teach it to you?"
"That's not the— wait. Abdominal Regression Art?"
An art that regressed the visceral fat piled up inside the belly?
"T-teach me. Please."
"Heh heh. First, and most important of all: eat less. That is the art's supreme truth — and, at the same time, its only truth!"
Wait, that's just—
"...That's just a DIET!!!"
When your master was a Formation Core cultivator, talking back simply wasn't an option. Hye-yeon dragged both hands down her face, again and again, in wordless surrender.
Peering at the Hall Master through the gaps between her fingers — the Hall Master who stood barely up to her ribs — Hye-yeon ground out each word, one by one.
"I have reached Foundation Establishment, First Layer. Hall Master."
"Mm. It does show. Somewhat."
"You're not the least bit shocked?"
"...It is so dull that I find myself wanting to kill you."
"It's not like I clawed my way through on my own, okay? I broke through on a spirit pill."
Ok Ye-rin's hand, which had been drinking in her reflection in the mirror, stopped dead.
And she turned to Hye-yeon with an expression grave in a way that sat strangely on that child's face.
"What was it you just said?"
"A spirit pill."
"A spirit pill? There is not a single spirit herb left in the world — how could there be spirit pills?"
'And now, at long last, she's ready to hear me out.'
Hye-yeon nodded, a cold line of sweat sliding down her spine.
"You don't watch streams, Hall Master, so you wouldn't know — but it is absolute chaos out there right now. Someone who can grow spirit herbs has appeared. And she can make spirit pills, too."
"...Wh-what did you say!!!"
Ok Ye-rin leapt backward, and her pupils trembled with genuine shock.
"S-so in other words — there might exist a spirit pill which, mixed with spirit sea grass, that most wondrous of things for the skin, and white spirit powder, and merely smoothed onto the face, restores one's complexion to a baby's bloom. Is that what you are telling me at this very moment?"
"...My sincerest apologies, Hall Master, but I never said a single word of that."
"Then you are saying there might exist a true Spirit-Soil Face Mask which, without even being eaten, but merely applied, stretches every wrinkle smooth. Is that it?"
"No... haah. Yes. Well. I suppose if we tried making it, we might just manage something. Ugh, fine, whatever."
"Eeheeheehee!!! Spirit herbs!! Spirit herbs, of all things!!! The spirit herb seed they said had withered and died — it lives again!!!"
Ok Ye-rin cackled like some scheming villain straight out of a melodrama.
Then, all at once, the laughter cut off.
"This is no time for such things, is it?"
Ok Ye-rin looked positively frantic.
"N-no time for this — I must present myself before the Elder of External Affairs at once."
The Elder of External Affairs — head of the outer council that held the purse strings of the entire sect.
Before the words had even finished leaving her mouth, Ok Ye-rin's body flowed back into its true form.
For all her desperate craving to be young, her true figure was lush and full of curve, her skin fine and smooth as perfectly kneaded dough.
The very image of a woman in her mature prime.
Hand pressed to her chin in visible unease, she paced back and forth across the office — then looked at Hye-yeon and asked,
"The others haven't descended on her yet, have they?"
"...I'd say it's only a matter of time. That is exactly why I've come to you in person, Hall Master."
And so, at last, the purpose of Hye-yeon's visit came into the light.
To protect Cheon Cho-young by putting the weight of the sect she belonged to — Pajeok Gate — behind her.
She had been confident that a disciple who had climbed to Foundation Establishment, First Layer on a spirit pill would be worth the sect sticking its neck out for.
No sane cultivator kills a pill-maker.
Why would anyone cut down the one person who could produce pills no one else could make?
Indeed, the only people in this world who could survive with a low realm were pill-makers and wealthy merchants.
They might, instead, seize her and work her to death — nothing but pills, until the very day she dropped.
Even so, they would need her pills until the day they themselves became immortals, so they would surely raise her cultivation alongside their own.
Which meant they needed to move fast, before some other sect carried Cho-young off first.
And Hye-yeon trusted, at the very least, that Pajeok Gate would never grind Cho-young down into a pill-making drudge.
"The Streaming Gallery has already gone into full meltdown. The supreme sects are going to start moving. The one blessing we have is that Pajeok Gate has this disciple of yours — Shin Hye-yeon."
"Disciple. Go there this instant and pin that girl down. If the others come—"
"If they come...?"
"...Then consider it my early congratulations on your Foundation Establishment, Second Layer."
"...Hall Master, you've lost your mind."
"Just see that you are not found out. Handle it all on your own — swift, clean, spotless. Yes?"
She really did look like she meant to kill me.
"Whoa. Fourteen percent!!"
A week spent streaming nothing but spirit-herb growing had bought her roughly ten percent.
Which meant a great many cultivators had been tuning in.
'As I thought, criminals who aren't worth as much as insects are no help at all......'
"Oh my. What am I even thinking."
"...Spirit-herb streams are the best."
Even after a week, the viewers who had poured in from Hye-yeon's stream were still there.
On top of that, newcomers drifting in through the Streaming Gallery kept growing by the day.
These days, the moment she went live, a good hundred or more regulars would pile in as a matter of course.
Cho-young checked the calendar.
Today was the full moon.
At last, she would be able to harvest the Black Moon Ginseng.
And once she refined it into spirit pills and sold those, a nice little stream of side income would come with them.
A short while later—
"Hello, everyone! Tonight the moon is bright — it's the full moon. So today, we're going to try harvesting some Black Moon Ginseng."
"You see, Black Moon Ginseng only comes out top-grade if you dig it up on the full moon, when the root has drunk the essence of the perfect moon to the brim."
"Thank you, AspiringCultivator, for the ten Chrome Stones."
"Thank you, Cho...young's...chest...nut stew, for the ten. Though I should mention — I'm really not much of a cook?"
"Wait — what! Was THAT what it meant?!"
Just then—
The clouds tore open, and the light of the full moon, hanging naked and silver in the sky, came pouring down over the field.
The hour for harvesting the very finest Black Moon Ginseng.
"Now!!"