Touch Cho-young? You're Dead
"Now!"
Cho-young gently scraped away the soil around the Black Moon Ginseng in her field. Then she took hold of the top of the root and drew it out in one smooth, unhurried motion. The uprooted ginseng was so jet-black that calling it a slice of the night sky would hardly have been an exaggeration. And as for the spiritual qi seeping out of it?
"Thank you, Amgwihyeoltu, for the one. Oh, really? You've seen them before?"
"Of course. Naturally I'll make it for you. One moment, please."
Cho-young carried the Black Moon Ginseng into the house.
"This is water steeped in spiritual qi. If you ask how I made it, I honestly don't know. I just... came across it."
And it was true. That water lay pooled in a dusk-dark corner of a cave on Biseungdo. Over countless ages it had absorbed spiritual qi until its very nature had transformed—it was not the sort of thing one could simply decide to make.
Cho-young began grinding the spirit herb on her cutting board. Once the Black Moon Ginseng had become a black-ash powder, she transferred it onto a sheet of white paper and poured the qi-soaked water over it.
"Next up, the pain-easing herb!"
Cho-young popped the herb into her mouth and chewed. Then she spat its juice into the bowl.
"Ptooey."
"?"
The chat window descended into utter chaos—though Cho-young herself had no idea what the problem was. She folded the paper around into a rounded shape and began kneading it into a little ball, working it over with her small, delicate hands for a few minutes. When she finally peeled the paper away, there sat a Black Moon Pill, gleaming with a luster all its own.
"All done! Hmm. This should be about lowest-grade Black Moon Pill quality, I'd say."
"Oh w-wow. I didn't expect this kind of popularity. It's the lowest grade, though?"
"Gah! N-no, you don't have to! You've already given me five. I'll just send it over for free! In return—next time! Please buy plenty again next time!"
"Then send me your address in a DM and I'll ship it right over. Thank you for your purchase! Oh, and the Black Moon Pill mixed with the pain-easing herb yields two pills per Black Moon Ginseng? I harvested three in total, so that means five more I can make."
The moment the words left her mouth, the donations came flooding in. A complete sellout.
A bright night, a full moon overhead. Two shadows fell across the vast field where nothing had been planted. One man crouched down and pinched up a pinch of soil. A black hood hid his face entirely. As though appraising the land itself, he rubbed the soil between his fingers and murmured under his breath.
"They said this was the place, for certain."
Just then, the other man beside him pointed a finger at the empty air. This one wore a black hood as well, his face equally hidden, though he stood a head shorter than the first.
"Senior Brother. Look at this."
Sure enough, in the empty air that should have held nothing, a faint, wavering shimmer had been caught. The man reached out his hand—
Snap—!
"A barrier."
"Wards laid over spirit pills... Unbelievable......"
Clicking his tongue, the shorter man turned his head and gazed at Cho-young's house. Whatever the thing inside was, they could always seize it and make it talk. And judging by the state of the surroundings, they appeared to be the first to come calling. With the streamer gallery gone dark, he congratulated himself on having moved one step faster than the rest of the pack.
"After you, Senior Brother."
"Mm. Let's go."
And yet the tall man could not, in the end, pull his feet away.
"...Senior Brother?"
Something hot spattered inside the short man's hood. At first he could not tell what it was. But the moment he saw his senior brother's head sliding down and collapsing at a slack diagonal, he understood.
"Ghk—!"
It was an ambush. If a cultivator standing at Grand Perfection of the fourth layer of Qi Condensation could be brought down so absurdly, so effortlessly...
'Foundation Establishment at the very least?'
The short man used his footwork technique to soar high into the air, his hood flapping in the wind.
"Who goes there! Show yourself!"
He roared with all the bravado he could muster, but the only answer was the distant bark of a dog somewhere far off.
"Damn it!"
Suspended in the air, the man closed his eyes, stretching out his qi in search of the hidden foe. Threadlike wisps of energy began spreading out around him, weaving themselves into a spider's web. It was a net so seamless it could only be called a web cast by heaven and earth itself, without a single gap—
"......Ghk."
—and yet it found nothing at all.
Then it happened.
"!!!"
Along his outstretched web he felt it—spiritual qi, faint but unmistakable. With blinding speed the man drew a talisman from his robe and flung it.
"There you are!!"
The attack-grade Lightning Talisman shot through the night, and a bolt of lightning crashed down onto the abandoned tractor.
KRA-KOOM!!!
'Did I get him?'
But alas, the voice came again from directly behind him.
"...The crest of the Demon-Expelling Dao Sect. You're with the Sado Sect, aren't you?"
The man whirled around in shock—and there, floating in the empty air as though it were the most natural thing in the world, was a woman. Her hand glistened, slick with blood. Blood that had spurted from her senior brother's neck. Anyone might have been forgiven for feeling a surge of vengeance, watching their own senior brother die. But the man did not rush in recklessly. In this world, sentiments like vengeance were a luxury. No matter how dear the person who had just died, if the killer stood a realm above your own, playing the dead mouse was the surest way to keep breathing.
"...I see. You're someone of considerable fame. The GhostCatchingShaman of Pajeok Gate."
"Oh, were you a viewer?"
"Not a viewer. I simply hear things, here and there."
"Figured as much. If you were a viewer, you couldn't waltz into a place like this."
"...For a Pajeok Gate Daoist who walks the righteous path to take a human life this easily......"
"As long as nobody catches me, it's all good."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I don't much like getting blood on my hands, but you people are the exception."
Hye-yeon, idly toying with the nails of her blood-free left hand, blew a casual puff of air through her lips.
"Wh-what is that supposed to......"
"You just came to buy a spirit pill, didn't you? That's all, right?"
The man swallowed hard. Their goal was to abduct Cheon Cho-young, the world's one and only spirit pill artisan. Only Cho-young could make spirit pills, so they would not kill her—but if she were carried off, she would be doomed to a lifetime as a bargain-bin pill peddler.
"That's the Sado Sect for you."
"You think we'd come after the world's only pill artisan without coming prepared?"
The man toyed with the talismans hidden inside his robe. Even a cultivator of the loftiest realm would struggle to withstand talismans steeped in numinous energy. All he had to do was loose them without her noticing, and...
"Doesn't it hurt?"
The man flinched and looked down. His arm—which should have been tucked inside his robe—had been sliced clean in half and was plummeting toward the ground far below. Sparks kept bursting from the severed cross-section. It was a cybernetic implant arm, but with its neural network still connected, severing it hurt exactly as much as losing a real one.
"...Urghk!"
"Lay a finger on Cho-young and it isn't just me you'll answer to—you'll make enemies of every cultivator in every righteous Daoist sect."
"...Th-that's...!!"
"If you want one, pay for it like everyone else? You're not a child. To think I have to teach a full-grown man something like this. Tsk."
"The Lord of the Demon-Expelling Dao Sect will not stand idly by...!!!"
Shff! With one clean, surgical severing sound, the man's body dropped, cleft in two. Hye-yeon, legs still elegantly crossed where she sat in midair, gave her fingers a snap. In that instant, the two corpses burst into flame. The fire did not die until nothing remained of them but black ash to scatter on the wind.
"I expected as much, but there are more of you than I thought."
Hye-yeon turned her eyes from the freshly made ash and swept her gaze across the forest of bare, skeletal branches. Sinister presences lurked there—one, two, three, four......
"Judging by how hard you're all hiding, you're not the type to pay for your pills either."
Whoosh!!
Countless shadows draped in darkness came hurtling toward her.
Crack!
The head of the first cultivator to reach her burst apart.
Shin Hye-yeon, of the righteous Daoist sect Pajeok Gate. The reason her reputation for faithfully observing the sect rule—thou shalt not kill fellow cultivators for the sake of training—remained so spotlessly intact was simple: not once, in all her killings, had she ever been caught.
Just then, two delivery drones lifted off from Cho-young's house and glided serenely through the night air.
Cho-young packed the Black Moon Pills with care and shipped them off to the address that had come in by DM. Delivery was handled by drones built by ChromeCorp. Request a pickup online and they came straight to your door—pricey, admittedly, but convenient. The courier's website was running a promotion at the moment: fifty percent off pickup and delivery fees with a long-term contract. Cho-young resolved to take a proper look at that long-term contract promo later on.
"Wh-what am I going to do? Wrap up the......"
—was what she had intended to say. But when she checked the clock, only two hours had gone by.
Fair enough. Ending a stream after barely two hours was poor streamer ethics, no way around it. Besides—whether because so many cultivators had been tuning in, the progress of her Universal Resonant Dao Body had already climbed to fifteen percent. The secret to advancing her realm was simply streaming; there was no reason to call it a day early. To make better spirit pills, she needed to raise her cultivation—only then could she handle truly potent spirit herbs properly.
'But what am I supposed to do?'
Hers was a stream about growing spirit herbs and crafting spirit pills to sell. She had already planted every herb in her possession over the past week; there was nothing left to sow. She had even potted the shadow spirit herb—which grew only in darkness—in a planter bought from the mart and set it inside the sunless house. And still, there was no content.
"Maybe I could do some conte—"
She was on the very verge of asking her viewers what sort of content they'd like to see.
'Those perverts are going to say something deranged again!'
Yep. No doubt about it. They'd have her doing whatever dance happened to be trending, guaranteed. These people were more than capable of that and then some. Yep.
And it was at that very moment that the doorbell rang through Cho-young's house, where nothing but stillness had settled.