A Familiar Face on the Battlefield
Since his stay was meant to be short, and since he had to avoid drawing attention, Mu-yong-i was once again left behind.
His tasks upon arrival were the same as before.
Tidy up the chaos left in the wake of a massive battle, and pick up a usable identity tablet along the way. He intended to make use of the identity of Un-gok Moon's Yi Gon — the one he'd last been caught with by Song Jamun, the lecturer on array arts, though nothing serious had come of it.
Until the lectures began, he spent his time gathering information as he had on previous visits. He had no idea whether he would ever return to Cheonwon Castle after attending every lecture, but it never hurt to be prepared.
It was during that time that he happened to come across information on Dong-eun Province's Yeon family — the identity of Yeon Biwon, which he had used on his very first visit here.
A mere three-clan family whose head is only a late Dharma Soul cultivator, is it?
In truth, "mere" was unfair; that was simply the reality for most small cultivation clans. Many didn't have a single Dharma Soul cultivator at all, so within the region, the Yeon family of Dong-eun Province might well be considered a power to be reckoned with.
But to Han Yujin — who now stood at the very threshold of Golden Core formation and could already exert Golden Core-level strength in his current state — it all seemed rather laughable.
He might use Yeon Biwon's identity someday. With the Monghwan Yusim divine ability, he could deceive an entire three-clan family without breaking a sweat, which made it a perfectly serviceable cover story for his origins.
As for the handful of minor complications that might arise — he could always worry about those if the day ever came.
The alchemy lecture was held in the plaza at the south end of the castle.
The cultivator presiding over it was a Golden Core alchemist named Do Myeonghui, a strikingly handsome man who looked considerably younger than his middle age.
As with the other lectures, his first day covered the fundamentals: how to turn solid-state spirit herbs into liquid, how to extract and separate only the necessary components or strip away impurities in that state, how to smoothly blend spirit herbs of differing properties, and how to stabilize the mixture back into a solid form.
It was, overall, material focused on handling ingredients, and the few professional alchemist's tricks he passed along kept the audience's ears pricked.
After the lecture ended, Han Yujin went looking for the small exchange gathering he had attended before.
He wanted the Okro Wine Bottle again. Since its previous form had been consumed as a material for crafting the Blood Spirit Red Flower Wine Bottle, choosing the finished product as his harvest had naturally used it up.
The Okro Wine Bottle had its own distinctive taste and aroma, so for Mu-yong-i's sake, if nothing else, he absolutely needed to get his hands on another.
While trading there, he picked up one more Gwibu Talisman as a bonus.
I always figured I'd get the chance to bluster with it at least once.
But with no such opportunity ever materializing, he was already standing at the threshold of Golden Core formation.
It seemed the Gwibu Talisman would simply have to serve as a teaching aid while he learned talisman arts. He might, after all, glean some ideas from the way it mimicked another being's aura.
On the second day of the lecture came instruction on the combinations and compatibilities of commonly used ingredients; on the third, guidance on how to solidify those ingredients and carve different types of Dharma patterns into them.
And as the material grew steadily more advanced, the Entry Stage cultivators, predictably, began dropping like flies.
Then, at a certain depth of sophistication, the lecture simply stopped.
What followed over the remaining days was mostly about repairing damaged Dharma artifacts and Dharma treasures, with the necessary tricks and knowledge doled out only in fragments.
Is the lecturer just a poor teacher, or is he stingy about sharing his alchemical knowledge?
Han Yujin couldn't help but feel disappointed. The lectures were certainly useful as they were, but held up against the formations and array arts lectures, the thinness was impossible to ignore.
Still, he had learned the basics, and he judged that by drawing on the Five Elements Ring he currently possessed, he could produce a life-bound Dharma treasure of his own.
That is, if he were satisfied with an ordinary-grade Dharma treasure.
Naturally, I have no intention of settling for anything that ordinary.
Another cultivator might compromise with reality and make do. But Han Yujin, armed with the most absurdly cheating awakening ability imaginable, could not.
To do so would be a hideous insult to his own awakening power.
And the moment that thought crossed his mind, something else occurred to him.
If a sci-fi world truly existed, one interwoven with xianxia elements, what level would its alchemy have reached?
It was mere speculation, but he suspected it wouldn't lag behind the standard cultivation world. He couldn't speak for raw power, but he had a feeling such a world's alchemy would excel especially in convenience and versatility.
Either way, there was no knowing until he went and saw for himself.
He attended the lectures diligently right up until the final day, when the Yeokjok would invade.
Then, determined to make up for the disappointment of the alchemy lectures by immediately taking the talisman arts course, he used an escape spell to slip out of the battle without wasting a scrap of mental focus on the Yeokjok.
He planned to fight to his heart's content — after he'd finished every last talisman lecture.
He revisited the trial, picked up an identity tablet, gathered what information he could along the way, and spent a day that way.
This time, he headed for the plaza on the eastern side of Cheonwon Castle. Since this was the most heavily attended lecture of them all, the place had been in an uproar long before he arrived.
The Golden Core talisman master presiding over it was a gaunt, austere-looking middle-aged man named Jeok Munyu. The moment he stepped onto the platform, exchanged a brief greeting, and launched straight into the lecture, it was clear his personality matched his face.
Fortunately, his teaching was nowhere near as hasty. If anything, it was meticulous to a fault.
Where the alchemy lecture had reeked of inadequacy, this talisman lecture felt packed with substance — perhaps because the craft itself was inherently practical from birth.
In particular, Han Yujin could tell as he listened that Jeok Munyu was unusually considerate of Entry Stage cultivators. No doubt because they made up the vast majority of talisman users.
But that consideration didn't mean the content was shallow, and as the days wore on, plenty of Entry Stage cultivators were weeded out of this lecture as well.
Even so, the survival rate was far higher than in any other course, and even those who dropped out midway would have walked away with no small harvest.
The lecture covered the varieties of talisman paper and spirit ink and their methods of production, along with the core question of how to imbue one's Dharma spells into a talisman.
Every legitimate talisman was crafted so that its authenticity could be verified by closely examining the Dharma patterns on its surface — while still concealing its essential core. And of course, it had to function without flaw on top of all that.
Moreover, the most important thing in crafting a talisman wasn't the materials but the talisman master's own concentration and mastery. A single stroke drawn with even the slightest error spelled failure.
Han Yujin found the lectures far more gripping than he had expected.
In the hours between lectures, he joined a series of small exchange gatherings, aggressively acquiring the materials talisman work required, and threw himself into practice without the slightest reluctance to spend them.
He also made an attempt to dig up more information on the Yeon family of Dong-eun Province, but despite having already found one lead, the results were almost nil. The family was simply an unremarkable clan with no fame to speak of.
And so the final day of lectures arrived.
By then, he had successfully imbued several basic Dharma spells into talismans.
It could only be called genuine talent — his transcendent comprehension, combined with the extraordinary insights gained through the pendant, had proven an immense help.
Had Jeok Munyu known of such an achievement, he might have approached Han Yujin just as Won Baekryeong and Song Jamun had, asking whether he had any interest in joining Taeqing Palace.
With a few finished talismans tucked away to his deep satisfaction, he felt the Jeongchung Golden Barrier beginning to restore itself, and made his way toward the castle wall at his leisure.
It was time for the clean, decisive fight he had been planning all along.
— You actually believed this pathetic little trick would work?!
The golden flame-serpent plummeting alongside Gu Soboo, Castle Lord of Cheonwon, was intercepted and burst apart mid-air.
A ring-shaped shockwave flipped the sky inside out, and the battle of Incarnation-stage beings continued in a blaze of light and afterimages too fast for the eye to follow. Still, Han Yujin could follow their fight in somewhat greater detail than before.
He was absorbed in the spectacle, marveling to himself again and again, when—
"Hold the wall—!!"
A voice carried by a spell rolled thunderously across the ramparts. His gaze naturally turned outward, and beyond the wall he saw Yeokjok of every description surging in from the horizon like a tide.
This was a great war that had made an entire world its frontline. No matter how much Golden Core-level power Han Yujin could exert, he was insignificant in a clash of this scale.
But what about on a local level?
He was quietly raising his strength, preparing himself, when—
- Kyaaaaak-!!
A Yeokjok resembling a bird of prey flew in low, punching straight through the hole-riddled barrier of the Jeongchung Golden Barrier. But it came in so hot that it drew the attention of every human cultivator nearby and was met with a concentrated barrage.
As the wretched creature tumbled out beyond the wall, other Yeokjok infiltrated from different points — and Han Yujin's gaze locked onto one of them instantly.
- Kehehehik···!
A three-headed, six-armed monster — vaguely human in shape, but one-eyed, with a head like the cyclops of a fantasy novel and a full three pairs of arms besides.
The creature whirled its six weapons like a storm and shrugged off all but the mightiest spells with its bare hide.
Last time, driving it off was the best I could manage.
With that thought, he leveled his index finger at the beast. In that instant the three-headed monster sensed something and whipped its head around to glare at him —
but the Pure Yang Extreme Flame Bullet Thread was a hair faster than its reaction.
Pwoo-k···!
- Kyaaaaak···!
Two of its left arms took the burning line dead-on, catching fire and shearing away entirely. It managed, admirably, to dodge the rest of the attack — but that was all it managed.
In a flash of thunder and blinding light, Han Yujin appeared at point-blank range and unfolded the Origin Power Great Hand. The instant the translucent palm slammed down on the fleeing creature—
Kwaang-!!
A thunderous crash erupted as the monster was hammered into the ground.
Kwaang-!! Kwaakwaang-!!
Two more blows followed in quick succession, and with them the creature's last tattered breath gave out, its whole body pulped into a smear of blood.
"Th-thank you, Senior···!"
A Dharma Soul cultivator nearby bowed to him. He had clearly mistaken Han Yujin for a Golden Core cultivator.
Han Yujin gave a brief nod, then swept his eyes upward.
Just as he had calculated, a Yeokjok that looked like a mantis crossed with a scorpion was flitting through the empty air.
The very creature that had once dove straight for him — and this time, it was trying to slip past as though it had seen nothing at all.
With one corner of his mouth twisting upward, Han Yujin vanished behind a burst of thunder and radiance.
He materialized directly in front of the mantis-scorpion monster and asked, in a tone that might almost have passed for friendly:
"In a hurry to get somewhere?"
- W-wait a moment···!
Before the creature could force out another word, Han Yujin unfurled the Origin Power Great Hand and froze its divine senses solid. A colossal hand of water, conjured in almost no time at all, crashed down faster than the creature could respond.
Poppoppeng-!!
The blow shattered the barrier the monster had hastily thrown up, smashed through it entirely, and crushed the body inside to paste.
Watching its corpse drop lifelessly from the sky, Han Yujin felt a strangely fresh rush of emotion.
This was the beast he had defeated last time only after losing an arm and having more than half his scalp melted away. Now he had killed it as casually as swatting a fly.
There were a few more debts I needed to collect, too.
With that thought, he spread his Divine Sense alongside his Spirit Eye Art and swept the surroundings. It didn't take him long to find the creature he remembered.
A beast with the form of a bipedal tiger — the very one that had lunged at him back then, sneering that he fought well for a human.
By coincidence, their eyes met at exactly the same moment. All of its old recklessness gone, the tiger immediately showed signs of trying to disengage.
But Han Yujin's Six Paths of Reincarnation was a step faster.
Six worlds surfaced behind him like a halo, beginning to turn, and whipped up a boundless storm of emotion.
The divine ability didn't confine itself to the tiger he'd marked. It radiated across a wide area, violently stirring the emotions of the Beast Path of Rage in every creature it touched.
"From this moment on — kill each other."
The instant the words left his lips, the Yeokjok began howling like madmen and tearing into one another. The tiger monster, perfectly in line with his design, came charging straight at him.
"I prepared corn frosted treats for you — the kind I couldn't give you last time."
Even as he spoke, he spread the Golden Lotus Nine Rotations Full Bloom in one hand and slid it gently toward the roaring tiger's open maw.
And then—
The creature swallowed the intermediate Five Elements spell whole, and instead of tiger's fury, what erupted from within was a detonation of sharp metal sword-qi that shredded its body to fragments in a hideous death.
It would be dragging plenty of its fellow Yeokjok down to the afterlife with it. The road below would be anything but lonely.