Inside the house, Seo Yerin lay flat on Gaon's bed. Her dark blue robes were rumpled, her face pale, a thin trail of dried foam still at the corner of her mouth. The veil had been set aside on the small wooden table.
Gaon stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, watching her breathe while his aura had faded now, back to nothing.
Jin-ah stood beside him, shorter by a head, her curved sword still tucked into the rope at her waist.
She opened her eyes and let her qi flow outward the small flame inside her reaching toward the unconscious woman on the bed.
What she saw made her breath catch.
The woman's qi was enormous. A deep, steady lake of energy, calm but vast. Jin-ah had never sensed anything like it. Compared to her own tiny spark the girl were more like a bonfire. Compared to the bandits from the road, this was the sun.
She's so powerful.
Jin-ah's eyes snapped open. She looked at Gaon. Then back at the woman. Then at Gaon again.
A smile spread across her face. Small at first, then wider.
He knocked her down. Someone this strong.
Her heart swelled. Her fingers curled into her sleeves.
My savior must be someone who hiding in this little house in the mountains. And someone like her someone so powerful couldn't even touch him.
"Agh Agh!" Seo Yerin coughed.
Blood sprayed from her lips dark red that almost black and splattered across her own robes. Her body jerked once, then went still again.
Gaon stepped back, confused.
What? I didn't hit her that hard. The neck lock shouldn't have caused internal bleeding.
He knelt beside the bed and placed his palm near her chest, the external life force flowed from his hand, thin and careful, reading her the way he read the herbs in the forest.
And he felt it.
Something wrong. Deep inside her most likely not from the fight. Something similar to a sickness, maybe, or an old injury that never healed properly. Her external life force the energy that surrounded every living body were fading slowly by slowly.
She was already sick. The fight just made it worse.
He pulled his hand back.
I need the needles but I don't know where to put them for this.
He examined her physique. Her robes were drenched in perspiration and blood. His gaze shifted to the region directly beneath her breasts on her chest.
There.
There was something. Her energy was tense. a knot. It was as if someone had drawn an excessively tight rope over her lungs.
That's where the sickness sits.
He turned to Jin-ah. "Bring me the cloth pouch. The one with the needles."
Jin-ah ran to the cabinet and grabbed it. She handed it to him without a word, her eyes wide.
Gaon untied the pouch and pulled out a silver needle. Then he looked at Seo Yerin's robes.
I need to see where I'm putting this. No choice.
He reached for the collar of her robe and pulled it open just enough to expose the skin below her chest. Her sternum. The base of her ribs. The place where the energy knot sat tightest.
Gaon hand hovered above her skin, needle ready.
I have no idea if this will work. But if I do nothing, she might not wake up at all.
When he injected the needle, her eyes snapped open.
Seo Yerin jerked backward, her hand flying to her chest. She ripped the needle out and tossed it aside. Then she coughed and pressed a hand to her ribs.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was hoarse, angry. Her eyes darted around the room. Saw Jin-ah. Saw the wooden walls. Saw Gaon kneeling beside the bed. "Are you—"
Her gaze landed on Jin-ah's small face, then back to Gaon. Her thoughts were everywhere. Disoriented. Furious.
"You bastard..."
Gaon blinked. He did not move.
"Hey. Don't you remember me? You saved me. Years ago. In the forest outside Hwagok. I was a kid. A wolf attacked me. You flew me home."
Seo Yerin's eyes squinted. Her breathing was still ragged. Blood smeared her lips.
"I don't recall anyone who are—"
She stopped.
Her eyes stayed on his face. The same face but younger, a boy with a torn shirt and a fresh scar on his collarbone.
That boy.
Her hand lowered slightly.
"You..."
He saw the recognition flicker across her face and spoke before she could.
"I can save you from that sickness of yours."
Seo Yerin stared at him. Her hand, still pressed to her ribs, trembled slightly.
This sickness?
She had been looking for a cure for three years. Heavenly pills, rare herbs, legendary healers she had chased every rumor across the central plains but nothing ever worked. The best physicians told her the same thing, We cannot remove what was never meant to be healed by medicine.
Her jaw tightened.
"You can't, this is not a sickness. It's a curse."
Gaon tilted his head. "Curse?"
She nodded slowly while her eyes dropped to the floor.
"Three years ago, I fought a demonic cultist. A necromancer from the Black Lotus Sect. I killed him. But before he died, he placed his palm on my stomach and spoke a word."
She touched the spot below her sternum.
"The curse entered me. It feeds on my qi. Every day, it grows a little stronger. Every month, I cough blood. The physicians say eventually—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Eventually, my own energy will devour me from the inside."
She looked up at Gaon, her eyes hard but tired.
"Heavenly pills cannot touch it, i've been living on borrowed time."
"Trust me. I'll do this favor for you. Because you brought me home back then."
Jin-ah kept listening from the corner, her head tilted, wondering what all of this meant. A curse? A necromancer? The words felt like something from the old books Gaon made her read.
Seo Yerin stared at Gaon. Her mind raced.
He defeated me easily and i barely moved.
Her eyes moved over his face, his shoulders, his hands.
He's grow… And he's gotten stronger as I thought…
Then her eyes widened.
"Wait," she said. "Don't you belong at an academy? You should be training somewhere. Not living alone in the mountains."
Gaon blinked. "...No. Why?"
Seo Yerin pushed herself up on her elbows, ignoring the pain in her chest.
"A years ago, I sent a message to my sect leader about you. A boy with latent power, no training, who killed a wolf with his bare hands. They said they would take care of you. Send someone to find you. Bring you to an academy."
Gaon was quiet for a moment. Then he murmured, almost to himself, "So that's why... there were people asking me to join academies. I thought they were just recruiters."
He looked at her.
"Well, I rejected them. All of them."
Seo Yerin's jaw dropped. "Huh!? Why?"
Gaon shrugged. "I don't need an academy. Besides, I can't use any qi. What would I even learn there?"
Seo Yerin stared at him. Then, without asking permission, she opened her eyes wide and let her qi perception flow outward the same way Jin-ah had learned, but stronger.
She saw him clearly.
No qi. Not a single wisp of internal energy in his dantian. No meridian channels lit up. Nothing.
But something else.
External life force. Pouring out of him like water from a cracked dam. More than any normal person. More than most cultivators. More, even, than some masters she had met. It surrounded his body like a second skin, dense and thick.
He has no qi at all. But this external force... it's massive. How?
Then she remembered his body. The way her sword tip had stopped against his stomach. The way his arm had felt like iron around her neck.
She closed her eyes and let her perception fade.
"I don't understand you," she admitted.
"You don't have to, Just believe me that I can take care of your curse. I just need to inject the needles. After that, let's forget about the attack. We started on the wrong foot."
Seo Yerin looked at him. Then at Jin-ah, who was watching with curious eyes. Then at the silver needle still lying on the floor where she had thrown it.
She thought about the past three years. The blood. The weakness. The healers who shook their heads. The nights she woke up wondering if each cough would be her last.
What do I have to lose?
She lay back down on the bed.
"Fine…"
As Gaon pressed the needle into her skin, The silver tip slid beneath her flesh, and he pushed the external force just a trickle at first.
Seo Yerin's back arched. Her teeth clamped down on her lower lip. Blood beaded where her teeth pressed, but she did not cry out. She would not fall unconscious.
Not again.
The curse resisted.
Gaon felt it push back against his energy a dark thing coiled around her lungs like a serpent. It did not want to leave.
Fine.
He scaled up. Two times. The external force doubled, flowing thicker through the needle. The air around his hand shimmered.
The curse held.
Four times the glow around his palm brightened, casting faint shadows on the wooden walls. The needle hummed.
Seo Yerin gasped but kept her eyes open. Her fingers dug into the bed frame.
Eight times. Gaon's breathing grew heavier. The external force poured out of him now not just through the needle, but radiating from his entire body. The room grew warm. The wooden floorboards creaked under the pressure.
The curse writhed. It did not break.
Stronger, he thought. I need to be stronger than the curse.
Ten times. His aura expanded a visible shimmer, like heat rising from summer stone, but thicker, denser. The air in the room felt heavy. Jin-ah, standing near the door, took a step back. Her small chest tightened. She could not breathe.
"Gah—" she started.
He did not hear her. His focus was on the needle, on the dark thing inside Seo Yerin, on the endless well of external force that answered his call.
Twelve times.
The aura exploded outward.
But it grew swelling from his body like a second skin peeling away to reveal a third. The shimmer became a haze. The haze became a faint, golden light that pushed against the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Dust fell from the roof beams. The paper window rattled.
Jin-ah stumbled backward. Her lungs felt like they were being squeezed. She turned and ran out the door, gasping once she reached the clearing. Even there, twenty paces from the hut, she could feel the pressure. The grass bent away from the house.
Inside, Seo Yerin remained conscious.
Her teeth were still locked on her lip. Blood ran down her chin. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Gaon's face. She could feel the curse inside her being overwhelmed by His external force was not delicately removing the dark energy. It was flooding her, pushing the curse out by sheer volume.
He trying to crushing the curse under the weight of his power???
The needle in her chest glowed white-hot, but it did not burn. The curse shrank. Coiled tighter. Then, with a silent snap that only she could feel, it broke.
To Be Continued.