If fate exists, then even if you’re separated by a thousand miles, you’ll meet again.

It was a proverb spread widely across the Central Plain.

And Seol Yegang was feeling those words in his very skin right now.

Because the younger sister he had missed so fiercely was in his arms.

*****

“Yehwa. Yehwa. Yehwa……”

“Stop calling me, Brother.”

Seol Yehwa sighed as she patted her brother’s head.

He was crying.

Big, ugly tears were dripping from a grown man’s eyes.

And not just anywhere—

Right in the middle of Shaolin.

Every monk was silently watching that scene.

Cheon Soyak was the same.

Even Cheonjeong and Cheongak.

Even Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae was watching.

Gong-eop looked at Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae and asked.

“Why didn’t you step in this time, patron?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why you didn’t accompany the raid on the Henan foothold.”

He was curious.

Ak Jupae had brought Cheongak and Cheonjeong and Cheon Soyak.

Ak Jupae had asked that the three of them be allowed to take temporary refuge at Shaolin.

Ak Jupae had saved Seon-geung from death.

“Abbot Gwanggyeong stopped me.”

“Pardon?”

Gong-eop asked again.

But Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae answered again, flat as ever.

“The Abbot of Shaolin told me not to. When I asked why, he told me not to ask.”

“…I see.”

Gong-eop thought for a moment, then arrived at the answer.

It was because he couldn’t trust him.

…Surely.

‘They’re Namgung’s shadow group. He was the former Heaven-Net Platform Lord under the Sword Sovereign, Namgung Ak, the Alliance Leader.’

Now that they knew those people belonged to Namgung—

They couldn’t put anyone even slightly connected to him into the field.

They didn’t know what knowledge he might have…

Or whose side he might choose on the scene.

In reputation, Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae was the very image of “a warrior of the Alliance.”

No more, no less—an emotionless saber master who followed the Alliance’s orders and commands to the letter.

If he was connected to Namgung’s shadow group…

Or if he recognized that they were Namgung’s people…

In the worst case—

A catastrophe could unfold where they’d have to fight him to the death on the spot.

And in Shaolin as it currently stood, those who could subdue him—someone at the threshold of the Transformation Realm…

Including Abbot Gwanggyeong, were so few you could count them on one hand.

And it went without saying: every one of those few held duties too heavy to leave Shaolin.

“Do you know something?”

Flame-Saber Lord Ak Jupae glanced at Gong-eop as he asked.

Gong-eop quietly shook his head.

“How could I presume to measure the boundless thoughts in the Abbot’s heart? Amitabha.”

“…Is that so.”

For some reason, it sounded like a flimsy excuse.

But this wasn’t the moment to press.

This gathering hadn’t been made for that.

“Are you done crying?”

Soyak finally stepped in, unable to take the spectacle any longer.

And she pried Seol Yegang and Seol Yehwa apart.

“No—no! Why! A brother wants to hold his little sister, that’s all!”

“So you don’t need me to melt the Azure-Ice Needle Swarm. Understood.”

“That’s not what I meant…!”

“Then what is it?”

Soyak’s black eyes rested on Seol Yegang without blinking.

Only then did Seol Yegang finally lower his tail.

Soyak was his benefactor.

Even if she couldn’t cure this artificial Severed Meridian Syndrome…

She was the benefactor who had returned Yehwa to his arms again.

“…You really can do it?”

“An eighty-percent chance.”

At Soyak’s short answer, Seol Yegang’s pupils shook.

The confidence was higher than he’d expected.

But the one even more shocked than him was Seol Yehwa herself.

“Uh—so, the person who put this in me is someone called the Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace…”

“I know. Stay still.”

“Y-you’re doing it here…?”

Cheon Soyak nodded.

It was midday, with the sun high overhead.

The moment when yang energy filled the air in every direction.

Sunlight was the energy of the sun itself—

So wasn’t right here beneath it the perfect place to melt “ice needles”?

Besides, this wasn’t the Harmonization Scripture, and it wasn’t the Falling Plum Elegy.

She wasn’t even showing another Mount Hua martial art in front of Shaolin.

This was only her internal power—born as the “result” of the Harmonization Scripture—

And she was merely using the special function embedded within it.

“At least explain what you’re doing before you start.”

Seol Yegang pulled Yehwa into his arms again and stared at Soyak.

Soyak sighed.

“Someone watching would think I’m trying to kill your sister.”

“O-our Yehwa’s body is weak!”

“I know.”

Soyak walked right up again and pulled Yehwa out of Yegang’s arms.

Then she seated Yehwa in a sunny spot where the light fell well.

“Sit in meditation posture.”

“…Okay.”

Eyes emptier and darker than anything in the world.

On instinct, Yehwa obeyed Soyak.

“From now on, you need to circulate my internal power through your body as if it were yours.”

“…What?”

“I don’t know the Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art, so Yegang, you come and sit here too.”

Seol Yegang’s eyes went wide.

“M-me too?”

“I’ll inject my internal power into her body and circulate it—exactly as you instruct.”

Yegang and Yehwa’s eyes trembled at the same time.

Internal power operation was the foundation of any scripture.

Of course, knowing which channels it passed through wasn’t enough to fully learn a scripture.

You needed the essential nature of that martial art—

And beyond that, mnemonic verses that carried its “representation.”

But even so…

The order of circulation through the meridian paths wasn’t some light secret.

“If you do that, then the operation of the Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art…”

“Yes. I’ll learn at least how the internal power is circulated.”

Seol Yegang had to choose.

Even if he was collateral blood, as someone of North Sea Ice Palace lineage—would he guard that secret to the death?

Or would he abandon part of it to save his own blood?

It was barely worth calling a choice.

“Fine. We’ll do it.”

Seol Yegang sat down beside his younger sister in meditation posture.

The North Sea Ice Palace had cast him out.

If he spilled everything—mnemonic verses and circulation patterns and all of it—then execution would begin in earnest, no question…

But this was only circulation.

And not even forms—only part of a scripture.

More than anything, Cheon Soyak—or Shaolin’s monks—weren’t about to run to North Sea Ice Palace and tattletale.

“Then I’ll begin.”

Soyak placed her left palm on Yegang’s back, and her right palm on Yehwa’s back.

When she closed her eyes, she felt it—

The cold, yin-chill energy flowing like a great river through Yegang’s body.

The constitution of someone born and raised in the North Sea.

The yin-chill energy rose from the lower abdomen and ran along the meridian paths.

Soyak chased it in one breath and memorized it.

And then, exactly like that, she began to pour the Harmonization Scripture’s internal power into Yehwa’s body.

Eighty percent.

The reason Soyak’s estimated success rate was so high was simple.

That “Azure-Ice Needle Swarm” originated from the Forest-of-All Still-Cold Divine Art.

The Forest-of-All Still-Cold Divine Art—by what she knew—took the unmelted ice of the North Sea as its representation.

Just like the Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art did.

Ice that does not melt.

Something that does not change.

Eternity.

And eternity ran straight into immortality.

No one born human could avoid being drawn toward immortality and undying permanence.

Even the First Emperor of Qin had searched for an elixir of eternal life.

Would martial artists who used the unprecedented mystery of internal power be any different?

Countless martial arts across the world took the undying and the eternal as their representation.

Namgung’s sky. Wudang’s Great Ultimate. The North Sea Ice Palace’s North Sea…

And the Mount Hua of this era—

Like plum blossoms approaching a “ten-thousand-day red” that never fades.

The Forest-of-All Still-Cold Divine Art, taking the never-melting azure ice of the North Sea as its representation.

But…

If it was her Harmonization Scripture—natural enemy to undying permanence, to immortality, to eternity—

Then she could melt ice needles created by that art.

If it was the black qilin’s function, then it could break the curse.

The Harmonization Scripture’s energy seeped into Yehwa’s frail body and passed through her channels and meridian paths, smoothing as it went.

Each time it passed, the chill embedded deep within the meridian paths began to lose its strength.

The special function carried by Soyak’s internal power was melting the hair-thin Azure-Ice Needle Swarm embedded in her body.

More precisely, it was canceling out the “undying permanence” it held.

And once the Forest-of-All Still-Cold Divine Art’s undying permanence was stripped away, the ice needles…

Were nothing more than ice that melted beneath warm sunlight.

But in that moment, an immensely powerful yin-chill energy began to surge up from Seol Yehwa’s lower abdomen.

The energy that had been blocked completely—unable to move even an inch—had awakened.

Cheon Soyak quietly began to withdraw her own internal power.

Internal power drawn out hair-thin.

Given undying permanence through a high level of the Forest-of-All Still-Cold Divine Art—

That was the Azure-Ice Needle Swarm.

If you removed that undying permanence, it became nothing more than yin-chill energy.

The energy that had circulated the small orbit absorbed every last trace of yin-chill energy that had been lodged in her channels.

Only a little—but Yehwa realized that the internal power returning to her lower abdomen had increased.

“…It’s finished now.”

Soyak lifted her palms from their backs.

And before anyone could speak, she opened her mouth first—getting ahead of it.

“I, Cheon Soyak of Mount Hua…”

Everyone fell silent.

Because they knew exactly what declaration Soyak was about to make.

“…will never, for the rest of my life, speak of any part of the operation of the Snow-Heaven Cold-Ice Art.”

No evil arts or spellwork lay on that oath.

But any righteous martial artist knew—

An oath once spoken aloud carried weight.

“And if I break it, I will never again be able to raise my head before the martial comrades of the Nine Provinces.”

Soyak let out a breath of relief and looked at Seol Yegang.

He was checking Yehwa’s pulse, confirming that all her meridian paths had returned.

And he was crying again.

“Until the puncture sites heal, don’t put strain on your meridian paths.”

Soyak left only that single sentence behind and stood.

And by coincidence—

Her eyes met Cheonjeong’s and Cheongak’s, where they stood beside her.

Eyes that looked proud of her.

Somewhere in her chest, Soyak felt warmth spread.

A warmth like family.

Chapter 67

Comments