Chapter 5
“Muyeol.”
Someone called out to me.
A familiar, dearly missed voice.
“Have you been eating properly?”
That was my mother from my previous life.
Conversations with Mom were always like this.
Had I eaten?
Was I feeling okay?
Had I slept?
“Muyeol. Don’t push yourself too hard. Your health comes first.”
“I’m busy. Later. Some other time. I’ll call.”
I always gave her a halfhearted answer.
Later. Some other time…
Such convenient words.
I was busy over Lunar New Year, so I said I’d come home next time.
I promised I’d visit Korea once the semester was over.
But who knew that ‘next time’ would never come?
In the end, I committed the worst act of filial impiety, making my parents look at their son’s portrait at his funeral.
I’m sorry for being such an unfilial son.
In my dream, that face slowly overlapped with another.
My mother, blood spreading across her white clothes.
“Our fine son. We’re proud of you. You’ve done so well.”
“Our pretty daughter. You’re so lovely. Such a good girl.”
“So stop crying!”
“Don’t cry.”
The two mothers turned away from me and grew farther and farther away.
I reached out, but couldn’t touch them, like mist.
My feet wouldn’t budge, as if glued to the floor.
"Don’t go. Mom. Don’t go—"
###
“Mom… Mom!!! Gasp, gasp.”
I opened my eyes with a scream.
A familiar ceiling.
My whole body was drenched in cold sweat.
My heart pounded like crazy, and my pillow was soaked.
“Hah, hah……”
It was a nightmare. A horrible nightmare.
Creak, the sliding door opened.
“So-ha, you’re awake!”
Father came rushing in.
“My daughter. Are you all right? Can you breathe properly?”
“Hah… Father!”
I kicked off the covers.
“What about Mother?”
"She’s lying in the next room. She’s past the worst of it now."
Father silently pulled me into his arms, too.
“Don’t ever do that again. If something happened to you, how would your mother and I go on…?”
“I’m sorry. But I want to see Mother.”
“No.”
“I’m going.”
“So-ha.”
“I’m going.”
Father looked at me for a moment, then sighed.
“Who in the world did you take after to be so stubborn?”
“Who else? You, Father.”
“Yes, you’re my daughter. Mm, that’s right… but still.”
“Ugh…!”
Before he could finish, I got up like a zombie.
Wobble, wobble.
“You didn’t have to inherit the stubbornness, too.”
Father sighed, then scooped me up as if he had no choice.
“Eek!”
Normally, I would’ve hated being carried bridal-style.
But I didn’t have the strength to resist now.
Everyone says Dad is terrifying outside.
But he says he can’t win against me, and always lets me have my way.
Such a doting dad. Seriously.
###
The next room smelled of blood and medicinal decoction.
Mother lay there, her face pale.
The physician was examining her wound.
“Doctor.”
My voice was hoarse.
“Mother……”
“By tremendous good fortune, she avoided a vital spot.”
My legs gave out.
If Father hadn’t caught me, I would’ve collapsed.
“Heaven was looking out for her.”
The physician called it a stroke of luck.
It had missed her heart by barely an inch, grazing a rib and passing through her side.
The bleeding had been severe, but her life was not in danger.
‘Her life is not in danger.’
I don’t know how many times I repeated those words in my mind.
Her life is not in danger.
Her life is not in danger.
Only then could I breathe again.
I gently clasped Mother’s hand.
“From now on, I’ll take care of you.”
Naturally, both of them vehemently objected.
My injuries were more serious, they said, and I needed complete rest.
“I’m fine. I just feel like I have to do this.”
We had a few mild squabbles.
Even so, they couldn’t change my mind.
I held her cold hand tightly and stayed up all night.
The next morning.
Mother slowly opened her eyes.
“So-ha.”
“Mother!”
My eyes were swollen from crying all night.
“I’m sorry. It was all my fault. I shouldn’t have run my mouth like that……”
“No, it wasn’t your fault.”
Mother struggled to lift her hand and stroke my head.
“It was the fault of the one who hurt people. Not yours.”
“But if I’d held my temper from the beginning……”
“So-ha.”
Her voice was faint, but firm.
“Does a mother need a reason to protect her child?”
“Don’t do that again. You mustn’t.”
“Mm, I can’t promise that.”
“Why not?”
“Even if I could go back, I’d do the same thing. A hundred times, a thousand times. Even if I had to repeat it infinitely.”
“Mom…!”
“My daughter, my precious daughter, more precious than anything in the world! I love you.”
“I-I love you too.”
“Oh my! Hearing ‘I love you’ from my taciturn daughter. Maybe it’s nice to lie in a sickbed once in a while.”
“Don’t joke like that.”
“Haha, I feel like I have the whole world right now. When your father comes back, I’ll brag about it all day!”
“No, you’ll pester me all day to say the same thing to you.”
“You little… ‘pester’ your father?”
“But it’s true.”
“Well, he is completely helpless when it comes to you.”
I hesitantly continued.
“I’ll try to express it more from now on.”
“Hmph, do you think your mother doesn’t know your personality? You don’t have to force yourself.”
“Force myself? I’m just… embarrassed.”
“Ahh. Just imagining you falling head over heels for some handsome man and getting married someday makes my heart ache already.”
“…That won’t happen.”
“Is there a boy you have your eye on?”
“No. I don’t raise those.”
“Why? That dark-skinned boy who’s always following you around and giving you flowers every day since you were little? I hear he’s learned martial arts.”
“I said I don’t like him. I’m going to live with you and Father forever.”
Mom turned her head and looked at me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
She stroked my cheek, then spoke with an inscrutable expression.
“All right. Let’s do that. We should.”
The more I saw what kind of person Mother was, the more my anger swelled.
Trash pretending to be an immortal.
Jin Mu-ak of the Hyunyang Sect.
I’ll have my revenge.
The blood Mother shed, and the pain she suffered.
The lives of the dead guards.
The humiliation of having to beg for mercy.
I won’t forget a single thing.
Someday, I’ll repay him an infinite number of times over.
But… I’m weak.
The weak don’t even have the right to be angry.
Didn’t I see him firing lasers?
I need the power to stand against him.
But how?
I haven’t even held a sword, and exercise is strictly forbidden, so I’m basically a soft, squishy slime.
A frail body that would probably collapse after one lap around the training grounds.
Besides, even in my previous life, I’d never gotten into a proper fistfight, or even a scuffle.
But it’s all right.
Fortunately, this isn’t Earth.
It’s a world where people fly through the sky and shoot lasers.
That means I can gain that kind of ‘special power,’ too.
Besides, they said I definitely had a spiritual root.
Even if it’s a trashy Five-Element Root…
That means I at least meet the minimum requirement to enter the marathon called cultivation.
I have the ‘right to become a cultivator,’ too.
...I do... I mean, I have it, but still.
Even so, the worst of the worst talent?
A once-in-a-generation good-for-nothing?!
That’s just picking on me for no reason.
But there’s always a way to rise even when the heavens fall!
I’ll definitely uncover the uses and effects of this garbage Five-Element Root.
To do that, first—I had to find out what a spiritual root even was.
Fire, water, wood, metal, earth.
Fire type, water type.
“I’m not some Pokémon. Am I a mixed type?”
Is there no separate Flying type?
###
A few days later.
The villagers began coming to the Ryu household one by one.
Some suddenly brought rice.
Others brought medicinal herbs.
Some gave us chickens and eggs, or silk.
Of course, I thought it was just the usual formal matchmaking discussions among the adults.
But that wasn’t it.
‘Then why?’
I had no idea what was going on.
I’m the sort of person who can’t rest until I satisfy my curiosity.
I pressed myself against the wall and eavesdropped on their conversations.
There were men and women mixed together.
“That lovely child must be going through so much heartache……”
“Still, she really is beautiful. She doesn’t seem like one of us.”
“Person? You’re a beast.”
“Who are you calling a beast, you old fossil?”
“What? Old fossil?! You wanna say that to my face? Don’t you move! Hey!”
Behind that, the beauty pageant was in full swing.
Still, at least they’re saying nice things.
I perked up my ears.
“How can someone be that pretty? The world is so unfair.”
“But I heard she has a Five-Element Root.”
“I know. Heaven really is heartless.”
“Imagine if she had good looks and a good spiritual root. She’d ascend to the Immortal Realm for sure. Heaven’s just restoring balance.”
But the conversation was full of utterly useless stuff.
Just as I was about to leave empty-handed.
“Now that she’s been marked by a cultivation sect, marriage is out of the question, right?”
“What bold man would take her as his bride? He’d have to be out of his mind.”
“Exactly. The whole family could be ruined in no time.”
“It’s like she’s cursed. Tsk, poor thing.”
“A cursed celestial maiden.”
Now I understood.
They were afraid of the immortal’s revenge, so they left without trying to arrange a match.
This was an unexpected windfall indeed.
‘It’s a lucky break, but this is totally awesome, right?’
I couldn’t stand the lustful way the men looked at me.
Especially those uselessly heavy lumps of fat…
‘My back hurts.’
A few days later, the village chief came to see me.
‘Why does that perverted old man want to see me?’
I’d told him I hated being called a celestial maiden, but he said it wouldn’t be polite, and ordered me to receive the guest.
I went out wrapped in layer upon layer of outer robes and greeted him.
“You look like a snowball rolled in here.”
“Ahaha. Hello, Chief.”
“You don’t seem to have fully recovered your strength yet.”
“I caught a terrible cold, so please don’t mind me.”
“In midsummer?”
“They say even dogs don’t catch colds in the fifth or sixth month. That’s how bad this one is.”
“The fifth or sixth month…? Dogs?”
“Ah! I’m just talking nonsense, so don’t worry about it. Anyway, what brings you here?”
“Ah, right. I’ll give you this.”
He held out an old book wrapped in cloth.
“A long time ago, my elder brother wandered the world, hoping to become a cultivator, and this is what he managed to find.”
The cover said:
『Qi Guiding Art (引氣訣) · Wood (木)』
“They say it’s the most basic cultivation method for sensing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and gathering it in your dantian.”
I accepted the book with both hands.
“Why would you give me something so precious……”
“The Celestial Maiden poured out her grief as if the heavens were falling. As village chief, I couldn’t just sit by and watch.”
“W-when did I ever cry like the heavens were falling? And how many times have I told you not to call me a Celestial Maiden because it’s embarrassing……”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
“Pardon?”
The chief, who usually looked at me with lecherous eyes, turned serious.
“If it weren’t for you, everyone in the village would’ve died.”
“I was the one who brought danger to them.”
“No. Everyone in the village is deeply grateful to you. You went through that humiliation and worked so hard you split your forehead open.”
The chief bowed his head in respect.
“N-no, I didn’t do anything……”
“A celestial maiden even on the inside.”
“Ugh……”
“Haha, even with a Five-Element Root, it’s apparently not impossible to cultivate. I brought it in case it might help.”
I hugged the book tightly.
“Thank you. How can I repay you?”
“Hmm? Actually, you’ve already repaid me. Twice over, no less.”
“I did? When? What did I do?”
“You know, that thing the other day… inside……”
“Inside? What’s ‘inside’?”
“In… in……”
‘What is he saying? Didn’t he say his hearing was bad……?’
“I can’t hear a thing. Chief!! What did you say? ‘Inside’?”
The old man startled and hurriedly stopped me, as if I’d hit a nerve.
“Never mind. It’s nothing. Have you been taken for a fool all your life?”
“I thought you said something else. Anyway, thank you. I’ll treasure it.”
“Please do. Heh heh heh. I’ll treasure it, too.”
‘Treasure it? Has he got dementia? Poor thing.’
Since I didn’t have anything to give him, maybe I could at least do him a favor.
“Chief. Grandpa~ Wait a moment.”
“Hm? G-Grandpa?”
“You have to live a long and healthy life! So-ha will pray for you, okay?!”
I winked and gently placed both hands against my cheeks.
"Thank youuu. Kkyu!"
“Keurgh! I can die without regrets now.”
The chief got a nosebleed and collapsed.
That day, my parents scolded me for the first time in ages, asking what on earth I’d done to be so rude.
When I kept my mouth shut, they even brought out the switch.
So I was too embarrassed to tell them, but when I said I’d done Ryu So-ha’s signature finishing move, a lethal dose of cuteness…
Oh, no! Father spent the whole day groaning in bed.
Anyway, from that day on, I immediately threw myself into studying the cultivation method.
It was an incredibly important responsibility, without a doubt.
It was basically a guide to becoming a cultivator, wasn’t it?
But the contents…
Hmm… how should I put it?
They were astonishingly vague.
Nothing but hopelessly ambiguous phrases that sounded like poetry.
For example, something like this.
In an empty cup, Heaven’s breath settles of its own accord; empty your lungs and dry the valley of your dantian.
The wind flows from high places to low,
The dew of heaven and earth seeps through every crack,
Only when you make yourself an empty pit will all things be filled.
‘What the hell is this? Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra?’
They should’ve summarized how to control spiritual energy in three lines and been done with it…
Every passage was completely incomprehensible.
And there was another fatal problem……
"Yeah, I’m trash."
It was the constitution itself called a ‘Five-Element Root.’
I could guess why they called it garbage.
In short, to cultivate, you had to convert the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into magical or spiritual power and store it in a place called the dantian.
I understood it as being like converting power plant electricity to 220 volts and storing it in a battery.
In that respect, a Five-Element Root was, by analogy…
Like having to run polluted wastewater through five separate processes to purify it before storing it.
But a Heavenly Spiritual Root, when absorbing spiritual energy, is as if it already has a water-purifier filter,
letting it gather just one kind of energy in the dantian, pure and whole.
But here’s what really pisses me off.
Apparently, the purer the energy, the more powerful it is.
They don’t even have to pass it through the filter multiple times, so they can do it faster and store more.
Why? How come? Why? It’s not fair.
Anyway, since I don’t have a Heavenly Spiritual Root, I have to learn methods suited to the other energies, or I’ll suffer qi deviation.
When I asked the adults what qi deviation was, it sounded truly horrifying.
Since it was a calamity I absolutely had to avoid, I needed those other cultivation methods.
But there was no good way to obtain them.
When I couldn’t find a clear solution, something strange happened.
As if a whole pumpkin vine had rolled down to me, all the other cultivation methods started gathering one after another.
As if I were collecting all seven Dragon Balls so the Dragon God would grant me a wish.
At the time, I thought I was incredibly lucky.
It was only much later that I learned it was all the village chief’s doing.
Here’s what happened.
After the chief gave me a cultivation method, the usually taciturn Celestial Maiden had actually!!
Personally put on a little performance, and he spread that nasty rumor.
The nasty rumor grew like a rolling snowball.
Things like three grown men getting nosebleeds from Ryu So-ha’s smile,
Or some old bachelor lying sick in bed for three days because the Celestial Maiden had gently hugged him, and the tales were twisted endlessly.
Fuck.
No wonder… men and women alike all seemed to be expecting something from me.
I felt bad for the disappointed ones who didn’t get what they’d been hoping for.
‘If you’re groaning, just say it plainly.’
Anyway, thanks to that, I got all sorts of cultivation methods.
Metal Qi Initiation, Wood Qi Foundation, Earth Breathing Method, Water Qi Art, Fire Breathing Art, and so on.
Heehee! This is basically a superpower.
The power of my looks cheat code really is amazing!
There’s a whole truckload of men promising to pluck the stars from the sky for me.
Haha!
Cultivation is a breeze for a face genius.
Easy.
So easy!
A tear rolled down…
In my previous life, I wasn’t all that popular, so I was a lifelong single.
Oh, right! I won’t date men in this life either, so I’ll die a lifelong single.
It’s fine! Romance is unnecessary for cultivating the Dao, right?
I can just cultivate.
Yeah, that’s all I need.