Why Is That Your Master?

It was a place arranged for peers to chat.

But with a Nascent Soul cultivator seated in the seat of honor, the atmosphere had frozen over.

Among the fresh-faced junior disciples, Zhenren Xianxu was calmly sipping tea.

As a result, no one dared to speak first.

They were worried that acting rashly before a grand cultivator might bring shame on their clan or sect.

Baek Cheong had no choice but to sit quietly.

'At least have the decency to slip away on your own.'

Inside, she was dying.

If not for the exchange gathering, she would have holed up in her quarters and browsed the forums to her heart's content.

Yet she had been dragged out to an exchange gathering with a grand cultivator present, and now she couldn't move an inch.

'Should I just pretend to be tired and leave?'

Around then, the awkward silence had been dragging on endlessly.

Yet there was one person utterly unconcerned by the chill at the table: her second older brother.

“Why is everyone so stiff and frozen?”

Baek Sang swept an irritated gaze across the crowd.

“There is a reason Master specifically came to a place like this.”

As he said that, he subtly gestured toward Zhenren Xianxu.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Zhenren Xianxu slowly stood up.

But his gaze passed over everyone present and locked only onto Baek Cheong.

He was staring so openly that it could only be called brazen.

'Why is he looking only at me again?'

Baek Cheong's nape stiffened.

Throughout the banquet, Zhenren Xianxu had kept studying her.

Before long, Zhenren Xianxu walked over to the pillar beside him.

Then he moved his fingertips like a brush and began to write.

Something slowly began to take shape on the pillar.

At a glance, it looked like both a picture and writing.

But with every stroke, a faint spiritual energy seeped into it, making it anything but ordinary.

“What exactly is the Zhenren trying to show us...?”

“Who knows? I can't make head or tail of it.”

The junior disciples in the room all whispered among themselves.

Even as they examined the pattern engraved on the pillar from every angle, they couldn't make head or tail of it.

Among the junior disciples, Seo Joo-ah studied the pattern for quite a long while.

Perhaps because her natural intuition was exceptional, she seemed to be faintly grasping something.

“That pattern... it's definitely holding some kind of principle.”

But Seo Joo-ah couldn't finish her sentence and trailed off.

She seemed unable to pin down what that principle actually was.

Baek Woo was even more serious.

The subtle mysteries hidden in the pattern somehow touched on the principles of the talisman path he followed.

The way each stroke carried qi and meaning seemed rooted in the same fundamentals as drawing talismans.

But the more he studied it, the more clearly different it became.

It was a path that seemed similar, yet was completely different, so he couldn't tear his eyes away.

'It's the character 玆.'

By comparison, Baek Cheong had figured out the answer long ago.

She had immediately recognized that the pattern carved into the pillar was a character.

It could be said to be the character 玄, the xuan in the phrase 천지현황(天地玄黃), referring to the dark black of the heavens.

It was a rather difficult character, all things considered.

But since she had already learned it, it didn't feel new at all.

She only looked at the pillar with a bored expression.

'Why is he pulling that out now?'

To those who didn't know the character, it would obviously just look like an esoteric pattern.

As expected, the junior disciples' faces grew darker as time went by.

No matter how they picked it apart or chewed on it, they couldn't find a clue.

In the end, they shook their heads one by one and gave up.

Soft sighs slipped out here and there.

Baek Sang watched the scene as though it were only natural.

Rather, he spoke to the crowd with a pleased look.

“If you had been able to recognize what this was, you'd have already joined the Xianjin Sect like I did.”

Then he glanced back at Baek Cheong.

“Cheong-ah, even if you've reached Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment, formations are not something just anyone can take on. So don't be too discouraged.”

He looked as though he were sincerely comforting his younger sister.

But Baek Cheong felt strangely irritated.

She had already been unable to enjoy even one proper round of forum browsing throughout the banquet.

The accumulated urge to stir up trouble had already reached a precarious level.

And then he topped it off with that innocently infuriating brand of trolling.

It was troublemaking with not a speck of malice, which made it even more obnoxious.

'...My brother started it first?'

The boiling urge to stir trouble finally broke through the dam and burst out.

So she decided to put her second older brother in his place.

Of course, if she talked about the character or about 玄, she'd only seem knowledgeable.

Her plan was to play the genius who didn't even know what the character was and knock his arrogance down a peg.

“Um... if I were to hazard even a rough guess...”

Baek Cheong began cautiously.

She pretended to think hard and pointed at the pattern on the pillar with her fingertip.

“If you look at the way these strokes keep curling inward, it feels like it contains the distant origin from which all things arose, before light and form were ever divided. Something deep, dark, and beyond the heavens... that sort of profound principle.”

When she finished, she quietly watched Zhenren Xianxu's reaction.

And Zhenren Xianxu's eyes went wide.

“Oh... to spot what's carved into the pillar at first glance. You truly have a gifted mind.”

Zhenren Xianxu kept studying Baek Cheong as if he couldn't believe it.

As soon as the praise poured out, the room stirred violently.

People could not hide their surprise.

Among them, Baek Sang in particular went wide-eyed.

He looked as though he genuinely hadn't known.

'...No way, did that man really not know?'

Baek Cheong was so dumbfounded she nearly laughed.

Her second older brother, who supposedly belonged to the Xianjin Sect and studied formations there.

Yet apparently he couldn't even recognize what the pattern on the pillar was.

In an instant, Baek Cheong ended up standing out before Zhenren Xianxu.

Still, Baek Cheong had a trump card.

'Even if he sets his sights on me, so what? I have the Sword Venerable.'

She had the undisputed Heaven-Cleaving Sword Venerable of the Heavenly Sword Sect backing her.

Just saying his name was enough to shield her from most recruitment attempts.

More than anything, Zhenren Xianxu somehow felt lacking as a master.

He clearly had learned the characters in a slapdash, hit-or-miss way, so he didn't particularly appeal to her.

Unaware of that, Zhenren Xianxu stroked his beard and approached.

“When I was young, I once heard that there was a child with exceptional talent in the Yeonha Baek Clan. So that was you after all. Do you perhaps have an interest in array formations?”

Before Baek Cheong could even open her mouth,

Baek Woo, who had been quietly keeping watch beside her, stepped forward.

“Please forgive me for speaking out of turn, Zhenren.”

Baek Woo continued with a touch of pride.

“My younger sister is so versatile that, when she was in closed-door cultivation, she even learned array formations on her own and put them into practice.”

Baek Cheong nearly cried out.

It felt like she'd been blindsided by the third brother she trusted.

'Brother!'

She shot Baek Woo a resentful glare.

But before she could even swallow that resentment,

Zhenren Xianxu brightened and asked again.

“Oh? So you even set up an array yourself. You truly do have a deep interest in formations, don't you?”

Baek Cheong reluctantly nodded.

Now that things had become utterly undeniable, she had no way to insist otherwise.

“...Well, a little.”

No sooner had she answered than Zhenren Xianxu's face lit up.

“Then how about learning array formations properly in our Xianjin Sect?”

She felt it was finally coming.

Baek Cheong quickly found an excuse to refuse and opened her mouth.

“I appreciate the thought, but the Heaven-Cleaving Sword Venerable is already my master.”

She quietly used the Heaven-Cleaving Sword Venerable's name as a shield.

She figured the Zhenren would back off obediently by now.

But Zhenren Xianxu didn't even blink.

“I heard you've even studied alchemy under Medicine Sage and are quite accomplished.”

Instead, he said something that laid Baek Cheong's situation bare.

“Whether you have two masters or three, what does it matter? It's not the Great Dao of cultivation; adding one more teacher in an art won't be a problem.”

Zhenren Xianxu even wore a friendly smile as he actively tried to recruit Baek Cheong.

Under normal circumstances, he should have had the dignity and pride of a grandmaster, but he didn't care at all.

“Ah, as expected of Daoist Baek Cheong, recognized by this lady...”

“Just what kind of talent is Daoist Baek Cheong that the grandmaster is putting in so much effort...?”

Seo Joo-ah and the junior disciples were shocked by the sight.

Baek Sang, in particular, looked shocked and troubled.

He had gone pale as if his master had been snatched away.

“M-Master? Why are you suddenly trying to take Cheongie...”

Baek Cheong, meanwhile, was left speechless in disbelief.

She could only stare blankly at Zhenren Xianxu, who kept pushing ahead regardless of whether she refused.

'If Medicine Sage grandpa finds out about this, it's going to be a disaster.'