Chapter 181
Baek Cheong quickly changed her mind.
Since the water had already been spilled, it was better to think of ways to put it to new use than to worry about gathering it back up.
On careful consideration, it wasn't as though there was nothing to gain.
Here and there on Hyunheo Zhenren's robe were inscrutable glyphs even she had yet to decipher.
‘Fine. Since things have turned out this way, I might as well pick out and learn the glyphs I haven't deciphered.’
She intended to make the extra master pay handsomely—in difficult glyphs.
Fortunately, Hyunheo Zhenren had another purpose for visiting the Yeonha Baek Clan.
Thanks to that, it didn't seem as though lessons would start pouring down on her immediately.
“I should finish what I came here to do first. There's no need to hurry, so let's talk at our leisure.”
Hyunheo Zhenren said that and rose.
Yak-seon then rose as well, as though he had been waiting for it.
His inability to meet her eyes suggested he was still thoroughly embarrassed.
“Cheong-ah, let's put off that third-rank pill formula until a little later.”
Baek Cheong celebrated inwardly.
‘The hellish alchemy session has been pushed back!’
He seemed to be postponing it because he felt sorry about what had just happened.
She was willing to accept as many apologies like that as he cared to offer.
She didn't forget to put on a regretful expression on the outside, either.
“Yes, Grandfather. Please take care on your way.”
Once the elders all filed out, the gathering became rather awkward.
It was impossible for the mood to be good when a Nascent Soul grand cultivator had muddied the waters from the very beginning.
The younger-generation talents merely glanced at one another, unsure whether to stay in their seats or disperse.
That was why Baek Cheong decided this was her chance to slip away.
“I’m a little flustered, so... I’ll head in first.”
She left a demure greeting and quickly slipped away.
No one tried to stop her.
***
Back in her quarters, Baek Cheong flopped down on her bed.
It was leisure she had finally managed to carve out after being hounded by the banquet and then the gathering.
“Ugh, I feel alive again.”
She stretched languidly, then immediately logged on to the Nameless Forum.
Seeing the daoists actively writing posts on the Nameless Forum lifted her spirits on its own.
‘I should quickly catch up on all the forum browsing I've missed.’
She was just about to enjoy her brief respite and start stirring up the boards.
Then she sensed someone approaching from outside.
A moment later, the sound of someone knocking on her door rang out with cruel timing.
“Cheong-ah, may I come in for a moment?”
It was her Third Brother's voice.
Baek Cheong swallowed her disappointment and logged off.
She tidied her appearance and rose.
“Come in.”
The door opened, and Baek Woo stepped inside.
But an unfamiliar person entered behind him.
He was a middle-aged man with a gaunt frame and fingertips stained dark with ink.
Judging from his cultivation aura, he was a Core Formation cultivator.
‘Core Formation...? Ah.’
If it was a Core Formation cultivator accompanying her Third Brother, there could only be one person.
Before she could even pretend to recognize him, Baek Woo spoke first.
“Cheong-ah, pay your respects. This is my master, Iron Pen Wanderer (鐵筆散人). He is a Talisman Master who has proudly reached the fourth rank.”
“Baek Cheong of the Yeonha Baek Clan greets you, Elder.”
Baek Cheong respectfully saluted.
Iron Pen Wanderer merely gave a silent nod.
They said he was taciturn, and he certainly seemed exactly as described.
After a while, Baek Woo cautiously explained why they had come.
“There is another reason I brought my master here to see you. You have an exceptional talent for talisman arts, and above all, your intuition is outstanding, don't you think?”
A chill ran down Baek Cheong's spine.
The situation seemed to be unfolding exactly like what she had just gone through.
‘Surely not. Has even the Third Brother I trusted betrayed me and... decided to foist another—no, another master—on me?’
She already had three masters, as it was.
If one more were added here, she wouldn't know whether she was studying the Hundred Arts of Cultivation or collecting masters.
But there was something strange about Baek Woo's behavior.
He suddenly spread his divine sense with care and thoroughly searched the surroundings.
Only after he had finished sweeping the area did he nod toward his master.
Iron Pen Wanderer let out a long sigh.
“It isn't good when too many people know.”
Iron Pen Wanderer took a talisman from inside his robes.
It was a talisman densely covered in red patterns on yellow paper.
The talisman left his fingertips, transformed into a halo of light in midair, and seeped throughout the room.
At the same time, the birds chirping outside abruptly fell silent.
The sound of the wind and the comings and goings of people vanished without a trace.
It felt as though the room had been severed from the outside world.
When Baek Cheong's eyes widened, Baek Woo quickly added an explanation.
“There's no need to be surprised. What Master used is a third-rank talisman. Once it's deployed like that, even a Nascent Soul grand cultivator can't easily peer inside.”
Baek Cheong couldn't hide her astonishment.
A single talisman rivaled a complex formation.
To be honest, until now she had thought talismans were convenient but lacked depth.
There was an obvious limit to what could be put into such a small piece of talisman paper.
Yet the scene before her neatly overturned that assumption.
It was both convenient and profound.
‘If I delve into talismans too, they might actually be something...’
Her interest was quietly piqued, but she didn't let it show.
If she revealed it rashly, she had no idea what else she might get dragged into.
Meanwhile, Iron Pen Wanderer continued to keep watch over the surroundings.
Even after finishing the concealment, Iron Pen Wanderer listened intently for a long while before sighing again.
Then he felt around the spatial treasure at his waist and carefully lifted something out.
It was a scrap of paper that had clearly been kept under careful protection.
“This came from an ancient secret realm in the Northern Sea.”
Iron Pen Wanderer held the scrap of paper out in front of Baek Cheong.
“Can you make out what is written on it?”
Baek Cheong cautiously took the scrap of paper.
The palm-sized paper was so rotten around the edges that it looked ready to crumble.
On its faded surface, a phrase of roughly four characters remained faintly visible.
But as she examined the writing, she tilted her head.
‘It looks similar to glyphs...’
The way it wove principles into each stroke resembled glyphs, as though they shared the same roots.
But the more slowly she dissected it, the more different its use seemed.
It did not carry the weight of glyphs, which wholly compressed the principles of Heaven and Earth into them.
Rather, it seemed to have been refined by repeatedly stripping away complicated strokes so it could be wielded with ease.
It was almost like simplified characters created for convenient use of glyphs.
As a result, even though she knew the characters, she had considerable trouble recognizing them.
She mentally enlarged each stroke one by one and overlaid them on the original glyphs for a while.
At last, when the four characters came into focus, she read them aloud without realizing it.
“The Talisman Rune Diagram...?”
The moment the words left her mouth, the air in the room changed.
Baek Woo and Iron Pen Wanderer stiffened and exchanged glances.
Soon, delight spread across both their faces.
“Cheong-ah, what did you just read?”
“The Talisman Rune Diagram. That's what it says here...?”
When Baek Cheong answered blankly, Baek Woo let out a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
“Master and I spent more than a year trying to decipher those four characters.”
“More than a year?”
“Yes. Yet you read them before a cup of tea could even cool.”
Even though his master's dignity was at stake, he made no attempt to hide it.
Baek Cheong belatedly realized she had made a blunder, but the water had already been spilled.
‘Well, if you don't know glyphs, you could stare at it for a hundred days and never read it.’
But there was something else that truly troubled her.
‘But... the Talisman Rune Diagram...?’
Talisman runes had existed in the cultivation world for ages.
That was why the patterns drawn on talismans were called talisman runes.
Yet for something said to have come from an ancient secret realm, it was incredibly shabby.
It was nothing but four characters on a worn scrap of paper, not even a fortuitous encounter.
Perhaps noticing her reaction, Iron Pen Wanderer spoke.
“I know what you're wondering about.”
He took the scrap of paper back and continued.
“Because this is a clue indicating that ancient talisman runes exist.”
“Ancient talisman runes...?”
“The talisman runes circulating in the cultivation world today are merely things created relatively recently. But ancient talisman runes are on an entirely different level. For instance, even wild tales like a teleportation talisman would no longer be wholly impossible.”
Baek Cheong froze as though struck by lightning the instant she heard that.
And no wonder. When it came to teleportation, there was the teleportation formation.
Even the teleportation formation was dismissed as absurd and believed to have existed only in the ancient era.
But if it existed as a talisman, beyond merely as a formation, its applications could only be limitless.
“From the various clues I've pieced together, it is certain that the Ancient Talisman Rune Diagram is lying dormant somewhere in the Lesser Realm.”
Iron Pen Wanderer added that with conviction.
Baek Cheong looked at Baek Woo without realizing it.
Baek Woo nodded without bothering to hide anything.
“Before long, Master and I intend to set out in search of the Ancient Talisman Rune Diagram.”
“Then the reason you showed me this today...”
“Is because I hope to have your help if we find the diagram someday.”
Baek Woo gave her an awkward smile.
“With your exceptional understanding and intuition, you would be a tremendous help.”
The fact that she had deciphered those four characters in an instant was the clearest proof of all.
She had unraveled writing they had struggled with for over a year before a cup of tea could cool.
Baek Cheong, however, only heard about half of what they were saying.
A sense of puzzlement was gradually blooming in her small chest.
‘There really are such ancient talisman runes...?’
It was information she had never seen, even after combing through every corner of the Nameless Forum.
She had dug into the Nameless Forum's musty depths and picked up all sorts of secret lore.
‘The teleportation formation isn't fiction...?’
She felt an urge to log on to the Nameless Forum right away and find out more.