Chapter 187
“I hate wall dumplings!”
Baek Cheong shot awake and sat up in bed.
Her breathing was ragged, and her entire body was clammy.
The moment she woke, the memory of her dream quickly grew hazy.
All she could recall was someone trying to force her to cultivate and one completely unexpected wall dumpling.
‘...What kind of dream was that?’
Even she couldn't understand why she had woken up shouting about wall dumplings.
If she had been a mortal, a nightmare like that would probably have left her with a splitting headache all day.
Yet a cultivator's body was not so easily affected by such things.
Whether she had suffered a nightmare or not, her body felt refreshed and her mind was perfectly clear.
‘Diligent cultivation? Not a chance.’
Only then did Baek Cheong relax and get out of bed.
Nothing could have pleased her more than learning it had all been just a dream.
But as she stepped away from the bed, she suddenly stopped.
She had the feeling that something was strange.
She carefully counted the days.
From shutting herself away in the corner of her room to buy and learn cultivation methods, then falling asleep...
“...Half a month?”
A full half month had passed.
It wasn't merely a day or two; far more time had passed than she had expected.
Only belatedly did she recall the schedules that had been lined up one after another after the banquet ended.
Various social gatherings, occasions when she had to show her face before the elders, and more.
Every one of them had been unbearably boring, and she had shuddered at the thought of attending.
But if half a month had passed, all those troublesome occasions should have already gone by.
She had skipped the entire schedule she had been dreading simply because she didn't want to go.
‘Yes!’
She even had the legitimate excuse that she had been practicing a new cultivation method.
Her mood lifted on its own, and she let out a small laugh as she grinned.
Of course, it had all happened unintentionally.
She simply hadn't known that skipping all those troublesome occasions would feel this satisfying.
Yet there was one thing keeping her from being completely delighted.
She hadn't shown her face for half a month, so it would have been normal for a maid or someone else to check on her at least once.
But her quarters were silent as the grave.
There was no sign that either a maid or any member of her family had visited.
Besides, if she wanted to, it would have been easy to extend her divine sense and inspect the inside of her quarters.
But if someone else's divine sense had swept through the place, there was no reason she wouldn't have noticed.
Even so, the fact that they had left her alone for an entire half month bothered her.
‘Could something have happened?’
An ominous premonition suddenly crossed her mind.
Under normal circumstances, her family would never have left her alone for this long.
Could some calamity have befallen the clan?
Once her worry surfaced, it refused to subside.
‘I should go to the clan head's residence.’
Baek Cheong hurriedly threw on some simple clothes and left her quarters.
As soon as she stepped outside, the midday sunlight stabbed at her eyes.
Several members of the household passing through the courtyard spotted her and froze in place.
Every one of them looked as though they had encountered a ghost.
Then they exchanged glances among themselves and hurriedly scattered in different directions.
They looked as though they were rushing off to report to someone.
‘What's going on? Why are they acting like that?’
The way they had vanished as though fleeing without even offering a greeting made no sense to her.
Still, if she went to the clan head's residence, she would be able to find out what was going on.
Whatever had happened, there was no way her father wouldn't know about it.
Leaving the direction in which the household members had disappeared behind her, she headed toward the clan head's residence.
***
When she reached the clan head's residence, she heard signs of someone inside the study.
Baek Cheong pushed open the study door as naturally as ever.
Inside, her father and Yak-seon were sitting across from each other with a table between them.
They seemed to have been in the middle of a conversation.
But the moment she entered, their conversation broke off.
Both her father and Yak-seon stared at her with their eyes wide open.
‘Huh? Why are they so startled?’
Seeing that their reaction was unusual, she cautiously opened her mouth.
“Father, did something happen?”
Only then did Baek Mu-jin relax his stiff expression and rise from his seat.
“Cheong-ah, you're finally out.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
He continued speaking as he carefully examined his daughter.
“For several days and nights, resplendent pillars of five-colored light kept descending onto the ridgepole of your quarters. We assumed you were undergoing something momentous. So we forbade anyone from entering the vicinity of your quarters.”
Only then did Baek Cheong understand why no one had come to visit her for the entire half month.
Before long, Baek Mu-jin's gaze settled on Baek Cheong's dantian.
“But Cheong-ah, your true essence has deepened so much, and your spiritual power has grown this strong. Yet it doesn't seem that you raised your cultivation realm in such a short time. What on earth happened while you were in there?”
Baek Cheong thought, ‘Oops,’ at her father's question.
There was no need to wonder when the pillars of light had descended.
It had been around the time she had learned the Five Elements Art and awakened to the harmony of the five elements.
It had been precisely when she had delved into the cultivation method all the way to the end while lost in a trance.
‘It was that noisy outside?’
She had known nothing because she had been lost in a trance.
She had merely switched cultivation methods quietly in her room.
Yet outside, pillars of light had descended for days and nights.
She had unintentionally drawn the attention of everyone around her.
‘I should answer the question first.’
But if she hesitated here, it would be troublesome.
Her father and Yak-seon were already looking at her rather strangely.
If she took too long to think, they might find it suspicious.
Baek Cheong quickly composed her expression and opened her mouth.
“I changed my cultivation method.”
Yak-seon's eyes lit up, and he leaned forward.
“Hoho, what sort of cultivation method could cause such an auspicious phenomenon?”
It was a question that would have come up sooner or later, and there was no way to hide the truth forever.
Besides, after shooting pillars of light into the sky, a clumsy excuse would only invite suspicion.
She answered with an unconcerned expression.
“I looked through various cultivation methods on the second floor of Baekgyeong Pavilion. But I couldn't find one that suited me, so I made a new one.”
Baek Mu-jin and Yak-seon looked at each other.
It was an absurd claim, but they couldn't simply dismiss it.
Even during the Qi Refining stage, Baek Cheong had been a child who had independently woven together a cultivation method and achieved the mutual generation of the five elements.
Given that history, her claim that she had created a new cultivation method did not sound entirely outlandish.
Besides, auspicious pillars of light had descended for several days afterward.
She was only fourteen years old, and her cultivation realm was merely the Foundation Establishment stage.
To think that at such a young age, she had personally woven together a cultivation method and created a harmony capable of moving Heaven itself.
Baek Mu-jin and Yak-seon were dumbfounded, yet they could not hide their admiration for Baek Cheong's intelligence.
After staring at Baek Cheong for a long while, Yak-seon cautiously asked a question.
“Could you tell us what principle of the five elements you awakened to?”
Baek Cheong opened her mouth without hesitation.
“The five elements...”
She began to speak, then suddenly stopped.
The name written on the bamboo slip was the Five Elements Art.
Yet when she tried to say it aloud in front of others, it somehow felt rather plain.
It was a cultivation method that had thrown the entire clan into turmoil for days.
Calling it merely the Five Elements Art seemed unbefitting of its stature.
So she arbitrarily gave it a new name.
“...The Harmony Art. The Five-Element Harmony Art.”
“Harmony...? You mean you've gone beyond mutual generation and mutual overcoming to reach harmony?”
Yak-seon repeated the word several times as though he couldn't believe it.
The harmony of the five elements was a principle that encompassed both the cycle of mutual generation and the clashes of mutual overcoming.
It was a realm that an ordinary five-element spiritual-root cultivator would find difficult even to approach after a lifetime of cultivation.
Yak-seon's face held something beyond admiration—an almost distant awe.
Yet his look of admiration soon stiffened.
“Then what of the ferocious latent spiritual root lurking within you?”
His lowered voice was thick with concern.
Baek Cheong answered casually.
“It's strange, but once the five elements reached harmony, the five-element spiritual roots stopped having their nourishment stolen, and the ferocious latent spiritual root lurking within grew quiet too.”
But instead of looking relieved, Yak-seon's expression darkened further.
“The thing that had been rampaging and ravenously craving nourishment all this time suddenly grew quiet? If so, that is anything but ordinary... There is always another reason lurking behind something ceasing to do what it has always done.”
Yak-seon's gaze swept up and down Baek Cheong's body.
“Besides, your inability to grow physically all this time surely isn't unrelated to the spiritual root.”
Having been struck right in a sore spot, Baek Cheong pouted inwardly.
She never liked hearing that she had failed to grow physically.
Yet Yak-seon did not back down even after seeing Baek Cheong's sullen expression.
“So listen to me: don't skip your Five-Element Spirit-Sealing Pills, and take them regularly. They're only an emergency measure to help you endure for a while, but they're far better than having nothing.”
“Yes, Grandpa Yak-seon.”
Baek Cheong obediently followed his advice and nodded.
Just in case, she thought she should take one every month.
She also needed to brew a new batch of second-grade body-tempering elixirs.
While she was at it, brewing some Five Elements Pills to replenish the premium spirit stones she had spent wouldn't be a bad idea either.
‘I really can't escape being a cultivator who lives on medicine.’
Even so, Yak-seon's words remained lodged in her mind like a thorn in her throat.
The thing that had rampaged at the slightest provocation had suddenly become this docile.
Whether that was truly a good thing remained to be seen.
‘...Well, if it's docile, that's good.’
Baek Cheong deliberately brushed it off as nothing important.
Even if a problem arose, she could simply suppress it with overwhelmingly potent elixirs.