"Is the formula complete?"
"It is."
"How many people know the final composition?"
"Only me."
"Good. That makes everything easier. Forgive me, Seok Mun-hwa. Gangho has no need for a new god."
A blade punched through his throat. Cold, precise, and efficient. No pain followed, only a void that slowly swallowed everything whole.
Then heat.
Not warmth. A vicious, scorching heat that tore through him from the inside, as though someone had poured molten lead into veins already gone cold.
"Hold his shoulders! Don't let him thrash!"
The voice cut through the ringing in his ears. Old. Panicked.
"Physician Yeon, we've hit the limit! If you keep forcing pure qi into his dantian, his meridians will rupture!" A second voice followed, younger, colder, patience long gone.
"Shut it, Tae-joo! He's my son! I know his body better than anyone! Chil-sung, hold down his left leg, he's seizing again!"
"I'm holding as hard as I can, sir." The third voice was flat, almost toneless, but a firm grip locked around his ankle right after.
On the hard wooden table, Yeon Hak, or rather the entity that had just been shoved into this body, opened his eyes.
His vision swam behind a red haze. Something foreign and aggressive was forcing its way through his back, straight into the Myeong-mun meridian point. The energy was clean. Too clean.
"Hak-ah! Hang on, son! Father is pushing protective qi into you. Breathe slow. Let it reach your heart!"
The surge of pure qi hit again.
Yeon Hak didn't scream. He had spent years dissecting Sovereign-grade poisons. Pain was just data. And the data this body was feeding him right now was clear: the treatment was killing him.
"S... stop." His voice scraped out, rough and dry, like sandpaper dragged across stone.
His father's hands trembled but didn't pull back. "Thank the heavens, you're conscious! Don't talk yet, Hak-ah. Your meridians are still critically weak. My qi needs more time to break through the blockage."
"Not... blocked." Yeon Hak pushed the words out on the last of his focus, forcing enough control into his throat so there'd be no misunderstanding.
His father's brow furrowed, sweat dripping from his wrinkled chin onto Yeon Hak's chest. "What do you mean? Stop talking nonsense."
Yeon Hak had no energy left for argument. He redirected what little remained into his right hand, twisted his wrist at a precise angle to break free from his father's grip, and slapped the old man's hand away from the Myeong-mun point at his back.
The crack of it echoed off the narrow stone walls.
The qi current snapped. Yeon Hak rolled to the edge of the table and coughed hard. His lungs refused air for a moment before dragging in a long, ragged breath.
"Hak-ah! What do you think you're doing?!" His father surged forward, hands still coated in the pale blue residue of pure qi.
"If you put those hands on me again," Yeon Hak wheezed, fixing his father with a gaze that held nothing familiar, "my dantian will rupture in four breaths."
The room went dead silent.
The old man froze. Near the door, a middle-aged man in a grey clan robe stood with his arms crossed. Yeon Tae-joo. In the far corner, a young man in worn clothes held a copper basin with a blank face. Pyo Chil-sung.
"What are you on about?" Yeon Tae-joo broke the silence, moving toward the table. His tone had the particular edge of someone running a test. "You've never been able to sense qi. Not once in your entire life. Where did you pick up words like dantian and breath count?"
Yeon Hak ignored him. He looked down at his own hands.
Pale. Thin. A fine tremor ran through his fingers.
What is this... What in the. My lab smelled like Moon Root decoction, almost at full reduction. Four more hours and the formula would have been done. Four hours. After twenty-three years. Now it smells like an old man's sweat. And my hands are shaking. Seok Mun-hwa, your hands never shook
This body is a wreck.
He closed his eyes and sent a thread of awareness inward, mapping the damage.
This body... Tae-yeon pathway, sealed shut. Gwan-won pathway, pulsing in reverse. Primary meridian flowing inward instead of out.
Yeon Hak opened his eyes.
He swept the room once, then gathered what was left of his voice.
"My heartbeat." He pressed two fingers to his own neck. "Three times slower than a normal person at rest. But my body temperature is above the threshold for a fatal fever."
"Physician Yeon." Tae-joo's tone carried a warning. "Your son is delirious again. Qi shock triggered another episode. I've said it before, burning your pure qi on this cripple is a waste. The Baek Clan arrives next month for their inspection. If you wreck your cultivation realm now just to buy a corpse a few more days, who's going to treat the clan's wounded?"
"Watch your mouth, Tae-joo!"
Anger finally won out over panic. The old man grabbed a small wooden box from the adjacent table and flipped it open, revealing a pale green pill that gave off a sharp herbal smell.
"This isn't over. Hak-ah, swallow this. It's a Recovery Leaf pill. It'll cool the heat in your body."
He stepped closer and held the pill toward Yeon Hak's lips.
Yeon Hak tilted his head and inhaled without touching it.
Sour earth. A faint sweetness from low-grade White Ginseng. And underneath, something slightly rancid.
"Three-year White Ginseng root, Star Leaf extract over-boiled until the Yin element cooked off, and Iron Pine resin as a binder." He listed the components without a change in tone, then looked his father in the eye. "Who put this garbage together?"
His father's hand stopped mid-air. His eyes went wide, caught between offended and thrown off. "What? This is a standard Alchemist Bureau pill. Two pure silver coins. I've kept it a full year for emergencies."
"Then you wasted two silver coins," Yeon Hak said flatly. "Iron Pine resin reacts badly with White Ginseng if the heat isn't neutralized during processing. This pill doesn't cool anything. It pushes the heat deeper, straight into the innermost meridians. In a normal body that means a week of stomach cramps." He pointed at his own chest. "In this body, the heat locks into the heart. I swallow that, I'm dead before morning."
The silence that followed sat heavier than the one before.
Pyo Chil-sung, still holding the basin, tilted his head slightly.
Yeon Tae-joo laughed, short and humorless. He stepped forward until the toe of his boot touched the table leg. "Impressive. The Yeon Clan's idiot suddenly fancies himself an alchemy master? You think having a physician for a father gives you the right to lecture a licensed pill?"
Yeon Hak shifted himself upright and sat at the edge of the table.
"You," he said, pointing at Tae-joo.
"Me, what?" Tae-joo raised an eyebrow.
"You have an injury on your right ribs that hasn't healed in three months. You tried to force a breakthrough into the late-stage Open Meridian realm, but your qi rebounded because you used an expired condensation pill. Right now, every deep breath hits that spot like a knife, and you've been standing straight to hide it."
The color drained from Yeon Tae-joo's face. His hand moved on reflex toward his right ribs, two inches, before he caught himself. "How did you..."
"Your weight is all on your left leg," Yeon Hak cut in, sounding bored. "Cold sweat at your temples despite the room not being hot. And cheap analgesic herbs bleeding through your robe. Not hard to read."
Yeon Tae-joo stepped back. He no longer looked at Yeon Hak the way he looked at a cripple.
"Leave," Yeon Hak said, his attention already off the man, as though Tae-joo had stopped being a relevant variable. "And bring that basin over."
The second order went to Chil-sung. The young man didn't ask anything. He stepped forward and held the copper basin under Yeon Hak's chin.
Yeon Hak's stomach clenched hard. He bent forward and expelled a thick black fluid into the basin. The sharp stench of metal and corrosive acid hit the room immediately.
His father dropped the pill. He fell to his knees beside the table, face drained white. "Black blood... The poison in his body has reached his core organs. It's too late. Gods, what do I do? What compound neutralizes this?" The old man's voice cracked, trembling hands reaching for Yeon Hak's shoulder.
Yeon Hak spat once more into the basin and cleared the residual taste of metal from his mouth. He studied the hissing black fluid without blinking.
Not poison. Residual pure qi that was forced into the body, expelled through the nearest viable exit.
This body doesn't need healing.
He raised his head slowly and looked at his father, still shaking, still coming apart.
"Father," he said quietly.
The old man looked up. "Yes, son? Tell me. Where does it hurt? What pill do you need? I'll go to the market right now, I'll sell the medical equipment if I have to..."
Yeon Hak wiped the last of the black fluid from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Bring me poison."