Embracing The White Moon (3)

“He is fine.”

After finishing the pulse reading, Woo Jang-ho spoke calmly.

“His stamina is severely depleted, but fortunately his muscles, bones, and organs are unharmed.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Other than some weakness in the body, he is in good condition. He will awaken soon.”

“That is a relief.”

Seol Hong-baek let out a sigh of relief.

Woo Jang-ho tilted his head.

“By chance, do you know the patient?”

“No. I saw him for the first time today.”

“Then why?”

“He looked like a wreck, so hearing he’s fine is simply a relief, that’s all.”

Woo Jang-ho smiled.

He had long known of Seol Hong-baek’s character. He only wondered if they knew each other because Hong-baek looked unusually anxious.

‘Even after all this time, he hasn’t changed.’

It was precisely Seol Hong-baek’s character that made him, one of Sichuan’s most renowned physicians, entrust himself to the White Sword Seol Clan.

Although he was the head of one of Sichuan’s top martial families, Seol Hong-baek was humble and kind. He could be firm when duty demanded it, but to Woo Jang-ho, Hong-baek was always a virtuous and righteous man.

“Could you tell me again how you found the patient?”

“After finishing my morning training, I went for a walk and heard a noise. I went to look, and there he was, collapsed by the wall, half-conscious.”

“Yes, that’s what you said.”

That was the part Woo Jang-ho found odd.

The main gate led to the outer court, which had many guest rooms and vacant medical quarters. Normally, a patient would have been taken there.

Yet Seol Hong-baek had brought the patient to the inner court, which was reserved for the clan’s direct line and elite warriors.

He wondered if it was a precious acquaintance, but since Hong-baek claimed it was their first meeting, it was puzzling.

‘He must have acted on impulse.’

Woo Jang-ho naturally changed the subject.

“By the way, Patriarch, are you well?”

“Hmm?”

“Is there anything troubling your health?”

Seol Hong-baek smiled bitterly.

“I’m fine. For now.”

“I’ll check your pulse after I finish my duties.”

“There’s no need. You’ll be leaving again soon, so won’t you be busy?”

“No matter how busy I may be, the health of the clan head must be tended to.”

“See to So-ha instead.”

“Is there something wrong with the young lady?”

“Her body is fine. But lately, she spends more and more time at the Daoist hall.”

“…I see.”

Worry touched Woo Jang-ho’s face.

Those who bore the Seol blood lived short lives. Even with internal energy cultivation and living free of illness, they died before reaching sixty. Among the Seol ancestors, there were even some who passed of natural causes before the age of thirty.

It wasn’t that their bodies were frail. At this point, it could only be explained as a curse.

By that measure, Seol Hong-baek was approaching danger too. Since he had passed forty four-years ago.

‘Or perhaps it’s because of martial arts.’

It was impossible to say.

Woo Jang-ho too had cultivated internal energy, but only to better understand the body. A master of medicine was not necessarily a master of martial arts.

“I’ll prepare the decoction for the patient.”

“Go on. I’ll watch over him a little longer.”

Woo Jang-ho flinched again, then bowed his head.

“Understood.”

With that, Woo Jang-ho left.

Seol Hong-baek gazed down at Gyeong Se-hwi with profound eyes.

‘Tianshan Sword Sect, he said.’

Far to the west in central Xinjiang, there was a snowy mountain range called Tianshan.

In that vast mountain range once existed a sect. That was the Tianshan Sect, also called the Tianshan Sword Sect.

But the Tianshan Sect had perished more than a hundred years ago.

Before their fall, some descendants were sent to safety. Those descendants came east to the Central Plains and founded the White Sword Seol Clan.

Few knew this truth outside the bloodline. Even Woo Jang-ho did not know the Seol Clan were descendants of the Tianshan Sect.

‘So how did this youth come to speak the name Tianshan Sword Sect the moment he saw me?’

After watching Gyeong Se-hwi for a while, Seol Hong-baek’s gaze fell to his abdomen.

The lower dantian, the usual center for cultivating internal energy.

‘Familiar.’

It wasn’t just the words that bothered him. From the youth’s dantian, he felt an indescribable familiarity.

No, more than familiarity, it felt like kinship. Like seeing a half-brother long parted.

“…Could it be.”

Seol Hong-baek shook his head inwardly.

Before Tianshan’s fall, the ancestors had hurriedly evacuated the young successors. Some among them had mastered Tianshan’s highest martial arts.

But by this era, almost none of it remained whole. Time had lost much, and what remained was muddled by misinterpretations.

If Tianshan’s arts had survived intact, the White Sword Seol Clan’s renown would be several times greater.

“What a ridiculous thought. It’s not as if I’ve lived my life just to gain fame.”

Smiling bitterly, Seol Hong-baek took Gyeong Se-hwi’s pulse to check his condition himself.

‘Hm?’

Seol Hong-baek’s eyes gleamed.

‘Calluses?’

The youth’s palms were covered with calluses.

His hands were large, fingers long, joints thick. But with trimmed nails, they would be considered fine hands for a man.

‘It doesn’t seem like he’s held a blade.’

His eyes moved to the bare upper body.

Though lean, his muscle fiber was firm. His forearms, shoulders, and back were well developed.

It was the body of one who had swung something heavy countless times. The level of training was remarkable.

‘He has trained in martial arts. I don’t know which, though.’

Seol Hong-baek closed his eyes and focused on Gyeong Se-hwi’s pulse.

A moment later—

“Impressive.”

Seol Hong-baek murmured in admiration.

“His internal energy is less than So-ha’s, but its quality is extremely pure. Such refined energy.”

Aside from the kinship he sensed from his qi, the high quality of the energy amazed him.

It was a cool, flawless energy. At this level, he could rightly be called a promising young talent. He must have devoted himself to accumulating qi with utmost diligence since childhood.

“Phew.”

Leaning back with a sigh, Seol Hong-baek recalled when he first met the youth.

The words Tianshan Sword Sect were striking, but more than anything, the youth’s eyes were filled with astonishment.

It wasn’t the gaze of a stranger. The youth clearly knew him. At least, his eyes did.

After a long while staring down at Gyeong Se-hwi, Seol Hong-baek rose with a complicated expression.

“I don’t know who you are, but get up soon. There is much I wish to ask you.”

The next morning.

“……”

When Gyeong Se-hwi opened his eyes, his senses instantly grasped his surroundings.

‘The scent of medicine, a bed, sunlight.’

He was neither dazed nor confused.

For some reason, his mind was calm, and his eyes clear.

His five senses were sharpened beyond anything compared to his days wielding a hammer.

Yet he did not panic.

He had lived dozens of lives merged with the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader. Sometimes at lower levels, sometimes in bodies that reached great heights.

And so he naturally understood that this was his current state.

Srrrk.

He pushed aside the blanket and slowly raised his body.

A mild ache stirred throughout his body. It was muscle pain.

As he looked around, he recalled the face of the middle-aged man he had last seen before collapsing.

‘The Tianshan Sect Master.’

A small ripple stirred in Gyeong Se-hwi’s clear eyes.

The Tianshan Sect. Before the Leader of the Eight Wastes Alliance conquered the Central Plains, it was the last great sect he faced. This man’s face was different, yet strikingly similar to that Tianshan Sect Master.

That wasn’t all.

Even as he fainted, he had felt a strong kinship from the man’s internal energy.

It was the same flow of internal energy.

Originally, the Body-Refining Art emphasized external arts over internal arts, aiming for the perfection of the physical body.

But after the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader destroyed the Tianshan Sect, he took their inner cultivation method and grafted it to the Body-Refining Art. Thus it was reborn as a martial art combining both internal and external power.

In other words, the inner cultivation method of the Body-Refining Art was the Tianshan Sect’s martial art itself.

‘If I recognized it even briefly, then he must have recognized me too.’

The internal energy of the Tianshan Sect was unusually sensitive to its own kind.

The reason was simple. Having accepted many tribes and peoples, they needed a strong unifying force.

Thus the Tianshan Sect’s inner cultivation method evolved to bind its practitioners tightly together.

‘Then.’

Gyeong Se-hwi looked around the room.

‘A clan founded by the Tianshan Sect’s descendants?’

It was a strange feeling.

He had not destroyed them himself, but having now become one with the culprit, he had laid waste to the Tianshan Sect.

Even knowing it wasn’t him, unease lingered. Yet he also thought, since it was something of the past, there was no reason to feel uneasy.

‘The remnants who escaped must have slipped into the Central Plains, avoiding the Alliance’s eyes.’

Unwittingly, Gyeong Se-hwi chuckled.

‘That mistake then saved me now.’

I am not the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader. Yet his shadow lies deep within my soul.

That truth caused a small confusion.

‘Does this mean he saved the culprit who burned his ancestors?’

It was strange. This relationship.

It reminded him of the Divine Iron Merchant House, who took him in out of need, gave him deep affection, but in the end cast him out once he grew strong enough to threaten the successor.

A clan that saved the descendant of the sworn enemy who had slain their ancestors. A family that cast out an adopted son who had brought glory to their name.

A displaced soul, left adrift inside one body.

‘Gyeong Se-hwi and the Leader of the Eight Wastes Alliance. The Leader of the Eight Wastes Alliance and Gyeong Se-hwi.’

Gyeong Se-hwi’s eyes clouded for a moment.

‘What am I, really…’

The Eight Wastes Alliance Leader had been a man over seventy.

Though jumbled, he had lived that life dozens of times.

Even twice was over 140 years. Though the same life, Gyeong Se-hwi had lived more than a thousand years’ worth before returning.

It was the boundary between reality and dream. Like living ten years in a dream but still remembering yesterday vividly, he knew himself as Gyeong Se-hwi.

At the same time, the countless lived experiences had naturally shared their knowledge, memories, and character.

He had not fully become the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader because his self had not collapsed. Yet even so, he could no longer simply call himself Gyeong Se-hwi.

‘Perhaps it’s natural.’

Gyeong Se-hwi smiled bitterly.

‘Since I was stabbed to be erased, perhaps it’s right that Gyeong Se-hwi ceased to exist.’

He thought of the Divine Iron Merchant House.

His brother, smiling at him even as he stabbed him. The master smiths and workers who treated him sincerely despite his being adopted.

He remembered his personal forge, his belongings hung here and there. Furnace, hammer, molten iron, oil…

And his adoptive father, brothers, and grandfather, who would greet him with smiles when the work was done.

‘I want to go back.’

Not back to the Divine Iron Merchant House.

‘I want to return to my place, my home.’

My ground, my shield.

His simple, witty nature and the Alliance Leader’s lonely, tyrannical nature wound around each other without mixing.

Brrrr.

Following his turbulent heart, his Body-Refining Qi stirred naturally. As a stream of true qi rose, peace returned.

Gyeong Se-hwi examined his dantian.

‘Barely a trace.’

Yet it was not something that could have been gained in merely a few days. He had never once practiced qi circulation, yet his dantian was open and filled with true qi. This was a phenomenon that even the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s knowledge could not explain.

Most of all—

‘The wound is gone.’

The dagger wound from Gyeong Do-cheon was utterly gone. No trace remained, as if it had never happened.

‘Well, if anything is strange, it’s not my body, but that I once lived the life of a dead man… and returned.’

Gyeong Se-hwi lowered his head and thought deeply. His current state, the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader, the Tianshan Sect, martial arts, the Divine Iron Merchant House, All these thoughts plagued him.

How much time passed like that?

Gyeong Se-hwi sensed someone approaching.

‘Light footsteps. Someone who has cultivated internal energy?’

Crrrk.

The door opened, and Woo Jang-ho appeared.

“Oh?! You’re awake?”

One look made it clear he was a physician.

Gyeong Se-hwi slowly sat up and bowed his head.

“I owe you my life. Thank you.”

It was simple but not lacking in courtesy.

Woo Jang-ho smiled and said:

“I did nothing. It was the clan patriarch who brought you here.”

It was clearly the middle-aged man from his memory.

“Anyway, is your body alright?”

“I am fine. But… where is this place?”

“This is the White Sword Seol Clan. Have you heard of it?”

“Of course.”

Gyeong Se-hwi was slightly surprised.

The White Sword Seol Clan. One of the top ten martial families in Sichuan, famed for its clean and precise swordsmanship.

A prestigious clan nearly a century old. Even with much of their arts lost, they still held such standing. Truly heirs of the Tianshan Sect.

‘Indeed, I must meet him.’

When thoughts grow tangled, one must begin with what must be done.

Gyeong Se-hwi asked:

“May I meet the clan patriarch?”

“Of course. The patriarch, too, seemed very interested in you.”

So it is as expected.

“But before that.”

Behind Woo Jang-ho, a medical assistant came carrying a tray.

“Are you not hungry? Have some sweet rice cake first.”