Zhuge Seol-rin woke slowly beneath sunlight pouring over her face.

Cracking her eyes open, she saw dust drifting in the air, the deep-blue sky beyond a large window, and the scenery beside it.

As anyone who oversleeps does, she instinctively sensed she’d passed her usual waking time by a lot. Dazed, she traced back last night and today’s schedule—then a sudden memory hit her and she jolted upright. Heat raced through her entire body in that instant.

With every pulsation of her heart, a hot energy stretched to her fingertips and toes. The path newly engraved throughout her entire body felt so vividly clear. It was similar to boiling water flowing through her blood vessels, yet strangely, it wasn’t painful. She simply felt alive for the first time. It was as if someone had breathed life into a body that had been like a wooden block.

Seol-rin, who had been lying down and groaning again due to the unfamiliar sensation, belatedly accepted the sounds from outside.

Light footsteps approaching quickly, a voice calling her name as the door was thrown open, and someone’s hand grabbing and shaking her arm.

At the same time, the stiffness that had been rigid released as if something had drained from her body.

Seol-rin, gasping for breath for a moment, sprang up from her seat as if bouncing and clutched the hem of the maidservant sitting beside her. Her face, drenched in cold sweat, glistened and wore a look of ecstasy.

“Su-yeong! I’m cured! My Severed Meridians is cured! That person healed me!”

“Young Lady?”

“I don’t have to die anymore. I don’t have to live just enduring it anymore! I can learn martial arts, and I can plan for great things! Above all, I feel his energy circulating inside my body. Did you all live experiencing something like this normally? How did you put reins on a body that runs wild like a wild horse like this?”

“Young Lady!”

The maidservant, who always spoke in a quiet and gentle tone, raised her voice for the first time.

The expression slowly drained from Seol-rin’s face as she looked up at the loyal subordinate who had guarded her side since childhood. Her heart was still pounding and her breath was short, but her heated head cooled down.

Su-yeong grabbed both shoulders of her master, who had regained her reason, injected internal energy briefly to examine her body, and spoke as if she couldn’t believe it.

“…It is true, Young Lady. I cannot find any blocked corners. Rather, your qi meridians are more tempered than mine. Is there anywhere that hurts?”

“…I feel exhausted and feverish as if I did strenuous exercise, but that is all. He definitely said it would hurt, but I don’t really know. Is it because I am so happy that I cannot even feel pain?”

“That might be the case, so we should monitor your condition for the time being. Are those the medicinal herbs he left behind?”

“Ah… I think so.”

Su-yeong let go of Zhuge Seol-rin’s shoulders, turned her body, and picked up the medicine packet and bamboo tube placed next to the bed.

Judging by the usage instructions written on the wrapping paper and the prescription attached to the bamboo tube, it was unmistakable.

Seol-rin, who watched Su-yeong’s actions quietly with a distant feeling, sighed deeply and wiped her face with her sleeve.

The emotion hadn’t fully faded yet, but she couldn’t jump up and down in excitement forever.

Above all, if Su-yeong had rushed here violating the order never to enter, it meant urgent business had arisen.

“I have calmed down enough, so you may speak. What is the matter?”

“…An urgent directive has come down from the family. And not through a courier agency, but directly, contained in a scroll tube that only the direct lineage can open.”

“…Give it here.”

Su-yeong took a small cylindrical wooden case from her bosom and offered it politely.

Seol-rin received it, performed a few precise manipulations, and opened it carefully. She had to pay attention because it was a special scroll tube designed to burn up from the inside if even a slight mistake was made.

What came out from inside was a small, rolled-up scrap of paper. Seol-rin, who unfolded the secretly and urgently delivered order without hesitation, flinched and froze.

Only two characters were written in the letter in her mother’s handwriting.

Refrain Returning.

Even Su-yeong, who waited patiently for Seol-rin, lost her words upon seeing this. Seeing Seol-rin silent for a long time as if shocked, Su-yeong spoke urgently.

“There is no way the Young Madam would cast you out, Young Lady. Surely it is because the elders are acting up. If news that your Severed Meridians is completely cured is delivered, or if you wait just a little…”

“…W-What should I do? It seems Mother, the family, is in danger. A serious crisis at that.”

Seol-rin crumpled the letter with a crunch, then hurriedly smoothed it out. Her eyes, empty as if her soul had escaped in an instant, shook here and there as she examined the handwriting as if not to miss even a small clue.

“If Mother intended to cast me out, she would have told me before I got on the carriage. She would have given me enough money to enjoy until I died, and she wouldn’t have bothered to tell me to have a good trip. Telling me not to return so urgently means something even Mother cannot stop has befallen the family. Something where I would definitely be swept up and lose my life if I went.”

“But…”

“The characters are not shaky. Unless she assumed enemies were filling the inside and outside of the family and she would be discovered, there is no way she would write such a short phrase in the time it takes to use such neat handwriting. At the very least, all the accompanying warriors are Mother’s subordinates; if she waited for me to get far from the family, she could have entrusted it to them. That she didn’t do so and used a carrier pigeon instead, that she conveyed nothing but the conclusion…”

It means there is no answer.

It means there is no way out in sight.

To deny this hypothesis, she had no choice but to go to the family and find out what happened, but since she was told not to come under her wise mother’s judgment, she couldn’t just blindly disobey.

Worried that her spontaneous action might become her mother’s weakness, she couldn’t decide easily.

They say a half-clever person gets tripped up by their own thoughts, and her state was exactly that.

Seol-rin, who was biting her thumbnail anxiously, suddenly lifted her head.

A line of voice like a gentle breeze brushed past her mind.

—I plan to pass through Fujian and go as far as Guangdong.

“…Guangdong, there was a Hao Sect branch in Guangdong, right?”

“Yes, Young Lady.”

“If it is the Hao Sect Leader, he would be able to find out what calamity has befallen the family, right?”

“That is… hard to guarantee, but it is at least more likely than with our current party.”

“How long will it take to get there? Are travel funds sufficient?”

“Funds are sufficient, but we need at least fifteen days. If we change horses every time we reach a village and run day and night, we can shorten it to ten days. However…”

“Is there a problem?”

“…I doubt if your jade body can endure it, Young Lady.”

“I am healthy now!”

“The prescription he left behind says you must rest absolutely until you finish taking all the medicine. A strenuous journey will leave an aftermath of that magnitude.”

“Oh dear…”

—The weather in Fujian Province during this season is fickle, practically poison to someone with a weak body, so do not even think of following.

Was that what those words meant?

Seol-rin chewed her lip repeatedly in deep thought, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The worry didn’t last long.

“I must go to Guangdong. Sending a warrior first would attract attention, so it must be an extension of my impulsive trip to the end. It would be best to go slowly until we leave the Namgung Clan’s territory, then speed up once we enter the Hao Sect’s territory. Please prepare thoroughly so we can depart at least by evening.”

“…Yes, Young Lady.”

It is a personal opinion that is obviously rude in this situation, but I am glad you have become healthy, Young Lady. Congratulations.

Leaving a quiet word, Su-yeong bowed deeply and rose from her seat.

A medicine packet and bamboo tube were held in the hand leaving the room with quick steps.

Seol-rin watched that figure blankly, then creaked down from the bed.

The anxiety that something abnormal might have happened at home and the joy she barely suppressed mixed dizzyingly, making Seol-rin’s chest flutter. There were so many thoughts arising and disappearing that she couldn’t even dare to move her hand to write them down.

Is it truly a coincidence that I urgently came to need the Hao Sect and that his destination is Guangdong? Is it just a coincidence that the Namgung Clan’s movements were strange and Mother’s urgent report flew in right on time? Is it really… a coincidence that I heard the news of elixirs in Bozhou and set out on a trip, and the family became endangered right when I was away?

Nothing could be guaranteed. She felt as if she were swept into a deep and massive current. Every step felt like sinking deep as if walking on a sandy bottom, and she couldn’t even know if she had made the right decision now.

But one thing was certain.

Zhuge Seol-rin’s fate had changed completely. The Immortal Healer Cho Yoon had twisted Zhuge Seol-rin’s future. Every time she met him, Seol-rin could feel her predetermined life being overturned.

Is he not truly an Immortal who has escaped the principles of the world? Is this what the Profound Realm is—seeing what others cannot see, hearing what others cannot hear, and doing what others cannot do?

If this chaos and calamity were the price of upheaval, she shouldn’t be dragged along helplessly at least. Since she had acquired the foundation to stand on her own feet without leaning on anyone, she had to show a result worthy of it.

If it was about struggling and striving in a situation where the future couldn’t be seen, she was confident. Zhuge Seol-rin sat in front of the desk and lifted a hand heavy as a thousand pounds to grip a fine brush. Grabbing any paper roughly, she scribbled the phrases from her memory.

The Zhuge Clan possessed tens of thousands of books, and among them, the martial arts manuals scraped together from the entire Central Plains and the Outer Murim amounted to a prolonged twenty thousand volumes.

And Zhuge Seol-rin had read and memorized everything she had. Since she had acquired numerous martial arts with her head first, the task of selecting the manuals she needed now wasn’t difficult.

A drop of sweat formed on the tip of her chin fell onto the ink writing, drawing a smudged stain, but Seol-rin didn’t stop her brush.

The small spark Cho Yoon had dropped began to burn like a wildfire.