“Th-that… isn’t that too much?! He isn’t even thinking of competing—just sitting side by side, leisurely sipping tea!”
“Shh. Lower your voice, Sang-cho.”
“But this is simply unacceptable! I seriously doubt the Immortal Healer’s underlying motives. If he doesn’t intend to intentionally sabotage our grand design by forcing a draw, what other reason could possibly justify this farce?”
Tang Sang-cho, the elder presiding over the competition, was practically leaping with indignation.
On the other hand, Second Elder Tang Myeong-cho scowled in profound distress, yet he firmly snapped his mouth shut, utterly failing to formulate a proper rebuttal. Even to his seasoned eyes, the current spectacle appeared to be nothing more than the Immortal Healer’s petty, childish retaliation.
If this wasn’t a deliberate plan to humiliate the Clan Head for failing to obtain a confession—and simultaneously set a treacherous path for the Tang Clan’s future by preventing them from exposing the Mount Hua Sect’s shameful collusion with the Green Forests—then what on earth was he doing?
Just as the elders’ discourse began spiraling toward the worst possible conclusions, Tang Yeom-cho, who had been sitting in heavy silence, finally spoke.
“Quiet down. Every word spilling from your mouths is nothing but baseless conjecture.”
“But, Clan Head!”
“I said quiet down!”
Tang Yeom-cho abruptly raised his voice, instantly silencing the indignant elders. Nevertheless, their seething dissatisfaction remained unquenched; the gazes they leveled at the Immortal Healer were still brimming with raw hostility.
Tang Yeom-cho ultimately released a heavy, weary sigh.
“The esteemed Immortal Healer severely rebuked us, but there was something else he stated prior to that. Have you all truly forgotten?”
“Something he stated prior to that…?”
—Using me for your absurd little schemes, and constantly hurling insults because you cannot overcome your pathetic inferiority complex. I will pardon it just this once.
The Immortal Healer’s impossibly tranquil voice briefly flickered across everyone’s minds. Yet, Tang Sang-cho grumbled defensively, entirely unconvinced.
“He merely stated he would ‘pardon’ it, not that he would actively play along. The Great Hero clearly possesses absolutely zero intention of participating in this competition!”
“Tsk. What a fool. Do you still fail to comprehend that your reckless, undisciplined tongue is the very reason this situation escalated to such a degree?”
Tang Yeom-cho clicked his tongue sharply, glaring daggers at Tang Sang-cho. The Clan Head cherished the Tang Clan more fiercely than anyone else alive, but when angered, his penetrating gaze was uniquely terrifying. Struck by that piercing stare, Tang Sang-cho snapped his mouth shut, especially since a distinct prickle of guilt stung his own conscience.
Channeling the commanding presence of an eldest brother scolding his reckless younger siblings from decades past, Tang Yeom-cho barked his reprimand.
“How can your thoughts be so embarrassingly shallow? If the esteemed Immortal Healer genuinely intended to do nothing more than share a leisurely cup of tea with that wretch, why would he specifically retrieve Wolf’s Tongue Root? What is Wolf’s Tongue Root? If utilized masterfully, it is a miraculous medicinal herb, but if misused, is it not an exceptionally lethal poisonous weed?”
“W-Well… Isn’t he just using it because of its potent analgesic properties?”
“You insolent fool! Are you still…!”
Tang Sang-cho visibly shrank back beneath the tiger-like roar. After his fiery outburst, Tang Yeom-cho released another deeply troubled sigh. Massaging his temples, he sank heavily into his chair. For the very first time, he looked like nothing more than an ordinary, deeply worried old man.
Seeing this, the elders seated below him opened their mouths to speak, only to firmly press their lips together in silence.
“If his sole intention were merely to manage the pain, he would never have chosen Wolf’s Tongue Root. The Pavilion of Snow Leaves is practically overflowing with Ledebouriella root, Cnidium, Datura, and Green-brightness willow. Am I wrong?”
“…You are correct.”
The boundary between poison and medicine was razor-thin.
When meticulously calibrated, a lethal toxin transformed into a life-saving drug; conversely, when the dosage and combination were altered, a healing herb devolved into a deadly poison. Because the Sichuan Tang Clan had achieved absolute supremacy in the poison arts, they simultaneously possessed profound expertise in pharmacology.
The Pavilion of Snow Leaves housed not only an arsenal of virulent poisons gathered from across the continent but also an exhaustive repository of medicinal herbs.
Perhaps it was precisely because they possessed such deep knowledge of pharmacology that they viscerally felt the unbridgeable chasm between themselves and the Immortal Healer, leading to this hostile rejection. Smiling bitterly, Tang Yeom-cho continued.
“He is a being who has mastered realms we do not know, and depths we cannot even begin to comprehend. Stop recklessly judging him and learn to know your place. Only then will the Tang Clan ever receive another opportunity.”
“…”
The elders, whose stubbornness and pride had calcified rigidly with age, could not utter a single word in response.
The old men turned their hollow, defeated gazes back toward the competition grounds.
The stark contrast was undeniable: the Immortal Healer, so immaculately white and pure he seemed entirely unmoored from this world, juxtaposed against themselves—men heavily stained by the mundane world, desperately flaunting their ugly inferiority complexes.
Just then, Baek Ho-cheol abruptly extended his arm toward the Immortal Healer, who had been sitting with perfect posture, silently sipping his tea. The Immortal Healer gently grasped the heavily scarred, outstretched hand, deliberately pulling it toward himself.
Baek Ho-cheol, who had previously been radiating intense wariness, had evidently been so thoroughly disarmed by a few cups of warm tea that he surrendered his body without a shred of resistance.
Something is about to happen.
Every spectator instinctively realized this, their eyes boring fiercely into the Immortal Healer and Baek Ho-cheol.
It was the fundamental duality of human nature: desperately scheming to drag a superior being down to their level, yet yearning with every fiber of their being to witness the divine miracles that would unfold from his fingertips.
***
Baek Ho-cheol sniffled loudly, acutely feeling the tension rapidly draining from his muscles.
Strangely, his heart was pounding erratically, yet his mind felt profoundly at peace. Perhaps it was because the warm tea had thawed his battered body after enduring such hellish torment, but he even felt slightly drowsy.
Above all else, the suffocating anxieties that had relentlessly tormented him mere moments ago had completely evaporated.
The agonizing screams of his dying comrades that perpetually echoed in his mind, the sheer humiliation of being stripped of his martial arts and paraded through the city center bound in wire ropes, the terrifying future where he would be ruthlessly interrogated and punished for his catastrophic failure—every single memory he desperately wished to forget had been entirely erased.
He felt nothing but pure, unadulterated tranquility. It was as if his brain had been wiped completely, flawlessly blank.
Yes, his mind was exceptionally clear.
However, the inside of his mouth and nose felt uncomfortably dry.
His throat burned with an intense thirst.
Baek Ho-cheol recklessly downed the remainder of the delicate teacup in his hand. He even tilted his head entirely backward, desperate to catch every last drop, but only a few pathetic drops of lukewarm liquid moistened his bone-dry tongue.
A creeping sense of impatience clawed at Baek Ho-cheol’s chest as he slammed the cup onto the table. The teapot was currently resting in the hands of the man sitting opposite him.
“Give me more,” he demanded curtly.
As a man who was ultimately nothing more than glorified bandit scum, he lacked the mental capacity to dress up his speech with the flowery, excessive modifiers the so-called orthodox sects constantly spewed.
Yet, the man sitting across from him didn’t spare Baek Ho-cheol a single glance, merely staring down at his own teacup with flawlessly elegant posture. Baek Ho-cheol’s grimy fingernails began to irritably tap-tap-tap against the wooden table.
The only one consumed by desperate urgency was Baek Ho-cheol himself.
“I said… give me more.”
Thinking the man might not have heard him, he repeated the demand. Swallowing his dry saliva, he tried to project his voice more clearly, but the man’s light brown eyes remained disturbingly serene. Baek Ho-cheol’s frantic gaze darted restlessly between the man’s eyes and the teapot resting on the table.
What do I have to do to make him pay attention to me?
Before he even realized it, Baek Ho-cheol’s mind had entirely shifted toward figuring out how to appease this man.
“More… more…”
What do I have to do to get what he’s holding?
“Please… give me more.”
After agonizing over his predicament, surprisingly polite words tumbled from the bandit king’s mouth. Only then did the man gracefully lift the teapot’s handle, tilting it over Baek Ho-cheol’s cup. Gripping the cup with both hands in a display of impeccable manners, Baek Ho-cheol waited until it was full before frantically guzzling it down to quench his burning throat.
I feel like I can finally breathe.
Just as Baek Ho-cheol released a heavy sigh of profound relief and slumped limply into his chair, the man—who hadn’t spoken a single word since offering the initial drink—finally broke his silence.
“Hold your hand out to me.”
His voice sounded like the shallow, tranquil waves gently lapping against the shore, yet paradoxically, it also carried the profound, isolating quietude of a vast, unfathomable ocean.
It should be fine.
Thanks to this very man, his agonizing pain had vanished, and his crushing worries had been erased. Moreover, Baek Ho-cheol still desperately coveted the teapot resting before him. If his maddening thirst returned and he was denied that water, he genuinely felt he would not survive.
In a hazy, trance-like state, Baek Ho-cheol extended his hand toward the man.
Over his deeply tanned, rugged, and heavily calloused hand, the man’s hand settled gently. He couldn’t understand why, but despite lacking any conventionally delicate charm, the man’s hand felt impossibly white and exquisitely smooth.
Rapidly losing his grip on reality and his ability to properly assess the situation in real-time, Baek Ho-cheol simply stared in bewilderment.
From the exact point of contact, a sudden, searing warmth flared. The heat didn’t just remain on his skin; it surged violently up through Baek Ho-cheol’s blocked acupoints, rapidly flooding into his brain. It felt as though his forcibly stagnated meridians and frozen blood vessels were slowly, obediently beginning to flow again under the man’s absolute guidance.
Why does my head feel so… clear, it’s actually tingling?
The very second that thought crossed his mind, a violent sensation—like something violently bursting open deep within his brain—exploded.
Baek Ho-cheol’s jaw slackened involuntarily, hanging wide open. His eyes glazed over, entirely losing their focus, and his consciousness spiraled into a thick, impenetrable fog.
Above all else, the maddening thirst violently returned.
As Baek Ho-cheol loudly smacked his parched lips, a shockingly calm question drifted into his ears.
“In the Qinling Mountains, you deeply debated whether or not to slaughter the disciples of the Mount Hua Sect. Given your usual temperament and spirit, you are hardly the type of man to agonize over such a trivial matter, are you?”
“Uh…”
The Qinling Mountains? Disciples of the Mount Hua Sect?
A fleeting image of a greenhorn wildly swinging a laughably pathetic sword flickered across Baek Ho-cheol’s mind. However, the image rapidly blurred, dissolving before he could grasp any concrete details.
As if acutely sensing his mental fumbling, the man subtly rephrased his words and spoke again.
“I am referring to the bastard who tried to plunge a blade into your back. If someone displayed such profound, ungrateful treachery, would you not have utterly annihilated every last one of them without a second thought?”
“Uh… right. And to think I specifically decided to spare them and let them go. The nerve of that bastard, walking around with his head held high just because he belongs to some supposedly prestigious orthodox sect… Normally, I would have butchered them all.”
As the fragmented scenes slowly bobbed to the surface of his murky mind, Baek Ho-cheol nodded absentmindedly. His clouded, unfocused eyes were entirely lost wandering through the past, completely forgetting the massive crowd of spectators silently watching him. He had even reached a state where he could no longer discern the identity of the man sitting directly across from him.
Refusing to let the crucial opening slip away, the Immortal Healer seamlessly wedged his tranquil voice into the widening cracks of Baek Ho-cheol’s shattered mind.