In the subtle silence, Zhuge Seol-rin quietly clenched the hands folded on her thighs. The other party had appeared suddenly with unfathomable skill, and even if she sensed a faint goodwill, she couldn’t let her guard down.
Amidst the suffocating tension, the intruder finally spoke.
It was a brief, two-sentence observation, but it was more than enough to make Zhuge Seol-rin bristle like a startled cat.
“I see you have reclaimed the Purification Stones,” he murmured. “I presume nothing changed, despite his grandiose guarantees.”
“What… how could you possibly know that?!”
“It would be stranger if I didn’t, considering several are currently rolling around behind you.”
At the low, even reply, Seol-rin hastily whipped her head around.
Sure enough, a handful of Purification Stones had tumbled off her desk and were presently skittering across the floorboards. To ask him how he knew what she had been complaining about just moments prior proved she was still reeling, her usually flawless rationality compromised.
Fumbling slightly, Seol-rin gathered the stray stones and placed them back on her desk, desperately forcing her paralyzed mind to reboot. When she spoke next, her tone was naturally razor-sharp.
“You also seem to know exactly where and why this lowly one planted them, which is why I ask,” she stated coldly. “If you truly came to clear a misunderstanding, kindly reveal your identity and explain how you acquired information that no one else possesses.”
“…”
The uninvited guest remained silent for a long moment. Then, he slowly raised a hand past his veil, gripped the brim of his bamboo hat, and removed it without a shred of hesitation.
First to tumble free was a cascade of pure white hair, previously tied up, now swaying elegantly past his waist.
Next came a face of such pristine, unblemished refinement that his age was utterly incalculable.
He had been gazing modestly downward, but now he lifted his eyes, locking his gaze directly onto Seol-rin.
Staring into those unwavering, light-brown irises—devoid of even a single ripple of agitation—Seol-rin gasped, struck by a completely inexplicable, visceral shock.
Setting his bamboo hat aside, the man addressed her in a low, soothing tone, actively attempting to pacify her. Seol-rin swallowed hard.
“I will say this once more: I apologize for acting in a manner you perceived as threatening. If knowing my identity will bring you peace of mind, I have no reason to hide it.”
“…Great Hero,” Seol-rin began, her voice trembling slightly, “you have completely dismantled arrays forged from hundreds of years of the Zhuge Clan’s accumulated essence, merely to materialize before me. If this vulnerability were to leak, this lowly one would never sleep another night without trembling in terror. Therefore, I merely wish to carve your illustrious name into my memory.”
“Do not worry,” he assured her. “I have neither the need nor the desire to speak of this to anyone. Furthermore, did you not engineer these arrays so that mere knowledge of their mechanics is insufficient to breach them? Unless an intruder has mastered the exact same martial arts to the exact same transcendent level as I have, simply ‘knowing’ how they work will not grant them entry.”
Seol-rin clamped her mouth shut, a faint, bitter scowl crossing her features.
The intruder was entirely correct.
The defensive matrix suffocating her bedchambers was a masterpiece—a meticulous assembly of theoretical concepts debated by countless Zhuge formation masters over generations, finally actualized and seamlessly integrated by Seol-rin’s own prodigious talent.
It was a monumental magnum opus that had forced even contemporary geniuses and the undisputed patriarch, Zhuge So-seo, to click their tongues in sheer awe. It was the very achievement that had forced the family to finally acknowledge her worth.
Seol-rin possessed a fatal flaw: when infuriated, she lost all situational awareness and vomited her emotions without restraint.
For a member of the Zhuge Clan—who survived solely through calculated logic and concealing their true thoughts—this was a catastrophic vulnerability.
Her desperate attempts to correct this habit had ultimately failed, forcing her to adopt a radical alternative. She simply eliminated any situation where her words could leak in the first place.
She ruthlessly restricted her social circle, aggressively vetting the few individuals permitted into her domain, and used her frail constitution as an excuse to avoid public appearances.
Aside from receiving sparse, critical intelligence through carefully planted agents, she dedicated every waking second solely to expanding her own capabilities.
In her world, concealment was paramount. Only by blinding others to her thoughts and schemes could she remain one step ahead.
She believed that since her body was fundamentally incapable of martial arts, she had to foresee the future two steps further than anyone else just to avoid becoming a puppet.
The moment she exposed a weakness or lost her edge as a prodigy, she would be reduced to livestock—a mere political pawn to be married off for clan alliances. Seol-rin fiercely refused to let her life be consumed like that.
And so, even at her tender age, she had bled and suffered to build her defenses, only for…
For this intruder to completely shatter the very first layer of her autonomy—her absolute privacy—and casually tell her ‘not to worry.’
She had no idea what martial arts this man practiced, how those arts manipulated her arrays, or how many other monsters in the world shared that same terrifying power. How could she possibly not worry?
Seol-rin substituted a verbal reply with a wall of resolute silence. Observing her reaction, the intruder’s shoulders slumped by a fraction of an inch. Because his face betrayed no emotion, it was impossible to say for certain, but it seemed he had swallowed a heavy sigh.
“I will trust the weight of your silence,” he said softly. “Even if you attempt to inform others, they will merely dismiss it as an absurd fabrication, so exercise discretion.”
“There are many who worry for my safety, so I cannot offer an absolute guarantee, but I shall strive to contain it.”
“…It is an empty title, but the world calls me the Immortal Healer. My given name is Cho Yoon.”
“…Excuse me?”
Cho Yoon. The Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon.
The Immortal Healer?
Asking the question with a completely slack-jawed expression, Seol-rin’s entire body flash-froze. She might have been a mere thirteen years old, but it was fundamentally impossible for her not to know the Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon.
The Zhuge Clan wielded their extraordinary intellect as their primary weapon, and for that intellect to exert true power, it required an ocean of flawless data.
Consequently, the family meticulously cataloged the names and identifying traits of prominent martial artists with a fervor matching even the Beggars’ Sect and the Hao Sect.
By the time a Zhuge child reached the age of five, they had flawlessly memorized the centuries-long histories and current rosters of the Nine Great Sects, the One Clan, and the Five Great Clans.
And the Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon, was a figure introduced at the very beginning of that curriculum.
A being estimated to have lived for over two centuries, widely believed to have shattered the boundary of Profound Realm.
The man who had played a pivotal role in sealing the Brilliance Heavenly Demonic Emperor, or also known as the Dark Venerable, a hundred and fifty years ago.
A monster who could obliterate hundreds of peak-level masters with a single breath, yet drag a soul back from the Sanzu River with a single touch.
A living myth who had single-handedly redefined the very concepts of poison and medicine.
A transcendent genius whose mastery of formations allegedly eclipsed even the Zhuge Clan.
An existence whose actions could not be measured or judged by mortal standards, and… the one entity they were absolutely, categorically forbidden from ever antagonizing.
Recalling the dire warnings of her wise great-grandmother, Seol-rin’s head slowly, mechanically drooped forward. Her wide eyes trembled without focus, and a cold sweat erupted across her forehead.
The more the legends of the Immortal Healer surfaced in her mind, the more agonizingly aware she became of her own recent behavior.
True to her nature, Seol-rin prioritized self-critique over awe, and right now, a single, deafening thought blared in her skull.
I’m dead.
She was absolutely, undeniably dead.
If he was telling the truth, she had just spent the last ten minutes throwing a spectacular, petulant tantrum at the Immortal Healer himself, aggressively demanding explanations and excuses from a living god!
She had completely failed to consider the catastrophic repercussions her momentary foul mood could unleash upon her entire clan!
Seol-rin’s complexion bleached to the color of bone. There was a microscopic chance he was lying, but her instincts and all physical evidence screamed otherwise.
Hair that had bleached white without the brittle frailty of old age.
A flawless face entirely devoid of wrinkles, rendering his age impossible to guess.
A scent that wasn’t acrid poison, but a subtle, soothing herbal fragrance permeating the room.
A martial prowess that was utterly overwhelming, yet projected absolutely zero killing intent.
Everything verified his identity.
He had to be the Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon. If he wasn’t, that was an even more terrifying problem.
So, what do I do now? Seol-rin’s mind raced.
The most tactically sound approach was to carefully emphasize the abrupt and highly unorthodox nature of his intrusion, subtly manipulating the conversation to justify her own rudeness.
However, Seol-rin was not yet fully corrupted by political cunning. Her inherent, stubborn honesty fiercely blocked any attempt to feign vulnerability, act cute, or manipulate his sympathy. She lacked the interpersonal experience to pull it off convincingly, and frankly, she despised people dripping with such toxic hypocrisy.
Ultimately, Seol-rin chose the frontal assault. She placed both hands respectfully on the floor and bowed deeply, pressing her forehead against the wood in a full prostration.
“Forgive my insolence… please forgive my severe insolence, Great Hero Immortal Healer,” she pleaded, her voice trembling. “Blinded by my own pathetic lack of insight, I failed to recognize you and dared to spew such presumptuous drivel.”
“I shall repeat myself: I am the one who trespassed into your private chambers without a word of warning,” Cho Yoon replied, his tone remaining gentle. “If anyone is owed an apology, it is you. I have absolutely zero intention of using this incident to pressure you or your family. Please, rise. Such excessive groveling only makes me uncomfortable.”
Seol-rin bolted upright the exact moment the words left his mouth.
She didn’t dare hesitate or offer the customary, polite refusals; his assertion that he was ‘uncomfortable’ sounded far too genuine to test.
Now that she thought about it, the intelligence reports had mentioned his intense disdain for empty formalities. Hermit masters detached from the mortal realm universally despised tedious, bureaucratic wordplay.
As Seol-rin sat rigidly, her gaze firmly anchored to the floorboards, utterly unable to meet his eyes, Cho Yoon’s next words commanded her absolute attention.
“Let us resume our discussion regarding the Purification Stones.”
“…Yes, Great Hero Immortal Healer.”
“Did the youngest young master of the Moyong Clan hand you a cluster of these stones and order you to plant them throughout Shaanxi?” Cho Yoon asked calmly. “Did he threaten you, claiming a horrific massacre would occur if you failed to comply?”
How does he know that too…? Seol-rin instinctively parted her lips to demand an explanation, then violently snapped her mouth shut.
If this was truly the Immortal Healer, a fledgling formation tactician like her possessed absolutely zero right to question his omniscience.