Even if Zhuge Seol-rin had confirmed no one was nearby before speaking with Moyong Seo; even if she hadn’t opened her mouth once afterward about Moyong Seo; even if she had no idea how the famed physician Cho Yoon could possibly know what they’d discussed—she wasn’t in any position to pry.
Zhuge Seol-rin parted her lips, hesitating for a moment before admitting the truth in a trembling voice. Yet, the Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon, didn’t stop there; he continued to effortlessly dissect her state of mind.
“It was an absurd claim, but the potential fallout was too catastrophic to ignore,” he observed smoothly. “Especially when you found your hands suddenly full of impossibly rare Purification Stones. However, if you presented this ‘vision’ to your family, they would have ridiculed you for placing faith in the ramblings of a young master. You had no choice but to handle it privately. Is that not the case?”
“It… it is as you say.”
“You analyzed his intent—giving you the stones and warning you to prepare—and deduced an imminent threat of a lethal poison spreading throughout Shaanxi. You spent a grueling fortnight on edge, fully braced for disaster. Yet, when you gathered the stones today and found not a single trace of venom in them, your frustration boiled over into a rage.”
Recalling her blind, explosive tantrum from just moments ago, Seol-rin’s face burned with profound humiliation.
This was exactly why she loathed letting people witness her anger.
Had the Immortal Healer not intervened, she would have undoubtedly shattered every piece of porcelain in the room, screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs.
Instantly deflated, Seol-rin mumbled a question in a tiny voice. It was a query born of embarrassment, laced with a lingering, childish petulance.
“How… how could you possibly know all of that? How long have you been watching me?”
He couldn’t possibly know unless he’s been spying on me for the entire fifteen days… she thought miserably.
She hadn’t breathed a word of her true intentions to even her most competent and trusted maids. For someone raised in the Zhuge Clan—where concealing one’s thoughts was paramount—and hailed as an unparalleled prodigy, this absolute exposure was a critical failure.
However, his answer was far more devastating than she anticipated.
“There is no need to observe you to deduce the workings of your little head,” Cho Yoon replied. “You felt manipulated and humiliated. Is that not so?”
“…It is.”
His tone was so utterly casual, so completely flat, it felt as though he had simply sliced her stomach open to examine the contents.
Raised amidst endless praise for her unfathomable intellect and inscrutable nature, Zhuge Seol-rin felt as if she had been struck in the back of the head.
She nodded blankly.
Yet, amidst the blooming cloud of defeat, a bizarre thrill fluttered in her chest. She had absolutely no idea why she was feeling excited in such a humiliating situation.
Seemingly uninterested in exploring her complex emotional turmoil, Cho Yoon abruptly dropped an incomprehensible revelation.
“To cut to the heart of the matter: the youngest son of the Moyong Clan did not lie to you. An event capable of turning those Purification Stones pitch-black has already occurred.”
“Excuse me? But Shaanxi experienced absolutely no changes…”
“That is because I eradicated the source of the poison before it could cascade down the mountain,” Cho Yoon explained. “Were it not for a series of overlapping coincidences, countless people would have perished. However, sensing the anomalous lack of downstream casualties, I tracked the faint resonance of Purification Stones. Following that trail led me directly to you.”
Seol-rin’s expression hardened almost imperceptibly.
She, too, had hypothesized the existence of a faction attempting to disseminate poison and had exhausted every resource to expose them.
Risking immense humiliation and the label of a paranoid fool, she had mobilized both the Hao Sect and the Beggars’ Sect to monitor the province.
The result had been absolute silence, leaving her with a severely depleted personal treasury and frayed nerves.
Yet, from another perspective, finding nothing had been a relief.
Had they uncovered a plot, it would have proven the existence of an active, highly capable enemy aiming to inflict a horrific atrocity upon Shaanxi. Mass casualties would have been inevitable. Thus, even while she furiously cursed the Moyong young master for the false alarm, a tiny corner of her heart had been grateful it was a bluff…
But the Immortal Healer had eliminated the source.
There was a source.
The poison had genuinely almost been unleashed, thwarted only by a miraculous alignment of coincidences.
…I shouldn’t have reclaimed the stones so quickly, Seol-rin realized, her face draining of color as the gravity of her mistake set in.
Just because there were no immediate changes and she felt deceived didn’t justify hastily recalling the defensive artifacts. She should have maintained the quarantine for at least another fortnight.
The Immortal Healer had serendipitously intervened to save Shaanxi this time, but she couldn’t rely on such miracles in the future.
If my instincts told me to trust the warning, no matter how absurd it sounded, the prudent move was to maintain vigilance, she rebuked herself. My impatience nearly resulted in a catastrophe.
Rapidly concluding her self-reflection and updating her operational protocols, Seol-rin placed a hand over her heart and asked with sudden, desperate urgency:
“If the target was the entirety of Shaanxi, is it an organized faction? Who are they? Have you uncovered their motive for attempting such an atrocity? Or, if you have already eradicated them, may I ask the location of their stronghold? The Zhuge Clan is fully capable of sweeping the site for remaining clues and pursuing any survivors.”
“Hmm.”
Swallowing a brief hum, Cho Yoon lowered his quiet gaze.
Seol-rin burned with impatience at his inscrutable reaction.
Fighting the overwhelming urge to shuffle forward on her knees and beg for the intelligence, she forced herself to wait for him to organize his thoughts.
When he finally spoke, the words were utterly bizarre.
“Hearing your perspective, it seems highly probable that a mastermind was orchestrating this,” Cho Yoon mused. “Still, it is not an area one simply wanders into. And even if they did, there is no way I wouldn’t have sensed the intrusion.”
“…Intrusion?”
“The source of the poison was a Zhenniao,” Cho Yoon stated. “The corpse of a Zhenniao, submerged in a river deep within the Qinling Mountains, was violently releasing a lethal toxin into the water. Fortunately, I extracted it while it was still inside the belly of a Human-Faced Water Snake. Had it remained, the upper currents would have been entirely corrupted by the bird’s venom.”
“…A Zhenniao and a Human-Faced Water Snake?”
For a fleeting second, Zhuge Seol-rin genuinely wondered if she and the Immortal Healer inhabited the same reality. Having never stepped foot outside her family’s estate, creatures like the Zhenniao and the Human-Faced Water Snake were strictly confined to the pages of fantastical, children’s bestiaries. She hadn’t even cracked open those books since she was five. Yet, he spoke of them with the casual certainty of someone discussing the weather. Naturally, she found it incredibly difficult to process.
Seeing her bewilderment, Cho Yoon seemed genuinely surprised.
“There are elixirs where a single drop increases one’s internal energy by sixty years,” he pointed out. “There are salves that regenerate gouged flesh with a single application. Why would the existence of a mere beast be so unbelievable? They simply avoid human settlements, and on the rare occasions they do descend, they are quietly dispatched by those in the know. They all exist. Frankly, something other than a Zhenniao causing this would be far more terrifying.”
“I… I see. Yes, of course.”
Did Mother know about this?
The realization that the fantastical myths she had discarded years ago were actually tangible realities wrapped Seol-rin in a bizarre, exhilarating thrill.
Oblivious—or perhaps indifferent—to the fact that she was currently wiggling her toes in sheer excitement while blushing furiously, Cho Yoon continued, “The corpse was disposed of properly, but a minute fraction of the toxin escaped downstream during the extraction. Even that minuscule amount is enough to cause the mountain range to suffer for the foreseeable future, which should give you an idea of the venom’s sheer virulence. I hurriedly crafted and scattered purifying sachets as I descended, and thankfully, the miasma did not spread further.”
“Ah… then it truly was a miracle,” Seol-rin breathed. “I recalled the Purification Stones the absolute moment the deadline passed. Had the timing not aligned perfectly, countless people would have been harmed.”
“A miracle you engineered with your own hands,” Cho Yoon corrected gently. “It is your own merit that you took such an unbelievable tale so seriously and prepared so thoroughly. Therefore, cease reprimanding yourself for a disaster that never occurred.”
He did it again! Seol-rin gasped internally, her conscience instantly pricked.
She had indeed been mentally flagellating herself for her near-miss. She honestly couldn’t tell if the Immortal Healer could literally read her mind with a single glance, or if she was simply so immature that her every thought was transparent.
Glancing up stealthily, she saw Cho Yoon’s expression remained as impossibly tranquil as before, actively soothing her anxieties. His voice was entirely devoid of emotion, and his phrasing was undeniably stiff, yet to Seol-rin, it felt incredibly tender.
“Your judgment was correct,” Cho Yoon affirmed. “You were neither manipulated nor clumsily deceived. A favorable variable simply intervened halfway through. Therefore, do not harbor excessive resentment toward the youngest Moyong, nor should you berate yourself or succumb to anger. As I said earlier, it serves absolutely no benefit to your constitution.”
“…Yes, Great Hero Immortal Healer.”
“Now, regarding the mastermind.”
Cho Yoon raised a hand to stroke his chin.
Every slow blink, every languid movement oozed an innate, transcendent elegance.
Completely disarmed by his demeanor—her initial terror entirely forgotten—Seol-rin watched his every motion with absolute reverence.
She nodded earnestly, signaling she was ready to absorb the intelligence.
“I mentioned the Zhenniao corpse was submerged in a river flowing through a deep valley in the Qinling Mountains. To be precise, it was the river within the Point of No Return Mountain Range, nestled deep within the Qinling range. The beast was in the Yeonpa River, situated between Mount Wonik and Mount Cheongwe—two of the six peaks. The problem is, in the several decades I have resided in the Point of No Return Mountain Range, I have never once encountered a Zhenniao.”
“Then…”
“The only logical conclusion is that someone captured a Zhenniao and deliberately released it into the Point of No Return Mountain Range,” Cho Yoon deduced. “However, if this is true, the situation becomes infinitely more problematic. It implies someone captured the beast, infiltrated the Point of No Return Mountain Range, and navigated the terrain entirely undetected by my senses.”
Seol-rin knew of the Point of No Return Mountain Range; her grandmother had told her tales of them during her bestiary-reading phase.
‘No Return.’
Enveloped by naturally occurring formations, simply locating the range was near-impossible, let alone surviving a mythical domain supposedly teeming with demonic beasts and malicious spirits.
It was a land overflowing with priceless elixirs and treasures, yet universally understood as a place no one should seek unless they actively wished to discard their life.
The Immortal Healer, Cho Yoon, had lived leisurely in such a hellscape for decades.
If a mastermind truly existed behind this incident, it meant they possessed an incredibly malicious intellect paired with a terrifying level of martial prowess.