Sickness has a price, and its currency is coin. Even if a benevolent physician offers their services for free, the herbs for the medicine must still be acquired.

He didn’t have the money for those herbs. Nor did he have the coin to buy the poppy that might have eased his wife’s passage as she lay dying in agony.

She had grasped his hand, her final words a desperate plea.

Look after our daughter.

You are too kind for this world. I worry for you.

Raise her in my stead. Give her the life I never could.

That was all she could manage. For days and nights that bled into one another, she writhed, her body a canvas of unrelenting pain, until at last, she died. Death offered no peace; her eyes remained open, fixed on the agony that had stolen her last breath.

In that moment, the Chivalrous Archer died, and the Phantom Archer was born. Fate granted him a fortuitous encounter, and through it, a path to martial power—a path perfectly suited to the archer he had once been.

From that day forward, he took any job that paid. Bodyguard, soldier, hunter, and other, darker work. Through the brokers of the Black Market, he accepted countless assignments, cutting down martial artists without number. With the blood money, he finally gave his wife a proper funeral and raised his daughter.

He wanted to lavish upon his child all the comforts he could never provide his wife. But he could not have known that his love would become a poison. The grudges of the Gangho festered, and soon, they turned their venomous gaze upon him and his daughter. To protect her, he was forced to conceal her identity, to build a fortress of wealth around her.

And now, here he was, offering that entire fortune, begging for his daughter’s life. This, his eyes screamed, is why I earned it all.

“What is the meaning of this commotion?”

At last, Zhuge Rin emerged. His long, silver hair framed a face of ethereal beauty. He was tall, his body lean and powerful like a trained warrior’s, yet his skin was so pale it seemed devoid of all color. No one who saw him could doubt he was the White Qilin Divine Physician. As if proving the thought, Phantom Archer slammed his forehead into the ground.

THUD!

“Please,” he begged, his voice muffled by the earth. “I beg you, save her.”

“First, I will hear what ails her,” Zhuge Rin said, his tone even.

“My daughter was attacked by seven assailants. The physician at the Medicine Sage of Hwaju’s. clinic said her internal organs were shredded. He diagnosed it as an internal injury and prescribed medicine, but there’s been no change.”

“The grudges of the Gangho are a fearsome thing,” Zhuge Rin remarked, his voice cool. With those few words, he had already pieced together the entire story. Even if Phantom Archer had only ever killed other martial artists, the fact remained that he had done it for money. Each man he had slain was someone’s senior, someone’s junior, someone’s master. Phantom Archer was a master of both archery and movement arts; unable to kill the man himself, it was the way of a certain kind of coward to seek vengeance upon his family.

“Let us see the patient.”

Zhuge Rin approached him. Phantom Archer offered his daughter’s wrist. Zhuge Rin placed his fingers upon her pulse point, sending a gentle stream of Qi into her body to map the devastation within. After a long moment, a heavy sigh escaped his lips.

“…It is a wonder she has remained alive this long.”

“Then…”

“It is far too late to administer treatment. She cannot be saved.”

“…!”

Blood bloomed in the man’s eyes. His hand shot out, reaching for Zhuge Rin’s throat.

What-! Master!

GRAB!

But his hand stopped, frozen in mid-air. Yoo Ho had intercepted him, his grip effortless but absolute.

“Control yourself,” Yoo Ho said, his voice a low warning. “This is the White Qilin Medical Pavilion.”

Yoo Ho! I knew it… The novel never went into detail about him, but… he’s incredibly strong.

Jin Cheon-hee’s eyes widened at the sight.

“Let go of me!” Phantom Archer roared, his voice raw with fury and grief. “Is it because my money is tainted? Is that why you treat me this way?! The Medicine Sage of Hwaju, and you, the White Qilin Divine Physician—you are all hypocrites! I will… I will kill you all…”

A wave of pure killing intent washed over the courtyard. A glacial chill ran down Jin Cheon-hee’s spine.

This… this is killing intent…

The officials of the Pavilion froze, their bodies turning to stone. They couldn’t even draw breath in the face of such suffocating malice. This man was truly the Phantom Archer.

Just then, the guards who had been holding their positions advanced.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

More warriors emerged from the shadows, their numbers swelling. It was only natural. The Pavilion was a sect with roots deep in the Murim, one that dealt exclusively with martial artists; it was bound to have its own fighting force. They simply did not use that force to vie for power or territory like other sects, for their trade was medicine itself.

The air grew taut with tension. But the White Qilin Divine Physician simply sighed again.

“What is impossible is impossible.”

“Then kill me and kill my daughter right here!” Phantom Archer bellowed, his rage boiling over. “Because if you do not, I swear on my name as the Phantom Archer, I will slaughter every last person in this Pavilion! And then I will find that hypocrite, the Medicine Sage of Hwaju, and I will kill him too!”

His killing intent intensified, flooding the courtyard. Yet Jin Cheon-hee’s master and Yoo Ho stood unperturbed, weathering the storm as if it were a gentle breeze.

“Do as you please,” Zhuge Rin said, his voice disarmingly calm. “But know that you will only see the corpse of you, Phantom Archer and your nameless daughter, rot in the market square.”

“What did you just…”

A cold, beautiful smile touched Zhuge Rin’s lips.

“Do you think I am jesting?”

Zhuge Rin held no sword, no spear. In his hand was nothing but a simple, elegant fan—the kind one might see anywhere. Jin Cheon-hee knew what terrifying power it held, but the expression his master wore now was one he had never seen. It was a coldness so absolute it felt as though he were looking at a stranger, and it made his skin crawl.

A laugh, twisted and crazed, tore from Phantom Archer’s throat.

“Kekeke. I have heard the rumors. That the martial arts of the White Qilin Divine Physician are second to none. I know that, as you say, I may very well end up a corpse. But… I think I can take at least one of you with me to the afterlife.” His gaze shot across the courtyard, landing on the small figure of Jin Cheon-hee. “A mutual destruction, you could say.”

Me? Why me?

“Spoken like the true Phantom Archer,” Zhuge Rin said, his voice still light. “To take a child hostage. You have just erased any hesitation I may have had.”

He looked down at Phantom Archer, his posture as relaxed and natural as if he were taking a stroll. But in stark contrast to his voice, which grew softer, like a spring breeze, a frigid aura began to pour from him. Frost bloomed on the ground at his feet.

To dare threaten his one and only disciple was to sign his own death warrant. And it would not be a gentle death.

I… I have to stop this.

Jin Cheon-hee took a resolute step forward.

“Master.”

“What is it, Cheon-hee?”

Even in this maelstrom of killing intent, his voice was warm only for his disciple.

Every eye in the courtyard turned to Jin Cheon-hee. They seemed even more astonished by his calm demeanor than they were frightened by the palpable malice in the air. Phantom Archer himself was glaring at him, his eyes shot with blood.

This is a bit overwhelming.

Still, he knew he had to speak.

“Would it be all right if I took a look?”

“What?”

“I believe you are right, Master, when you say she cannot be saved. But if she is fated to die anyway, I think it might be worth the risk to try something adventurous. Also…”

“Also?”

I’m thinking of recruiting this villain.

Jin Cheon-hee swallowed the rest of his sentence.

***

Ultimately, the patient was moved inside the Medical Pavilion.

In that instant, the madman vanished, and the father returned. It was said that nothing was harder to change than a person, Jin Cheon-hee thought, but then again, perhaps nothing was easier.

The Phantom Archer of the novel was not the kind of man who would take a child hostage.

But faced with his own daughter’s life hanging by a thread, this father had cast aside all of his pride in a heartbeat.

Phantom Archer stared down at his own trembling hands. The image of his wife’s face, her eyes still open in death, flashed in his mind. It felt as though she were admonishing him. Why did you do it? Why did you start a family when you couldn’t even afford a single dose of medicine? In truth, her final words had been a plea: Please, take care of our baby. You are all she has to rely on now. Please, raise her well.

With his rage subsided, only a hollow worry remained. He gripped his trembling arm and cursed himself under his breath.

As Jin Cheon-hee approached, Phantom Archer spoke, his voice heavy.

“I am… sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jin Cheon-hee said with a cheerful laugh. “Hahaha, but next time, maybe try taking someone else hostage?”

He spoke the joke with an easy calm, a deliberate attempt to soothe the guardian’s frayed nerves. Only after the words left his mouth did he realize his old habits had resurfaced, and he clicked his tongue. It was a reflex honed over long years as a surgeon.

“To wield a bow is to live by your eyes,” Phantom Archer said quietly. “Walking the path between the orthodox and righteous paths for so long, the only thing that sharpens is your perception. In that moment, I saw the White Qilin Divine Physician’s eyes. Those were not the eyes of a man looking at another man.”

“What did he see you as?”

“I do not know. He wore a beautiful face and a noble air as a mask, but my instincts screamed at me. They told me that this man would not flinch if every single person in this courtyard died. All but one, that is.”

Was he referring to Jin Cheon-hee himself?

“My master cares for me a great deal.”

“Yes. I felt that. Those who ascend to the rank of Divine Physician have witnessed death on a scale far beyond that of ordinary warriors. I knew they were often… eccentric. The Medicine Sage of Hwaju was a strange one, too.”

“You’ve seen him in person?”

“Not while carrying my daughter. He would never grant me an audience. But long ago, on a commission, I saw him from a distance. He had the eyes of an old fox, obsessed with fame and fortune. But he was very different from the White Qilin Divine Physician. At the very least, he still seemed human.”

He picked up a small stone from the ground.

“My archer’s intuition told me that your master would offer the same smile to this stone as he would to a person. That is why I grew desperate.”

Jin Cheon-hee knew this was the self-justification of a cornered father, but he also knew it was the only way the man could bring himself to apologize honestly.

“Truly, I am so sorry, child.”

If Jin Cheon-hee hadn’t stepped forward then, would he have really loosed an arrow?

It was a question that neither Jin Cheon-hee, who had read the book, nor Phantom Archer himself could answer. All Jin Cheon-hee knew was that for the sake of family, a person could do anything, could become anything.

In the novel, after his daughter’s death, Phantom Archer burned paper money. Not the ceremonial kind for rituals, but real money.

He had hunted down the assassins who killed her, slaughtered the physicians who refused her treatment, and eventually, began killing innocents, burning all the money he took from them. He would gather silver and gold coins, take them to a merchant guild to have them converted into paper notes, and set them alight. When that was not possible, he would buy the things his daughter had loved in life and burn those instead. But that was a future that had not yet come to pass.

He was the Phantom Archer, but he had not yet become the Demonic Archer.

“Please,” Phantom Archer pleaded, his voice breaking. “Please save my baby. I will give you anything. Please…”

The man choked on his own breath, a ragged, desperate sound. A demon heart—an inner demon—filled the air, its presence more toxic than any poison.

Jin Cheon-hee took Phantom Archer’s trembling, tear-soaked hand.

Yes. This is a hospital…

The world had changed, his age had changed, but the boy felt it in his bones. He had stepped back into the ring.