He woke to silk, pain, and the smell of dried herbs.
The sheets beneath him were soaked. Blood. His blood. Again.
His left arm was tightly wrapped, thick with gauze and some kind of herbal paste that stung like betrayal. A bowl of bitter soup steamed on the table beside him.
Baek-Ha's voice whispered in his head: "You'll thank me after you stop pissing blood."
He reached for the bowl. His fingers trembled. He cursed softly and drank anyway.
Burning down. Sour. Heavy. Powerful.
He exhaled.
Every part of him hurt.
But it was a different kind of pain now not the dull, rotting fatigue of a cubicle life. Not the resigned ache of going nowhere slowly.
This pain meant something.
He'd won. Or survived. Which, in Murim, was often the same thing.
There was a knock.
The door creaked open and Mistress Seo stepped in, her long robe dragging across the floor like a whisper. She carried herself with the air of someone who could end conversations and people with the same sentence.
She looked at him. Not with pity. Or concern.
But with interest.
"You didn't die," she said, setting a tea tray down.
"Disappointed?"
"Not yet."
She poured two cups. The aroma was dark and sharp—some mountain-grown blackleaf blend only nobles drank. She handed him one.
He took it. Didn't sip.
"Who were they?" he asked.
"Men paid to intercept the delivery. I'm sure someone in your sect leaked it."
Sim blinked. "Leaked what? The bundle was just incense sticks and a scroll."
Seo smiled. "That scroll was half of a cultivation technique once practiced by the Crescent Saber Hall. The original was lost a century ago."
He felt like the floor shifted.
"And my sect just sent that… casually?"
"They likely had no idea what it was. Or they didn't care. You're all forgotten up there on your rock, surrounded by mildew and mediocrity."
Sim set the tea down, un-sipped. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you didn't die."
She looked him over again, slower this time. Like she was reading a book in his bones.
"You're not talented," she said. "You're not strong. You're not trained properly."
Sim waited.
"But you're smart. You're stubborn. You hurt well."
"…Thanks?"
"That's not praise. That's potential."
---
He left the next day.
Seo didn't offer protection, money, or secrets. Just one thing:
A name.
"Ask around in Daewon City. Find a man named Go Pil-Bae. He owes me. Say I sent you. He trains vagrants. Half his students die. The other half become killers."
Sim bowed deeply. "Why help me?"
"You're a broken tool, disciple Jin Mu. But if you keep hurting right… you might make something worth holding."
Then she turned and walked off.
---
The road back was harder.
Not physically though his wounds still ached. No. It was the paranoia.
Every traveler looked like a blade waiting to be drawn. Every bird call sounded too practiced. His eyes darted. His grip tightened around the handle of the dull blade at his side.
He stopped sleeping in inns.
He moved at dusk. Camped at dawn.
And he felt it.
He was being followed.
Not closely. Not obviously. But enough.
He saw it in the shifted stones. The faint second footprints. The tiny breaks in brush patterns.
The follower was good.
Which meant he couldn't shake them.
Not with his current strength.
So he walked faster. Didn't engage. Not yet.
Let them think he didn't know.
Let them think he was still just Jin Mu.
---
When he finally returned to the Howling Tiger Sect, the gatekeeper didn't even look up.
"Oh. You're alive."
"Disappointed?"
"Impressed. That's the furthest any of you scrubs have traveled and come back on two legs."
Sim passed the gate and didn't respond.
Inside, the courtyard was exactly the same.
Training dummies.
Half-asleep disciples.
The smell of boiled radish and sweat.
But something had changed.
Him.
He walked straighter. His breath felt deeper. His grip was different. Controlled.
The qi in his body had grown heavier, slower but more willing. When he directed it, it moved.
He had learned to make pain obey.
---
[Breakthrough Achieved: Late Qi Gathering → Peak Qi Gathering]
His body hadn't caught up fully. But his center had. He could feel it.
His qi didn't just sit in him now.
It waited.
---
Baek-Ha tackled him.
Not with affection. With fists.
"You bastard! You didn't write! You didn't send a message bird! You didn't even die where I could see the body!"
"Hi," he said.
She punched his shoulder. "That's for leaving."
She punched his ribs. "That's for coming back."
Then she looked at him.
And her voice dropped.
"…And that's for looking like someone who's been through a war."
He didn't smile.
Didn't joke.
He just nodded.
"Someone tried to kill me."
Her eyes sharpened. "How many?"
"Three."
"And you walked back?"
"Mostly."
She didn't ask anything else.
Didn't need to.
She just handed him a peach. "Eat. Then go to the infirmary before your guts fall out."
---
The following days were strange.
Some disciples gave him space.
Some gave him long looks curious, cautious.
Shin Rok asked for a spar. Sim declined.
He didn't need to prove anything yet.
Not to them.
But one night, as the clouds rolled in and lightning cracked above the hills, Sim stood on the rooftop of the bunkhouse.
Sword in his lap.
Eyes to the storm.
He whispered:
"I know you're there."
Nothing replied.
But across the forest, in the shadow of a ridge, a figure crouched silently, watching.
---