224.
〈The Poison of the Spirit Guards — Invisible Death〉
That evening, there was not a breath of wind.
The small courtyard of Hwajusochuk lay in silence; even the chirring of insects had ceased.
The sky pressed low, and the moonlight spread in a dull haze.
Park Seong-jin closed his book.
The letters had begun to overlap.
He thought it was fatigue—but the inside of his head felt heavily compressed.
The moment he drew in a breath, something tightened inside his chest, as if it were burning from within.
"..."
The air had changed.
A space that should have been still had sunk into a sticky stagnation.
Then—a sound, almost imperceptible, brushed past.
A faint tremor of air, the soft pyung that comes when something ignites.
Park Seong-jin sprang to his feet.
Outside the window, beneath the moonlight, a thin mist was rising.
Too light to be smoke, too structured to be fog.
It blurred when it caught the light, sharpened in shadow.
There was no scent, no direction.
The judgment was instant.
Poison.
He dropped low beneath the desk, sweeping his hand through the air.
Tracing the grain of the air with his heightened sense, he felt a minute inflow seeping through a crack in the southern wall.
There was no wind—yet the air was unmistakably entering.
"South."
He launched himself forward.
Inner force surged to his fingertips.
Kicking the door open, he drew a line through empty space.
Boom—!
Nothing was struck, yet the air exploded.
A portion of the formation he had prepared activated, twisting the current.
The flow of poison buckled; the mist was forced back outward, as if recoiling.
"So you touched the air."
Park Seong-jin closed his eyes.
This was not an attack one could answer with sight.
But wherever air flowed, the trace of human breath followed.
He lowered his breathing to the extreme.
Every sense opened like an ear.
One step.
Another.
The instant he stepped onto the veranda, the wind tore above him.
Shuk—
An arrow.
Without turning his head, Park Seong-jin caught it with his left hand.
The sensation reached him strangely late.
On the arrowhead clung a blackened, dried liquid.
"Poison."
The word left his lips clearly—yet took a beat too long to reach his ears.
No.
It was already late.
He twisted his body and drove his palm into the air.
The current flipped violently and slammed into the roof.
Crash—
A body tumbled down from above.
A man dressed like a passerby.
His landing angle and balance were perfect—
and that perfection itself felt unnatural.
One more remained.
That man flung away the blood-smeared arrow and charged straight in.
Park Seong-jin's eyes flashed—
but his body did not answer at once.
One beat.
A gap no wider than a breath.
Through that opening, the poison seeped in.
The sensation spreading through his blood was neither hot nor cold.
It was weight.
His arm grew heavy.
His legs felt glued to the earth.
Each movement lagged, as though he were borrowing another man's body.
It was like being crushed beneath a thousand weights.
The world began to tilt.
The roof slid downward; the sky flowed beneath his feet.
The world inverted—slowly, unmistakably.
Breath.
They're targeting breath.
His thoughts were clear, but the path from thought to body had been severed.
The air he drew in failed to reach his lungs.
Inside his chest, something tightened and burned.
He clenched his teeth.
Even that sensation felt as though it came from far away.
His fingertips touched the ground.
The cold arrived late.
His perception wavered, scattering in all directions.
He tried to focus—
but each time he gathered it, the thought slipped away.
Just before it could converge into a single point, it unraveled again.
His breaths shortened.
He could no longer tell whether he was inhaling or exhaling.
His heartbeat echoed not in his ears, but inside his skull.
The enemy before him split into two—then overlapped again.
The position of the blade would not settle.
Depth collapsed.
If I fall now, it's over.
That thought alone remained sharp.
Park Seong-jin poured every remaining ounce of strength into the hand braced against the ground.
Not to resist—
but to hold on.
His consciousness was sinking.
Yet he did not let go.
One breath—just barely—entered again.
And then, the sword moved.
The sword that cleaves the current — The Blade of Severing Qi.
The instant the blade cut through the air, the grain of the poison split apart.
From the torn currents burst a clear, untainted force.
The pressure crushing his breath vanished in a heartbeat.
The remaining assassin tried to twist away within that light—
but it was already too late.
Where the sword passed, the man's body wavered like a gust of wind, then collapsed silently.
There was no sound.
For a long moment, Park Seong-jin stood there.
Unable yet to steady his breathing, he watched the moonlight return to its proper place.
"Even unseen enemies must draw breath."
He searched the fallen man's robes.
A small blue porcelain vial emerged.
Without hesitation, he uncorked it and drank.
A bitter, astringent taste—then a wave of chills.
Soon, the poisonous current within him subsided.
Then—
At the edge of the flowing moonlight, something shifted.
This time, it was not an attack.
It was an eye.
Watching.
Park Seong-jin fixed his gaze in that direction.
The Spirit Guards' assault was not yet over.