"Stop right there," Physician Yeon's voice shook, echoing down the narrow corridor.
"Step aside, Physician Yeon."
"No." The old man shook his head hard. "I let you do that insane thing with the Black Castor extract because you backed me into a corner. I let you give orders in the treatment room because I was too afraid to watch you die. But I will not let you into this room."
"Give me one logical reason," Yeon Hak answered flatly.
"Because what's inside is not medicine!" Physician Yeon half-shouted. He pointed at the door behind him with a trembling hand. "Clan Yeon was not always a clan that gets trampled like this. The generations before us once chased power. They dug up ancient records, practiced deviant medical methods, and do you know what came of it?"
Physician Yeon held his son's gaze. "They died. Vomiting black blood, exactly like you did last night. What's inside that room is not a legacy. It's a curse. I locked it away years ago so that poison of the mind would never touch what remains of this clan. So it would never touch you."
The clan's ancestors had used those records. They died from it. Which meant the records were genuine, but they lacked the alchemical understanding to neutralize what they contained.
Every word his father had just said was absolute confirmation that he stood in front of the right door.
"You were protecting me," Yeon Hak said quietly. "But your protection came too late. My meridians no longer flow forward. If I don't find a circulation method from the 'madness' inside that room before midday, the Black Castor extract will rot my heart."
Physician Yeon went rigid. The logic hit him, but his paternal instinct refused to yield.
"Hak-ah..."
The voice came out very soft. Fragile. Filled with pleading. The exact same tone Physician Yeon had used to sing Yeon Hak to sleep during a high fever ten years ago.
For a few seconds, a father and son faced each other in that dark corridor. The father pleading to the past, while his son's body tried to answer him.
"The Hak-ah you're grieving died this morning when you forced pure qi into his dantian," said Yeon Hak. "I am only what remains to survive. You are protecting a memory, Physician Yeon. I am protecting my heartbeat."
Tears spilled from the old man's temples. He understood with absolute horror that he had truly lost his son.
Yeon Hak looked away. "Chil-sung. Break the lock."
Chil-sung stood where he was. His eyes moved to the old man who had saved his life five years ago, then shifted to the pale young man who now held authority over death. Without hesitation, Chil-sung stepped forward.
He pulled an iron torch bracket from the wall, swung it, and brought it down squarely on the brass lock mechanism.
Bam. Bam.
The second blow shattered the inner cylinder. The lock broke apart. Physician Yeon stumbled back against the wall and slid to the floor, both hands covering his face.
Yeon Hak pushed the rotting wooden door open. It groaned on its hinges.
The air inside was heavy and smelled of mold-eaten paper.
Yeon Hak ignored the shelves lining the left and right walls, all of them packed with dusty bamboo scrolls. His gaze went directly to one corner of the room. There, buried under a thick layer of dust, sat a deep black wooden chest. No cobwebs around it. The wood itself gave off a faint aura.
He knelt in front of it. No keyhole. Only an asymmetric Yin-Yang symbol carved into the surface.
A qi lock. Yeon Hak pressed his palm against the carved wood. He drew on the wild residual energy of the Black Castor Seed still pooled in his dantian, pulled a thin thread of it, and pushed it in. The thick poison flowed into the qi channels of the chest like a key finding its lock.
Click. The seal opened.
Inside lay a worn manuscript bound with leather thread. No title. Only one large symbol: the ancient notation for the Hae-ryu meridian point.
Yeon Hak picked it up and turned to the first page. His eyes went straight to the opening lines:
*"The world calls water that climbs a mountain an anomaly. They forget that lava never flows downward when a volcano erupts. For a body that does not refuse death, poison is not the end. It is the first breath."*
Then his eyes caught a handwritten note in the bottom margin. Small script, using specific alchemical terminology.
*'Initial formulation stable. Residue locks at the central point. Third-stage execution requires C-D to breach the threshold.'*
Yeon Hak's eyes narrowed. C-D. Cheonpa-dan. The formula that had gotten him executed in his previous life. Who wrote this? Why did a minor clan's manuscript hold a reference to his secret formula? The walls of the reality he had accepted felt like they were cracking.
But before he could process that, the poison in his dantian pulsed hard. The pooled Black Castor Seed extract began to heat, threatening to rupture the walls of his internal organs if it wasn't moved immediately.
Yeon Hak set the manuscript on the floor. Time for theory was over. He had to test it now.
He read the text on the first page. Proto-Circulation: First Current Reversal.
Yeon Hak crossed his legs. He closed his eyes and focused his entire awareness on his dantian. Following the manuscript's instructions. Instead of drawing energy upward through the spine the way a normal cultivator would, he pressed the poison downward, forcing it to rotate through the base of his pelvis before driving it aggressively into the left arm pathway.
BZZT.
Yeon Hak jerked hard. What hit him was not a calm flow of water. It was like thousands of glass shards being dragged forcibly through his bloodstream. The Black Castor poison moved, and for the first time, the energy obeyed his command. But the cost was brutal.
The blood vessels along his left arm bulged immediately, turning deep black. His skin felt like it was burning from the inside.
CRACK.
The sound of micro-tears came from inside his arm. Yeon Hak bit down on his lower lip until it bled, swallowing the scream.
Fresh blood seeped from the pores around his left wrist. The pain made his vision flicker.
He severed the circulation immediately and let the remaining poison settle in the arm.
His left arm shook violently, completely numb yet throbbing with bone-deep pain.
Yeon Hak stared at his blackened arm, breathing in ragged pulls. The circulation worked. He had moved the poison away from his vital organs. But the meridians in this arm were nearly destroyed.
As he tried to steady his breathing, he felt something through the palm still resting against the stone floor.
Warmth.
The floor temperature ran higher than the rest of the room. Something pulsed far beneath the layers of stone and earth. The energy waves were faint, but the residual poison in his arm responded with a strong resonant pull.
With an arm on the verge of rupturing, disturbing whatever lay underground was suicide. He pulled his hand from the floor.
"Young Master," Chil-sung's voice came from the doorway.
Yeon Hak did not turn. He watched a drop of blood fall from his left wrist onto the stone floor.
"Close the door from the inside, Chil-sung. Don't let anyone within ten paces of this room."
"Until when, Young Master?"
"Until I finish reconstructing this circulation," said Yeon Hak.