Chapter 2

When I woke up, the White-Robed Divine Doctor had really prepared the medicine made from concentrated extreme yang energy.

It was a small pill, only about the size of a fingertip.

He said it would solve most of the problems with my condition.

“I’ll guide your true qi. Relax your entire body and simply accept my guidance.”

With his help, I began circulating my qi.

As soon as I swallowed the pill, he placed his hand on my back.

The warmth from the pill, almost hot enough to burn, spread through every meridian in my body.

The goal wasn’t to force out the yin energy but to blend it with warm yang energy.

Is he using yang energy to open the meridians blocked by yin energy?

It was both painful and refreshing.

Perhaps, just as he had said, I lacked the understanding to fully grasp what was happening.

All I could do was focus on my breathing and follow his guidance.

I had no idea what was actually happening inside my body.

“Huff… huff…”

How long had I been concentrating?

When I finally opened my eyes, the freezing cold that had been suffocating me had completely disappeared.

“Are you alright?”

Instead, my clothes were in terrible condition.

Just like in the martial arts novels I had once read, impurities had been forced out through every pore in my body.

“Ah! What happened to my clothes…?”

“It worked!”

I cried out in surprise, but Father, who had been protecting us during the treatment, smiled brightly.

“Yes. The violent energy has been calmed. From now on, as she gradually gains understanding, she’ll be able to control her internal energy properly.”

“Thank goodness. Thank goodness…”

Father, who had worried just as much as I had, was overjoyed.

He hugged me tightly without caring that my clothes were covered in impurities.

“W-Wait a moment!”

The celebration could wait.

There was something I needed to ask.

I quickly stopped the White-Robed Divine Doctor before he could leave.

“Master, what will happen to me from now on?”

I had already prepared myself to hear the worst.

So I asked him directly about my condition.

But he simply shook his head.

“It is not yet time. This is a secret kept for your own sake. Please understand that I cannot speak carelessly.”

“I’m really alright!”

I asked him again to tell me the truth.

“Until your body and mind have matured, do not practice the Frozen White Divine Art for another seven or eight years. If you do that, there will be nothing more to worry about.”

The White-Robed Divine Doctor only smiled kindly.

“Ah…”

He chose not to say any more.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a child who would believe someone saying, “You’ll understand after a hundred more nights of sleep.”

Don’t practice the Frozen White Divine Art?

Obviously, if someone with a body that naturally accumulated yin energy continued practicing the ultimate yin cultivation method, the yin energy would only build up again.

“I understand. I’ll remember your words and follow them exactly. Thank you for saving my life.”

***

With the help of the medicine created by one of the Three Greatest Physicians Under Heaven, my illness disappeared.

He never told me directly what disease I had.

But just before I fell asleep, I had overheard him talking to Father about it.

So I assumed I would learn everything if I simply asked Father.

I know I have too much yin energy. But shouldn’t I at least know whether it’s the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, Seven Yin Severed Meridians, or Three Yin Severed Meridians?

This time, however, no amount of pleading worked.

Father absolutely refused to tell me about my condition.

“Ahem! You’ll know when the time comes!”

Whenever I asked about my health or my constitution, he only laughed awkwardly and changed the subject.

“But what if I get sick again?”

“Don’t worry about unnecessary things. Focus on studying and training your body. Your health is perfectly fine.”

Eventually, whenever I even tried to bring up the topic, he claimed to be busy and left.

I might have been a child, but was this really something that had to remain such a complete secret?

If no one would tell me, then I would find the answer myself.

I searched through the Ice Palace library.

The guard looked surprised to see me there but simply stood beside me without stopping me.

There are so many kinds of special constitutions…

There were ridiculous names like the Empty Spirit Body and the Ten Thousand Poisons Body.

Then I noticed a familiar one.

The Heavenly Martial Body… It possesses the powers of extreme yin, extreme yang, the Five Elements, and Taiji, allowing its owner to master every martial art in perfect harmony… So even in this world, it’s considered almost legendary?

Only two people had possessed it throughout the entire history of the martial world.

In the martial arts web novels I had read in my previous life, the protagonist seemed to have the Heavenly Martial Body in every other story.

But in this world, it really was an incredibly rare constitution that might only appear once in a thousand years.

I couldn’t help envying those fictional protagonists.

So lucky! Why couldn’t I have been born with the Heavenly Martial Body instead?

My internal energy grew just as quickly.

I was just as talented at learning martial arts.

“Ah, found it.”

After turning a few more pages, I finally found information about Severed Meridians Syndrome.

Some of the meridians were naturally blocked.

Yin energy kept increasing.

The victim died before reaching the age of twenty.

It wasn’t much different from what I already knew.

Unlike the Heavenly Martial Body, it wasn’t quite as rare, so the explanation was much longer.

There were even examples of people who had suffered from the Three Yin Severed Meridians.

Hoping there might be a cure, I carefully looked up unfamiliar Chinese characters in the dictionary and read every word.

In the end… it’s either spiritual medicine or a man.

The treatment methods were almost exactly the same as those in the novels from my previous life.

First, consume the inner core of a powerful yang creature, such as the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp.

Second, achieve Yin-Yang harmony.

That meant having physical union and exchanging true qi with a man who had mastered an ultimate extreme yang martial art.

If this were a novel, I’d just go find the male lead…!

But in reality, neither option was easy.

Finding a Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp was impossible enough.

Where was I supposed to find a man who had mastered the ultimate extreme Yang martial arts?

And when I imagined such an incredibly powerful martial artist…

The image that automatically came to mind was an overly muscular man showing off huge muscles.

No! Huge, muscular men aren’t my type!

I quickly erased that image from my head.

The man wasn’t even standing in front of me.

There was no reason to suffer over someone I hadn’t even met.

Option one. Definitely option one!

I’d cure the Nine Yin Severed Meridians with a spiritual medicine.

Then I’d fall in love with a handsome man with long hair and live happily ever after.

Find a yang-based spiritual medicine, and meanwhile keep improving my understanding and physical training without letting my yin energy increase.

… In the end, it was exactly what the White-Robed Divine Doctor had advised.

I couldn’t run away at the age of eight to search for spiritual medicine.

For now, all I could do was train.

I needed to maintain the balance for as long as possible and extend my life.

Once I became stronger, perhaps I could search for the medicine myself.

“Young Lady, are you really well enough to move around now?”

“Of course! Let’s spar! Just a training match, so go easy on me!”

I immediately got out of bed and resumed my training.

One thing I had confidence in was working hard.

Things weren’t as perfect as before I got sick.

But even knowing I had a limited lifespan didn’t fill me with fear.

As long as I’m not dying right now, it’s fine. There are still things I can do.

Somehow, I felt everything would work out.

Every martial arts novel I had ever read said people with the Nine Yin Severed Meridians died young.

Yet they always survived somehow.

Either through a spiritual medicine or… the other method.

Not once had I ever seen such a character simply die of natural causes.

Nothing has changed. I’ll keep training hard, and when I’m older, I’ll go out into the world!

The white-robed divine doctor and Father had probably kept the truth from me because they wanted me to live happily.

So I decided to do exactly that.

***

Time passed.

Thankfully, my severed meridians syndrome never flared up again before I turned fifteen.

That was the result of carefully preventing my yin energy from increasing while constantly training to strengthen myself enough to control it.

While everyone else spent their time cultivating internal energy, I focused mainly on strengthening my body.

My physical strength became remarkable.

Unlike before, when I had avoided studying Chinese characters, I worked hard to better understand martial arts manuals.

I even borrowed Buddhist and Taoist scriptures to read.

I also secretly learned a few martial arts that weren’t ice-based techniques from forgotten books in the library.

Thanks to all that, the yin energy filling my dantian no longer caused me any suffering.

Even without relying on that yin energy, I became strong enough to defeat others my age in the Ice Palace.

Then one day, Father suddenly called me to his office.

“Su-ryeo, you’re already fifteen this year. In the Central Plains, this is called the Age of Learning.”

“Yes.”

“I delayed telling you because I worried how a child would take it… but I think it’s finally time for you to learn about your constitution.”

Ah, finally?

After avoiding the topic every time I asked, he was finally going to tell me everything.

I had long since passed through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

Now I had fully accepted it.

I quietly nodded.

“I already know, Father.”

“…What? You really do?”

Father stared at me in shock.

But honestly, how could I not know?

I had trained for years without even using my internal energy because I was afraid of increasing my yin energy.

Normally, internal energy didn’t grow so easily.

Everyone else spent hours cultivating.

Yet somehow, every time I used even a tiny bit of the qi in my dantian, my internal energy tried to increase on its own.

“I always knew you were clever… but this is beyond my expectations. To know your condition and still work so hard…”

Heh.

Instead of falling into despair because I might die young, I had simply worked harder.

“If I only live according to what I was born with, then what’s the point of life? All I can do is give my best within the circumstances I’ve been given.”

I answered confidently.

Father was deeply moved.

He even teared up, saying he never expected someone so young to be this mature.

Unable to bring himself to tell his little daughter that she was dying young, he had carried that burden alone all these years.

I smiled gently and comforted him.

“Good. If you already know, then this will be much easier.”

Father calmed himself and firmly took my hand.

“There is something I want you to do.”

Hmm?

Since I was little, Father had never forced me to do anything.

I knew he secretly hoped I would love martial arts and train diligently.

But he had never ordered me or pressured me into anything.

Was there something only a person with Severed Meridians Syndrome could do?

I searched through both my current and previous lives’ memories…

Ah.

Could it be marriage?

A possibility suddenly crossed my mind.

There were only two major ways to cure severed meridians syndrome.

Since Father loved me so dearly, he must have searched for both.

If he had found a spiritual medicine, he wouldn’t be talking like this with tears in his eyes or saying there was “something I had to do.”

Did he find a man who had mastered the ultimate extreme yang martial arts?

I had pushed that possibility to the back of my mind and focused on training all these years.

But if it had suddenly become reality…

I couldn’t avoid making a decision anymore.

What should I do?

Should I get married just to survive?

Maybe, if I were incredibly lucky…

The man might actually be handsome and exactly my type.

Maybe we’d marry first, fall in love later, and live happily ever after.

It didn’t sound very likely.

That only happened in romance fantasy novels!

I was only fifteen.

If the man had already mastered an ultimate extreme yang martial art…

Wouldn’t he be even older than Father?

Well… maybe he had rejuvenated himself through cultivation and still looked young?

I was practically panicking.

Should I at least ask to see his portrait first?

No, paintings couldn’t be trusted anyway.

Or… instead of getting married, could I simply ask him for the Yin-Yang Harmony treatment…

Would that be far too scandalous in this era?

I wanted to live, but my future still held endless possibilities!

“Have you ever heard of the Heavenly Martial Academy?”

While my mind raced in complete panic, Father suddenly asked something entirely unexpected.