Living with a sickly body in a Murim clan was akin to planting guilt in one’s chest instead of a heart, breathing through the blood it pumped. Such was the short life of Danmok Ryeon.
The backs of the adults were always distant, and her younger sibling, who once stood behind her, eventually surpassed her as time flowed by.
However, no one could stop the Murim world from shaking and her family from crumbling at the hands of the rampant Hyulla Valley.
So, when death finally approached, it was actually welcome.
The agony that felt like awls piercing every inch of her body, the helplessness of watching her family suffer for a fate she couldn’t change—it was all over.
It was finally over…
It was supposed to be over.
*
“I don’t understand…”
A young girl sat on the bed, wearing a grave expression.
She looked pale and frail, with sickness clearly etched into her features, but her eyes sparkled like stars depending on the angle.
The girl, Danmok Ryeon, clutched her head as she looked down at her shortened limbs.
She had died. The memory of death was vivid.
The moment the pain that had tormented her all her life slowly faded, and she fell into that long, eternal sleep. She was buried in the earth, and she had floated through the world for a long time.
Then, suddenly, she was sucked somewhere, saw too many things, and when she snapped back to consciousness, she was here.
She saw the Universe and All Creation.
She saw this place and that place, the past and the future, places that didn’t exist and places she knew.
As she pondered deeply, retracing her hazy memories, a sigh burst from Ryeon’s lips like a thunderclap.
“Ah!”
But before Ryeon could contemplate what she had just recalled, someone entered from outside.
“Young Lady, are you awake?”
The person who opened the door and entered was Nanny Jang, who had taken care of Ryeon since she was born.
Gentle wrinkles formed around Nanny Jang’s eyes, as she always smiled whenever she saw her.
“Nan… ny.”
“Young Lady, we have honey cookies today, too. If you finish your medicine, you can have them as a reward.”
Next to the white porcelain bowl filled with decoction so dark it looked black, lay honey cookies thinly coated in sugar. But Ryeon, knowing the taste of that medicine all too well, made a crying face.
“…Can I not eat the cookies and skip the medicine too?”
“Do not say such things.”
Nanny Jang spoke strictly. At those words, Ryeon had no choice but to accept the bowl of medicine.
Nanny Jang was someone who always took meticulous care of her. She was also the person who hadn’t left her side for a single moment during the seven years she had been bedridden.
Knowing how much her nanny had worried and fretted all this time, she couldn’t stubbornly refuse to take her medicine.
She gulped down the entire decoction and barely opened her eyes, which she had squeezed shut with force. Nanny Jang was looking at her with a moved expression. She even seemed to be tearing up a little.
Ever since she opened her eyes again, everyone in the household reacted like this.
Whenever Ryeon moved her lips to say something, frowned after drinking bitter medicine, or melted into a smile after eating a sweet dried persimmon, everyone seemed overwhelmed with emotion, as if tears were welling up.
It was inevitable!
For reasons unknown, Ryeon’s soul had been expelled from her body the moment she was born.
Thus, for seven years, her body—left as nothing but a shell—lay aimlessly unless someone sat it up, and ate nothing unless force-fed. She didn’t cry, didn’t laugh, and didn’t speak.
Then, the clan decided to attempt a grand ritual called Marrow Cleansing to awaken her somehow.
‘Marrow Cleansing’ is a ritual usually performed on newborn children. It quickly establishes the foundation of the dantian, burns away impurities, and corrects the muscles and bones to create a body suitable for learning martial arts.
It wasn’t even a medical treatment to cure illness, but they forced it through, grasping at straws. Surprisingly, the method worked!
The ritual ended successfully, and Ryeon miraculously shook off her bedridden state and rose.
Imagine the hearts of the adults watching a small child finally making various expressions and starting to speak.
Her mother had cried so much over the awakened Ryeon that she half-fainted, so the nanny was taking care of her instead.
Nanny Jang, her heart swelling once again, quickly wiped away her tears and placed the honey cookie in front of Ryeon.
“Oh my. How can you be so mature?”
Thinking it was better than the bitter medicine, Ryeon mumbled on the cookie while glancing at Nanny Jang.
“Nanny, you know. I want to go outside. Just to the garden out front.”
“Then I will ask the elders and get permission, Young Lady.”
Saying that, the nanny lifted her as if soothing a baby and patted her back. The child, who had lived like a doll for seven years, was too small to be seven.
As soon as the nanny, thinking she had put her to sleep, quietly left the room, Ryeon bolted up, grabbed a mirror, and injected the bluish energy rising from her fingertips into it.
Simultaneously, words began to float on the mirror’s surface. If anyone had seen this scene, they would have fainted in shock at this mysterious and unfathomable art.
[Verifying User: Danmok Ryeon]
[Display mode is changing to suit convenience… ■■□□□]
Below that, a sentence passed slowly from right to left.
[Outputting information the user can contemplate.]
[Outputting in the mode fastest for understanding.]
The boxes indicating the change in display mode filled up one by one, and soon all five were full.
[Change Complete!]
[The Immortal Mirror becomes visible!]
It meant it was made so she could understand the situation quickly.
That… she couldn’t bring herself to deny.
“Dying and coming back is actually doable…”
While wandering the nine springs as a soul after death, she saw many things and learned even more.
To know is to understand, and to understand means one can display it again.
Although she had forgotten most things her body couldn’t handle upon returning to the past, just as a person cannot return to a time of ignorance once they have learned something, Ryeon could contemplate through the knowledge engraved on her soul.
Only as much as was possible for her, in a way she could understand.
That was exactly this method.
Ryeon suppressed her embarrassment and stared firmly at the mirror. Soon, letters appeared softly on the mirror as if written in ink.
Just like this.
Danmok Ryeon
Traits: Infinite Spring of Spiritual Energy / Half-Enlightened / Mourned by Malice / Sickly Plant in a Greenhouse
Harmony: 7 Stars
Mind’s Eye: 2 Stars
Purification: 1 Star
Health: 3 / 100
Internal Energy: Unable to Learn
External Arts: Unlearned
Aptitude: Measurement Error
Perception: Measurement Error
Spiritual Energy: 76 / 100
Warning: Keep Spiritual Energy below 50. If this state persists for more than two months, it will lead to death.
However, knowing how to see and having the ability were separate issues. Most of her stats were truly modest. Health was 3 out of 100, and External Arts were unlearned.
Ryeon clutched her head. In the midst of all this, only the Spiritual Energy stat was sky-high, as if piercing the heavens alone.
This was the greatest obstacle in her life.
The fact that she could not accumulate Internal Energy in this Murim, where one could never reach the supreme realm with External Arts alone.
Even if she somehow avoided her body’s vessel shattering and dying from the Spiritual Energy that spewed out excessively—enough to be bizarre for a human—was it really possible to survive as a martial artist like this?
In her past life, she couldn’t learn martial arts, so she didn’t even know things like this.
Aptitude and Perception were measurement errors, so she couldn’t know them either, and meanwhile, the Spiritual Energy was blinking in a deep crimson red. There was even a ‘Warning’ floating beneath it.
Right, the most important thing right now was her life, with only two months remaining.
Still, seeing the numbers clearly put her mind at ease, even in this bleak situation.
It meant she just had to lower it to 50 by any means necessary. Though she didn’t know how to lower it yet.
“And what are these traits…”
She didn’t know what ‘Mourned by Malice’ or ‘Half-Enlightened’ meant, but ‘Infinite Spring of Spiritual Energy’ and ‘Sickly Plant in a Greenhouse’ were understandable.
The reason she had eventually reached death before regression! It was because her body, unable to handle the overflowing Spiritual Energy, had endlessly creaked and failed.
But not anymore.
Ryeon clenched her fist tightly. She didn’t know the reason, but she had somehow returned to the past.
She knew why she had been sick all that time. And now she knew how to be healthy.
“From now on, I will definitely show you an accident-free, disaster-free, long and healthy life…!”
