-Get this man to the infirmary!
Ha Jin's last memory was the Blade Demon's voice, shouting at him with urgent desperation. After his vision went dark, Ha Jin eventually opened his eyes.
"Ugh......"
An unfamiliar wooden ceiling and the sharp scent of medicinal herbs stinging his nose. Every joint in his body ached as though screaming.
'I'm dying. Where am I now......?'
As he tried to sit up, the door was flung open from outside along with a frantic voice.
"My good fellow! You must not move yet!"
A man in white robes spotted Ha Jin stirring and rushed in. He gently pressed Ha Jin's shoulders, easing him back down, and exclaimed.
"You need to rest. But what on earth happened during the first-stage trial to put your body in this state?"
The physician tilted his head with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. Ha Jin answered matter-of-factly.
"Well. I was trying to block the Mad Demon's strikes, and I ended up like this."
CLATTER—!
A silver acupuncture case slipped from the physician's hand and clattered to the floor. His eyes went round with disbelief.
"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"
Seeing the physician's startled reaction, Ha Jin asked with a frown.
"Why are you so surprised?"
"Because it's unbelievable, that's why. That lunatic came to the Demon Path Hall? What for?"
The physician couldn't even think to pick up the fallen case, his voice rising with agitation.
"What would a Demon Lord be doing at a first-stage trial......?"
"Are the Demon Lords really such formidable figures?"
At Ha Jin's question, the physician furrowed his brow, as if to say "what kind of obvious question is that?"
"Good grief. And you call yourself a Demon Path Hall cadet? The Demon Lords are extraordinary, but the Mad Demon is in a class of her own. In fact, this infirmary wasn't originally in this location. It used to be on the mountain range over there, but the whole building was relocated here."
"Why?"
"The Mad Demon was passing through and got irritated that the mountain was blocking the sun, so she blew the entire mountain range away......"
The physician shuddered as though recalling some terrible memory.
'No wonder the building looked brand new.'
Ha Jin hadn't known about such a tragic backstory. He muttered his understanding inwardly.
"In any case! Stay away from that lunatic if you value your life. Even ten lives wouldn't be enough to......"
At that moment, Ha Jin's gaze drifted past the physician's shoulder. He began to stammer, "Uh, um, well......" while shooting awkward glances.
Sensing something amiss, the physician turned his head with a puzzled look.
"A lunatic, you say. How terribly sorry to hear that."
From behind the physician came a voice as cold as a sheet of ice.
"More importantly, would you mind stepping out for a moment? I have something to discuss with Cadet Four Hundred."
There, having appeared at some unknown point, the Mad Demon was pinning the physician with her killing-intent-laced violet eyes. The physician's body began to tremble like an aspen leaf.
"HIEEK!"
He couldn't even manage a proper scream before his eyes rolled back and he collapsed backward in a dead faint.
"Oh dear."
Ha Jin fully expected the Mad Demon to slit the unconscious physician's throat on the spot. But contrary to his expectations, she merely grabbed the man by the scruff and dragged him out, tossed him through the doorway, and slammed the door shut.
Ha Jin asked, surprised by the restraint.
"You're not killing him?"
"Why would yours truly kill him?"
"He...... insulted you......?"
Weren't martial world people supposed to be fiercely proud? Proud enough to challenge someone to a life-or-death duel over a mere slight?
But the Mad Demon only snorted.
"Yours truly would not kill a valuable asset of the Sect over something so trivial. I do not let personal feelings dictate my actions."
Her words were so rational and measured—so un-Mad-Demon—that Ha Jin was momentarily confused.
'Huh? She might be more normal than I thought?'
Just as he was about to revise his assessment of the Mad Demon, she added with a wicked grin.
"Which is why I'll just have to make more patients to run him ragged day and night from now on. How dare he badmouth me?"
Right. Time to retract that thought.
Ha Jin immediately corrected himself. This woman was not normal after all. Her method of revenge—crueler than simply killing someone—sent an involuntary chill down his spine.
"More to the point, why have you come to see me? Isn't the trial still underway?"
The Mad Demon answered with a disinterested expression.
"The trial? It ended four shichen ago."
"Excuse me......?"
Ha Jin couldn't help but blurt back. He'd been unconscious for that long. But it made sense on reflection. Given that his mana wellspring had taken a direct hit, passing out for that duration was probably only natural.
Recalling the agony of his very source being shaken, four shichen actually felt short. Ha Jin nodded and waited for the Mad Demon to continue. What business had brought her here?
But the Mad Demon paused, and with an awkward air, averted her gaze. She hesitated briefly, then produced a small wooden box from inside her robes and thrust it at Ha Jin.
The gesture was so unexpected that Ha Jin could only stare blankly at the box she held out.
"Take it and open it."
"What is this?"
"I said take it!"
"Yes......"
Ha Jin kept his mouth shut and carefully opened the box. Inside was a small medicinal pill.
***
Shortly after the trial had ended in disaster, the Blade Demon had blocked the Mad Demon's path, fury still unspent.
"You're not going to let today slide, are you?"
The Mad Demon, surprisingly, replied without resistance. She glanced at the wrecked sparring grounds and let out an irritated sigh.
"I wasn't planning to sweep it under the rug anyway. It was my mistake, so I'll make proper amends."
With that, the Mad Demon rummaged inside her robes, pulled out a small wooden case, and held it in her hand. Then, as if unwilling to speak another word to the Blade Demon, she spun on her heel toward the infirmary where Ha Jin had been carried.
And now she had handed that same wooden case to Ha Jin. Of course, Ha Jin had no grasp of the pill's true value.
"What is this?"
"A Ghost Dragon Pill."
The Ghost Dragon Pill. Normally, it was only given to cadets who had achieved exceptional merit or outstanding results. But in this case, the Mad Demon had brought one from her own personal allocation.
"It's a spiritual medicine produced by the Sect's alchemists. Take it."
Ha Jin brought the dark, reddish-black pill to his nose and took a tentative sniff.
'It's quite bitter. Almost like traditional herbal medicine......?'
Distinctive, but not unpleasant enough to refuse. While Ha Jin rolled the pill between his fingers, deliberating, the Mad Demon spoke up.
"You were coughing up blood earlier, so you've probably sustained internal injuries. If you take that and perform Energy Circulation, it should help you recover somewhat."
"Can I just take it now?"
"What's the hesitation?"
"It might be...... dangerous here."
The Mad Demon let out a scoff, then dropped into a chair and folded her arms.
"Yours truly will stand guard. Go on, take it."
Feeling the Mad Demon's watchful gaze on him, Ha Jin placed the pill in his mouth without further hesitation. He didn't know how to perform Energy Circulation—having never learned any heart method—but if it could heal his wounds, that was good enough.
The instant the pill slid down his throat, a bittersweet energy radiated throughout his body. And then something remarkable happened.
Into the fractured mana wellspring, a warm and powerful energy flowed in. Like long-awaited rain falling on a parched riverbed, the energy filled the cracks and began to replenish the hollow spaces.
'What......?'
Ha Jin's eyes widened. He had assumed it was merely a medicine for treating internal injuries, yet its effects were manifesting somewhere else entirely.
'My mana is recovering......?'
Faint though it was, the mana that had bottomed out was unmistakably rising again. For Ha Jin, this was more precious than any spiritual medicine could have been.
A spiritual medicine that restores mana?
'Could I use this as a substitute for mana potions?'
If spiritual medicines were effective for mana recovery too, there was no need to scour the world for mana potion ingredients. As though he had seized a vital clue, Ha Jin's eyes sharpened.
He shot to his feet as if he couldn't afford to waste another second.
"What? Without performing Energy Circulation?"
The Mad Demon started to ask in puzzlement, but then suspicion flickered and she snatched Ha Jin's wrist. She wanted to examine his condition directly.
"Pardon the intrusion."
If he was absorbing the spiritual medicine this quickly, that alone would indicate an exceptional constitution for martial arts cultivation.
As someone who took martial arts with deadly seriousness, the Mad Demon couldn't help but want to learn more about Ha Jin immediately.
'Let's see what you are. A once-in-a-generation martial prodigy?'
But what reached her through her fingertips was something entirely beyond her expectations. His body was simply empty.
A faint trace of energy swirled within, but the deep, weighty current of inner arts that any martial artist should possess was completely absent. Like a jar with no bottom—nothing but hollow emptiness.
The Mad Demon's violet eyes, which so rarely wavered, shook with genuine shock.
"You...... have no inner arts......?"
Her voice was saturated with disbelief. She could only stare at Ha Jin in bewilderment, still gripping his wrist.
"Is there a problem?"
"You truly have no inner arts?"
This single utterance was less a question than a lament at an incomprehensible reality.
The pulse flowing through the Mad Demon's fingertips was indeed empty. A bizarre sensation, as though not a shred of martial cultivation existed within this body.
The Mad Demon's mind went white.
'But that's impossible. During the trial, he clearly blocked my attacks—'
She doubted her own eyes. No—she doubted the sensation in her fingertips. But no matter how many times she checked, the result was the same. There was not a single drop of what could be called inner arts in this man's body.
'Then how did he block them?'
The scene from the examination grounds flashed back into her mind. The unmistakable alien sensation of her fist striking something invisible just before impact.
Utterly different from the heavy recoil of inner arts clashing against inner arts—a feeling of something shattering and scattering.
It was far too alien to attribute to Ghost Hand's martial arts.
'Is it possible to block an attack charged with my genuine energy without possessing any inner arts?'
It shouldn't be. It was something that must not happen. It negated every piece of common sense the Mad Demon had built over a lifetime.
"If you mean inner arts, that's correct. I've never learned any martial arts."
Ha Jin spoke nothing but the truth. His opponent was the Mad Demon—half-hearted lies wouldn't work.
And she had just confirmed with her own hands that he wasn't lying. That left only one possibility.
'Ghost Hand—that old geezer deliberately chose not to teach this man martial arts.'
The Mad Demon swallowed hard.
'Could it be that instead of inner arts, he forged a body capable of blocking my strikes purely through physical conditioning?'
If so, blocking her attacks made sense. It was an absurd notion, bordering on fantasy—but weren't there oddball monks at Shaolin who practiced such things? The Dharma Sutra, "Strength Breaks Softness," Vajra Indestructibility—those types of body-cultivation methods.
For a stubborn, eccentric old man like Ghost Hand, it was absolutely something he could and would do.
'Ghost Hand, what kind of monster did you create during your retirement?'
Her shock gave way to awe. A smile—half chilling, half wonderstruck—spread across the Mad Demon's face.
'If yours truly were to teach her martial arts to someone who has reached this level without any inner arts...... he would become the most unprecedented talent in the entire history of the Divine Sect.'
She scrutinized Ha Jin as though she had unearthed a treasure of the ages, still holding his wrist, and murmured.
"You. Become yours truly's disciple."
A bombshell proposal—the legendary Mad Demon, a Demon Lord, personally offering to take him as her student.
Any ordinary cadet would have dropped to their knees on the spot, calling it the glory of a lifetime. But Ha Jin's answer was devastatingly concise.
"I'll have to decline."
"What......?"
Every expression drained from the Mad Demon's face. She blinked, as though she couldn't comprehend what she had just heard.
The countenance of a Demon Lord who commanded all under heaven went as blank as a lost child's.