Fourth floor of the National Academy's Archive.
On the nameplate hanging at the far end of the corridor, these characters were carved.
<The Martial Research Society>
A gathering of cadets who studied martial arts.
It sounded plausible enough.
As though there were anyone at the National Academy who did not study martial arts.
Naturally, the reality was something else.
A social club that admitted only cadets with good backgrounds — heirs to major guilds, children of politicians and businessmen, third-generation conglomerate scions.
“It's been noisy lately.”
“Because of that contract professor?”
“Don't get me started. It's practically a ghost story at this point. There's even a rumor he isn't a parachute hire but a killing weapon the Bureau is raising.”
“There's a limit to how far gossip should run. Have you ever seen a killing weapon that drinks?”
“Still, if one burst of killing intent put most of them in the infirmary, doesn't that mean there's something to him?”
Amid the assorted reactions flying about, someone's gaze turned toward the window.
“Yu-sik, what do you think?”
At the curious question from a female cadet, every eye in the room converged on one spot.
“You sat in on that class too, over the suspension business. Are the rumors real?”
“......”
Cha Yu-sik did not answer.
He simply sat with his legs crossed, looking out of the window.
“A-Ahem. Yu-sik must be tired today.”
She retreated awkwardly.
They did not know.
That under the table, the thigh muscles of Cha Yu-sik's crossed leg were spasming and shuddering madly even at this very moment.
‘Is this right?’
Cha Yu-sik chewed at his lip.
Starting from that first Sunday session, the contract professor had been making them hold nothing but the horse stance, three hours a day.
Truly nothing but that.
He had not taught them a single other thing.
‘Could it be that he has no ability to teach, so he's just standing us in a punishment posture to kill time?’
And yet he could not give up either.
Because the others were holding out to the end and showing up.
If the professor produced an actual secret manual the moment he quit, the sheer galling frustration might drive him out of his mind.
‘I genuinely feel like I'm being conned.’
What was more irritating was that it was hard to conclude with certainty that it was a con.
“Yu-sik? Are you really unwell? You look pale.”
At the voice of the cadet across from him, Cha Yu-sik finally came back to reality.
The corner of his mouth twisted.
“If you're curious, register for it yourselves next semester.”
“......What?”
“Assuming you have the nerve to cross the line that man draws, of course.”
***
Where is the most crowded place for cadets?
Stop passers-by and ask, and a hundred out of a hundred will say the New Hall.
A vast, imposing structure that rose up as though flaunting the Academy's grandeur.
Shhhhhh!
At the center of the plaza in front of it sat a fountain, and a great many people crossed past it without pause.
Cadets hurrying to their major classes, clusters of young high school students on a field trip, ordinary tourists gathered in threes and fours taking photographs.
‘Where are you.’
Kang Hyeon was perched languidly on a bench in the corner of it.
His gaze looked indifferent, but in truth he was sweeping over the frames and constitutions of the cadets passing by.
‘Come out. A constitution that matches even slightly with the seven old men's arts will do.’
Every day, once the dawn session ended, his real work began.
Wandering the Academy in search of vessels who could complete the Seven Luminaries Formation!
‘How is it that not a single one turns up.’
Unbidden, the faces of the old men who had found him at thirteen — a Heavenly Martial Body — came back to him.
Was that it?
Was that why they had danced about and laughed like lunatics?
He dreamed sometimes.
A nightmare in which he opened his eyes to find himself young again, with crazed old men beating him.
Struck and broken and coughing blood, he woke at the moment his breath seemed about to stop for good.
‘Damned old men.’
Why do you torment me even after you have croaked?
Gulp!
Just as he pressed down the nausea with a mouthful of the whiskey in his tumbler.
“Mr. Kang Hyeeeeeon! Hah, hah!”
Someone was running toward him from far off, gasping for breath.
It was Lee Se-a.
“Chick?”
“Why do you wander around so much? Hah, hah.”
“I told you. Don't follow me around.”
Wiping away the running sweat, she flopped down onto the bench opposite.
“Following you around is my job.”
“And I said you can take a rest from that job.”
“My direct superior is the Director, though.”
“Give me the Director's number.”
“No thank you.”
Lee Se-a backed off, because Kang Hyeon genuinely looked like he would do it.
“Anyway, why are you out here so much?”
“And if you knew? Would you solve it for me?”
“Of course I would! Just say the word. I'll have you know I entered the Bureau at the top of my intake. I'm on the task force, so I have information channels too. What is it you want?”
“Is that so? Then find me some constitutions. Someone with the Heavenly Meridian Eye, or with the Nine Yin Severed Meridian, the Nine Yang Ruined Meridian, or a Ghost Eye. Ah, a Heaven-Slaying Body or a Diamond Body would do nicely too.”
“......Sorry?”
Lee Se-a's eyes went blank.
“What on earth are any of those?”
“You said you had information channels.”
“I-I'll look into it.”
“Never mind.”
There was no chance she would know.
They were rare bodies that might appear once in a thousand years even in a Murim mad for martial arts.
He had not expected anything in the first place.
Kang Hyeon looked flatly at Lee Se-a, whose breathing was settling by now.
‘What is it that makes her work this hard?’
He knew.
That when he had moved into the faculty residence recently, she had set the whole place up, from the furniture to the liquor cabinet.
On top of that she had moved into the residence right next door and had not gone off duty once since.
Truly a tremendous patriotism.
‘There were people like that in Murim too.’
Loyalty, mission, the greater cause.
Men who pinned some grand label on themselves and ground their own lives up for it.
“You can take it easy, greenhorn.”
Kang Hyeon put the tumbler to his mouth and spoke languidly.
“Grind your life up like that and there won't be a soul who appreciates it.”
That was the bone-deep honesty of a man who had spent twenty years in Murim rolling like an animal in the name of saving the world.
Nation, loyalty, whatever else.
If you cannot even look after yourself, how are you going to do a proper job of anything?
“I don't mind if nobody appreciates it.”
“What?”
“I know, don't I? That I'm doing something enormously important right now.”
“Is that so.”
A mission he had assigned to herself......
He had seen plenty of that type as well.
Admirable, and foolish.
“Do as you like. Roll around long enough and you'll come to feel it your......”
Kang Hyeon broke off mid-sentence.
For an instant, force entered his languid eyes.
‘What.’
The far side of the fountain.
There was a female cadet walking out of the crowd.
Jet-black hair, cropped short, swaying as she moved.
But in stark contrast to it, eyes of a pale blue.
‘Insane.’
Kang Hyeon's heart lurched hard.
‘The Heavenly Meridian Eye!’
An eye that sees straight through the flow of the meridians and the qi by pure intuition!
Kang Hyeon had such eyes himself, but his had been developed after birth, forced open by lunatic old men who poured the juice of poisonous herbs into them.
That one was an innate spirit eye!
‘This is genuinely astonishing.’
A prickling thrill ran through him.
A legendary rare body that might appear once in a thousand years even in Murim was strolling past his eyes a mere few days after he came to the Academy?
Was that possible?
“You said you didn't want to go off duty, didn't you?”
“Sorry?”
Blinking, Lee Se-a asked again.
“That cadet.”
Kang Hyeon jerked his chin toward the short-haired girl beyond the fountain.
“Look into her.”
“Who?”
“The one over there with black cropped hair and the vivid blue eyes.”
“U-Understood!”
Of the seven old men, the physician who had held the Water Luminary Formation was the Mad Hand.
Even the man himself used to lament, like a verbal tic, that without a Heavenly Meridian Eye it was hard to bring out the Water Luminary Formation's full power.
If it were that girl?
She might wield the Water Luminary Formation even more perfectly than the Mad Hand had.
The very formation he needed most urgently right now, to wash Asura's venom out of himself!
A deep smile hung at the corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth.
***
Not long after, Lee Se-a came back having asked after the student's name.
“Cadet Baek Yu-yeon. Class 19.”
“Information?”
“One moment.”
Tap, tap!
Checking the record on her tablet, Lee Se-a began her briefing.
“Wow, this cadet is a hugely famous prodigy inside the Academy. Her grades are in the very top tier, and above all she has a perfect memory — she never forgets anything she has seen once. So the cadets have a nickname for her, too.”
“A nickname?”
“The walking encyclopedia. Apparently she can run her eyes once over any complicated formation art or heart method verse and have it memorized exactly. They say even the professors are astounded.”
Kang Hyeon shook his tumbler without a word.
‘The gift of never forgetting.’
The talent of not forgetting what one has seen.
In fact, that was an ability anyone possessing the Heavenly Meridian Eye would inevitably come to have.
The Heavenly Meridian Eye sees through to essence rather than appearance.
Which is why a complicated verse or the unfolding of a formation — mere husks — cannot be forgotten however one tries.
“Her major?”
“Martial medicine.”
Nice!
Kang Hyeon cheered inwardly.
A perfect match with old man Mad Hand's specialty.
“Under notable points it says she's Professor Hwang Ye-rim's favorite student. Professor Hwang is the best in the country in martial medicine.”
He understood the feelings of those old men, if only by a hair's breadth.
So this was what it felt like to discover a vessel.
Of course, understanding it did not mean he had the slightest intention of following their methods.
‘So what should I do, then?’
That he would have to think over slowly now.
A prodigy majoring in martial medicine would inevitably have an extraordinary intellectual curiosity and thirst for the field.
And in that field, Kang Hyeon was confident he would not lose to a single soul in this world.
***
The evening glow stained the Academy's grounds red.
Seated on the roof of the New Hall with his whiskey bottle, Kang Hyeon looked down at his leisure.
‘There she is.’
The short-haired, black-haired cadet walking along with an armful of major textbooks nearly as big as she was.
Baek Yu-yeon, the disciple-to-be with the Heavenly Meridian Eye.
He had already marked her firmly in his mind, so the other cadets did not even register.
He had been following her back with interested eyes for some time when.
Tap.
Someone blocked Baek Yu-yeon's path.
A tall, glossily good-looking male cadet.
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
Kang Hyeon propped his chin on his hand and watched below with interest.
But the mood was somehow off for the fresh air of a young couple.
“Baek Yu-yeon.”
At the man's call, Baek Yu-yeon shifted her grip on the books and stopped.
“M-Min-woo.”
“Have you thought about it?”
The man called Min-woo drew a crisp paper document from his coat and thrust it in front of her eyes.
Even from a distance, it had the shape of a contract.
“It's an agreement that after graduation you'll work for ten years in the medical corps under our guild.”
“......”
“All you have to do is put your thumbprint here.”
“Mm.”
Baek Yu-yeon bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.
Watching the scene from the roof, Kang Hyeon's brow twitched.
‘What's this situation?’
A ten-year exclusive contract?
By whose leave?
Just as the languor in Kang Hyeon's eyes turned cold for an instant.
“The hell are you two doing here?”
A coarse, delinquent voice split the two of them apart.
‘Huh?’
Kang Hyeon's eyes went round.
‘Gwak Do-jin?’
Why is he here as well?
Now this is getting interesting.
He had been drinking alone with nothing much to go with it, as it happened.
It seemed a rather excellent bit of theatre had turned up to accompany the liquor.