Daewon City stank of horses, old metal, and ambition.
Wide, stone-paved streets twisted between markets, sparring arenas, gambling dens, and tea shops stacked two stories high. Cultivators moved like currents in a river some cloaked, some proud, all dangerous.
Sim Gwan had never seen this many powerful people in one place.
His skin buzzed with it.
Their auras scraped the edges of his perception like invisible knives.
Baek-Ha walked beside him, wrapped in a simple grey cloak, her eyes flicking to every shadow.
"This place feels alive," she said, not quite whispering.
"It is," he muttered. "Most cities grow around resources or trade. This one grew around violence."
---
Finding Go Pil-Bae was like trying to find a specific drunk in a city of failed martial artists.
They started at the recommended teahouses.
Then the back-alley taverns.
Then the fight pits bare-knuckled, shirtless, half the contestants missing teeth or honor.
No one knew where Pil-Bae lived.
But everyone knew who he was.
"A ghost with a liver."
"The man who punched through a Foundation Cultivator's shield with an open palm while vomiting rice wine."
"A lunatic who only teaches people with nothing to lose."
They followed rumors like breadcrumbs through backstreets and broken roofs until one old man at a gambling den finally pointed at a temple on the outskirts of town.
"Go there if you want your bones rearranged."
---
The temple was dead.
Overgrown. Stone steps cracked. A statue of a one-eyed tiger guarded the entry, half its jaw missing. Inside: silence, dust, and a mat with a single gourd of wine sitting in the center like an offering.
Then a voice.
"Step on my mat and die."
Sim stopped mid-step.
The voice echoed from nowhere. Then a figure emerged shirtless, half-asleep, holding a clay jug and dragging his feet like a corpse with a hangover.
Go Pil-Bae.
He had a belly like a retired war general, arms like tree limbs, and eyes that flickered with something terrible.
"You're late," he said, sniffing. "You smell like sweat and secrets."
"I'm here to learn," Sim said.
Pil-Bae took a drink. "Everyone says that. Then they cry when I teach."
"I don't cry."
"You'll bleed, then."
Baek-Ha stepped forward. "We were told you could help."
Pil-Bae looked her over.
Then at Gwan again.
"You brought your cook?"
"She's more than that."
"Mm."
He turned his back. "Come in. Let's see if you're worth ruining my floor over."
---
Training started immediately.
No welcome. No terms. No tea.
Just pain.
Pil-Bae called it "tempering." But it looked a lot like getting the absolute shit kicked out of him.
Sim stood on a stone slab while Pil-Bae circled with a stick.
"Your body doesn't know how to move without asking permission. You think. Too much."
CRACK.
The stick slammed into his shoulder. Gwan grunted. Didn't fall.
"Better," Pil-Bae said. "Again."
Over the next hours, he learned five things:
1. Pil-Bae was stronger than he looked.
2. He only taught through violence.
3. He had zero patience.
4. He respected pain.
5. And as expected he knew exactly what the Veil Root Path was.
---
That night, they sat in the temple's ruined garden.
Pil-Bae smoked a gourd pipe and finally spoke with more than insults.
"You think you're the first? Boy, I've seen what's in your blood."
Sim wiped a streak of dried blood from his cheek. "The woman with the red umbrella said someone put this in me."
"She's right. You're not natural. Your dantian, your core it's forming backwards. It eats instead of stores. That's Veil Root."
"What happens if I keep going?"
"You get strong. Fast. But one day, you'll bleed out through your eyes because your own qi will try to burn you from the inside."
"…Good to know."
Baek-Ha crouched nearby, arms wrapped around her knees.
"What if we stabilize it?" she asked.
Pil-Bae looked at her, for once without sarcasm.
"You'd need to force him through Foundation Establishment the hard way. In battle. In full pressure. Let his qi collapse. Let it rebuild itself through survival."
Sim looked up.
"That sounds insane."
Pil-Bae grinned. "It is. So is walking backwards into hell."
---
The next morning, Sim woke up early.
Pil-Bae was already waiting in the courtyard.
But he wasn't alone.
There was a man with him.
Tall. Slender. Dressed in muted colors. No emblem.
But the air bent around him.
Sim's chest tightened.
"Who is he?" he asked.
Pil-Bae lit a cigarette with one hand.
"Your test."
"What stage?"
"Mid Foundation. Maybe late. Hard to tell. He doesn't like talking."
Baek-Ha stood to the side, pale.
Sim stepped forward.
Pil-Bae said one thing.
> "Don't die kid."
---
The man struck first.
No name. No sound. Just speed.
Sim barely blocked qi erupting along his forearms, flooding through pain paths, fighting back.
The man struck again elbow to the gut. Gwan folded.
But didn't fall.
His vision blurred. Qi spiked.
He let it.
He wanted it.
And then he screamed.
His dantian snapped.
And something rebuilt.
---
The fight turned.
Gwan's strikes became sharper. Faster. His blood heated not with panic, but with control.
He landed two hits.
Then three.
Then took a fist to the jaw that cracked a molar.
He fell.
Stood.
And kept swinging.
Until the man stepped back and, for the first time, smiled.
Pil-Bae clapped slowly. "Not bad."
Sim collapsed.
His whole body shook but the qi inside him?
It roared.
Like a flame that wanted to live.
---
[Foundation Establishment: Early Stage STABILIZED]
---
Baek-Ha ran to him, knelt beside him.
"You're alive," she whispered.
He spat blood. "Mostly."
Pil-Bae stood above them, arms crossed.
"You've got the Path now. It's yours. But the world's going to want it from you. Remember that."
Sim looked up, eyes glazed, jaw bruised.
"What now?"
Pil-Bae turned and walked into the mist.
"Now you survive long enough to regret it."
---