Reincarnation of the Cloud Dragon - Chapter 28

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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Chapter 28.
“Are you alright?”
Rather than answer Yun Cheon’s question, she retreated backward, curling her body inward.
Like a wounded beast cornered at the edge of a cliff.
“…I haven’t seen you in the Inner Library before.”
Her lips had turned pale and trembled, yet the wariness contained within them was sharp as frost-laden blades.
“I am Yun Cheon, a warrior under the command of Sect Leader Gal Mu Heun.”
“…You needn’t concern yourself with me.”
At a glance, she appeared precarious.
Unable to control the yin energy churning within her, white breath scattered like frost with each breath she took.
‘She’s pushing herself too hard.’
Rather than respond, Yun Cheon fixed his gaze upon the trembling, worn scroll in her hands.
“Severed Meridian Syndrome. And the yin energy has burrowed all the way to the marrow.”
“…How could you possibly know that?”
Her voice still brimmed with caution.
Yet Yun Cheon spoke calmly, though his words carried weight.
“One can tell at a glance. I myself have suffered from congenital Severed Meridian Syndrome.”
Her blue eyes widened in astonishment.
“That… that can’t be right? If you had Severed Meridian Syndrome, how could you be standing so perfectly fine at your age…?”
In that instant, her grip loosened and the worn scroll tumbled to the ground with a soft thud.
It unfurled.
The opened scroll was filled with bizarre characters I had never seen before in my life.
Yun Cheon slowly bent down and picked it up.
‘…Is this script from the Western Regions? Or ancient language?’
Characters as cryptic as earthworms crawling across the page.
Yet the annotations left in the margins caught my eye.
[The collision of Extreme Yin and Extreme Yang ruptures the blocked meridian… from the shattered remnants, a new path shall open… this is called the Convergence of Polar Extremes.]
Yun Cheon’s brow furrowed.
From the annotations alone, I could discern the vicious principle at work.
‘This is madness. This isn’t a cure—it’s nothing short of demonic cultivation.’
The very opposite of the Daoist principles that follow harmony and natural order.
To use a fragile body as a battlefield and collide opposing energies within it.
This wasn’t healing the body—it was shattering it.
“Surely you don’t intend to practice this?”
At Yun Cheon’s pressing question, she desperately reached out her hand.
“Give it back…!”
But Yun Cheon lightly withdrew his hand and shook his head.
“This isn’t a cure. It’s suicide. You would rupture a meridian blocked by Extreme Yin using Extreme Yang? Do you truly believe your body could withstand such an impact?”
“…!”
Her lips trembled violently.
I knew it.
That this was a gamble with my life on the line.
But I had no other choice left.
“Don’t worry about me. There’s no other way now.”
My voice carried the cold venom of someone with nothing left to lose.
With eyes sharp as a wildcat’s, I hurled myself forward to seize the scroll.
Whoosh!
The frail appearance of someone on the verge of collapse from illness vanished entirely.
My body closed the distance with an uncanny, breathtaking speed.
Whirrr!
The moment I extended my arm, a biting wind tore through the shelves.
The yin energy raging uncontrolled within my body became a razor-sharp blade at my fingertips, freezing the very space around it.
‘This is dangerous. The Library Archive will take damage too.’
A cold so severe that touching it would cause flesh to necrotize like a burn.
But instead of evading, Yun Cheon stepped forward.
Tap.
His hand shot out like a blade of frost, catching my wrist with perfect precision.
“…!”
My blue eyes widened in shock.
A chill that would freeze bone upon contact—yet the man before me accepted it bare-handed without flinching.
“Let go! Unless you want to freeze to death too!”
I screamed, unleashing the yin energy I had been suppressing.
Frost began to crystallize across the back of his hand.
A pain like tearing flesh shot up my wrist, yet Yun Cheon’s expression remained serene.
“I don’t want to die.”
He spoke softly.
“So I’m struggling.”
With his words, a foreign energy flowed through my captured wrist into my body.
It was not inner energy accumulated in the dantian.
To survive the cursed constitution of severed meridians, Yun Cheon had created his own life-sustaining breathing technique, carefully cultivating vitality thread by thread.
True Primordial Qi.
That warm, weighty energy gently enveloped my raging cold yin force.
Sizzle.
Like plunging a heated brand into cold water, white steam rose where the two energies met.
Though forces of different natures should have clashed and repelled, his energy flowed like spring sunlight melting the frozen earth of deepest winter.
Rather than suppressing my rampaging cold, Yun Cheon’s energy naturally opened a path for it to dissipate.
“Ah….”
A soft gasp escaped my lips.
The icy thorns constricting my heart melted away.
For the first time in my life, I felt the sensation of breathing without pain.
High in the ceiling, darkness cloaked an elder’s eyes as they gleamed with intrigue.
‘Hmm… Look at that boy. Even Saengsa Jjon struggles to contain her rampage once it begins, yet he suppresses it so effortlessly?’
Even Cheon Gyeon, the watcher, dared not intervene directly in her outbursts.
One careless touch risked detonating the suppressed yin energy, which could sever her meridians entirely.
Each time she spiraled, the best he could manage was shielding the books from damage and summoning Saengsa Jjon.
Yet unexpectedly, this newcomer had stepped forward and was restraining her rampage.
‘What is that technique? I’ve never witnessed such a method even in the Inner Library. No wonder Gal Mu Heun grants him special treatment.’
Yun Cheon’s primordial true qi gently caressed her yin-cold energy, soothing it like a tender touch.
“…What… what is this?”
She stared blankly, her gaze shifting between her wrist and Yun Cheon.
Slowly, a faint blush returned to her lips, which had been drained of color moments before.
“That’s not internal energy…?”
The ferocious cold that had threatened to consume her—she had never encountered its like—this boy had tamed it.
And he had done so with a body afflicted by the same severed meridian condition as hers.
“Could it be… primordial true qi?”
Her pupils trembled.
The fundamental life force one possessed from birth.
‘To wield it with such mastery… how is this even possible?’
Once her breathing stabilized, Yun Cheon slowly withdrew his hand.
“This is merely a temporary measure. I’ve only calmed her for now. True healing requires…”
“I already know that much.”
She turned her head, her tone sharp and dismissive.
Yet her steady hands and the faint color returning to her pale cheeks betrayed the truth her words denied.
“…Don’t misunderstand. I could have calmed myself without your help.”
Pride. That was all it was.
A fragile, precarious pride that would shatter the moment she leaned on another.
Though Yun Cheon did not know her name, he was certain of her identity.
A patient suffering severe severed meridians who moved through the Inner Library—the Demonic Cult’s forbidden zone—as though it were her own home.
If even Gal Mu Heun and Cheon Gyeon tolerated her dangerous conduct, the answer was singular.
‘So this woman is Saengsa Jjon’s granddaughter. To think I’d meet her before meeting him.’
Yun Cheon smiled faintly, touching upon the truth without wounding her pride.
“Perhaps. In an hour or so, you would have calmed on your own.”
“….”
“Though by then, your meridians would have frozen further, shortening your lifespan, and those precious medical texts on the shelves would have crumbled from the cold damage.”
A direct hit.
She bit her lip.
She could not have been unaware of the devastation her rampage would bring.
After a moment of silence, her voice emerged low and strained.
“…You’re right.”
She lifted her head.
The wariness that had settled in her blue eyes softened slightly.
“Yun Cheon, was it? I’m Seol Young… Thank you. I didn’t want to burden anyone.”
Yun Cheon picked up the worn scroll that had fallen at her feet and spoke.
“Recklessly pursuing such a perilous demonic art—it must stem from that very reason.”
My eyes deepened with understanding.
I handed the scroll to her and added quietly.
“You no longer wish to be a burden to anyone.”
“…!”
Seol Young’s blue eyes trembled visibly. I had struck directly at her most painful wound.
It was the deepest, darkest secret she had never wanted anyone to discover.
Her grandfather—the Demonic Cult’s greatest physician, called the Saengsa Jjon, master of life and death.
‘Even grandfather couldn’t cure my illness….’
Watching the Saengsa Jjon abandon his medical arts in despair.
That was a greater torment than the agony of dying from disease.
“You have quite the talent for seeing through people’s hearts. Disturbingly so.”
Seol Young accepted the scroll with a bitter smile.
But she no longer hid it away in her embrace.
Instead, she met my gaze directly.
“You’re right. I… no longer wish to be grandfather’s burden. Even if I fall into demonic madness and die pursuing this art, perhaps that would be better.”
I saw fierce resolve burning in her eyes.
A desperate struggle, one that had already embraced death.
Yet it was not for herself alone.
‘…She reached for demonic arts because she couldn’t bear to watch her grandfather—the Physician—fall into despair.’
My gaze lingered on her trembling fingertips.
It was not the madness of the Demonic Cult that I so despised, but rather the raw, primal survival instinct of a human standing at the edge of an abyss.
“Escaping your burden through death is easy. Cowardly, even.”
“What do you mean?”
“You would be freed from your burden, but those left behind would carry a far heavier weight—the burden of guilt—for the rest of their lives.”
Seol Young’s eyes trembled violently.
She knew all too well the weight her grandfather would bear.
“Live and prove it. That you are not merely a burden, but hope itself.”
It was a vow I was making to myself as well.
The fallen senior disciples of Kunlun.
Upon the shoulders of the survivor rested both their deaths and Kunlun’s future—a beacon of hope.
“…Not a burden, but hope.”
Seol Young repeated my words like an incantation.
In her dying eyes, a faint but unmistakable spark of vitality ignited.
“I’ll remember that.”
Seol Young carefully folded the scroll and bowed lightly to me.
She feared that if she lingered any longer, she would break down in tears.
Seol Young fled from the Library Archive like a shadow escaping into darkness.
‘The granddaughter of Saengsa Jjon….’
With her departure, silence reclaimed the Inner Library.
I watched the space where she had vanished for a moment before turning my steps toward the medical texts section.
Though I had spoken with confidence before her, inwardly I could not suppress a weary sigh.
‘So even the Demonic Physician, the Demonic Cult’s foremost healer, has found no solution to the Severed Pulse Syndrome.’
The path to recovery seemed impossibly distant.
Yet I did not yield to despair alone.
‘If I meet with Saengsa Jjon privately in the future, observing the state of her illness today will become a decisive trump card.’
* * *
From that day forward, I became a phantom of the Inner Library.
I devoured every medical text in existence, even forgoing meals to do so.
Whisper.
With each turn of the page, a chill clung to my fingertips—traces she had left behind.
Her desperate notes, densely inscribed in every margin, were evidence of how fiercely she had grasped at life itself.
[When yin energy flows backward into the dantian, press the Yongquan point to calm it… Failed.]
[The principle of using poison to suppress poison, countering toxin with toxin… The risk is too great.]
Her handwriting trembled, and certain pages bore stains—whether from frost or tears, I could not discern.
‘…She walked all these paths alone.’
I clicked my tongue.
‘Such fierce dedication to research….’
Like me, she was a fellow sufferer who had exhausted herself fighting to survive the Severed Pulse Syndrome.
‘Sympathy born of shared affliction.’
She had likely endured far longer than I, who had felt the agony of the Severed Pulse Syndrome for merely a year since my rebirth.
It was then.
As I narrowed my brow before an ancient tome inscribed in cryptic characters that appeared to originate from the Western Regions.
Thud.
Someone carelessly dropped a thick stack of books onto my desk.
It was Baek Ri Hyeon.
“What is this…?”
“…Books I’ve annotated. She also studied the Western Regions’ languages under me. Ask if you don’t understand.”
Baek Ri Hyeon stood with arms crossed, his expression deliberately indifferent.
Ordinarily, he would have picked a quarrel with a newcomer for such presumption.
“Are you offering help?”
“…Don’t misunderstand. It’s not because I find you appealing.”
Baek Ri Hyeon turned his head sharply, his tone cutting.
“It’s simply… hearing that you too suffer from the Severed Pulse Syndrome. I’m helping in case it might benefit her even slightly.”
Though his words carried thorns, the books he provided were precisely the essential materials that could unlock the section where I had been stuck.
“…My gratitude.”
I answered briefly and buried myself in the texts.
Baek Ri Hyeon watched Yun Cheon’s retreating figure in silence.
His eyes held a tangle of conflicting emotions.
‘Talent, the sect leader’s favor, even the very illness that afflicts her….’
Jealousy toward the boy who possessed everything he had so desperately wanted, everything he had yearned to reach. Yet beneath that jealousy burned a deeper, more urgent longing—one that compelled him to aid Yun Cheon.
‘…Please, find something. Anything. If only she could live….’
Baek Ri Hyeon, having watched over Yun Cheon, quietly dissolved into the darkness.
* * *
The musty scent of aged paper mingled with the dust of millennia-old wisdom.
I was absorbed in the medical texts of the Western Regions that Baek Ri Hyeon had provided, lost in the profound silence.
That tranquility shattered at the sound of hurried footsteps drawing near.
“Yun Cheon, you have a visitor.”
As Baek Ri Hyeon stepped aside, a familiar, broad-shouldered figure emerged from behind him.
The man was breathing heavily, sweat pouring down his face like rain.
“…Ma Chung, Instructor Kyoto?”
I closed the book and rose to my feet.
For the instructor of Zamadong to visit the Inner Library in broad daylight, no less?
More than anything, Ma Chung’s expression was not one of casual pleasantries.
“Blast it, I had an urgent summons from the Chief Instructor, yet the gatekeepers still tried to obstruct me. Wasted precious time.”
The moment Baek Ri Hyeon vacated the space, Ma Chung seized my shoulders urgently and lowered his voice.
“There is no time. Listen carefully. The news is grave.”
Ma Chung’s expression had grown deathly serious.
“The Inspection Bureau has set their sights on you.”

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This chapter is translated by Falnar Novels Team.
Support us by reading on our official site: https://falnarnovels.com
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