"Poison."
The word hung in the air, colder than the stone floor beneath them.
Yeon Tae-joo broke the silence with a rough laugh. "I told you, Physician Yeon. Your son has lost his mind. Qi shock has damaged his brain meridians. He doesn't even know what he's asking for."
"Hak-ah..." His trembling hands touched his son. "You need a sedative. Sleeping Root. Not poison. The fever is making you delirious."
"Listen carefully," said Yeon Hak. "The residual pure qi you pushed into me is burning through my Gwan-won pathway. My body is trying to reject it by spiking my temperature. If the temperature isn't forced down using an element that opposes pure qi, the blood vessels in my eyes will rupture in less than one incense stick's time. Give. Me. Poison."
"No!" His father stepped back. "I am your father! I am this clan's physician! I will not give poison to my own flesh and blood!"
Yeon Hak clicked his tongue.
Time was running out. His heartbeat had grown erratic, that lethal clean energy pumping closer to his vital organs with every pulse.
His eyes swept the shelf behind his father. Rows of dusty ceramic bottles.
"Chil-sung," Yeon Hak called.
The shabbily dressed young man who had been standing frozen with the basin raised his face.
"Black ceramic bottle on the third shelf. Far left end. Red wax seal." Yeon Hak fixed his gaze directly on Chil-sung's eyes. "Get it."
His father spun toward the shelf. "That's Black Castor Seed extract! That's a corrosive pesticide! Chil-sung, don't you dare touch it!"
Chil-sung stood between them. His eyes moved from the old man who had raised him, to the thin young man on the table who had just vomited black blood.
Chil-sung set the basin down on the floor. He stepped past Physician Yeon, took the thumb-sized black ceramic bottle, and walked back to the table.
"Chil-sung! What do you think you're doing?!" Tae-joo snapped.
"My duty in this room is to serve the Young Master," Chil-sung answered flatly, without turning. He pried the red wax seal off with his thumb and held the bottle to Yeon Hak's lips.
Without a moment's hesitation, Yeon Hak drank.
"Insane! You're all insane!" Yeon Tae-joo shouted, yanking his sword from his hip. Physician Yeon had already collapsed to the floor, clutching his own hair with a look of pure horror.
The first five seconds, nothing happened.
Ten seconds later, thin wisps of vapor rose from his pores. The red lines that had bulged along his neck faded slowly, replaced by an extreme pallor. His breathing, which had been ragged and fast, settled into a steady rhythm.
Yeon Hak opened his eyes. The burning pain from his father's qi was gone. The Black Castor Seed poison had consumed that pure energy without mercy, neutralizing it instantly.
He was right.
The theory was sound. This body welcomed poison as a defensive medium.
"See," said Yeon Hak, his voice clearer now. "My temperature is dropping. My eyes aren't bleeding. The poison neutralized—"
The sentence died at a small tearing sound.
Not from outside. The sound came from inside his ears.
Yeon Hak's eyes went wide.
His left hand seized on its own, fingers curling like broken claws. A brutal cold crawled up from his stomach and drove straight into the marrow of his spine.
Wrong, his mind said.
The poison had neutralized the pure qi. But poison was still poison. Without a specialized circulation method to convert the raw pesticide into cultivable essence, the lethal fluid now ran wild through his meridians.
"Akh!" Yeon Hak choked. His mouth opened but no air came in. His body seized and arched violently upward. He rolled off the wooden table and hit the stone floor with a sickening crack.
"Hak-ah!" His father screamed, scrambling forward to cradle his son's head as it began slamming against the floor. "Chil-sung, hold him down! He's convulsing! The poison is killing him!"
"Not... killing..." Yeon Hak forced the words through his locked jaw.
"Quiet! Stop talking!" His father pressed acupuncture points across Yeon Hak's chest in desperation. "We need an antidote! Ash Lotus Flower! Tae-joo, help me, check the western cabinet!"
"Don't bother," Tae-joo's voice receded, footsteps moving toward the door. "You don't have Ash Lotus Flower. The Baek Clan cut off your herbal supply two months ago, remember? This clan is already dead, Physician Yeon. And your son just accelerated the process for himself."
The wooden door slammed shut. Tae-joo was gone.
On the floor, Yeon Hak was still convulsing, but his mind ran faster than before.
This pain was the slap he needed. He was Seok Mun-hwa, the genius alchemist behind the Cheonpa-dan formula.
But in this body, genius alone was not enough. Swallowing raw poison without a specialized qi processing method was no different from drinking lava to keep warm.
"How... long..." Yeon Hak forced his vocal cords to work, ignoring the fresh blood seeping from his lip.
"How long what, son?!" His father wept.
"Chil-sung." Yeon Hak shifted his eyes to the shabby young man holding his shoulders down with full strength. "Paralysis effect... Black Castor Seed... how long in an adult?"
Chil-sung looked at him with a calm face amid all the chaos. "Six to eight hours, Young Master. If the patient survives the first hour."
Yeon Hak exhaled long and slow. The tremors in his body began to ease, not because he was recovering, but because his nerves had simply stopped responding to his brain's commands.
"Good," Yeon Hak whispered. His eyes locked onto his father. "For the next eight hours, leave me alone in this room. And starting tomorrow... tell me every old medical record this clan has been hiding from me."