Chapter 9: Yin-Yang Harmony

I woke up because my stomach was on fire.

Not bad fire. Warm fire. Like I’d swallowed a hot coal and it was just sitting there below my belly button, glowing.

The sky was gray. Almost dawn. Birds were starting up in the pines. I was lying on the flat rock at the edge of the spring with my legs still in the water, and Yeon-hee was sprawled across my chest, wrapped in her dark robe, snoring. Little cute snores. Like a cat.

I didn’t move.

I just lay there and felt it.

My dantian.

In three months of being Baek Mu-jin, I’d barely ever felt it. The old Mu-jin trained his body like a maniac, but his qi was garbage. Third-rate. A cup of water at the bottom of a big empty jar. Every morning I’d sit and meditate the way the academy taught, and every morning I’d feel that same sad little puddle.

This morning, the puddle was... bigger.

Not a lot. Not a lake. But warmer. Thicker. Like someone had poured a cup of warm tea into my cold cup of water.

And it was moving. Slowly. Swirling.

What the fuck.

Then the window came back.

No static this time. No broken letters. Just clean, glowing text floating in front of my face, like it had been waiting for me to wake up.

[New Function Unlocked: Yin-Yang Harmony.]

[When a Target reaches maximum desire, Harmony is established.]

[Harmony allows the Host to receive the Target’s yin energy during intimacy.]

[Harmony established: Dam Yeon-hee.]

[Yin absorbed. Unrefined. Refine through meditation to integrate.]

I read it three times.

Then a fourth time, just to be sure.

So every time I... with a woman who’s maxed out...

I get stronger?

I almost laughed out loud. I bit my lip so hard it hurt.

In my last life, I died alone at a desk. In this one, the system that got me kicked out of my clan just turned into a cultivation method.

Some old masters spend fifty years in a cave eating pine needles for this.

I get it from making a physician scream on a rock.

Slowly, careful not to wake her, I put my hands on my knees and closed my eyes. Breathed the way the academy taught. In through the nose, down to the dantian, hold, out.

The warm stuff fought me.

It didn’t want to sit nice and neat like my own qi. It was slippery. Soft. It kept trying to slide away every time I grabbed for it. I had to chase it around my meridians like a fish in a bucket.

After maybe a quarter hour, I’d only pulled a tiny thread of it into my own qi. A hair. Barely anything.

But when it joined in, my whole body went warm. My fingertips tingled. My bleeding knee from last night stopped stinging.

[Refinement: 3%.]

Three percent.

Okay. So it’s not magic. It’s work. Real work. One night with Yeon-hee and I’d be sitting cross-legged for weeks turning it into anything real.

Still.

It was more than I’d gotten from three months of sitting alone.

"...You’re glowing."

I opened my eyes. Yeon-hee was propped up on one elbow, squinting at me. Hair everywhere. Robe hanging off one shoulder.

"What?"

"You. Your skin." She reached out and pressed two fingers to my wrist. Of course she did. She counted, frowning. "Your pulse is strong. Steady. Way stronger than yesterday." She looked up at me, suspicious. "Did you sneak some ginseng?"

"Nope."

"Then what—"

"I think it’s you," I said. "Physician’s orders, remember?"

She snorted. But she didn’t let go of my wrist.

And honestly? She was glowing too. Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes were clear. The dark circles that had been under them yesterday were just... gone.

"I slept," she said, like it surprised her. "I actually slept. All night. I haven’t slept all night in—" She stopped. Did the math. "Years. Maybe two years."

I didn’t tell her about the system. How do you even say that? Hey, so, there’s a voice in my head that just turned you into my cultivation manual.

No. Some things stay in my head.

She slid back into the water and pulled me in with her, and for a while we just floated in the warm steam, watching the sky go from gray to pink. She lay against my chest. My arms around her.

"Three nights," she said dreamily. "He’s gone three nights."

"Then I guess I’ll see you two more nights."

She smiled with her eyes closed.

And because I’m an idiot, and because she was naked and warm and laughing against me, I leaned down to her ear.

"What if he walked up that path right now?"

Her whole body went still.

"...What?"

"Your husband." My hand slid slowly down her stomach under the water. "What if he came through that gate right now, with his ledgers under his arm, and saw his wife like this? Naked in the hot spring with me?"

She turned her head and stared at me. Eyes wide.

I thought I’d gone too far.

Then she bit her lip. Hard.

[Desire — MAXIMUM.]

The number didn’t go up, because it couldn’t. But it flashed. Like it was laughing at me.

"You’re a bad man," she breathed.

"You keep saying that."

"You keep proving it." She twisted around in the water to face me and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He’d faint. He’d drop his ledgers in the water and faint. And I’d just keep..."

She didn’t finish. She kissed me instead. Deep. Desperate.

"I want him to know," she whispered against my mouth. "Gods help me. I’m a physician. I’m a decent woman. And I want him to see what he’s been ignoring for five months."

My dantian went warm again. Just from her saying that.

I pulled her closer. She wrapped her legs around my waist. Her breath hitched—

Knock. Knock. Knock.

On the gate.

We both froze.

Not a clack. Not a bead. A real knock. Hard. Fast.

Yeon-hee’s arms locked around my neck.

"Yeon-hee."

Seo-rin’s voice. But wrong. No dry little smile in it. No calculation. Flat and fast and low.

"Get dressed. Now."

Yeon-hee didn’t move. "U-unni? What—"

"Your husband is downstairs," Seo-rin said through the gate. "At the front counter. Asking every person in the inn where his wife slept last night."

Silence.

Just the steam. Just the birds.

And Yeon-hee’s heart, which I could feel pounding right through my chest like it was trying to escape.

"And Baek Mu-jin," Seo-rin added. "He asked about you too. By name."