After the movie theater commotion, he rested for a full day, and then starting the next morning, he began learning purification techniques. Do Seonhwa had made a special request to a senior Purifier who was an Elder, and so it was a grandfather with a long white beard who taught him directly — and the theory behind it was quite demanding.
Purification techniques were a complex ability, remarkable enough that Sim Seowoo had carried out two purifications without a single thought. One had to attune the harmony of yin and yang, approach the task with a reverent mindset of driving away the world’s impurity, erase the traces left by the dead as they sought to harm the living, preserve the balance of the world, and so on and so forth.
There were quite a few hanja characters involved, making the reading difficult, but if one were to summarize the thick tome on purification theory, it ultimately came down to a power that saw the target clearly and washed it clean. Purification was also said to be something that needed to be internalized through hands-on practice rather than simply studied in theory.
So after teaching the basics of purification theory, the Elder assigned him a task.
‘Erase the curse on this wooden box, and we shall begin the next stage.’
It was said to be a cursed object collected from a recent site Heun had been dispatched to. As he handed over the box wrapped in red silk, the Elder warned him again and again.
‘Absolutely do not touch it with your bare hands, and do not try to look inside. Never!’
His tone was gravely serious — but Sim Seowoo’s face as he took the box was utterly impassive. The box was already so rotted that he had no particular desire to touch it with bare hands anyway, and the latch was so rusted it barely opened. So he brought it to the training room exactly as he had received it and practiced there.
The interior of the Purifier’s training room was, curiously, arranged to resemble a forest. Whether it was interior design meant to bring peace to the mind and body, a small stream even ran through the space indoors, and one could even hear what sounded like birdsong at times. It was clearly inside a building, and yet it felt as though one had stepped into nature itself.
Sim Seowoo took in the peculiar elements of the organization called Heun as he put on a pair of white cotton gloves and picked up a brush. It was standard practice to wear gloves when handling cursed objects so that impure energy wouldn’t transfer, and to purify through a tool rather than directly. The explanation that only practitioners highly skilled in purification could manage it with bare hands made him understand why Do Seonhwa and Jin Gwangmin had been so startled when they saw him do it.
Perhaps the reason he had bled from the nose that day was precisely because he had purified without proper tools.
In any case, Sim Seowoo now had tools, and so he thought purification would be all the safer and more manageable — but……
Five days in, he had not managed to erase even a sliver of the curse on the wooden box.
“It’s definitely dark, though……”
Sim Seowoo gazed at the wooden box with a puzzled feeling.
At the start, the Elder had asked him what the box looked like, and when he answered that it looked charred and dark all over, the Elder had praised him, saying that was very accurate. And then he said that from now on, if Sim Seowoo brushed at it with the feeling of wiping it clean, the purification power would naturally follow — and yet no matter how he tried, the dark energy didn’t diminish in the slightest.
Brushing endlessly at a wooden box the size of a hand, he gradually felt as though he had become an archaeologist excavating an artifact. He had been curious about how on earth he had managed the two previous purifications, and now that curiosity had only grown.
Maybe purification can only be done when one has absolutely no thoughts at all? Is it an ability that requires reaching a state of complete mindlessness?
Sim Seowoo stared hard at the brush. A brush with a deep crimson handle and thick golden tassels. He now understood that the two colors were ones that spirits disliked. Red symbolized fire and blood, and gold symbolized light and flame — colors commonly used in rituals to ward off spirits, he had been told.
That was why these two colors could frequently be found throughout Heun’s building as well, and the Purifiers used brushes made in those colors precisely because their role was to erase the traces of spirits. He understood the various background details well enough, but how to actually channel the power remained a mystery.
Phew. Sim Seowoo let out one long breath, then moved his hand again. Resigning himself to the idea that it would work out eventually, he decided to become a machine of brushwork — but then he heard whispering from across the way.
“What’s with that person? They’ve just been clinging to that wooden box the whole time.”
“The Elder is personally overseeing them, I heard……”
It was the sound of other Purifiers in the training room stealing glances at him and talking among themselves.
In truth, they had found Sim Seowoo odd from the very start.
Heun was a very secretive and special organization. Only practitioners with exceptional ability could join, and visitors were screened so strictly that an unfamiliar face naturally stood out. There hadn’t been an entrance examination recently either, which made Sim Seowoo’s presence all the more out of place.
And then, when word spread that one of Heun’s Elders was personally teaching Sim Seowoo, an atmosphere of wariness formed around him. They watched him for a while with the eyes of just how talented at purification must this person be, to have been brought in so suddenly — and yet, absurdly, he had not managed to purify even once.
He was clearly a novice.
Moreover, the way he peered at the wooden box and gloves with a strange curiosity, or simply brushed honestly back and forth, made it plain that he had never actually purified before. He didn’t even know the basics of purification. Considering the way he had looked around the training room when he first entered — as though he had come to a tourist attraction — it was possible he hadn’t even known of Heun’s existence.
“Isn’t he just some ordinary person who’s been living normally on the outside up until now? But is it alright for someone like that to enter Heun?”
The members of Heun carried tremendous pride in their organization. The vast majority were practitioners who had bled and sweat to earn their place in this storied organization that had quietly kept the world in balance — and had undergone seclusion training from a young age. Most were gifted individuals with spiritual abilities.
As such, Sim Seowoo’s arrival was surprising to the Purifiers, bewildering, and then gradually extended into something close to displeasure. The reason was that Sim Seowoo’s expression was persistently impassive — and that was precisely what grated on them the most.
Even setting aside his clumsy ability, if one is practicing purification, one ought to approach it with a serious and careful attitude, as has always been the case!
“So why did they bring someone like that in? It’s not like there’s a shortage of people.”
“He hasn’t even greeted the seniors……”
The Purifiers muttered among themselves even louder. In a tone that made it seem as though they wanted to be heard, they raised their voices — and Sim Seowoo stopped his brushwork and turned to look their way.
“……?”
In truth, Sim Seowoo had known for a while that the Purifiers were observing him. But every time their eyes met, the other party was the one to look away first — so he had naturally interpreted it as meaning don’t get in the way, and given that it was supposed to be a quiet space, he had been well-behaved and kept to himself. Now, out of nowhere, he was being criticized.
So this kind of place has senior-junior hierarchy too. Or rather, because it’s this kind of place, even more so? As Sim Seowoo mulled it over, the Purifiers’ conversation grew even more heated.
“Tch, Heun isn’t the sort of place that teaches someone who knows absolutely nothing from scratch.”
“Must be nice, pulling strings like that.”
They assumed that an Elder personally teaching a novice must involve some kind of backing — connections, in other words. At the mocking, sardonic remarks, Sim Seowoo simply blinked.
He gazed at them for a moment, then rolled his eyes slightly to the side, and in the end said nothing at all, shifting his gaze back to the wooden box. The whole sequence of actions was carried out with that very impassive, that expression — the one the Purifiers currently found most irritating — and just as it was about to set their anger alight——
“Quite loud and dirty for a space that’s supposed to be quiet.”
A cold voice cut cleanly through the atmosphere, falling from the opposite side.
The sound of footsteps approaching accompanied it, and Sim Seowoo’s head turned. The sharp, cutting tone had become, without him realizing it, somewhat familiar to his ear.
Cheon Yijae.
He, who had not been seen since being summoned by the Vice-Leader a few days prior, had suddenly appeared in the Purifier’s training room.
As he crossed the forest in long, unhurried strides, his dark charcoal dopo swayed, and the red lining of its interior was especially striking — so much so that it almost looked as though flames were flickering beneath it.
“So, Sojunim……?”
In truth, the faces of the Purifiers who spotted Cheon Yijae also hardened as though they had come face to face with a calamity. The peaceful atmosphere of the forest shifted in an instant, and an uneasy tension bloomed.
The Purifier at the very front called out urgently.
“You are not permitted to enter the Purifier’s training room at will, Sojunim!”
“That’s right. This is a space where one must keep one’s energy clean, so please leave quickly……!”
The others quickly chimed in, raising objections to Cheon Yijae. They shouted as though they wanted to stop him in his tracks — but he did not slow his steps, and instead merely tilted his head, as though he had heard something amusing.
“As far as I know, other Elders come in here from time to time as well — so why the fuss with me specifically? Ah, is it that my coming in makes the energy in here terribly dirty or something?”
“A, no, that’s, it’s just that you might break our concentration, so please be careful……”
“And who here is currently concentrating on purification?”
Cheon Yijae answered with a languid indifference, sweeping his gaze over the Purifiers. The look in his eyes — you were all crowded together chattering away, weren’t you — silenced every single one of them.
Before long, Cheon Yijae arrived at Sim Seowoo’s side. He leaned in at a slight angle, one hand propping himself against the desk. A glance at Sim Seowoo, and then he checked the wooden box.
One corner of his mouth curled up, just slightly lopsided.
“So this one’s the only one sitting here and training. That means right now, it’s you lot who’ve been making noise and breaking this one’s concentration — so the ones who need to leave are you, aren’t they?”
“……”
“If you understand, shut your mouths and get out.”
It fell like a command, almost threatening in its tone. At the sharp words, the Purifiers exchanged bewildered looks. As though they didn’t know what to do, they fidgeted, lips twitching — and Cheon Yijae tilted his head to the side.
“Why aren’t you leaving? If you have something to say, go ahead and say it. You were running your mouths just fine a moment ago.”
The cold voice seemed to freeze the very forest. Even the birdsong, which had been drifting in and out like a hallucination, disappeared — and Sim Seowoo looked up at Cheon Yijae with a curious tilt of his head.
He had barged into the Purifier’s training room uninvited, and now out of nowhere was trying to chase all the Purifiers out. Was this what one called turning things on their head?
That said, it was hard to interpret his actions as being motivated by any intention to help Sim Seowoo……
“And you on that side — I’d say it’d be a lot more comfortable for you to just leave Heun, given that you’d be spending your time listening to this kind of nonsense. What do you think?”
“……”
“Looking at how you haven’t managed a single purification so far, I’d say you’re probably itching to leave already.”
He was trying to kick him out too……
