Prologue
"When everything around you erases you, only what you carry within remains."
The rain wasn't elegiac. It was dirty, gray, urban rain, falling silently on rusted tin roofs and soaked cardboard boxes. Beneath the Cheonggyecheon bridge, a man sat hunched over, his eyes lifeless yet still alive.
Ji-Hoon no longer waited for anything. He no longer dreamed, no longer screamed, no longer cried. But he read.
Between his grimy fingers was an old Korean Wudang manual, torn at the corner, scribbled with ballpoint notes. He knew it by heart, yet he read it again. And again. And again.
Children passed by without seeing him. Pedestrians avoided him like an overflowing trash bin. Ji-Hoon didn't mind. He wasn't part of this world anymore. He no longer belonged.
Murim. That's where his mind lived.
An ancient world, rooted in misty mountains and forgotten valleys. A world of swords and honor, of sects with poetic names and assassins with slow hands. There, the weak perished, but the cultivated rose. There, knowledge wasn't a burden. It was a weapon.
He lived in that other world, through a screen, in a forgotten game that only madmen and true fanatics still delved into.
Then came the mythical quest. A simple message on the forum:
> [Hidden Challenge: Quest of the Goddess of Knowledge]
Difficulty Level: UNKNOWN
Reward: ???
Access limited to players who have completed 100% of the Codices of the Nine Great Sects.
Ji-Hoon didn't hesitate. He was the only known player to have read everything. Memorized everything.
He entered.
What he faced wasn't a boss, or a maze, or a riddle. It was a test of memory, of logic, of intuition, of scholarship. A trial of the soul.
And at the end… there was her.
Qian Zhi.
Not an avatar. Not a game illusion. A presence.
Her gaze was a bottomless well. Her voice, a harp note heard only by the soul.
— You have read. You have understood. You have endured. But will you dare to carry knowledge?
Ji-Hoon had no strength to answer. He simply nodded. And the world shifted.
---
He woke up in a bamboo field. The air tasted like jade. His breath was heavy, his hands trembled… but he knew. He knew this was no longer a dream. He was in the real Murim.
The Treasures of Qian Zhi rested upon him. The cold ring on his finger. The medallion pressed to his chest. The pearl within his heart.
Ji-Hoon, once homeless, now a traveler between worlds, stepped forward into his first battle.
Not with fists.
Not with weapons.
But with everything he had ever learned.