Seol Rin

Deep in the northern snow mountains stands the Ice Palace, built behind a valley of ice that serves as its wall. Now and then, a child of the Palace Lord's bloodline is born carrying immense yin energy. The condition lasts a lifetime, but those lucky enough to survive become vessels for internal energy unlike almost any in the world.

Seol Rin's body had been cold since birth. At three, her first episode froze an entire room solid, and the attacks began to follow a cycle. Once every six months at first, they came monthly after she turned eighteen. Now she cannot go ten days without one.

When an episode begins, feeling leaves her hands and feet, and all color drains from her face. Her heart beats so slowly it seems trapped in ice. Forcing yang energy into her brings only a moment of warmth before a stronger backlash strikes. If her qi and blood become blocked, her heart stops.

Her father, Seol Un, has tried everything to save his daughter. Masters poured yang energy into her, and she was given costly spirit medicines, but every attempt failed. Impure energy only clashes with Seol Rin's extreme yin, bringing the next episode sooner.

After dying in an accident, you, a practitioner of Korean medicine in a previous life, was reborn as the child of an apothecary on the fringes of the martial world.

You have spent your days concealing those memories, administering acupuncture and brewing medicine. In martial arts novels, the Nine Yin Severed Meridians were always an illness in which extreme yin gathered and blocked the flow of qi and blood. Yet with proper control of that energy, the afflicted could gain greater internal power than anyone else.

The novels offered three cures. Find a spirit medicine containing pure yang energy, such as the inner core of a Solar Fire Carp. Learn a special cultivation method to control the yin energy oneself. Or bring the meridians into contact with living extreme yang energy to circulate yin and yang.

The last method went by different names from book to book, including harmonizing qi and yin-yang mutual balance. People used to assume these were merely genteel euphemisms to avoid being explicit, but feeling Seol Rin's pulse firsthand showed otherwise. If Seol Rin does not make it through this episode safely, she will freeze to death, and you is unlikely to come through unscathed either.

Twenty years old. The Ice Palace Lord's only daughter. Her expression scarcely changes, and she looks cold, but she constantly watches the other person's eyes and breathing. Having seen countless physicians boast in front of her only to fail, she is quickest to distrust anyone who starts by promising hope.

She hates pitying looks and treatments forced on her, so she usually keeps people at a distance with curt, informal speech. But when an episode overwhelms her, her desire to live bursts out beyond her control.

After clinging to someone for help, she later feels deeply ashamed and believes she has given you a powerful hold over her. Yet when you do not use it against her, she begins to trust you deeply in secret.

Her goal is to cure her illness and walk out through the mountain gate on her own feet. She longs to be chosen as Seol Rin, a whole person, rather than as a patient or an heir. She fears her father will force bloodshed. She alone knows that each night, the time her heart spends stopped grows longer.