Chapter 3. A Third-Rate Warrior Who Gathers Spiritual Medicines
“So, you are saying you will not attend Busaeng Hall?”
Because of this incident, the Taeul Sect was thrown into an uproar.
First, Gye Yeon-seok, Gye Cheol-yeong’s father and the master of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild, made a commotion over Gye Cheol-yeong’s injury. Then, in the process of investigating the incident, Gye Yeon-seung’s negligent conduct during lessons was revealed.
Gye Yeon-seung was dismissed from Busaeng Hall for the matter, and he was no longer allowed to enter the Taeul Sect.
Gye Yeon-seok lamented that, by needlessly making trouble, the guardian meant to protect Gye Cheol-yeong had disappeared, but the matter had already been settled.
“The former Busaeng Hall Master already acknowledged that I completed the course. Therefore, there is no need for me to attend.”
Father made the most fearsome expression he could with that rugged face of his.
To others, it might have been a face that inspired fear, but to me, it was still a face that made emotion surge in my chest.
I quickly turned my gaze away in case tears rose to my eyes.
“I still cannot believe it. How did a wretch like you defeat Gye Yeon-seung? Did you perhaps use some trick?”
“Ah, Hall Master Gye said that and had his arm broken. Do you wish to have your arm broken as well, Father?”
“What did you say?”
“In any case, I am free until the other junior disciples complete Busaeng Hall.”
“Of all the heads you could crack, why did it have to be Gye Cheol-yeong’s?”
My father, Jin Tae-san, was the Hall Master of the Outer Hall, which oversaw the sect’s external affairs.
Since the Gyeryong Merchant Guild was the Taeul Sect’s greatest patron, this incident could hardly have been welcome to Father.
“Did the Guild Master not acknowledge his fault in the end? Then that should be enough.”
“You fool! Do you think a man like Gye Yeon-seok will end this with words alone? If the meals at the Taeul Sect are cut down to two a day, do you think the other disciples will leave you alone?”
“Please speak properly. Why would that be my fault? It would be the fault of the incompetent Outer Hall Master.”
“You brat—!”
“I shall take my leave now.”
“Where do you think you are going? If you will not attend Busaeng Hall, then help with the work of the Outer Hall.”
“I have many personal matters to attend to.”
“And what are they?”
“I am now of an age when hair grows on my face. Please respect my private matters.”
“What?”
Jin Tae-san’s beard began to tremble, as though he had heard something utterly absurd.
But I could not honestly say, ‘I must prepare to protect the Taeul Sect against the return of the Demonic Cult.’
Before long, Father’s hand began moving toward the club standing in the corner, and I swiftly threw myself away.
“Then I shall be off—”
“You brat! Stop right there!”
“Are you the ill-bred wretch called Jin So-un?”
I had escaped my fierce-looking father, only for an old swine with sagging cheeks to block my path.
“Who are you?”
“You…… do not know me?”
Of course I knew him.
Silk robes that did not suit him. A golden leather belt set with jade, and crude, oversized gold rings.
There was only one person in the Taeul Sect who dressed so vulgarly.
It was Gye Yeon-seok, father of Gye Cheol-yeong, the man who came day after day and turned the Taeul Sect upside down with his trouser hems fluttering behind him.
“What business do you have with me?”
“You wretch! Mind your tongue! This man is Master Gye Yeon-seok, the master of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.”
A man who appeared to be an armed escort glared fiercely, his face twisting into a scowl.
“Yes. I heard you. He is the Master of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild. That is why I asked what business he has with me.”
Gye Yeon-seok snorted through his nose as though he was dumbfounded.
“Because of you, our Cheol-yeong is injured and cannot rise from bed. Did you think you could do such a thing to the legitimate heir of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild and simply get away with it?”
He had bled a little, but this was an excessive exaggeration over a single blow to the head.
If that was the standard, what should be done about the Taeul Sect disciples who had been beaten countless times by Gye Cheol-yeong under the pretense of sparring?
“Did you not decide to let the matter pass?”
“That was a matter between the Sect Leader and me. The matter between you and me still remains, does it not?”
Should shamelessness of this degree be counted as a martial art?
“And if you do not let it pass?”
At my words, the armed escort placed his hand on his sword as though he might leap forward at any moment.
“If you were afraid of him being struck, you should have taught him commerce. Why teach him martial arts?”
“……You, you wretch, how dare you speak while an elder is talking…!”
Gye Yeon-seok’s eyes were darting as he thought, and I drove my words into his ear.
“If Senior Brother Gye is selected for the Murim Academy, do you intend to chase him there and hold the descendants of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans responsible as well?”
Not only Gye Yeon-seok, but even the armed escort looked slightly startled.
Had he not thought that far?
Or had he assumed from the beginning that the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans would not impose their hierarchy?
“Given that you cannot answer, it seems you do not possess the courage for that. Yet seeing you come to the Taeul Sect and force such absurd demands upon us, you must regard the Taeul Sect as very easy prey.”
“……Look at this, this wretch……!”
Gye Yeon-seok’s voice was so loud that the Hall Masters of the various halls, and even the Sect Leader from Great Mysterious Hall, began to emerge.
“More than ten junior disciples have been struck by Senior Brother Gye and left unable to rise for days. If you wish to blame me, then first blame Senior Brother Gye for doing that to them.”
“How dare you……”
Gye Yeon-seok, who had been doing nothing but shouting, ‘You wretch……’ and ‘How dare you……,’ suddenly smiled triumphantly.
“If the Taeul Sect loses its patronage because of you, will you take responsibility?”
That had always been the problem.
Half of the disciples of the present generation were children like me, born and raised in the Taeul Sect.
The other half were children from families that were not particularly well-off even in the village.
Most of them had entered the sect to lessen the number of mouths their households had to feed.
Just as children raised in hardship grew up quickly, they understood better than anyone that resisting Gye Cheol-yeong would bring harm to others.
“Responsibility?”
That was precisely why Gye Cheol-yeong and Gye Yeon-seok had been able to lord over the Taeul Sect with such ease.
“There are many other places among the One Hundred Eight Peaks that want Cheol-yeong. We can simply move him there whenever we wish. When that happens, will you take responsibility?”
Gye Cheol-yeong’s entry into the sect meant an enormous amount of patronage.
And the Taeul Sect was not the only member of the One Hundred Eight Peaks struggling with its finances.
The fact that ‘many places wanted Cheol-yeong’ was the weakness that forced the people of the Taeul Sect to swallow their grievances.
That was why we had never once asserted ourselves against him, as others would have done.
“Then do so.”
“What?”
“Responsibility? I will bear it. Go ahead and do as you said.”
My father, who had been approaching from afar, heard the conversation while speaking with another Hall Master. His face turned ashen, and he was on the verge of rushing over.
“There is less than a year left until the special admission review. Do you truly believe Senior Brother Gye will receive treatment as favorable as the Taeul Sect’s if he goes elsewhere? And what martial sect would welcome Senior Brother Gye, a newcomer who merely rolled in, for the sake of a single year of patronage?”
“You…… know that……”
My father, who had been about to rush over, suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“The disciples of the Taeul Sect are not fools. They learned the virtue of gentlemen, and so they merely do not wish to consort with the base.”
Gye Yeon-seok trembled as he ground his teeth and spoke.
“I will make certain the Taeul Sect suffers greatly. Because of what you have done, the disciples of the Taeul Sect will soon reduce their meals and wear only old clothes.”
It was an obvious threat.
I whispered quietly in his ear.
“Do you think I will allow that?”
Seeing Father trying to rush over as though he could no longer bear it, I quickly turned away and left the Taeul Sect.
There was a mountain of work to do.
In my previous life, after Gye Cheol-yeong entered the Murim Academy through the special admission track, the support given to the Taeul Sect had clearly decreased.
Although he had been a lay disciple, the patronage eventually dried up within a few years, as though he meant to sever the bond entirely, and the disciples of the Taeul Sect had to reduce their meals.
“If that is going to happen anyway, then someone other than Gye Cheol-yeong must go.”
Considering that the Taeul Sect was inevitably going to be swept into the Great Righteous-Demonic War, one of the Taeul Sect’s own had to enter the Murim Academy. If one entered the Murim Alliance merely as a low-ranking Warrior, one would only be used as a wall of flesh and discarded.
“The problem is that the Taeul Sect’s martial arts are far too……”
They were worthle…… no, riddled with waste.
According to Jegal Cheon-gi, the only useful martial arts in the Taeul Sect were the Minor Heaven Sword Art and the Taeul Heart Method.
All those countless martial arts were utterly incompatible with the Taeul Heart Method, the root of the Taeul Sect.
Since the roots and branches differed from one another, it was no wonder that, in hundreds of years of history, not a single master had emerged who could shake the martial world.
The supreme martial arts of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans were all contained in my head.
“If I practice those, not even a stray cur will remain alive in the Taeul Sect before the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult returns.”
In the end, the only way for me to grow strong now was to overwhelm others with internal energy.
“The currents of the Yangtze carve away rocky islets.”
However, with the Taeul Heart Method, I would have to cultivate for about two hundred years to gather a single gapja’s worth of internal energy.
In the end, that meant I had to consume every spiritual medicine I could find. But spiritual medicines were called spiritual medicines precisely because they were not common.
“……Heh heh. But there is a way.”
I immediately began searching through the library constructed inside my mind.
While my junior disciples were dying helplessly at the hands of the Demonic Cult, my duty in the Murim Alliance had been to remain there and memorize miscellaneous reports and materials that uselessly took up vast amounts of space.
However, when the Demonic Cult’s forces surged in like a flood, the final defensive line broke, and there was no longer any time left, a situation arose in which I had to memorize even the materials in Mantongbu and Sim Hyeon-gak.
They were classified documents more complex and far greater in volume than the miscellaneous materials.
I gave up on understanding and absorbing them. Instead, simply to store them, I created an enormous library inside my mind.
From the deepest part of that library in my mind, I found a single book.
The Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines.
It was a classified document that encompassed the discovery sites, times of emergence, and movement routes of spiritual medicines that would appear in the martial world over the next twenty years, compiled from records of old.
Though it was called a classified document, at that time it had merely been a book recording spiritual medicines that had already all been discovered.
In order to memorize something so useless, my mind had overloaded, and I had lived with blood pouring from my nose all day.
The reward for that hardship had been murder to silence me.
“Even thinking of it again makes my anger rise. That Taecheong Divine Sword, that bastard…….”
He had been the idol of my childhood.
At the same age, he had no rival; he was a heaven beyond the heavens.
When the Great Righteous-Demonic War unfolded, he had been the savior of the Orthodox Path who brought the fractured Murim Alliance under control in a single stroke.
He had also been the hero who preserved the Murim Alliance to the end, when it had nearly vanished from the martial world.
But in order to preserve the Murim Alliance, the Taecheong Divine Sword had made sacrifices of everyone except a select few.
In the end, the Murim Alliance raised in Bukhae had been rebuilt upon their blood and corpses.
“I will never again trust you or the likes of the Murim Alliance.”
Grinding my teeth, I headed toward the place where the first spiritual medicine, the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwu, was located.
