Chapter 4. A Third-Rate Warrior Who Gathers Spiritual Medicines (2)
“SKREECH.”
A spider with a shape vaguely resembling a human face spat venom from its mouth.
HISS.
The virulent acidic fluid melted not only the trees, but even the packed earth beneath them, while green smoke rose from it.
I had covered my mouth with a cloth, yet my head was gradually beginning to feel dizzy.
Spiritual medicines often appeared in places where the qi of the earth and the heavens gathered.
Such spiritual grounds did not nurture only spiritual medicines, but spiritual creatures as well.
However, when the creature in question was dreadful enough merely to look upon, people sometimes called it a demonic beast.
“You are hideous indeed.”
Eight legs. A massive body. And upon it, a face resembling a human’s, with four eyes. It was a demonic beast itself—the Human-Faced Spider.
Fearing that its treasure might be taken, the Human-Faced Spider kept the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng behind it and watched me warily.
“Because of you, I had to go all the way to distant Mount Hapchi.”
I circled to its side and cut off one of its legs.
SKREECH.
Green blood sprayed out, spewing smoke and acidic fluid in every direction.
For someone like me, whose internal energy was meager, even the smoke alone carried enough terrible venom to bring sudden death. It had been worth going the long way to Mount Hapchi and eating the Nine-Leaf Divine Root first.
“Even if you survive here, in three years you will be dragged away by the Tang Clan, forced to produce venom until you die dried up.”
SKREECH.
Despite my persuasion, the Human-Faced Spider showed no intention of listening at all.
FWIP.
Spiderwebs shot out from the Human-Faced Spider’s hindquarters in every direction.
The webs spread out like a net and swiftly blocked the passage of the cave.
“Stupid creature.”
I began setting fire to the webs with a torch.
In an instant, the flames caught on the webs and began racing toward the Human-Faced Spider.
Following the creature’s mucus, the flames chased straight to the Human-Faced Spider’s hindquarters.
SKREECH.
The creature panicked and tried to scrape its hindquarters against the ground. At that moment, I poured the oil I had prepared over its body and set it aflame.
SKREEEEEECH!
As the Human-Faced Spider screamed, I thrust my sword into its dreadful maw, and the creature began thrashing wildly.
From its face, which resembled a human’s, green blood poured from its eyes and mouth.
It was a hideous sight, the kind that would haunt one’s dreams.
I withdrew and kept my distance. Soon, the creature’s movements slowly weakened.
Only when a foul, fishy smell filled the cave was I finally able to let out a breath.
“Hoo.”
I had eaten the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwu and the Human King Ginseng, but I had only absorbed eight years’ worth of internal energy.
The two spiritual medicines were precious in themselves, but they were not especially helpful for increasing internal energy, and the amount I could absorb with the Taeul Heart Method was limited.
“How many ages will it take me to catch up to that man with this?”
The Taecheong Divine Sword—no, the current Yong So-ah—had possessed three gapja of internal energy.
Three gapja. Three gapja.
The sheer distance made my mind reel.
Even so, I could not simply stand there in a daze.
“If I eat every spiritual medicine recorded in the Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines, will I at least be able to catch up?”
The Taeul Heart Method was an excellent heart method, but it was still only a foundation.
Without a superior internal energy method, absorbing the medicine’s power would be even more difficult.
The energy of the spiritual medicine would not vanish, but if I died with a blade in my body while unable to absorb it, how bitterly unjust would that be?
“I need spiritual pills. Spiritual pills.”
When it came to increasing the quantity of internal energy, spiritual pills were more efficient than spiritual medicines.
The more renowned the great sect that made them, the more internal energy they could increase.
“There is no end to what I must do.”
As I pondered this and that, I passed the corpse of the Human-Faced Spider and saw the leaves of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng basking in the light that seeped through a crevice in the cave.
“To think I would eat this in my lifetime.”
My worries about spiritual pills lasted only a moment. The moment I saw the leaves of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng, all my concerns vanished.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwu and the Human King Ginseng were precious, but the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng, along with the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, was a spiritual medicine with extraordinary effects in increasing yang and yin true qi as well as internal energy.
In particular, it had the effect of rebirth. If one without martial talent ate it, one’s body would transform into one with excellent martial talent. If one with excellent martial talent ate it, one would be transformed into a Martial God Body.
In other words, if I ate this, at the very least, the foolish situation in which I knew how to block an attack in my head yet could not do so with my body would no longer occur.
Without delay, I began with the smallest root, absorbing as much essence as possible, and chewed and swallowed even the leaves.
A clear, pure fragrance filled my mouth, and every breath I exhaled spread that pristine scent in all directions.
“It is coming.”
Not long after I swallowed the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng, heat began to rise from my lower abdomen.
In order not to miss that moment, I quickly sat cross-legged and began circulating the Taeul Heart Method.
The hot energy far overwhelmed the energy of the Taeul Heart Method and began racing around inside my body.
The gentle and pure Taeul Heart Method diligently chased after the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng’s energy and tried to restrain it, but the thing would not listen.
“Urgh.”
It traveled through my heart meridians, breaking through blocked paths as it pleased and burning away turbid qi.
Each time it did, pain as though my entire body were being torn apart surged through me. Thanks to that, however, the energy began to weaken little by little, very slowly.
And so the endless chase continued.
How much time had passed?
FLASH.
When my eyes opened, the light shining into the cave was so bright that I frowned.
‘Bright?’
In the cave, light only entered the small portion where the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng had grown.
Even that light had been so weak that I had made and carried a separate torch inside.
And yet, if the light was bright?
‘I have changed.’
My body had changed. Vitality surged from every part of me.
THUD.
When I struck the wall with my fist, part of the solid cave wall collapsed.
Even so, I felt no pain at all.
When I looked within my dantian, a lump the size of a finger had settled there.
“Roughly fifteen years’ worth?”
Compared to the prodigies of the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans, it was still far from enough. Even so, this was internal energy gathered through the Taeul Heart Method, which possessed an atrociously slow rate of accumulation.
Moreover, I had tempered the body needed to achieve martial skill, so the speed at which my internal energy accumulated from now on would not be as slow as before.
“I suppose I may try coveting a precious spiritual pill.”
As it happened, I knew of a precious spiritual pill that was not recorded in the Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines.
“To be precise, it is a spiritual pill that the Gyeryong Merchant Guild lost.”
For Gye Cheol-yeong’s sake, Gye Yeon-seok had purchased Mount Hua’s Snow Plum Pill.
Aside from the Purple Firmament Pill, Mount Hua’s finest spiritual medicine, it was counted as the best of their spiritual pills.
In order to obtain the Snow Plum Pill, which even Mount Hua’s true disciples could scarcely glimpse, he had mobilized not only his family fortune but every connection possessed by the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.
And so Gye Yeon-seok had eventually obtained the Snow Plum Pill and nearly succeeded in preparing a brilliant future for Gye Cheol-yeong.
But perhaps because he had accomplished something so remarkable, Gye Yeon-seok’s vanity ruined the matter.
“Or perhaps he trusted in the masters of Mount Hua.”
A master of Mount Hua was coming to visit the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.
Gye Yeon-seok was not the sort of man to let such an excellent opportunity pass, and he held a banquet to advertise that Mount Hua Sect and his merchant guild maintained a close relationship.
However, on the night before Gye Cheol-yeong was to take the Snow Plum Pill, the Snow Plum Pill hidden in the deepest vault of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild vanished without a trace.
An unknown being had evaded the eyes of the Mount Hua masters and stolen the Snow Plum Pill.
Gye Yeon-seok, left like a hound that had lost the chicken it chased, clung to Mount Hua Sect for help. But Mount Hua Sect merely said that the pill had been stolen after it had already been handed over, so they could not bear responsibility, and then departed.
Afterward, Gye Yeon-seok spent another enormous portion of his fortune to acquire a Plum Blossom Pill, but this matter remained in his heart forever, and he forbade even those around him from speaking of the Snow Plum Pill.
Yet another person’s misfortune always made fine accompaniment to drink.
People told this story again and again.
At the time, there had been many tales about who had taken the Snow Plum Pill, but afterward, the lost Snow Plum Pill never appeared in the world again.
“To think playing the role of a moving library would prove useful like this.”
I began searching through the materials in my mind.
The first was the monthly report sent by the Murim Alliance’s Hefei Branch.
Using the date the Snow Plum Pill was stolen as a reference point, I examined the incidents that had occurred in Hefei over roughly the month before and after it, as well as the movements of major Black Path figures.
The second was the Murim Alliance’s entry and exit roster.
If it was a master of the Orthodox Path capable of avoiding the eyes of Mount Hua’s masters, most such people belonged to the Murim Alliance.
By examining only the Murim Alliance’s entry and exit roster, I could determine who had moved and when.
The third was the mission report.
Among the masters dispatched by the Murim Alliance for missions, I narrowed down those who had passed through Hefei around the date of the incident.
And then I organized the information I had gathered using the method of inference that Jegal Cheon-gi had taught me.
“Four people.”
In that way, the identities of four people surfaced in my mind.
Soul-Chasing Guest Ju Jang-mok.
Five-Star Gentleman Song Won-gi.
Diancang Five Swords Gu Il-mu.
Diancang Five Swords Jang Han-gi.
Two of the Diancang Five Swords had stopped by Hefei three days before the incident, rested there for three days, and then left again to carry out their mission.
Five-Star Gentleman Song Won-gi.
He had stayed in Hefei from one month before the incident and remained there for another two months after it occurred.
He was a wandering Warrior, but his conduct was so upright that the people of the martial world had given him the epithet of Gentleman.
Moreover, his skill had reached the peak realm, so if he wished, he could have obtained enough wealth to buy as many Snow Plum Pills as he wanted. Yet he was a man who devoted himself only to the sword, just as a gentleman devoted himself to letters.
And lastly, the Soul-Chasing Guest.
The Soul-Chasing Guest was a man of the Black Path.
He was better at grappling arts than martial techniques, and his greed for wealth was great.
He appeared in Hefei when rumors of the Snow Plum Pill began to spread.
And on the day the Snow Plum Pill disappeared, he vanished.
After that, no trace of him appeared in any of the Murim Alliance’s reports.
“The Soul-Chasing Guest……”
As I continued my reasoning, I reached a point where I was blocked.
Every branch spread throughout the realm was required to include the movements of major figures in its reports at all times, yet there was no mention of the Soul-Chasing Guest anywhere.
The fact that no trace of him appeared in the Murim Alliance’s records after the incident meant there was a high possibility that he had hidden his identity.
Thieves of this sort, in particular, often possessed several identities by using human-skin masks.
After stealing the Snow Plum Pill, he might have erased the identity of the Soul-Chasing Guest from the world itself.
“But no one new appeared during that period.”
I ran frantically through the library in my mind, searching for any new bandit who had appeared around the time the Soul-Chasing Guest vanished, but there was no one similar.
Then, as I searched through another mission report, a hollow laugh escaped me.
“Hah!”
So that was the method he had used.
“That is why there were no traces.”
If things went well, I might be able to steal the Snow Plum Pill without worrying about being pursued.
“This will be easier than expected.”
Just as I thought so comfortably and stepped over the Human-Faced Spider’s corpse to leave the cave, an unprecedented force tugged at my left arm.
“?”
The moment I unconsciously looked down at my left hand, I could not help but be greatly shocked.
A blue dragon was coiled around my wrist.
The Azure Dragon Bracelet I had possessed in my previous life was glowing beneath my skin.
‘What in the world is going on?’
It was strange enough that the Azure Dragon Bracelet I had worn in my previous life was now inside my skin. Stranger still, the Azure Dragon Bracelet was unmistakably drawing the Human-Faced Spider’s corpse toward itself.
“Do you desire its inner core?”
The Human-Faced Spider’s inner core possessed poison so potent that merely touching it could cause severe poisoning, so I had left it alone.
Yet for some reason, the Azure Dragon Bracelet seemed to be pulling at the Human-Faced Spider’s inner core.
RIIIIP.
When I cut open the Human-Faced Spider’s belly, the smell alone made my eyes sting.
As if it had found its meal, the Azure Dragon Bracelet gave off an even brighter light and reached toward the inner core.
“……What should I do?”
The Azure Dragon Bracelet was the relic of the Blood-Drinking Demon, one of the Guardian Dharma Kings.
It was an object that commemorated the Sojeong Squad’s precious victory, and so I had kept it. Until the moment my life ended, the Azure Dragon Bracelet had been the object that symbolized the Sojeong Squad to me.
“Ah, to hell with it. I do not know.”
The moment my approaching hand seized the Human-Faced Spider’s inner core—
SSSSS.
“Urgh.”
A burning energy began to melt through my palm and seep inside.
The urgency that I would be finished if the poison entered my body made me try to let go.
At that very moment—“Hm?”
A cool, refreshing sensation began to be absorbed through my palm.
The energy, which had been a small stream like a brook, soon became a great river and began coursing throughout my entire body.
A shiver ran through me at the invigorating clarity, utterly unlike when I had absorbed the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng.
The Human-Faced Spider’s inner core that had been in my hand vanished without a trace, and within my dantian, I felt the lump grow slightly larger than before.
“Hah, this is……”
I stared in disbelief at the Azure Dragon Bracelet as its light faded.
“Should I be pleased about this, or should I not?”
