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chapter 37
“What on earth were you thinking when you went out?”
Back in the annex, Naeng Yeoseol pressed the Sword Spirit for answers. He was interrogating him to make sure he stayed cautious — the Sword Spirit could have even lost his life.
“I didn’t say anything untrue, did I? And even if I don’t know about Gon Man-wook, that guy Hyun Tae-ryeong knew Hyun Myeong had learned demonic arts.”
“That again?”
“Isn’t it a fact? I think it’s not something for the righteous school to hide a son’s crime while persecuting innocent people. Am I wrong?”
Naeng Yeoseol tried to calm the Sword Spirit, but he couldn’t easily bend his stubbornness.
“Uncle, did you get into trouble again?”
“Trouble? I just said what needed to be said.”
The Sword Spirit patted Jin A-seol’s head and said, “Because of this, your name will probably become somewhat known in the martial world.”
When he fought Hyun Tae-ryeong, the outer sect’s Chi-gum Yoo-dong was also present. It was unlikely Yoo-dong wouldn’t report the Sword Spirit’s actions to the outer sect, hence the Sword Spirit’s remark.
“How could you have stopped Hyun Jang-ju’s sword wave?”
In truth, Hyun Hwa-myeong still couldn’t fully accept that the Sword Spirit had blocked a sword wave. That alone proclaimed the Sword Spirit as a superior martial artist — someone from a higher tier than himself.
“It wasn’t that difficult.”
The Sword Spirit said casually. The two born-warriors brightened at his words.
“The sword wave of the Sword-Wave-Sword-Form (Geompa-Geomgyeol) creates a force-field-like energy and then shatters it into fragments and shoots those fragments at the opponent.”
Up to that point, both already understood.
“So, though it’s powerful as a force, its effective striking power is significantly lower. To put it simply: the force’s strength becomes the strength of a sword-energy (geom-gi).”
The two silently nodded. Even so, blocking sword-energy is by no means easy.
“If you form a counter force and collide it with the sword wave, you can block every sword wave aimed at you. That’s the simplest method.”
“You’re saying to stop a weakened sword wave that way?”
“But there aren’t many masters who can form a force like that.”
The two objected to the Sword Spirit’s easy tone.
“Yes, that only means how tremendous the Sword-Wave-Sword-Form is.”
“But you didn’t create the sword-force; you simply thrust your sword forward. Yet the pieces of force scattered in all directions.”
The Sword Spirit smiled.
“I only mixed in Grandpa Godok’s blunt-sword trick.”
“Blunt-sword?”
“Yes. It’s a method to redirect external pressure cleanly to another place — you can think of it simply as a type of ‘heterogeneous grafting’ technique (ihwa-jeopmok). Of course, it’s more complicated than that.”
Naeng Yeoseol and Jeok Hwa-myeong looked at each other.
Calling it ihwa-jeopmok sounds simple, but it’s actually quite difficult. And ihwa-jeopmok has a drawback: the caster’s internal energy must be higher than the opponent’s.
Since Hyun Tae-ryeong was strong enough to be in the top one hundred masters of the martial world, his internal energy was not to be dismissed. It didn’t make sense to the two that the Sword Spirit would have higher internal energy than him.
“Did you eat a lot of elixirs when you were young?”
“My grandparents and elders fed me strange things, but I don’t know if they were elixirs. They just told me they were good for the body and made me eat them. Ah, there is one thing I ate a lot of.”
“What?”
“Hongjeok-sam-gu-yeong-cho.” (Red-Scarlet Three-Nine Glory Herb)
They stared at each other. They had heard many names of elixirs, but never this one.
“There’s an herb that blooms nine red flowers of three shades of red. Grandma said the Hongjeok-sam-gu-yeong-cho is a poisonous plant the likes of which will never appear again in the world.”
“Not an elixir but a poison?”
“Yes! Among poisons, she said it has the second-strongest toxin.”
“Second-strongest? Then what’s first?”
“The first is the human toxin (in-dok), the poison that exists in the human body.”
“People have poison in their bodies?” Jin A-seol asked, curious.
“Yes. When people eat food or encounter harmful energies, toxins slowly accumulate in the body at levels so tiny you can’t notice.”
Even if human toxin is the king of poisons, it can’t do everything; thus the true poison-king was the Hongjeok-sam-gu-yeong-cho.
“What about the Mu-yeong poison?” Jin A-seol, who had heard something somewhere, asked.
“Mu-yeong poison is an artificial toxin, so it’s hard to compare. But indeed, Mu-yeong poison is frightening.”
Naeng Yeoseol thought the Sword Spirit’s explanation made sense in theory; he just hadn’t heard of that herb before so he couldn’t comment much.
“So you ate that poisonous herb instead of elixirs?”
“My grandmother said even a poison could be an elixir. She said if you develop resistance, you could cross from tolerating a hundred poisons to withstanding a thousand — so we ate it a lot at the time.”
In fact, the Sword Spirit was resistant beyond a hundred poisons and even had thousand-poison immunity.
He was raised carefully by three people vying to be the best in the world: invulnerability to blades and swords (Do-Geom Bu-chim), invulnerability to water and fire (Su-Hwa Bu-chim), and invulnerability to a thousand poisons (Cheon-dok Bu-chim)!
In the martial world, such abilities might be essential for survival.
Somehow the talk had drifted to the Sword Spirit’s background. After a long discussion, Naeng Yeoseol brought the conversation back.
“You say you killed those two — Hyun Tae-ryeong and Gon Man-wook won’t just sit idly by.”
“I told the truth.”
“But did those two really learn demonic arts?” Naeng Yeoseol asked again.
“Yes. Both died by my hand. And I knew the Amplified Demonic Art (jeungpok magong) was from a manual because I saw the other two demonic arts, the Flame-Demon Jade-Hewn Technique (Hwama Okhyung-gong) and the Surging-Demon Sky-Smash Technique (Sura Pokcheon-gong).”
Naeng Yeoseol and Jeok Hwa-myeong glanced sharply at each other.
“You saw the demonic manuals?”
“Yes — you both saw it. You watched me look at the Amplified Demonic Art manual.”
Naeng Yeoseol recalled the moment and nodded.
“Anyway, since you’ve earned the hatred of those two, you must be careful.”
“It can’t be helped. It’s better for you both to part ways from me. If you stay with me, you might get caught up and get hurt.”
If you lack power, maybe you can ignore it, but as long as they had the ability, which parent would leave alone someone who killed their child? No such parent existed. That was the Sword Spirit’s point: Hyun Tae-ryeong or Gon Man-wook would surely harm him, so he wanted to separate.
Naeng Yeoseol looked to Jeok Hwa-myeong.
“I will go with the Sword Spirit. Lord Tae-sang, perhaps you should return to Wolyeong Moon?”
Naeng Yeoseol thought a moment and nodded. If only he stayed, it would be fine, but little Jin A-seol was also there.
“Sorry — I planned to go together.”
“No, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done so far.”
“Master! So does that mean we have to part with Uncle?” Jin A-seol asked, sounding sad.
“No, it’s only for a while. A-seol, if you learn martial arts at Wolyeong Moon, your brother will come find you.”
“Really? You must come see A-seol.”
“Yes, you must train hard until then, understand?”
Jin A-seol nodded.
Her young face showed disappointment and sadness, but her tightly closed lips revealed she was okay.
The Sword Spirit smiled brightly as he stroked her head.
“Train hard. Or else your brother will come and tease you again.”
“Pfft!”
“Brother! What will you do? Will you just watch?”
Hyun Tae-ryeong, head of Cheonmyeong Mountain Villa, remained unmoving in the annex given by Shin Chang-ui’s family.
It was embarrassing enough that someone had discovered his son learning demonic arts; even more shameful was that, despite using his ultimate technique on the boy, he could not win.
Hyun Tae-ji, his younger brother and elder of Cheonmyeong Mountain Villa, looked at him impatiently.
Despite his brother’s urging, Hyun Tae-ryeong remained silent.
“Brother!”
Again, frustrated, he called out.
“Taeji!”
Only then did Hyun Tae-ryeong speak in a low voice.
“That brat blocked my sword wave.”
“It must have been luck. Your martial skill is recognized across the land, is it not?”
“If a sword wave is something that can be stopped by luck, then I wouldn’t be counted among the top hundred masters.”
“Brother!”
Hyun Tae-ryeong was the head of a family. If he wavered, the whole clan would sway.
“What are you thinking so deeply about? Think of Jin Myeong. His organs were melted. How terrible must that pain have been?”
“That was the price of learning the demonic art.”
Both Hyun Tae-ryeong and Hyun Tae-ji knew Hyun Jin-myeong had learned demonic arts.
Taeji had accidentally seen him learning and had told Tae-ryeong.
“But brother! He is your son. Whether he learned demonic arts or not doesn’t matter. Jin-myeong is your son.”
He emphasized the word son.
Hyun Tae-ryeong was silent for a moment. The silence weighed heavily in the room.
Hyun Tae-ji waited silently, expecting his brother to make a decision.
After about half an incense’s worth of time, Hyun Tae-ryeong spoke.
“Yes, you’re right. Jin-myeong is my son. If I do not avenge him, who will?”
“That’s right, brother!”
“You contact the main house and mobilize the entire Assassination Sword Corps (Salgeom-dan). Kill him.”
Hyun Tae-ji’s eyes widened.
Being righteous doesn’t mean only doing good deeds. Every organization has its light and its darkness.
If the Sword-Heaven Order (Geomcheon-dae) was Cheonmyeong Mountain Villa’s light, the Salgeom-dan was its darkness.
The Salgeom-dan were a covert assassination group secretly nurtured by Cheonmyeong Mountain Villa; though only twenty in number, they were no less capable than shadowy assassins.
“All of them?”
“There’s one matter.”
“What is it?”
“He said he knew my master. He mentioned ‘grandmother.’”
Hyun Tae-ji, who had also trained under Lee So-han, knew what his brother meant.
“Then…”
“If he says ‘grandmother,’ it would not be Jeonmo Yak-bing but the Sword Marquis Cheong Yak-ryeo. Jeonmo Yak-bing disappeared fifty years ago, so he must be the Sword Marquis’s grandson.”
If he were a direct disciple, he would have said ‘Master’ instead of ‘grandmother,’ so Hyun Tae-ryeong concluded it must be Cheong Yak-ryeo’s disciple. One should not act rashly against a Sword Marquis’s disciple.
“I understand. I will mobilize all the Salgeom-dan. I will also place a contract with the Naeng Ga-gok.”
If Guangdong Province had shadowy forces, Fujian Province had the Naeng Ga-gok.
Naeng Ga-gok was likewise an assassin group — the strongest sect in Fujian where the righteous schools’ influence was weak.
“Do it. Don’t make a mistake — incite Gon Man-wook of the Myunhwa Trading Company so they move too.”
“I will, brother!”
