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Chapter 30
ontrolling the poison qi is the key.
I had to drive the poison into the poison well (dokjeong) the way one gathers qi into the dantian with breathing techniques.
Easier said than done.
It wasn’t simple at all.
“If I’d done this once in a previous life, maybe it’d be different.”
This was the first time I’d been taught the Honwon Poison-Body Divine Skill across both my past and present lives.
It was also the first time such a terrible poison had entered my body.
In my previous life I would never have even dreamed of this.
Back then they’d say a little contact with poison could cost you your life, and I was kept well away from anything that resembled poison.
I remembered how my father sometimes put on those anti-poison gloves when he hugged me.
My father in that life had done everything he could to hide me.
But now, thinking back…
“There’s something odd.”
Was my father really hiding me so desperately for the sake of a single family token?
I used to be sure that was the only reason.
But after going outside the residence, I saw things differently. If my father had asked my grandfather for help, or if he’d truly wanted to, it felt like that token could have been countered.
Why didn’t he…?
“Ugh!”
I was snapped back as my thoughts wandered.
“No, I can’t.”
Careful not to let my focus waver, I gathered the poison qi inside my body into the poison well.
A strong sense of foreboding told me that one small slip could cause a disaster.
I could feel the qi inside me ripple.
And stranger still—
“It’s going to a weird place…”
The poison was being sucked into a strange spot.
Like a beast with its reins cut loose, the poison that had been rampaging wildly was burrowing into a corner of my body.
Certainly, that place was not the poison well.
“Where are you going?”
This wasn’t where I had made the well!
The poison moved through my body as if it had a rightful place to occupy—unified and precise.
No matter how much I struggled, it was useless.
Cold sweat dotted the back of my neck.
But I did not stop circulating qi.
One of the greatest poisons held by the Sachun Dang family—
the one that cannot be taken outside of the palace without permission from the Householder, then the Grand Elder and the Elders—the Paldokgo! (Eight-Poison Elixir)
“If I could make it mine…”
If only that could happen…
That would be like gaining another weapon to fight the Family Token (Dangpaejin).
I felt the Manhyeol Sword fidgeting inside my sleeve as if uneasy.
But I didn’t have the luxury to soothe it.
This circulation of qi might be the chance—or at worst, my life.
This was effectively the first battle I’d fought after returning to this life.
“I won’t lose!”
I closed my eyes and placed my hand on my lower abdomen.
Was it only my imagination?
It felt as if heat was rising through my body.
The heat couldn’t escape; it pooled inside me, warming me.
A heat that felt like it would keep heating until it burned me alive.
Feeling that fierce stirring of force run through me made my head swim for a moment.
But I didn’t let go.
Pain and hardship were tolerable.
I had survived worse than this.
No matter how painful, could it be worse than having my abdomen pierced by my uncle’s hand?
This level of small pain couldn’t hurt or wound me.
It had to be like that.
Then, at that moment—
My distant, scattered mind came back, and the qi inside my body began to follow my will obediently.
“Got it!”
A tight rush of exhilaration flooded me.
The movement was tiny, but it was clearly moving as I willed.
If this continued I could draw it all the way into the poison well.
If I could deposit the overflowing qi into the poison well—!
Then.
Kkiririk.
Screech.
A chilling, unfamiliar metallic sound brushed my ear.
It was like multiple dull blades being scraped at once.
“What’s that sound?”
The nerve-grating noise cracked my concentration.
But before I could even realize what it was—
Swaeaaak!
A sound so sharp it felt like my eardrums would be torn rang out.
It was a sound any warrior of the Sachun Dang would know all too well—hair-raising for those raised in the House; a sound impossible not to recognize.
“What—!”
Somewhere, flying blades were being launched!
Without meaning to, I snapped my eyes open.
I whipped my head toward the sound.
“What is this!”
“What’s happening!”
I could see the Dang House guards on watch leap up and parry the incoming flying blades.
But there was one—
“Hup…”
They failed to block one small knife.
The guards turned to me with faces that clearly showed their shock.
I stared at them in a daze, then slowly lowered my head.
A small knife.
A blade no bigger than a small tanto was stuck in my abdomen.
It was much smaller than the other flying knives.
And it had flown from a trajectory different from the others.
That was why the guards hadn’t seen it in time—they were flustered by the sudden barrage.
I looked toward the direction it had come from.
There stood the mechanical device my father had shown me.
“A training mechanism they use.”
“Mechanism?”
“Yeah. If you trigger it, a dozen or so flying knives fire at once.”
The very device I had sworn not to touch.
My father had said it wouldn’t operate. So why did it activate?
Who in the world had tampered with it?
This small knife was—.
“Cough!”
A moment of silence.
Hot blood surged back up from deep inside my belly.
The heat that had been circling in my body like a hawk without a mate flared, burning through me.
I could feel the poison inside me running rampant, burning blood and melting flesh.
With my scattered mind, blurred vision and a collapsing body, I had no strength to control or stop any of it.
My field of vision slowly began to tilt to one side.
“Dangbi!!”
“Biya!!”
“What’s going on here!”
“Medic! Head of the medical hall!”
“Black Cloud Poison Dragon Squad! Protect Bi!”
For a moment there was chaos everywhere, and then—
‘It’s quiet…’
It went still again.
I blinked.
My consciousness was fading.
It felt like someone was lifting and carrying my body, but I couldn’t tell whose hands they were.
Sssslip.
The only thing I realized was—
“Uh—”
That in the midst of the commotion, the Manhyeol Sword had slipped out from my arms.
Dangbi was hurried to the medical hall.
Dang Jin-hyeon scooped Dangbi up and ran toward the medical hall, followed by the head physician, Dang Sa-yuk.
Dang Cheon-gi, who had been chasing after Dang Jin-hyeon carrying Dangbi, stopped and turned to Dang Rip.
“Dang Rip!”
“Yes, Householder.” Dang Rip bowed his head, clearly flustered.
He spoke then, face full of anger.
“As long as you, as the temporary head of Dokryonggak, supervised this test, you cannot escape responsibility!”
“I will remember.” He lowered his head deeply.
Still not appeased, Dang Cheon-gi shouted at the Dang House warriors.
“Find out right away which audacious bastard did this!”
Whoever dared to do this inside the Dang House—attacking a scion while they were circulating qi—was unforgivable.
Not only disrespecting Dangbi, but the Householder Dang Cheon-gi himself, and indeed all the elders present and the entire Sachun Dang—this was an act of contempt that could never be forgiven.
“Seize them and bring them before me!” Dang Cheon-gi roared. The Dang warriors nodded.
Dang Cheon-gi fixed them with murderous eyes, then, not long after, swept away in his deep green wide sleeves toward the medical hall.
Dang Rip, sweating profusely, didn’t raise his head until Dang Cheon-gi had gone.
From the crowd, Dang Rip’s twin brother, Dang Ho, rushed out.
“Hey! What happened? You—don’t tell me you…?”
He grabbed Dang Rip and demanded.
“You’re insane?” Dang Rip responded, looking around at the assembled faces with cold eyes.
Someone among them had deliberately sabotaged the test.
More than that, someone had tried to kill Dangbi.
“We must catch them.”
This was what Dang Rip, as the person responsible for the test, had to do.
He knew his duty clearly.
“Investigate everything, as the Householder ordered.” Dang Rip said.
“Bring in everyone who approached the statue area at the time.”
His voice rang low, also edged with lethal intent, like Dang Cheon-gi’s.
Operating the Dokryonggak’s mechanism is tricky.
You must place twelve flying knives in their slots and rearrange the device’s complex parts in the correct order.
After that complicated process—
“One shot.”
Only once will the knives be fired.
They shoot out at lethal speed, so it’s too dangerous to use on children who are just learning martial arts.
But warriors trained in Dokryonggak had all experienced that mechanism at least once.
So they knew the moment the knives fired and the trajectories.
They knew exactly when to strike to deflect them.
Yet they failed to stop the small knife that flew.
“It wasn’t fired from the mechanism.”
Someone had thrown it.
From within the crowd.
