The Cooling Battery
Once the duel had ended, the remaining formalities were carried out in the main hall under the supervision of Yu Han-saeng, the manor lord of the Yu Clan of Nanchang.
Hwa Seok-dae, master of Hwa Clan Manor, did his utmost to conceal the humiliation contorting his face as his trembling hand stamped his seal upon a written pledge to deliver ten thousand nyang of silver to Bamboo Forest Manor within three days.
With Yu Han-saeng and a host of witnesses looking on, the ceremony was a dishonor worse than death to him. Unable to remain a moment longer, he left his seat with a face carved from stone, fleeing alongside Jin Mun as if running for his life.
Ouyang Qiangang, the Heo women, and old Hwang Nodae likewise turned their backs on the cascading stream of congratulations and made their way toward Bamboo Forest Manor.
Crash! Smash! Clatter!
The moment Hwa Seok-dae returned to Hwa Clan Manor, his fury boiled over, and he smashed the furniture in his study to splinters.
Just then, the keeper of the herb storeroom came tumbling through the door, his face drained of all color.
"Lord Master! It's a disaster! The herbs... there's something terribly wrong with the herbs in the storeroom!"
"What are you babbling about?"
Seized by a grim foreboding, Hwa Seok-dae raced to the herb storeroom with Jin Mun at his heels.
Creeeak—
The instant the massive door swung open, he understood exactly what the keeper's words meant. The vast warehouse that should have overflowed with the fragrance of precious herbs was instead thick with suffocating dust and a sour, musty stench.
He staggered toward the nearest box, the one holding the highest-grade purple aster root, and lifted the lid. What struck his nose was not a rich medicinal aroma but the rank smell of dry earth.
With shaking hands, he scooped up a fistful of the herb. In his palm, the precious root—priced at three nyang of silver apiece—crumbled limply into powder.
"Ah... aah... AAAAAARGH!"
A groan of agony burst from his mouth like a scream.
He had spent his entire life in the herb trade, and he knew at a glance. The mountain of medicinal herbs filling the storeroom had lost every trace of their potency, reduced to nothing more than heaps of worthless weeds.
The ten thousand nyang in reparations owed to Bamboo Forest Manor, piled on top of the value of the ruined herbs. The total came to more than half of Hwa Clan Manor's liquid assets.
However illustrious a merchant house Hwa Clan might be in Nanchang, this was a blow grave enough to shake the very foundations of the family.
"Uuuugh...!"
Hwa Seok-dae swayed under the shock, his face twisting grotesquely between despair and rage.
"Hwa Do-reung...! This is all that worthless wretch's doing! I'll see to him right this—!"
Blind to the truth that his own greed and arrogance had nurtured this catastrophe, he raged on, heaping every ounce of blame upon his son.
Watching him, Jin Mun heaved a long, silent sigh. In his eyes sat contempt braided together with self-reproach for his own failure.
Was it a fatal error from the start, trying to make use of such a pathetic fool? But Heo Il-bi... how could his swordsmanship change so completely in a single night? It was as if I were watching another man's blade entirely. What fortune could he possibly have obtained to...
His mind churned with tangled thoughts. Heo Il-bi's sudden growth was an 'unforeseeable variable' that had never figured into the plan.
And how am I to report this failure to my lord...
He furrowed his brow, thinking of that person in Hubei Province. This was no ordinary setback. A critical delay had just struck the vast design of the master he served, and Jin Mun sank deep into worried deliberation over how the report should be delivered.
Meanwhile, with the duel against Hwa Clan Manor ended in an overwhelming victory, Bamboo Forest Manor had plunged into a festival. The enormous reparations extracted from Hwa Clan were set to swell the family coffers handsomely, and more than anything, everyone rejoiced that the arrogance of Hwa Clan Manor had been thoroughly broken. On top of all that, the supply of herbs needed as ingredients for the Dragon-Restoring Pill would soon flow smoothly once again.
The celebratory feast hosted by Heo Il-bi carried on late into the night. Though Ouyang Qiangang never touched a drop of wine, he sat at the edge of the banquet hall, wearing a contented smile as he watched Heo Il-bi and Heo Cho-ryeong genuinely rejoice alongside the lively people of Bamboo Forest Manor. The satisfaction was no small thing—that even with his meager(?) part in it, he had been able to help them in a moment like this.
And yet, even amid the revelry, his mind was already running calculations toward the next stage.
This joy is fleeting. I've buried the threat of Hwa Clan Manor, but a far greater mountain still stands—Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor, and Dong Hyeon-do.
After the feast ended and everyone had gone to bed in the deep of night, Ouyang Qiangang sat in the pavilion that served as his quarters, lost in profound thought. A single ordinary Dragon-Restoring Pill rested between his fingers.
Akasha, these pills can fund the Ouyang Clan's restoration—but I can't stay locked away in the refinement chamber producing spirit pills forever.
Deep anguish ran beneath his words.
To unravel all the secrets of the Nine Dragon Myriad Mountains Diagram, and to find a way to cure my own condition, I have to venture out into the wider world. Is there no way for the Ouyang Clan and Bamboo Forest Manor to keep producing Dragon-Restoring Pills even while I'm gone?
That is a difficult problem, Doctor. The 'special low-temperature maturation' process, the heart of Dragon-Restoring Pill production, requires the Pure Yin Qi derived from your Chaeyeon Museang Divine Art. Your absence would mean a halt in production. Your Pure Yin energy is an irreplaceable power source, after all.
I thought as much... Then I have no choice but to mass-produce a large stock before I leave. But that's only a stopgap. It can't be a fundamental solution.
Hmm... Doctor, if the energy cannot be 'replaced,' what about 'storing' it instead? In other words, creating a kind of rechargeable cooling battery.
A cooling battery?
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes sharpened.
Yes. Doctor, you remember the material on the jade box that Dong Hyeon-do sent, don't you?
The Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade?
Correct. It is a treasure that, having nurtured yang energy over countless ages, can radiate a gentle warmth continuously. And just as yin and yang exist within the order of nature, the world also holds rare treasures possessing the opposite property of the Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade.
At that moment, a single word—seen in common within both the Record of Heaven's Bloodline Secrets and the Path of Life and Death—flashed through Ouyang Qiangang's mind like a bolt of lightning.
...You mean the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade?
Yes, Doctor. If the Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade nurtures and releases yang energy, then the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade could serve as the ideal medium for storing yin energy—above all, that pure, frigid Pure Yin Qi of yours.
Akasha's hypothesis was bold yet logical, but Ouyang Qiangang's brow furrowed almost immediately. The wall of reality stood far too high for hope.
Beyond one mountain, another. Both books go on at length about how nearly impossible those things are to find. Surely you haven't forgotten that?
Doctor, those records assume an 'ordinary' case. But you are anything but ordinary. I am not proposing some irrational hope along the lines of 'seek, and ye shall find.' This is a matter of probability.
Probability?
Yes. First, you possess my nanobots—a 'search' capability no one else in this world could even imagine. Second, the very fact that Dong Hyeon-do owns a Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade proves that such rare treasures still exist somewhere in the martial world, and can be 'discovered.' And third, through your Nine Yin Severed Meridians and the Chaeyeon Museang Divine Art, you yourself are a being capable of resonating with 'yin energy' more strongly than anyone else in this world.
Statistically, Doctor, you are the single most likely person to find the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade. So we must seek it. The data says it can be found.
With Akasha speaking like that, there was no giving a deflating reply. Ouyang Qiangang nodded and asked,
...Fine. Say we obtain it. But no matter how rare the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade is, how exactly do you propose to turn it into a vessel that stores the Pure Yin Qi of the Chaeyeon Museang Divine Art?
That part is where I and the nanobots come in. We won't simply be storing the Pure Yin Qi. I will use the nanobots to rearrange the molecular structure inside the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade and etch it with ultra-fine energy circuits capable of efficiently 'charging' and 'discharging' the qi.
Hmm...
All you would need to do, Doctor, is take your time injecting your Pure Yin Qi into those circuits until they are fully 'charged.' Then, later, we arrange for someone you can trust—like old Hwang Nodae—to replicate the low-temperature maturation process using equipment engraved with those circuits.
Your plan is brilliant, but how much Cold Jade would this actually take? If you need a house-sized chunk of the stuff, it feels like finding it alone would take a lifetime.
No, Doctor. Quantity is entirely irrelevant. What we need is not overwhelming quantity, but perfect 'quality' and 'structure.'
Quality and structure?
Yes. Think of a twenty-first-century semiconductor chip, and it will be easy to understand. The performance of a chip the size of a fingernail is not determined by a massive lump of silicon, but by the hundreds of millions of ultra-fine circuit patterns etched onto it at the nanometer scale, isn't that so?
Ouyang Qiangang grasped her point at once.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade will serve us as a perfect 'substrate'—something like a semiconductor wafer. We will not be drawing on the jade's own chill, but on its inherent property: its ability to conduct yin energy stably and without loss.
Akasha continued in her calm, measured tone.
Using the nanobots, I will etch the surface of the Cold Jade with an 'energy control circuit' that resonates perfectly with the wave patterns of your Pure Yin Qi from the Chaeyeon Museang Divine Art. That micro-circuit will be the very heart of the 'cooling battery'—storing your Pure Yin Qi efficiently and without loss, then releasing it with precision whenever it is needed.
Therefore, we need only a single fist-sized chunk of high-purity Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade. From that one piece, I can produce dozens of high-efficiency 'Pure Yin Qi storage units'—enough to perform the low-temperature maturation of dozens of Dragon-Restoring Pills simultaneously.
Within Ouyang Qiangang's mind, the scattered fragments of the plan clicked together one by one, and a thread of solution came into view.
Good.
His next objectives—the ones that had to be accomplished as quickly as possible—drew themselves clearly in his mind.
First, obtain the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Jade. Second, following Akasha's designs, craft the Cold Jade into Pure Yin Qi storage units. Third, before I leave the Ouyang Clan, charge as many of the units as possible with my Pure Yin Qi. Fourth, hand the production techniques over to someone trustworthy and build a system so that Dragon-Restoring Pill production can continue even in my absence.
Only after all of this preparation would he finally be able to set out on his own path with his heart at ease. Ouyang Qiangang clenched his fist tight.
By the following day, word had spread like wildfire across all of Nanchang: Hwa Clan Manor had suffered staggering losses from the affair—and worse, they had violated the merchants' code and thrown the market into chaos. As for Bamboo Forest Manor and Heo Il-bi, who had always prized good faith, the trust of the merchants and the common people rose higher than ever before.