Chapter 85
Chapter 85
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: Chapter 8: Martial Arts (6)
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As he came back out, he ran into the underlings who looked utterly bewildered.
“Who the hell are you?”
What kind of gang has no sense of hierarchy?
He had just walked out of the boss’s quarters with perfect confidence, so normally they shouldn’t be mouthing off like that. But their reaction was so crude.
“Boss! What’s this one-armed bastard?”
“You son of a bitch, what’s your name! Why are you coming out of our boss’s room?”
Even for a local riffraff gang, this was beyond pathetic.
As one of them raised his voice, ten more came swarming out.
Not a single proper martial artist among them. Even if they had learned some martial arts, it was nothing but parlor tricks, not real training. That’s why they couldn’t sense anything. Anyone with even a modicum of qi sense would feel an instant unease upon seeing Cheonwi. And in the jianghu, feeling something off should immediately put you on high alert.
These guys didn’t have even that.
A red glint flashed in Cheonwi’s eyes.
“Move.”
With that one word, a path cleared.
It worked not just on one, but on the whole group. The thugs who had been glaring and scowling shut their mouths in an instant.
He had deliberately used his “voice.”
With a single sword, Cheonwi could cut them all down by himself.
Oho had mentioned it once.
You don’t send Danmun to a place like Haewu Gang.
Now he understood why.
Danmun despised trash like this.
He had no hesitation in slaughtering fools who lunged at him without knowing their place. If it had been Danmun here instead of Cheonwi, a bloodbath would have erupted long ago.
Cheonwi leisurely exited the Haewu Gang grounds.
No one else tried to stop him.
It was a new experiment.
Cheonwi had imprinted some rather complex orders into Haewu Gang boss Hwangjo’s mind.
First: Throw drinking parties with the gang elites.
He had attached the qualifier “every day.” He wanted to see if it would stop after a day or two, drag on for ten days or more, and if so, how long it would continue.
The voice was an innate ability.
No martial art of the Peng Clan contained incantations with mind-enslaving effects. Nor had he ever learned any shamanic spells.
It was a power flowing in his blood. The woman who had saved him wielded such abilities as naturally as breathing.
He needed to understand the scope and limits of his power.
The second order had the same intent.
Rather than directly commanding them to steal wealth, he had merely left the possibility open. He would observe if the suggestion of “easy to take out” led to actual raids on the estates. It was a test of whether mere hints could induce specific actions.
The third was even more intricate.
Spreading rumors to other gangs seemed simple at first glance, but it wasn’t.
There were many ways to spread rumors.
“The Chae estate has loads of wealth.”
“Estate lord Chae Jeong will lose his government post.”
If Haewu Gang elites shouted this in the markets, it would spread effectively, but that wasn’t the jianghu way.
He had to lure in Shanghai Guild and Qingpomen gangsters to the tavern and subtly disseminate what Cheonwi had said. It was a test of their judgment. Would they execute the order literally and brainlessly, or could they employ imagination and creativity?
“Looks like it worked perfectly.”
The next day, Oho returned from the Three Little Wells tavern, sticking out his tongue in astonishment.
“The tavern keeper was pale as a ghost. Total chaos.”
“They’re all gathered?”
“Haewu Gang, Shanghai Guild, Qingpomen—over thirty of them packed in. Reports said they don’t get along, but a bit of booze and they’re having a blast.”
“Haewu’s footing the bill?”
“Not sure if they’re paying properly, but yeah, seems that way.”
“Forgot about that. If the tavern keeper’s taking a loss, we should compensate him.”
“That much can be approved as operational funds.”
“Need branch chief approval?”
“Nah. I can handle it.”
He was still deputy branch director, after all. Oho had plenty of discretion.
The Peng Clan had money to burn.
To stand as one of the Six Great Clans, asset scale was crucial—more than half the battle, really. Whether dozens of thugs threw drinking parties at a rural seaside tavern, it was a drop in the bucket for the Peng Clan of Hebei.
Of course, the Three Little Wells tavern keeper saw it differently. If Haewu Gang acted true to their reputation as a backwater thug outfit, they wouldn’t pay a dime for booze or food. It was only right for the Peng Clan to cover it.
More importantly, the “voice” had worked flawlessly.
Cheonwi felt anew the wonder of his ability.
Mind enslavement was no simple spell.
To “draw in the soul” meant bending the target to the caster’s will. In the jianghu, such soul-binding arts were taboo sorcery. Yet in practice, they manifested in myriad forms across various fields.
If a beautiful woman used her charms to bewitch an innocent man and fleece him of his wealth, that could broadly be called soul enslavement. Of course, the jianghu’s term implied something more potent.
It was ultimately a matter of degree.
From simple seduction to elaborate brainwashing, the applications were astonishingly diverse. The methods varied wildly.
The signature arts of unorthodox spell sects using special incantations were the typical examples, but formations, poisons, martial arts themselves—even song, dance, painting, or calligraphy—could serve as tools of soul enslavement.
None were easy.
The true soul-binding arts that terrified the jianghu were especially so.
Manipulating someone with incantations and mana alone demanded immense arcane power. The caster’s ability was key, but so was the target’s internal energy. Masters with steadfast minds and deep cultivation shrugged off lesser sorcery. Thus, soul enslavement was mostly used on low-cultivation grunts or non-combatants untrained in martial arts. That’s why mountain hermits dismissed it as mere street tricks.
That was the common wisdom in the jianghu.
Cheonwi’s power transcended it.
It activated instantly, without preparation.
Hwangjo had followed his orders to the letter with just a few words.
The man had shallow internal energy but was still a trained martial artist—and boss of a shamanic gang, no less. He had turned into a devoted servant.
Without any training.
It came naturally.
He could make others act as he wished, with no conditions or backlash.
It felt almost too good to be true.
“You here?”
Oho’s voice snapped Cheonwi from his reverie.
Danmun had descended into the cavern.
“Let’s start.”
Danmun said it the moment he arrived.
Without a word, Oho and Danmun drew their swords.
Clang!
Sparks from the clash of black-and-white blade and crimson sword lit the darkness in bursts.
Cheonwi watched silently for a moment, then stepped toward the table. Two jars sat atop it.
He plunged his left hand into one.
When he withdrew it, his hand was drenched in blood.
Blood dripped from the Water Star Pill pinched between thumb and forefinger.
It was the blood collected when his arm was severed. Even after all this time, it hadn’t clotted, and the color remained vivid. That was the nature of his blood. It coagulated less readily than ordinary blood, staying liquid far longer. He had only just realized this properly.
Cheonwi understood intuitively.
The properties of the stored blood were crucial.
Human blood vessels weren’t all the same. Nor was the blood flowing through them.
Fresh blood pumped from the heart raced through arteries to the whole body, reaching fingertips and toes. The blood returned via veins, gathering turbid qi back to the heart.
Arterial blood was brighter red, purer.
To Cheonwi’s eyes, it gleamed almost luminously.
Venous blood, by contrast, was darker, murkier.
Through his nose, Cheonwi caught the scent of decay and death accumulated in the body.
The blood from slicing his skin was mostly venous. The blood staining those two prior Water Star Pills had been the same.
The blood from his severed arm was different.
Both artery and vein had been cut. In such cases, arterial bleeding dominated. That’s why the blood in the jar was so strikingly red. It contained far more of the life force he possessed.
He could tell the Water Star Pill’s transformation without tasting it.
He placed the arterial-blood-soaked pill on a sheet of clean paper. It dried rapidly, as if reacting to the air. Beyond mere stickiness, its surface hardened solidly.
Cheonwi turned to the other jar.
He dipped his bloodied hand in and swirled it, ensuring even saturation for another Water Star Pill. He left it submerged this time, planning to observe the long-term changes.
The previous two pills had been ineffective.
He had meditated day and night to gauge changes but felt none.
For him or ordinary people, they wouldn’t boost internal energy.
This time was different.
He wouldn’t need to discard either pill.
Both would yield worthwhile results.
So it seemed.
Feeling success within reach, he groped at unremembered memories.
One question had arisen.
That physician Seok had claimed success in refining Water Star Pills.
Did that mean using arterial blood?
In his dream, he had been a speechless infant.
Arteries lay deeper than veins. Infants were especially vulnerable to blood loss. The idea of digging into a baby’s artery for blood was unfathomable—who could conceive it?
Cheonwi wanted to deny it was his birth mother’s doing. The mother he remembered was often ruthless, but far warmer still. She wasn’t capable of such cruelty. He hoped not.
He stopped there.
Choosing comforting belief over harsh truth.
Shing! Clang! Scrape!
“Phew, you got me this time.”
Oho’s voice, arriving just then, pulled Cheonwi from the mire of memory.
“You okay?”
Danmun asked.
“With what?”
Oho shot back, then grimaced.
“Blood’s coming out.”
Danmun’s sword strikes grew sharper by the day.
A gaping red gash crossed Oho’s forehead. Already a spot that bled profusely. The bleeding was heavy.
“Damn it, my face.”
“Seal the acupoints.”
Even without Danmun’s prompt, acupoint sealing was first priority.
Oho’s hand moved swiftly. Pressing Gukcha, Hamyeom, Hyeolli stemmed the flow visibly. Still, blood trickled from brow to jaw.
Cheonwi’s expression hardened.
The scent of freshly spilled blood was intoxicatingly sweet. The aroma of blood infused with profound internal energy was even richer. An unbearable thirst surged. He marshaled every ounce of self-control.