Mixing the Purple Lightning of the Honwonbaekroegong
And the morning after.
I carefully pulled the blanket up over Ye-hwa, who was still sleeping soundly beside me, and stepped out of the bedroom.
I filled the wooden bathtub in the bathhouse with water and warmed it using the Three Treasures of Harmony, then picked up a censer from the storage room and placed it beside the tub.
I added agarwood incense and lit it.
The calming fragrance quickly filled the bathhouse interior.
According to what Ye-hwa had heard from me before regression, Baik-ri Jong-gwon had adored agarwood so much in his lifetime that the scent clung to his clothes. So whenever my mind grew turbulent, smelling the agarwood brought back the gentle face of my grandfather and made me feel at ease.
I went out to the courtyard.
On a wide, flat rock, Se-ryeong was meditating.
It seemed she had been doing this all night.
She was probably still feeling uneasy after I had, quite unintentionally, given her the decisive contribution to turning her into my slave.
As I approached, Se-ryeong opened her eyes.
"..."
With silent, sulky eyes that looked at me as if I were the enemy of every woman in this world.
I let out a light laugh.
"The morning meal will be ready soon. Go wake Ye-hwa and bring her to the bathhouse."
Se-ryeong followed my command without a word.
After confirming that the sleepy, disheveled Ye-hwa was being led by Se-ryeong into the bathhouse, I headed to the kitchen to prepare the morning meal.
Today it was the fried rice with eggs that Ye-hwa loved.
I coated the egg yolks in a golden, glossy coating and cooked the rice kernels until they were perfectly fluffy over a hot fire.
Since that alone would have left everything feeling empty, I also prepared a plate of five-spice braised pork.
I transferred the dishes to platters and carried them to the dining table just as Ye-hwa emerged from the bathhouse.
She sat at the table first, then looked back and forth between the food I was arranging and the face I was serving. She gave me an unexpected expression.
"The meal... was prepared by the master?"
I answered.
"Yeah. To maintain the beauty and health of our slaves, it's important to feed them well. From now on, I'll keep taking care of it myself."
Honestly, the biggest reason was that I was the best cook around.
Based on the time when we first began living together before my regression.
Se-ryeong had never cooked at all, and Ye-hwa could handle basics but was clumsy with the stove, burning ingredients far too often.
There was no comparison now.
In contrast, I had diligently practiced cooking as an auxiliary skill during my days of enjoying poison as the whore leader.
I was now capable of acting as a skilled chef anywhere.
Ye-hwa sat next to Se-ryeong.
Se-ryeong spoke carefully to Ye-hwa.
"Um... are you... all right?"
A small smile bloomed across Ye-hwa's gloomy face.
"I'm fine. Thank you for worrying, Dan-sojeo. Because of yesterday's events too."
"I... couldn't do anything worthy of gratitude..."
"Don't say that. Thanks to Dan-sojeo's chivalry, who stepped up to save me despite being in the same unjust situation, I was able to gather my resolve."
"Huh... really?"
"Yeah. It's true, Dan-sojeo. Can I call you Se-ryeong?"
Se-ryeong nodded slightly, looking a little embarrassed.
"Good. I grant you special permission to call me by my name."
"Please call me Ye-hwa too."
Ye-hwa pulled Se-ryeong into a tight hug.
"Let's endure this year together, Se-ryeong. We'll get through it."
"Uh, okay..."
Se-ryeong stayed still without pushing her away, even though she looked awkward.
The sight of two beautiful women gently rubbing their soft breasts together was quite a pleasant scene.
It would have been even more perfect if I could have slipped my shaft between them...
Tsk, I had to hold back for now.
The meal itself began.
Ye-hwa took one spoonful of my fried rice and her eyes widened.
"Delicious...?"
Se-ryeong smiled faintly.
"Isn't it amazing? The master, despite that appearance, is a great cook."
"Yeah."
What an odd thing for someone like that.
I was a guy with many talents and many hidden aspects. He needed to observe me more carefully.
I gave Ye-hwa some advice as her senior.
"Only then will we be able to end this era of humiliation and properly seek revenge."
"Revenge... Se-ryeong is so amazing. The spirit that didn't yield to harsh trials and set big goals. I respect you so much."
"Hmph, I am the one who carries the Heavenly Demon's name. This is nothing compared to that."
Watching Se-ryeong puff up with pride, Ye-hwa gave me a motherly smile that felt almost like calling me her little son.
My heart finally settled at the much brighter face of Ye-hwa.
Ever since I had heard that my only daughter, Ye-hwa, had wished for a cute younger brother since she was little.
In the history before regression, I had secretly fulfilled that desire by bringing Se-ryeong into the picture.
It looked like the same was true in this history as well.
That was why I had brought the distant Se-ryeong to me before the nearby Ye-hwa.
***
We returned together to my hidden sanctuary.
My hidden sanctuary was a secluded estate tucked away in a bamboo forest on the outskirts of Luoyang.
It was quite large, surrounded by high walls on all sides, and included a vast courtyard.
At a glance, it looked like a place where immortals might live—mysterious and ancient in appearance.
In the old Jin and Wei eras, the game of immortal play had been popular among the young masters.
Originally, this estate had been a villa built by some magnate back then.
Later, the descendants had maintained and used it as a villa until their family fortunes declined, and they had decided to sell.
I bought it under a fake identity and used it as my hidden sanctuary.
Around the estate, I had layered the Illusion Array so that without my path, anyone would wander endlessly in the bamboo forest looking for the house.
On either side of the two-story main building at the center of the estate stood the attached buildings with arms outstretched forward.
One was the storage, the other the workshop.
The structure of the main building for living quarters was roughly as follows.
In the basement, the Gate of the Eight Dragons' Palace of the Illusion Array was installed.
On the first floor were the kitchen and bathroom, along with a special room whose purpose I had yet to reveal to them.
Finally, on the second floor, there were three rooms with south-facing windows.
I used the middle room, and I had assigned the two side rooms to them.
The western room belonged to Se-ryeong, and the eastern room belonged to Ye-hwa.
"Rest. I'll begin practicing my martial skills from now on. There are some pastries on the kitchen shelf—help yourselves."
I went into my room.
I sat on the bed and crossed my legs in the lotus position, closing my eyes.
First, I checked the inner energy I had refined using their bodies and circulated within my dantian.
Se-ryeong's inner energy, focused on dominance and strength, burned like raging fire.
Ye-hwa's inner energy, based on gentleness and softness, flowed like calm water.
My own unique inner energy, which pursued the principles of nothingness and stillness to prevent the opposing natures of their inner energies from repelling each other, enveloped them.
"Huuu..."
With a long breath, I expelled the turbid qi from the channels and began the circulation and nourishment practice.
This was the second chapter of the Gyo-hwang-yu-cheon-sim-beop, the dual cultivation technique I used to directly circulate the inner energy I had absorbed from them.
First, I dispersed my own unique inner energy that had been blocking their inner energies.
Se-ryeong's inner energy and Ye-hwa's inner energy mixed together.
Before the violently repelling opposing inner energies could cancel each other out, I rotated them into perfect balance so they would not lean to one side.
Following the mystery of the Taiji.
Wu Ji Er Tai Ji.
The state of no bias, where nothing had yet been accomplished, was the Taiji.
From that arose yin and yang and the five elements.
Finally, it became the Hun Yuan that encompassed all things.
Inside my dantian, which had become Hun Yuan, their inner energies no longer repelled.
Instead, they stabilized and fused into a completely new nature of inner energy.
I raised my right hand and tried to stir the newly acquired inner energy.
Tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu—
Seeing the purple lightning wrapping around my hand, I grinned.
"Success."
***
I returned to the courtyard with the sword in hand.
I took a wooden practice dummy from the storage and set it up, standing in front of it.
I wrapped purple lightning around the sword raised above my head and struck it down into the dummy.
Kwa-ruung!
With a thunderclap, the wooden practice dummy was smashed to pieces.
The wooden fragments flying in all directions were charred black, as if struck by real lightning.
From behind, Se-ryeong, who had been watching my practice with Ye-hwa, exclaimed in admiration.
"Amazing martial skill. What is its name?"
"The basic opening form of the Honwonbaekroegong—the Flash Thunder Tremor Strike."
"It truly is a martial art worthy of being called a divine skill. The master was willing to bear the hatred of this servant and Ye-hwa just to seek it."
As Se-ryeong said.
Among the martial arts that handle the inner energy resembling nature's properties, those with the nature of thunder are extremely rare.
Thunder is fast and strong, but difficult to control.
The slightest loss of concentration causes it to backflow into the body and kill the user—a double-edged sword.
That's why the widely known thunder-attribute martial arts, without exception, focus on short, instant-kill opening forms.
But the thunder qi of the Honwonbaekroegong was different.
It was qi infused with the principle of the Hun Yuan that encompasses heaven, earth, and all things, so it was extremely stable.
It could be used without burden even if wrapped around a sword like regular qi.
Yet its power rivaled true thunder.
It could be called a divine skill on par with the Heavenly Demon Divine Skill or the Wu Ji Divine Sword.
This time, it was Ye-hwa who spoke.
"I can't help but acknowledge your ability, master. If you had directed that power in the right direction, it would have been truly wonderful..."
Martial artists are like that.
Everyone is obsessed with martial skills, only differing in degrees.
Even if the acts are the same madness, they tend to be relatively lenient toward those done for martial skills.
If they had thought I had simply created them as slaves to satisfy my lust, they would have hated me enough to despise even breathing the same air.
But because I presented the pretext of training the supreme divine skill.
They felt hatred toward me while thinking, "If one trains hard enough in martial skills, this kind of thing might happen."
They would understand and sympathize with my motive to turn them into slaves to some extent.
I was, after all, an unsavory human who couldn't quite be called a proper martial artist...
Honestly, I didn't understand that kind of sentiment well.
Ye-hwa asked me.
"What do you plan to do with that power?"
"I wonder myself. The master is so obsessed with perfecting that martial art, even setting a one-year limit. There must be some pressing reason."
The Heavenly Cult Lord had already been killed, so there wasn't even a desperate situation demanding the Honwonbaekroegong.
It was just a pretext to keep them as my slaves.
But it wasn't completely unplanned.
"Men's goals in martial arts are obvious, aren't they."
I laughed boldly toward them.
"The number one under heaven."
Becoming a man who could claim the Heavenly Demon and the Sword Empress at the same time—everyone would have no choice but to accept it.
That was the dream I wanted to achieve.