The Arm That Wasn't Quite Human
The moment the Dang Family Poison Flower was mentioned, a bright sparkle returned to Cheong’s eyes. As the Great Pure Energy circulated through her along with the washing technique, chanting sutras in perfect harmony while traveling along the governing vessel behind her spine, the sinister star that had been sucking on her half-open upper dantian like a straw quietly slipped away and pretended it had never been there. Why it retreated so obediently, no one could say. How could a mere human understand the intentions of a star?
Cheong, now back to normal—or more precisely, returned to her usual emotional, somewhat stupid, overly distracted, and not-particularly-kind state after the murderous intent of the Heavenly Killing Lone Star had left her—looked down at the collapsed Cho Gwak. His eyes had rolled back, his body was convulsing, and beautiful foam kept pouring from his mouth in a steady stream of bubbles.
Whoa. He’s still not dead.
Or rather, maybe he wasn’t at a level where he would die? All that had happened was his dantian being pierced and his lower pelvis being shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. It wasn’t a fatal wound that would stop his breathing right away.
Cheong squatted down, grabbed Cho Gwak’s right wrist and elbow in a firm grip, and bent them in the opposite direction of the joints. Even steel would bend easily under Cheong’s monstrous strength. Yet his arm only trembled slightly, as if stubbornly refusing to break.
Just what kind of body is this guy made of, seriously?
She kept struggling like that until—crack, snap, crunch. Along with the sweet sensation of tissue tearing fiber by fiber from the bone, there came a final, satisfying crunch!
“Oh. Got it.”
Cheong beamed with a bright smile and began folding and unfolding Cho Gwak’s forearm in every direction—left, right, front, back—like it was some kind of toy. Only then did the spectators finally realize what she was doing.
They had thought she was checking his pulse because she was holding his wrist and trembling, but no. She had been ripping the man’s forearm off!
The Dao’ersa cried out in horror.
“W-what are you doing!”
“Uh… looting the spoils?”
“Stop it this instant! How dare you lay hands on an official of the imperial—”
“He’s a traitor!!! Who are you calling an official? Didn’t everyone hear him insulting the princess? Wow. That was seriously too much. How could he say such things to a woman? Even I felt ashamed just listening to it.”
She said all this while spinning the severed forearm around and twisting the skin and tendons together.
“Ah!! That’s it!! Could it be that Lord Dao’ersa is actually in cahoots with this traitor?! Is that why you’re trying to protect him?!”
“No no no! Absolutely not! It’s not true! Not at all!”
The Dao’ersa frantically denied it with great vigor. Getting wrongly involved in this mess could lead to the extermination of his entire clan. It was a truly petty and underhanded trick. After all, since it was the Dang family, how could there not be a poison capable of making people hallucinate?
Princess Ha-ryeon was a beauty personally declared by the Emperor himself as the greatest beauty under heaven. So it was only natural that Cho Gwak, upon seeing her illusion, would dream of obscene acts. The Golden Guards who resided in the palace were all familiar with lovesickness; there wasn’t a single one among them who hadn’t suffered from it.
However, Princess Ha-ryeon was the daughter the Emperor cherished most. Especially a very small number of high officials like the Dao’ersa knew better than anyone just how deep that paternal love ran. He still treated his fully grown daughter with the utmost care as if she were a child, even worrying that her bed might be uncomfortable and sleeping beside her. It was one of the deepest secrets known only to the highest officials in the imperial palace.
To have insulted such a princess meant the extermination of his entire family was all but guaranteed. Whether it would be three generations or nine, he would have to beg for whatever mercy remained.
Even in the midst of all that, Cheong finally achieved her goal. The stretched and torn area that had once been his right elbow was now a ragged, crushed mess dripping with blood. And then, at last—riiiip.
Having successfully detached Cho Gwak’s forearm from his body, Cheong stood up with a satisfied expression.
----
Although the process had been rather unsightly—to be exact, there wasn’t a single part of that life-or-death battle that wasn’t unsightly. But even if one set aside the horrifying mouth-of-hell technique and the highly suspicious cowardly poisoning, what remained was still shocking.
The fact that a Harmonious Realm expert, and the third strongest among the Golden Guards at that, had been toyed with and sent rolling by a mere Peak realm young girl was undeniable.
The Dao’ersa had no choice but to withdraw, taking the now one-armed Wiji Hwi Cheom Sa with him. There was nothing more to be gained by staying. Besides, the army’s morale had hit rock bottom and was currently drilling straight into the earth. That too needed to be addressed.
Cheong picked up the severed arm and casually held it out to the old poison master like a gift.
“Grandpa, this thing was weird. Can you take a look? It doesn’t feel like a human body at all. Even steel—no, even cold iron doesn’t seem like it would be this hard.”
It wasn’t like she was going to grill it or make soup with it. There was no reason to tear off a person’s arm and bring it unless it was strange. She had brought it precisely because she wanted him to examine it.
Of course, that was only up to the point of bringing it. If Cheong had felt that simply castrating him wasn’t enough satisfaction, it wouldn’t have been strange for her to tear it off for fun and then toss it aside.
“What are you talking about?”
The Supreme Family Head had taken it reflexively and was about to ask what kind of nonsense she was spouting when—
“Hey!! What the hell is this mess?! I’m seriously so upset!”
Dang Nan-a shouted sharply, grabbed Cheong’s hand, and dragged her away.
In truth, none of Cheong’s wounds were life-threatening. If her bones had been broken or her muscles severed, the Heavenly Killing Lone Star or not, she wouldn’t have been able to exert any strength at all. If she had been cut in a heavily bleeding area, she would have fainted midway and collapsed.
All she had were minor cuts to the skin. The wound on her chest, however, was quite deep.
Dragged by Dang Nan-a into the medical hall, Cheong finally got a proper look at the injury on her own chest.
“Whoa. My chest has become one and two halves. Ugh, that’s gross.”
1 and (1/2)×2. It was actually a very accurate description. Since no part had fallen off, the total volume remained the same, but the left breast had been sliced diagonally, revealing a bizarre, grotesque cross-section.
“Is this really the time to be saying that?!”
Dang Nan-a slapped Cheong’s shoulder with a loud smack and breathed heavily in anger.
“If it had gone just a little deeper, all your ribs would have been cut clean through! Why didn’t you dodge properly?!”
“Well, against a Harmonious Realm opponent, this is actually pretty good. No. I’m sorry……”
Seeing the tears welling up in Dang Nan-a’s eyes, Cheong immediately tucked her tail between her legs. She wasn’t heartless enough to flip the stomach of someone who was genuinely worried and upset.
Instead, Cheong slyly tried to change the subject.
“Um, do you think it’ll leave a scar?”
“You’re worried about a scar but you don’t even care about your own body?!”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Wouldn’t a scar be kind of cool? Originally, I mean.”
“Hey!!!”
Smack.
Cheong ended up getting hit one more time. At least it was only a smack because it was Dang Nan-a. If Seomun Su-rin had heard this, it would have been the terrifying Grandmother’s Fist—a heavy strike from a Profound Realm master regardless of injury.
“I’ll take responsibility and make sure it doesn’t scar, so stop saying useless things.”
Cheong felt a little wronged. It had been sliced diagonally vertically, and then horizontally about two finger-widths across. Put together, it would make a perfect cross shape. Didn’t every sword master need to have at least one cool scar like that?
“No, I’m serious. It’s fine even if it scars, so you don’t have to get so worked up.”
But Cheong’s sincerity didn’t get through. Far from it—it only caused a massive misunderstanding.
Even if a woman wouldn’t say it out loud, was there anyone who didn’t secretly care deeply about their breasts? Whether small, large, or just right, they were precious things one would secretly examine in the mirror—wondering if the shape was okay, if the color looked strange, if they were pretty, and what to do if someone commented on them later.
To have sliced such a thing in half and then say “even if it leaves a scar, wouldn’t it look cool?”—of course that would only make the other person feel even more sorry.
In truth, what Cheong said was easy to misunderstand. What use would a cool scar on a woman’s chest be? It wasn’t like she could flash it at passersby and say, “Look at this! Whoa, a sword scar! You recognize the cross, right?” and brag about it.
“You really… seriously…… *hic.*”
Dang Nan-a finally burst into heavy sobs.
And so, Cheong had to pay a very painful price for toying with a woman’s pure heart with nonsense.
“Ack! It hurts! A little gentler! Save me, kyaaak! Somebody help! The doctor is killing me!”
“What are you talking about? I used plenty of paralyzing powder. Even an elephant would be fine with this much, you know?”
“C-can’t you give me some poppy extract?”
“This girl, do you even know how harmful poppy is?”
“Hiss… huff… huff. *Sob.* *Hic.* Ack!”
For the first time since leaving the city, Cheong cursed the strategy guide. Honestly, shouldn’t anesthesia be included? Why was there poppy but no anesthesia?
In reality, pain itself was necessary for the body’s survival. Therefore, anesthesia was harmful. Poppy didn’t remove pain—it merely elevated one’s mood to hide it. In modern terms, one could analyze it as some kind of hormone doing this and that, but Cheong didn’t know any of that.
So all she could do was curse her anesthesia-resistant body and the person who had recommended that particular choice.
----
It was that same night when the old poison master came to visit.
Cheong greeted the poison elder she had so generously gifted with a bright smile.
“Whoa. That stuff worked incredibly well.”
It was bound to work well. The Dang family possessed seven absolute poisons known as the Seven Great Extreme Poisons. They were considered almost accidental products even within the family’s long history.
They were: Pal Saek Bun Hwan Dok, Gyeon Hon Su, Sin Seon Pyo, Tal Baek Mi Mang San, Chil Bo Dan Hon San, O Dok Sin Mu, and Myeol Hon Dan.
The materials the Supreme Family Head had personally handled were precisely these greatest extreme poisons of the Dang family. Moreover, the Supreme Family Head was the greatest poison artisan under heaven. The result was the most vicious poison under heaven, modified by the greatest craftsman under heaven.
Even a Harmonious Realm expert—perhaps even someone in the Profound Realm—would have met a miserable end if they failed to quickly suppress and expel or burn away the poison energy in the early stages.
On top of that, Cho Gwak had lost his reason and failed to notice the poison, which was also the result of his meridians already being heavily damaged by the Sosu Magong.
“Do you have any more? I used up all three pills……”
“Hehe, that was all I had. It was something that came out by chance. I was going to ask if you had any left, but it seems that won’t be possible.”
The Supreme Family Head also looked regretful. Since he made them as a hobby, there had been more than just one or two. But since there was no one to test them on, he had simply stored them away without recording the exact recipe.
However, after seeing the terrifying effect of the modified Tal Baek Mi Mang San, he had thought to give it a proper name and add it to the family’s list of extreme poisons. But since they had all been used up…
“Ah. Right. By the way, how did you administer the poison? Did you learn some kind of poison-using technique?”
“Ah. That.”
When Cheong held out her hand, Choe-ri-ong just stared blankly. Only after Cheong pursed her lips and whistled did he understand and hand over the Boksinjeok.
Cheong took the flute, pretended to drop a poison pellet into one of the finger holes, and then shook it once with a crisp motion. If there had been anything inside, the centrifugal force would have sent it flying out with a pop.
The Boksinjeok was truly an all-purpose club—it could withstand sword energy, produce sound, and even fire poison pellets!
“Oho! The child’s resourcefulness is truly excellent!”
The Supreme Family Head did not hold back his admiration.