Chapter 67: Divine Thief and the Mad Physician (2)
Chapter 67: Divine Thief and the Mad Physician (2)
In the Rivers and Lakes, the Great Rebirth Pill was a Spirit Medicine counted among the finest treasures of Shaolin Temple. It might not be the very best for increasing one's inner power, but it could certainly be called one of the best.
It had an exceptional effect on healing internal injuries, and it could increase one's cultivation by no small amount. How could anyone not call it a treasure? And yet he had offered to give one—a pill that Shaolin could barely manage to produce once every ten years—to an outsider, and not just any outsider, but the leader of a sect that dressed women in vulgar clothes.
Even I couldn't help being taken aback by Buddha's Son's words.
I showed nothing on the outside, but inside, my thoughts descended into chaos.
I was so flustered that I even entertained the filthy delusion that this gay bastard right in front of me was after my asshole.
Barely managing to pull myself together in that fleeting instant, I put on a calm expression and asked,
"You mean the Great Rebirth Pill?"
"Amitabha. That is correct."
"You could just secretly eliminate us. Why hand over the Great Rebirth Pill, the supreme of treasures?"
"Benefactor. This humble monk may be a crooked monk, but his eyes are not crooked."
His half-open gaze fell upon me, then shifted to Chi-chi.
It wasn't something you would say about a homosexual, but... his eyes really did feel like the eyes of a Buddha. The sort of gaze that saw right through the muddled hearts of others.
"If there were three Peak Realm masters, I might have threatened you as you suggested. But I am not foolish enough to act rashly against two masters who have entered the realm of Heart Arts. Not even if one of them is a demonic practitioner, against whom I would hold the advantage in compatibility."
"You saw through Chi-chi's energy?"
"Yes. She has concealed it very thoroughly, but my Heart Art is specialized in seeing through things, so I was able to perceive it."
The moment he said that, Chi-chi and I both froze. A Transcendent Heart Art was, by nature, a mental martial art that brought about the creation of a new world the moment it was used. By disregarding causality and reflecting one's own mind in the laws of the world, that technique caused everyone within its domain to instinctively realize its name as soon as it was activated.
That was why I didn't use my own Transcendent Heart Art, World Violation. Its name was so blatantly obvious that the moment I used it, my opponent would instinctively realize that I was the Thousand-Faced Lust Demon.
And yet Buddha's Son was telling us that he had used a Transcendent Heart Art without anyone noticing.
Since even a fleeting instant could decide the outcome of a fight to the death between Super Peak masters, using a Transcendent Heart Art from the very beginning, without any warning, was an overwhelming advantage.
If Buddha's Son had been an assassin, that meant he could kill any Super Peak master. And even if he wasn't an assassin, he would still hold a tremendous advantage right from the start.
"You seem surprised by my Heart Art. But my Transcendent Heart Art is nothing to worry about, benefactors."
Buddha's Son spoke to Chi-chi and me with a gentle smile.
"Amitabha. My Transcendent Heart Art is not a technique, but a kind of eye art that is always active. It is called the Mind Eye. All it does is see through energy and make one better at reading an opponent's moves."
"...Is it really all right for you to tell us that?"
"It is all right. I hope for Shaolin to build a good relationship with you, benefactors."
Buddha's Son joined his palms, acting just like a monk without so much as a single filthy hair on him. He was more of a normal person than I'd expected. No—perhaps this was the normal reaction after all.
He said that he had seen through Chi-chi and me using his passive Transcendent Heart Art, the Mind Eye.
Then—
"Using that Transcendent Heart Art, you must have guessed who Chi-chi and I are."
"I have only made a guess. I merely suspect that the sect leader is the Thousand-Faced Lust Demon, and that the benefactor is the next generation's Heavenly Demon."
"And you're offering us such a generous gift based on nothing more than a guess?"
"Even if my guess about your identities is wrong, that does not change your strength. If my efforts can let two Super Peak masters become close with Shaolin Temple, what would be too much to give? Amitabha."
I thought I understood what Buddha's Son was after.
He was offering us lots of gifts in exchange for becoming secret friends.
There had never before been a faction in the history of the martial world with two Super Peak masters among its ranks. At first, seeing that Chi-chi and I—the master and sect leader of the Post-Nut Clarity Sect—were both Super Peak masters, he had tried to pressure us into keeping it secret. But he'd changed his mind and shifted to a new approach: making friends with Shaolin.
The surprising part was how sincerely he seemed to care about Shaolin.
I'd thought that since he was a homosexual, he wanted to turn Shaolin Temple into a holy site for assholes. But unexpectedly, he was rather serious about it.
"The greatest treasure Shaolin can offer at present is the Great Rebirth Pill. And while it is inferior to other Spirit Medicines when it comes to increasing inner power, the Great Rebirth Pill is the finest Spirit Medicine for clearing away worldly thoughts and bringing the mind and body into harmony."
Buddha's Son's gaze settled on Seol Yu-ran.
Exposed to that gaze, which seemed to see through everything, Seol Yu-ran tensed.
"From the look of it, benefactor, you are ready to take the leap into the next realm. You are adapting to the changes of late and moving toward the next stage, but at the same time, they have become lingering attachments, remaining as worldly thoughts that are holding you back. The Great Rebirth Pill would be of great help in breaking through that wall."
What he was offering would certainly be of tremendous benefit to us.
A Small Rebirth Pill was just one of many common Spirit Medicines to me, what with all the Fortuitous Encounters I'd had. But even I couldn't dismiss the Great Rebirth Pill. As payment for mere silence, it left a lot of change over.
Of course, anyone with a conscience would have tried to return the change, but I was a lecher.
I didn't give a damn about that!
"One Great Rebirth Pill, and a secret manual for the Sorcery Brand as well."
"......"
At my demand, a crack appeared in Buddha's Son's gentle expression.
He looked like he had never dreamed I'd make another demand after he'd agreed to give us the Great Rebirth Pill.
"Benefactor. The Restraint Seal is a top secret even within Shaolin Temple. Asking for the Sorcery Brand on top of the Great Rebirth Pill is a bit..."
"I'm not asking you to hand it over for nothing, either."
My original plan had been to threaten Buddha's Son and squeeze every last thing I could out of him.
But how could I turn down the chance to make such an amicable proposal and carry out some peaceful shake-downs? The fact that he was a homosexual did bother me a little, but he wasn't a bad person to do business with.
And I rather liked this situation, too: instead of the Shaolin Temple we'd beaten to a pulp, it would be a Shaolin Temple in perfectly good shape backing the Post-Nut Clarity Sect.
So I thought it might be nice to give Shaolin something in return, too.
I wasn't so coldhearted that I couldn't show a little mercy to the sucker who'd be paying me protection money from now on.
"I understand that, not long ago, Divine Thief stole one of Shaolin's secret manuals."
This time, the opposite of what had happened just moments ago—
Buddha's Son's expression hardened.
"How does the benefactor know...?"
"What matters isn't how I found out."
Divine Thief had originally been born into a minor family. His bones had grown in a grotesquely deformed way, so he had an outstanding talent for footwork, movement techniques, and kicking techniques, but—
When it came to any other martial arts, he was woefully untalented.
As a result, he grew up being looked down on by the other disciples of a minor sect. Out of resentment, he trained his footwork and movement techniques to their utmost limits and mastered them. Before long, he had come to be known as Divine Thief. But perhaps he had still been plagued by an inferiority complex over his weak level of martial arts.
Maybe his guts had grown too big, because after infiltrating even Shaolin Temple and stealing the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic, the man entered closed-door cultivation. In the future, he would even succeed in changing his constitution through Bone Transformation Rebirth.
He would then come under Chi-chi's command, become the Strange Demon, and take part in the Great Righteous-Demonic War, slaughtering the righteous martial artists who had once looked down on him.
Only to meet a tragic end when the protagonist's party, who had stepped forward to fill the void left by Shaolin's weakened strength, hunted him down.
"I'll recover the secret manual Shaolin lost for you. What do you say?"
Let's learn the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic, too.
"Wouldn't that be more than enough payment for the Great Rebirth Pill and the Sorcery Brand?"
And while we were at it, we'd get the Sorcery Brand, too.
"W-would you settle for a Small Rebirth Pill and the secret manual for the Sorcery Brand...?"
"The Great Rebirth Pill!"
"......"
"The Great Rebirth Pill!"
As if.
***
After some deliberation, Buddha's Son accepted my proposal.
It happened four hours after we returned to our room. Since our business had wrapped up sooner than expected, we came down from Mount Song and took a room at a nearby guest inn.
"I didn't expect the abbot to accept your proposal so quickly. I never thought he'd hand over a secret manual like the Sorcery Brand, something that was both a closely guarded secret of the sect and a potential weakness, so easily."
"That's understandable. What Divine Thief stole was the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic, after all. How could Shaolin not want to recover its Ultimate Art, which is also called the Bodhidharma's Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic?"
Just imagine if another family had stolen the Hegemon Sword Form from the Namgung Clan. Those people... I'm not even joking—every last one of them would throw themselves into recovering it, prepared to die.
Even if the Demonic Cult had stolen it, they'd charge in, saying they'd rather die than let it go.
If anything, what surprised me more was how calmly Buddha's Son, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, had behaved even after hearing from me who had stolen the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic.
"He's no bald monk leading Shaolin's monks for nothing. If you want to lead a faction called Thousand-Year Shaolin, I suppose you need that kind of steadfastness."
"Even though he's a homosexual?"
Chi-chi scoffed.
"And yet you're a pervert of the highest order, and yet you became a Super Peak master and the strongest under heaven, didn't you, Master? Does that make any sense?"
"...Generally speaking, no."
"Exactly. In my eyes, that bald monk isn't an ordinary being, either. A Transcendent Heart Art that's active all the time? I haven't heard of the like, even in the First Generation's memories."
It was true that the Mind Eye, that Transcendent Heart Art, was astonishing. Until now, I'd thought the Mind Eye was a kind of realm possessed by eye techniques, but it turned out to be a Transcendent Heart Art.
Was his Heart Art—reading moves and discerning qi—born from the desire to see through other people's filth because he was so filthy himself?
In any case, now I understood how Buddha's Son had inflicted internal injuries on Chi-chi in the original story. The Chi-chi in the original story must have failed to see through Buddha's Son's Mind Eye, then been caught off guard and struck while fighting him to the death.
Even if I ran a simulation of myself fighting him to the death, the result would be the same.
If I fought Buddha's Son without knowing about the Mind Eye, victory would be certain—but he'd exploit an opening and leave me with internal injuries.
Even with a Diamond Indestructible Body, there was a limit to how much I could withstand with my bare body against the techniques of a Super Peak master. No, ordinary attacks could probably be stopped with no more than a few minor scratches, but a life-risking attack would leave me badly injured inside.
"Then what if you fought him knowing he had the Mind Eye?"
"I'd still win for certain. It would just take me longer. But that's only in a fight to the death."
"It's the same for me. In a sparring match, I'm not so sure I could win."
I hadn't experienced it firsthand, but that was what Buddha's Son's Transcendent Heart Art was like. You could call it a mental cultivation method optimized for sparring.
My intuition as a Super Peak master quietly told me that the Mind Eye was that kind of cultivation.
In a sparring match, killing moves were forbidden, so you couldn't determine the outcome by reading your opponent's moves. The fight would be settled as either a loss or a draw. It seemed like a Transcendent Heart Art meant solely to make its user the strongest in an age of peace.
I'd never known that a mental cultivation method like that could exist, despite how vast the world was.
Even I, who had read all of Wind and Cloud Harem Record and knew about all kinds of Heart Arts, had never encountered a type like that. I could only imagine how Chi-chi and Seol Yu-ran felt.
"By the way, Master, do you know where that thief is hiding? It's all well and good to say 'not long ago,' but didn't they steal the Muscle-Tendon Transformation Classic several months ago?"
"So that must be why Shaolin's warrior monks were rushing around a few months ago. The culprit can't have gotten far from Henan already, can he?"
At their worried words, I smiled calmly.
"There's a reason they say it's darkest beneath the lamp."
"Master, don't tell me..."
"Just listen."
The amazing way to catch the Divine Thief and the Mad Physician was simple.
"All we have to do is taunt them on a massive scale."
Thus, the operation's codename was [Scared?].