The Secret Laboratory of Tang Ak
“My wife, who has already passed from this world, was frail by nature. Not long after giving birth to our second son, she closed her eyes for the last time.”
There was sorrow in Tang Seonyak’s voice.
“Ak, who was still young then, could not accept his mother’s death. And at some point, he began researching ways to overcome death. At first, it seemed harmless. He studied all manner of medicines and treatments in an effort to surpass death.”
Tang Jin nodded as if he remembered it well.
“But then he realized it. That death could not be avoided forever. After he came to that understanding, he began studying how to revive the dead. It had only been a short while since he started, so I merely watched. I thought that if he saw the wider world, his mind might change, so I even forced him to take part in the Martial Arts Tournament. After all, reviving the dead is an impossible task. I believed he would give up quickly.”
“Then where is that secret laboratory?”
“I do not know the exact location myself, but if I had to guess based on where my second son frequents most often... Mount Gongga seems the most likely.”
I sensed it instinctively.
We have to catch Tang Ak. Sohui is there.
Seeing the way Tang Seonyak hesitated and faltered, I could tell he seemed to suspect, at least dimly, that the disappearance was Tang Ak’s doing too.
I had no time to hesitate. I broke into a run toward Mount Gongga at once.
Tang Jin hurried after me.
“I will go with you.”
“No. I’m going alone. I can’t trust anyone in the Tang Clan right now.”
If Sohui had been kidnapped by Tang Ak, then I could not trust a single person in the Tang Clan.
Even the village Tang Jin and I had gone to investigate might have been part of the scheme to separate me from Sohui.
At my blunt, icy words, Tang Jin came to a stop.
“Th-then... I will follow behind with the Tang Clan’s forces.”
After saying that, Tang Jin turned back and hurried to the Tang Clan.
I wrapped my body in internal energy and increased my speed even further.
There was no reason to worry. Tang Ak was clearly not skilled in martial arts, so I had assumed I could handle this alone.
After a long sprint, I finally reached the foot of Mount Gongga.
Now that I was here, I was shaken by the mountain’s sheer height and scale, rising like it wanted to stab the heavens. I began to lose confidence in whether this was the right place at all, and where on earth I was supposed to start looking.
First, I steadied my breathing and circulated my energy to calm myself, then I reached out to sense the surroundings.
My ragged breaths settled, and my mind cleared.
Calm down... calm down...
I closed my eyes and felt for the flow around me.
Just as I normally sensed the cold in the air, I focused on whether there was any clue hidden in the surrounding energy.
Slowly, I widened the range of my perception, but the method of sensing internal energy had a clear limit when it came to distance.
At this rate, searching Mount Gongga would take far too long.
I did not have the luxury of waiting for the Tang Clan’s support, either.
Then an idea flashed through my mind.
Do it the other way around!
Instead of circulating my energy to draw in and feel the surrounding power, I spread my internal energy outward in a thin, weak layer.
Like releasing force when using martial arts, I let my energy flow out, only far more gently so it could spread much farther.
Then the surrounding energy began to register across a much wider area.
From there, I slowly searched the mountain.
How far had I climbed? Something caught on my senses.
It was unmistakably human in shape, yet there was no energy inside the body at all.
It might have just been an ordinary person with no internal energy, but on the off chance I moved toward the place where I had sensed it.
There, I found the entrance to a large cave.
A man who looked like a guard was standing at the entrance, but something about him was wrong.
His eyes were unfocused, like a man who had lost his mind, and his swaying posture looked deeply unnatural.
Quietly, I drew the dagger I had received as the Martial Arts Tournament’s prize and came up behind him.
“Don’t scream. Who are you? Why are you here? Huh?”
There was a long needle stuck in the man’s head, just like the traces I had seen on the corpse in the Tang Clan’s underground laboratory.
He ignored my threat completely, turned around, and lunged at me.
I quickly slashed his throat with the dagger.
I had clearly cut his throat, yet no blood came out at all.
“What the hell is this?”
The man, as if he could not even feel pain, kept charging at me.
I had definitely cut through his throat.
For an ordinary human, that would have been a fatal strike already.
But no blood flowed, and the man swung an arm at me as if nothing had happened.
“Damn it!”
I threw the dagger aside and quickly drew the Japanese sword from my waist.
With a slicing sound, the man’s head was severed from his body and dropped to the ground.
But the body did not stop.
Even after losing its head, it kept thrashing its arms toward me.
I cut off both its arms and legs as well.
Only when all four limbs had been severed did its movements finally stop, like a broken doll.
Examining the wreckage I had cut apart, it seemed the man had already been dead.
There was no blood in his body, and long needles had been driven into every joint.
Could this be a Jiangshi?
As I wondered that, several more Jiangshi came shuffling out from deeper inside the cave, as if they had sensed the disturbance outside.
“No choice, then.”
I picked up the dagger that had fallen to the ground with my left hand and cut down the Jiangshi one by one.
Fortunately, they did not use martial arts, they were nothing more than moving corpses, and they had no solid defensive strength, so cutting them apart was not difficult.
“Did he make Jiangshi by researching how to bring the dead back to life?”
I did not know the mechanism, but someone had created moving corpses.
And the odds were high that person was Tang Ak.
If I delay any longer, Sohui could be in danger.
Even if a few more Jiangshi came out of the cave, they would not be much of a problem, so I hurried onward.
As I went deeper into the cave, a different kind of Jiangshi began to appear.
They were not the shambling corpses I had met at the entrance, but sturdier, more agile specimens.
Drawing Slash.
Spinning Slash.
Even so, the Jiangshi were still not easy to deal with, though they were at least within the range I could cut down.
As I went deeper inside, the cave began to narrow.
Watching the flood of Jiangshi pouring out at me, I regretted not bringing Tang Jin, but it was too late now.
The cave grew narrower still, until I had barely enough space for Drawing Slash or Spinning Slash.
Ice Dragon Sword Dance, Third Form: Blizzard of Frozen Flowers
Once again, I took the Japanese sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, then hacked my way forward like a madman, leaving icy blossoms hanging in the air behind me as I pressed inward.
After forcing my way through the cramped passage, a wide chamber opened before me.
For a brief moment, I was glad to have room, but then more Jiangshi came surging in from the entrance behind me, and I was completely surrounded.
I had been isolated in an instant.
Fearless and unfeeling toward pain, the Jiangshi kept rushing at me.
I cut them down one after another, but there was no end in sight.
My arms were beginning to ache.
I gritted my teeth and thought of Sohui, then continued cutting them down one by one.
But even when I severed them properly, the Jiangshi did not stop moving; they only kept charging at me like lunatics.
How long had I been swinging my swords...?
My Japanese sword, which I had been using nonstop until now, was gradually dulling, and it was becoming harder to cut the Jiangshi in a single stroke.
The cold, gleaming blade filled with internal energy for the Blizzard of Frozen Flowers was losing its light.
But the Jiangshi still filled the entire chamber.
Is this as far as I go...?
Just as that thought crossed my mind, I faintly heard Sohui’s voice from deeper inside.
“You bastard! You used that forbidden art?!”
It’s Sohui. Sohui is inside. If I break through this room, that’s enough!
I squeezed out every last drop of internal energy I had left.
I can’t keep handling this many with my swordsmanship alone.
I no longer had the strength to cut down each Jiangshi one by one. My Japanese sword had also taken a beating.
I need a wide-area attack that can sweep through the entire space.
At that moment, my eldest brother’s Cold White Divine Sword came to mind.
A martial art that altered the surrounding environment through internal energy.
It would be difficult for me to imitate it directly, but this space was already full of ice particles from my sword technique.
While defensively responding to the Jiangshi’s attacks, I spread what internal energy remained around me as far as I could.
Under the influence of my energy, the air around me began to freeze slightly.
Sohui’s voice drifted in faintly from within.
I could feel each ice particle scattered through the air, each one carrying my internal energy.
“I’ll sweep every last one of them away!”
Ice Dragon Sword Dance, Fourth Form: Ice Rain
An improvised area attack, devised on the spot.
Using the ice particles floating in the air from the Blizzard of Frozen Flowers, I shot them toward the enemy like rain.
The frozen particles fluttering overhead flashed with a sharp sound under the force of my internal energy and streaked toward the Jiangshi.
Since the battle had been dragging on for so long, the ice particles that remained massacred the Jiangshi mercilessly.
“Haa... haa...”
I had pushed both my stamina and internal energy to their limit, so I had barely managed to pull it off.
Whether because of the aftereffects of the Ice Rain or because there were no Jiangshi left, no new enemies appeared.
Breathing hard, I walked toward the place where I had heard Sohui’s voice.
Passing through the wide chamber and going deeper still, I came to a bright room.
“Big brother!”
Sohui called out to me in desperation.
Seeing her sitting in the corner with her wrists and ankles bound made my anger surge.
Then, from behind me, hidden weapons flew through the air.
I twisted my body at the murderous intent I felt a split second too late, but several long needles still pierced my left arm.
“Ugh.”
The one who had thrown the needles was, as expected, Tang Ak.
“I don’t know how you got in here, but now that you’ve found this place, I’ll turn you into my Jiangshi too.”
“You made all those Jiangshi?”
“The result of my research! Of course, I did get a little help.”
Help? Does that mean there’s another collaborator?
“If we wait a little longer, that person will arrive! I have to become that person’s strength together with my wife!”
“Who’s your wife?!”
Sohui shouted, furious.
If another collaborator showed up in this situation, things would become a serious pain.
Worst of all, I had already exhausted all my internal energy in the prolonged fight, and I did not have the strength for a long battle.
I had to get Sohui out of here as quickly as possible.
I have to end this in one blow.
I had no energy to spare for techniques like Blizzard of Frozen Flowers or Ice Rain anymore.
I sheathed both the dagger and the Japanese sword at my waist again.
Then I gripped them harder than I ever had before.
I could not retreat.
I could not lose.
Even without internal energy, the drawing slash I had practiced since childhood did not need it.
I poured every last ounce of strength into myself and charged straight at Tang Ak.
Drawing Slash