Chapter 10: Obtaining a Fortuitous Encounter-2
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 10: Obtaining a Fortuitous Encounter-2
The Yin-Yang Demon, Lee Ho-seon.
Born a hermaphrodite, he endured a wretched childhood, subjected to the mockery and contempt of villagers who branded him a cursed child.
It was perhaps inevitable that Lee Ho-seon, raised on a diet of scorn and condemnation when he should have been nurtured with affection, would grow into a hollow, emotionless boy.
Though the villagers despised him as a blight from the heavens, his parents cherished him, cradling him with the same love any parent would show their child.
Perhaps sensing their devotion, Lee Ho-seon rarely expressed his feelings, but thanks to their abundant affection, his days were not lonely.
At least, not until that happened.
One day, a plague swept through the village, claiming countless lives.
The villagers, maddened by the loss of their families and kin, grew desperate for a target to vent their rage upon.
Lee Ho-seon, the hermaphrodite, became their mark.
Believing the plague was caused by his cursed body, the villagers stormed his home and brutally slaughtered his parents.
His father was mercilessly beaten to death with clubs. His mother, a woman of great beauty, was raped and murdered by the mob.
Lee Ho-seon, hidden in the attic, narrowly escaped death. However, through the cracks in the floorboards, he witnessed everything: his father being savagely bludgeoned and his mother being surrounded by a swarm of men, raped, and finally strangled to death.
Having watched his beloved parents be butchered, Lee Ho-seon wept tears of blood. He grew to loathe the world and harbor a deep-seated hatred for all of humanity.
Vowing revenge, he headed for the Hundred Thousand Mountains, the seat of the Demonic Cult. There, he became the joint successor to the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, who were elders of the cult at the time.
Among the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, the Yin Demon was a master of the Art of Absorbing Yang to Supplement Yin and the successor to the Yin-Wind New Moon Art, a technique of Yin-cold energy. She was a temptress among temptresses, having drained the essence of well over a thousand martial artists. The Yang Demon was a master of the Art of Absorbing Yin to Supplement Yang and the successor to the Fierce Wind Yang Art, a technique of heat-Yang energy. He was a lecher who possessed immense internal energy gained from violating and draining countless female martial artists.
Though these two demonic practitioners possessed vastly different martial arts, they shared the same root in the Yin-Yang Sect. Thus, the world collectively referred to them as the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.
Both were absolute masters who had reached the Extreme Demonic stage, yet they were perpetually frustrated by the limitations of their martial arts, which prevented them from reaching the stage of Demon Transcendence. It was then that the hermaphrodite Lee Ho-seon appeared.
The Yin-Yang Twin Demons believed that Lee Ho-seon, with his unique constitution, could achieve the harmony of Yin and Yang they so desperately craved and finally reach the stage of Demon Transcendence. Thus, they took him as their joint disciple.
Thanks to his physical traits as a hermaphrodite, Lee Ho-seon was able to learn both the Yin Wind New Moon Art and the Fierce Wind Yang Art simultaneously. His venomous desire for revenge fueled his progress, allowing his mastery to grow by leaps and bounds every day.
Finally, a demonic practitioner was born who reached the Extreme Demonic stage despite not being from a demonic lineage.
The first thing Lee Ho-seon did upon reaching this absolute realm was kill his masters, the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.
As the first joint successor of the Yin-Yang Sect, the Twin Demons had raised Lee Ho-seon with the utmost care, as if he were their own child. But to Lee Ho-seon, who had long since lost his humanity, they were nothing more than potent elixirs for his own growth.
The Yin Demon was subjected to his Art of Absorbing Yin to Supplement Yang; he drained every drop of her Yin-cold energy, leaving her a shriveled, mummified husk. The Yang Demon suffered the same fate through the Art of Absorbing Yang to Supplement Yin; Lee Ho-seon sucked out all his heat-Yang energy, turning him into a mummy as well.
This act of ultimate depravity was only possible because Lee Ho-seon was a hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female genitalia.
It was a hollow end for the temptress and the lecher who had once dominated an era, toyed with countless heroes and heroines, and met their miserable demise at the hands of the disciple they had cherished so dearly.
Even after devouring the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, Lee Ho-seon did not stop. He began to prey upon numerous other demonic practitioners.
Few could stand against a man who had reached the absolute realm and possessed the staggering internal energy gained from consuming his masters.
In the end, he devoured hundreds of demonic practitioners before he was finally caught by Gwangcheonma, the Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult at the time, incurring his absolute wrath.
No matter how vast Lee Ho-seon's internal energy was or how peerless his Extreme Demonic martial arts were, he was no match for Gwangcheonma, who had surpassed the Extreme Demonic stage to reach Demon Transcendence. Without hesitation, Lee Ho-seon fled the Hundred Thousand Mountains.
The enraged Gwangcheonma organized a pursuit team to hunt him down, but Lee Ho-seon had already vanished without a trace.
Upon emerging into the Central Plains, the first thing Lee Ho-seon did was seek revenge on the villagers who had killed his parents.
Arriving at the village, he tracked down the men who had violated and murdered his mother. He severed all their limbs, violated their sons and daughters before their eyes, and then beat them to death with clubs.
The villagers wept tears of blood and begged for mercy, but he showed none.
He then performed his absorption techniques on every single person in the village, turning them into mummified corpses, and set the entire place ablaze.
He burned everything until it was as if the village had never existed at all.
With his parents' revenge complete, Lee Ho-seon traveled from region to region. Regardless of gender, he repeatedly practiced his absorption techniques, leaving a trail of mummified martial artists in his wake. The people began to call him the Yin-Yang Demon, their voices trembling with fear.
The Yin-Yang Demon reigned as a terror of the Murim for a long time. He was declared a Public Enemy of the Murim, but countless martial artists fell like autumn leaves before his overwhelming power.
However, he eventually suffered a grievous wound at the hands of a legendary eccentric known as Seon-ong and vanished from the Murim.
This was the backstory of the Yin-Yang Demon, a character created as a sacrificial lamb for Lee Jae-won's awakening before his final confrontation with the Heavenly Demon Emperor.
As the story neared its conclusion, he was a disposable boss created to provide the necessary catalyst for the protagonist to break through from the Transcendent Realm to the Profound Realm.
After all, don't protagonists usually grow stronger when they lose something precious?
Lee Jae-won, the protagonist of High School Senior Goes to Murim, was no different.
The Yin-Yang Demon, who had been severely wounded by Seon-ong—who could be considered Lee Jae-won's master—had spent years in bitter seclusion refining the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art. He eventually returned to kill Seon-ong. Seon-ong, who was already at the end of his natural lifespan, could not withstand the Yin-Yang Demon and met his end.
Witnessing this, Lee Jae-won awakened, reached the Profound Realm, and engaged in a fierce battle with the Yin-Yang Demon.
Consumed by rage, Lee Jae-won eventually defeated the Yin-Yang Demon, inflicting severe internal injuries and avenging his master.
In truth, the Yin-Yang Demon was also a bit of a MacGuffin.
Though Lee Jae-won won the desperate struggle, he failed to deliver the killing blow. The author had built up an atmosphere suggesting he might reappear at any moment, yet the disposable boss never showed his face again until the very end.
That was the Yin-Yang Demon.
Sun-woo couldn't help but be stunned to see such a figure listed as the author of the manual.
Though he was a sacrificial lamb, the author had given him such a detailed backstory and a distinct presence that Sun-woo remembered his title the moment he saw it.
Driven by curiosity, Sun-woo began to scan the manual more closely.
The manual contained Lee Ho-seon's lamentations and a detailed explanation of the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
[After my defeat at the hands of Seon-ong, I could not sleep. Even Gwangcheonma, the great ruler of the Demonic Cult, had not defeated me so easily.
Seeking the cause of my defeat, I re-examined my martial arts and finally discovered a fatal flaw in the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art!]
Flip.
The content was incredibly intriguing, and Sun-woo's hands moved faster as he turned the pages.
[The methods of my masters, the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, were wrong from the very beginning!
The true essence of the Art of Absorbing Yin to Supplement Yang and the Art of Absorbing Yang to Supplement Yin is not to unilaterally drain all the essence of the partner through intercourse. Rather, it is to refine the pure internal energy of both parties through the act, making it even purer, and allowing one to exert massive power with only a small amount of energy.
The impure internal energy obtained through chaotic, unilateral relations is not only inefficient but also reduces the power of one's martial arts. That is why I could never defeat Seon-ong.
Therefore, I have dispersed all the internal energy I accumulated over fifty years and have no choice but to start over from the beginning.
I pursued a natural harmony of Yin and Yang through connection, rather than a forced and one-sided alignment. I strove to make my pure internal energy even purer.
As a result, I have perfected the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art and obtained power incomparable to before.
O successor, I go now to face Seon-ong with this perfected Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
I shall be victorious, of course, but I leave this martial art behind just in case.
I do not wish for the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art I have perfected to be forgotten.
O successor, learn the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
And become the Greatest under Heaven!]
Sun-woo felt his heart thumping wildly as he turned to the next page.
The following pages contained the mnemonics and various techniques of the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
If what was written in the book was true, this was the opportunity of a lifetime.
Although Jang Sam was nominally Lee Jae-won's eldest disciple, the number of times Lee Jae-won had actually taught him martial arts could be counted on one hand.
The reason was simple: Lee Jae-won was a terrible teacher.
Thanks to the author's convenience, Lee Jae-won had easily reached realms that others couldn't achieve in a lifetime. His path was fundamentally different from that of a typical martial artist who gains deep enlightenment through meditation and training.
Furthermore, Seon-ong's martial arts were not designed for rapid progress.
Seon-ong's techniques were typical of the Orthodox Faction; they required long periods of meditation, cultivation of the Way, and the purification of essence, energy, and spirit, leading to a great enlightenment only in one's later years.
In Lee Jae-won's case, Seon-ong had directly implanted his enlightenment into his mind, allowing for explosive growth. But Lee Jae-won, who had learned through such a shortcut, lacked the ability to transmit that enlightenment to Jang Sam.
This was why Jang Sam, despite being the disciple of the World's Greatest Martial Artist, had only reached the Peak Realm.
In fact, reaching the Peak Realm in his mid-twenties using Seon-ong's agonizingly slow martial arts was enough to label him a peerless talent.
And now, an absolute divine art like the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art had fallen into his lap.
In the novel High School Senior Goes to Murim, only five masters were mentioned to have reached the Profound Realm.
First was Seon-ong, the greatest master of the Orthodox Faction, and his disciple, the Absolute Martial God Lee Jae-won. Then there was the former Demonic Cult Leader Gwangcheonma and his son, the novel's final boss, the Heavenly Demon Emperor. And finally, there was the Yin-Yang Demon.
With the Yin-Yang Demon's secret technique right in front of him, Sun-woo felt a powerful urge to abandon Seon-ong's slow-progressing martial arts and switch to the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
Of course, the original Jang Sam would never have betrayed his sect to learn the techniques of a demonic villain who was a Public Enemy of the Murim, but Sun-woo was different.
To survive among these barbaric Central Plains people, he had to use whatever he could.
Even if it was the martial art of the Yin-Yang Demon.
In the worst-case scenario, if Lee Jae-won ever became his enemy, Seon-ong's martial arts wouldn't stand a chance.
There was an unbridgeable gap between Lee Jae-won, who had gained strength through a protagonist-exclusive cheat, and Jang Sam, who had self-studied Seon-ong's martial arts—a style often called the "Aesthetics of Enlightenment"—without any help from his master.
To bridge that massive gap, he needed a martial art that could make him strong surely, quickly, and easily.
The Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art fit those criteria perfectly.
To summarize, it was a martial art that made one stronger just by having sex with women. It boasted maximized efficiency, allowing one to exert immense strength with only a small amount of internal energy because that energy was so pure.
Moreover, didn't he have the Stalactite Fluid, famous for its purity?
He felt that if he used the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art to absorb the Stalactite Fluid into his body, he could convert it into internal energy with almost no loss.
It was such an attractive martial art that there was almost no reason not to learn it.
And the biggest draw for Sun-woo was that this was the martial art of the Yin-Yang Demon, who had managed to kill even Seon-ong, a master of the Profound Realm, even if the latter was at the end of his life.
It might just become his final trump card against Lee Jae-won if the need arose.
His hesitation was shorter than expected.
Sun-woo opened the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art and began to memorize every single phrase in the book.
'I will survive. I will survive. Even if I die, I will survive!'
Sun-woo renewed his vow, gritting his teeth as he read the manual intently.
As he read, Sun-woo felt a sense of relief.
Since it was a peerless divine art, he had worried that he might not be able to understand it. However, the Yin-Yang Demon had included detailed annotations throughout the manual, so Sun-woo found it relatively easy to grasp.
Unlike Lee Jae-won, the Yin-Yang Demon seemed to have the qualities of a good teacher.
Sun-woo lost track of time as he became completely absorbed in the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.