I Think Something's Seriously Wrong?
As Nok Soyun had told me, Transcendent Peak was not some neighbor's pet dog you could walk up to and name on a whim.
That was common knowledge in Murim.
The path to reaching Transcendent Peak was simple in theory.
The human body houses two great meridian channels known as the Ren and Du meridians.
In ordinary people, they are almost entirely clogged with turbid qi.
Those channels must be forced open.
By mobilizing every ounce of one's energy and every scrap of one's enlightenment.
The catch: the commonly known success rate for the Transcendent Peak ascension was a mere twenty percent.
Send ten Peak masters to attempt it, and only two will come out the other side.
So what happens to the other eight?
For the most part, they die.
And a few survive with their lives intact but their martial arts utterly destroyed, left as broken husks of men.
That was precisely why the Ren and Du meridians were also called the Gate of Life and Death.
Crossing it truly required staking your life.
"...Are you really going to attempt it?"
"Yeah. But first... I need to secure a safe place."
"It would be better to seek another way entirely."
"No thanks."
With that, I tucked the wooden box back into my robes and started walking.
In search of a safe place where no one could interfere with me.
"I just need to book a room at some inn, right?"
I happened to be starving, so I could grab a proper meal while I was at it. With that in mind, I headed for the nearest inn.
And just as I stepped over its threshold and was about to walk inside, the elderly innkeeper's sharp voice rang out through the building.
"We're not open!"
"Excuse me?"
For a moment I was too dumbfounded to speak, and simply pointed at the several people eating inside.
"Then what are they..."
"I said we're not open! Now get out!"
"...?"
The innkeeper rose from his seat, seized both my arms with his wrinkled hands, and shoved me out the door.
For an instant, the urge to level the whole inn with the Heavenly Concealment Sword Art surged up inside me.
How could anyone get away with humiliating a man so openly?
The inn door slammed shut behind me with a heavy crash.
I stared at the firmly shut door for a moment, then turned away.
"...Let's try somewhere else."
"Ah...!"
I grabbed Nok Soyun by the wrist and turned on my heel.
In the end, we visited three more inns after that.
The results were hardly different from the first.
"We're not taking customers. Goodbye."
"..."
From the inn's doorway, I let out a long sigh at the waiter's scowling face.
"Haaah..."
Once again, the door shut firmly in my face.
Crunch—
I kicked the boulder sitting beside me, and its shattered fragments sprayed in every direction.
"This is infuriating."
"Refusing customers is rather strange, isn't it? At this rate, Sichuan's economy will stop turning over altogether..."
"Now what do we do?"
Places selling food, places offering lodging — nearly all of them had shut their doors, and the few that remained open flatly refused us as customers.
There was always the option of retreating for now and attempting the Transcendent Peak breakthrough somewhere deep in the mountains...
But if the Green Forest decided to strike at my back while I was mid-breakthrough, I would be well and truly dead. With all my companions dispatched somewhere else, I couldn't afford to be careless with a single move I made.
"We've come all this way, and it feels like a waste of time to head all the way back to Wudang..."
"Sichuan has never been fond of outsiders, you see. And given our current situation... our appearance marks us unmistakably as people of Murim. They must be feeling quite anxious themselves."
"...Then should we just barge in and threaten them?"
"Excuse me?"
Nok Soyun's eyes went round as she stared at me.
"What, is there some reason I can't?"
It was an idea that had come to me while I mulled over her words. And on reflection, I couldn't find a single reason it wouldn't work.
Right now, I was not Baek Sihyeok, disciple of the Taiji Sword Marquis and first disciple of the Wudang Sect.
I was just traveler number one — some green Murim youth on a sightseeing trip through Sichuan.
Why else would I have taken off the Wudang robes?
Whatever I did, it couldn't cause me any trouble.
As long as I didn't get caught.
"Let's do it now."
"That's a bit... no — do as you please."
"If you're scared, you can head back."
I wasn't lying. Honestly, being alone was more comfortable for me.
I'd only brought Nok Soyun along because she might prove useful for things like gathering information.
And yet, somehow, she seemed to have understood my words in an entirely different way. Smiling, she ground her teeth together and murmured,
"Never once in my life have I harbored such a thought."
"Really? Good to hear."
And so we set off toward the very first inn we had visited.
Why that one, you ask? Because I'd been thrown out of it in the most offensive manner of all.
Spreading out the Celestial Emperor Taiji Steps, I could cross the distance back to it in the blink of an eye.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"Good grief..."
The aged owner of the Azure Dragon Inn sighed as he wiped down the tables.
His muttering echoed through the hollow silence of an inn emptied of every last customer.
"It's hard, so hard... making a living is just so hard these days."
How on earth had his inn come to this?
There was a time when the place had been so packed with guests you couldn't find a spot to set your foot down. Back then, he hadn't lifted a finger himself.
He simply hired servers, paid them their wages, and let them do the work.
But ever since Sichuan's situation had soured, the customers seeking out the Azure Dragon Inn had naturally dwindled.
Worse, the Tang Clan of Sichuan had gone so far as to send people around with an explicit demand: do no business with anyone from Murim.
"We were short on customers as it was... and now they want us to pick and choose who we serve..."
And yet he could hardly ignore that order either.
Any innkeeper who defied them and took in Murim guests had, sooner or later, vanished without a trace.
What had become of the ones who disappeared — that, he didn't even want to imagine.
"Those two young men... carrying swords like that, they must be from Murim..."
Pity flickered across the innkeeper's eyes.
Why would young people walk into this dying land only to torture themselves like that?
In his heart, he'd have loved to serve them a warm bowl of noodles at the very least — but doing so might well invite disaster upon his own head.
He had a granddaughter to raise, after all.
"If only I could leave this land of Sichuan quickly, before the Clan's eyes fall on me..."
And just as he murmured those words —
BOOM—!
The inn door burst apart with a tremendous crash.
"Wh... what the—!"
His head snapped up, his gaze flying instinctively to the ruined doorway.
Beyond it, there was nothing at all.
Then someone leaned in close to the old man's ear and whispered.
"Gotcha."
"Who... who are—!"
The next instant, something struck the back of his neck, and the world lurched sideways in his vision.
The last thing he saw as he crumpled to the floor was a young man's hand clutching at empty air.
"Sleep well, elder."
With those words, the old man's consciousness sank into darkness.
Thud.
Baek Sihyeon and Nok Soyun stared down blankly at the man they had felled.
"...Let's dump him in a room somewhere and stay here for a while, gathering information."
"Actually, I have a much better idea."
"Which is?"
"Well..."
She leaned in and whispered something into my ear.
"...Oh?"
It was a somewhat risky plan that required certain conditions, but if it succeeded, nothing could be better. A method that would reveal everything happening in this land of Sichuan — including the whereabouts of the medicinal ingredients I needed.
And so we decided to wait a little while, until the elder woke up.
"In the meantime, maybe I'll attempt the realm breakthrough."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Don't worry. There's no chance of failure. But no one comes through that door while I'm at it. Understood?"
"Um... yes, understood..."
With that, I entered the most secluded room on the inn's second floor and bolted the door behind me.
Sitting down on the floor, I drew out the wooden box cradled in my robes.
The moment I opened it, a cool, herbal fragrance spread through the room, sharpening my senses as though washing my mind clean.
"This should be enough, right?"
The Transcendent Peak breakthrough was something I was attempting for the first time in my life — both of them.
Countless warriors on the very cusp of Peak had feared this trial and simply stayed where they were.
See a higher world, or die.
"..."
Had I truly attained the enlightenment required to reach Transcendent Peak?
I couldn't say I felt any particular certainty about it.
But then, it didn't feel like I would fail, either.
"A strong body means the mind doesn't have to work so hard, after all."
Any enlightenment I lacked, I could simply paper over with physical power that overwhelmed anyone in my realm, plus the energy of the elixir.
My hesitation was brief.
With a faint chuckle, I pulled the azure pill from the wooden box and pushed it into my mouth.
A few bites, and the pill dissolved instantly, becoming a colossal waterfall inside my body that came cascading down through every meridian in my frame.
I poured every last scrap of my concentration into moving the energies with exquisite precision, wasting not a single grain of it.
This was much like keeping the tip of a sword perfectly steady, so the work wasn't especially difficult for me.
The refined, elegant energy of the Azure Firmament Pill, racing through my entire body, soon settled into the Qihai point — the dantian.
Ordinarily, that would have been the end of the elixir's absorption.
But...
Then I felt it: the great channel running straight from the dantian to the crown of my head — the Ren meridian. The channel running from the crown down the spine — the Du meridian.
And there, wedged at the crown, a thick, hardened knot of turbid qi.
I drove all of that energy up the Ren meridian and slammed it into the Baekhui point at the crown of my head.
Without a thought for the consequences — at the absolute maximum power I could muster.
KUUUUNG—!
The impact that struck the Baekhui point far exceeded anything I had anticipated.
Along with the enormous shock to my skull came a pain so savage it was hard to comprehend.
Blood began to trickle from the point above my brow.
"...Huh?"
My consciousness was starting to drift.
And into my fading ears, a commotion outside the room began to filter through.
It was unmistakably the sound of something breaking.
Wait. I think something has seriously gone wrong here...?