Chapter 36
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: The Second Request
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“My apologies.”
Ha Yuseong was taken aback by the elder’s sudden apology.
This was a man so far above him—in status, martial skill, and fame—that the difference between them was like that of a firefly and the sun.
Even if it was just a slight nod, for it to be directed at him carried a different weight entirely.
“Why would you apologize to me, Elder? If anyone should bow their head, it is I who should do so to you.”
And it was true.
He had received the Great Transmutation Pill.
From Great Monk Cheonsu.
He had also received the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic.
From Great Monk Cheonsu.
Hm? On second thought, maybe he didn't need to apologize after all.
“Hah! To think you were born with such a fine character as well.”
Ha Yuseong grinned.
Whatever works, works.
“I’ve always been a good person.”
“Still, using you for the Tang Family’s affairs was my mistake, no matter how I look at it. Even though things turned out well, this is an apology for my own conscience, so please accept it.”
Faced with the elder’s repeated apologies, Ha Yuseong had no choice but to accept.
And this was all part of Dang Mandok’s scheme.
“Yes, I understand.”
The moment Ha Yuseong accepted the apology.
A grin spread across Dang Mandok’s face as he continued.
“An apology can’t be made with words alone!”
“Before that, there is something I must tell you.”
At Ha Yuseong’s serious tone, Dang Mandok wiped the playful expression from his face.
“What is it?”
“The truth is, I’ve already used my internal energy twice.”
“What!”
Dang Mandok immediately began examining Ha Yuseong’s body.
Now accustomed to it, Ha Yuseong let Dang Mandok check him over and continued his explanation.
“The first time, just as you said, Elder, I felt something wrong with my body right away. But then the poison insects swarmed me, and after that, I felt at ease. Much better than before, in fact.”
After listening to Ha Yuseong’s explanation, Dang Mandok continued his examination for a good while longer before letting out a sigh of relief.
“Hoo. There seems to be nothing wrong with your body for now.”
An ordinary person would have stopped their diagnosis there. But the man before him was Dang Mandok, known as the Divine Doctor.
He immediately formed a new diagnosis, then a theory—no! A diagnosis bordering on certainty.
“Do you remember what I told you about your threshold?”
“Yes. That my body’s threshold is lower than others.”
“It’s not just low. It’s extremely low. Honestly, this is something I hadn’t anticipated.”
It had been a possibility.
But he had thought it was a possibility for the distant future.
Yet, it had happened now.
Dang Mandok briefly recalled the past.
“Around the time I came to be called the Divine Doctor, I thought there was nothing left for me to learn about medicine.”
Right now, Dang Mandok’s eyes were burning with passion.
He was eighty years old, but in this moment, he had returned to his youth.
“Meeting you was a gift to me, who was passing the days in boredom. To exaggerate a little, it was like being given a second life.”
His life had become meaningless.
To grow old was to become accustomed to the world with each passing year, and with that, the new and novel disappeared.
Then, something new appeared.
And it was fascinating.
Could anything be better than this?
“It seems you’ve had a stroke of fortune.”
“A stroke of fortune?”
“Yes. Dang Guyu.”
The name of the Tang Family traitor escaped Dang Mandok’s lips.
“That fellow was always greedy. But his abilities were never that outstanding.”
Who else could claim that a First Elder of the Tang Family, a transcendent master, lacked ability?
Only Dang Mandok could say such a thing.
And Ha Yuseong believed his words completely.
‘So he was a fake transcendent master after all.’
No wonder he was defeated so easily by the Unit Leader.
And he wasn’t a combatant, but a support type who handled poison insects.
“Instead, the man had a talent for handling poison insects. He actually cultivated that talent and rose to the position of an elder in the Tang Family.”
The Tang Family had traditionally always had five elders.
Now, that number was reduced to four.
“Well, that’s just family history. The point is this.”
By defying the warning, Ha Yuseong had shattered the delicate balance in his body, a balance painstakingly achieved with the Great Transmutation Pill.
A near-perfect exterior.
In contrast, an extremely weak interior.
The sudden collapse of this balance would have forced his internal organs to work overtime, trying to match the strength of his exterior.
In the process, he would have required far more calories than usual, all of which would have been supplemented by the most readily available source: oxygen.
His breathing would have quickened, and his lungs would have expanded. The same would have happened to his other organs.
And as this process repeated…
Eventually, his blood vessels would have failed to withstand the strain and burst.
Starting with the weakest points.
In other words, it was abnormal for Ha Yuseong to be alive and standing here right now.
When Dang Mandok had first assessed Ha Yuseong’s condition, his first thought had been, ‘How is he still alive?’
Now, there was no trace of the Great Transmutation Pill’s energy in Ha Yuseong’s body.
First hypothesis: The pill’s energy was used up protecting Ha Yuseong’s body.
But how could that explain the poison?
This is where the threshold came into play.
If it took a normal person ‘10’ units of energy to detoxify a poison.
Ha Yuseong’s body, in its instinct to survive, must have lowered its threshold to an extreme degree.
To ‘2’ or even ‘1’.
Of course, this was nigh impossible.
But an impossible man stood right before him. There was no other way to explain it.
If all these hypotheses were correct, Dang Mandok was faced with another problem.
Before, the Great Transmutation Pill’s energy had barely maintained the balance. But in the process of detoxification, that energy had been completely spent.
In short, Ha Yuseong was no different from a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment.
The slightest imbalance would likely cause his body to explode into pieces.
“You said you feel more comfortable now, correct?”
“Yes.”
“This is just my opinion, so it might not be the right answer. Don’t put too much stock in it. It’s likely something similar to a final burst of life before death.”
“You mean that brief moment of feeling better before one dies?”
“Yes. That’s how I see it. I’ll need to investigate further to be certain.”
Ha Yuseong was shocked to learn his body was in such a perilous state.
‘Then I can’t just stay like this, can I?’
‘Am I in big trouble?’
Just then, Dang Mandok continued.
“At this point, I’d like to make you a proposal.”
Dang Mandok explained further, and Ha Yuseong accepted.
At this point, he had no other viable options, and this was the best course of action.
What Dang Mandok proposed was surprisingly simple.
To create a substitute for the Great Transmutation Pill.
“Well then! Let’s give it a try! An Earth Essence, a treasure of nature itself, might be too much to ask for, but let’s try to create a Poison Essence, one step below it!”
The goal was to restore the balance in his body once more.
Ha Yuseong asked.
“If we succeed, will I be able to use my internal energy more than twice?”
“You should be able to use it even more than that.”
“Ooh!”
Despite having just been told he could die at any moment, Ha Yuseong was completely unfazed, instead filled with excitement and anticipation for what he might be able to do. Watching him, Dang Mandok felt a sense of youthfulness he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Most masters…
Furthermore, those special individuals who had carved their names into the vast history of the martial world…
Almost all of them displayed the same attitude.
They focused more on the ecstasy and joy of success than the fear of failure.
To those who were not like them, this sight…
Tears welled up slightly in Dang Mandok’s eyes. In that moment, the man named Ha Yuseong seemed to shine so brightly.
It was something he, withered by the direct blow of time, no longer possessed.
‘How wonderful!’
Feeling a surge of vigor he hadn't felt in ages, Dang Mandok strode forward.
“Elder?”
“Follow me!”
He himself was unaware.
Unaware that his own eyes were sparkling with the same bright intensity as a child who had just seen a new toy for the first time.
A short while later, Dang Mandok arrived at a vast, open field.
Ha Yuseong was genuinely amazed.
He had never imagined that such a large expanse of land could exist within the family estate.
‘It’s almost like a whole village exists here!’
“This place was managed by that fellow, Dang Guyu.”
“It’s incredible.”
“Indeed. It would be hard to find land as fertile as this within the Tang Family, or perhaps in the entire country.”
“I can see that.”
A breeze blew past.
The fresh, grassy scent of the field rushed into his nostrils.
Not only that, but the myriad scents of nature washed over his entire body.
Ha Yuseong felt as if the land itself was alive.
“It would be a terrible waste to just leave this place as it is.”
“I’d have to agree.”
“Yes, a great waste. But ‘that thing’ has taken root here.”
“‘That thing’?”
“Yes. A poisonous creature that even Dang Guyu couldn’t control. I have no idea how that fiend managed to capture ‘it,’ but he was better than me when it came to poisonous creatures… This one is quite troublesome, you see.”
Rustle.
“It’s faster if you see it for yourself.”
Dang Mandok took a step into the lush green field.
The moment he did, the atmosphere of the field, which had been brimming with nature’s abundance, changed.
A wind rose.
It carried not a fresh scent, but the acrid stench of poison.
Swish, swish, swish!
From the distance, the blades of grass began to bend in unison, all in one direction.
Thump, thump, thump!
A vibration rose from the ground.
He could tell that something of unknown identity was rapidly approaching them from beneath the earth.
Soon, a section of the ground swelled upward.
And it revealed its form.
“Hiss!”
It was a single, colossal snake.
No! Could that even be called a snake?
It was like something from legends, not quite a dragon…
Yes. Finding the right word to describe it, Ha Yuseong muttered.
“A lesser dragon.”
“Well, something like that.”
Dang Mandok remained perfectly calm, even as he stood before a snake more than ten times his size.
On the contrary, his eyes as he gazed at the creature were like those of a man in love.
The lesser dragon opened its massive jaws.
Two fangs, each the size of a human body, were revealed.
Venom dripped from them.
Sizzle!
The ground melted away on contact.
Just as the serpent was about to strike, Dang Mandok quickly stepped back. As if nothing had happened, the serpent coiled in mid-air and then hid itself back underground.
Dang Mandok spoke.
“That creature is the master of this land. Its proper name is the Ink-Scaled Blood Serpent, and it is the king here.”
And so.
The elder’s words were this:
With the venom of the Ink-Scaled Blood Serpent, the king among snakes, they might be able to create a Poison Essence that could substitute for the Great Transmutation Pill.
As an added bonus, if they could drive the creature out, this fertile land could be used once more.
And Dang Mandok was certainly capable of driving out even an Ink-Scaled Blood Serpent.
However, in the process, there was a high chance he would kill it.
As a man who purely loved poison, he did not want to harm this magnificent creature.
“This is shameless of me, but I have a second request for you.”
Dang Mandok continued.
“Could you drive the Ink-Scaled Blood Serpent from this land?”