The Old Ancestor (3)
Though a splitting headache surged through his skull as if the blood vessels in his brain were bursting, Cheon Woo-jin's soul remained serene.
Within his own spiritual domain, he calmly observed his current state while meticulously forging a new power in response.
The Tamryeong Yeonhonggeom in his hand reacted.
Of the beads that had formed along the blade—no, the spirit orbs—one that had glowed blue lost its light.
What it released at that moment was a blue, mystical energy: wood spirit qi.
It was what he had absorbed moments ago from Sama Mun's forbidden art.
He had not taken the entirety of the vast spirit qi Sama Mun had possessed, but it was more than enough to bring about the phenomenon Cheon Woo-jin desired.
One of the Five Thunder Arts, wielded through blue wood spirit qi.
Paaaht!
A blue flash lanced through the air.
It was the Five Thunder Art deployed with blue wood spirit qi—Azure Thunder.
Within the Five Elements, wood is the force of a new sprout that pierces the earth and reaches toward the sky in spring.
Because wood comes first, fire—the element that spreads its lush leaves through summer—can exist.
If the fire-element thunder art, Crimson Thunder, specializes in explosive power that sweeps across a wide area, then the wood-element thunder art, Azure Thunder, specializes in the piercing force that runs a single point through.
A bolt of blue thunder that skewers the enemy with one streak of light.
That was Azure Thunder of the Five Thunder Arts.
"……!"
Pwat!
Blue lightning hurtled toward the scorpion's head with terrifying speed.
The scorpion, lunging with a house-sized body, could neither dodge the attack nor block it.
Punching through its armor-like exoskeleton, the blue lightning drilled straight through the creature's body.
Having pierced the head and breast, Azure Thunder ravaged its torso with overwhelming penetrating force, obliterating every organ and nerve in its path.
At last it burst out beneath the tail, stretching far into the distance toward the hermitage in a line of blue.
"……"
Kukoong!
The scorpion collapsed to the ground.
Momentum carried it sliding all the way to Cheon Woo-jin's feet, but in the end it never so much as grazed a hair on his head.
"Whew…."
On the chance something else lurked nearby, Cheon Woo-jin stretched his spirit qi out in all directions.
Only after confirming that no other threats remained in the eastern grotto did he sink down where he stood.
His body had never fully recovered to begin with, and now, having pushed himself to wield a dharma treasure on top of that, he was a complete wreck.
Above all, Cheon Woo-jin was not yet a body suited to wielding wood spirit qi.
He had grown into the middle stage of Foundation Establishment and gained the ability to handle fire spirit qi, but wood spirit qi was still beyond his readiness.
Still, to fell a venomous insect with such a hard exoskeleton, he had needed Azure Thunder, the art of piercing.
'If I'd used Crimson Thunder with fire spirit qi, it would have been hard to break through that shell, and if I'd used Black Thunder with water spirit qi, I couldn't have run it through the whole body….'
With that thought, Cheon Woo-jin examined the Tamryeong Yeonhonggeom.
The five spirit orbs that had formed on the sword stemmed from Sama Mun's Five Elements spirit root.
And the five colors that filled those orbs were spirit qi absorbed from Sama Mun's forbidden art.
The blue orb held wood spirit qi.
The red orb held fire spirit qi.
The yellow orb held earth spirit qi.
The white orb held metal spirit qi.
The black orb held water spirit qi.
Each type of spirit qi was stored within the dharma treasure.
He had just used wood spirit qi, so the blue orb was dark for now, but it would shine again once he accumulated wood spirit qi elsewhere.
'So spirit qi can be stored not just inside a living body, but in a dharma treasure too.'
That carried two meanings.
The first was that he could now carry more spirit qi than his own maximum capacity.
Time and again, Cheon Woo-jin had experienced his power running dry after unleashing his strongest techniques.
He could launch attacks that exceeded his own realm, but the cost in spiritual power was correspondingly brutal.
He had always needed to swallow pills and absorb spirit qi to recover, and since that took considerable time, sustained battles against powerful enemies had been impossible.
But if he could store spirit qi in an external reservoir like this, he could unleash his mightiest techniques again and again without ever running empty.
The second was that he could now store types of qi other than water spirit qi.
With his single water-attribute spiritual root, Cheon Woo-jin could only accumulate water spirit qi.
Depending on one's training method it was possible to accumulate other attributes as well, but the time spent doing that was better invested in honing the water element further.
With the spirit orbs of the Tamryeong Yeonhonggeom, however, he could carry the qi of wood, fire, earth, and metal as well.
And whenever he needed to deploy a technique outside the water element, as he just had, he could simply draw it out and use it.
'The reason I could use Crimson Thunder against Gi Shin-ryeo on Mount Jakryang was that the place was saturated with fire spirit qi. But with this, I'm no longer bound by the environment.'
The problem was that this was a dharma treasure, not a dharma tool.
If he drew it out just anywhere, it could cause an enormous commotion.
So he would have to save it for truly decisive moments.
'Besides, water spirit qi alone will settle most situations anyway.'
Cheon Woo-jin rested for a while, recovering his strength.
The eastern grotto of the Great Emptiness Cave Heaven Mirror was a place where pure spiritual power was supplied ceaselessly, which made it excellent for recovery as well.
Once his body had mended, the first thing he did was harvest the scorpion's venom.
The venom of the Great Void Dark Path King was nearly depleted, so he needed to replenish his stock.
'A shame I can't take things out of Sama Mun's Universe in the Sleeve.'
He had inspected Sama Mun's corpse too, but there was nothing worth taking.
Powerful items were surely kept inside that Universe in the Sleeve, but only Sama Mun himself could retrieve them.
'They'd all be things far beyond my current strength to use anyway. Better to just let them go.'
But there was no reason for disappointment.
Sama Mun's belongings lay piled high inside the hermitage of the eastern grotto.
Most likely things from his Core Formation days—once he ascended to Nascent Soul, they must have become unnecessary, and he had simply left them behind.
'Pills, talismans, dharma tools, secret manuals… they may have been worthless to Sama Mun, but to me they're a treasure vault.'
Cheon Woo-jin decided to pick out the useful items and carry them back to his own grotto.
He had no intention of setting foot in this grotto again.
There was no way to know under what conditions Sama Mun had contracted for it in the past, and besides… there might be others besides Sama Mun who held the right of entry to this place.
Only the key Sama Mun had placed on the table earlier, he decided, he would take with him.
'With this, I can enter and leave the Great Emptiness Cave Heaven Mirror from anywhere. Far more convenient.'
Once he had settled on a rough plan, Cheon Woo-jin set about erasing the corpses of Sama Mun and the scorpion first.
No trace of what had happened here could be left behind.
The fact that Cheon Woo-jin had killed Sama Mun, the Nascent Soul Old Ancestor, would be known to no one.
Erasing every trace and sorting through the salvageable items had taken quite a while.
By the time he finished the cleanup and stepped out of the Great Emptiness Cave Heaven Mirror, five days had already passed.
Cheon Woo-jin made his way to the Geumsijong main hall on the fourth layer.
But when he arrived before the hall, something about the atmosphere seemed off.
Everyone was bustling about, setting out memorial tables and raising banners.
He could even smell cooking coming from inside.
Were they preparing a celebration feast over their victory in the war against the Mandokyuksamun?
Cheon Woo-jin caught a passing Geumsijong disciple and asked.
"What's the feast for?"
"Not a feast. A funeral."
Ah, I see.
Come to think of it, with so many dead, they couldn't very well throw a party.
"A disciple named Cheon Woo-jin died this time."
"……?"
"Well, technically he was captured rather than killed, but since he was taken by a wicked Old Ancestor, it's safe to call him dead. He was a loose cultivator with no family or connections, so we at Geumsijong decided to give him a proper funeral."
"……"
At a loss for words, Cheon Woo-jin peered into the main hall.
He could see Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so moving about in mourning garb, their faces gloomy.
He briefly wondered if it would be right to simply slip away like this.
But the two men spotted him first.
"Huh?"
"Huh?"
Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so stared at Cheon Woo-jin with expressions that had forgotten how to speak.
Cheon Woo-jin wasn't sure what to say either, so he simply kept his mouth shut.
The most awkward silence in all the cultivation world flowed between them.
"Forgive me. The mourning went on so long that talk of holding a funeral came up within Geumsijong… and I got swept along by the mood."
Gwak Gyeong-in apologized, scratching his head.
"We don't normally go this far, you know. One disciple dying doesn't warrant mourning at the sect level. But your contributions in this battle were so great… we wanted to do something, anything."
"Mm… I understand."
Cheon Woo-jin had nothing more to say either.
He decided to simply let it pass.
"But how in the world did you make it back alive? I'd very much like to hear that."
When Gwak Gyeong-in raised the question, Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so beside him nodded along as well.
"We've been curious about that too."
"I truly thought we'd never see you again this time."
He had been taken by Sama Mun, a Nascent Soul Old Ancestor.
Assuming he would never return alive was the far more natural reaction.
"Sama Mun was searching for something."
"Searching for something?"
"For people with a certain special aptitude, it seemed."
Cheon Woo-jin fabricated the story slowly.
In truth, Sama Mun had been searching for a special constitution suitable for absorption into the Tamryeong Yeonhonggeom, so the lie reflected a measure of the truth.
"He said he was trying to complete some dharma treasure, but he never told me the details."
"A dharma treasure…?"
"He ran all sorts of tests and examinations on me… then seemed to lose interest once he realized I wasn't the aptitude he wanted. He said he was busy and chased me off."
"……!"
Everyone wore expressions of astonishment.
"That terrifying Old Ancestor Sama Mun just let you go? He treats Foundation Establishment trash like insects…"
"No, Senior Brother, perhaps it's precisely because he treats them like insects that he'd simply send one away. Don't we all do the same—when a bug crawls into our room, if it's a bother, we just leave it be?"
Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so exchanged opinions back and forth.
Beside them, Gwak Gyeong-in spoke up again.
"Cheon Do-u, surely you haven't made some kind of contract with Sama Mun? Something like having to live as his puppet for all eternity…"
"Would Sama Mun go to such trouble for a mere Foundation Establishment disciple?"
"Hmm, true enough."
Gwak Gyeong-in stroked his chin and murmured.
"Then I suppose we really must assume he let you go on a simple whim. A good turn of events, to be sure…"
Before the now-convinced Gwak Gyeong-in, Cheon Woo-jin spoke again.
"Also, Sama Mun seemed to have no lingering attachment to the Mandokyuksamun."
"Is that truly so?"
"This time he only looked into who had killed his own disciple Gi Shin-ryeo, and his manner made it plain that whether the Mandokyuksamun perished or not was no longer his concern."
"……!"
At Cheon Woo-jin's answer, Gwak Gyeong-in's face brightened.
"Then Sama Mun will never lead the Mandokyuksamun back into war!"
"I'd say the likelihood is high."
"Honestly, that was our greatest worry. Thanks to you, Cheon Do-u, we can finally sleep with both legs stretched out."
Of course, that was only because Cheon Woo-jin had killed Sama Mun.
But he couldn't reveal that truth, so he simply let them carry away the assurance that Sama Mun would never attack again.
"Cheon Do-u, I say it again, but thank you, truly."
Gwak Gyeong-in expressed his gratitude to Cheon Woo-jin once more.
"Our Sect Master says you have placed us under an immense debt as well. She has ordered that every seed and sapling you require be handed over to you, without exception."
"Thank you."
The seeds and saplings of rare crops that Geumsijong possessed.
That was precisely what Cheon Woo-jin had wanted.
Planting them in the grotto's spirit fields would let him be self-sufficient in every manner of crop that money could scarcely buy.
"And… Cheon Do-u."
Gwak Gyeong-in opened his mouth cautiously.
"Allow me to ask just one more time. Have you no thought of joining Geumsijong? We would grant you the very highest treatment."
"……"
It was a sincere offer.
But Cheon Woo-jin shook his head slowly.
"I'm sorry, but there is a place I mean to reach by the path of the loose cultivator. I will never belong to a sect, now or ever."
"I see…"
Gwak Gyeong-in wore a disappointed look.
Still, he did not press the matter further.
"I will keep praying that you reach your goal, Cheon Do-u."
Before Gwak Gyeong-in, who clasped his hands together in earnest encouragement, Cheon Woo-jin likewise pressed his palms together and bowed.
After leaving Geumsijong,
Cheon Woo-jin shared a brief drink with Jang Ryang and Won Pil-so.
It was something of a wake-turned-gathering.
The two were openly disappointed that their collaboration with Cheon Woo-jin was ending here.
But so long as they kept operating in Ghost Head City, there would surely come another day when they fought shoulder to shoulder.
Cheon Woo-jin, for his part, knew the two were trustworthy, and resolved that when a job needed extra hands, he would reach out to them first.
"By the way, Cheon Do-u."
Just as he was thinking of winding the drinking party down, a thoroughly drunk Jang Ryang tossed out a question.
"When Cheon Do-u came back alive, how did Seo Seol-ryeong react?"
"Oh, I've been wondering that too."
Won Pil-so nodded along beside him, gnawing at the side dishes.
"When we went to deliver the news, Seo Do-u looked truly crestfallen, I tell you."
"Crestfallen, you say?"
"Yes. First time I've ever seen that ice-woman look like that."
In truth, Cheon Woo-jin had never seen her that way either.
Not in the game, and not since coming to this world.
"Whatever else you say about her, she cherishes Cheon Do-u most of all. I'd wager she considers you the most reliable disciple she works with. And when word came that such a Cheon Do-u had been taken by a Nascent Soul Old Ancestor, his fate unknown, even Seo Do-u must have felt it in her heart."
"……"
"So seeing you return safe and sound, she must have been overjoyed… so what was her actual reaction?"
To the two men curious about Seo Seol-ryeong's response, Cheon Woo-jin answered flatly.
"I haven't met Seo Seol-ryeong yet."
"What?"
"Haven't met her yet."
"……"
A brief silence fell.
"Wait, you haven't even told her you're back alive?"
"I had no particular reason to go to the second layer."
"No, Cheon Do-u, that won't do!"
Won Pil-so slapped the table, irate.
"Is now the time to be sitting here drinking with us? You should have gone to Seo Do-u first!"
"That's right—go at once and tell her you're safe. Honestly, isn't Seo Do-u the one person in all of Ghost Head City who cares most about you? For someone like that, you deliver the news as fast as you can."
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin suddenly recalled the month or so of silence after his attempt to break through to Core Formation.
Back then, Seo Seol-ryeong had thought he was dead and had nagged him at length about it.
"Seo Do-u may run a bit cold, but she's far from heartless. Best you go now and show your face."
"I suppose you're right."
Cheon Woo-jin rose from his seat.
He had already been planning to wrap up the drinking party soon anyway.
"Then I'll head down to the second layer."
"Go on, and show yourself quickly."
"Let me know how it goes later!"
After parting from the two men, Cheon Woo-jin descended to the second layer.
The second-layer market was as bustling as ever.
Until two months ago, wandering the second layer had meant people recognizing him and giving him a wide berth.
But ever since he reached Core Formation and transformed his appearance entirely, that hadn't happened.
His new face was still unknown.
As he built more renown in the middle layers, would his face become known again?
When that time came, he thought it would be better to wear the human-skin face-mask or disguise his features with the Bone-Shifting Flesh-Molding Art as a matter of routine.
'Come to think of it, Seo Seol-ryeong never gets confused no matter how many times I change my face.'
Thinking of Seo Seol-ryeong, whose eyes were always bound with cloth, Cheon Woo-jin headed toward a secluded corner of the market.
There was a shop there that no one ever visited.
Seeing the tent marked with the character for divination, he was suddenly reminded of when he had first set foot in Ghost Head City.
'Thanks to the bond I formed with Seo Seol-ryeong back then, I've been able to grow steadily all this way.'
Lost in old memories, Cheon Woo-jin moved to enter the shop.
But the moment his hand touched the tent's flap—
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin felt his mind turn ice-cold.
And with an expression unlike his usual self, he stepped inside the tent.