The Disciple Overthrows the Master (2)
Was I being followed?
Gwiyeongja's brow furrowed. He had never told Cheon Woo-jin where this dugout was located. There was no other explanation — the boy must have trailed him here.
"Why did you follow me?"
"There's something I need to tell you, sir."
"You could have simply waited for me to return."
Cheon Woo-jin's demeanor was as flat and unremarkable as ever. And yet, for reasons he couldn't name, Gwiyeongja felt a creeping sense of dread. Holding his wariness close, he pressed the question again.
"What exactly is this about?"
"Master."
Under the falling snow, Cheon Woo-jin spoke.
"You said earlier that the Black Haze Dragon seems to have vanished, didn't you?"
"I did."
He had circled all of Mount Goeyu and sensed not the slightest trace of the dragon's presence. Unless the beast had crawled into some deep cavern for its winter slumber, it appeared to have relocated somewhere far away.
"The Black Haze Dragon is dead. I killed it."
"What did you say?"
What nonsense is this? He killed the Black Haze Dragon?
Gwiyeongja stared at Cheon Woo-jin, bewildered. This was no atmosphere for jests. But neither could it possibly be the truth. What skill did this boy possess that could slay a dragon of the Nascent Soul Realm?
"……"
Has he gone mad, spouting delusions?
The thought crossed his mind — and yet, inexplicably, a cold stillness spread through his chest. It was not the bite of the winter air. The instincts of a martial artist were screaming a warning at Gwiyeongja.
Subdue him. Right now. This instant!
A dagger and talismans waited inside Gwiyeongja's robes. But baring his hands and pinning the boy down would be faster than drawing any of them. He flung aside the liquor bottle in his grip and, in the same breath, surged his internal energy up from his dantian. A torrent of qi flooded his meridians, his hardened sinews snapping into full activation.
At this very moment, Gwiyeongja was unfolding Ghost Shadow Death-Stealing Palm — the demonic art of his venomous lineage. A single careless strike might snuff out Cheon Woo-jin's life outright, but he sensed instinctively that this was no time for restraint.
A demonic art of the venomous lineage — a single palm strike poised to tear flesh from bone.
"……!"
He planted one foot forward, the opening move of the technique already coiling toward Cheon Woo-jin — and in that instant, the eyes that had unsettled him all along began to gleam with an unearthly light.
"Ah."
The moment he felt every current of qi in his body sever at once, Gwiyeongja erupted in blood from head to toe and died where he stood.
Thud.
Gwiyeongja collapsed. His body had been shredded apart like torn cloth.
A martial artist of Gwiyeongja's caliber could have kept fighting through wounds of that severity. The reason he could not so much as twitch was that, quite apart from the damage to his flesh, every life function within him had simply ceased. He was already a corpse.
"I've been curious for a while now — what face you'd make when you learned I killed the Black Haze Dragon."
Cheon Woo-jin murmured as he gazed down at him.
"I can't quite tell what that expression was."
Of course, curiosity alone had not moved Cheon Woo-jin to raise the subject. He had deliberately provoked Gwiyeongja with those words for one purpose: to measure the reaction speed of a peak transcendent master.
As I thought — the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye activates faster. Against ordinary martial artists, I won't need to worry at all.
The Instant Killing Heavenly Eye was, as its name declared, a transcendent authority that inflicted immediate death. But Cheon Woo-jin, who wielded it, still remained within the domain of humanity. Should his opponent ever be a being that had surpassed that domain, something dangerous could unfold.
Transcendent beings can split time itself and strike at speeds beyond normal perception. If that happens, I'd be struck down before I could even activate the Instant Killing Heavenly Eye.
For the eye to fire, Cheon Woo-jin first had to designate his target. Designation took only an instant — but a higher-order being could move faster than that very instant. It was conceivable that such an entity might sense his killing intent in advance and separate his head from his shoulders before the eye ever opened.
So he would have to keep raising his realm, sharpening the speed of his cognition. Fail, and the transcendent beings awaiting him in the future would slaughter him like a stray dog.
"……"
A haze-like wisp of energy began to seep from Gwiyeongja's corpse. It was the spirit qi he had hoarded in his upper dantian all these years — blues, yellows, whites, and blacks mingled together. Fitting enough, for Gwiyeongja had possessed a mixed spiritual root of Wood, Earth, Metal, and Water.
My root is Water. I need only take in the black water-attribute qi.
Cheon Woo-jin extended a hand. The spirit qi streamed toward him of its own accord — the signature of the Body of the Dark True Abyss, which swallowed all things like a pitch-black void.
Of the qi flooding into his body, he channeled only the black water qi up to his upper dantian, then sent it circling through the Conception and Governing vessels, the Small Heavenly Circuit, coaxing it to settle into his spirit meridians.
Not as easy as I'd hoped.
This was qi that Gwiyeongja had desperately accumulated over long, grinding years. Its character was anything but docile, though the sheer quantity was considerable. A single light circuit could not hope to tame it.
Cheon Woo-jin sat where he stood and folded himself into a lotus position. Snow kept falling and the cold bit deep, but he paid it no mind. A winter brimming with cold qi like this one was, in truth, the perfect season for wielding water-attribute qi. In that state, he began to circulate the spirit qi according to the formulas of the Five Elements Dao-Entering Art.
How long had he sat there?
When he opened his eyes, a snowscape stretched before him. Days of falling snow had buried the world in unbroken white.
Cheon Woo-jin rose to his feet, exhaling a plume of white breath, then raised a hand and drew spirit qi from his upper dantian.
BOOM!
The thickly piled snow scattered in every direction at once. He hadn't invoked a single spell — the mere release of his spiritual power was enough to summon a phenomenon of this scale.
"……"
Beneath, he could see Gwiyeongja's corpse, entombed in the snow. Frozen stiff by the cold, it had kept its shape perfectly despite the considerable time that had passed.
"Thank you for everything, Master."
Cheon Woo-jin pressed his palms together as he looked down at the body.
"Thanks to you, I've entered the late stage of the Qi Condensation Realm."
Spirit qi was now flowing through every meridian in his body. Not only the Conception and Governing vessels, but the Yang Heel, Yin Heel, Yang Linking, Yin Linking, Thrusting, and Belt vessels as well — all brimming to capacity. Beyond even that, qi coursed freely through the fine collateral channels threaded between the meridians. He had converted every one of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and all the collaterals into spirit meridians, and with that, entered the late stage of Qi Condensation, circulating spirit qi through his entire body.
"Without you, Master, I could never have grown this quickly."
This growth rate was flatly abnormal. Gwiyeongja himself had lingered in the middle stage of Qi Condensation for over a decade. Even in the game, growth this fast had been impossible.
The reason Cheon Woo-jin could enter the late stage in a matter of mere days was that he had been able to absorb Gwiyeongja's spirit qi wholesale. From the very beginning, he had intended to use the Body of the Dark True Abyss to drain his master dry. Just as Gwiyeongja had planned to render Cheon Woo-jin into a living pill and attempt his own breakthrough to the late stage, so too had Cheon Woo-jin planned to plunder his master's spirit qi and break through himself.
"I'm sure you resent me — but you know as well as I do that you have no right to. You were only ever fattening me up to devour me."
Had Gwiyeongja truly cherished and loved his disciple, Cheon Woo-jin's thoughts might have differed. But his master had intended nothing more than to raise him as an ingredient. And so Cheon Woo-jin had been able to sacrifice him without a flicker of hesitation.
"That is simply the way of this world of cultivation. Carry no regrets, and pass on to a better place."
Having paid those final respects, Cheon Woo-jin spared the corpse not another glance and made for the dugout.
Inside lay stacks of secret manuals, medicinal pills, and more — every treasure Gwiyeongja had never once shown him.
A final gift from Gwiyeongja, then.
Cheon Woo-jin intended to train here in this dugout for some time. He had entered the late stage of Qi Condensation and gained considerable spiritual power, but wielding that power properly would take practice.
First of all…
He picked up a book devoted to the art of talismans. After reading through the sections that had always puzzled him, he drew out a sheet of yellow paper lying nearby — locust yellow paper, dyed with the blossoms of the Chinese scholar tree. Split the character for "scholar tree" apart, and it yielded "wood" and "ghost" — which was why the paper had been used for talisman-making since ancient times.
He mixed cinnabar with oil to make a paint, then inscribed characters and patterns onto the paper with a brush. Each stroke demanded a chanted incantation and an infusion of spirit qi, requiring a state of absolute concentration.
Complete.
Being his first attempt, a single talisman had cost him half the day. Still, a quiet pride swelled in him at having finished his very first one.
So now I have my own Sword-Controlling Talisman.
Cheon Woo-jin's first talisman was the Sword-Controlling Talisman — the very one Gwiyeongja had once swaggered before him with, bragging that it was as good as carrying a second blade. He had studied it carefully back then, and so already understood its principles.
Come to think of it…
Suddenly, Cheon Woo-jin sensed a presence. Stepping outside with the talisman in hand, he heard the sound of wet, smacking jaws. Drawn by the scent of prey, perhaps? A wolf had appeared at some point and was tearing into Gwiyeongja's corpse.
But this was no ordinary wolf. Its coat was a vivid blue-green all over, and its frame was massive.
A Azure Gale Wolf.
A wolf that had become a monster by absorbing the qi of the winds that swept through the valley. When Cheon Woo-jin fixed it with a long stare, the beast lifted its head from the corpse.
"Grrrr…"
The wolf's eyes locked onto him with naked hunger. A living, warm human would surely be far more appetizing than a frozen corpse.
"Graaagh…!"
It roared and lunged. The fangs filling its gaping maw were a nightmare to behold — a single bite would shatter bone and sinew alike.
"……"
Cheon Woo-jin poured his spirit qi into the talisman and hurled it. The paper ignited in a bloom of flame and, in the space of a heartbeat, transformed into a gleaming blade. The instant his first true spell unfolded.