The Poison-Dispelling Poison Freak
Gong Ryun was a slave.
A slave of the Slave Planet—a world where the vast majority of the population lived in bondage.
So what work could they possibly do? In a galactic murim where technology had advanced and high-efficiency automated factories were the norm, what meaning was there in forcing labor on human slaves who were neither machines nor martial masters?
…If the fruit of that labor was a lethal poison.
A substance no one wanted near them—something people refused even to share the same air with.
Something everyone shunned, yet civilization could not do without.
Then the Slave Planet had meaning.
Sangongdok.
The poison that erased internal energy.
A martial artist's nightmare.
And every soul living in this galaxy was a martial artist.
…Perhaps the slaves simply were not counted as such.
In truth, many people were not even certain the Slave Planet existed. It was something of an urban legend.
Inhuman hard labor without a single day of rest.
Gong Ryun had made Sangongdok.
"Whoa!! The Sangongdok hyung is seriously amazing! How the heck did you earn a nickname that scary and vicious!!!"
Loro was ecstatic.
"No. That one's a genuine misunderstanding. The nickname is rather overblown."
"I heard you grow San-gong-cho at home—is that true or what?"
San-gong-cho. The plant that served as the raw material for Sangongdok. It looked like a cross between cannabis and an orchid.
"Well… I do grow a few, but… just as potted ornamentals, nothing more…"
"I heard you've packed your whole house full of them."
"I have not! I only grow seven!"
"But you do grow them!!! So why keep them around at all! Obviously so you can use them for poison arts!!"
"I said they're ornamental!!!"
Gong Ryun's expression turned faintly wistful as he continued.
"…Ornamental. They remind me of home…"
Gong Ryun's homeland.
The Slave Planet of San-gong-cho plantation farms.
An entire world that was one vast farm for cultivating San-gong-cho.
Gong Ryun had been a farmer there.
He grew San-gong-cho. He hauled it to the factories. That had been the labor of his entire life.
He had spent his whole existence with San-gong-cho. So whenever he saw the plant… memories of his old home surfaced. No matter how inhuman that space of labor exploitation had been, it was still the hometown where he had lived with his mother.
When Gong Ryun escaped the Slave Planet, a few San-gong-cho seeds had been tucked against his chest. It had been seeding season; they had simply worked their way into his clothes while he labored. After settling here, he had planted those seeds in pots.
The outside world was a place utterly unlike his homeland.
If he did not keep that grass close at hand, even like this… he felt he might lose the memories of his old home and family forever.
Un-rang, who already knew the circumstances, grew solemn.
He laid an arm across Gong Ryun's shoulders and patted him gently, as if to console him.
Loro, however, had no such tact whatsoever.
"Seven is still a ton, though!? Doesn't contact with them make your internal energy evaporate? Even androids don't get a free pass! Just bringing that stuff into the house is already insane. Aren't you scared of Sangongdok's 'fatal side effects'? On top of evaporating the energy in your body, high-concentration Sangongdok permanently reduces your total internal energy capacity—that's a crime against humanity, right?"
Gong Ryun glared at him, needlessly on edge.
"I explain this to everyone I meet: the San-gong-cho plant itself contains no dispersing component whatsoever. What evaporates internal energy is the effect of Sangongdok—the poison refined from San-gong-cho."
"But it's the raw material—there's got to be something, right? Tobacco leaves have nicotine in them too, don't they?"
"San-gong-cho is not a drug. Well… the roots do have a mild dispersing effect, but…"
"I knew it!!!!!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!!"
Gong Ryun finally snapped and roared.
"Listen all the way through! The root's dispersing effect doesn't drift into the air or anything like that—you have to chew the living plant raw and crunchy before you get a temporary, minor effect! To get a proper dispersing result you have to process it! Fifteen chemical reagents and a three-stage refining process! You need specialized machinery and at least twenty hours of aging!"
"…"
Loro's expression grew steadily more suspicious.
"Only after that process does it become the Sangongdok everyone knows! The permanent reduction of total internal energy is an effect that only appears after every last step of that process! It's the same principle as factory-made paper cigarettes being far worse for you than chewing a raw tobacco leaf! So San-gong-cho is safe! You can even eat it! It's full of nutrients!"
"……Hyung… how do you know all that in such detail…?"
After farm work finished, he had also been forced to help in the Sangongdok manufacturing plant, so he knew. Gong Ryun simply saw no need to mention it.
"Don't ask! Anyway, San-gong-cho is safe! Seasoned as namul, it tastes incredible!!!"
"Eeeeek!!!!! You actually eat it!!? Hyung! So the rumor that you mix Sangongdok powder into your rice was true after all!!!"
"You little—! I never did that!!! Sometimes I just sprinkle San-gong-cho leaves on carbonara like basil!!! I've done it since I was a kid!!"
"Kyaaaaah!!! Poison-art training from childhood!!! So you really were an illegitimate son of the Sichuan Tang Clan!!!"
"Sichuan Tang Clan, my foot! Receive my scolding!!!"
Gong Ryun delivered a hearty verbal thrashing, then drew a long breath.
He had gotten too worked up.
"Ah… damn it, getting excited again… This always happens the moment San-gong-cho comes up…"
"Heh heh heh. Gong Ryun. Please calm yourself."
"Un-rang, everyone keeps smearing me so badly. What am I supposed to do?"
"Does the nickname feel unjust to you, Gong Ryun?"
"What have I done so wrong to end up like this? I am wronged."
"Heh heh heh. But Gong Ryun—this may sting a little, yet I feel I must say it now or never. That nickname is your own karmic retribution."
"Not you too! What do you mean, karmic retribution!"
"…Loro. Would you share a few more of the rumors about Gong Ryun?"
"Ah, yes, Monk-hyung. Let's see. I heard he takes his San-gong-cho pot to restaurants, never orders food, just sits at a table with a blissful look and strokes the plant."
"That was when I was lodging in a building where the first floor was a restaurant and the second floor up was a guesthouse. The manager's hobby was bonsai; I borrowed his tools to tend the San-gong-cho. The plant needs so much care."
"Why do it on the first-floor restaurant when you could have done it at home?"
"The manager told me to do it downstairs. He didn't want the borrowed bonsai tools walking off, so he had me bring the pot to the first floor and work where the counter could see me. Strangely, after that one time, he said I could do it at home. He even gave me the tools, saying he was going to throw them out anyway. A free loot drop, as it were."
"…Any other rumors, Loro?"
"I heard he's a druid who can talk to San-gong-cho."
"Hey, Loro! Anyone can tell that's nonsense! How could a person hold a conversation with a plant!"
"Still. Plenty of people have seen Gong Ryun-hyung clutching a San-gong-cho pot in inns, crying and talking to it."
"Ah. Must have been one of my depressive days. Sometimes when homesickness hits, I want to bury myself in the scent of San-gong-cho while drunk. A kind of personal healing, I suppose."
"Ah… uh… then what about the 'talking to San-gong-cho' part?"
"I was only speaking to my mother in heaven!"
"Using the San-gong-cho as a medium…?"
Not a druid—had he actually been a poison-attribute necromancer?
Loro immediately felt guilty for the rude thought.
"Oh, and there's that other rumor. The one about… hyung handing out Sangongdok for free."
"What?"
Gong Ryun's face sharpened.
Loro scrambled to answer.
"Ahaha! Of course that can't be true!"
"Not Sangongdok—San-gong-cho powder."
"…?"
"San-gong-cho powder is simply dried San-gong-cho root run through a blender. It is not poison."
"Not poison? No dispersing component?"
"Well, there is some."
"Then it is poison!!!"
"But it does not permanently lower your internal energy capacity."
"What difference does that make!!! You can still use it for poison arts!!"
"I truly cannot understand. Why is everyone so terrified of a little temporary loss of internal energy? It doesn't wreck your body. It doesn't even hurt. Yet people act as if the sky is falling."
"Mmm… Gong Ryun. That is because you are not yet accustomed to a martial artist's sensibilities."
What is internal energy to a martial artist?
Their most precious resource.
They spend their entire lives straining to raise the energy in their dantian even a fraction. They swallow anything said to be good for the body, meditate, and even while breathing use energy-circulation methods to gather ambient qi into their core.
The downward love of parents who try to feed their growing children one more spiritual elixir needs no further explanation.
And yet something simply snatches that precious internal energy away—energy steeped in one's own effort, sweat, and tears, and those of everyone one loves.
It is exactly like money vanishing from a pay envelope. That is what Sangongdok is. You merely inhale a pinch of the powder and the wad of bills you tucked against your chest starts evaporating! Even if the evaporation is temporary, the experience is terrifying.
Worse, high-purity Sangongdok makes the effect permanent rather than temporary. It permanently trims a little of your total internal energy capacity. In other words, the pay envelope grows permanently thinner.
It is a pay cut. A lifelong pay cut.
So Sangongdok is frightening on principle. Until you are actually poisoned, there is no way to tell whether you have received high-purity Sangongdok or the side-effect-free variety. Temporary evaporation would be a mercy—but if it is permanent? The thought alone is too frightening.
Gong Ryun, however, still could not quite grasp this sensibility.
A little less internal energy did not make a person suddenly keel over. Heatstroke was far more terrifying. How many villagers had dropped dead working under the blazing sun?
His sensibilities remained closer to those of a slave laborer than a martial artist.
"No one fears the sun just because sunlight can kill people, do they?"
"…But sunlight is indispensable to human life, while Sangongdok is poison, is it not?"
"I can't live without my San-gong-cho namul. Doesn't that make it indispensable too?"
"…I believe the 'freak' part of the nickname is accurate."