The Benefactor's Three Heavens
Paeng Ja-ryeong stood with his arms crossed, waiting for his sister while his thoughts lingered on the child born with a heavenly affliction. He had far more than one or two questions. Even after Paeng Ha-ryeong took her seat across from him—with their mother Moyong Hye occupying the head position—he still wrestled with where to begin. It was Moyong Hye who spoke first.
“Ha-ryeong.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“What sort of man is this benefactor?”
It was a simple, foundational question, yet none could have eased their shared curiosity more completely. Paeng Ha-ryeong let out a soft hum, organizing her thoughts before answering.
“I’m not entirely sure myself.”
“What do you—” Paeng Ja-ryeong began, but caught himself. “Never mind. Please continue.”
He had momentarily lost his composure and leaned forward, only to immediately exercise the self-restraint expected of the young master and settle back into his seat.
Paeng Ha-ryeong reflected on everything she had observed of Namgung Woo. Their time together had been a mere three days. Counting the journey to Muan County, it amounted to five at most. Far too short a time to truly know another person. On top of that, Namgung Woo was not one to speak freely about himself. The Yang twins had usually stepped in on his behalf. Though they could not have spent much more time with him than the members of the Paeng family, their behavior carried a distinct quality. It was clear the pair had learned some secret about Namgung Woo that he had not shared with the Paeng clan. That was why they acted as though they were guarding him.
The Yang twins seemed to believe the Paeng family remained unaware, but deceiving the eyes of the Paeng clan was no simple feat. No matter how bold and straightforward the family’s martial tradition, a prestigious murim house could never entirely escape politics—especially the Hebei Paeng family. After all, the greatest power under heaven, the imperial court, loomed just next door. Though they appeared unbound by anyone’s gaze, in truth the Hebei Paeng family paid more attention to such matters and possessed sharper instincts than any other clan in the murim.
Even Paeng Ha-ryeong and Paeng Mu-ho—direct descendants far removed from the seat of leadership and thus rarely involved in political maneuvering—possessed the fundamental discernment such a position demanded. The two of them had observed Namgung Woo closely, studying what kind of man he truly was. Their conclusion…
“He is a fascinating person.”
“In what way?”
“How should I put it? He seems to lack a great deal of common sense. As if he grew up in some remote mountain hamlet. Yet at the same time, he possesses astonishingly profound knowledge.”
“Hmm… Perhaps he was raised in a very particular way by someone.”
Paeng Ja-ryeong retraced the limited information they had on Namgung Woo. Their first encounter had been in Muan County. He belonged to the Yoping Escort Agency and had been traveling with an escort mission, so the starting point was Linfen County in Shanxi Province. There was a strong possibility his origins lay in Shanxi.
“But his martial prowess is extraordinarily high.”
“His martial prowess?”
The statement was so far from what Paeng Ja-ryeong had expected that he repeated the words, puzzled.
“Yes. In Muan County, he erased a Demonic Phantom with a single sword strike.”
“A Demonic Phantom… A troublesome creature to handle.”
Paeng Ja-ryeong was confident he could subdue one alone. But with a single strike? That was difficult to believe.
“I had lost consciousness after being caught in the self-detonation of another Demonic Phantom, but Uncle witnessed the entire scene. Sword gang, he said. And it was refined to an almost unbelievable degree.”
“Yet his aura was clearly… No, never mind. A master of that caliber could certainly suppress his aura at will. So that’s why you stopped me back then. I understand now.”
Paeng Ha-ryeong had intervened when her brother was about to casually underestimate Namgung Woo’s martial realm and probe too deeply into his background. At the time, Paeng Ja-ryeong had assumed she simply didn’t want him to be rude to their benefactor. While that was partly true, she had also been preventing him from acting rashly without knowing the man’s true strength. The realization that his sister had taken Namgung Woo’s side over his own had left Paeng Ja-ryeong somewhat disgruntled, but now he nodded in acceptance.
Paeng Ha-ryeong regarded him with a faintly awkward expression before continuing.
“It also seems he has studied medical arts separately.”
“Medical arts?”
Martial artists inevitably developed a deep understanding of the human body. To advance their arts, they had to completely grasp how the body moved, the structure of its meridians, and the role each played. Yet that was fundamentally different from properly learning the medical arts. In the past, martial arts had been a method of nourishing life and a form of cultivation meant to transcend human limits. But those days were long gone. Martial arts had become combat techniques. Therefore, even with a high understanding of the meridians, the focus lay not on healing but on amplifying power and efficiently subduing or killing opponents.
Mastering medical arts required effort and time on par with martial cultivation. It was no coincidence that those called divine physicians or eccentric doctors possessed comparatively lower combat strength relative to their fame. Those who reached the pinnacle in both fields were exceedingly rare, and such individuals quickly earned resounding fame across the world. In short, becoming highly skilled in both martial arts and medicine at a young age was extraordinarily difficult—impossible without heavenly talent.
Yet none of those gathered here claimed it was impossible.
“If he truly shares the same constitution as Ye-ryeong…”
“Yes, Mother. It would be entirely possible. However, the fact that he has also reached the pinnacle in martial arts means he has achieved balance among essence, energy, and spirit. That would imply he overcame his constitution far faster than Ye-ryeong did.”
Throughout the history of the Paeng family, Paeng Ye-ryeong possessed the greatest talent ever recorded. Her comprehension was such that after merely seeing the family’s secret movement technique, the Void Spirit Steps, she had improved it in her mind alone. Not by observing the perfected version practiced by the family’s greatest expert, but by watching her sister Paeng Ha-ryeong’s still-clumsy form from childhood. There was no martial art in the current Paeng family that had not been touched by her hand. It was no exaggeration to say every technique had advanced by an entire level.
The Gongryeong Taeheo Singong to which Paeng Ye-ryeong had devoted the most attention had now transcended the limits of worldly martial arts, rising to a level that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the techniques of the Nine Great Sects or the Xuan Yuan clan. This was her talent even without having learned the arts in her own body. No one could imagine what miraculous achievements she might attain once she internalized them completely through personal practice.
Yet every time she gathered qi, it poured into her wide-open upper dantian and further expanded the Heavenly Gate. That was why Paeng Ye-ryeong had been forced to abandon martial arts to prolong her life. Burning her brief existence to reach the Absolute Realm and escape her heavenly affliction had been one possible path, but unfortunately she was a frail child. Her body could not keep pace with her mental enlightenment and explosive growth in energy.
But what if she could suppress the spirit and control her qi so it would not destroy her essence?
“We cannot afford to be blindly optimistic,” Paeng Ja-ryeong said. Beyond the opened Heavenly Gate, she might simply possess an extraordinary physique. He tried to analyze the situation with as much objectivity as possible. If they raised their hopes too high only to have them shattered, the resulting despair would be equally devastating.
“That being the case…”
Paeng Ha-ryeong gently rolled up her sleeve and extended her pale arm.
“Would the two of you examine my meridians?”
“Your meridians?”
It was only natural for Paeng Ja-ryeong, and Moyong Hye—having come from the Moyong family, one of the Seven Great Clans—had also cultivated martial arts. The pair placed their fingers on her wrist. Then, careful not to injure her, they channeled only the smallest amount of internal energy they could perfectly control into her meridians.
They did not need long to notice the anomaly within Paeng Ha-ryeong. The path was polished to an unnatural smoothness. The farther they traveled along it, the more clearly they sensed the existence of endlessly branching fine meridians.
“By the heavens…”
“Did you experience some form of enlightenment?”
Paeng Ha-ryeong’s entire network of fine meridians lay wide open, as though she had been reborn. It surpassed even Paeng Ja-ryeong, who had broken through the Peak Realm and now stood at the threshold of the Transcendent Realm. Moyong Hye, whose own martial understanding was comparatively shallow, exclaimed in shock.
“Does this mean Ha-ryeong has also entered the Transcendent Realm?”
“That is…”
Before Paeng Ja-ryeong could offer a definite answer, Paeng Ha-ryeong withdrew her wrist and shook her head.
“Not exactly. But I believe my level is similar to Uncle’s.”
“Similar to Uncle Mu-ho? That alone is an astonishing achievement. Late-stage Peak Realm at twenty-four years old.”
“This too is a blessing bestowed by Eungong.”
“By the benefactor?”
Paeng Ha-ryeong gazed down at her arm—healthy, more resilient and powerful than before—and recalled the past.
“Eungong did not merely heal me. He opened all my meridians and left behind something like this…”
Crackle.
Lightning sparked between the fingers of both her hands.
“Even thunder qi.”
“…Divine qi.”
Divine qi. Energy accumulated through divine arts. Ordinary true qi gradually reverted to the qi of nature the moment it left the body; for it to remain as internal energy this long meant the depth of cultivation was profound indeed. It was divine qi accumulated by an absolute expert through an absolute divine art.
“If it is Eungong, he will surely be able to cure Ye-ryeong. Without fail.”
Paeng Ha-ryeong’s voice brimmed with unwavering faith.
“So rather than speculating, wouldn’t it be more productive to consider how we might repay him?”
Namgung Woo existed within darkness. Not the darkness of the outside world, but the darkness of his own mind. He shut out all external stimuli from his consciousness and sank solely into his inner self. Inside the training cave he had borrowed from the Paeng family, Namgung Woo descended to the very depths of his being for the first time.
He passed the platinum dragon formed of the Heavenly Thunder qi from the Cheonroe Jewang Singong—the art he used most frequently. He moved beyond even the blue sky drawn by the Blue Sky qi of the Changgung Daeyeon Singong, which served as the central axis of his body. And at the farthest reach, he arrived.
The pinnacle of the flesh. The nadir of the mind. There existed the third energy that filled Namgung Woo’s spirit.
The Gongryeong Taeheo Singong.
It was the last of the three heavens that Namgung Woo possessed.