27
Chapter 27: Crown Opening
Thud, crack, thud!
Dot-like bruises were engraved in various places on Dong Bong-su's body.
Careful yet sharp movements.
Finally, the Tang Family's secret Crown Opening Great Method began to unfold on Sosam's, no, Dong Bong-su's body.
To perform the Crown Opening Great Method, Tang O had to artificially create meridian paths in Dong Bong-su's body with the Dragon Phoenix Golden Needles. Since there were no paths, the work of making paths had to precede everything.
Tang O's hand swiftly sliced through the air. Following his touch, the Dragon Phoenix Golden Needles floating in the air began to pierce various parts of Dong Bong-su's body, and Tang O's qi wove between the needles, creating paths.
Passing through Zhongfu Point, penetrating Shaoshang Point and Shangyang Point to Yingxiang Point, from Jiquan Point piercing Shaochong Point and Shaoze Point, crossing Tinggong Point and Tianzhu Point, passing over Zhongchong Point and Chengying Point, marking Litui Point and Yinbai Point, marking Dabao Point and Qingming Point, crossing Zhiyin Point and Yongquan Point, striking Youmen Point and Guanchong Point, scraping Sizhu Kong Point and Tongzi Liao Point, penetrating Zuqiaoyin Point and Dadun Point, all the way to Qimen Point.
Finally, paths were opened through all Twelve Meridian Points according to Yin-Yang and Five Elements.
From then, the full-fledged Crown Opening Great Method was performed.
Crack crack crack!
Tang O's hands and the Dragon Phoenix Golden Needles traversed every part of Dong Bong-su's body.
While proceeding with the Crown Opening Great Method, he was feeling more and more the magnificence of the Holeless Body. Despite following temporarily created meridian paths, there was absolutely no blockage in the flow of qi and blood. Far from being blocked, qi flowed several times faster than an ordinary martial artist.
He was excited and gradually became absorbed in the Crown Opening Great Method.
That said, he hadn't completely lost his reason. An important task he had to do still remained.
When approaching the end of the Crown Opening Great Method, Tang O pressed a button attached somewhere on the bottom of the Dragon Phoenix Golden Needles case. Then the bottom opened, revealing a space hidden inside the case.
Inside were many tiny black things like sesame seeds. But looking closely, those small things were crawling. They weren't sesame seeds, but insects.
They were precisely a type of extremely fine insect called Ten Thousand Poison Gu.
Ten Thousand Poison Gu was a gu secretly developed by the Tang Family, a special breed created by mixing various gus to create an improved breed of gu, then administering ten thousand poisons to it.
Ten Thousand Poison Gu had the characteristic of settling in the host's dantian, then eating up all poison when poison infiltrated inside. So even if a person had no resistance to poison, if they harbored this Ten Thousand Poison Gu in their body, they would become a Body Impervious to Ten Thousand Poisons.
However, Ten Thousand Poison Gu was shelved shortly after being created.
The reason was because of the danger of its use.
Ten Thousand Poison Gu lived in colonies like ants or honeybees, then met a host and that colony broke apart, at which point the person harboring the Queen Ten Thousand Poison Gu in their body could control all people harboring the rest of the Ten Thousand Poison Gu from that colony.
In other words, if someone harboring the Queen Ten Thousand Poison Gu had evil intentions and endangered the Tang Family, the Tang Family could walk the path of irrecoverable ruin. So the Tang Family members who knew of that danger buried the Ten Thousand Poison Gu even after developing it.
But that Ten Thousand Poison Gu, thought to be lost, was now in Tang O's hands.
The reason Tang O took out this Ten Thousand Poison Gu at this point when the Crown Opening Great Method was almost finished?
Obviously.
It was to restrain Dong Bong-su.
He didn't want to lose such an excellent item as Sosam to another place even by chance, and it was to make him completely his own.
But there was something he didn't know.
Dong Bong-su had already heard all of this.
Knowing it all, he accepted all of Tang O's proposals and was now accepting one male Ten Thousand Poison Gu into his body. Because he could kill the Gu at any time he wanted. Inventory Divine Art applied the same way inside the body. This was a recently discovered fact.
If he could take out and put in various objects with Inventory, it was a result derived from pondering how its range worked.
Could Inventory Divine Art be applied even to empty spaces inside the body?
The result was 'possible.'
Therefore, if Dong Bong-su just knew where the Gu settled in his body, he could shoot out small weapons like thin needles into his body at any time to burst and kill the Gu.
Tang O didn't know that fact and believed he could completely control Dong Bong-su.
Tang O put one Ten Thousand Poison Gu into Dong Bong-su's ear.
Wriggle wriggle.
Like an ant burrowing into sand, one male Ten Thousand Poison Gu disappeared into Dong Bong-su's ear.
Even in the midst of this, Dong Bong-su sat still, feeling the energy newly accumulating in his body due to the Crown Opening Great Method. He was grasping how qi flowed in his body and how it should flow simply by receiving qi. In that process, the pain from the Crown Opening Great Method and the Ten Thousand Poison Gu's infiltration was terrible, but Dong Bong-su, having achieved unity of object and self, gradually forgot the pain.
Though not for a long time, Dong Bong-su was evolving further into a monster.
***
Several hours later.
Only after the dawn rooster crowed did the Crown Opening Great Method finally end.
A satisfied smile hung on the tired Tang O's face, and he looked down at Dong Bong-su and said.
"Open your eyes."
Dong Bong-su slowly opened his eyes and looked at Tang O. The dull energy had completely lifted from his eyes, and in some aspects, there was even a feeling of dizziness.
"I named you Tang Sam, meaning to cut down evil people like cutting grass."
"Yes."
An awkward voice flowed from Dong Bong-su's mouth. To Tang O or others, it should have felt like he had lost speech for a long time, and it was appropriate.
Tang O thought everything had been accomplished properly and smiled with satisfaction. At that, Dong Bong-su also smiled back. Of course, his smile was also about everything being accomplished properly.
Though it was obvious without saying whose matter had succeeded between the two.
Finally, Dong Bong-su completely shed the shell called Sosam and obtained new wings called Tang Sam. Though no one in the Martial World noticed its danger.
Today was the day the monster donned small wings and began preparing to take flight. How high he would fly, or whether he would fail to fly and simply collapse, remained to be seen.
***
(Revised) New Murim Online 2nd Law: Any object in direct contact with any part of the body (Addition: regardless of inside or outside the body) can be put into Inventory. (However, its size must be smaller than Inventory and it must not be a living creature.)
Addition: It's not that only one can be put in and taken out at a time—the number can increase through training.
※Still, all these laws are not fixed or certain.
Side Story 1: Birth of a Psychopath
Being a good person is something you can only say when passing by. When looking at a lifetime, there are no good people in this world.
— Hannibal Lecter, from 'The Silence of the Lambs'
***
I was different from a young age.
Kim Yang-suk said she was startled when I was born because I didn't cry and just looked around. She pounded my bottom for a long time trying to make me cry, but when I still didn't cry, she pinched me. Only then did I cry from pain.
Ten months later.
Finally, my speech opened.
Even then, I was a child differentiated from other children. The first words I uttered weren't short words like mommy, daddy, or bottle, but a complete sentence: 'Mom, give me food.'
Mother Kim Yang-suk seems to have clearly realized then that I was different from other children. Perhaps because of that, from a young age I was able to learn various things under the guise of gifted education and whatnot. But that curriculum wasn't much different from other children. In reality, after mastering everything, I was doing my favorite activity of making ants fight, but outwardly I still pretended to be learning.
I probably knew instinctively even at that time. That standing out was never beneficial.
Time passed again, and I became five years old.
Kim Yang-suk's excessive gifted education was now almost over and I was going through normal growth.
I played marbles, land-grabbing, and various game devices with neighborhood kids. Among them, my favorite activity was catching insects, reptiles, amphibians, etc., and playing with them.
Ants, dragonflies, cicadas, dung beetles, longhorn beetles, mantises, various grasshoppers and katydids, frogs, salamanders, tadpoles, etc.
Since most of the kids' mothers hated such things, keeping them was always my responsibility. Kim Yang-suk didn't care much about such things as long as I was okay.
I mainly played with them in my room.
Then one morning, when Kim Yang-suk came into my room and didn't see them, she asked.
"Huh? Bong-su, what happened to all the bugs you caught with the kids yesterday? You know you can't just throw such things in the trash?"
And she searched my room's trash can. But there was no way they were there.
"I ate them."
I probably answered like that. It wasn't wrong.
Shocked by those words, Kim Yang-suk scolded me hard. Saying I shouldn't carelessly eat such things. I even got scolded more severely when she told Dad, who came home in the evening.
Actually, I only ate the frog. I made the rest fight each other. They killed and killed each other. Eventually, what survived was the frog, and I just ate the frog. Consequently, I ate them all though.
I proved I was stronger than the frog, but I was still a weaker existence than my parents.
I realized then. That I shouldn't do what I liked where others, especially people stronger than me, were watching.
Time passed again.
I grew up healthy and splendidly.
I didn't upset my parents, nor did anything that fell outside the teachers' eyes. Rather, the young me was a model student acknowledged by everyone.
Wherever she went, Kim Yang-suk praised me.
A son who studies well and is good.
Teachers also frequently patted my head and praised me.
'Someone else's son' who would receive praise anywhere.
That was me, Dong Bong-su, at that time. Because when I did that, even if I did what I liked, people would interpret it on their own as having a thorough experimental spirit or understand it easily.
But being 'someone else's son' who studies well and receives praise—parents might not know, but it naturally draws hostility from friends. At that time, I didn't fully realize that.
It was probably when I was in 8th grade.
I secretly brought several stray dogs and cats from the neighborhood and made them fight. And while secretly burying the dead dogs and cats in the school flower bed, the kids caught me. Because of that incident, I became bullied. After that, for the rest of middle school, it became difficult to pursue hobbies and experiments again.
I learned another thing then. That I had to look good not only to people stronger than me, but also to those who weren't strong, and hide my hobbies.
Years passed again, and I became a high school student.
At that time, at least outwardly, I had become quite ordinary.
My grades were ordinary, I wasn't particularly good at anything—just the next-door high schooler who wouldn't stand out anywhere. That was me, Dong Bong-su.
But.
There was still something not ordinary.
Strangely, girls liked and followed me. At first, I didn't know why.
Eventually, I braved the annoyance and dated one of them. And one day I asked.
"Why do you like me?"
"Oh my! Look at you? How can I say such an embarrassing thing with my own mouth?"
When she said that, I did what she liked, and when she reached climax, I asked once more.
"Why do you like me?"
She panted and finally told me the answer I wanted.
"Well. Because you're not ordinary……I guess?"
"What does that mean?"
"You look different somehow. You're ordinary, but you seem somehow not ordinary?"
Then I gained new enlightenment. That I wasn't ordinary even just staying still.
So from then on, I began adopting artificial protective coloring. I did sports that everyone did, watched TV programs everyone watched, laughed when others laughed, cried when others cried.
At some point, people started saying this about me.
"Bong-su. You're such a good person."
"Bong-su. Thank you."
"Bong-su. Please do me a favor."
"Bong-su……."
"Bong-su……."
"Bong……."
At some point, I had become a good person.
Everyone approached me without hesitation. Men came to like me just as a colleague or friend, and women came to perceive me just as a workplace colleague, school senior, older brother, etc.
Finally, I realized.
The fact that I had finally obtained true protective coloring, ordinariness. Now, like a chameleon, wherever I went, even without being conscious of it, I had become 'a good person, an ordinary person.'
I had finally completely escaped people's eyes.
Only then could I regain my true self.
It was truly a long time of endurance.
Now it was time to release the desire I had held back and held back. Not to insects or animals, but to real prey.
Only before them could I deactivate my protective coloring and return to my true self.