I Have to Eat That Even If It Kills Me! (2)
Chung Myung’s eyes had gone completely wild.
He had always been obsessed with small gains and money, but this was on another level altogether. This was different. Completely different.
Who was Yakseon?
Setting aside everything else, he was the man regarded as the greatest alchemist in history. The art of alchemy meant the art of creating spiritual elixirs. In the past, the Honwon Dan Yakseon made was said to outclass even Shaolin’s Great Return Pill.
The Great Return Pill. The Great Return Pill!
Every major sect in the world had its own alchemical tradition, and through it they improved the inner power of their disciples. Among them, the most famous were Shaolin’s Great Return Pill and Wudang’s Purple Heaven Pill.
And what of the elixirs forged by Shaolin and Wudang, sects blessed with monstrous wealth and monstrous manpower? There was no need to waste words on how miraculous they were.
But Yakseon had studied alchemy alone and surpassed the elixirs of both those sects.
For martial artists who staked their lives on inner power and martial prowess, a Honwon Dan with effects beyond the Great Return Pill was, quite literally, an invaluable treasure.
Anyone who obtained a Honwon Dan would immediately leap into the ranks of experts on the strength of that overwhelming inner power alone. In truth, the word “invaluable” might not even have been enough.
Even a hundred years ago, whenever rumors spread that Honwon Dan had appeared in the world, bloodshed inevitably followed. Eyes gone mad with greed, people had no hesitation about killing one another just to get their hands on it.
And this wasn’t even the Honwon Dan itself, but Yakseon’s tomb?
That meant…
'There might be an alchemical record here!'
People always wanted to leave behind what they had achieved.
There was no way a man who had accomplished so much would have simply erased the alchemy he had spent his whole life perfecting. He must have left it somewhere.
And if the Sword Tomb truly existed, then there was a high chance that alchemy record was stored within it.
'I must eat this even if I die!'
No. More accurately, Mount Hua had to eat it.
Why were Shaolin’s Great Return Pill and Wudang’s Purple Heaven Pill so famous? Because inner power was that important to martial cultivation.
If skill was equal, then the one with greater inner power had the advantage. That was a plain and simple truth.
That was why Shaolin and Wudang had poured immense money and manpower into alchemy research, and why they had created elixirs counted among the best under heaven. The disciples who consumed those elixirs would only grow stronger by the day.
Exactly. Just like Mu Jin had done a moment ago, unleashing streams of sword energy with inner power too vast for his age.
But Mount Hua…
'We don’t have an alchemy tradition.'
To be precise, it had been lost.
'And we don’t have elixirs either.'
Thanks to that, Mount Hua’s disciples were reduced to sharing basic pills, not even having the chance to see proper elixirs—just like the Plum Blossom Pills Chung Myung used to take as hangover cures in his past life.
And now even those Plum Blossom Pills were gone.
As long as Chung Myung was around, brute force could cover the gap somehow. But after he was gone, the fact that the sect’s alchemy tradition had been lost would become a fatal weakness.
“No! If that’s the case, then why didn’t you preserve it properly?! What the hell!”
Chung Myung jabbed a finger at the sky.
— Did I know?
They had preserved the ledgers and martial manuals, but not the alchemy records! No wonder the Medicine Hall bastards kept saying they were mistreated and staging work stoppages!
No, fine. That wasn’t the important part right now.
With half-crazed eyes, Chung Myung glared at Jin Hyeon.
“You sure?”
“...Yes.”
“I mean, you’re sure that Sword Tomb is Yakseon’s grave?”
Jin Hyeon coughed awkwardly and then answered.
“Even though Talgeom Muheun rose to the position of the strongest under heaven, he was not recognized by the world because his martial arts were mediocre. Yet with those mediocre skills, he defeated all the great masters of his age.”
“Yeah, right.”
Normally, when someone reached the level of the strongest under heaven, their signature martial art became famous alongside their title. But Chung Myung had never even heard what Talgeom Muheun’s martial arts were called.
'Now that I think about it, that is kind of weird.'
“That was because Talgeom Muheun defeated his opponents without any particular techniques, relying instead on a level of inner power no one could have imagined. Even back then, there were those who suspected something, but Yakseon himself denied it, and the matter faded away. However, after his death, one of Yakseon’s acquaintances quietly revealed that truth, and the story was passed along in secret.”
“So only a few sects knew?”
“That’s right.”
Jin Hyeon let out a long sigh.
Now Mount Hua would be added to that small number of sects. No, more like Mount Hua would be added to the list of thieves.
Still, there was nothing he could do about it. A warrior’s oath weighed more than a thousand gold. He could not stain his grand-uncle’s honor for the sake of a private gain.
No, more than that…
'If I don’t say anything, they won’t let us go.'
People might not believe that Wudang disciples were being threatened, but that was the reality unfolding here and now.
“I’ve now told you everything I know. So please, let us go.”
“Sure, of course. I’m a man who keeps his promises.”
Chung Myung grinned.
He’d let them go. Of course he would.
After he took one more thing first.
“So where’s the map?”
“...Pardon?”
“Where’s the treasure map? You said earlier that you found one.”
“...”
Jin Hyeon’s eyes wavered.
“Th-that...”
His mind spun desperately.
“I said I would tell you what I knew, but I never said I’d hand over the treasure map too!”
“Right. I know that.”
“Then why—”
Chung Myung snorted.
“Think about it. If I let you go like this, you’ll just go back to Wudang and bring your disciples with you, won’t you?”
“...”
“You’d probably come swarming back like a bunch of ants, right?”
“...”
“Then I’d be the one chasing after a chicken that’s already run off the coop. No matter how strong I am, there’s no way I can do anything if Wudang bastards are crawling around everywhere like ants. Besides, you idiots still don’t know the exact location of the Sword Tomb, do you? If even you, who had the treasure map, couldn’t find it, there’s no way I could search all of Namyang and find it on my own.”
That was why they had told him in the first place, of course.
Chung Myung grinned at Jin Hyeon.
Jin Hyeon’s thoughts were obvious enough. No matter how strong Chung Myung was, he couldn’t take on Wudang alone. And Mount Hua was far away from here.
Even if Chung Myung knew that, there would be nothing he could do about it.
“So at the very least, you ought to hand over the treasure map. Then the terms would be fair, wouldn’t they?”
How did that logic even work? How the hell did that work?
Jin Hyeon’s face hardened.
“I can’t give you the treasure map. That wasn’t part of the condition!”
“You can’t give it?”
“That’s right!”
“You really can’t?”
“...I said—”
“Really?”
“...”
Jin Hyeon’s face turned deathly pale. Watching Chung Myung stroll closer with that smiling, easygoing look on his face, his mind went completely blank.
“A-Aren’t you a Taoist? How can you threaten others and steal their belongings? If you truly follow the Way…”
“The Way?”
“Y-yes!”
“Who says?”
“...”
Chung Myung clenched his fist.
Crack.
The sound of bones grinding together made Jin Hyeon’s skin crawl.
“How many times do I have to say it? Who am I?”
“M-Mount Hua…”
“Tsk, tsk. Our Taoist here really doesn’t understand plain speech. Fine, I’ll say it one more time. I’m a passing bandit!”
“...”
No, you bastard. That doesn’t make it true just because you say it—
“Choose!”
Chung Myung’s eyes blazed.
“You can hand over the treasure map and crawl back to Wudang to bring reinforcements… or else!”
Thud!
Chung Myung stomped on the ground. The earth caved in, leaving behind a huge crater.
“You can be buried here with only your head sticking out and wait until I find the Sword Tomb!”
“...”
His head tilted to one side.
“Which is it?”
Jin Hyeon smiled as benevolently as a saint.
“Shouldn’t a true Taoist renounce greed?”
There was no such thing as a Taoist before brute force.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Chung Myung trudged down the mountain, checking the treasure map over and over again.
A diagram tangled with lines and symbols, chaotic and dizzying to the eye. Yet the mysterious energy he sensed from it told him immediately that it was the real thing.
“Kuh-heh-heh. Yakseon’s tomb, huh? They say heaven blesses the good. So all this righteous living finally paid off.”
For a moment, he had the distinct feeling that someone far up in the heavens was hurling insults and pointing at him with both hands, but that was no concern of his.
Hey, shut up already! You leave out the alchemy records and make a man suffer like this, and now you want to complain?
Chung Myung smiled again, contentedly, and looked down at the map.
Symbols he had never seen before, lines twined together in a bewildering mess.
“So this is a puzzle, huh? I have to interpret it if I want the right to enter his tomb?”
Hahaha.
What a cheeky little trick.
From the look of the map, Yakseon had clearly been overflowing with pride in what he had accomplished. Otherwise he never would have left behind such a fiendishly difficult treasure map.
He had complete confidence that only a genius capable of unraveling a map like this would be worthy of taking an interest in his tomb. The man was absurdly self-assured.
“Well, that’s not entirely wrong.”
Because a genius named Chung Myung had already taken an interest.
Chung Myung snickered at the map.
“So this is a cipher, huh?”
It had been designed so that just anyone would never be able to solve it.
But who was Chung Myung?
Heh heh heh.
It was embarrassing to say it himself, but Chung Myung had once been hailed as one of the greatest geniuses in Mount Hua’s history, even back when Mount Hua stood proudly among the Nine Great Sects and was thriving.
There was no way he couldn’t solve a single treasure map like this.
Chung Myung stared hard at it, eyes blazing. If he arranged the laws governing these lines…
He glared at the messy web of lines for a long while, and at last set the map down with a satisfied expression.
“I don’t understand a damn thing!”
What genius, my ass.
I’m a genius at pounding people’s heads in. When the hell was I supposed to learn this kind of thing?
“Grrr.”
He scanned the treasure map a few more times with a thoroughly frustrated expression before finally shaking his head.
“This is impossible.”
Just looking at it hurt his eyes and made his head feel like it was sprouting mold. If this had been a sword manual, he could have stared at it all day, but this had nothing to do with sword traces.
After a bit of thought, Chung Myung nodded.
“I don’t have to solve this myself!”
He had reliable(?) grand-senior brothers and incredibly intelligent(?) senior brothers, after all!
“Anyway!”
The Wudang bastards would soon be bringing disciples from the main sect.
Once they learned that Mu Jin had been defeated by Chung Myung and that the treasure map had been taken, the elders of Wudang would come swarming in a frenzy. No matter how strong Chung Myung was, taking them all on would be impossible. If this had been his former life as the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, he could have beaten down ten Wudang elders at once without breaking a sweat, but right now he had not yet recovered the martial prowess of his past.
'At most, three days?'
By then, the main force from Wudang’s headquarters would have arrived. Before that happened, he had to determine the location of the Sword Tomb and get in before the Wudang bastards did.
“No time to waste!”
With determination burning in his eyes, Chung Myung broke into a run.
If he could obtain the method for making the Honwon Dan, Mount Hua could move forward once more. Gaining inner power meant acquiring one more essential element needed to leap forward as the greatest sword sect under heaven.
“First, I’m eating some myself!”
Still rubbing at the dantian that remained painfully unsatisfied, Chung Myung pushed himself onward.