Grandfather’s Switch Is Supposed to Hurt (4)
“Y-you damn insane old bastard! How dare you pull something like this!”
Tang Gun-ak shoved a hand into his sleeve. The sleeve bulged as he clamped down on the throwing blade in his grasp, his shoulders jerking as though he might launch himself forward at any moment. It was the kind of movement that said just how close he was to exploding.
But Tang Oe only sneered when he saw it.
“It was a fair bout of martial skill, nothing more.”
“You call using a deadly poison in a fair bout? A poison with no antidote, at that!”
Tang Gun-ak bit down hard on his lip.
Too late.
Even if he rushed onto the platform now, there was no way to save Chung Myung. He’d only end up poisoned himself.
Blinded by a rage so fierce it sent blood surging backward in his skull, Tang Gun-ak bellowed until the veins in his neck stood out. His voice was raw with something almost miserable in its intensity.
“After pulling a stunt like this, how can you still call yourself an elder of the Tang Family?! If you used a poison with no antidote against a child of the righteous sects in a martial contest, how are you any different from those vile scum of the demonic path!”
At that, the Tang Family Lord no longer addressed Tang Oe as the head elder of the council. Tang Oe no longer deserved the title.
How could anyone call and respect as an elder a man who had abandoned even the bare minimum required of one belonging to the righteous path?
And yet, in the face of Tang Gun-ak’s boiling fury, Tang Oe only kept sneering.
“Ha. You call us scum of the demonic path?”
“I do!”
“Family Lord. Come to your senses! That is precisely why the Tang Family has never been able to seize the world!”
Tang Oe gathered poisonous energy into both hands.
“Look at the Tang Family’s place in the world! If we truly set our minds to it, we possess poisons and hidden weapons enough to challenge the world itself, and yet here we sit in this backwater corner of Sichuan, pretending to be some regional overlord! How much longer are we expected to be shackled by these obsolete rules!”
His eyes flickered with a strange, feverish light.
“Qingcheng? Emei? What a joke! If those sects ever truly turned against us, it would take no more than a single day to dye Qingcheng Mountain and Mount Emei red with blood! And yet look at our situation! We’re trapped by these mediocrities and can’t move a finger! Is that the future you want for the Tang Family?”
“So what? You’d just spray poison at anyone and everyone? If you did that, you’d become the enemy of the world!”
“Or else rule it. Isn’t that right?”
The color drained from Tang Gun-ak’s face. His fury was so hot it was becoming hard to think.
Gritting his teeth hard enough to make a grinding sound, Tang Gun-ak shouted in a voice sharp with heat.
“What are you waiting for! Seize this criminal at once and lock him up!”
“Criminal? Who are you calling a criminal!”
Tang Oe pointed at Tang Gun-ak and roared back.
“The criminal is the family lord who weakened the Tang Family! Do you despise the Tang Family so much that you would ally with a sect like Mount Hua?”
“You—”
Tang Oe clicked his tongue in disgust.
“Family Lord. The reason our elders stepped back was not because we were weak. Don’t forget that if you continue to oppress the elder council in this manner, we may come to think differently as well.”
Tang Gun-ak’s nails dug into his palm.
His fist trembled inside his sleeve, but he could not bring himself to draw it out. No matter how monstrous Tang Oe’s actions were, the man was still an elder of the family. He could not strike him in front of everyone.
Besides…
Looking around at the family members gathered there, Tang Gun-ak clenched his teeth in sudden realization.
They were not openly showing it, but there was clearly a mood of quiet agreement with Tang Oe’s words.
Tang Gun-ak despaired inwardly.
It’s all my fault.
It had been his mistake to let Tang Oe speak before so many people. His mistake not to realize how much ambition the old man had been hiding. Above all, it had been his mistake to let Tang Oe and Chung Myung fight a martial contest at all.
He should have stopped it.
He should not have tried to interfere clumsily at the last second; he should have stopped the match itself. It should never have been allowed to begin.
One moment of hesitation and blind trust had led to something this dreadful.
“Damn it—”
Just as Tang Gun-ak was about to pull the throwing blade from his sleeve,
“H-huh? There!”
A gust of wind swept across the platform and scattered the poisonous haze that had filled the arena. Those watching from a distance cried out in panic and scattered in all directions.
“Hmph.”
Tang Oe thrust out a palm strike, sending the poison mist upward into the sky. If anyone among the family members were poisoned now, everything he had built up until this moment would be ruined.
And then, as the drifting haze cleared, Tang Oe turned his head toward the place it had been.
He was prepared to offer his condolences to Chung Myung, who should by all rights have been reduced to a heap of blood and flesh…
“W-what?”
Tang Oe’s eyes bulged.
What appeared before him was not a corpse melted into goo.
It was simply Chung Myung.
“How….”
His clothes had been stained by the poison, but Chung Myung’s body, where it showed beneath them, looked oddly untouched.
Though he was hardly in good shape, he was clutching the ground and convulsing as if wracked by some internal discomfort.
And then—
“Uwueeeeeeek!”
Chung Myung proceeded to retch repeatedly.
It was a ludicrous sight, but Tang Oe could not laugh at it for even a second.
“Ugh! Uweeeek!”
After a few more dry heaves, Chung Myung wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and painfully hauled himself upright.
Tang Oe finally forced the words out.
“The poisoning….”
“Aww, did I eat too much?”
Chung Myung shook his head back and forth.
“You made me this sick. That’s some Sichuan cuisine for you.”
“….”
Tang Oe stared at him with utter disbelief.
Cuisine?
Not poison?
“How…?”
How could he not be poisoned?
Tang Oe’s mouth hung open, and he seemed unable to close it.
Hadn’t everyone here seen it?
He had been engulfed by Ghost King Ream, drowned beneath Seven-Treasure Soul-Chasing Silk, and then struck by Rejoicing Lotus Smoke at the end.
Any one of those poisons would have been enough to turn a man into a handful of blood and pus.
Of course, a master with deep internal power might endure some of it, or at least suppress the poison to a degree. But there was no way that brat could be at that level!
“Tch.”
Chung Myung spat a few times as though his mouth had gone dry and gritty, then lifted his head.
“First, there are a few things I should correct.”
“….”
“First. The Tang Family hasn’t been unable to strike the world because it doesn’t use poison. It’s because its poison doesn’t work.”
“What did you say?”
Chung Myung snorted.
Watching Tang Oe’s face made him laugh despite himself.
That brings back memories.
—Why the hell doesn’t a Tang Family bastard use poison?
—Ah, brother. Have you ever heard anyone say the Tang Family produced the strongest martial artist in the world?
—No.
—Exactly. The Tang Family is supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Namgung Family as one of the great prestigious houses. But the Namgung Family and the Peng Family keep producing strongest-in-the-world types, while for some reason the Tang Family never does.
—And that’s because of poison?
—Of course. Poison’s a trap. Sure, at the right level, it’s basically a universal key. You toss out a few needles, they brush against someone, and they drop like flies—what’s there to be afraid of?
—But?
—If you can win that easily, who’s going to bother sharpening their hidden-weapon skills? They start thinking the Tang Family poison makes them invincible, their noses go in the air, and their actual ability never improves. Then they run into a real master like you and lose their heads. Those idiots never understand no matter how much you tell them.
Poison could work against masters. But it did not work against absolute masters.
Rule the world with poison?
If that were possible, why would the Tang Family ever have run from the Heavenly Demon in the first place!
It wasn’t only the Heavenly Demon. In the end, the Tang Family had fled because they could no longer handle even the masters of the Demonic Sect.
If what Tang Oe said were true—if simply using poison could bring down masters—then how could some demonic sect have ever driven the Tang Family away?
A poison with no antidote?
That only meant there was no antidote. It did not mean the poison could not be countered.
There were absolutely ways to deal with poison. Chung Myung knew at least two himself.
“Y-you should have been unable to avoid the poisoning. Ghost King Ream seeps through the skin even if you hold your breath. The same goes for the other poisons!”
The first was the method Tang Oe himself had just mentioned.
Use internal energy to seal off the body completely. If you didn’t breathe in the poison and didn’t let it touch your skin, there was no reason you should be poisoned.
But that method could not help you avoid poison coated on hidden weapons. The moment even one poisoned blade pierced the body, the toxin would seep in.
The method used by absolute masters was to purify the poison that entered the body with their internal energy. Masters whose control of qi had reached the extreme could neutralize toxins with their own power.
No antidote was necessary.
An antidote was merely medicine made so that even those who were not masters could neutralize poison just by ingesting it.
What use was an antidote to someone who could withstand poison in the first place?
That was why the Tang Family, despite wielding poison as a weapon, had never become the strongest in the world.
Tang Bo knew this already.
Tang Bo, who was practically treated as an outcast in the Tang Family, had traveled the world and fought countless martial contests and life-or-death battles. Thanks to that, he had realized poison alone could never make him the strongest in the world, and so he had thrown everything he had into hidden weapons.
That was how Tang Bo, the Dark Saint who shook the world with hidden weapons alone, had been born.
“Well, no matter how much I explain it, you wouldn’t understand, so let’s just say I’m built differently.”
“A-are you saying you’re invulnerable to all poisons?”
“Now that’s going too far.”
Chung Myung waved a hand dismissively.
“Second!”
He narrowed his eyes a little.
“It’s not the Tang Family doing Mount Hua the favor of allying with it. It’s Mount Hua doing the Tang Family the favor of allying with it. That’s an important point, so remember it.”
The moment Tang Oe opened his mouth in bafflement, Chung Myung cut him off with absolute certainty.
“And third.”
“….”
“Our Family Lord had already seen through all this and tried to join hands with Mount Hua. But you all were blind to the end. The Family Lord must have had a hard time, having to feed and support people like you as members of the family.”
“You—!”
Chung Myung raised the sword in his hand.
“Come on, then. Keep going. Use whatever poison you want.”
“W-wait. You shouldn’t have been able to circulate internal energy. You were already—”
Tang Oe, who had blurted the words in haste, suddenly flinched and shut his mouth. In his panic, he had said something he absolutely should not have.
“Ah. That?”
Chung Myung gave a crooked smile.
“Do you know what the hallmark of an idiot is?”
“….”
“Thinking only they’re smart. I expected this kind of stunt long before the bout even began. People like you are usually pretty damn predictable.”
“You took an antidote beforehand?”
“Seriously, stop saying stupid things. I already told you your poison doesn’t work on me.”
Chung Myung snickered.
“If you don’t believe me, try again.”
“That was my plan anyway!”
Poison mist burst once more from Tang Oe’s sleeve.
The billowing smoke thickened around Chung Myung, narrowing the range but increasing the concentration of the poison. Just as before, Tang Oe had chosen density over spread.
“I said it’s useless.”
Chung Myung swung his sword once and scattered the Ghost King Ream drifting toward him.
Then, as though nothing had happened, he began strolling toward Tang Oe.
Tang Oe stared at him, nearly stunned stupid.
He had seen with his own eyes the poison flow into Chung Myung’s nose and mouth. By all logic, the boy should have been poisoned by now, his body melting and burning from within.
And yet the Chung Myung before him did not look poisoned in the slightest.
“Sorry, but this isn’t enough to do anything. I told you, didn’t I? I’m built differently.”
It sounded absurd, but it was true.
Inside Chung Myung’s body gathered the purest energy in the world. Daoist energy, to be exact.
Daoist energy was by nature specialized in breaking evil and purifying impurities. And no Daoist master in the world possessed a purer energy than Chung Myung.
It was energy he could gather only because he had reached the end of Daoist internal power, then started over from the beginning. Against that sort of energy, poison was meaningless.
If it came to it, I was even ready to crack open a Honwon Dan and swallow it.
It had been purified much more cleanly than he expected. He felt almost like patting the little engine in his stomach on the head.
Then again… considering the hell he had gone through to gather it, it had better have some effect!
Chung Myung smirked and said, “All right. Now what are you going to do?”
At that moment, Tang Oe’s expression changed completely.
The face that had been twisted with panic and fear a moment ago suddenly regained perfect composure.
“Hah hah hah. So you don’t even know your own condition. Look at your hands before you speak!”
“Huh?”
Chung Myung lowered his head and spread out both hands.
“Huh? What the hell is this?”
From his fingertips all the way to his wrists, everything had turned black. That was, of course, a symptom of poisoning.
“I knew you were impressive. But it seems even you couldn’t force out the poison completely.”
“Whoa… what kind of poison is this?”
It had actually punched through. Just how vicious did a poison have to be to do that?
Tang Oe said with a smug face, “If you end up meeting the King of Hell in the underworld, tell him you came here as the price for underestimating the Tang Family’s poison.”
“You’re really impatient too, huh?”
“...What?”
Chung Myung snickered.
“So you can solve it on your own, but only up to a point. And? What about it?”
“That poison cannot be antidoted….”
And then it happened.
Whoooooosh!
Something burst outward, and great flames rose from both of Chung Myung’s hands.
At the same time, a foul smoke surged upward into the air, carried by the blaze.
“….”
Chung Myung puffed out his stomach.
“If you can’t antidote it, just burn it away!”
Seeing the flames Chung Myung had summoned, Tang Oe staggered back two steps without meaning to.
“S-samadhi… Samadhi True Fire?”
How?
Was he saying that brat, that child, could use the Samadhi True Fire said to be available only to masters of the highest transcendence?
While Tang Oe stood frozen in stunned disbelief, Baek Cheon, watching from beneath the platform, let out a long sigh.
“…That bastard burned away alcohol with fire, and now he’s literally burning away poison too.”
He really should not set Mount Hua on fire…
Please.