Because It Was Mount Hua (2)
“Damn it, this is a waste!”
Chunks of qi were being cut away in great slabs. He had tried to salvage as much as he could, but there was nothing in it worth keeping.
Like slicing off the edible part of a rotten radish, he had reached the point where he was extracting only the purest strands of inner energy from Seolmaedan. Anything that failed to meet that standard was ruthlessly stripped away and expelled from his body.
For anyone else, it would have been unthinkable.
Hadn’t elixirs existed to enhance inner energy in the first place? And yet here Chung Myung was, forcing the elixir’s power out of his body instead of absorbing it.
If the people who had made the Seolmaedan had seen this, they would have come running with foam at their mouths.
Do I look like I want to be doing this?
That damned foundation!
He had gathered only the purest qi into his dantian, and now he couldn’t even raise his inner energy freely. Even the qi of an elixir refined and refined again was treated like one giant impurity.
From a sea of qi, the essence he had managed to select was only a handful.
He desperately guided that tiny remnant inward and pushed it into his dantian.
Wooooooong!
At once, the essence merged with the dormant qi in Chung Myung’s body and began to circulate through him.
One heavenly circulation. Then two.
In an instant, twelve circulations were completed. Chung Myung’s body, seated in meditation, began to rise into the air.
It should have been impossible with his internal cultivation, yet because the qi was so pure, a phenomenon beyond the amount of inner energy he possessed began to occur.
Wooooooong!
The crystal-clear energy kept turning through his body again and again, and with every rotation, it began filtering out every impurity lodged in his flesh.
This isn’t right.
That was not what Chung Myung had intended.
He had merely meant to restore his innate energy with that pure qi, but the power had slipped beyond his control and started regenerating his body instead.
Both wrists that had been broken healed in an instant, knitting together cleanly. The bruises scattered across his body vanished as if they had never existed at all.
Drip, drip.
The waste expelled from his body soaked his clothes, then ran down in thick strands and plopped onto the ground. Not only the major passages he had thought were already opened, but even the meridians themselves began to widen further, growing vast and boundless.
Without realizing it, Chung Myung threw his head back.
“T-thousand passage opening?”
The Baekhoe point had opened.
The lower dantian.
The qi that had started from the place commonly called the dantian burst open the middle dantian around his chest, then was now even opening the upper dantian.
Fear crept up on him all at once.
Everything in this world had stages. A child had to crawl before it could walk. If a child whose legs were not yet strong enough tried to run, wouldn’t it trip and crack its head open?
That was exactly where Chung Myung stood now.
I need to stop it…
Qi that escaped control could do anything. When qi went out of control and destroyed the body, that was Juhwairma, the deviation into madness.
This was practically the threshold of going mad. Even if the process itself was helping the body, no one knew what the end would be.
Chung Myung strained to block the qi. But the utterly pure energy rejected his will and raced along its own path.
Damn it, I’m telling you to listen! It’s my qi!
Chung Myung shouted again, cursing. Only then did the qi hesitate. It seemed to remember who its master was.
But only for a moment. After sneaking a few cautious glances, the qi surged forward again. Chung Myung gritted his teeth.
Stop it!
Even if the qi flowed backward and damaged his body, he had to stop it now. The moment Chung Myung gathered all his will to suppress it—
- So are you a Taoist or a martial artist?
Senior brother?
The voice of his senior brother, the sect leader, echoed in his mind.
The senior brother’s voice?
No! This was something he had heard from the sect leader long ago.
- A martial artist controls and suppresses. But those who follow the Dao leave things be. Hey, you brat. Since when did the principles of the world get solved by squeezing them down? If you build a dam to stop flowing water, the water will simply rise over it and keep going.
Chung Myung’s body loosened.
- Leave it be. If you let things go, everything will flow according to its nature. To twist nature with human will? Foolish brat. Man, too, is part of nature. Within the vast and high expanse of nature, how could man be absent?
The qi, now granted Chung Myung’s permission, rushed through his entire body. The inner energy that had been boiling with savage force relaxed instead, and once left alone, it began flowing smoothly through him like water.
Inner power coursed within his body. The current grew thicker and thicker, then became a river, flowing through and through the universe that was Chung Myung.
How much time had passed?
Flash!
Chung Myung opened his eyes. Brilliant clarity poured from them.
And then…
Thud!
“Ow!”
He dropped from the air to the ground and clutched his backside.
“What the hell? Why was I floating?”
He had never imagined his body would be hovering in midair. Rubbing his numb behind, Chung Myung climbed to his feet.
“Hoo. That was close. I almost died.”
It had been dangerous.
If he had slipped even slightly, he might have ended up crippled or dead. Compared to that, falling off the cliff earlier felt almost playful.
But the price had been undeniable.
Hmm.
Chung Myung gave his wrist a light shake. The broken wrists had healed completely. They even felt sturdier than they had before they broke.
And it wasn’t just his wrists.
So there really were impurities left behind.
He had thought he had completely washed his body clean, but the higher his realm rose, the more he could see. He had stripped out the impurities remaining in his flesh once more. When he reached an even higher level in the future, there would be things he still could not see now.
But all of that was secondary. What had truly changed was his meridians.
It felt as though every part of his body was open.
From head to toe, there was no blockage anywhere. If his blood vessels and channels had once been little mountain paths, they had now widened into a vast imperial road. Exaggerating only a little, it felt like horses could run and hawks could fly through his meridians now.
My internal cultivation increased too.
As his body was refined, his inner energy had risen with it. Given that he had been gathering only the most pure and clear energy, even increasing his inner power by a fingernail’s worth would have taken ages. So this was truly encouraging.
The innate qi has also fully recovered.
So if he gathered everything together…
My vessel got bigger.
For Chung Myung, the body was the vessel that held his martial arts. If the vessel was small, the amount it could hold was inevitably limited. By crossing a new barrier through Seolmaedan, that vessel had clearly grown larger.
For now, he had only grown stronger by a mere thread, but this vessel would become the foundation for Chung Myung to surpass the realm of his past.
Chung Myung smiled in satisfaction.
If not for Senior Brother’s teaching, I might’ve been screwed.
Maybe he had gained some kind of realization by dying once. The words of his senior brother, which he had once dismissed as nothing but nagging, now came to him in an entirely different light.
He was made to understand anew.
“I was only a swordsman.”
He had not been a Daoist.
Mount Hua was a sect of swords, yes—but it was also a sect of the Dao. That was the essence of Mount Hua. But Chung Myung himself was someone it would be hard to call a Daoist.
Could someone like him really raise Mount Hua again?
“Hmm.”
Chung Myung scratched his head hard. This kind of worry didn’t suit him.
Well, he’d do what he could first!
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Whatever.”
Chung Myung strolled over to the chest. With every step he took, his body moved forward far more lightly than expected, enough to surprise him, but since this had actually felt more natural to him in the past, he adjusted quickly.
Click.
Chung Myung took the box containing the Seolmaedan and Maehwadan from the chest and shoved it into his sleeve.
Tsk. What a shame.
Now this held no meaning for him.
The reason he had been able to rebuild his body was that the Seolmaedan’s qi had served as a medium, not because the qi itself had helped his inner energy.
Even if it was an elixir refined and refined again, when compared to Chung Myung’s inner energy, it was nothing but an impurity. If it were something like Jaso-dan, it might be a little better, but not by much.
Of course, it would help a little. But it was too valuable to use that way. If someone other than him took it, they could probably gain far greater results.
Tch.
Chung Myung clicked his tongue. The world really did move in such a twisted way.
Ah, screw it!
After thinking about it for a while, he shut his eyes tight.
What was the point of lingering over something that was no longer his? He had already gotten effects he couldn’t have imagined even from ten Seolmaedans.
Let greed ruin you and you’re finished, Chung Myung. Eat only what you can actually swallow.
With no hesitation left in him, Chung Myung turned around—
Thud-thud-thud!
Hm-hm! Hm! Hmm-hmm!
A couple of liquor bottles from inside the chest had somehow wound themselves around Chung Myung’s waist.
This was absolutely not because he wanted to drink. It was simply the pure curiosity of wanting to know what century-old liquor tasted like.
After stowing away the alcohol and the box, Chung Myung stood at the cave entrance and glanced back over his shoulder.
Feels weird.
Probably because the traces were still there.
In Mount Hua, which had changed beyond recognition, only this cave preserved its former shape. Because of that, whenever he stood here, it felt as though he had slipped back into that time.
It was nostalgic.
And lonely.
Silently staring into the cave for a moment, Chung Myung smiled faintly and turned away.
I should come back here sometimes.
He wouldn’t come here to drink and fool around like before, but it was still a good place to visit and rest when his heart grew heavy.
Still, I won’t come too often. The past is the past.
It was an unshakable fact that he had once been Chung Myung, the Plum Blossom Sword Saint. But now he was not the Plum Blossom Sword Saint Chung Myung; he was Chung Myung, third-generation disciple of Mount Hua.
Those bound to the past could not move toward the future.
The past was merely a signpost meant to guide his life in the right direction.
All right then.
Without lingering, Chung Myung hurled himself out of the cave.
Whoosh.
His body, now lighter than anything he had ever known, made movements entirely different from when he had entered the cave.
His feet kicked lightly off the cliff wall, then rose higher, and higher still.
Hup!
In several successive leaps that vaulted him nearly three jang at a time, Chung Myung climbed the cliff in a flash and stood atop the summit.
Not bad.
He drew in a deep breath.
When the clear air of the mountaintop rushed into his nose, it felt utterly…
Uweeeek!
He nearly threw up.
Only then did he realize his clothes were covered in the sticky filth that had poured out of his body. Frowning, Chung Myung stripped them off in a rush.
What the hell is coming out of my body?
After wriggling out of every last piece of clothing, Chung Myung lifted the bundle by one corner and let out a deep sigh.
Ha, seriously. Nothing goes right. Where’s the nearest stream?
At the very least, he had to wash these clothes before he could go back to Mount Hua or anywhere else.
Chung Myung trudged down the mountain.
That day, the beasts that had casually stopped by the stream as usual to drink water all ended up with trouble and had to suffer for days on end.