Rebirth of the Cloud Dragon (2)
The jolt of being flung onto a cold cot snapped Yun Cheon's consciousness fully awake.
"Kgh…!"
His every joint creaked aloud. He tried to rise, but he couldn't so much as twitch a finger. It was as though his mind had been severed from this unfamiliar flesh; his gaunt limbs refused every command. *If I lie here like this, I really will die!* Instinct took over, and Yun Cheon set the Great Pure Qi Art of Kunlun into motion. He drew a slow, quiet breath, gathered the qi of heaven and earth, and guided it down toward the dantian in his lower abdomen. In his past life this art had been like an extension of his own body — something he could unfold with his eyes closed. *First things first. I have to get the qi circulating through this corpse of a body.* In his mind, Yun Cheon traced the perfect flow of energy with total clarity. The gathered qi began to spiral, coalescing into the seed of inner power— And in that very instant!
"Ugh!"
An agony beyond imagining crashed over him. It felt as though something had exploded from deep within his dantian! The barely gathered qi scattered in all directions, surging backward in reverse. Every meridian in his body screamed at once. They twisted and seized, rejecting even the faintest trickle of energy. *The meridians across my whole body are… warped! This is… a congenital case of Severed Meridians!* Only now, amid the excruciating pain, did he truly grasp it: the heights he had once reached as the First Sword of Kunlun were nothing but a mirage before this ruined body. *If this goes on—!* If he could not master the qi, he would destroy his own body from within. The terror of that death closed around his throat like a hand. Yet at the very peak of that fear, what curled across Yun Cheon's lips was a laugh of sheer absurdity. *The First Sword of Kunlun, Yun Cheon — dying because he can't control a single wisp of qi?* The sheer ridiculousness of the situation, paradoxically, shoved the fear of death aside. *I finally have my chance at revenge against the Demonic Cult and the Alliance. I will not throw it away this pathetically!* The fog that had shrouded his reeling mind lifted, and his consciousness woke sharp as a blade. Every scrap of martial knowledge from his past life whipped through his head like a storm. *The Great Pure Art won't work. With every meridian in this body twisted, storing qi at all is poison. Which means….* Yun Cheon boldly abandoned the great acupoints entirely. The great points were, in essence, the mighty rivers through which qi flowed. Common sense held that one gathered energy into the dantian by channeling it along those broad currents. But Yun Cheon threw out common sense. No — he had no choice but to throw it out. His body sat far outside anything common sense could account for. *Building inner power with this body right now is impossible! So instead… let it simply soak in.* Rather than the blocked great rivers, he began threading his very breath, strand by strand, through the countless minor capillary channels that spread across his body like a web of fine veins — a detour from the main current of the river into its tributaries. *The minor channels, at least, are still open…!* This was not a martial art. It was a breathing method that had never existed in the world — invented on the spot by a man desperate merely to survive in a body cursed with Severed Meridians. The Life-Prolonging Breathing Technique. A flower bloomed by Yun Cheon's genius in the face of death itself.
"Hah… hah…."
Yun Cheon barely quelled the runaway qi and gulped down ragged breaths. *So I've been reborn into a wreck like this. I nearly died the moment I arrived…. But in the instant he paused to catch his breath— someone seized his wrist roughly. A physician.
"Wasn't this the one whose heart stopped when the Gu flared up? Well, well. He managed to survive."
The physician took his pulse in a cursory, annoyed sort of way, then turned his back without another glance.
"Heh. He's swallowed the Demon Bell Soul-Chasing Gu, so alive or dead, he's the Cult's slave either way."
Yun Cheon's heart went cold. *The Demon Bell Soul-Chasing Gu…! I've swallowed a Gu poison of the Demonic Cult?* At once he mobilized his meager qi and turned his gaze inward, surveying his own interior. This body — his, and yet not his — was a wasteland, twisted and blocked everywhere, unable even to carry vitality properly. *…And as if that weren't enough.* There, wedged between the meridians warped by Severed Meridians, a sinister, clammy energy lay coiled around his faintly flickering heart channel. It was the Gu, without question. *Damn it — it's already taken root!* And yet… something was wrong. There was no movement at all, none of the living stir of a creature. *…Could it be?* Yun Cheon was stunned. *It's dead?* While the frail host's body had briefly stopped breathing, the Gu had apparently breathed its last as well. But his relief lasted only a moment. The fatal dormant poison carried within the dead Gu remained inside Yun Cheon's body, exactly as it was. *Touch it carelessly, and it will doom me to a handful of blood. Severed Meridians and dormant Gu poison on top — truly the worst hand imaginable. But…. Even in this desperate situation, his mind flashed like a blade. *They fed me the Gu, which means they believe I'm still under its control.* Free will. That was the only weapon Yun Cheon possessed in this cage. *Handled well, this could turn calamity into fortune!* And for that, there was one precondition. *No one can ever learn that the Gu is dead.* Survive first. Play the obedient, controlled slave, and claw his way upward. And then, someday, at the decisive moment, he would drive a fatal dagger into the very heart of the Demonic Cult. His mind made up, Yun Cheon narrowed his eyes and took stock of his surroundings.
"Ungh… hah…."
Children moaned in pain from every corner of the infirmary. The physician, busy working through his examinations, waved a dismissive hand.
"Hah! There's nothing to check one by one. Whoever survives the Gu's convulsions lives; whoever doesn't, dies. Just take whoever's still fit and be done with it."
"Understood."
One of the Cult's lackeys answered the physician, then barked bluntly at the room: "Anyone still breathing, crawl out here now! Anyone who can't return to duty stays like this — you'll be worked to the bone as a laborer for the rest of your life!"
Groaning, the children began to pull themselves up one by one. Yun Cheon rose without a word, slipped in among them, and followed behind the Cult members. But the moment he left the fetid cavern and breathed the cold air that seeped deep into his lungs, his steps stopped without his meaning them to. Familiar mountains. The biting bite of a fierce wind. Snow-capped peaks surging up as if to pierce the sky. *This scenery—! How could I ever forget it…!* His blood ran cold in his veins. This place, which he had taken for nothing more than a breeding pen for the Cult's warriors… was Kunlun. Trembling, Yun Cheon lifted his head and looked around. Where the vast training grounds of the past had lain, a new structure now loomed — grim and massive, wreathed in a dark crimson aura. Across its plaque, three characters were carved in letters red as blood.
*These Demonic Cult vermin… dared to raise this monstrosity on Mount Kunlun…!* His teeth ground together at the fury surging up in him. But he forced himself to judge the situation coldly. *Wait. A facility of this scale on Mount Kunlun — building it would have taken considerable time….* Could it be? Even rifling through the orphan boy's memories, wandering the streets, he could find no hint of how much time had passed. Ten years since that war? Twenty? There was no way to know. *How long has it been since I died? I don't have nearly enough information!* Lost in these thoughts, he arrived at his destination: an underground training hall buried deep within the Mad Path Pavilion. Cold stone walls, the smell of blood wafting from all sides, a stale reek of mold — and hanging over it all, a heavy silence born of the children's fear, smothering everything else. Thousands of children, at the least, filled the space. *…What is this place?* Among them, one group stood out. A small number of children clad in black or crimson martial robes, heads held stiffly high. *The Demonic Cult's own spawn, then.* They'd likely been fed elixirs and trained in the martial arts since childhood; their gait and bearing were anything but ordinary. The great majority of the children, by contrast, were paralyzed with terror. *…So they're not mere slaves. They've only abducted children of the right age to learn the martial arts.* Yun Cheon quietly settled himself at the edge of the crowd, watching his surroundings as he steadied his breathing. *No need to draw attention, not with this body.* Before he knew it, even the frightened murmur the children had been making died away. As if spellbound, their eyes turned toward the platform at the head of the training floor. And there, as though he had been standing there from the very beginning, a man had appeared — silent as a shadow. *A formidable master…!* The aura beneath his jet-black robes was like a naked blade, and a long saber radiating a blue-black killing intent hung diagonally across his back.
"So. You're all here."
The man's face was gaunt and cold. A faintly cruel smile played at the corner of his mouth.
"Let's begin."
His presence alone froze the air of the training hall even further. The children around him stared up at him with terror-stricken eyes. Apparently satisfied with their reaction, the man spoke slowly.
"I am the instructor who will forge you whelps into blades of our Cult — the Mad Blood Blade, Jeok Mu-gwang!"
His voice, laden with killing intent and inner power, thundered through the entire underground hall. The children's shoulders flinched at the echo that rolled across the training floor, and even the Cult's own spawn, who had seemed fairly confident, visibly startled. *The Mad Blood Blade, Jeok Mu-gwang? A Cult master with a title I've never heard of. His realm is… roughly the Peak stage, I'd say.* Instead of trembling in fear, Yun Cheon tilted his head at a crooked angle and measured the instructor's cultivation. *…A perfect target. It's a road I've walked once already. This time, I'll walk it faster.* In his past life, Yun Cheon had already ascended to the Peak realm before the age of thirty. Then Jeok Mu-gwang made his declaration.
"However… the Mad Path Pavilion has no leisure to waste on talentless trash. You will be sorted by your foundation into five grades!"
The unexpected words landed squarely in the ears of Yun Cheon, who had already been eyeing the man as his next target. *They're grading our foundation?* A single line of sweat ran down Yun Cheon's back.
"The results come in five grades: Supreme, High, Middle, Low — and… the Lowest. Those judged Lowest… well, it means you're worthless as a warrior. You'll be disposed of immediately."
Even Yun Cheon was thrown by that shocking pronouncement. *…Wait! If they assess this body's foundation as it is now, it goes without saying — I'm Lowest!* Lowest meant disposal on the spot. He was rattled — but he had no time to react.
"Examiners, begin the assessment at once!"
Whish—! Before Jeok Mu-gwang had even finished speaking, a hundred-odd pitch-black figures erupted in unison from the darkness behind him. If the instructor was the brain of this cage, these were the ruler's hands and feet — the ones who would drill the children on the front lines. The examiners. They slid soundlessly among the children and graded them like machines, drawing from their robes identification tags of different colors and fastening them to each child's chest in quick succession.
"Low."
"Middle."
"…Disposal grade. Lowest!"
The children nearby, crushed by the momentum of the examiners churning through their ranks like a black wind, could scarcely breathe. *If I stay like this, I'll be disposed of! There has to be… some way…!* But instead of trembling, he studied the movements of the men approaching him. Then, in a flash, a clever scheme came to him. *An assessment, is it? Fine. If you're going to judge me — then I'll judge you right back.* His gaze swept rapidly over the examiners, analyzing the characteristics of their martial arts. *A fist-arts master. The energy radiating from his fingertips is vicious. If those hands so much as touch me, he'll see through the warp in my meridians at a glance.* *That one has trained palm techniques. His palms look thick and soft — but hands like those are all the more sensitive.* Then Yun Cheon's eyes settled on one examiner in particular. Unlike the others, the man's lower body was remarkably developed. He surveyed the children with his hands clasped behind his back, moving them only when he attached a tag. *…He's the one. Footwork stylist, by the look of him, and his upper body is undertrained. Best of all, that hands-behind-the-back stance — he's careless!* Yun Cheon moved stealthily, hiding himself behind another child's back and artfully shifting his position. And at last, the examiner he had marked blew past in front of him like the wind, speaking in a voice cold as ice.
"Warped skeleton, blocked meridians. No need to say more. Disposal grade. Lowest."
The instant the man's hand slipped into his robe to draw out a black identification tag— a chill smile crept across Yun Cheon's lips, one that no soul present could have noticed. *Lowest, you say? Says who?*
Return of the Cloud Dragon
Author | Chu Sang (Autumn Frost)
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
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