Chapter 6
Chapter 6
The Tang Clan of Sichuan (1)
Near Chengdu in Sichuan Province stood a modestly sized yet expansive mountain called Tang Mountain.
Originally, the mountain bore a completely different name, but at some point, the people of Sichuan began calling it Tang Mountain.
Because there,
The estate of the Tang Clan of Sichuan (四川唐家) was located.
An uneasy calm, like the stillness before a storm, hung over the Tang Clan.
Every member of the clan moved about with tense expressions, while the servants trailing behind them wore faces filled with nothing but worry and fear.
And all of this stemmed from urgent news that had arrived just half an hour prior.
Se-woon, who had attended the gathering, had engaged in a life-or-death duel with the youngest disciple of the Martial Alliance Leader.
The result: Yi Hoseong lost an arm, his dantian was destroyed,
And Sword Emperor Yoo Jin-hak intervened to quell the disturbance.
For the Tang Clan, this was nothing short of a bolt from the blue.
The mere fact that Se-woon had dueled Yi Hoseong, the Qingcheng Sect's top disciple, was baffling enough—but for the Sword Emperor himself to appear?
Regardless of the circumstances, securing the safety of their heir was the top priority,
So the clan leader set out from the estate with the Tang Clan's elite combat unit, the Tang Elite Unit (暗花隊).
And then—
"I'm back."
With a sleeping maid slung over his back, the young master returned home amidst the chaos.
Shortly after, in Se-woon's quarters.
A graceful middle-aged woman with delicate beauty gazed at Se-woon with worried eyes.
"......Se-woon-ah, are you really alright?"
She was Eun So-wol (殷素月), the matriarch of the Sichuan Tang Clan and Se-woon's mother.
But unlike her restless demeanor, Se-woon remained unnervingly composed.
Se-woon smiled faintly and spoke.
"There's no need to worry, Mother. Not a single drop of blood here is mine."
"—!"
Eun So-wol's words caught in her throat as she looked at Se-woon's clothes.
As if testifying to the brutal fight, Se-woon's robes were soaked red with blood.
Despite clearly having endured something horrific, his serene expression made him seem almost like a stranger—
'No, perhaps he's in shock from the trauma.'
She reasoned that Se-woon must be suppressing immense emotional turmoil.
Wasn't he a kind-hearted boy who couldn't even bring himself to kill an ant?
Beneath his calm exterior, his heart must be in turmoil, wracked with pain.
"......Alright. Then rest well until the clan leader summons you again."
"Yes, I will."
Forcing a smile, Eun So-wol left the room.
Silence instantly descended.
Even after she left, Se-woon stared at the door with a complicated gaze for a long while.
"......I'm sorry, Mother."
She was the mother he had longed for over a decade, finally reunited against the flow of time.
He wanted nothing more than to embrace her immediately and confess everything.
But he held back.
The truth of his return through time had to remain an absolute secret.
'I can't put Mother in danger.'
The Blood Demon Cult was already lurking in the shadows of the martial world at this very moment.
Just as one peers into the abyss, the abyss peers back.
The moment someone learns of the cult's existence, they become its target.
Thus, the truth of his regression must remain his alone.
He couldn't lose his loved ones again.
"Sigh. Finally alone."
As he exhaled deeply, the tension in his body snapped like a taut string.
From the moment he regained his memories of regression until his return to the clan, he had been suppressing extreme exhaustion—now, it crashed over him like a tidal wave.
If he closed his eyes now, he would surely pass out.
"But there's no time. I have to prepare now."
He steeled himself again.
There was too much to do in this uncertain window of time.
First, he stripped off his bloodstained robes and reached for fresh clothes.
"!"
Then, he froze.
The reflection in the mirror had caught his eye.
Staring at his youthful face, still untouched by maturity—
"I really did go back."
He was reminded once more that he had returned fifteen years into the past.
After changing, Se-woon moved elsewhere.
His room was less a bedroom and more like a vast library.
Bookshelves filled with countless tomes stood like walls in a labyrinth.
Originally, this hadn't been his quarters.
His room had been in the inner courtyard, but at his request, it was relocated to this former storage area in the outer courtyard.
Yet, Se-woon's expression as he walked through the room was peculiar.
'It's hard to get used to.'
He looked down at his legs.
It wasn't just his face that had grown younger.
His two straight legs supported his body effortlessly.
The unfamiliar sensation of standing firmly on his own two feet—
After the Blood Demon Cult severed the tendons in his right leg,
Se-woon had lived as a cripple for over a decade, dragging one leg behind him.
Now, he had regained a healthy body.
"Who knew simply walking normally could bring such joy?"
But even as overwhelming happiness filled him,
A sudden wave of guilt crashed over him.
Was it right for him alone to return to the past and feel this happiness?
To save his clan, he had handed the Blood Demon Cult the Ten Demon Weapons.
And because of those weapons, countless innocent people had died.
It felt as though thousands of pounds of weight had settled on his shoulders.
"......It's a burden I must bear."
As he muttered bitterly to himself—
Tap.
Se-woon stopped walking.
In a secluded corner of the room, there was an empty space devoid of books.
Strangely, the floor there was discolored compared to the rest.
Complex emotions flickered in Se-woon's eyes.
"I was this desperate, huh?"
Every book in this room was filled with martial treatises and theoretical manuals.
And this spot was where Se-woon had trained alone, trying to overcome his congenital disability (天刑).
Countless failures, sweat, and tears had stained the floor a different hue.
Before his regression, this room had been a space filled with nothing but despair.
Tap!
Suddenly snapping out of his thoughts, Se-woon stepped onto the spot where he had once trained.
Slowly, he spread his legs, lowered his stance, and assumed a preparatory posture.
His eyes burned with fierce determination.
"But this life will be different."
Se-woon had been born with a malformed dantian.
Unlike ordinary people, his dantian recognized all qi absorbed through breathing techniques as poison.
The moment he attempted to circulate qi, excruciating pain and convulsions would wrack his body.
Thus, the only type of internal cultivation he could practice was one:
'Dynamic Cultivation (動功)—accumulating energy not through breath but through movement, storing it not in the dantian but throughout the body's meridians.'
Whoosh!
Se-woon planted his feet firmly, swung one arm in a powerful arc through the air.
The motion resembled a blacksmith hammering molten metal.
The Tang Clan possessed only one Dynamic Cultivation method:
'Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation (金緩動功).'
A metallurgy technique passed down for the clan's blacksmiths.
Ssshh!
The ambient energy in the air slowly seeped into Se-woon's meridians.
Simultaneously, his regenerative abilities activated, rapidly healing the minor wounds from his earlier battle.
Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation not only built internal energy but also enhanced physical strength and recovery—much like External Martial Arts.
Had this been its only advantage, Dynamic Cultivation wouldn't have been shunned by most martial artists.
'Current progress: twenty percent. Still too low.'
A fatal flaw soon became apparent.
The amount of energy accumulated in his meridians was pitifully minuscule.
Dynamic Cultivation was woefully inefficient compared to traditional internal cultivation.
Se-woon had practiced Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation since he was five, yet the energy stored in his meridians now amounted to barely five years' worth.
Fifteen years of relentless effort—only thirty percent efficiency.
A cultivation speed worse than the most mediocre manuals peddled in marketplaces.
Any ordinary martial artist would have abandoned it long ago for a better method.
'But I have no choice.'
As mentioned earlier, Se-woon couldn't practice other internal techniques due to his disability.
So he had delved obsessively into Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation.
And through grueling effort and heaven-defying coincidence,
He discovered two hidden functions of the technique that no one in the clan's history had ever realized.
The first was:
'At fifty percent mastery, one can imbue materials with will and true qi to forge artifacts with extraordinary power.'
Yes. The ability that allowed Se-woon to create the Ten Demon Weapons for the Blood Demon Cult—
Its origin lay in Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation.
But right now, that wasn't the function Se-woon cared about.
Whoosh!
Se-woon redistributed the chaotic energy in his meridians evenly throughout his body.
Ssshh!
Bathed in radiant light, Se-woon's cultivation surged past twenty percent—reaching thirty.
This was possible because he leveraged insights from his past life.
'Now that the roots are established......'
It was time to raise the trunk.
Se-woon began recalling the mnemonic verses (口訣) of another martial art.
To stand above the heavens,
'One must embrace all anomalies and contradictions within oneself—!'
Namely:
The Blood Demon's martial art—Reverse Heaven Energy (逆天氣).
CRACK!
Instantly, the dust-like energy drifting in his meridians went berserk, as if struck by a storm.
'Ghk!'
Simultaneously, excruciating pain—like thousands of blades carving into his flesh—engulfed Se-woon.
"Cough!"
Black blood spewed from his mouth.
Veins bulged across his body; his skin turned dark crimson as if poisoned.
The classic symptoms of Demon Qi Deviation.
Normally, one would desperately try to revert upon entering this state.
'Ghk! More, more—!'
But Se-woon focused entirely on maintaining it.
He had no choice.
Reverse Heaven Energy forcibly induced Demon Qi Deviation to harness its rampaging power—
A demonic art that defied the natural order (逆天).
His meridians felt like they were tearing apart, his dantian crushed, his qi and blood thrown into chaos.
Both mind and body were being shredded.
No doubt, even a peerless master with profound internal energy would have long surrendered to such agony.
Yet Se-woon endured with desperate resolve, circulating energy to the very end.
'......If I endured it once, I can endure it twice!'
When he first practiced the Blood Demon's martial art in his past life, it had been the same.
His mindset now mirrored that moment of overcoming pain.
Remembering those who had suffered and died—
Because of him.
For him.
'This trivial pain—I can endure it a hundred, a thousand times over.'
Ignoring the torment,
He applied the insights and epiphanies from his past life to his current body.
'Points connect into lines.'
Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation, now at fifty percent mastery, solidified the energy in his meridians into sturdy 'roots.'
'Lines spiral into helixes.'
Reverse Heaven Energy, now at ten percent mastery, began weaving the rampaging energy into a 'trunk.'
The newly formed energy circulation in Se-woon's body resembled 'a single tree.'
Ssshh!
Finally,
The pain subsided, and his body underwent a transformation.
He could have stopped here.
'Only one thing remains—!'
To sprout lush 'leaves,' Se-woon channeled the spiraling energy upward—
To the Baihui point at the crown, where the upper dantian resided.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion echoed in Se-woon's ears.
Thud.
His body collapsed onto the floor.
To any observer, he seemed to have lost consciousness.
But—
"Haaah."
A deep exhale resonated.
Se-woon soon lifted his head and opened his eyes.
A faint smile curled at his lips.
"......Seems I'll need to change clothes again."
Foul-smelling impurities had seeped from his pores, staining his robes.
This wasn't the marrow-cleansing rebirth of Bone-Forging.
His malformed dantian remained unchanged.
To outsiders, Se-woon's martial prowess would still appear third-rate.
But—
The reality was entirely different.
Hummm!
His meridians and upper dantian were now perfectly connected.
An unbelievable feat.
It defied the martial world's common knowledge—that one must first complete the lower dantian, then the middle, before unlocking the upper.
Whoosh!
Se-woon summoned his innate true qi using Reverse Heaven Energy, manipulating it effortlessly in his palm.
"Good. The energy flow has stabilized."
Unlike during his forced awakening against Yi Hoseong,
Now, Se-woon could wield innate true qi from his upper dantian without pain or side effects.
And for good reason.
Through fifteen years of training, he had learned:
'Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation and Reverse Heaven Energy were always meant to utilize the upper dantian.'
Both arts unlocked hidden functions when connected to the upper dantian.
Whoosh!
'Golden Tempering Dynamic Cultivation restores innate true qi.'
Channeling meridian energy to the upper dantian via Reverse Heaven Energy—
'Reverse Heaven Energy amplifies the quantity of innate true qi.'
No ordinary martial artist would believe it.
The ability to increase one's innate true qi—a fixed quantity determined at birth?
Conventional wisdom held that innate true qi was several times more potent than ordinary qi.
Now, even if he faced Yi Hoseong again in a life-or-death duel, victory would be effortless.
The only drawback?
'I can't reveal my innate true qi recklessly.'
As the old martial saying goes: A warrior must conceal thirty percent of their strength.
This trump card had to remain hidden until the end.
'Word getting out might draw unwanted attention from the Blood Demon Cult.'
That left just one final task.
Se-woon focused his energy back into his upper dantian, where his innate true qi resided.
Whoosh!
An intangible dagger hidden in Se-woon's right hand slowly materialized.
'Formless Dagger. Why did you return with me?'
Just as Se-woon pondered this greatest mystery—
He suddenly sensed someone's gaze.
"......Hm?"
Turning his head, he saw a young boy staring at him in shock.