Acupoint Sealing
The Murim Alliance’s lodging was by no means lacking. If anything, it was good enough to hold its own anywhere.
You could almost say it was excellent.
The only problem was that the accommodations provided by Mangeum Commercial Guild were absurdly lavish.
I’d only been in Murim for a short while, and I still didn’t really understand life here, so I couldn’t say exactly how extravagant this was.
But there was a way to find out. I had three people with me: Gokseon, Baek Jin-ah, and Dang Yeong-young.
Gokseon—an extraordinary woman whose fame and skill were so far beyond measure they hardly needed describing.
Wherever she went, there was no way she’d receive shabby treatment.
Who in their right mind would dare court her wrath otherwise?
Baek Jin-ah, the young palace lord of the North Sea Ice Palace.
Of course, the North Sea Ice Palace I knew wasn’t exactly overflowing with wealth. It seemed to be the same in reality, too.
Still, no one would ever be careless in the way they treated the Ice Palace’s young palace lord.
And Dang Yeong-young—the granddaughter of the Sichuan Dang Clan, and not just any granddaughter, but a direct descendant.
Nothing more needed to be said. The words Sichuan Dang Clan alone explained plenty.
There were the Nine Great Sects and the Five Great Clans, but nowhere was larger or more influential than the Sichuan Dang Clan.
They were practically the rulers of Sichuan, and Dang Yeong-young was the granddaughter of that house.
And yet even those three women couldn’t hide their amazement. That was how staggering Mangeum Commercial Guild’s wealth was.
No wonder they were called the number one trading house in the Central Plains.
But if you lived this extravagantly, wouldn’t the government start complaining that you were getting too cocky?
Ah, maybe they were already pouring money into that side too. Well, that would make sense.
In any case, our extended mission was simple.
Continue escorting Yeo I-ryeong until the captured men had been interrogated and the mastermind and motive behind the attack were uncovered.
And while that happened, Mangeum Commercial Guild would provide us with every convenience possible.
Besides, the Murim Alliance would probably receive a fair amount of “donations,” too.
Thankfully, Yeo I-ryeong wasn’t some clueless spoiled young lady.
Even knowing someone had targeted her, she didn’t recklessly insist on going out or babble about wanting to go have fun somewhere.
Good. That was a relief. Characters who were stupidly annoying like that weren’t very popular these days.
Besides, if she had said something like that, Gokseon probably wouldn’t have sat still.
There was no guarantee she’d let anyone lay a hand on the treasured daughter of Mangeum Commercial Guild.
Mangeum Commercial Guild was quick on the uptake.
Maybe that was one reason they’d become the leading trading house in the Central Plains.
They didn’t dawdle at all. How had they finished interrogating all the prisoners in just one day?
The men subdued by Baek Jin-ah and Dang Yeong-young spilled everything: why they had done it, how they had done it, and all the rest.
From their standpoint, the story was fully understandable.
Since the information had been relayed by Mangeum Commercial Guild, there was bound to have been some trimming around the edges.
When I thought about that, I could understand why they’d acted the way they did.
The problem was that man. The one who had attacked me.
He said he didn’t actually know the group beforehand.
And that on the first day of the banquet, he had suddenly appeared and practically forced them to work under him.
It didn’t sound like an excuse to dodge responsibility.
If you worked through the chain of causality, it was probably true.
The problem was what I had felt.
That man hadn’t been after Yeo I-ryeong.
In the room next to the one where Yeo I-ryeong was sleeping—the room prepared for us to stand guard—we gathered together: me, Gokseon, Baek Jin-ah, and Dang Yeong-young. There, I told them what had happened.
“That masked man had the skill to ignore me and take Lady Yeo away whenever he wanted. But he targeted me instead.”
At my words, all three looked at me as if to say, What are you talking about?
“Senior.”
“Speak.”
“That masked man... what level do you think he was at?”
At my question, Gokseon watched me with calm eyes and thought for a moment before speaking quietly.
“At the very least, the Transcendent Realm.”
“Yes. I haven’t really had much experience with proper experts of the Transcendent Realm yet, so I couldn’t judge exactly. But after facing him myself, I understood. That man was no ordinary person. Like you said, Senior, he must have been a Transcendent Realm expert.”
After saying that, I took a sip of tea to wet my throat and went on.
“If a Transcendent Realm expert had truly been targeting Lady Yeo, wouldn’t he have been able to drop someone like me with a single strike? He wouldn’t have bothered trying to seal my acupoints, would he?”
At that, all three of them widened their eyes.
Exactly. That was the part I found strangest.
“You mean he sealed your acupoints? That man?”
“Yes. He sealed my acupoints. Before I even properly noticed him.”
“And yet you were perfectly fine?”
Gokseon stared at me in utter incomprehension.
Baek Jin-ah and Dang Yeong-young wore similar expressions.
“I don’t really know either. Maybe I have a somewhat unusual constitution?”
The instant I said that, Gokseon’s hand flicked out so fast it was almost a blur, and I felt a sharp tap just below my Adam’s apple.
Her hand speed was terrifyingly quick. In an instant, she had sealed my voice acupoint.
“Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. See? It doesn’t work, does it?”
When I said that, Gokseon looked genuinely startled.
Then she moved her hand again, and Dang Yeong-young jumped back in alarm.
Before I knew it, she even had hidden weapons in her hands.
“!!!!!”
But since her voice acupoint was already sealed, Dang Yeong-young couldn’t speak. She frowned and kept opening and closing her mouth.
“Senior. You can’t just do that. Hurry up and undo it.”
“Your body is certainly strange.”
Without paying any attention to Dang Yeong-young or me, Gokseon reached out once more and unsealed her acupoint.
“No matter how much of a great senior you are, this is outrageous!”
Wow. At least she still used honorifics in a situation like this.
Thank goodness. So there had been some growth in that girl after all.
It wasn’t weird for her to have switched back to her usual sharp, casual tone by now.
Of course, even if she had, Gokseon wouldn’t have batted an eye.
After I soothed Yeong-young down, she was still fuming, but she quietly sat back down.
Then again, she was impressive in her own way. If Gokseon hadn’t been there, she probably would’ve thrown the hidden weapon she’d been holding.
And if she had, her opponent definitely wouldn’t have come out unscathed.
“You there.”
“Yes, Senior.”
“I’ll try once more, so sit still.”
She said that, didn’t even wait for my reply, and moved her hand again.
This time, the blow was much stronger than before—hard enough that I could feel an involuntary ugh rise in my throat.
“Ah. Ah. Ah. Didn’t work again, huh?”
But the words came out.
That seemed to trigger Gokseon’s stubborn streak.
Damn. Maybe I should’ve just pretended my acupoint had been sealed?
This time was different from before.
It wasn’t merely a tap; it was the kind of strike that felt more like a beating, landing on my voice acupoint with enough force to make me go, ugh!
And apparently that technique worked, because I suddenly couldn’t speak at all.
Ow. That hurts. But this feels really, really weird.
It’s like I’m forcing my voice out, but it gets stuck in my throat and won’t come through.
Gokseon released the seal before long. The problem was that it hurt quite a bit even when she let go.
Then, over and over again, she varied the strength and tried sealing and releasing different acupoints.
Since it seemed interesting, Baek Jin-ah and Dang Yeong-young joined in and started testing my acupoints too.
And what we learned was that, under normal methods, my acupoints just didn’t seem to be sealable.
For one thing, neither Baek Jin-ah nor Dang Yeong-young could seal them no matter what they tried.
Gokseon could seal them, but even that didn’t work every time.
To actually succeed, it had to be less like a technique and more like a beating.
“How astonishing. Hmm. Sit comfortably for a moment. I’ll have to investigate further.”
“Senior, could I ask something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Could it be that external martial arts prevent acupoints from being sealed?”
At that, Gokseon narrowed her eyes and looked at me.
Did she really have to think about it with that kind of expression?
Anyone on the receiving end of that stare would get chills. Gokseon’s expression had a certain effect to it.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. However, depending on the case, it may not be unrelated.”
Hearing that, I had a rough idea. It was probably because of the Golden Dragon Body.
Wow. That really was absurdly overpowered. Long live external martial arts.
Maybe the reason such excellent external arts weren’t more common was precisely because they were so difficult to perfect?
In this Murim, who knew how long it would take to master an external art to perfection?
And there was no guarantee you’d even succeed.
Besides, my Golden Dragon Body had been further strengthened thanks to Iron Body Weight-Adding Force, so it wasn’t strange that it had this kind of effect.
“Anyway, the topic drifted off to acupoints all of a sudden, but... that masked man did try to seal my acupoints. There wasn’t any reason for him to do that. He used a Transcendent Realm expert, brought in people targeting Lady Yeo, and even used a large amount of explosives that could have caused serious trouble—so why would he go out of his way to seal my acupoints?”
“So what you’re saying is that he was targeting you?”
“That’s what I’m suspecting, yes. But I can’t think of any reason why, so I’m still not sure.”
“He might have taken lust for Lady Baek...”
Dang Yeong-young muttered that, then quickly looked away when she saw my disgusted expression.
I had thought about that too.
And when I did, I had actually shuddered with revulsion and horror.
Seal someone’s acupoints, knock them out, and kidnap them?
And once they woke up... who knew what might have been done to them?
Honestly, just thinking that far made me want to retch.
The problem was that no other explanation fit as well.
“Very well. I understand. For the time being, do not leave this one’s side. And you too, Jin-ah.”
Baek Jin-ah looked at Gokseon with an odd expression and asked, “Me too?”
“You and this child are not so different, are you? Then what would be wrong with being careful!?”
At that, Baek Jin-ah seemed to understand and nodded.
Come to think of it, if that masked pervert had some kind of white-hair fetish, Baek Jin-ah would be at risk too.
The more I thought about it, the more disgusting it got. What a barbaric world this was.
“What about me?”
Dang Yeong-young asked when she heard Gokseon’s words.
Gokseon silently looked at her for a moment, then answered without the slightest emotional ripple.
“You don’t have a body men would be interested in.”
After that, Baek Jin-ah and I spent quite a while calming down Dang Yeong-young as she went ballistic.
Haaah.