Confession
Anyway, the verification of Hunyuan Gong went smoothly enough.
The blue-steel stone floor had cracked, but that was the Murim Alliance’s problem. Surely they wouldn’t try to bill me for it? If they did, I’d tell Exalted Sun. He’d take care of it. Honestly, one cold look from him would probably settle the matter.
Still, would they really dare? I had given them a fair bit of profit last time with the Ten-Thousand Gold Trading Company. Hmm. This was probably a good chance to see just how much backbone the Murim Alliance actually had. They wouldn’t turn stingy on me, would they?
Then, that evening, Dang Yeong-young returned without incident and showed me a mushroom.
It looked like a dog’s leg with white spots on it. Just like she’d said. The name fit perfectly.
"By tomorrow, you’ll be able to hear a lot from that man’s own mouth. Look forward to it."
After saying that, Dang Yeong-young gave me a bright smile and headed off to the Medicine Hall.
So she could make a truth serum out of a hallucinogenic mushroom, and she did it with that much confidence.
No matter how I thought about it, that clan was not normal.
What kind of place was the Dang Clan, anyway? And what kind of Murim Alliance was it that allowed this?
The next day.
Once again, everyone gathered.
The Patrol Hall Lord, the Medicine Hall Lord, a few people from the Murim Alliance, Exalted Sun, me, Baek Jin-ah, Dang Yeong-young.
And the unidentified man.
The Medicine Hall Lord calmly fed the man a pill.
The man resisted with all his might, but since he couldn’t move properly, there was no way to refuse it.
Forced to swallow the medicine, he clenched his teeth and endured.
But not long after, he burst out laughing with a loud, "Ahahahaha!"
How should I put it...? It was kind of terrifying. He didn’t seem sane.
No, that was exactly right. This was the Mad Laughter Crying Pill, wasn’t it?
Laugh like a madman, then cry like a madman?
That was exactly what happened. The man laughed for ages, then started bawling his eyes out.
He went through that cycle several times before finally looking utterly drained, staring blankly into the air with a dopey grin on his face.
Only then did the Patrol Hall Lord begin the interrogation.
Though, calling it an interrogation was generous. It was really just asking questions.
And the man answered everything he was asked, obediently and without resistance.
What came out of his mouth was astonishing, every single word of it.
The Sado Alliance. The name Jeokwol. The target. The kidnapping...
At one point Exalted Sun cut in and started asking questions too, and I listened quietly to all of it.
Until, eventually, I joined in and asked him directly.
"So the Sado Alliance Lord ordered you to kidnap me because I attacked Tae Family Manor?"
"Th... that’s right."
"Was Tae Family Manor an important place? What exactly is the Sado Alliance plotting there?"
"I... don’t know."
"Tell me everything you know about Tae Family Manor. All of it."
"I don’t... know. Cough."
I asked a few more things after that, but the man called Jeokwol kept saying he didn’t know.
If he still didn’t know even after taking the truth serum, then he really didn’t know.
In the end, we didn’t uncover anything more, and the Patrol Hall Lord had no choice but to keep questioning only the man’s own affairs.
Eventually, Jeokwol got to the point where he could barely speak at all and was sent back to the prison dungeon.
No matter how I looked at him, he seemed a little worse for wear.
So I asked Dang Yeong-young about it.
"That guy... he’ll be okay, right? He won’t end up a complete wreck or anything?"
"You’re worried about the man who tried to kidnap you?"
Dang Yeong-young looked at me, puzzled, and asked the question back.
Well... yes, that was true. If something had gone wrong and I’d been kidnapped by that man, I probably would’ve been put through something pretty awful.
"The Mad Laughter Crying Pill isn’t that addictive. Using it once or twice won’t make someone crave it badly. Half a year, maybe? If they don’t come into contact with it for that long, they should be able to get over it. Whether they’ll even get that chance, though, I can’t say."
"Even so, this is the righteous faction’s Murim Alliance..."
"Miss Baek."
Dang Yeong-young looked straight at me. Then, in a voice that had gone a little cold, she continued.
"Righteousness doesn’t always include justice."
I was still a newcomer to the Murim world, but I could understand those words now.
Righteousness and chivalry. What these people pursued. The attitude a martial artist should take toward righteousness and chivalry.
Righteousness was principle. It was resolve. A way of being.
Great righteousness, benevolent righteousness, proper righteousness.
No matter what came before it, righteousness meant what was right, and that applied to everyone.
Chivalry was action. Movement. Putting it into practice.
Even if you held a noble ideal in your heart, if you never acted, it was empty.
Depending on what kind of righteousness you embraced, that chivalry could become something right—or something wrong.
That was why, within the righteous factions, righteousness and chivalry were treated as one.
Chivalry without righteousness was violence. Righteousness without chivalry was nothing but empty words.
So what Dang Yeong-young was saying was clear.
Even the Murim Alliance of the righteous factions might, at times, carry out chivalry without righteousness.
And that applied to any martial artist.
Righteousness all looked in the same direction, but chivalry could point in many directions.
The person who was my benefactor could be someone else’s mortal enemy.
If that person tried to kill my benefactor, then to him, that was an act of chivalry.
And stopping him would be chivalry too.
Anyway, thanks to Jeokwol, I’d learned a great deal.
The Sado Alliance. The Sado Alliance Lord.
What exactly were they plotting?
The Tae Family Manor had only passed through my life in the briefest of flashes. It was just a place I had stopped by temporarily for the Yang Family Manor quest.
And yet things had connected like this. Enough for the Sado Alliance Lord himself to take an interest.
Well, that worked out nicely. I was supposed to face the Sado Alliance Lord sooner or later anyway.
He was part of my assigned mission. If I wanted to complete it, this was an unavoidable step.
The problem was that I still had no confidence in my ability to face him and win.
I was only three months into Murim, after all. It was still too early for some greenhorn to go scheming against the Sado Alliance Lord.
But that didn’t mean I felt hopeless or lost.
Hunyuan Gong. A martial art formed thanks to my unusual situation.
No, saying I’d formed it felt wrong. It would be more accurate to say I’d discovered it.
Either way, with Hunyuan Gong, I might actually have a future.
It hadn’t been in a complete state yet, but I had still wrestled power up to the Hua Realm with just four star-level internal force.
So if I could perfect the Ice Soul Divine Art, its power would become absurdly strong.
Of course, Hunyuan Gong still wasn’t in a fully complete state, so it would need quite a bit of refinement.
Still, thanks to my work and Jeokwol, the situation improved a lot.
First, Exalted Sun, Baek Jin-ah, Dang Yeong-young, Geumran, and Hong Si-yeon were all released from confinement.
According to Jeokwol, the Sado Alliance was plotting something.
And it seemed there was now a question of whether that had something to do with the Green Forest incident from before.
The Murim Alliance likely knew something more about it as well.
Well, they were the elite of the righteous factions in name as well as reality.
So of course they’d know plenty. Maybe one of the connections Jeokwol mentioned had already been uncovered.
And I received a gold token.
It had barely been long since I’d received a silver token, and I hadn’t even completed a single mission since then, but I’d been promoted straight to gold.
That just showed how much merit there was in capturing Jeokwol. He hadn’t been an ordinary man.
Clearly he knew an enormous amount. Come to think of it, the Patrol Hall Lord had asked him about all sorts of things.
When I thought about it, it made sense.
He was a man at the Hua Realm. Not only that, he was one of the Sado Alliance Lord’s close subordinates.
So of course he’d know plenty, and there would be a great deal of information to squeeze out of him. Being promoted to gold wasn’t strange at all.
Thanks to that, I was able to climb up to the fifth floor of the library tower.
In other words, I could now browse anywhere except the sixth floor, which only holders of a white-gold token could enter, and the floors above it.
Though visiting the Sutra Pavilion would have to wait a little longer.
Because the Wudang elder Exalted Sun had called for was already here.
"Hah..."
The man called Hyeonseong gave off the same kind of feeling as the Flashing Flower Sword, Cheon Hyeong-jin, whom I’d met before.
Which meant he, too, was probably quite advanced in years. The sort of seniority you’d see in a sect master or clan head.
And yet he looked like a handsome man in his early thirties. Not in the way he spoke, though.
"How bizarre! How utterly bizarre! How can this be possible!? Even if someone were said to possess the Heavenly Martial Body, this would still be impossible!?"
Hyeonseong Jinin stared wide-eyed at the Purple Sunset Divine Art running in my left hand and the Ice Soul Divine Art running in my right.
The amusing part was that he didn’t seem all that interested in why I had learned the two martial arts in the first place.
He was simply fascinated by how they could be operating within a single body.
"I know it may be rude, but would you allow me to examine you?"
"Go ahead."
"Thank you!"
Then he carefully touched the tip of a finger to my hand.
And with that, his true qi flowed into me.
Touching another person’s body and sending true qi into it to check their condition was something that should only be done between master and disciple.
It wasn’t something you could just casually grant to anyone. It was extremely rude, in fact.
But Exalted Sun had deliberately called him here. Which meant Exalted Sun trusted him.
So I allowed it.
Besides, I was expecting something from this too.
If I wanted to develop Hunyuan Gong further, I’d probably need this man’s help. That must be why Exalted Sun called him.
"Hmm..."
After checking me for quite some time, Hyeonseong Jinin only kept exclaiming in amazement, his brow furrowed tightly.
Then he withdrew his hand and looked at Exalted Sun.
"Jade Plum! Is it true that this child can learn martial arts just by hearing the oral formula?"
"Can’t you tell by looking?"
"And why would that be easy to believe? Go out to the marketplace and ask any random passerby. Nine out of ten would tell you to quit spouting nonsense!"
At that, Exalted Sun simply smiled with an expression of pleased satisfaction.
"Hmm... so that’s how it is? Good. Then... I shall recite the formula for you. Let us see whether you can learn this as well."
And so Hyeonseong Jinin began reciting the oral formula.
Since all I had to do was listen, I only needed to stand there quietly.
And when Hyeonseong Jinin finished reciting it all, I was able to see the message window for the first time in a while.
Taiji Divine Art has been acquired.
Whoa. Taiji Divine Art? That sounded like another ridiculously impressive martial art.
Some high-ranking Wudang elder was teaching it to me? There was no way it was some trivial thing.
"Shall I recite it once more?"
"No. I memorized it all."
"What! You memorized all of it!? Really?"
To the astonished Hyeonseong Jinin, I recited the oral formula for Taiji Divine Art.
I did this all the time, but there was something thrilling about it each time.
If my actions could leave someone staring in disbelief with their eyes practically falling out of their sockets, then of course I’d feel this way.
Even if it wasn’t really because of my own ability.
"Hohoho... how can such a thing exist...? Primordial Heavenly Venerable. Primordial Heavenly Venerable."
Hyeonseong Jinin laughed weakly, chanting his honorific over and over with a dazed look on his face.
But even as I watched him, Exalted Sun’s expression was brighter than mine.
Well, of course. Exalted Sun was probably enjoying this too. There was a kind of vicarious satisfaction in it.