Breaking Through the Conception and Governing Vessels (2)
I have to slow the flow. The Conception and Governing Vessels aren't something you touch unless you've reached a considerable realm...!
In the novel itself, Yeon Cheongha only broke through them in the latter half. After Han Soso fought Ban Gyuseong and struck out on her own, he helped her, attempted mutual destruction with an officer of the shadowy organization, and only after seizing a fortuitous encounter did he pierce the Conception and Governing Vessels and climb into a new realm.
It was a half-measure. He had been on the verge of death and never fully completed the Flesh-and-Bone Rebirth—all he managed was to heal his wounds and rise a level—but even that was lofty enough to set him among the very strongest by the late story.
A fortune no greater than having shared a snow ginseng should never have been enough to break through. That much was certain.
Junior sister's in danger...!
Another shock slammed into the nape of his neck, hard enough to jerk his whole body, and this time his mind reeled as if an iron hammer had struck his skull.
Damn it... this is bad...!
Blood streamed from his nose, and his face felt ready to burst. Had he been alone, he would have abandoned the circulation, braced for an internal injury, and forced the breathing technique to stop.
But his junior sister was here. He couldn't.
Is she all right?
He opened his eyes to check on her even as his own insides tore, but her smooth back was unchanged. She was not bleeding, nor writhing in pain the way he was.
How... is that possible?
Even through the agony of the vessels being hammered, he focused on her condition, and a moment later he understood why the qi was moving with such abnormal speed and force.
Junior sister... her Conception and Governing Vessels are already open?
They were points their master had scoured clean from the day she was born, burning away his True Origin qi so that impurities would never settle in them. It was the same principle by which the heirs of martial houses, still children and not yet sealed along those vessels, received hair-fine needling and underwent a lesser Flesh-and-Bone Rebirth, gaining talent beyond that of ordinary people.
But I'm not ready yet...!
Blood burst from his nose, and his acupoints began, little by little, to rupture.
He had gone in too deep. He had synchronized so thoroughly with his junior sister's flow that his own qi was trying to move exactly as hers did. Hers ran smooth because her vessels were already open, and his body was forcing itself to match—so this backlash had been inevitable.
Nothing of the sort happened when their master guided qi through the points. He did not carry internal energy identical to hers, and so he never fell into resonance with her. Had Cheongha himself not synchronized with his junior sister, the accident would never have occurred.
But what was he supposed to do about something that had already happened? If he wanted to live, he had to break through the impurities packed into his body and pierce the Conception and Governing Vessels.
Remember her flow.
Being told to open them out of nowhere felt hopeless, but fortunately a perfect model sat right in front of him. He tried to stop holding his qi back—to follow her current and let it strike the vessels—but the flow he had already grown used to slowed of its own accord just before it met the wall sealing them. The impact carried through. It did not break through.
Damn it!
He had called Ban Gyuseong a flea trapped in a cup, unable to tell whether she was truly strong, and yet he had done the very same thing. He had never even entertained the thought that his qi might pierce the vessels. He had drawn his own limits and locked himself inside them.
My internal energy... isn't enough...!
He lacked the power. In the original tale, Yeon Cheongha was meant to catch the scent of snow ginseng, receive the aid of the thousand-year snow leopard that came seeking it, consume the glacial essence hidden in the great wilderness, and only then break through. As he was now, he simply did not have the internal energy to force the way open.
So... do I give up after all?
It was not yet time. There was an order to things, and even now, playing the rival role assigned to Yeon Cheongha, he was already strong—strong past the point of merely being strong, strong enough to throw the novel's plot into disorder. Strong enough that taking an internal injury and losing inner power here still would not cause any real trouble.
Maybe I've grown so strong that I've tangled the story, and some godlike being—the author writing this world—has stepped in to cut my power down.
Thinking that, he meekly accepted the internal injury, drew back as much of the energy resonating with his junior sister as he could, and tried to endure the rampage alone.
"Ghhh—!"
It hurt. The moment he took his hands from her back and tried to contain the whole rampage by himself, the current that had been riding her flow lost its direction, snarled, and slashed through every part of his body.
This... if I slip, it's real qi deviation...!
It truly was that dangerous. Or it would have been, if her internal energy had not been flowing in through his back.
As if to guide him, her energy poured in and began to make up for the output he lacked.
Right...! That was it!
If his own energy was not enough, he could borrow hers. Her inner power was a little greater than his. Added together, by the simplest reckoning, he could gather nearly twice what he held now.
I can... do this...!
Boom. He felt the end of the Conception Vessel shatter, like a battering ram breaking a castle gate.
But a single collision could never cross a wall of impurities this thick. Dozens of impacts, hundreds, would be needed before a crack even formed.
Then... what if I strike like a drill, fast and relentless?
Rather than circling once and slamming in with all his weight, what if he broke the wall the way a road crew's drill bores a hole—rapid, small, ceaseless blows? He set his junior sister's energy behind him as a brace and hurled every scrap of inner power he could raise against the wall sealing the Conception Vessel.
It was like a brick-breaker game, pinning the ball against a hard wall and hammering it with rapid hits. He drew her energy up as a backstop and ground the barrier down from within with a tight, spinning thread of his own power. The pain was as hideous as a root canal without anesthetic, but each swift revolution chewed a little farther through the vessel's wall.
It's grinding!
The wall of the Conception Vessel began to wear away. It was not quite the drill he had imagined. By the nature of flowing qi, it had become more like a spinning saw blade eating through the wall—but what mattered was that it broke through, whichever way it went.
Thud.
"Kuhk!"
A heavy clot of blood burst from his mouth, and yet he felt better for it. Once the Conception Vessel was open, the Governing Vessel would not take long.
Again he used her energy as a brace, spinning his own power inside it to grind the wall away. Like a saw blade wearing itself down, his energy burned off at a frightening pace as it forced the passage. By the time he had nearly pierced the wall of the Governing Vessel, what he possessed was almost gone.
No. I can't cross it like this...!
It had to be now. If he failed to break through in a single attempt, the flow would return to what it had been, and impurities would settle once more in the unused stretch—the Conception and Governing Vessels. A few days, and he would be forced helplessly back to his original state.
If he was going to break through, it had to be now.
A little more!
His energy was spent, but only one paper-thin wall remained across the Governing Vessel blocking the path. Ignoring the clot surging up his throat, ignoring the blood streaming from his nose, he scraped together even his junior sister's energy and prepared one last strike.
One last blow to shatter this wall.
"Ah!"
He broke it.
The walls of the Conception Vessel and the Governing Vessel—the Conception and Governing Vessels that had kept his energy from flowing—he smashed them apart. Like pulling a tooth that had ached for years, the wall came down in a single breath. What had seemed vaster and thicker than the Great Wall was, once he saw through it, nothing but a single thin membrane.
As if a sluice had opened, he felt the qi of his whole body recover and burst forth, and joy washed over him at the thought that he had ascended a stage.
"Uuugh."
And then, as if the power had been cut, he blacked out.
His body felt clear.
Once, the qi moving through him had seemed to pass only from below the neck down to the lower abdomen. Now it seemed to run through every corner of him, from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.
So this is what it feels like to have the Conception and Governing Vessels open?
If he had to name it, it was like having worn a cooling vest over his torso alone, then stepping out of a cold shower to stand naked in the full blast of an air conditioner. Refreshing, through and through.
Did I... do something close to a Flesh-and-Bone Rebirth?
His body was still young, near its prime, so there had been no need for a full rebirth. His form remained as it was, and he had gained only a faint imperviousness to heat and cold. His honed sense of qi registered the temperature keenly, and yet the feelings of cold and heat themselves barely reached him.
"Young hero. Young hero? Are you all right?"
"Ugh...?"
A woman he did not recognize, seated beside him, had called out all at once. For an instant he thought, who...? But the shape of her eyes, and the slightly thin back of her hand, told him she was Jegal Yeonji's twin, only changed into different clothes.
Damn it... I ought to have asked her real name. I can't keep calling her Dark Jegal Yeonji forever.
"I meant to help my junior sister, and ended up being helped instead."
"What do you mean?"
She seemed not to know what had happened here—that his junior sister's energy had resonated with his and shown him how to break through the vessels, and that as a result, though he had lain unconscious for a long while, he had risen to a realm close to Flesh-and-Bone Rebirth.
"It's nothing you need to worry about."
He sat up with a heave, and found a half-burned scrap of cloth lying on his chest. Beneath it he was naked, so he lay quietly back down and drew the blanket over himself. Just in case, he felt along his lower half. Bare there, too.
"It is all right, young hero."
It is absolutely not all right!
Apparently this Jegal Yeonji had seen everything. He had only been stripped while he was unconscious, so it was understandable enough—but that did nothing for the shame of it.
"Ugh... How long was I unconscious?"
The air had grown considerably colder. He must have slept at least a day.
"About a fortnight, young hero."
"Ah. A fortnight... a fortnight?"
"Yes. You collapsed on the night of the full moon, and today is the last day of the month."
For a moment the word fortnight failed to register. Then the last day of the month snapped him awake.
Come to think of it... isn't today that day?
The day when, unable to bear the sight of Yeon Cheongha suffering from his internal injuries, a courtesan went to steal the medicine that should have gone to the Sichuan Tang Clan—medicine that healed internal wounds—rummaging in secret through the cargo at the harbor, only to be caught by the mistress of the pleasure house and dragged away.
Fortunately I never took that internal injury, so the courtesan shouldn't be kidnapped......
"Your junior sister said she was going to find medicine good for internal injuries, and set out for the harbor. If nothing is amiss, she will return shortly."
"......What did you say?"
"Your junior sister Ok said she would bring back a pellet good for internal injuries, and headed for the harbor, but..."
Wait. The story turned like this?
Originally his junior sister had died long before, and the courtesan he met while wandering in the shock of that loss was the one who should have been kidnapped today. Now two separate incidents were being stirred together, so that today it was his junior sister who came to harm?
He shot upright. With Distant Grasp he yanked his spare clothes to him, dressed in a flash, threw the window open, and leapt out.
"Young hero?"
"It's dangerous outside. Please wait in here!"
"You already dealt with all of them last time... and the members of the Jegal Clan residing in Sichuan are even now watching the harbor for any untoward movement, so there is no need to worry..."
He knew better. Those "members of the Jegal Clan" were warriors of the shadowy organization, wearing the human-skin masks of the Face-Snatching Ghosts.
"Explanations later. Stay here for now!"
Please. Don't let me be too late.
The moon of the month's last night already hung high overhead.