Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method
The emotional turbulence that had briefly swallowed me whole subsided quickly the moment the wooden horse I rode reached its destination.
The faint scent of blood drifting in from outside the Eastern Chamber where my second brother and I had been working swept every stray thought from my mind in an instant.
I sprang from the horse as though I had been launched, and when I hurried inside, I was met with a rather absurd sight.
My second brother was standing with both hands bloodied, clinging to the chamber wall while tears streamed from his eyes.
Worse still, Yang Jeon sat nearby with a dazed look on his face, though thankfully his grave injuries seemed to have healed. The source of the blood smell that had drifted all the way outside was nothing more than my second brother’s ruined hands.
But why had his hands, which had been perfectly fine earlier, become so bloodied?
Just as I was about to ask, my second brother, still unaware that I had returned to the chamber, began to show me the reason his hands were in such a state.
Thud! Thud!
He had been bracing himself against the wall a moment earlier, and then he suddenly started pounding the hard stone with his bare fists.
Of course, however much my second brother was also a cultivator at the early Qi Refining stage, he had not learned any body-tempering art such as refinement of the flesh. So the only thing harmed by those blows was his own pair of hands.
Yet with every full-strength punch, even as skin tore and flesh split and blood ran free, the force in his fists never seemed to diminish.
It was as if he wanted both hands broken beyond repair.
I closed the distance at once with light footwork and caught his hand.
Only then did my second brother, who had been about to wrench free of even my grip and swing again, realize that his hand was fixed in place and would not move. He slowly turned and looked at me.
In that time, he must have cried enough to leave his eyes swollen and puffy.
And yet the emotion banked in those tear-filled eyes was somewhat unexpected.
It was anger directed at himself.
I had never imagined that he, of all people, would be nursing such rage. After all, in battle against high-level cultivators, he had always been the sort to grin and toss out flippant remarks. But it seemed not everything could be seen from the outside.
Deeply understanding the frustration, disappointment, and boiling anger he was feeling, I finally spoke to him.
“It isn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong.”
“No! It is my fault. I neglected my training, and when it mattered most, I was of no help at all!”
“The An Jeong-pung who threatened us was a spy of Gwi-eum-sa, and a late Qi Refining cultivator. Even if you had cut your sleep short and forced yourself to the middle Qi Refining stage, the outcome would not have changed much.”
At my words, he clenched his fists so hard that fresh blood began dripping again from his torn wounds.
“If I were also at the late Qi Refining stage, it would have been different. I’ll grow stronger! From now on, I will never hide behind your back again.”
Just as I was about to nod at his determination, I felt an unexpected presence behind me.
I turned at once and reacted to it.
Swish!
Several strands of Yang Jeon’s hair, sliced away by the sword I had drawn like lightning, fluttered down through the air. He froze on the spot, then let out the breath he had been holding and spoke with a bewildered look on his face.
“I only wanted to make sure. Whether you truly were that woman from earlier…….”
At that, I lowered the sword that had hovered near his nape and said, “It was only a light disguise to take part in Dark Dust Market.”
He studied my face for a moment, then slowly bit his lip and went on.
“I suppose so. Just how ridiculous did I look in your eyes?”
In truth, the fact that he had mistaken me for a woman all the way to the end was rather absurd.
But that did not mean I had found him ridiculous.
At the very least, he had shown today that he possessed the courage to step forward in order to help another. He had displayed a side utterly unlike those other cultivators who moved only for their own greed.
“You did not look ridiculous. I only found it regrettable that your skill could not match that remarkable courage.”
For some reason, when he heard that, his face turned red. After hesitating for a moment, he said something rather interesting.
“So my courage seemed remarkable, at least?”
It was the kind of remark that sounded as if he were seeking my approval. At this rate, I almost wondered whether he still thought of me as a woman.
So I addressed it once more.
“Knowing full well what sort of people were after us, you still stepped forward to help our ‘brother.’ That is not something just anyone can do.”
“If I close my eyes to injustice, then I become complicit in it as well. That will never happen again. I swear it in the name of Yang Jeon.”
He spoke much like those righteous heroes the orthodox sects so loved to praise, but I found his answer rather to my liking.
Unlike the hypocrites of the righteous schools, who always let their words run ahead of their actions, he had shown his conviction through deeds.
“Very well. I will watch you.”
Then, as I finished speaking with a faint smile, his face, already red, flushed even deeper.
Sensing something off, I quietly stepped back.
He must have felt the awkwardness too, because Yang Jeon immediately cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Ahem. Then I’ll take my leave. I’ll come by often from now on.”
“Do that.”
After that strangely awkward exchange, as awkward as the air surrounding us, he finally departed from our brothers’ chamber.
Then, after a long silence, my second brother spoke again.
“I’m going to enter secluded training now. Tell Master for me, would you, Neung So?”
It seemed my second brother had resolved himself firmly.
“I’ll give you half of the Clear Harmony Pill I obtained today. Take it with you.”
Yet even after hearing me, he hesitated for a long while before answering. Then he said something unexpected.
“I don’t need it. I haven’t even fully absorbed the medicinal energy already inside my body. You use it for now, and later you can find me something better.”
“You said you wanted to grow stronger, didn’t you? You said you would never hide behind my back again. Take it. It was yours from the start. Just come back stronger than before.”
For a moment he seemed to grit his teeth, then snatched the Clear Harmony Pill from my hand, turned, and walked toward the chamber entrance.
As I watched his back in silence, he suddenly stopped near the doorway and, without turning around, called out.
“The next time we meet, I’ll be at a higher level than you. Then I’ll show you no mercy either, just like you did to me, and blast you with Fire Pellet Art, Neung So!”
It seemed my second brother had especially vivid memories of the scorching taste of that Fire Pellet Art he had taken in our last spar. He spoke of it like a joke, but his voice held a strange solemnity.
That made me smile as well, and I played along.
“While you’re growing stronger, I won’t be sitting around idly either. Next time, I’ll show you something even greater than Fire Pellet Art, so come back with high expectations.”
At that, as if a laugh had escaped him, his shoulders shook soundlessly for a moment before he started walking again.
Then he was gone from the chamber…….
Watching the place where he had disappeared for a moment longer, I soon remembered the object that had been worth thirty Clear Harmony Pills.
The art of making puppets—Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method. Clearly, I had to look into that as well.
So I took out the jade slip containing the Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method, faintly suffused with blue-green spiritual energy, and poured qi into it. The light from the slip deepened, and then the knowledge contained within the Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method began flowing straight into my mind.
It was an exceptional means of transmitting knowledge, far beyond anything in the martial world’s manuals of martial arts. There was no need to spend time deciphering dense formulas one by one; I could understand every passage at once, in a way that was almost absurdly efficient.
The Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method is the art of forging an empty body and binding a soul within it. To achieve this, first shape the wood, then summon the ghost, and finally impart humanity. Once these successive steps are complete, inscribe the meaning of illusion and bring the false form into manifestation.
The opening was so simple and direct, with no room for misunderstanding, that my mind almost drifted elsewhere. Thoughts about what might be done with countless puppets created through this method, for instance.
Of course, I was not the type to linger on idle speculation for long. I quickly cleared the stray thoughts from my mind and focused on the main body of the Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method.
Dry wood becomes bone, and green bark becomes flesh. What my hands carve is a false body.
“Dry wood” referred to a tree at least a hundred years old, and the line about green bark becoming flesh meant that the more abundant the spiritual energy in the wood, the stronger the vitality of the puppet created from it would be.
As for the “false body,” it meant that one had to carve out a wooden form with an empty center. There could scarcely be a more concise or easier method to understand.
Thanks to that, despite how exhausted my body was, I found myself wanting to try making a puppet right this instant.
Unfortunately, dawn was already breaking faintly outside. I swallowed my lingering disappointment and replaced sleep with an hour of breathing meditation before heading to the Shadow Talisman Department.
And as on any ordinary day, I resumed the awkward routine of work with my fellow senior disciples.
Of course, my current level as a cultivator was not yet high enough for me to take part directly in talisman production, so I only helped with the preparatory work.
But for some reason, one senior disciple who looked utterly exhausted handed me a task he would never normally have given me.
“We’re short on yellow paper for making talismans. So today, you’ll make the paper yourself. You know how to make it, don’t you?”
Not every cultivation sect was like this, of course, but Hyeondo Sect was rather careless when it came to managing its own supplies.
That was why there were plenty of people who traded in the sect’s pilfered goods.
For someone like me, this was an opportunity that would never normally come along.
And since I was already in need of suitable material for the Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method, I had no intention of letting it pass.
“I do. Since I’m at it, I’ll make plenty.”
As soon as I offered to do the work, he rubbed his face with a tired hand, nodded, and waved me off to hurry along.
He must have had a rough night as well…….
White-Mask, the organizer of Dark Dust Market, was already dead, so Dark Dust Market would no longer be held. But as long as there were many people like the senior disciple before me, it was not difficult to guess that some other market would arise in its place.
Of course, my own actions from now on would not differ all that much from what they had done.
I did not know how many trees over a hundred years old there might be among the yellow wood used for making paper or the ghost wood, but once I found something that met the conditions, I intended to use it without hesitation.
And because I had learned the Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method, I was now able to tell at a glance which trees were older than a hundred years. That made the scene inside the storage shed rather surprising.
None of the wooden materials stacked high on one side of the shed for talisman use were old enough, but at the same time, it was not as though there were no trees over a hundred years old in the shed at all.
The only problem was how on earth I was supposed to get one out…….
If I removed one of the wooden pillars supporting the shed, the whole structure would collapse.
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