The Sudden Appearance of a Strong Foe
Of course, for me—already walking a path of Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment that was little different from the Golden Core realm—the Great Ultimate Yang Brightness Pill, which would only be of use to a Qi Refining cultivator, was not something I needed.
Still, if it could raise both inner energy and spiritual energy at once, then it was more than enough to become a treasure for the new Neung Family I was rebuilding.
So I decided to accept it.
“I’ll come to the Baekri family estate before long.”
At my words, she gave a faint smile, then quickly turned her face away, perhaps embarrassed by the sight of her own severed tongue.
So I continued.
“In truth, I have a healing talisman I received from my martial uncle. My eldest brother said something to me, though. He told me he’d rather I use that talisman on his wife, who cannot speak, than on him. Since I’ve already met my sister-in-law like this, I might as well use it on you.”
Startled by my claim that I could restore her severed tongue, she looked at me in disbelief, and I drew out the yellow talisman I had received from Uncle Jeong. As I poured spiritual energy into the Green Wood Talisman, following the method I had learned in the Shadow Talisman Department, a fresh, verdant aura burst forth at once.
The talisman in my hand crumbled into fine powder and scattered into the air. The green spiritual energy lingering there paused at her mouth, where her tongue should have been, before drifting instead toward her abdomen.
Had the injury been more than a severed tongue after all?
When the energy began to disperse after lingering over her belly for longer than it had over her mouth, I frowned slightly and asked her, “Did those bastards cripple your dantian as well, sister-in-law?”
But the words that came from her mouth in answer were utterly unexpected.
“N-no… It’s just that there’s a baby in my stomach…”
With her tongue newly restored, her speech was awkward and uncertain, and she quickly trailed off.
Still, her brief explanation was enough for me to grasp the situation.
The two injured people had leaned on each other and lived through hardship together, and somewhere along the way, a child had been conceived. In the martial world, when a mother took spiritual medicine, some of its power would flow to the baby in her womb; in the same way, the healing power within the talisman must have gone first to restoring her severed tongue, then gathered around the child inside her.
Perhaps, because of this, the child in her belly would even be born with a spiritual root.
So I told her, “If the child in your womb is born with a spiritual root in the future, I’ll take him as my disciple.”
At that, she shook her head firmly at once.
“I’m going to raise our child as a martial artist, not an immortal. A life spent with family is more important than anything else.”
That was a rather interesting answer, coming from someone whose own dream had been to leave her clan and become a cultivator.
Perhaps she had grown used to speaking with her newly restored tongue, because her expression had eased considerably. Watching her speak more calmly than before, I gave a small smile and nodded.
“Then let the child choose his own marriage partner. He might find the match arranged by the family displeasing and leave home to become a cultivator, mightn’t he?”
She gave a snort of laughter at that, then seemed to remember that she now had a tongue in her mouth and smiled more brightly still.
“I shall do that. But now that I’ve experienced it myself, I can’t say marrying the person chosen by one’s family is bad. There’s a reason the elders of the clan choose the matches they do.”
Her words made it sound as though she cared for my eldest brother far more deeply than I had realized. I turned my gaze away to the empty sky, which, even through the severed opening, had once shown patches of blue.
Then, looking at the afterimage of my father suspended over that yellow sky, I continued, “If I’d known arranged matches were so wonderful, I should have asked Father to find one for me before he passed. If I had come home sooner, he would have only pretended to scold me and then taken me back in.”
Staring at that yellow sky, which no darkness could fully conceal, I poured out the longing I had never truly been able to erase from my heart and sank into thought for a long while.
My sister-in-law watched me for a moment, as though she understood the confusion in my heart, and quietly gave me space.
For some reason, tonight was going to be a very long one indeed.
Only a few days—long enough to settle one’s emotions, yet far too short to settle one’s memories.
During that time, my eldest brother and I worked tirelessly to restore the Neung Family to something like its former self. We brought in new servants and put considerable effort into erasing every trace of the Gold Family that remained in the Neung Family estate.
Fortunately, the large fortune left behind by the Gold Family, which had fallen in a single day, was enough to draw people in despite the thick smell of blood still hanging over everything. Thanks to that, the estate recovered much of its former appearance in only a few short days.
But those few days were also enough for the nearby Lian Tian Sect to learn that something had changed here.
“Neung So! They’re here!”
At my eldest brother’s shout, I slowly turned my head and, seeing how tense he was, answered without concern.
“Two peak martial artists. At that level, the puppet should be able to win.”
My brother swallowed hard and asked again, “A wooden doll is that strong?”
I pointed toward the puppet I was still making and said, “This ordinary puppet might struggle a little, but the one guarding our estate’s gate right now is rather special. It’s strong enough that even ten of these ordinary wooden puppets couldn’t beat it.”
Then I returned to concentrating on the puppet in my hands, and my brother let out a hollow laugh.
“Hah… To think two experts who have reached the peak realm—one I haven’t even come close to yet—are being handled by a single wooden doll. What a strange world this is…”
“There’s no need to be disappointed. The soul dwelling inside it was, while still alive, an existence stronger than I am now. It was my good fortune that our paths crossed.”
Fate, or perhaps chance—that was what Seop Myeong-gyeol was to me. Our first meeting had not gone especially smoothly, but by now I could say we were fairly close.
Even now, the reason she was guarding the estate gate was because she had volunteered for it before I asked. She had said she would rather watch people come and go at the front gate than sit idly beside me out of boredom.
Thinking of Seop Myeong-gyeol, who was likely dealing with the men sent by Lian Tian Sect right now, I smiled faintly and returned to my work. My brother watched me for a moment longer before quietly leaving the area.
Not long after, Seop Myeong-gyeol returned with her spoils, just as I had expected, having finished the fight with little trouble.
“Those fellows knew how to fight for commoners. So I took out their souls to make them into puppets too.”
I had, in fact, learned from Seop Myeong-gyeol how to draw out the souls of the dead.
Thanks to that, I had come to understand why cultivators kept talking so casually about killing people and stripping their souls. To cultivators, the human soul was a resource with many uses.
So I was now gathering the souls of my enemies separately as well. While I was away attacking Lian Tian Sect, they would be the perfect material for making puppets to defend this place.
“I’ll have to gather more wood soon. What we have now is already beginning to run low.”
“Then we’ll need to return to Hyeondo Sect for a while, or stop by a nearby market town.”
In truth, the most famous market town in this region was Cheonmuhoe in Yeongju City, ruled by the Cheon family.
But it wasn’t as though there were no smaller market towns at all. If one searched carefully enough, one could certainly find a little place like Dark Dust Market.
Of course, finding precisely the thing I wanted in a sparsely populated place like that would be anything but easy.
On the other hand, going back to Hyeondo Sect to buy one with contribution points was difficult as well, simply because the place was too far away. Even if I left Seop Myeong-gyeol here, the current state of this estate—still so full of gaps and weaknesses—remained a constant concern.
Although I had already made three wooden puppets with the strength of early Qi Refining cultivators, testing had shown that even if all three stayed behind, they still could not stop a single mid-stage Qi Refining cultivator if one came to attack.
Just as a mountain of sand and gravel is far weaker than a cultivator of the same realm from a great sect, a wooden puppet containing the soul of an ordinary martial artist could not display the strength of a proper Qi Refining cultivator.
I thought for a moment, then asked Seop Myeong-gyeol, “Do you know any technique that could replace Ghost Wood Human Illusion Method? Corpses keep turning up, so if I could use those corpses instead of wooden puppets, that would be ideal.”
I had spoken while thinking of the jiangshi that existed in the martial world, but unfortunately, even Seop Myeong-gyeol—who knew so much—did not seem to know any proper puppet art she could teach me.
“Didn’t I tell you that the Musang Alliance I belonged to was originally a place famous for alchemy and artifact forging? I was skilled in artifact forging among them, so I don’t know puppet arts. If you asked me to teach you how to make artifacts or how to cultivate dual arts, though, I could teach you that much.”
As a soul division severed from her main body, Seop Myeong-gyeol was a remarkably honest and oddly entertaining existence. Because of her excessive frankness, I had never once doubted her identity or her purpose.
Still, when she occasionally spoke with such confidence about dual cultivation, there was no way to doubt her on that point.
So, finishing the wooden puppet shard I had been carving, I smiled and asked her, “Is that so? Then this time I’ll ask about dual cultivation. You saw everything from the dual cultivation I shared with my martial uncle last time, didn’t you? Was there anything to improve?”
As if she had been waiting for the question, she answered with immediate confidence. “Of course! I thought about that dual cultivation whenever I had a spare moment. What exactly went wrong, and what went right. Open your ears and listen carefully.”
It was a rather long preamble, but I didn’t expect much from her words. Every time she talked about dual cultivation, she always began with grand declarations and then quickly lost her way.
So instead of answering, I sent her a look that said, Go on, then.
She hurriedly continued. “First! You were far too rough. Dual cultivation is, in principle, the harmony of man and woman—of yin and yang. But that time, your yang was too overwhelming and suppressed the yin. Fortunately, your martial uncle’s flexible response got you through the crisis, but the harmony of yin and yang had already collapsed…”
At least this time she was speaking more smoothly than usual, perhaps because she had seen and heard it directly herself.
Watching her with a smile, I suddenly felt a tightness creeping up my spine.
A strong foe!
Not merely strong—an expert who was not even the slightest bit inferior to me. No, perhaps even stronger than I was!
In this Heavenly Flag World, the final realm cultivators could normally attain was the Nascent Soul realm. To break through from Nascent Soul into the next stage, Deity Transformation, one needed a very special treasure, and such a thing did not exist in this Heavenly Flag World.
Thus, cultivators who reached Nascent Soul either ascended to a higher world through flight, or else ruled from the very peak of this place. The sect leaders who governed the great factions here, including my own Hyeondo Sect, were mostly such people.
And the cultivator approaching in this direction now was one of those very experts.