Rejuvenation and Body Reconstruction: Hwangbo Mujin Regains His Youth
Why did lust and desire claim the largest part of his mind? It was inextricably tied to the blood vigor now dominating his body. Demonic arts were known for all manner of anomalies, and the Jinhyul-shingong was particularly unique among them. Rather than gathering qi in the dantian, it stored power directly within the blood itself. Ultimately, it was the pinnacle of a bizarre martial art that treated the entire body as a massive dantian by circulating qi through the blood. Yet it carried one clear side effect: constant erection.
The hot, powerful qi-infused blood coursed vigorously through every vessel. In men, this meant the yang organ would stand at attention without warning. Yang energy naturally seeks yin, and such desire inevitably stirred lust. Even the Blood Demon himself had taken women almost daily. In exchange for supreme power, he had accepted this heavenly curse of a side effect.
Thus, the desire to repay his daughter-in-law and granddaughter blended with the blood vigor’s lustful urges, allowing carnal hunger to dominate his inner landscape.
“Krrgh… krrgh…”
Tendons rose along his previously limp arms and legs. His fingertips and toes began to twitch.
The qi deviation Hwangbo Mujin suffered was no ordinary one. Typically, it occurred when qi deviated from its proper pathways during circulation or when the body sustained shock, causing the meridians to run wild. In his case, it was a defensive mechanism—his body had frozen in place to resist the Jinhyul trying to seize control. If the blood vigor claimed both flesh and mind, he would rise from that sickbed.
And that moment… was not far off.
The blue light occupying his mind gradually dimmed. In contrast, the red glow grew ever stronger. Blink. Blink. The faint, flickering light finally sank into complete darkness.
At that instant, a clear blue radiance bloomed in the eyes of Hwangbo Mujin, who had been emitting a deep crimson blood-light. It was a blue glow that transcended mystery and approached the divine. Return of the light before death. The brief return of clarity that sometimes came just before a person’s passing. His mind had experienced it right before extinction.
Focus returned to his previously vacant eyes, revealing profound pupils brimming with vitality. Hwangbo Mujin realized something. Once this moment passed, he would rise from his sickbed—and from then on, he would no longer be himself. A madman more terrible than the Heavenly Demon or the Blood Demon was about to be born. He saw, clearer than any premonition, the image of the murim drowning in blood because of him.
—Kahaha, kahahahaha!!
A mountain of corpses. A man laughing atop it. Explosive, deranged laughter. Eyes that had lost all reason. A face, hands, and feet drenched in blood.
The blue radiance in Hwangbo Mujin’s eyes flared violently. Resolution filled them. He had made his choice. The final method no martial artist would ever willingly take. Only after losing everything he had achieved… death.
He closed his eyes.
Blue qi surged from his body in rippling waves. So dense it was visible to the naked eye, the azure energy poured out endlessly, causing the glow in his eyes to gradually fade. Following it came the power contained within the Jinhyul—a vivid, blood-red vigor.
Could this truly be coming from that small, decrepit body? The seemingly endless torrent of energy soon filled the spacious room like thick fog. A never-before-seen phenomenon lit the darkness as sacred blue light and spine-chilling crimson radiance intertwined.
Having expelled even the innate qi that sustained his life, the vitality drained from Hwangbo Mujin’s eyes. With all his energy gone, his body was empty. Hollow. Futile.
Heh… so humans were such small beings after all.
Death’s approach had sharpened his senses. He could clearly feel the energies floating around his body. The blue qi brushing his skin felt clear and pure, while the red qi burned hot and full of life. The energies enveloping him filled the entire room. Paradoxically, his emptied body felt strangely full.
By locking it all inside himself, he had only created his own limits. The emptiness faded. In this moment, he was the smallest human in the world, and at the same time, the greatest. Only after emptying everything could one understand true fullness…
Suddenly, Hwangbo Mujin’s eyes snapped open. Even the pupils were pure white. Eyes containing the enlightenment of selflessness radiated transparent brilliance.
Whoooosh— whoooosh—
The blue and red energies that had filled the room began to swirl violently. The two forces that could never mix chased each other in spirals, merging into a massive vortex. Soon they formed a tornado that surged back into Hwangbo Mujin’s body.
The flow was so fierce that decorative items throughout the room crashed to the floor and shattered. Blue and red radiance alternated within his transparent pupils before darkening into a black deeper than the night sky.
Along with the storm of qi, Hwangbo Mujin’s body floated into the air. It rose a full three ja—roughly ninety centimeters—before stopping. The clothes he wore crumbled into powder and scattered. Once every last trace of energy had been absorbed, a profound silence descended upon the room. Even the air seemed to have stopped moving.
His body remained suspended.
The transformation began with the skin. Crackle. Crumble. The wrinkled, sagging flesh dried out and flaked away. A thick layer of dead skin formed over his body. Next came the body hair. Dry, lifeless white hair fell out in clumps. His beard followed, and every last hair on his body shed.
Crrrrumble—
The dead skin split and split again, turning into fine particles that drifted down. What emerged was smooth, pale skin without a single wrinkle. Long, pitch-black hair—dark as the night sky—grew until it nearly touched the bed.
The changes did not stop there.
Crack. Crunch.
Bones throughout his body shattered and reassembled. Stronger than in his youth. Tougher than at his peak. His small frame began to expand. It was as if aging were reversing. No—this was closer to the complete recreation of a body.
The great achievement of Patcheon-shingong. Qi brimming with more arrogance than anything in the world. Blue power strong enough to topple mountains and red blood qi carrying the will to defy heaven. His decrepit body was not simply regaining youth—it was being reborn as the perfect physique of a heavenly being capable of containing both forces.
It was nothing short of evolution.
His blood vessels widened and toughened like ox tendons. The blood vigor that had once struggled through narrow channels now flowed freely. Tendons and muscles gained powerful elasticity while hardening like iron horns.
Then came his manhood.
Due to the newly settled blood vigor, it surged upward, rock-hard. Thick veins pulsed visibly around the shaft. Its girth continued to expand as it rose higher, growing larger and larger.
Banro-hwandong followed by Hwangol-taltae. Rejuvenation was a legendary realm said to have been reached only by supreme masters like Shaolin’s founder Dharma or the first Heavenly Demon of the Demonic Cult. To achieve it simultaneously with body reconstruction? Hwangbo Mujin had entered a supreme realm rarely seen in the long history of the murim.
Nor was the transformation limited to the body.
His mu-ui—the martial enlightenment engraved in his mind—began to break apart and reassemble. Again and again. Each time it disassembled and reformed, the forms grew simpler. More concise. Stronger. More intuitive.
The completed mu-ui in his mind took shape as a pure white and blue sphere. And then—
Shatter!
The sphere broke apart, dissolving into fragments of light that sank into him. He had transcended the framework of forms and entered the realm of formlessness.
The final change was to his mind.
His nearly extinguished spirit, bolstered by enlightenment and the great achievement of Patcheon-shingong, revived with powerful vitality. Yet he could do nothing about the blood vigor already rooted deep in his brain. It welcomed the physical changes that brought greater strength. And with devilish cunning, it dove deep into his psyche to find a mind that suited his rejuvenating body.
It knew instinctively that his current decrepit spirit was unsuitable to house it. The only chance to change that was now—while his body regained youth and his spirit trembled. The blood vigor sank deeper into his inner world. Passing through his sixties, it descended into his fifties, then forties, thirties… until it finally found it.
The spirit of Hwangbo Mujin at his most vigorous—his twenties!
It burrowed into the center, coiled around it, and dragged it to the surface. Upward, ever upward. Passing the aging spirits, it finally merged with the seventy-year-old mind at the very top and settled firmly in the center.
Hwangbo Mujin, now containing both the decrepit seventy-year-old mind and the vigorous twenty-year-old spirit. Since the twenty-year-old spirit occupied the center… he had not only regained youth in body, but in mind as well.
The next day. The family head’s office.
Bang!
“Father! Change my name for me right now!”
Hwangbo Jun, who had been reviewing important documents at his wide desk, let out a deep sigh at the sight of his daughter barging through the door. This adorable little troublemaker treated the solemn office like her own playground.
“Jia… you’re a grown woman now. How can you still call me ‘father’ like that? People will think you have no manners. You need to start conducting yourself properly.”
“What are you talking about! Everyone thinks I’m cute—who would say I have bad manners? If anyone spreads rumors like that, I’ll beat them black and blue!”
Hwangbo Jun knew nothing he said would get through to her. Ever since she was little, she had only feared her grandfather. No matter how much the rest of the family scolded her, she never took it to heart.
“…Sigh. Fine. So why the sudden demand to change your name? That meaningful name your grandfather personally gave you—how can you ask to throw it away?”
Hwangbo Ji pounded her modestly developed chest in frustration.
“You don’t know what I heard outside! People were saying my name sounds like ‘pussy’! My surname is Hwangbo and my given name is Ji, but together it sounds like that!”
“……Ah.”
Hwangbo Jun pressed a hand to his forehead. He had known this day would come.
Over the past five years, bizarre new slang had spread across the central plains like never before. Men’s penises were now called “cocks.” Women’s genitals were “pussies.” Masturbation was “jerking off.” Sex was “fucking.” And countless other vulgar terms whose origins no one could trace.
The first person to spread them was the Southern Flower Demoness. Just her title—man-devouring flower—told you everything. She was a wicked temptress who seduced men and drained their qi. During the five years she had been active in the murim, the strange words she spat out had spread like wildfire. Once you heard them, they sounded vulgar yet somehow stuck in your mouth. It made sense. Even Hwangbo Jun, who had been stuck inside the family estate, had grown used to them. By now, there was probably no one in the entire central plains who hadn’t heard them.
A year ago, his younger brother Hwangbo Jin had tried to curry favor with their father by capturing her and throwing her in the dungeon. The Chaeum-boyang-sul was a forbidden art in the murim. While it didn’t steal life like the most extreme yin-draining techniques, a single session could rob a lifetime of accumulated cultivation. To martial artists, cultivation was life itself.
She even called herself a “cum rag,” yet her beauty was so otherworldly that black path ruffians with no cultivation to lose dreamed of sleeping with the Southern Flower Demoness just once. To martial artists she was someone to avoid; to ordinary men, an object of envy.
When Hwangbo Jun first heard the word “boji,” he had immediately thought of his daughter’s name and felt awkward. He had assumed it was just a passing fad. But five years later, everyone knew it.
He looked at his daughter, who stood before his desk fuming with an indignant expression. Who could have guessed that “boji” would come to mean a woman’s genitals? Even if the original meaning was different, his own daughter was throwing a fit. It seemed he really would have to change her name.
“All right. I’ll change it for you soon. Do you… already have a name in mind?”
Hwangbo Ji’s eyes sparkled as if she had been waiting for this. She planted both hands on the desk.
“Hwangbo Ran! No matter how you look at it, it suits me perfectly!”
Upon hearing the name his daughter wanted, dismay flashed in Hwangbo Jun’s eyes.
Not the ‘ran’ that means chaos, but the ‘ran’ from orchid? Just where exactly does that suit her…?
Still, he couldn’t show it. Once his daughter got sulky, her temper became truly nasty.
“Haha, my dear daughter! It really does suit you. Very well. I’ll have it changed as soon as possible.”
Hwangbo Ji—soon to be called Hwangbo Ran—bounced with joy.
At that exact moment—
Bang!
“F-Family Head…!”
“Just what is this… bursting into my office without—”
Hwangbo Jun turned toward the door with anger on his face. A middle-aged woman stumbled in, panting. It was Yeo Nansuk, the head maid in charge of all the servants in the Hwangbo family.
“F-forgive me! It’s just… I received urgent news that I had to deliver immediately…”
Only then did the head maid seem to regain her senses. She hurriedly bowed.
“What could possibly make you act this recklessly?”
“Just now, a servant from Mujingak sent word… She says there is an unknown man inside the sleeping quarters of Mujingak!”
“What?!”
Hwangbo Jun shot to his feet. “Who else besides direct bloodline members can even enter that place?! Who dared go in without my permission?!”
“That’s… I asked the servant the same thing, but she said she went in to feed him his medicine and found a huge naked man standing there. She was so startled she slammed the door shut again…”
Hwangbo Jun kicked his chair aside and strode out. Who? Just who would dare—!
With an expression of utter confusion, Hwangbo Ran followed after her father, trailing behind the rushing head maid.