Chapter 45
Dang Hye’s face was blank with shock, as though she’d forgotten how to think. But the moment I stood before her, she narrowed her eyes and asked, sharp as a blade, “What was that sword technique just now?”
“Sword technique? Are your eyes for decoration? You’d call that a sword technique?”
“I told you, don’t scratch my nerves!”
Her tone was cutting, but she really did seem curious. I answered slowly. “Look at the essence of Dang Hye’s martial arts. What I used wasn’t swordsmanship.”
“You subdued your opponent with a sword. If that wasn’t swordsmanship, what was it?”
“What I used was throwing-dagger art.”
“Throwing-dagger art?”
Dang Hye still didn’t seem to buy it. But what I’d used really had been throwing-dagger art. Every dagger I knocked aside with my sword flew exactly where I wanted and suppressed the enemy.
I’d just used a sword instead of my hand.
“……”
She looked dissatisfied, but somewhere along the line she’d fallen into thought.
Maybe this would become the turning point for the martial art she would use.
“What’s the name of that throwing-dagger art?”
“You said it yourself.”
“What?”
“You called it Mancheon Hwau.”
“I only said that because it looked like that...”
“What I used there wasn’t a martial art taught by anyone. So let’s call it Mancheon Hwau, the way you said.”
“...You used a martial art you’d never even learned?”
“It’s nothing special.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Dang Hye muttered with a grimace.
Watching her quietly, Baek Mugeuk couldn’t help but snort.
How had she even known the name of the martial art?
Was it because she was a member of the Dang Family?
Mancheon Hwau.
A lost secret martial art of the Dang Family. I’d found it in the ruined main hall of the Dang clan as well.
There were no verses left, no details on the stances. The only description of the technique was this: countless daggers adorning the sky.
What I’d just shown was Mancheon Hwau, colored with my own interpretation.
“So? Was that beautiful too?”
“Not as good as swordsmanship, but...”
Dang Hye didn’t finish the sentence. Still, it was obvious the technique had made a deep impression on her.
“What if all those daggers had been coated with poison? It might suit the Dang Family pretty well.”
“...!”
At my words, Dang Hye’s eyes lit up. She was probably imagining Mancheon Hwau laced with all kinds of poisons.
“That martial art...”
“That martial art?”
“I want to...”
Dang Hye hesitated, unable to say it plainly. It was probably because of the attitude she’d shown until now.
“Dang Hye.”
When I called her name, she looked up.
“Answer me before we leave this village. You don’t need to feel pressured. I’ve got things I need from you too.”
“Understood.”
At my words, Dang Hye’s lips curved ever so slightly. Then she turned her head away.
“Thank you.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
There was definitely a thank you in there.
I grinned and stepped closer to her. “Say it louder. What did you say?”
“Don’t scratch my nerves!”
Squeak.
Teasing Dang Hye, I opened the village chief’s door. But there was no one inside. The one who reacted more sharply than I did was Dang Hye.
“Baek Mugeuk. Where did the village chief go?!”
As soon as she stepped into the house, she quickly swept her eyes over the room and checked for a rear door. But there was only one door in this house.
“No way. While you were fighting, I didn’t sense the door opening or hear any movement at all!”
I hadn’t sensed anything either. On top of that, he had no internal energy. There was no way he could have fooled my eyes and slipped out of this house.
Which meant the bastard had to be somewhere else.
Thud. Thud.
I began stamping hard on the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“Playing mole hunt.”
“Now’s not the time for that. We need to chase him down.”
Dang Hye already assumed the village chief had left the house. Then—
Tong.
“Found him.”
A different sound came from the floor than before. In other words, there was a hollow space beneath it.
I immediately drove my heel down in a true stance.
Crack.
The floor shattered, revealing the empty space below.
“A burrow, then.”
The burrow was small. There was no way my body could fit into it.
I glanced at Dang Hye.
“No.”
“Really? Then it can’t be helped. So Danhwa slips through our fingers.”
“No!”
Dang Hye let out a desperate scream, the most intense reaction I’d seen from her yet.
“Then what, I can’t get into that burrow with my body.”
“Half!”
“Half?”
“Give that to me. I want to use it for research.”
“Mm... what should I do...”
I stroked my chin and looked at Dang Hye for a moment. Her eyes were starting to look frantic.
Unable to wait for my answer, she hurriedly added, “One-third! I won’t give any more.”
I smiled and slowly nodded. Only then did Dang Hye swiftly push herself into the burrow.
“I said one-third.”
That was the last thing I heard from her voice.
“She’s obsessed with poison like that, and yet she’s so reluctant to use it.”
Still, if I were her, I’d crawl in too. To her, Danhwa was probably no different from a divine weapon.
“I should start looking too.”
I moved quickly, leaping onto the palisade that surrounded the village in an instant.
“I’ve been suffocating, trying to keep pace with Dang Hye lately.”
From atop the palisade, I surveyed the surroundings. It was obvious the village chief had escaped through the burrow. But if he’d moved through the tunnel, it was already too late to chase him properly now.
The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the forest made it easy to hide a single person.
So the method I chose was simple and certain.
I began spreading my sense of ki out in the direction my sight could reach.
My ki sense caught many things: spring water flowing down from the mountain, animals running through the woods. But the village chief didn’t appear in it.
Was it not this way?
I leapt to the opposite side of the palisade and spread my ki sense again.
“Another miss.”
How tedious. Back when I was the strongest in the world, I could search a mountain of this size in all directions while standing in place.
“Better to die than suffer like this.”
And when I spread my ki sense a third time, I found him.
“He couldn’t have gotten that far.”
I shot forward toward the direction he was running.
BOOM!
“W-what the hell!”
The village chief looked up. To him, I probably looked like a vengeful ghost.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Aaaagh!”
The village chief screamed as though he’d seen a specter and turned to run the other way.
“Hah. You’re really making this annoying.”
BOOM!
Once again, the village chief slammed into my body. How could someone without even a shred of internal energy hope to outrun me?
“How can you move so fast?”
“Because I’m a martial artist.”
I looked at him and held out my hand. In that instant, a wicked gleam flashed across the village chief’s eyes. It vanished at once, though, replaced by the weak gaze of an old man.
“I’ll hand it over. I’ll hand over Danhwa and everything else. But I twisted my leg when I ran into you, so I can’t move.”
At his words, I lowered my stance. His face came fully into view. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flower.
A red flower, as though it had soaked up blood. It was definitely Danhwa.
“No choice, then. Give it here.”
I reached forward to take the Danhwa. At that moment, the village chief leaned forward and spat out the poison mist in his mouth.
“Keuk-keuk-keuk. Did you really think a martial artist would be this defenseless? You’ll be blind soon enough, you idiot.”
The village chief laughed madly and tried to move away from me.
No, he tried to.
“You done with everything you can do?”
His legs could never outrun my hand.
Grabbing the back of his neck, I smiled thinly.
His face went pale as he muttered, “How? Surely you can’t see?”
“This?”
I raised my left hand and snapped my fingers. Poison forced out by my internal energy ran along my fingers and dripped onto the village chief’s face.
Chiizzt!
I heard the poison eating away at his skin. But the village chief didn’t seem to feel any pain.
So much for the plan to torture him for information.
Instead, I tightened my grip around his throat.
One squeeze and his neck would snap, no doubt about it.
“I was wrong. I went a bit mad there. I’ll give you everything, just spare me. I’m nothing but an old man with no martial arts and no internal energy, aren’t I?”
“I’ll let you live if you tell me one thing truthfully.”
“Anything. I’ll tell you everything truthfully. Are you curious how I got Danhwa?”
“No. I only want to know one thing. Why did you breed so much poison?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I did it to make a living...”
Crack.
Without saying another word, I broke the village chief’s neck halfway. With his neck shattered, he couldn’t say another word.
But his expression was clear enough that he didn’t need to.
Why did I just kill him? Because you were planning to invade the Orthodox Faction with that poison of yours, that’s why. Pretending to be righteous martial artists along with those assassins.
Once again, the village chief’s expression changed. It was full of confusion.
Well, it was something that would happen in the future. The problem was that I already knew his plan.
“I’m not interested in whatever story you might have. You just look like a pest to me.”
The village chief’s breathing stopped completely. First I recovered the Danhwa still clutched in his hand. Then I searched his robes and found a seal and a receipt.
And the instant I tucked them into my chest, Dang Hye appeared.
“How did you—!”
Dang Hye shouted as if she were screaming in anguish, like a gambler who’d dreamed of striking it rich only to lose everything.
“You were a step too late.”
“One-fifth.”
“What?”
“I’m the one who caught him.”
“You meant if I caught him.”
Dang Hye’s expression was full of irritation. But when she looked at the Danhwa in my hand, she adjusted herself.
“Baek Mugeuk. Why do you need that Danhwa? Is there someone you want dead so badly?”
“No. There isn’t. I’m going to eat it.”
“What? What do you mean by—”
Dang Hye’s expression turned odd. She was definitely misunderstanding something.
“It’s not what you think, so don’t worry.”
As I spoke, I put the Danhwa into my mouth and bit down. The moment the crunch rang out, Dang Hye flung herself toward me in shock.
“You crazy bastard! If you want to die, do it cleanly.”
Dang Hye tried to pry my mouth open, but my jaw did not stop chewing the Danhwa.
The taste of Danhwa was a taste that made me want to curse out loud.
“Ugh. Tastes awful.”
“You’re dead.”
“What are you talking about? Danhwa isn’t poison that kills people.”
“If martial artist Baek Mugeuk dies, then so do you, you crazy bastard.”
Powerful inner energy began to surge from Dang Hye’s whole body. But I merely rested a light hand on her shoulder, as if it were no big deal.
“Stand guard properly.”
I sat cross-legged on the bare ground.
I could feel the hot energy of the Danhwa gathering in my dantian.
I’d consumed Danhwa in my previous life too.
Because of this poison flower, I’d turned back time thirty-five times. I’d nearly died that many times too.
At first I’d used it to cultivate resistance to all poisons in the world, aiming for immunity to a hundred poisons. I only learned the true effect of Danhwa later.
Everyone thinks otherwise, but... Danhwa isn’t actually a poison that melts the dantian. On the contrary, it strengthens the dantian and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
The way to absorb it was simple. Don’t reject the poison. Accept it.
In my previous life, not knowing that, I’d tried to forcibly expel or destroy the poison with my internal energy.
Each time I did, the poison fought back against my inner power and burned it away. That’s right. Danhwa wasn’t just a poison that melted the dantian; it was a poison that burned away internal energy when it met its aggressive reaction.
So all I had to do was wait.
When Danhwa’s energy reached the dantian and touched my internal energy, a searing heat spread through me. No, it felt as though the dantian itself were melting.
But I couldn’t react now. This was the process of Danhwa sinking in.
Time passed.
The dantian that had felt as if it were melting began, little by little, to harden. And the remaining energy of Danhwa started to seep into my internal energy.
I began circulating my internal energy through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.
As the Danhwa-infused inner power passed through the meridians again and again, they grew hot enough to burn.
And then, at the moment when I no longer felt heat from my body at all, but instead a cool, refreshing sensation, I opened my eyes.
Sunlight struck them hard. I squinted and pushed myself up.
“So now I’m a man without internal energy?”
“You open your eyes and immediately say something that chills the spine.”
Dang Hye’s voice came from behind me. At the same time, I heard the sound of a sword slicing through the air. Without even looking, I ducked lightly and avoided the blade.
“What the hell are you? How can you eat Danhwa and still have internal energy?”
“Don’t believe legends so easily. Not all of them are true.”
“Haah.”
Dang Hye let out a long sigh. Then a vein pulsed at her throat as she muttered, “No. You should’ve just died. You ate something that precious? My life, no, maybe it won’t ever be found again in the Central Plains.”
Bit by bit, killing intent began to leak from Dang Hye’s body. More sluggish, more viscous than when she actually used martial arts.
“Dang Hye?”
“Honestly, I think I should just kill you myself and cut you open.”
“Hey, your eyes are really wrong right now.”
Her obsession with poison and madness seemed to turn toward me for a second. As I slowly stepped back, she let out another deep sigh.
“What’s done is done. Still, it’s a relief you didn’t lose your martial arts.”
“Your eyes are still wrong.”
“I’m trying to suppress my anger as much as possible, so stop scratching at me.”
“Fine.”
I shouldn’t provoke Dang Hye’s temper right now. I didn’t know much, but I was certain that where poison was concerned, it was better not to create a problem.
“You’re right. I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“Being obsessed with the sword was foolish. That just made me no different from the bastards who mock our Dang clan.”
Dang Hye bit her lip in silence.
I watched her quietly, then said bluntly, “Then we should change the promise too.”
“The promise?”
“The promise that you’d teach me to be immune to a hundred poisons, and I’d teach you swordsmanship.”
“You mean...”
“I’ll help you become stronger.”
At my words, Dang Hye’s lips curled up slightly. Soon after, however, her face returned to its usual coldness.
“Help... Fine. Let’s go back to the village first.”
“Why go back again?”
“Because I can’t just leave those poisons there.”
“Right.”
I nodded, only to stop a moment later, suddenly uneasy.
“Hey, Dang Hye. If I hadn’t had any internal energy, what were you planning to do, swinging your sword like that?”
“……”
I could feel the sharpness in her presence. Then came a small voice.
“I’d have just killed you.”
“What? I heard that wrong, right?”
For an instant, a chill ran down my spine.