Chapter 62
As Dang Pae’s head hit the floor, the sobbing around me only grew louder.
Invisible Poison.
The invisible poison Dang Pae had scattered was spreading, and the people struck by it were slowly dying.
“Help… me!”
“I don’t… want to die!”
I swept my gaze over the area, then shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Circulate your inner energy and hold on as best you can!”
I moved quickly, darting my feet as I reached first for those with the lowest cultivation and began drawing out the invisible poison and Shin Nong as fast as I could.
“The moment the poison leaves your body, start circulating your energy again.”
The faster I moved, the more the groans around me began to fade.
That was the terror of Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity.
As Dang Bo had said, a poison master could become a physician at the same time.
Which meant that once one reached the level of Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity, one could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Divine Healer in everything related to poison, and not only within one’s own body.
So how had I obtained Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity?
Because I had given up Heavenly Poison Immunity. That might sound like sophistry, but it was the truth.
The decisive reason I had been able to attain Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity was that I had abandoned Heavenly Poison Immunity and overcome Shin Nong.
Shin Nong.
I didn’t know who had named the poison, but it was a damn good name.
Shin Nong was a figure from myth, the god of agriculture who had tasted poisonous herbs one by one to identify and neutralize them, and died doing it.
It was, quite literally, the god of poison.
And this poison called Shin Nong was the deadliest poison imaginable to a poison master.
I had overcome Shin Nong by giving up Heavenly Poison Immunity.
If I had kept Heavenly Poison Immunity, I never would have been able to neutralize Shin Nong.
To reach Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity, the state that overcame every poison in the world, I naturally had to neutralize this Shin Nong.
It was an incredibly simple realization, but it had led me to the realm of Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity.
In other words, I had simply been lucky.
“At this rate, how could there possibly be such a thing as Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity in this world?”
There had to be more than this one realization on the road to Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity. Still, after rising to that realm through this insight, I came to think that it was nearly impossible for a poison master to reach it.
Think about it. Tell a poison master to give up Heavenly Poison Immunity. Tell them to abandon the poison they had spent their entire life building up.
Could they do it?
I could say with certainty that it would be impossible. If anything, it had only been possible because I was me.
Because I wasn’t a poison master.
I was a swordsman.
“So this is the last of it?”
Dang Hye and the elders had been detoxified, and now only Dang Bo remained.
As I approached Dang Bo, he spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Cough. Baek Mugeuk.”
“Don’t speak. You might really die if you do.”
Just as my hand moved toward Dang Bo’s dantian, he seized my wrist with surprising force.
“You reached Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity?”
“Yes.”
“How in the world did you manage that?”
There was madness in Dang Bo’s eyes. I knew that look. There were countless martial artists in the Central Plains who had lost their reason to greed before the achievement of martial arts.
“I gave up Heavenly Poison Immunity.”
“……I see. So that’s what it was. At last……!”
“Clan Head. Don’t do it.”
“Why not? You’ve done it, so are you saying I can’t?”
“Because that isn’t your realization.”
“…….”
Dang Bo’s eyes sharpened viciously. But there was no helping it.
In martial attainment, realization mattered. Yet if it wasn’t realization one had gained for oneself, it meant nothing.
For Dang Bo to reach Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity, he would need a new realization he had found himself.
The hand holding my wrist slowly loosened.
Dang Bo’s condition was far worse than I had expected. His meridians were twisted to the point of tearing apart, and the inner energy that had been suppressing the poison was nearly completely depleted.
“You’re still alive, remarkably enough.”
“The Dang Family doesn’t die from poison.”
Dang Bo finished speaking and closed his eyes. I drew out only the Shin Nong still lodged in his body.
“Much obliged.”
The moment I spoke, Dang Bo began to circulate his energy and rest.
“Someone just tried to kill you and the whole place descended into chaos, and now you’re meditating in public like this. You’ve got guts, or you don’t know fear at all…….”
I kept watch over Dang Bo while scanning the surroundings and stood guard. About an hour passed.
Dang Bo opened his eyes. A pressure stronger than anything he had shown before flowed out from his body.
“I do feel much better.”
“You should. I had a hell of a time while you were doing nothing, Clan Head.”
“As expected, you really are a madman.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment…….”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
The corners of Dang Bo’s mouth lifted slightly. Then he rose and passed by me.
“First Young Master. Dang Pae attempted rebellion. There must be others who joined him. I swear in the name of the Dang Family that I will hunt those men down and kill them.”
At Dang Bo’s declaration, every member of the Dang Family present dropped to one knee and clasped their hands.
“As you command!”
Their shout shook the main hall. Then that cry began to ebb away.
“The Dang Family does not forget debts or grudges! Is that not so!”
“We repay kindness tenfold! We avenge hatred a hundredfold!”
The roar rose again. The instant it burst forth, Dang Bo turned to me.
Then he bowed deeply and made a formal salute.
“Clan Head?”
“Bright Destroying Sword. You are the benefactor of our Sichuan Dang Family. The Dang Family will not forget this!”
Starting with Dang Bo’s lead, everyone bowed with clasped hands and raised their voices.
“The Dang Family will not forget this!”
Their cry was even louder than the one before.
“Clan Head, come on. What kind of gratitude is this between drinking buddies?”
“……”
Even then, Dang Bo didn’t raise his head. I let out a sigh and returned the salute.
“Fine, fine. I’m the Dang Family’s benefactor, Baek Mugeuk.”
At that, Dang Bo lifted his head. And his telepathic voice came to me.
-You really have no sense of style.
-Pardon?
-You’re the Dang Family’s benefactor, and that’s how you say it! How could you be so rude?
-Being rude is just a fact.
The corners of Dang Bo’s mouth rose in mockery.
“And thus concludes the succession ceremony for the Young Clan Head.”
With Dang Bo’s words, the Dang Family members left the main hall one by one. And the only ones remaining here were Dang Hye, Dang Bo, and me.
“Baek Mugeuk.”
“Yes?”
“Is there anything you desire?”
“Something I desire?”
I had always thought of the Dang Family as simply harsh. I hadn’t expected them to be so straightforward about asking whether I wanted a reward.
Still, I suppose I was their benefactor.
“Ah, the Clan Head will take care of it himself, won’t he? How could I ask for something with my own mouth?”
“Could you at least lower the corners of your mouth before you speak?”
Dang Hye looked at me and shook her head as if she couldn’t believe me.
“Dang Hye! You know from the start that I didn’t do this expecting any reward.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“I’m the Dang Family’s benefactor!”
As we bickered, Dang Bo watched us for a long time. Then he slowly opened his mouth.
“Is that so. You didn’t do it for a reward, then. I had intended to let you choose something from the Dang Family vault, but in that case, this matter will be treated as if it never…….”
“No! I’ll take it! The Dang Family really is refreshingly direct! Let’s go!”
“Good grief. If you can’t even keep your mouth shut, don’t speak at all.”
I smiled and turned around. Seeing that, Dang Bo’s mouth curled once more in amusement.
So what if he laughed? He was offering to reward me, and it wasn’t proper to refuse too stubbornly.
Still, the Dang Family vault…….
Did something like that really exist? I had never heard of a Dang Family vault even in my previous life. And when I had come to find the ruined Dang Family later on, there hadn’t been anything resembling a vault either.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
I started following Dang Bo. He had already left the Dang Family grounds completely, and now he broke into a run with light-footed movement arts.
We sped away and quickly left the Dang Family estate behind.
At that moment, a question arose in my mind. Why was the family vault so far from the Dang Family itself?
We maintained our movement arts for about an hour. And when a cliff finally came into view, Dang Bo stopped.
He looked down beneath the cliff.
“Jump down.”
“What? Didn’t you say we were going to the Dang Family vault? Are you really just trying to kill me by making me fall off this cliff because you don’t want to give me anything…….”
“Shut your mouth.”
With Dang Bo’s low murmur, his foot lightly tapped my backside.
“Aaaagh! The Dang Family head is murdering a man!”
Screaming, I began to fall from the cliff. It was a rather high one. Just before I hit the ground, I twisted my body and landed on my feet.
Thud.
Dang Bo followed by leaping down after me.
And Dang Hye…
“You still have a long way to go. If you want to become human.”
She was carefully making her way down the cliff on foot.
I looked around. There was nothing below the cliff. The only things visible were the cliffs on either side.
“Why hide the vault so secretly?”
“It’s a tradition passed down from the first Clan Head. Though to begin with, if you aren’t the Clan Head, you probably wouldn’t even know the vault exists.”
As Dang Bo said, Dang Hye was also looking around as if this were her first time here.
“If you hide it this secretly, who would ever find it?”
“No, it’s not because it’s secret.”
“Huh?”
At that moment, with a creaking sound, I heard machinery moving. Openings appeared all over the cliff face, and something began rolling from inside.
Thuk.
Thud.
Through those openings, objects began dropping to the ground in quick succession.
Fsssssh.
“Poison mist?”
“That’s right. Unless you possess Heavenly Poison Immunity, you can’t enter this place.”
The poison mist quickly began to fill the entire cliffside. Just seeing it made irritation start to bubble up in me. I swung Bright Destroying Sword into the air and released a sword gust.
Like a dragon taking flight, the poison mist was driven rapidly away by the sword wind.
“I’m already sick of the sight of poison mist.”
“……”
When I turned, Dang Bo had placed a hand on the cliff wall and started pressing.
As his hand moved repeatedly, the wall sank inward little by little with the sound of machinery shifting, and a wall jutted out in front of Dang Bo.
“Wow. What is all this? There’s a machine this huge built into a cliff? Just how much money does the Dang Family have?”
I stared at the mechanism in admiration. I wasn’t exaggerating. Machinery required enormous wealth and craftsmanship.
And to build something of this scale beneath a cliff like this? I couldn’t even imagine how much it had cost.
“Dang Hye. Give me the dagger.”
Dang Hye took out the dagger she had received from Dang Bo before the Young Clan Head selection and handed it over. Dang Bo then inserted it into the gap in the protruding wall.
Kiiiiiik!
A massive grinding sound unlike anything heard before rang out from the mechanism, and the protruding wall began sliding sideways.
Rumble!
An entrance to the cliff was revealed. Dang Bo stepped aside.
“Go in.”
“Alone?”
“The vault cannot be entered by two people.”
“That sounds suspicious. If I go in there, can I really come back alive?”
“If you don’t want to, then I suppose there’s nothing I can do.”
Dang Bo reached for the dagger embedded in the wall. Before he could pull it out, I hurriedly dashed into the opening in the cliff.
Inside the cliff, there was only a single path. Not only that, there wasn’t a trace of light anywhere, so any ordinary person would lose all sense of direction.
“Rich bastards could at least install some night pearls.”
I walked onward. After about half a watch, I saw a door. I struck it with my fist, and it answered with a dull thud.
“Damn. This is year-old black iron too.”
My anticipation for what was inside was growing. What kind of treasures had they hidden away so carefully that they built a vault like this?
Creak.
The door opened, and bright light greeted me. The entire ceiling was packed tightly with night pearls.
“Hah… just taking those alone would feed me for five, no, ten generations.”
I lowered my head. What met my eyes were dozens of raised platforms.
“All right, let’s see what’s here.”
I headed toward the nearest platform.
The first things I saw were poison wines. At a glance, the shelves were lined with exceptionally potent poison wines arranged in neat rows.
There were so many of them that it was hard to tell their quantity at a glance.
“Dang Family… you really are a harsh bunch…….”
These poison wines were stockpiled by the Dang Family in preparation for war. Even a poison master was not immune to every poison.
Once war broke out and high-level poison masters began using their toxins, not only the enemy but also our own poison masters would certainly die.
“It’s completely useless to me, though I’m immune to ten thousand poisons.”
After the poison wines, the next row of platforms held bottles sealed with poison.
“This is useless to me too.”
A poison master would have chosen these poisons. But what was I supposed to do with them? Next!
On the next platform, daggers were laid out.
“So this is where it was.”
I picked up one of the daggers resting on the platform. A thunderbolt pattern had been engraved into its blade.
Thunder Head.
It had once been used by an expert from a previous generation of the orthodox side. The dagger had been forged from year-old black iron. According to rumor, the moment it was thrown it sounded like thunder, and its movement was as swift as lightning, piercing a hundred martial artists in an instant or some such.
If Dang Hye used it, it would surely help her…….
But this was a token of sincerity meant for me. Next.
The last row held protective armor.
“White Tiger Armor, Kirin Armor, Sacred Cloud Armor, Overthrowing Heaven Armor…….”
There was a full line of the finest protective armor from across the Central Plains.
In my previous life, I had never worn protective armor. I could simply turn back time if I died.
But in this life, protective armor could mean a great deal to me.
“This might save my life once.”
I lifted each suit of armor, weighing it for mass and convenience. And when I finally stood before the last one,
zing-.
Bright Destroying Sword began to vibrate violently. Instinctively, I placed my hand on it.
Even so, the vibration didn’t stop. No, it only grew more intense.
“What the hell?”
zing-iing.
clatter, clatter.
The moment I drew Bright Destroying Sword, the platform began shifting with a grinding sound. I turned my head and looked at the trembling stand.
There sat an old suit of protective armor, quivering.
“Bright Destroying Sword… and protective armor…? What is this?”
It was obviously old protective armor. The kind that didn’t look like it could stop even a single sword strike, no, not even one dagger.
I picked it up. It was light. So light it barely felt like I was holding anything at all.
I checked the inside as well, but there didn’t seem to be any special mechanism built into it. Yet the instant I lifted it, the two weapons began vibrating even more fiercely.
There is a saying in the Central Plains: divine arms recognize one another and resonate.
“This is a divine weapon?”
I couldn’t accept it. And yet, the moment I held that protective armor, I felt a strange pull.
As if it were fate.
I took the armor and left the vault.
There had been many treasures in the vault, but all I ended up holding was that old suit of protective armor. Still, I wasn’t disappointed. There was no such thing as a meaningless phenomenon.
“Haah… I saved the Dang Family, and this is all I get? Some old protective armor?”
Though, maybe I was a little disappointed.