That Precious Thing
“Did the head eunuch not tell me not to interfere when you were in the middle of your nap? What happened?”
With such audacity, the head eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonies and my batchmate, Wang Zhen, dared to lay a hand on me while I was napping.
The imperial palace’s atmosphere had gone completely to hell lately…
Slap!
At that moment, a resounding slap landed on my forehead, sending sparks flying from my eyes.
Alright, this head eunuch had met a truly insane fellow today.
Which insane bastard was it that I had seen today!
“Still haven’t had your manhood cut off, huh? What kind of eunuch are you? A nap? Dreamed it? Wake up! It’s your turn.”
“What? My turn? What is?”
I opened my drowsy eyes and involuntarily retorted.
Come to castrate me? This head eunuch?
My turn?
“Yes, your turn! It’s time to remove your manhood. You wanted to become a eunuch? Scared now? When it comes to actually cutting, you’re afraid?”
With tear-stiffened eyelids lifted from crying earlier, the scenery around me came into view.
Familiar yet unfamiliar, a landscape that felt deja vu.
Old barns filled with screams and moans, the sound of boiling water and thick steam like mist.
The scent of blood and the smell of white wax.
When I sat up, in the opposite compartment, young boys with clear signs of manhood trembled with terrified expressions.
And a man being supported, wrapped in paper soaked with something precious, walked by.
“Jangja…?”
Upon waking, my head cleared, and I realized where I was.
How could I forget, Jangja.
If I were a eunuch, I would never forget the Jangja who had been castrated and the You Jiu who had performed the castration.
The immense pain and the terror during the three days of thirst after castration.
At the crossroads where after three years of the same three days, when urine came out from the urethra plugged with a needle, you lived, but if not, you died from inflammation.
And the biggest was the loss of becoming a eunuch!
I am a eunuch! I am a eunuch!
My precious thing, which I had left behind on a long journey without properly using my true ability once.
Even now, thirty-two years later, I clearly remember that painful farewell moment, but wait, wait…
But why am I with Jangja?
“This guy? Came here on your own two feet and talking nonsense? Don’t want to? Money isn’t refunded. Got it?”
“Hah! You Jiu?”
“But the young brat can’t even wake up and calls the old man casually? You want to get castrated today?”
You Jiu! I remembered.
It was him, the one who had mercilessly cut out my precious thing!
Since I had gone to him of my own will, out of conscience I couldn’t go back to kill him on purpose, and if I accidentally met him, I would tear him apart and kill him, as I had sworn.
But, this You Jiu guy hadn’t aged at all…?
“Hah! What is this?”
Feeling the same anger even after years, I clenched my fist, but startled and jumped up.
No wrinkles on the hand.
Smoother and firmer face.
What? I hadn’t aged either?
Then a thought flashed, and I reached into my waist.
“It’s there, it’s there! It’s there!”
After confirming with my hand, I cheered.
Thankfully, my precious thing was still intact in my waist.
Was it a dream? Or reality?
The sensation of being slapped on the back was vivid, so it wasn’t a dream.
Then was the time I became a eunuch, entered the Directorate, rose to power, enjoyed all the authority as a head eunuch, tried to assassinate Wang Zhen who ruined the country with his schemes in his old age, and failed and died a dream?
What was real?
“Is this guy crazy? What are you going to do? Speak up! If you’ve changed your mind, get out quickly! I’m busy.”
You Jiu looked at me as if I were a strange creature while I was cheering after touching my waist, and urged me.
Looking back, the other waiters also had expressions as if they thought I had gone mad from the fear of castration.
“Going to do it? Castrate?”
It was about to burst into laughter.
You asked if I was going to do it? Castrate my precious thing and become a eunuch?
“Are you crazy? I will never cut it!”
Without hesitation, I kicked out the Jangja.
Whether this was a dream or reality, absolutely!
Absolutely not cut!
You cut it! You bastard!
“I am not a eunuch—Ah! Huahaha!”
***
After leaving from You Jiu’s place, I ran around Yingtianfu like a madman.
I wanted to feel the freshness of youth and the sensations of the body vividly to confirm that all this was not a dream.
The result was too perfect a reality.
Even now, I can’t believe it, but anyway!
I had returned.
That day thirty-two years ago when I had gathered money with difficulty to become a eunuch and gone to You Jiu, the best at castration in Yingtianfu.
How much I had longed for that.
Thousands, tens of thousands of times I regretted becoming a eunuch.
I had learned the pinnacle martial arts and enjoyed the power and authority.
But what then, I was a eunuch.
My flesh was sagging and aging poorly, living a life of a monster neither man nor woman.
Life of doing only menial tasks all my life if I couldn’t learn the Sunflower Manual.
Life where I couldn’t properly share love with women or pass on my blood to a woman.
To hide the leaking urine smell, wearing cotton pants even in summer and carrying a perfume pouch, … I don’t even want to say more.
People whispered because they feared our power, but secretly despised and looked down on us eunuchs.
They openly chewed us out in front of us.
We eunuchs were perverted beings who deceived palace maids who didn’t receive imperial favor and shared in bizarre copulation, addicted to gambling and gold and silver treasures.
Every day, I prayed to Buddha while sleeping.
Asking to return to my childhood.
Or to transcend the wall of the Transformation Realm and undergo Body Metamorphosis.
Regression was impossible, and entering the Transformation Realm was nearly impossible after losing the manhood and learning the incomplete Sunflower Manual.
Ultimately, I was a half-life fearing the unpredictable invasion of demons, dying before reaching sixty years old.
But! I had regressed.
Also at the age of eighteen, in full bloom!
Body Metamorphosis was a hundred times, a thousand times better than aging.
What if I did Body Metamorphosis after aging? This way, I could live a new life of tens of years, much better.
Youth is good, youth.
Youth is opportunity.
With a bit of mad joy calmed, I found a noodle shop called No Dae Ya.
“No Dae Ya!”
“Jang Myeong? You weren’t going to go there today? You haven’t gone yet?”
No Dae Ya, who had been talking about noodles from inside the shop, asked with a puzzled expression.
This uncle knew that I had planned to go to the castration clinic today.
“I changed my mind. I was looking for other things.”
I answered with a faint smile.
The face of No Dae Ya, who had aged thirty-two years and was seen again, was new with emotion.
“Really? This guy thought well. Learning the incense exam is hard, but there is a way to become a martial official by learning martial arts. Even if I think about it, it wasn’t that. Or was it?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
No Dae Ya was an old bachelor uncle who had been close to me before becoming a eunuch, who often let me sleep and fed me.
What did he do before becoming a eunuch?
He was an eighteen-year-old bachelor with a healthy body but not working.
Because of the words about holding money and power, I, a rootless life, could become the best, so I became a eunuch.
Now, in this era where hundreds of eunuchs are recruited, thousands apply, right?
How many lives have so many ways to live and eat?
“Sit down, I’ll roll you a bowl. Eat and wash up. Why were you running around so much this morning that you sweated so much?”
“I just went to the castration clinic and then stayed by the river.”
“Really? Why is your speech so different? After just one trip to the castration clinic, you became an adult? Anyway, you should thank the gods of the Yangtze River? You saved a healthy man.”
I, who had been running around excitedly, sat down with a thud.
It was evening, and customers were coming one by one.
That’s right, why was I a bachelor? Because I had no parents.
My first memory started from the old brothel with the smell of alcohol, excrement, and incense smoke.
My mother, a courtesan, gave birth to me and died, and after that, as a newborn, I was raised in the brothel.
At that time, our nanny and grandmother who didn’t abandon me were my benefactors of life?
“Here, take it and eat.”
“Yes, uncle.”
I quickly went and picked up the steaming noodles.
Today, I would rest here, and tomorrow go home.
There were things to do here.
***
That night.
No Dae Ya asked if I wanted a drink, but I declined, saying I was tired, and he was dozing off while talking about customers.
I also needed time to calmly organize my thoughts.
“Sunflower Manual.”
Because of the fact that I had regressed after waking from the castration, the one thing I had forgotten all along came to mind.
The genuine Sunflower Manual I had seen at Badaling Cliff.
“Going to Badaling now would be a road to the afterlife, right?”
The distance to Badaling where the genuine manual was was approximately two thousand five hundred li.
Walking would take three months.
Even walking for three months and eating and sleeping is a problem, but the biggest issue was the low probability of arriving alive.
Only martial masters could traverse the dangerous Central Plains alone.
And how to find the cave where the demon was? If the monk hadn’t gone there yet?
No matter how much I thought, going to Badaling was reckless.
Shameful, to miss the greatest martial art in history.
“I should memorize it, but who knew this would happen. What was the first verse? Our couple in the first year of Kangxi… . ”
Eventually, with the feeling of grasping at straws, I recalled the manual.
“The true divine skill is the harmony of yin and yang… what?”
Because the text of the Sunflower Manual that I hadn’t memorized came to mind smoothly.
“Aligning the essence, qi, and spirit… this is coming to mind?”
Even regression didn’t make sense, but it was the same now.
I hadn’t even read the Sunflower Manual written in the lyrics, let alone memorized it.
I didn’t know how it was, but the three thousand-character manual was vividly remembered as if I was looking at it in front of me.
If I recited it backwards, I could recite it backwards.
My heart started beating as if it would burst with excitement.
“It’s done, it’s done! My life… No, that’s not it.”
Because of the sudden thought rising from the swelling joy in my chest, I stumbled.
The biggest flaw and fatal limitation of the Sunflower Manual.
The limitation that only castrated men could learn it came to mind.
If the genuine one had the same limitation, I had planned to use it as toilet paper.
Rather, I would learn the miscellaneous arts like the Three Reins Method or Six Harmony Fist sold in the market, but I had no intention of getting castrated even if I had to beat to death in this life.
My excitement quickly subsided, and I calmly recalled the manual.
Checking one by one to see if there was a verse instructing castration to prevent invasion of demons due to qi explosion.
The result.
“None, none, none! Jang Jinmyeong’s second life is over, it’s over!”
There were a few other limitations, but no verse instructing castration.
After checking several more times, the cold chest started beating again.
How good this could be! It was so good that I was on the verge of tears.
Only if I were not a eunuch—only if I were not a eunuch!
“Wang Zhen! She Ping! These crazy eunuch bastards.”
With a surge of emotion, the faces of the eunuchs who had stabbed me came to mind.
The faces of Wang Zhen and She Ping.
There were more than a few things to do, but no matter when, it was a given that I would kill those crazy eunuchs.
***
Shortly after.
Having accurately recalled the text of the genuine Sunflower Manual, I sat in lotus position.
Before regression, I had completed standing qi and lying down qi, but since I didn’t know my internal energy at all now, I had to start with the basic lotus position.
“A complete Sunflower Manual.”
My heart trembled.
The Sunflower Manual is a mental method for accumulating and using true qi, fist methods and sword methods for offense and defense, and long spear.
There, the connection and evasion of qi and strength, and body methods to effectively move the body.
Divine skills including the method for rapid movement over long distances and other skills.
Since the mental method, qi and strength methods, body methods, and method for rapid movement are completed as one martial art system, there is no need to consider the compatibility or interaction between each martial art.
“Sigh… Hoo…”
Starting to operate the legendary mental method ranked as a legend in a thousand years of martial history, I quickly fell into a state of no mind and no thing.
Long ago, a martial art created by a couple out of concern for the special trait of a child born as a yin-yang person (hermaphrodite).
The true Sunflower Manual had sprouted in my body after five hundred years.
And the sprout began to explosively absorb true qi like dry cotton absorbing water.