Blood Heaven Demon Scripture
A snake can climb a wall. Hwa Baek learned that for the first time today.
Not a bad ride, either.
He sat in a chair wrought from the Blood Dragon's own scales. Beside him, ten sacks of treasure rested on seats of the same make.
Shaaaa—!!
The Blood Dragon screamed. It had spent the better part of a day and more knitting itself back together. It was not whole, but it had recovered enough strength to lift the weight of ten sacks without strain.
Hwa Baek brought the beast to a halt at Old Master Hyeongong's hidden abode. Unlike the gate of the Blood Heaven Cult, which could be opened only with the Blood Dragon's inner core, the old master's abode had no special mechanism at all. The hidden abode was Serpent Sound Valley itself.
He stepped into a cave scoured smooth by wind and weather. The way in was ordinary enough that anyone might have walked through it, and once he had, he saw.
"Night-luminous pearls..."
Seven night-luminous pearls lit the interior of Old Master Hyeongong's hidden abode. He told himself he would take every one of them when he left, and set about packing the rare weapons and manuals laid out through the place into the sacks.
The most important treasures, though, were still waiting.
A single chest sat alone at the center of the abode. It was not even locked. Hwa Baek opened it and found four manuals inside.
Lower Martial Art
Middle Martial Art
Upper Martial Art
Ultimate Martial Art
The four profound arts Old Master Hyeongong had founded in his later years went into Hwa Baek's robes.
Whether they'll be of any use, I couldn't say.
In the original, the protagonist had burned every one of these manuals, declaring they would bring ruin upon the Central Plains. He already knew several peerless divine arts and had no particular need of them—that, too, was part of the reason. Even so, the manuals returned later, in a side story.
Was that when he was raising his disciple?
Setting the sudden Easter egg aside, Hwa Baek drew out one more volume that had lain hidden behind the four. Its cover bore a name.
The true treasures of the hidden abode, he tucked against his chest.
"So this is..."
The formula for a spirit pill, devised by Old Master Hyeongong—greatest master of the qi arts under heaven, and a physician besides. The Hyeongong Pill was no match for Shaolin's Great Restoration Pill or its Violet Sprout Pill, spirit pills said to stand foremost in all the murim.
The Lesser Restoration Pill, then? No. Regrettably, it did not even reach that grade. Half a Lesser Restoration Pill—be generous, and that was still the true quality of the thing.
And yet the Hyeongong Pill was not the sort of object one could judge by quality alone. It was the only spirit medicine under heaven that could be mass-produced. In truth, with enough coin any spirit medicine might be turned out in quantity, but the cost of this one was vanishingly small beside other spirit pills of a similar class. Would it feel real to hear it could be made with a single tael of gold? A spirit pill, for a mere five taels. Just how mad for qi Old Master Hyeongong had been, the original described to the point of nausea.
With this, Baek Haseong built a legion all his own.
Mass-produce a spirit pill, and masters can be mass-produced as well. The protagonist had done exactly that, founded a sect of his own, and that sect was said to have endured for thousands of years. Hand this to Yeon Ihwa, and she would find a use for it one way or another.
The Blood Heaven Demon Scripture, the four secret manuals, and the Hyeongong Pill's method of refinement besides. That ought to be payment enough.
Cure the side effects of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture, and help Jeokhwamun rise again. Deliver these, and the two clauses of the contract Hwa Baek had made could be called fulfilled.
Every treasure packed away, he climbed the cliff with the Blood Dragon.
Shaaaa—!!!
Hauling several hundred kilograms of treasure up a cliff on its back was, of course, the Blood Dragon's share of the work.
Shaa...
Once they had crested the cliff and reached solid ground, the Blood Dragon collapsed at once, as if the climb had spent a great deal of its strength.
"......"
Swearing under his breath, Hwa Baek reckoned the distance still left to the house. The house and Serpent Sound Valley both lay in Sichuan, yet the stretch between them was dozens of kilometers at the least. Even a modern car would take a solid hour or more, and he had twenty sacks of treasure to move.
...Did I think this through too shallowly?
So fixed on the grand design, his thinking had narrowed where the details were concerned. What he needed was a steward to fill in the places he fell short. He was just wondering whether he would have to wait for the Blood Dragon to recover when it happened.
Shaa...
The beast's body—a crimson mass that had spanned dozens of meters—began to shrink. It dwindled faster and faster, until it was smaller than Hwa Baek himself, and then no larger than an ordinary snake.
"......"
Now he had no way to move the cargo at all. He let out a long breath at the thought of hauling twenty bulging sacks by his own strength.
"Haa..."
But what else was there to do? He set about binding the sacks together. Each one was so bulky that five was the most he could gather into a single bundle, and with both hands he lifted ten in all.
The other ten...
...I'll just have to drop these off and come straight back.
He would have liked to strap them across his back, but that would leave him defenseless. In the Central Plains, where martial artists swollen with internal energy wandered as they pleased, he could not afford to go unguarded.
I'll have to pray nobody steals them.
That was when it came.
"What are you doing here?"
A voice.
Several days had already passed since Hwa Baek left. In that time Yeon Ihwa had been steadying body and mind by the three means he had left her.
Still no word.
Uneasy at his silence, she made inquiries and set out after his trail. Finding where he had gone was not difficult. He had not bothered to hide his traces, and all she had to do was follow them. At the end of that trail she learned he had made for the cliffs of Serpent Sound Valley.
When a brief lull opened in her work, Yeon Ihwa came to the valley herself. She could spare only two shichen—four hours—but the distance was not great, and she had meant only to see what he was attempting. What she found, as it happened, was Hwa Baek climbing the cliff with a snake and twenty sacks of treasure.
"You might have just buried them. Then you wouldn't have had to worry about someone making off with them."
"...Ah."
The two of them were on a carriage now. Once she had seen how much there was—far too much to carry—she had raced off on her lightness art and come back hauling one.
"Haa..."
Yeon Ihwa looked at him as though he were hopeless, and yet she could not bring herself to scold him. The treasures he had brought were worth enough to turn any rebuke into praise. The Blood Heaven Demon Scripture. The method of refining the Hyeongong Pill. The four profound arts Old Master Hyeongong had left behind, and treasures of a value one hardly dared to count. With those alone, raising a great sect to rival the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans would not be impossible.
"Let's talk once we're home. I suspect there will be a great deal to say."
After they returned, Hwa Baek was summoned at once to her study. He had been gone a few days and come back with peerless divine arts; there was a great deal to hear, and a great deal that had to be said.
"To summarize: out of curiosity you leapt down into Serpent Sound Valley, and that was how you realized these treasures were there."
"That's right."
"In an underground where not a point of light could enter, you fought a demonic beast like an imugi. You beat it, and it spat out an inner core. You held that core to a door that would not open, and the door opened of its own accord. You gathered the treasures, climbed the cliff again, found Old Master Hyeongong's hidden abode, and inside it the Hyeongong Pill and four profound arts."
Having boiled his long excuse down to its bones, Yeon Ihwa said what she actually thought.
"Do you truly believe that makes sense?"
"Yes. Leaping off a cliff out of curiosity—that, perhaps, you might do. The murim is full of mad martial artists, so I can understand that much. But you fought an imugi? And the snake wound around your neck is that imugi?"
By any ordinary measure, it was absurd. Not even the fabled dokkaebi club, that wish-granting mallet of legend, would have produced the Blood Heaven Demon Scripture and the method of refining the Hyeongong Pill. The Central Plains had no shortage of eccentrics and marvels, but even so, there were limits.
And yet what could she do? She might sigh and ask in all frankness, and Hwa Baek still would not answer.
"......"
When the thought had run its course, Yeon Ihwa's expression settled in an instant. Body and mind quieted, she straightened her posture and spoke.
"...First, I ought to thank you."
"......"
Yes. In truth, those should have been the first words out of her mouth.
"They were what I should have said before anything else. For coming to them late, I can only apologize."
"......"
There had been so much to say that she had not been able to get the words out until now. Even so, late as it was, Yeon Ihwa bowed her head and offered her thanks.
A grace that a lifetime of repayment would not be enough to clear. What would her life have become if he had not helped her? She was imagining that dreadful future when he spoke.
"It's a little early for thanks."
Hwa Baek drew a crimson orb from his robes and went on.
"The side effects of the Crimson Blood Demon Scripture still haven't been dealt with."