Sichuan Tang Clan (10)
Sichuan Tang Clan (10)
The tunnel I returned to had half-collapsed and was in shambles, but it was more than enough for me to crawl through alone. There was no danger of me dying even if this cave caved in, so there seemed to be no need to bring in men to widen it further.
The house had been purchased by the vanished merchant under a false identity to evade pursuit, so there was no chance of anyone showing up to cause trouble. Since the Liaison Book agent was dead, there was no one left to contact the Demonic Cult. And now that the tunnel was roughly finished, I no longer needed any manpower either.
It was an unfortunate turn of events for that Demonic Cult Liaison Book bastard, but in the end, I had simply made use of his resources and set everything up comfortably for myself.
"That's why you shouldn't have betrayed me."
I tied up the corpses inside roughly in hemp sacks and disposed of them through the Hao Sect. The good thing about working with the Hao Sect Leader was that he never asked questions about the source, no matter where the bodies came from. Even when I brought him corpses, he would just give a vacant nod from beneath his human skin mask and dispose of them at a location only he knew, without ever checking their faces.
Thus, with the bodies gone, I returned to the luxurious cave glittering with night-luminescent pearls. This time, I had come fully prepared. My hands, feet, and all exposed skin were wrapped tight to prevent any exposure to poison smoke, and I held a small, elongated tube in my hand.
It was an object I had specially commissioned from a blacksmith. Roughly the thickness of an arrow shaft and hollow through the middle, it looked like a tube meant for shooting poisoned needles. But one end flared outward like a trumpet, so that I could press my mouth tightly against it and form a seal.
With my mouth sealed against it, I looked rather like a mosquito, and I intended to use this device to converse with the Poison Human inside.
If I simply punched a hole in the wall, the poison aura would leak out. But without a hole, I could not speak with the person on the other side. So I needed a way to contain the poison aura while still enabling conversation.
This device was my solution. To onlookers, it would probably look like a giant mosquito burying its head in the wall to suck blood, but in its own way, it was my personal effort to talk without exposing myself to poison aura.
First, I forcibly drove an iron rod into the wall to make a small hole. Poison aura could seep in through the opening, but a hole this small was something I could repel just by emitting inner force from my palm to neutralize and push back the poison aura.
Second, to converse through the hole in the wall, I had to press my mouth tightly against the trumpet end and speak. Of course, the moment I inhaled, I might suck in the poison aura and drop dead on the spot. So I had to maintain the uncomfortable method of speaking and then drawing breath from outside in short intervals.
Third, since my voice might be too small to be heard, I had to amplify it with a touch of inner force. And after each time I spoke, I absolutely had to press my ear to the trumpet end to hear the response.
If my control of inner force was clumsy or my concentration slipped even slightly, I could end up drinking poison and dying. So every time I performed this task, I had to focus, and focus again, controlling my inner force with the utmost precision. In a way, this was no different from coaxing the Poison Human over to my side while simultaneously risking my life to train in the regulation of inner force.
By remotely teaching the Poison Human the Taijiquan, I could engrave the profound principles of the art deeper into my own heart. And by manipulating inner force with extreme precision, I would learn the most essential virtue for a peak realm master: the art of delicate inner force operation.
I could gain a Poison Human and also revisit my own martial insights.
There was risk, but I chose to see it as killing two birds with one stone.
*****
"I want to go home."
The Poison Human had a name, yet no name. They called her Poison Human. Or that thing. Or this bitch. She remembered when she first entered this underground chamber. She had been living with her family when smoke suddenly poured in, and hooded figures kidnapped her and dragged her here.
"...Please send me home."
Even when she screamed, demanding to know what was happening, even when she begged to go home, they ignored her. The men with white-painted faces and beast-like slanted eyes simply replied flatly to her pitiful cries.
"This is your home now."
To her, it was an incomprehensible statement. What was a home? Was it not a place where one could feel safe? Yet all she was given were iron chains and needles—medicines that caused agony when swallowed, and the disgusted faces of those who treated her like something hazardous.
The food she ate had no taste.
The water she drank was bitter.
"I want to go home."
"No one knows you're here. You're already registered as dead, so just give up."
By the time her body was slowly growing accustomed to these terrible foods, they would provide even more toxic and tasteless food and water. And by the time she had grown used to even that, the food no longer took the form of food at all. They began feeding her foul-smelling decoctions, indistinguishable from the medicines she took every day, and called it food.
"...I want to go home."
"Eat what you're given! If you don't eat, I'll force it down your throat!"
If she resisted and refused to eat, they forced her mouth open and poured it in. If she still would not swallow, they drugged her to sleep and fed her then. The days that wore down her spirit and drove her mad continued endlessly. There was no joy in her existence. Everything that was supposedly prepared for her seemed like objects arranged solely to satisfy their own thirst for discovery.
Sometimes she dreamed that her father came to rescue her. A dream where he smashed through the wall, and bathed in pure white light, he revealed his strong, reliable shoulders and said:
'My daughter, you must have been so frightened.'
Then she would become a child again, a crybaby wailing as she ran into her father's arms. That was all the Poison Human wanted. To reclaim her name and weep in her father's embrace. She wished for nothing more than that.
"...I want to go home."
But the world never changed. The scenery inside the room shifted little by little, but no one answered the Poison Human's echoing plea. Before she knew it, the room had filled with purple poison smoke.
"At last! She has ascended to the realm of Poison Human!"
"Wahahahaha! Now we only need to find a way to control the poison!"
The single phrase she had managed to utter with such effort was buried beneath their cheers and dancing, and vanished. Watching those who ignored her final request, the Poison Human felt nothing now. At some point, she had become indifferent to everything.
Even her hope of going home was fading away.
She thought she had held on for far too long. She thought that maybe, just maybe, surrendering everything and letting go completely would not be so bad. Because the world did not know her, so no one would come to save her. Because her father must be unable to find her, too.
If she were to be reborn, she wanted to become something like that moss clinging to the wall. Moss that harmed no one, staying still without any thoughts. Moss tucked away in an underground corner, where no one would even think of scraping it off.
Then no one would be able to torment her.
That moss, even if it could not move from its cramped spot, would be living snugly, clinging tightly to its mom and dad.
"—Are you there?"
And then, a voice came from the darkness. It was far too clear to be an auditory hallucination—a voice that changed the very air in the room. The Poison Human could not easily answer that question. She simply stared, dumbfounded, in the direction the sound had come from.
Had she misheard?
Or was even this a trap set by those wicked men?
The iron chains rattled softly, but her lips could not easily part. Her lips trembled as she hesitated. Should she speak? Or should she let that voice leave?
Her dilemma was short-lived.
"Do not be afraid. I have come to rescue you, Miss."
The Poison Human felt as if her breath had stopped. Her hanging arms did not even hurt. In that moment, it felt as if the wall had crumbled and someone was leaping toward her. She was about to cry out but bit down hard on her lip instead, holding her breath because tears threatened to gush out.
The Poison Human struggled to steady her breath and opened her mouth.
"D-Did my father send you? He did, didn't he?"
Her voice, filled with certainty, was mingled with sobs. The man on the other side of the wall maintained a brief silence before speaking.
"That's right."
At those words, the Poison Human laughed. She did not know why. Even as her body trembled violently, even as tears kept spilling from her eyes, she could not stop laughing. For a long while, she cried and laughed, and a droplet fell from her eye.
Every time it hit the floor, it ate away at the stone, and acrid purple smoke rose with a hiss. Through the thick smoke, the man addressed the Poison Human in a clear and gentle voice.
"You have endured much hardship. But please do not cry out. It would be troublesome if we were discovered."
The Poison Human did not answer the man's words. She simply sobbed and nodded her head. The man on the other side waited in silence. From beyond the small hole, he asked a question.
"...Is there something you wish to say now, perhaps?"
The Poison Human answered.
"...I want to go home."