Chapter 3
Chapter 3
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Senior Brother
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"What? Where is this place? Of course it's Wudang Mountain... The Heavenly Communication Pavilion where I live with Master."
At this point, I had no choice but to accept it.
"What year is it now...? It's been 53 years since His current Majesty, Emperor Fanli, ascended the throne..."
I'd returned to the past.
To the time when I was just a 14-year-old kid, barely out of swaddling clothes.
"Hyeonseong, why are you suddenly asking these things? Are you just spouting nonsense to avoid getting in trouble? I'm really going to get mad."
"No, Senior Sister."
Considering the possibility that this was some kind of illusion cast by a demon, I recalled the mental safeguards I'd set in place.
I'd often overheated my upper dantian while practicing martial arts, or had parts of my brain damaged from head injuries, so I'd prepared several mechanisms to judge whether I was in my right mind. The suggestions were one of them.
In the end, my sanity was intact.
I did occasionally see things that weren't there or hear phantom voices, but that was par for the course.
As I followed Senior Sister's lead, I performed the Small and Grand Heavenly Circulations several times through internal movement.
My self-examination of the body was perfect. From the arms and eyes that had been missing being fully attached, to the strength of my muscles, the degree of skeletal growth, and the state of my meridians—all of it confirmed I was fourteen years old.
'This...... is my body......?'
To put it bluntly, it was utterly pathetic.
No shedding of bones or transformation of marrow, so my limbs were stubby and weak. Even the basic meridians like the Birth-Death Gate and the Ren and Du were completely blocked.
With the meridian to the brain obstructed, there was no way my upper dantian was open. I felt like a complete idiot.
The dantian...... No way this tiny thing the size of a mung bean was my dantian? Could even one unit of internal energy fit inside this?
'Let's think calmly. If my limbs get severed, can I regenerate them? If my internal organs get damaged by something like the Internal Heavy Hand Method? If my dantian shatters? If my heart bursts? If my throat gets pierced? If half my head gets blown off?'
I can't. I'd die. I'd become crippled. I'd die. I'd die. I'd die.
'This fucking......!'
I nearly cursed out loud.
I'd never been one to cling desperately to life.
Even in my final moments, I'd only wondered what lay beyond death—I hadn't thrashed about to stay in this world.
But this was an entirely different matter.
The me from before...... or rather, my 'previous life' had been all but liberated from death.
I could survive injuries that would have killed anyone else several times over.
It wasn't for nothing that the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult—which treated curses as praise—called me a cockroach.
From the Heavenly Demon's perspective, 'indestructible' was about the highest compliment there was.
So just a few hours ago, I'd been as close to immortal as it got. Now, suddenly, I was trapped in a frail body that would die from a single stab of a knife.
'Let's see, I reached the Peak at twelve, and Superlative at twenty......'
Even my martial arts level was abysmal.
At this level, if some crazy old sect leader from the Nine Great Sects or one of the Demonic Heaven's Nine Dragon Star Lords swung a sword at me, I'd just have to die. How absurd was that?
The entire world around me now carried the unpredictable possibility of death. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
'Which bastard's spawn decided to resurrect someone who was perfectly fine with dying......'
And cause all this chaos?
As I stewed in silent fury, a warm, soft sensation touched my cheek.
"Hyeonseong, are you okay? You're really acting strange today...... Did Senior Brother hit you somewhere?"
Senior Sister, her face full of worry, was gently stroking my cheeks with both hands, searching for any possible wounds.
"I'm really fine, Senior Sister."
I softly grasped her wrists and lowered her hands.
'Right.'
The pulse from her wrists. The beating only a living heart could produce.
'Senior Sister...... is alive.'
It finally hit me that I'd come back.
To the time when I'd lost all my power, but everyone was still alive.
'Then the Fiery Beggar Hero, Sword Empress, Sword Emperor, Thunderbolt Spear, Demon Buddha...... They're all still alive for now. The Heavenly Demon......'
The Heavenly Demon was about ten years older than me, so right now she was probably still just a lump of flesh that couldn't even walk.
'Who knows. Maybe she's already practicing the Supremacy of the Heavenly Demon, toddling around......'
I could see the Heavenly Demon doing that.
She had the greatest talent and inaction in the world—nay, throughout history.
[That's right.]
I ignored the hallucination echoing in my head. Footsteps approached from afar.
Subtle and light, like stepping on clouds, rapidly closing in.
"This is."
The weight of power in each step, the stride length, the dispersion of lightfoot skill.
It was all so familiar, so nostalgic.
I'd never forgotten those footsteps etched into my memory.
"Master......"
"Oh, you got back early. Haha, you seniors and juniors should spar in moderation. I had to wear myself out convincing Uncle-Master Mujin."
Beyond the open door,
stood my father.
Like most people, I don't remember my first moments.
No memory of the pains of birth, or the warmth of my mother's embrace.
But like everyone else, I must have had parents who bore me.
However, the only person I could call a parent was my Master.
My actual parents—whoever they were, father or mother—had left instructions one freezing winter day to leave a sword at the Frozen Sword Pool on Wudang Mountain but instead abandoned me, still a newborn swaddled infant, and vanished.
It was by sheer chance that my Master found me, on the verge of freezing to death in the biting winter wind.
At the time, Master wasn't an elder yet; he was a first-generation disciple. He'd just returned from a trip through the martial world and had brought back Senior Sister Hyeon-ye, a three-year-old blind orphan girl he'd found abandoned on the streets, formally taking her as his disciple.
And caring for Senior Sister was entirely Master's responsibility.
It wasn't some petty 'You dared bring a woman into our sacred Taoist sect, so you deal with it' nonsense. No one in the sect knew how to raise a little girl.
Taoist sects didn't discriminate against women like those bald monks in Shaolin. Their founding ancestor, Mount Mao Sect's Great Harmony Lord, had been a woman.
But as you can see from Senior Sister Hyeon-ye being Wudang's sole flower now, the sect had no history of female disciples before her.
We'd only recently shifted from a pure Taoist order to a martial sect, unlike Huashan with its Maiden Sword Pavilion for women and the Jade Maiden Sword Arts dedicated to female disciples. Wudang simply lacked training facilities for girls. It was better to say they didn't exist at all.
In a martial sect predicated on communal living, without dedicated spaces for female disciples, you couldn't exactly tell them to bunk with the boys.
So Master, struggling alone to raise a blind girl, suddenly had me thrust upon him as well.
Unlike Senior Sister Hyeon-ye—who was naturally clever and bright, obedient even at a young age—I was a newborn who cried for food at all hours. Master had to carry me on his back, hold Senior Sister to his chest, and use lightness skill to trek down to the village below every time, begging for milk.
Doing that every day—hauling two kids up and down Wudang Mountain while practicing Cloud Stepping Steps—he ended up becoming Wudang's Number One in Speed.
If that had been the end of it, it would have remained a funny yet poignant memory.
But it wasn't the end.
I was born with gray hair.
When Master first brought me back wrapped in swaddling clothes, he thought the fine down was just baby fuzz, but as it grew, it stayed ash-gray.
Unless you're from the Western Regions, hair in the Central Plains is mostly dark.
And people naturally shun those who look different from them.
For reasons like it being ominous, or just ugly.
The deep-seated hatred the Ming people held toward the Western conquerors of the Yuan Dynasty—who'd ruled above the Han—might have projected onto me, since my hair color resembled theirs.
As practitioners of the Tao, they didn't show it openly, but I could tell my senior brothers and the older disciples subtly avoided me.
On top of that, polite and kind Senior Sister—who was blind—received all the affection from the seniors who treated her like a niece. Me? I'd been a sourpuss without a shred of charm since childhood.
With my pride firmly set from a young age, I never sought their love anyway.
In return, I saw those untalented seniors as monkeys or turtles, so it was even.
People treat perfectly limbed monkeys as beasts just because they don't speak or count.
Why not treat blockheads who can't even unravel basic oral formulas the same way?
That was my mindset.
"What is this...?"
But Master and Senior Sister were exceptions.
Sects call elders uncle-masters or grandmasters metaphorically, as the sect is like family. But for me, true family meant just Senior Sister and Master. A person's father can't be a monkey, so Master was human.
Thus, the emotions I felt now surpassed reuniting with a father lost for thirty years.
I performed the disciple's bow before the bewildered Master.
Master helped me up. As I barely suppressed my surging feelings, Senior Sister spoke worriedly.
"Master, what about Hyeonseong? Surely not the punishment chamber..."
"Haha, Hyeon-ye, no need to worry so much. Didn't I say I convinced Uncle-Master Mujin? He just needs to chop some wood down below and stack it in the shed."
"Ah......"
Senior Sister patted her chest in relief.
"You must have been worried too, Hyeonseong. You've always hated apologizing to your seniors more than death itself. Still, go visit Uncle-Master Mujin sometime and promise to do better. Even with the sect leader's protection, you can't be free from sect rules."
Master chuckled heartily.
Come to think of it, I'd just been beating up Senior Brother Hyeon-gyu.
I couldn't exactly remember why.
I'd gotten into scraps like that too often back then, and mentally, it was over forty years ago. Vividly recalling daily life from forty years back would be the real miracle.
And I wasn't the type to feel guilt for hitting a monkey.
However.
"No."
Monkey or not, it was our family monkey.
I'd seen it once in my previous life, but watching them lie dead and sprawled out left a foul taste.
'In this life.'
I'd make sure that didn't happen. With that thought, I spoke.
"I'll go apologize to Senior Brother, Master."
"H-Hyeonseong?"
"Medical Hall disciples! Where are the Medical Hall disciples!"
At that moment,
Senior Sister's eyes snapped wide in shock, and Master cried out in alarm.
What?
'Is saying I'll apologize that weird?'
Why was everyone freaking out?