Five Pills to Pacify the World

Enthusiasts love to rank things.

No—nor is this a tale confined to the strange few known as enthusiasts. Most people love to rank things. It would be closer to the truth to say that ranking and judging is human nature itself.

"Among the Nine Sects, Shaolin is first, surely?"

"Tch, friend, you don't know a thing. Who is the supreme master of the Nine Sects these days? Wudang's Sword Emperor, no? So Wudang comes first!"

"Little known across the Central Plains it may be, but one cannot leave out Kunlun, standing alone before the very gates of the Cheonma Cult."

The ranking of the Nine Sects had always been a subject of endless debate.

"As for the Five Great Families, the Namgung are certainly first."

"Hah! That is only because the Tang Clan holds its poison arts in check. Let them wield poison in earnest, and no family under heaven could stand against the Tang of Sichuan."

"Tch. You truly know nothing. The martial arts of the mortal world have always prized raw strength above all. Never in all my days have I seen a family that could overcome the might of the Peng Clan of Herculean Strength."

The Five Great Families, too, could not escape the enthusiasts' love of ranking.

"Then the strongest martial artist alive must be the Sovereign of Destruction, Yeom Gi-ha. That is my belief."

"..."

"Do you agree?"

"W-well, even so, the Sword Emperor is also..."

"Are you saying the Sword Emperor is stronger than the Sovereign of Destruction?"

"No, I only mean, that is not exactly what I..."

Of course, some rankings were pointless to argue over from the start.

In any case, why did enthusiasts always fall to quarreling over these very topics whenever they met? The reason was simple: nothing stirred people's interest quite like they did. The value called 'strength' was the one that held the greatest fascination for the martial folk of the jianghu.

And there was one subject that drew from the fellow travelers of the murim as much awe and attention as strength itself: 'the way to become strong.' Who was strongest was another man's question, but how to become strong might be one's own—so it was no mistake to say that interest ran even deeper.

Setting aside worn subjects like training, effort, and talent, the ways to grow stronger could be boiled down to roughly three.

"Wouldn't the answer be to obtain a fine weapon?"

"Bah. Leaning on a mere trinket of divine make will never carry you to the realms above."

"Tsk. So you are a Purist, brother?"

"Then you are a Pragmatist, brother?"

"Impossible man."

"Likewise."

There was room for argument, but the first would be divine weapons.

"Divine arts."

"Divine arts, you say?"

"Just so. If my fortune ran deep enough to lay hands on even one secret manual of martial arts..."

"And supposing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you found one—could you actually master it?"

"Ahem. Mock me all you like, but there was a time I was called a prodigy."

"Are your meridians not blocked through and through? You could not even take the first step."

"..."

The second would be martial manuals of ascension.

"Forget all of it. Elixirs are supreme."

"You don't grow strong just by swallowing elixirs, though."

"But with something on the level of the Five Great Murim Pills, would that not be another story altogether?"

"Hmm."

Last of all came elixirs. And chief among them, one would have to name the Five Great Murim Pills—the very Five Great Murim Pills Yakseon had spoken of.

The Five Great Murim Pills: the name given to the five pills bearing the greatest efficacy in all the jianghu and murim.

Natural elixirs were magnificent things, but humankind was not content to stop there—perhaps because nature, for all its vastness and benevolence, is at the same time violent and indifferent. To harvest the virtues of elixirs more conveniently, the great sects turned their hands to the study of alchemy, and research accumulated over centuries upon centuries bore meaningful fruit. The places known as great sects had each produced a secret pill worthy of standing as the very symbol of their prestige.

Shaolin's Great Restoration Pill. Wudang's Supreme Clarity Pill. Mount Hua's Purple Cloud Divine Pill. Kunlun's Blue Pine Divine Pill. The Beggars' Gang's Intoxicated Dog Pill.

Great names, every one of them deserving to be called a divine treasure.

To reach the Sixth Pill Stage, Yakseon had said, one had to obtain and consume every one of the Five Great Murim Pills. Every last one of those peerless treasures.

The proper answer would be: impossible.

And yet...

"I suppose I must."

Perhaps at some point, without noticing it, I had come to share Yakseon's audacity. This body had already taken in the Empty Blue Stone Milk, the Vermilion Fruit, and elixirs aged ten thousand years—things every soul in the world would call impossible. What reason remained for me to grumble that anything else could not be done? Perhaps, too, because weighing possibility only has meaning when other choices remain.

When I came face to face with Cheonma, I understood as though it were fate: that I myself had to reach the Sixth Pill Stage to hold back the Great Righteous-Demon War in its entirety. There was no other way to stop that living hell from descending upon the world again. In the end, it was something I simply had to do.

It was not difficult to guess why Yakseon never reached the Sixth Pill Stage. Yakseon had simply never obtained the Five Great Murim Pills. He had completed a flawless blueprint but never secured the proper materials—a carpenter, in the end, who could never finish his house. The deficiency lay not within himself but in the world outside, and so it was a problem that even the Pill Immortal of his age could never overcome.

In truth, it was inevitable. Yakseon had been born with spiritual eyes. For him, sensing spirituality was everyday life, and finding the supreme elixirs that harbored great spirituality was—as he put it with only a touch of exaggeration—no harder than flipping over his palm. Yakseon, who wished to become like nature, consumed elixirs beyond counting and reached the Fifth Pill Stage of the Heart Decision. He had wished to become nature, and at last he had come to resemble it.

Put another way, it meant that Yakseon had never blended into the jianghu and murim. For he had wished to become an immortal rather than a man, and to become nature itself. People could not understand Yakseon, and Yakseon could not understand people.

"How difficult humans are..."

A single line of transmission from some long-ago day, idle as a murmur, proved that truth. Yakseon had said he never fit into the jianghu and murim—that is, into the society of humans, where struggles raged like eggs hurled against stone. His martial arts, built upon the premise of elixirs, could not be shared in exchange with others, and his temperament did not lend itself to keeping company. Nature is aloof in its very essence; so it was. It was also why the footsteps of Yakseon, the grandmaster who left behind such mighty achievements, were so rarely found in the jianghu and murim.

Sadly, the journey to the Sixth Pill Stage pointed in a direction far removed from the path of nature Yakseon had pursued.

"Perhaps this old Daoist has simply grown too old."

So lamented Yakseon, for whom changing himself had proven the hardest thing of all. I understood him. Nature is beneficent; it would give everything it had to whoever found it. But human society could never do the same. Above all, in this world there was no one among the great sects—whose foundations had been laid stone by stone over generations—who would readily hand their secret treasures to Yakseon for nothing.

Nature and the jianghu murim shared one resemblance: the strong devour the weak. It was one of the few values that nature and human society held in common. Yakseon, who with the Fifth Pill Stage alone had attained a realm that could embrace all under heaven, could not help but wrestle with the question—whether to carve open the road to the Sixth Pill Stage by force.

The sorrow of it was that Yakseon, who resembled nature yet pursued the Dao, could not bring himself to choose the way of the strong devouring the weak either.

"...I found the way, but it was a road this old Daoist could not walk."

Yakseon did not walk the way of the strong devouring the weak. No—he could not walk it. For he had wished to ascend the divine throne, not to become nature in its violence. And so Yakseon remained in this world an outsider—never fully human, never fully nature, and never ascending the divine throne.

That was why Yakseon left behind the Yakseon Heart Decision.

And so, laden with regret, Yakseon's transmission came to its close. He had handed over everything he was to a successor yet to come—perhaps this, too, was one facet of Yakseon that resembled nature.

Which path had been right? I could not say. But one fact stood certain: I was not Yakseon. Which meant that what had been impossible for him was possible for me. If Yakseon's weapon was the spiritual eyes he was born with, my weapon was information. It was also because Yakseon had wished to become nature, while I wished to be human. And the greatest difference of all was that, thanks to the guidance of my teacher Yakseon, I walked a road charted for me without a single trial and error.

"Hoo—"

The moment Yakseon's transmission drew to its end, the information I had gathered and organized in my days as Myeong-gae came surging back like an incoming tide. I had long known of the Sixth Pill Stage's existence and understood the need for the Five Great Murim Pills—was it not only the natural course, then, for me to make my arrangements accordingly?

"I suppose I must."

I would form ties with the masters of the Five Great Murim Pills. Or, to put it precisely, I would bestow favors upon them—favors great enough that they would hand over their secret treasures of their own accord. For a lone individual to bestow favors upon those who dwelt in the Nine Sects and One Gang sounded like empty fantasy, but now that I had reached the Fifth Pill Stage, it lay well within the bounds of possibility. It would not be easy, but neither was it an impossible road, as Yakseon's had been.

'First...'

They say order matters in all things. Five pills to obtain meant five great currents to set in motion, and the question was where to begin.

"The Beggars' Gang."

The answer came easily. The Beggars' Gang was numbered among the powers that held one of the Five Great Murim Pills—the place where I had once made my home. I could boast that I knew the Beggars' Gang better than anyone alive, which made it the easiest place to set my plan in motion.

And besides...

"As it happened, the time had come."

There was also the simple fact that it was time to find Chwipung-gae. Since my regression, not for a single hour had I forgotten him. I had come back with it carved into my soul that the kindness that cantankerous old beggar had shown me was anything but small.

In any case, the time to find Chwipung-gae had arrived. Soon, an opportunity to repay him would present itself. That the hour of repaying Chwipung-gae's kindness and the hour of seeking the Beggars' Gang's Intoxicated Dog Pill had overlapped—perhaps that, too, was fate.

Tap, tap.

With my course decided, I stepped outside—

Fwoosh—

A familiar face was sweeping a sword through the air in the front courtyard of my residence. The momentum was so majestic that the display brimmed with the tension of a real battle rather than mere practice. It was Chunbaek, distilling the enlightenment won from his recent duel with the Extreme Demon master into his sword.

Fwoosh— shraak! Stop!

For a long while I simply watched, admiring the grace of his swordplay. The spirit within Chunbaek, awakened long ago, was expanding further still. That a man who had ascended to the Harmony Realm was advancing so swiftly owed to Chunbaek's own talent, to the experience of a life-and-death duel with the Extreme Demon master, and to the shock of witnessing Cheonma with his own two eyes. Misfortune had turned to fortune in the end—that is how strange and difficult human affairs can be.

Fwoosh—

Without the slightest reserve at my presence, Chunbaek swung his sword to his heart's content. Martial training was by its nature a confidential thing that no outsider's eyes should touch, yet Chunbaek and I were both perfectly at ease.

"Might I do a bit of martial training?"

"I'll arrange somewhere secluded."

Chunbaek, who had studied me for a long moment with unblinking eyes...

"...if it's you watching, I suppose that's fine."

—that was what he had said. Knowing that Chunbaek was the chosen heir of a reclusive mystic sect, I could not fail to grasp how deep that trust of his ran.

Shring— click.

"So you're out."

Chunbaek brought his dance to a close ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and put away his weapon. And then...

"Where are you headed now?"

He asked, as though he had read the thought straight out of my mind.

"To the Beggars' Gang."

There was nothing to hide from him.

"Chunbaek, will you come with me?"

Walking this road in his company would be better still.

At my question, Chunbaek let out a short laugh.

"Traveling with you might be fun in its own right."

There was one more way in which Yakseon and I differed.

"Thank you."

I was not alone.

My first target was the Beggars' Gang's Intoxicated Dog Pill. Called, together with the Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures, one of the Beggars' Gang's two great treasures—with it, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would begin the journey to the Sixth Pill Stage.

Pyeongcheonha—Pacifying All Under Heaven. That was what he had called it.

With the divine might attained at the Sixth Pill Stage, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would surpass Cheonma and pacify the world, trampling out the embers of the Great Righteous-Demon War. And then I would give peace back to all under heaven.

Pyeongcheonha. That would be the Sixth Pill Stage road I walked.