Chapter 355
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 355
Chapter Title: Flowers Blooming in the Snow
When Baek Hyang-a drew out her True Origin Qi but still hadn't died after three days, the group's atmosphere grew subtly tense.
"Why hasn't she died?"
"How should I know?"
Baek Hyang-a had used her immense yin energy to slow the dispersal of her True Origin Qi to the utmost.
Unlike ordinary people, who would perish within half a day of drawing it out, she had roughly half a month.
However, Dang Mujin's group had no way of knowing this.
Of course, Dang Mujin's group didn't actually wish for Baek Hyang-a's death.
At the same time, they didn't think she absolutely had to survive. Their reactions were closer to pure curiosity.
Hong Geolgae and Namgung Myeong lowered their voices and chattered away.
"Maybe Baek Hyang-a couldn't draw out her True Origin Qi?"
"No way. Didn't you feel her yin energy suddenly thicken?"
"She must have some method we don't know about. Like some secret internal art manual."
"Where's an internal art that suddenly amplifies power like that? If something like that existed, I'd eat the world's best and claim the top spot. Make some sense."
"Then surviving three days after drawing it out makes sense?"
Unlike Namgung Myeong and Hong Geolgae, who were driven by simple curiosity, Dang Mujin paced restlessly.
There was one problem. In Dang Mujin's eyes, Baek Hyang-a looked like a patient.
Baek Hyang-a had been a patient since her days suffering from Blocked Meridians. After consuming the Millennial Ice Crystal, she became an even more severe patient, and now she was a patient teetering on the brink of death.
He had actually felt at ease right after she drew out her True Origin Qi.
It was beyond the realm treatable by medicine, so there was nothing to do if he couldn't heal her. But now, his mind was filled with the thought that maybe, just maybe, he could save her somehow.
'Maybe Hong Geolgae's guess is right, and she didn't actually touch her True Origin Qi. Maybe I can save her.'
The moment he finished the thought, Dang Mujin unleashed his lightness skill even faster toward Baek Hyang-a's direction. Hyun-gong, seeing this, panicked.
"Dang Mujin. Where are you going?"
"Just to check her condition real quick."
"Her condition? Baek Hyang-a?"
"Yeah."
"You last time..."
Hyun-gong glanced at Seolhwa, then sent a transmission to Dang Mujin.
- Didn't you say you killed Baek Hyang-a's father?
- Yeah.
- Does she know?
- Not the details. But she seems to know it's connected to me at least.
Hyun-gong frowned.
- And you're still going to approach her? One slip and you're dead. If it were some regular guy dying, maybe no widow or just one, but if you die now, you'll leave two widows.
- She wasn't hostile last time. It'll be fine this time too.
- No way... Sigh, fine. Fine. Wait. Let's go together. If I'm with you, even if trouble starts, you won't die.
Hyun-gong also sped up his lightness skill to catch up to Dang Mujin.
*
Dang Mujin's group was maintaining a distance of about ten to fifteen li from Baek Hyang-a.
If they decided to catch up, it would be in moments. Dang Mujin and Hyun-gong soon spotted her. A back view wrapped in tiny ice shards, hard to make out with the naked eye.
Dang Mujin approached her side and called out.
"Baek Hyang-a!"
Baek Hyang-a kept flying forward with her lightness skill, turning only her head to look at Dang Mujin.
"What?"
"Your body's not doing well, right? Can I check your condition?"
"No need."
"You know I'm a physician? I can cure most illnesses. At least let me check."
"Who hands their life over to their father's killer?"
"Uh..."
Baek Hyang-a knew that Dang Mujin had killed her father, Baek Chaseo.
She said indifferently.
"I haven't killed you right away because you lost someone as important to you as I did. We're not that close."
Baek Hyang-a knew everything. That Baek Chaseo had commissioned the murder of Goe-ui from Salmak, resulting in Goe-ui's death, and that Dang Mujin had avenged him by killing Baek Chaseo.
But Dang Mujin didn't back down.
"Then how about just some questioning?"
"Questioning?"
"You don't have to let me take your pulse. Just tell me about your condition. You won't refuse that much, right?"
Baek Hyang-a let out a deep sigh before answering.
"What do you want to know?"
"First thing to check: Did you draw out your True Origin Qi?"
"Well, about that..."
Baek Hyang-a began slowly. Dang Mujin thought her gaze seemed to drift slightly away from him.
At the same time, Baek Hyang-a thrust out her snow-white right arm. A motion clearly laced with killing intent.
Dang Mujin reflexively dodged her attack.
Dodging the hand itself was easy, but he felt the sensation of countless small, hard things pummeling his skin. Ice grains that had been frozen by Baek Hyang-a's yin energy and swirled around her body. Of course, the ice grains weren't threatening.
However, Baek Hyang-a's attack wasn't aimed at Dang Mujin to begin with. The target of her right arm was Hyun-gong.
"Watch out!"
Dang Mujin shouted urgently, but no separate warning was needed. Unlike Dang Mujin, Hyun-gong had never let his guard down from the start.
Hyun-gong immediately drew his sword and met Baek Hyang-a's hand with the Taiji Sword.
Scraaaaaape—
A metallic sound rang out between Baek Hyang-a's grasp and Hyun-gong's sword.
Hyun-gong's sword was the one Dang Mujin had made for him. Not particularly crafted with special care, but still a famed sword that could rank in the top ten worldwide by generous measure.
Yet when such a famed sword clashed with her hand, Baek Hyang-a's showed no scratch.
It was astonishing. Even the Three-Eyed Monk, who had devoted his life to external arts, would suffer at least a minor wound from a sword made by Dang Mujin.
And it didn't end with blocking her hand.
Hyun-gong realized his sword-wielding right arm was being eroded by Baek Hyang-a's yin energy. And at an absurdly fast rate.
He felt a sensation like frost forming on his fingers, wrist joint, and elbow. As the tiny ice shards disrupted his joints, excruciating pain hit him.
"Urk!"
Hyun-gong immediately unleashed Wudang's top lightness skill, Cloud-Soaring Step, leaping backward. His form stretched out like a strand of sticky candy.
At the same time, he circulated the Six Yang Heart Method, the Wudang internal art that gathered yang energy the fastest. The intruding yin energy and the yang energy from the Six Yang Heart Method roughly balanced, slowly loosening his joints and easing the pain.
Hyun-gong's back was drenched in cold sweat.
'That was dangerous.'
If he'd been careless, he'd be dead. Even without carelessness, if either Cloud-Soaring Step or Six Yang Heart Method had been a moment slower, he'd have lost his right arm at minimum.
Thanks to his past enlightenment allowing him to use both arts simultaneously, he'd escaped the crisis.
Hyun-gong shouted at Baek Hyang-a.
"Sneak attack? What cowardly nonsense is this!"
But Baek Hyang-a scoffed.
"I didn't attack Dang Mujin because, even though he killed my father, my father greatly contributed to Goe-ui's death. But you? You haven't paid any price."
"Price? What did I do wrong?"
When Hyun-gong protested as if wronged, Baek Hyang-a looked at him with disbelief.
Among Dang Mujin's current group, if she had to pick the one she harbored the deepest grudge against, it was undoubtedly Hyun-gong.
Unlike his friends who had taken up swords out of necessity, Hyun-gong had actively staged the hostage drama, flipping the battle and leading to the death of Mulryangja, who was like a father to her.
"You... No, just die ignorant. You're not worth telling."
Baek Hyang-a charged at Hyun-gong.
Any other warrior might have raised his sword out of pride, but Hyun-gong wasn't one to accept a fight with no gain or no chance of victory.
Thus, he unleashed Cloud-Soaring Step again to widen the distance, then flowed into Yan Qing Eighteen Flights and fled at full speed. With her imbalanced attainment, Baek Hyang-a couldn't catch Hyun-gong's lightness technique.
Baek Hyang-a looked around. Dang Mujin had already vanished.
She let out a deep sigh, then resumed her lightness skill northward.
*
The sun set and the moon rose.
Dang Mujin's group lit a small campfire and chattered nonstop.
"So, Hyun-gong, you approached Baek Hyang-a for no reason and nearly lost an arm?"
"Yeah. You, who meekly became a one-armed man in that crisis. Me, who overcame it and kept both arms. That's the decisive difference between you and me. Get it?"
"Like at the sword debate last time, why not slyly pull out a third arm and attack?"
"Fine. Next time, I will."
Namgung Myeong and Hyun-gong, Hong Geolgae and Seolhwa all laughed and talked before quickly falling asleep.
But Dang Mujin quietly kept watch, confirmed everyone was asleep, and stood up.
Dang Mujin approached Baek Hyang-a.
She sat alone in the darkness without a fire, head buried between her knees, trembling faintly.
To avoid startling her, Dang Mujin asked from a good distance away.
"If you're cold, want me to make a fire?"
Instead of answering, Baek Hyang-a lifted her head and looked at him.
"Why are you here?"
"The talk I tried to have earlier today didn't finish, did it?"
Baek Hyang-a recalled how Dang Mujin had tried to question her condition that afternoon.
Even after all that commotion, the patient was still a patient. Thinking that, she smiled faintly in the darkness.
In a voice much softer than during the day, she asked.
"What do you want to know?"
"How's your condition? Any issues around your shoulders or the back of your neck? Unnecessarily stiff or aching. Or tightness around your solar plexus, like indigestion."
"I drew out my True Origin Qi."
It sounded like a non sequitur at first, but it was the most concise and definitive answer.
Meaning, since she'd die soon anyway, no need to waste effort on pointless treatment.
"So, go back."
Dang Mujin was about to insist on checking her condition anyway but gave up.
In treatment, the physician's skill matters, but the patient's will to live is equally crucial. Yet Baek Hyang-a showed no such will.
Pushing closer here wouldn't be medicine to save the patient—it would just be the physician's ego.
But he didn't want to just leave. So Dang Mujin brought up something unrelated to medicine.
"Then can I ask something else?"
Baek Hyang-a answered readily.
"What?"
"What are you planning to do at the Ice Palace? Raise a blood calamity or something?"
"...No."
In truth, until recently, she had considered causing a bloodbath.
Her chest filled with rage, she had wanted to make a huge scene.
But as always, Baek Hyang-a's radical thoughts didn't last long.
Among those still at the North Sea Ice Palace, there was no one she held a grudge against.
Excluding Palace Lord Sosang and Palace Lord Da-byeok, the people of the North Sea Ice Palace were all kind and good. To the point where she once thought she'd live there forever.
Baek Hyang-a mumbled.
"...I want to clear up the misunderstandings and end my life at the North Sea Ice Palace. Show them I didn't steal and run with the Millennial Ice Crystal and manuals. Return the manuals, and give my body back in place of the Millennial Ice Crystal. I think that's not a bad way to wrap things up."
"You drew out your True Origin Qi for that? Ridiculous."
Dang Mujin couldn't fathom her thinking.
If it was just that, why invite death by drawing out True Origin Qi instead of simply returning to the Ice Palace and living?
Hearing Dang Mujin's response, Baek Hyang-a stared at him intently in the darkness.
Then, suddenly, she burst into laughter.
A high-pitched laugh. But a bit awkward.
Dang Mujin figured it must have been her first laugh in ages.
Probably since Goe-ui and Dang Mujin cured her Blocked Meridians.
Maybe even longer. It's not easy for someone with a chronic illness to laugh.
After laughing for a while, Baek Hyang-a wiped the tears trickling out with her sleeve and said to Dang Mujin.
"You really don't think about anything, do you?"
"...Why curse out of nowhere?"
"Not that kind of talk. It's a compliment, actually."
Baek Hyang-a stretched while sitting, then lay defenselessly on the ground. Perhaps because of the cold weather, the stars shone especially bright.
"You know why Sosang Palace Lord and Da-byeok Palace Lord followed me?"
"Yeah."
"Those two were after my corpse. A bit gruesome, but my body could become an incredible spiritual medicine."
"I know."
"Was my corpse a spiritual medicine only for those two?"
Baek Hyang-a said this while staring straight at Dang Mujin.
Only then did Dang Mujin understand why she had drawn out her True Origin Qi.
Just as Baek Hyang-a's corpse was spiritual medicine to Sosang Palace Lord and Da-byeok Palace Lord, it was spiritual medicine to Dang Mujin's group as well.
In Baek Hyang-a's eyes, Dang Mujin's group was a threat incarnate.
Three super-elites. Two peaks.
They even knew the value of her corpse, and their relationship was somewhat hostile.
To reach the north alive, she had paradoxically embraced death and drawn out her True Origin Qi.
Otherwise, she thought Dang Mujin's group might kill her.
That was the worst outcome she could imagine.
Not only failing to reach the north, but even her death not being her choice.
From birth to life and death, nothing in her life would be her own choice.
Dang Mujin said in a quieter voice.
"...That was a misunderstanding on your part. Our group has some eccentrics, but no one's after your corpse."
"Really? That's a relief."
Baek Hyang-a spoke in a clear voice. But Dang Mujin still felt heavy-hearted.
"I didn't understand your feelings. Sorry about that. You probably didn't want to die like this..."
"It's fine. It wasn't exactly because of you guys that I drew it out."
"Huh?"
"There's someone else after my corpse besides you."
"Who?"
Baek Hyang-a didn't answer, instead gazing at a point in the darkness.
"Speak of the devil."
Dang Mujin also looked where she was staring.
In the darkness, two faint figures appeared.
Coincidentally, both were faces Dang Mujin knew.
The Demonic Cult's Left Protector, Yeon Sa-uk. And Gwang Yeom-ra.
Gwang Yeom-ra raised his hand brightly in greeting to Dang Mujin and Baek Hyang-a.
"Talk about luck. The guy I want to kill and the one I have to kill, together. Everyone doing well?"
Baek Hyang-a whispered to Dang Mujin.
"The Demonic Cult didn't let me go easily."