Hyeonpa's Visit
Meanwhile.
Tang Bi, watching the shadow, frowned.
“How long has it been since I sent word, and you’re only arriving now?”
“My apologies. I tangled my route to move in secret.”
The old man who stepped forward looked nothing like Tang Bi. Profound energy cascaded from his body in a continuous, murmuring flow. More than that—his bearing was elegant, and his features were remarkably kind.
Tang Cheonwi, who had recognized the shadow’s identity at a glance, murmured to himself.
Hyeonpa Jegal Mu. Grand Elder of the Jegal Clan, who rose to the Cheongangyukjwa alongside Grandfather.
He was the grandfather of Jegal Gwang and Jegal Rin.
The past has changed.
It was true that Grandfather and Hyeonpa had often kept company. But Cheonwi himself had seen Hyeonpa only once—when he was ten, and had come to the Tang Clan with Jegal Gwang. After that, never again. Once Jegal Rin died on her way to marry into the Tang Clan, Hyeonpa’s presence had vanished from the jianghu as well.
My guess is he was taken out while trying to avenge his granddaughter.
He examined Hyeonpa’s energy. There was no trace of the Soul-Sealing Extreme Poison. Which meant those bastards—the Guju—had likely moved in person to deal with him.
I can ease the regrets of the past.
Because of him, the Jegal Clan had been destroyed—simply for being tangled up with him. But this life was different. The current of the story had already diverged from the last. For the friend who, even after the Jegal Clan’s fall, had never once blamed him, he would find every last one of the hidden Guju and wipe them out.
While he was thinking that—
“Greet him. This is your grandfather’s sworn younger brother.”
“Tang Cheonwi pays his respects to Elder Hyeonpa.”
Jegal Mu looked considerably startled.
“You remember me?”
“You look so much like Gwang—how could I forget?”
“Ahem. I’m a little handsomer than Gwang, aren’t I? Right?”
At Jegal Mu’s joke, the Blood Elder beside him gave a sharp rebuke.
“Cheonwi is a busy man. Spare us the nonsense.”
“Blood Elder Hyung’s personality is still the same. You’re old enough now—isn’t it time you killed off that rotten temper?”
“Shall I refresh your memory of the old days?”
“Ahem. Can’t take a joke?”
Jegal Mu tucked his tail at once. How many martial artists in the entire jianghu could treat this old man that way? They could be counted on one hand—and one of them was the Blood Elder. The Yin Elder was no different.
“Heh heh. Mu, why open your mouth and invite a beating?”
Jegal Mu was nothing like the image known to the jianghu. Not the dignified, refined old scholar, but an endlessly lighthearted old man who loved a joke.
He leaned in and whispered into the Yin Elder’s ear.
“Sauk, do you live under their thumb every single day?”
“Need you ask. Those two old men’s personalities grow more vicious by the day.”
“Even Elder Choun?”
“Don’t even start. If I stop them from running poison experiments on my body, he makes my life worse than those two hyungs combined.”
“They say the older brother right above you is always the scariest… It’s a relief that in my house I’m the eldest adult.”
“I envy you, Mu.”
The Yin Elder complained under his breath. The two of them were close friends—inseparable companions.
Toward the whispering pair, the Blood Elder bellowed.
“I can hear every word, you bastards!”
“Eek!”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
The Yin Elder immediately washed his hands of the whole affair.
“We grandfathers have matters to discuss. Cheonwi, you may go.”
At Grandfather’s words, he nodded.
“Then may I step outside for a while?”
“Go ahead.”
Grandfather gave ready permission.
“Thank you.”
After greeting the grandfathers, he left the Poison Forest Valley.
Watching his vanished grandson, Tang Bi asked,
“What is your impression of Cheonwi?”
“My divination seems to have been correct. A destiny of slaughter—and one in which the blood will never dry. When I saw him before, it was nothing like this…”
“That is why I mean to marry him to your granddaughter.”
“Rin may have been born under the Purple Star’s destiny, but she is still only a candidate. You hyungs know this as well as I do.”
Many children were born carrying the aura of the Purple Star. Most of them lost that light along the way.
“Which is why I intend to gather every Purple Star around Cheonwi.”
The Purple Star and the Heavenly Killing Star were opposing constellations. Yet if the right bonds were forged, the Purple Star could transform into the star that restrained the Heavenly Killing Star. That was the point Tang Bi was aiming for.
“Restraining that child will not be easy. And the Young Heavenly Demon of the Demonic Cult is also a Purple Star candidate, is he not?”
“We can only pray it isn’t that one. Who else among the Orthodox and Unorthodox factions counts as a Purple Star candidate?”
“Namgung Sohee, the Sword Saint’s eldest granddaughter, and Paeng Haewon, the youngest granddaughter of the Blade Saint.”
“A small mercy. At least they are the descendants of people we know.”
Jegal Mu spoke carefully.
“Aren’t those all people who find Tang Hyung… difficult?”
“Ancient history. You think they still hold a grudge?”
The Yin Elder muttered to himself off to the side.
“Easy for the one who did the hitting to say. The ones who got hit remember it forever.”
The Blood Elder jabbed him.
“Say it properly to Hyung.”
“Ah—no, nothing.”
Speak up and die on the spot. The Yin Elder sealed his mouth.
Fortunately, Tang Bi simply continued.
“Among the Purple Star candidates, any boys?”
“Wudang and Mount Hua have some, but they fall short as true candidates.”
“So the ones you named are all of them?”
“There is one more—in your own household, Hyung. The most promising of all the Purple Star candidates.”
“The boy who follows his older brother so closely…”
Tang Bi’s worry ran deep. His second grandson loved his elder brother—but he also loved the Tang Clan. With that boy’s nature, if forced to choose between his brother and the clan, he would try to hold both. And if that happened, the Tang Clan would set foot on the road to ruin.
That was the future Jegal Mu had seen.
While the old men’s concerns deepened, Tang Cheonwi arrived at the Poison Dragon Pavilion.
Late evening. Lamps burned throughout the Poison Dragon Pavilion. On the training ground, Tang Jo and the Armryongdae were pouring everything into their practice.
“Hup!”
Footwork flowing light as smoke. They were running the Mist-Cloud Step in a single breath—keeping weight off the ground as much as possible, focusing on the balance of the toes, moving without a sound.
“If you put every nerve into your feet, the muscles tense and you make more noise, not less.”
At the unexpected voice, Tang Jo stopped training cold.
“Who’s there!”
Everyone went on guard. The shadow stepping out of the dark made them jump.
“Young Master?”
“Weren’t you under a three-month sentence in the Poison Forest Valley?”
“How did you get here?”
They all lowered their voices and scanned the surroundings. Choeun, who had been watching the residence, was already at his side without anyone noticing when she arrived.
“I came because I have something for you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve roughly settled the Six Poison Heart Formula into your bodies, so let’s move to the next stage quickly.”
At the words “next stage,” Tang Jo and the Armryongdae’s eyes lit up. Until now they had trained the Six Poison Heart Formula and their existing arts to death. Hadn’t the Young Master said they would advance once they reached a level that satisfied him? That moment was now.
“The arts you’ll learn are the Three Yang Finger, the Three Yang Hand, and the Three Yang Divine Palm.”
“Wha—?!”
“Th-the Three Yang arts?!”
“Those are taught only to the direct line—”
“They aren’t arts we are permitted to learn.”
Tang Jo and the Armryongdae recoiled in shock. The Three Yang arts were core techniques even within the Tang Clan—impossible to learn unless one held a high station. Clan law had set it so. Even the Young Master touching the Three Yang arts would be a violation of that law.
“I already got Father’s permission, so stop worrying.”
“Th-the Clan Lord permitted it?!”
“Then… the promise you made us—it was these Three Yang arts?”
When Tang Cheonwi smiled, Tang Jo’s legs nearly gave out. To learn the highest-level arts was every martial artist’s dream—and the Young Master was handing them over as if it were nothing. Twice over, no less.
“Father will notice I’ve slipped out soon enough. We don’t have time, so I’ll give a short demonstration. Eyes wide. Watch carefully.”
Tang Jo and the Armryongdae formed ranks and sat. Choeun drifted naturally to the side as well. After experiencing the Six Poison Heart Formula, her thinking had changed. She had believed the Tang Clan’s sword arts and hidden weapons were the pinnacle—but all of that had been false. The Tang Clan’s true strength lay in the Poison Arts. The Six Poison Heart Formula was an internal method that allowed even ordinary people to wield poison arts safely. If he would give them something like that, then the Three Yang arts would be no different.
“First—the Three Yang Finger.”
The entry art of the Three Yang lineage. A finger technique that gathered yang energy at the fingertips to pierce, press, and dig.
Tang Cheonwi’s finger flushed a deep red—and drove forward.
Hisssss—!
Heat shimmer rose from the empty air he had pierced.
He flicked his finger at once—
Thud-thud-thud!
Heat shot from his fingertip and hammered the wooden training dummies. Nothing visible happened. Yang Flame Needle Point was a technique that paralyzed an enemy’s acupoints to subdue them.
What came next was the essence of the Three Yang Finger.
At last, ten threads of energy flew toward ten wooden dummies.
At a glance it looked identical to the second form, Yang Flame Needle Point. A moment later, the change arrived. Fissures spidered across the still dummies—
BOOM!
—and they all burst into dozens of fragments at once.
“Ah…”
Tang Jo and the Armryongdae’s mouths fell open. This was not the Three Yang Finger they had known.
“No time for awe. Next is the Three Yang Hand.”
If the Three Yang Finger was the entry, the Three Yang Hand was the intermediate stage—an art that used the entire hand rather than the fingers. Crushing, severing, refracting. Attacks that reshaped form itself. Built on ferocious yang force, it seized the advantage in close combat.
A palm saturated with yang energy smashed the wooden dummy’s arm and ribs.
CRACK!
He shaped a blade with the edge of his hand and tore through empty air—
SHUNK!
Hand-qi like sword-qi flew out and cut a wooden dummy clean in half.
Before anyone noticed, a black-iron dummy stood before him. He drove his palm straight into its abdomen.
Between abdomen and palm, a vast surge of yang energy was sucked into the black-iron dummy—
CRUNCH-SCREECH!
—and with a grotesque metallic scream the black-iron dummy warped into a twisted wreck.
“That’s… the Three Yang Hand?”
“Wooden dummies are one thing, but destroying a black-iron dummy isn’t easy…”
“So this is what a proper Three Yang Hand looks like…”
The Three Yang Finger and Three Yang Hand had been considered the Tang Clan’s highest-grade supporting arts—difficult to learn, and weaker in destructive power than the sword arts. What Tang Cheonwi had just shown was not the arts they knew. He had not even seemed to use that much internal energy, yet the destructive force was overwhelming.
They waited for the next art. It would be the true essence of the Three Yang lineage—the Three Yang Divine Palm.
They were disappointed almost at once.
“Once you’ve mastered the Three Yang Finger and the Three Yang Hand, I’ll teach you the Three Yang Divine Palm. Work hard until then.”
In other words—he intended to teach them the entire Three Yang lineage.
Wiping the disappointment from his face, Tang Jo answered with firm resolve.
“We will not disappoint you, Young Master.”
“I’ll be expecting it. Choeun—go to the pavilion library, bring the Three Yang manuals, and review them.”
“I’ll fetch them at once.”
She moved off with a flush of color on her face. What Tang Cheonwi had demonstrated was a Three Yang lineage of an entirely different caliber. For the first time she understood the true face of the arts she had once looked down on.
“I have to head back. Keep working hard.”
He had appeared without warning and vanished like the wind. On the faces of Tang Jo and the Armryongdae, pure exhilaration shone.
“The Young Master is a benefactor to us.”
“For the Young Master, I’d jump into a fire.”
“I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Loyalty to Tang Cheonwi came as a bonus.