A Thousand Years or So Should Do It (3)
THUD!
Jin Yigang's elbow slammed into the dirt beside Hwa Mu.
"He's dead."
He brushed the soil from his elbow and rose to his feet.
"So you really don't have any internal energy?"
Gung Yo asked, wearing an expression of pure disbelief.
There had been a stone in the ground right where Jin Yigang's elbow had struck — and he had crushed it flat.
"No internal energy, but there's still some medicine left in me."
"What medicine?"
"Mad Soul Beast Pill."
"An amplification pill?"
"It doesn't just amplify."
"Then what does it do?"
"It also lets me draw on my true primal core."
"That means..."
Gung Yo stared at him steadily.
"We don't need to step in anymore, right?"
Jin Yigang turned his gaze toward the battlefield.
The moment Sama Yucheon and Dok Ji had begun their duel, the others drifted closer to the pair and threw themselves into the fray. Staying bunched up would make it hard to pick off enemies in secret. Better to hide and watch than get spotted and suffer for nothing.
A long time had passed since the fighting started, and though it was nearly over, it remained ferocious to the last. Neither side yielded an inch, both raining down killing blows.
"Gahk!"
With a scream, Sama Yucheon was flung backward.
He scrambled upright and unleashed the Heavenly Scholar's Ten Decisive Arts.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang!
Dok Ji retreated, deflecting each strike with snatched handfuls of ground.
―A withdrawal order has been issued.
The squad leader sent a voice transmission to Sama Yucheon.
―What the hell...
Sama Yucheon looked at him.
―His Majesty has caught wind of our military campaign. An imperial decree commands us to withdraw at once.
―God damn it!
Sama Yucheon glared at Dok Ji.
"I would like to know your name, sir."
"What do you want with my name?"
As Sama Yucheon's murderous aura died away, Dok Ji released his own grip on power as well. It had suddenly struck him that they'd been fighting for no reason either of them could name.
"Because I need a name to seek out later — so I can cut off your head."
"If you want a rematch, come to the Demonic Cult and look for Dok Ji."
"Dok Ji... then you're one of the Nine Demons of the Demonic Cult?"
Sama Yucheon's eyes went wide.
"Consider yourself fortunate."
"...And here I thought a legend would amount to something more. In any case, next time I'll be taking your head — see that you keep it in good condition. Farewell."
Sama Yucheon shot one last glare at Dok Ji, then flung his body into the air behind him. As he departed, the survivors launched themselves after him in a single motion.
"Tend to the wounded."
Dok Ji called out as he turned away.
"Hm?"
Dok Ji's face went rigid.
Far off in the distance, someone stood atop a massive boulder.
"It can't be..."
Dok Ji trembled.
"Impossible. They're..."
His eyes dropped to the base of the rock. Four people stood there.
"W-we're moving out — now!"
Dok Ji bellowed the order and launched himself away.
"E-Elder!"
One of the Demonic Shadows called after him.
"Follow me."
Dok Ji fled as if pursued by demons, and the Demonic Shadows had no choice but to pour after him. When they were gone, only corpses remained where they'd stood. No — not only corpses. There was one wounded man left behind: Bi Geom, who had fallen from the cliff and taken a fatal wound.
When a groan drifted over from somewhere, Jin Yigang walked toward it.
"Tsk."
He clicked his tongue as he looked down at Bi Geom.
It was a miracle the man was still breathing — he was mangled that badly.
"Got any last words?"
At Jin Yigang's question, Bi Geom's eyes opened. Jin Yigang rummaged in his pouch and drew out a single pill.
"Open up."
"W-what is that?"
"A rock over there is all it would take to kill you, old man. This is something to dull the pain."
Bi Geom opened his mouth without a word.
Jin Yigang placed the pill on his tongue. A short while later, as the medicine took hold, Bi Geom looked around from where he lay — and then found Hwa Mu lying dead to one side. He gazed at her in silence.
"Did they leave?"
He turned his head to look at Jin Yigang as he asked.
"Yeah."
Jin Yigang nodded.
"..."
"Wasn't that bastard who ran away your friend?"
"We lived together for over fifty years, so he wasn't a friend. He was family. And yet..."
"...and it turns out that was just in the old man's head."
"True."
"Got any last words?"
"Would you listen if I did?"
"I only asked because I'd listen. Within the limits of what I'm able to do, anyway."
"Take responsibility for that child."
Bi Geom pointed at Hwa Mu with his chin.
"I can't even take responsibility for myself. Who am I supposed to take responsibility for? I can bury her, sure."
"Burying her is included in what I mean by responsibility."
"Who even is this woman?"
"She's my daughter."
That was why Bi Geom had insisted on responsibility — because Hwa Mu was his daughter. Until this campaign began, he had never known she was his child. Before coming here, a letter had arrived from a woman he had briefly lived with forty years ago. In it was written the truth: that he was Hwa Mu's father. He had rushed to find her, and she was already dying of illness. It was from her lips that he confirmed Hwa Mu was his blood.
On the journey here, he had tried again and again to tell her — but the words simply would not leave his mouth. Not ten years, not twenty, but thirty-eight. 'I didn't even know you existed' was no excuse.
Day after day he had put it off, until it came to this. And just now, he had realized that Hwa Mu was not dead. He didn't know precisely what state she was in, but she was unmistakably alive. Which meant he had to save her, whatever it took.
"..."
Jin Yigang stared at Bi Geom in silence.
"Are you cursing me right now?"
"A parent in their right mind doesn't drag their own daughter onto a battlefield. Curse away — I've got a whole barrel of it coming."
"That child doesn't know you're her father."
"You didn't know either?"
"Found out recently."
"And what are you offering me?"
"..."
Bi Geom looked at him quietly.
"You know full well the world isn't a kind place. Why the questions?"
"Meaning there's no such thing as a free lunch?"
"Obviously not."
"Then I'll give you my martial art."
"How old do you think I am?"
"Hard to say. Forty, maybe...?"
"...Do I really look that old?"
"That's why I'm taking Hwa Mu off your hands. If you were younger, I'd never have dreamed of it."
"You son of a—"
Jin Yigang spat out a curse.
"And you keep talking like she's alive. She's dead."
"Either way, all you need to do is keep your word."
"I'll bury her, and now that I know your name, I'll even raise a gravestone. Good enough?"
"Understood. But why so lukewarm about receiving the martial art of Bi Geom, one of the Nine Demons?"
"I'm thirty-two this year."
"Don't lie to me, boy."
"It's true, you old geezer. What would I even stand to gain, lying to a man about to die?"
"Fine. I'll believe you. What does that have to do with anything?"
"I've never once in my life managed to learn a martial art."
It wasn't that Jin Yigang hadn't tried.
Over the past five years he had squeezed out every effort his body allowed. He practiced the internal cultivation method the Jecheon Medical Manor taught him without rest, and he drilled the Five Fists of Shaolin through sleepless nights. But his mind understood while his body refused to follow. Only then did he grasp the truth: to become a true master of the martial arts, you had to forge your body starting from childhood.
"Put simply — even if I trained, this body would cap out at Third-Rate."
"If my martial art displeases you, then I have nothing left to give."
"Is internal energy going to do me any good in the afterlife?"
"You're asking me for internal energy?"
"Burying her is one thing — if it's within my power, I'll avenge her too."
"Avenge her?"
"That bastard abandoned his wounded friend and walked away. He ought to be punished."
"Dok Ji is the Finger of Poison. Before you got within ten paces, you'd be melted to soup by his venom."
"That's exactly why I added the clause 'if it's within my power.' So — are you giving it or not?"
"I'll give it. But once you receive the transfer, you must circulate your energy immediately to make it truly yours. Do you have an internal cultivation method?"
"Picked one up recently, actually."
"Recently?"
"Was reading a book, and it was written on the very last page."
"One of the supreme arts?"
"The name, at least."
"Only the name?"
"It's called the Great Heaven-Earth-Man Myriad Streams Heart Method."
It was the method written at the very back of that thick book titled Third-Rate. He knew little about martial arts, but since even a beginner could grasp it at a glance, it was clearly a foundational technique.
"What a magnificent name."
"I told you, it's just the name."
"Sit me up."
"Can you manage that?"
"Give me one more of your pills and I can."
"The poison's only coated on the surface."
"So you coated it with poison on purpose."
"Poison doesn't work on me. But anyone who steals a bite — well, this is what happens."
Jin Yigang drew his palm smoothly across his own throat.
"Can't you remove the poison from the pills?"
"There's a very simple way."
"And you gave them to me as-is?"
"The old man needs to be able to sit up, doesn't he?"
"So you handed me poison-coated pills to kick my hidden strength into gear."
"That's right."
"Did you study medicine?"
"I spent five years as a Geomseonin at the Jecheon Medical Manor."
"...Give me one."
Jin Yigang pulled out another pill and handed it over. After taking it, Bi Geom drew a book from inside his robe.
"A secret manual?"
"My martial art."
"You carry a martial arts manual around with you?"
"No, I never do. But for some reason, this time I wanted to bring it. I must have foreseen that it would come to this."
"Tsk."
Jin Yigang clicked his tongue.
"Come sit in front of me."
Bi Geom spoke as he leaned himself back against the boulder.
"You said it yourself — a secret manual you can't use is just a painting of a rice cake."
"Then pass it on to my daughter."
"Got it."
"A mountain of internal energy doesn't make someone a master."
Bi Geom spoke as he began pouring his qi into Jin Yigang's Mingmen acupoint. It was his way of answering Jin Yigang's request for internal energy rather than martial technique.
"I'm going to pile up a lot of it."
"Just how much do you intend to amass?"
"A mere thousand years at the bottom of the barrel. If I can manage it, of course."
"You're insane."
"I think so too."
"Do your best, then."
"What's your name?"
"My name?"
"I'm putting up a gravestone."
"Hwa Woong."
"I'm Jin Yigang."
"A fine name."
Bi Geom pushed his internal energy into Jin Yigang.
Jin Yigang immediately began circulating the Great Heaven-Earth-Man Myriad Streams Method. He had no idea how many decades of practice Bi Geom's art represented, but a staggering torrent of internal energy came flooding in.
―There are two ways to store internal energy. One is what most martial artists do: accumulate it in the dantian. The other is to store it in each and every vessel-channel running through the entire body. The strengths and weaknesses of the two are plain to see.
Storing energy in the dantian lets you draw it out in a single burst, saving the time needed to unleash your techniques. The flaw is that unless you have expanded your dantian, an elixir or a sudden stroke of fortune cannot be fully converted into your own power.
The second method — storing energy in the vessel-channels — allows you to contain every last drop even when you receive internal energy all at once, and because it does not rely on the dantian, you can still wield your techniques even if the dantian is destroyed. In exchange, you must draw the energy from each of the three hundred and sixty vessel-channels, which takes an eternity. In other words, before you can finish gathering it, an enemy's strike may already have cut you down. Thirty years stored in the dantian yields considerable force, but thirty years stored in the vessel-channels amounts to almost nothing.
Because it is divided and scattered across three hundred and sixty channels. That is why the channel-storage method was abandoned long ago.
But I had no choice but to use that method — because I entered the martial path after turning thirty. The cultivation method that stores energy in the vessel-channels is called the Great Heaven-Earth-Man Myriad Streams Heart Method. Grand as the name sounds, strip away the character for 'Great' and the phrase 'Myriad Streams,' and you're left with the Heaven-Earth-Man Heart Method.
It's nothing but another name for the Third-Rate Method.
The Great Heaven-Earth-Man Heart Method is a play on words — a Third-Rate method through and through. Whether the energy would actually settle into the vessel-channels, well, that remained to be seen.
"Guess we'll find out in time."
Jin Yigang turned his head.
Bi Geom was slumped against the boulder, his breath already gone.
"What happened here?"
Yu Bong-ji approached and asked.
Shock was written plainly across her face. Jin Yigang and Bi Geom had met for the first time today. And yet Bi Geom had transferred every last drop of his internal energy to Jin Yigang.
Even for a dying man, handing your life's cultivation to a total stranger was, in her eyes, unthinkable.
"I'm just naturally charming, you know. Barely known the old woman for any time at all and we're already close enough that I've had my hands all over her chest."
"Why, you—! Want to die?"
Yu Bong-ji quickly glanced around.
"We made a deal."
"A deal?"
"I agreed to take responsibility for her and bury her properly."
Jin Yigang pointed at Hwa Mu.
"Burying her is just burying her. What's this about 'taking responsibility' for it?"
"He asked me to take responsibility for her, and then he died — so now I'll make absolutely sure she gets buried. That's all."
"She isn't dead."
"...What did you say?"
"She's still alive."
"Then why isn't she getting up?"
"It's not that she won't get up. It's that she can't."
"Her injuries are that bad?"
"Yeah."
"Well then, just dig the grave in advance and have it waiting."