Chapter 1: The Ten-Thousand-Year Son of Heaven, Yeok Bulg-un (1)
"This stone bed is strange too."
Je Chuyeong tilted her head, staring down at the stone bed she'd been lying on until now.
"Strange how?"
"It feels like Yin-Yang Stone."
"You mean the Yin-Yang Stone? The one that radiates warmth in winter and breathes out coolness in summer?"
"Yes."
Je Chuyeong nodded.
Jin Yigang surveyed the interior of the cavern. The walls were coated thick with moss, and beyond that, nothing. The stone bed of Yin-Yang Stone was the only thing the place had to offer.
A Yin-Yang Stone bed and a waterfall. It might be pleasant enough in summer, but come winter this place would turn into a charnel house of cold. If it were meant for brief summer use only, that would be one thing — but living here as a permanent dwelling made no sense at all.
"Perhaps this place was… a final resting spot."
Jin Yigang murmured it half to himself.
"A final resting spot?"
Je Chuyeong narrowed her eyes at him.
"Stopping by for a short rest is one thing, but actually living here? There are far too many inconveniences. There's barely any sign anyone ever lived here, either."
"That's true."
Je Chuyeong nodded. Then a thought occurred to her — lying on the Yin-Yang Stone, gazing at the waterfall while putting one's affairs in order — that didn't sound like such a bad way to go.
"Shall we try peeling off some of this moss?"
Jin Yigang pointed at the wall. Dampness had blanketed it in a thick growth of moss.
"Oh, right — the moss!"
Je Chuyeong cried out.
"What is it?"
"They say Yin-Yang Stone Moss grows around Yin-Yang Stone."
"Really?"
The two of them moved to the side of the stone. The Yin-Yang Stone was broad at the top, tapering as it went down, and they examined the hollowed-out portion near its base.
"There it is."
Je Chuyeong said, breaking into a wide smile.
"That's the Yin-Yang Stone Moss?"
Jin Yigang pointed at the moss clinging densely to the stone.
"Doesn't it look different from what's on the wall over there?"
"Hard to say."
"Pull off a handful and see."
Jin Yigang tore off a clump and held it up to the light. Unlike the moss on the wall, the tips of what he'd peeled away were tinged red and white.
"True Yin-Yang Stone Moss has liquid sealed inside the red orchid and the white orchid."
"These are the red orchids?"
Jin Yigang pointed at the small red fruits. Each one was about the size of a grain of barley — and there were countless of them, clinging in uncountable numbers.
"Yes."
Je Chuyeong nodded.
"Let's see here."
Jin Yigang pressed one of the red fruits. A crimson liquid welled out of it.
"This is a genuine great fortune."
Je Ha-yeong said with a bright laugh.
"What's it good for, exactly?"
"The finest vitality tonic in existence."
"……?"
Jin Yigang stared at her fixedly.
"What?"
"I'm the one who saved your life, aren't I?"
"What's that got to do with anything all of a sudden—"
"I am, right? Tell me I'm wrong."
"Y-yes, you are."
"Then you'll do as I say, won't you?"
"Of course. Anything you want, I'll do it all."
"Don't you dare put your lips on the Yin-Yang Stone Moss."
"……"
"I'm eating all of it."
Jin Yigang lifted the moss in his hand to his mouth.
'Damn it…!'
It was so bitterly, brutally bitter that he nearly swore out loud. But Jin Yigang didn't furrow his brow so much as a hair. He chewed it down, crunching steadily, and honestly, the little pops of the red and white orchids bursting in his mouth weren't unpleasant.
He finished one fistful and tore off another.
"Is it good?"
"Insanely sweet. It's basically honey. Honey."
"Then its life-extending effect will be excellent."
"Life-extending? So you're saying it makes you younger?"
"It doesn't make you younger — it slows aging."
"Younger would be nice, though. I do look a bit old, don't I?"
"Who says that?"
"Bigeol does. Says I look forty."
"I don't think it's quite that bad…"
"So in other words, I look old. That's what you're saying."
"Not to my eyes, you don't. Besides, when Yin-Yang Stone Moss tastes sweet, it has almost no medicinal potency."
"Then what's it supposed to taste like?"
"So bitter you want to spit it out. Then it grants extended life, obviously — and for martial artists it boosts internal energy, and for commoners it promises a long life free of illness."
"How much of an increase in internal energy are we talking?"
"They say you gain at least one full sexagenary cycle's worth."
"Give me some, then."
"Okay."
Je Chuyeong nodded.
"Didn't you say the sweet kind has almost no effect?"
"Sweet means I want to eat more of it."
"How generous of you. Here."
Jin Yigang held out the Yin-Yang Stone Moss.
"Thank you."
Je Chuyeong brought it to her mouth.
'Ugh!'
The moment she chewed, her face twisted. It was so bitter her whole mouth stung.
She glared daggers at Jin Yigang.
"What?"
"This stuff is way too bitter!"
"Mine was sweet, though?"
"Hmph!"
Even shooting glares at him, Je Chuyeong chewed the moss down and swallowed it all.
"Want more?"
"…I'm so bitter I might throw up."
"Your rear did look like it was sitting a little higher, though…"
"Really?"
"Could've been my imagination."
"……"
Glaring at Jin Yigang all the while, Je Chuyeong tore into the stone moss in a daze. Jin Yigang was no different — eating it as if he were competing with her, handful for handful.
It took less than half a shijyeong for every trace of Yin-Yang Stone Moss on the stone to vanish.
"Isn't that juice?"
Jin Yigang pointed at the stone's surface. Where the moss had been stripped away, red and white liquid was trickling downward, seeping off toward somewhere below.
"Looks like it, doesn't it?"
Je Chuyeong nodded.
"Is there any other elixir related to the Yin-Yang Stone Moss?"
"There's Yin-Yang Stone Milk — and the Yin-Yang Stone Clearfish that live inside the milk."
"And their effects…"
"If the stone moss is the earth, then the stone milk and the clearfish would be the sky."
"Push."
Jin Yigang gripped the side of the Yin-Yang Stone.
The two of them shoved. The stone ground slowly along.
Grrrnk!
With a deep, heavy rumble, the Yin-Yang Stone slid aside.
"Whoa—!"
Je Chuyeong let out a gasp. Beneath the stone lay a pool, filled to the brim with liquid of a pale crimson hue.
"Is this the Yin-Yang Stone Milk?"
Jin Yigang asked.
"That's it."
Je Chuyeong nodded, face flushed with excitement.
"Shall we find out just how delicious it is?"
"Yes. You drink first."
Je Chuyeong said.
"Sure."
Jin Yigang plunged his head straight in and drank. The stone milk was less bitter than the moss — no, perhaps only because the moss had been so unbearably bitter, but he could even detect a sweetness in the milk.
As he slurped it down, something like a lump slid into his mouth. It was about the size of his thumb.
"A fish?"
He swallowed it along with the milk without a second thought. Fish or tree root, anything inside the Yin-Yang Stone Milk counted as an elixir. A few more lumps drifted into his mouth after that. About halfway through, he lifted his head.
"Lady Chuyeong's rear is definitely going to ride up after this."
Jin Yigang said, settling into a cross-legged seat.
"Hmph!"
Je Chuyeong shot him a sidelong glare and buried her face in the pool. She too slurped the milk down like someone drinking from a stream.
Watching her for a while, Jin Yigang began circulating his energy.
'Huh?'
Jin Yigang started in surprise.
Something felt as though it was stirring inside his body. When Bigeol had transferred internal energy to him, there had been no sensation like this.
'Does that mean I've accumulated a meaningful amount of internal energy?'
One of the drawbacks of storing energy in the blood channels was that unless the amount reached a meaningful level, you couldn't even feel that you'd cultivated at all. Perhaps that was the greatest drawback of all.
To store a single year's internal energy in each blood channel required three hundred sixty years — six sexagenary cycles — of energy in reserve. Those who stored theirs in the dantian would be hailed as absolute masters with six cycles' worth of power, but for one who stored in the blood channels, that much amounted, in vulgar terms, to barely a knock on the liver's door.
When his circulation finished, he opened his eyes.
Je Chuyeong was circulating her energy atop the Yin-Yang Stone.
'But wait—?'
Jin Yigang tilted his head. Je Chuyeong was completely naked.
'Ah—!'
He nodded to himself in understanding. She must have decided she might undergo a complete rebirth. When rebirth struck, one's clothes crumbled to powder — so if she didn't want to end up wandering around bare, the clothes had to come off in advance.
"Some's left."
There was still Yin-Yang Stone Milk remaining in the pool.
"Mine, then."
He plunged his head in again and slurped down the rest.
'Fish, eh.'
When the milk was gone, a few fish lay stranded on the bottom — about the same size as the ones he'd swallowed earlier.
'Become my medicine, you things.'
He sucked up everything left on the bottom, then crunched through the fish one by one, chewing thoroughly.
"Food really is meant to be chewed. I even feel healthier."
Chewing the clearfish, he scanned the cavern's interior once more.
"My eyes have gotten better too."
Things he hadn't been able to see before were visible now.
"And now…"
Jin Yigang clenched his fist.
He stared at it a moment, then thrust his left foot forward and punched with all his might.
PWA-ANG!
For an instant the air seemed to tear apart, and a dull, thunderous crack burst out.
"Heh."
Jin Yigang snorted a laugh.
This time he hadn't struck his own chest with his left hand. And still, the sound came.
"So the foundation's set now."
He looked at the outstretched fist. Something wavered around it like a heat haze.
"So that's qi, apparently."
It was the first time he'd seen his own. He'd seen other people's plenty of times, of course. But never his own.
"But that's not all of it, is it."
He had the feeling something more lay deeper within the fist — that if he squeezed hard enough, that hidden thing would show itself.
He glared at his right fist and slowly applied force. Power rose up through every blood channel in his body. That power surged rapidly into both arms.
Like something sunk in dark water rising to the surface, the gray sheath enveloping his fist revealed its form.
"The Formless Demon Armor."
Jin Yigang nodded.
The Heaven-Soaring Divine Armor he'd received from the figure standing tall in the underground plaza had finally revealed itself.
It did not emerge past his skin. Just beneath the surface, it shed a gray radiance.
He applied more force.
Nothing changed.
"You don't want to show me any more, is that it?"
Jin Yigang said, glaring at his fist. He had the sense he hadn't seen everything yet, but the Heaven-Soaring Divine Armor didn't budge an inch.
"Must be that my strength falls short. Either way, I'd like to see the rest before I die."
Jin Yigang nodded.
"At least I won't be getting beaten down anywhere now."
He let out a dry chuckle and released his strength. The Formless Demon Armor slid away and vanished, sinking back beneath the water as it were.
"Now, back to what I was doing."
He tore the moss from the walls. Whatever purpose this place had served, if anyone had ever stayed here, he reasoned, they would have left something behind.
As if ages had passed, the moss was a full two chi thick.
His guess proved right.
Words were carved into the cavern wall.
The inscription, too, was written in ancient clerical script.
A rebellion has broken out.
I knew the ambitions of my disciples and those wretched sons of mine ran deep, but never did I imagine they would raise the banner of revolt.
If my presence displeased them, they could simply have walked away.
Instead, these bastards ambushed me.
Those who led the rebellion are surely Ditian the Emperor of Heaven, the Heavenly Demon, and the Blood Emperor.
"Ditian, the Heavenly Demon, the Blood Emperor…"
Jin Yigang tilted his head.
Traveling alongside the martial artists, he'd picked up all manner of stories about the world of murim. One of the tales that had stuck with him concerned the Orthodox Way's Ditian, the Demonic Cult's Heavenly Demon, and the Evil Path's Blood Cult. Yu Bongji had told him most of it — in the old days, the head of the Orthodox Way had been called Ditian, the master of the Demonic Cult the Heavenly Demon, and the head of the Blood Cult the Blood Emperor, and those three together were revered as the founding ancestors of the Central Plains murim. He didn't know who had left this writing, but if it wasn't a lie, then he was reading words left behind by the master of the very people the world called the ancestors of murim.
"Interesting."
Jin Yigang turned his eyes back to the wall.
The place I fled to, escaping those wretches, is this very haven of rest. A haven of rest is where one stays a day or two before one's breath runs out.
Mostly, traitors dwelt here.
I sent countless subordinates to this place, but none ever imagined I myself would come. And my disciples will not believe I hid myself here either. I intended to heal my body here, then go and wipe them from the earth.
Wait for me, you dogs.
My disciples did not seek me out for nothing. My body will not heal.
They did not merely poison me. I wither away day by day. No matter how I circulate my energy, it is useless. My internal power has not diminished in the slightest, and yet my body only grows thinner. These are the symptoms of steady arsenic consumption. I have erased countless enemies with arsenic, so no one knows its nature better than I. In any case, there is no hope of survival.
Now I shall speak my name.
I am Yeok Bulg-un, Emperor of the Son-of-Heaven Nation — the Ten-Thousand-Year Son of Heaven.
"Whoa!"
Jin Yigang barked a laugh.