The Downside of Being a Terminally Ill Bastard: Losing All Fear (2)
The Ten-Thousand-Year Son of Heaven, Yeok Bulg-un. Even Jin Yigang knew of him. The Yeok Bulg-un Jin Yigang knew, however, was not a warrior but a king. Between the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States era, there had lived a man who conquered the realm, if only for the briefest moment. He named his nation Cheonjaguk—the Nation of the Son of Heaven—and proclaimed himself its Son of Heaven. Read literally, Cheonjaguk meant "the country of the Son of Heaven, Yeok Bulg-un."
Every emperor who came to rule the Central Plains after him styled himself the Son of Heaven in his wake.
In any case, the nation Yeok Bulg-un founded did not last. He had unified the world before even the First Emperor of Qin, and yet every record of him was erased from history.
He never made it into the official annals, surviving only in books that chronicled unofficial histories, like the Shan Jing.
The title "Son of Heaven" was the sole surviving proof that Cheonjaguk had ever existed at all.
According to the Shan Jing, Yeok Bulg-un was an absolute master who could collapse a mountain with a single gesture and part the sea with a single breath.
He had no shortage of sons and disciples, either. Twenty children by ten wives, and fifty disciples besides.
He granted his children and disciples the title of king. Those kings later became the main players of the Warring States era, and the Central Plains would be swept by two hundred years of relentless war before the First Emperor finally unified them.
In other words, Jin Yigang was reading the words of the very man who had ignited the Warring States era. He turned his gaze back to the wall.
"I have resolved to end my life here."
"Tch!"
Jin Yigang clicked his tongue.
He had been the subject of the most dazzling titles the world could offer—the finest under heaven, the Son of Heaven—and yet in his final years he could not even secure a grave plot. Someone had once told him that how a man died mattered more than how he lived, and only now did Jin Yigang finally grasp what those words meant.
Manse Heavenly King Martial Stream.
"I pride it the supreme martial art under heaven. I have yet to meet my equal through the Manse Heavenly King Martial Stream. Even Heaven can no longer touch me."
Jin Yigang read it calmly and began memorizing the formulas.
Whoosh!
Without warning, a sound of wind came from behind him.
Jin Yigang turned his head. Something was happening to Je Chuyeong's body, which floated in midair. This was the legendary rebirth he had heard of only in stories—a complete transformation of flesh and bone.
"Impressive."
Jin Yigang allowed himself a small smile. There was no way he could pass up a spectacle this rare. He settled in where he stood and watched the rebirth unfold.
It seemed she had begun only moments ago; something dark and sludgy was now sloughing off her body.
Turbid qi—thirty years' worth, accumulated through every inch of her flesh.
Soon a pale radiance began to stream from her, and her hair, along with every other strand of body hair, dropped away. The falling hair dissolved into powder the moment it left her.
Crack! Crack!
Bones knocked against bones, and places all across her body bulged and popped outward, as though something alive were straining to break free of her flesh. Jin Yigang took in every last bit of the mysterious, awe-inspiring sight.
When the rebirth was finished, Je Chuyeong's new body slowly descended toward the ground.
Jin Yigang turned back and peeled away more of the moss.
Once he had stripped it all off, a great deal of writing emerged.
Most of the words carved into the wall were curses directed at Yeok Bulg-un. Alongside the curses, countless martial arts had been inscribed as well. The first of them was the Sky-Collapsing Twelve Strikes—an art that mingled fist technique, footwork, and palm strikes.
"I know all of these movements."
He ran through all twelve strikes in his head, from the first to the last. They grew more intricate as they went, but executing them posed no difficulty.
"The problem is internal energy."
The second art was the Demon King Eighteen Strikes.
It was a pure fist art—nothing but relentless offense, its defining feature being an unbroken barrage from the first strike through the eighteenth.
The third was the Ghost Shadow Dance.
"No matter how mighty your fists or your feet, they are useless if you cannot close the distance to your enemy. The Ghost Shadow Dance is an art of closing in."
"Now that's an art I could genuinely use..."
The Ghost Shadow Dance emphasized footwork over striking. Aside from those three, everything else was either swordsmanship or saber technique. He gave those a rough skim as well.
What he needed most was not any single art, but knowledge of every art there was. Whatever they were, the more he knew, the better.
"Martial arts?"
Je Chuyeong, having finished her qi circulation, came over and asked.
"Yeah."
Jin Yigang nodded.
"Anything useful?"
"For me... eh."
Jin Yigang shrugged. Lacking as he was in knowledge of the martial arts, judging which arts were strong and which were weak was no simple matter.
"Then let me take a look."
Je Chuyeong stepped up to the wall. A moment later she turned to him with a helplessly troubled expression.
"What's wrong?"
"I can't read it."
"Ah—!"
Jin Yigang nodded in understanding. The script carved into the wall was a jumble of archaic clerical script and ancient tadpole script. Without a grounding in tadpole script, deciphering it was impossible.
"I'll read it out for you."
And so Jin Yigang recited the martial formulas aloud. Je Chuyeong listened to his every word with grave concentration. He recited without pause until she had memorized each formula, and somewhere along the way he found that he had committed every art inscribed on the wall to memory as well.
"What do you think?"
Jin Yigang asked.
"The First Heaven Sword Elder Formula and the Subtle Phantom Shadow Spear are worth using. The Sky-Collapsing Twelve Strikes, the Demon King Eighteen Strikes, and the Ghost Shadow Dance could rightfully be called divine arts."
"You memorized the Subtle Phantom Shadow Spear?"
"Yes."
"What about the rest?"
"I couldn't memorize the others."
"I've got all of them up here, so I'll teach you everything on the way out."
"You haven't peeled the moss over there yet, have you?"
Je Chuyeong pointed toward the far wall.
"I was just about to."
Jin Yigang walked over and stripped away the moss.
There was writing carved there as well.
"That was the kind of man he was. When he needed someone, he would kneel before them gladly; when he decided he no longer did, he cut them off without mercy—blood kin included."
"I knew he would betray me one day, and still I stayed at his side. Fighting beside him, conquering the world at his side—nothing in this life had ever been so sweet."
"When the final battle was over, we laughed loud and long, our bodies drenched in our own blood and our enemies'."
"And then we founded a nation."
"He named himself the Son of Heaven."
"He made me kneel, and demanded my loyalty."
"Kneeling was not difficult. I did not do it to save my own life, but for the sake of the people who had followed me."
"Even after all that... something must have made him uneasy, for he slipped arsenic into my food."
"I have no regrets. Never once did I wish to be a king. I only grieve that I can fight no more. Now, one last time, I shall write down the life I lived."
— The Mad Demon Yama King Battle Dance —
He nodded and lowered his gaze. Below the inscription, the formulas of the martial art were written out.
The volume was staggering. The wall stretched some twenty feet wide and seven feet high, and it was crammed edge to edge with small, dense script.
Jin Yigang read it all, calm and unhurried.
It wasn't only the martial formulas. There were passages that truly told of the man's life as well. Even just reading through everything took a fair amount of time.
He read, and read again, until he had memorized all of it.
"Did you say the Mad Demon Yama King?"
Je Chuyeong, who had been listening to his explanation, asked.
"That's right."
"Astonishing."
"Was he famous?"
"He's one of the Five Heavens of Past and Present."
"What sort of men are the Five Heavens of Past and Present?"
"Five men: the Heavenly Demon, the Ten-Thousand-Year, the Yama King, the Imperial Heaven, and the Blood Emperor."
"The Ten-Thousand-Year... would that be the Ten-Thousand-Year Son of Heaven?"
"Yes."
"Then there are two of the Five Heavens of Past and Present inside this place?"
"So it would seem."
"We've stumbled upon an extraordinary piece of fortune."
"Looks like it."
Jin Yigang nodded. Then he looked around the interior with a bitter expression. This might be the fortune of the century for Je Chuyeong, but it was not for him.
Because every single martial art in this place had been created for a warrior with a dantian. They did not suit a fighter who wielded internal energy stored in the blood vessels. It wasn't that he couldn't execute them—rather, their efficiency would be abysmal. It was like wearing someone else's finest silk garments: however splendid the clothes, if they were too large or too small, they never felt like your own.
I'll just use them as reference material.
One thing had improved since he became a terminally ill bastard: his outlook. No matter how dire the situation, he never once complained.
There was no situation worse than being a terminally ill bastard, after all.
"There's probably no other warrior in the entire history of the martial world who's used the arts of two of the Five Heavens of Past and Present as mere reference material."
Jin Yigang smirked.
That said, being a terminally ill bastard wasn't all advantages. There was a drawback, too.
It was that he had lost all capacity for fear.
"Now let's see whether there's another chamber."
Je Chuyeong said.
The two of them pressed deeper into the cavern, examining everything with care.
"Over here, I think."
Jin Yigang pointed at a wall. The spot he indicated was directly beside the wall bearing the Mad Demon Yama King Battle Dance.
"There's a door here."
"That's a door?"
"There's a groove right here, see."
Jin Yigang traced the groove with his finger. It formed a rectangle roughly the size of a door.
"Shall we push it?"
"Hold on."
Jin Yigang rapped the wall here and there. He stopped at the point where the sound rang out ever so slightly hollow.
"That side is the one to push."
Jin Yigang pointed to the left. Je Chuyeong pushed where he had indicated. At first it didn't budge an inch. But the moment she drew up her internal energy, the door ground open with a low rumble.
"Heh heh!"
Je Chuyeong burst into a thoroughly satisfied laugh.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I didn't use even thirty percent of my strength."
"Meaning it'd be hopeless for someone like me?"
"Yes."
"So now I could mow down a thousand mountains and the Five Great Peaks in no time?"
"Of course you could."
Je Chuyeong beamed.
Beyond the stone door, the passage was narrow enough that only a single person could squeeze through at a time. Jin Yigang drew his Blood Thunder umbrella and pressed its edge against the wall, walking along as he scored a line into the stone.
Jin Yigang took the lead with Je Chuyeong behind him. Never once did he lift the umbrella from the wall. Whenever a dead end appeared, he simply drew a line and moved on.
The passages were tangled together like a maze.
There were a few more doors as well, every one of them already destroyed.
"It's a maze."
Je Chuyeong sighed as she spoke, when no matter how far they walked no exit appeared.
"We'll find the exit soon enough."
Jin Yigang kept walking, tracing his line along the wall.
"Does that have something to do with getting out?"
Je Chuyeong asked. He had not once lifted the blade from the wall since the entrance. It occurred to her that it might somehow be connected to escaping this maze.
"It's a method for passing through a maze. As long as you never lift your hand and simply keep going, you're guaranteed to come out the other side eventually."
"I didn't know there was such a method."
"There's something over there."
Jin Yigang pointed at a dark, shapeless object.
"Is there?"
Je Chuyeong advanced the night-glow pearl.
The dark mass was an old corpse. Beside it, what looked like a spear stood upright, planted in the ground.
Jin Yigang planted the Blood Thunder umbrella against the wall and drew near the body.
"Those who poisoned the Son of Heaven came for us. We had no choice but to flee. We carried his weapon all this way, hoping to reach the Son of Heaven... and yet."
Jin Yigang's eyes went to the spear standing beside the corpse. "The Son of Heaven's weapon" seemed to refer to it. He pulled the Blood Thunder umbrella free and gave the spear a light tap.
Claaang!
A sharp, ringing sound rang out.
"Still in fine shape, by the looks of it."
Jin Yigang lifted the spear. It carried a considerable heft.
"Here."
He held it out to Je Chuyeong. She had lost her own spear in the fighting.
"You want me to use it?"
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"Shall we keep going?"
Jin Yigang set off again, scraping the umbrella along the wall. They had walked perhaps another half hour when—
Suddenly, the view opened up before them.