For Meat, Nothing Beats... (2)
The Sword Immortal Wijimanseung, the Saber Immortal Geuk Myeongyang, and the Fist Immortal Tak Cheondo — these three had been active around the same era as the Absolute Five Venerables. But while the Absolute Five had burned bright and vanished after a brief flourish, these three kept on going, and as the years piled up, they earned the title of the Three Immortals Beyond Heaven.
And it wasn't just one of them. All three were hurtling toward this shore.
"What about diving in and swimming across?"
Mak Hong said.
"If those old men get riled up, they might start flinging their martial arts around like mad. Everyone standing here would get hurt. We haven't even made it into the Invincible Fist King Land yet — getting injured now would be a waste."
"Then what?"
"I'll take one hit and fall back."
"Excuse me?"
"It's a mad rush right now, so they won't stop to check anything — they'll just plow through. Mak Dae-hyeop, you and I pretend we don't know each other and just go. Once those old men have passed, I'll catch up with you."
"Leaving you behind like that... it'd sit on my conscience."
Na Seokjin said.
"If you feel guilty, make it up to my father when you get back to the Jecheon Physician Clan."
"Understood."
By then the raft had arrived, and the wandering warriors and Jecheon Physician Clan fighters quickly jumped off and scattered.
"Let's see what you've got."
Jin Yigang kicked off the raft's deck with all his strength.
His body shot up toward the Three Immortals Beyond Heaven.
The most hot-headed of the three, the Fist Immortal Tak Cheondo, immediately thrust a fist at him.
A fist-gang wreathed in jet-black radiance hurtled at Jin Yigang. He swung his left fist without the slightest hesitation.
WHAM!
The instant his fist met the gang, he slackened just the right amount of the force riding his arm, and his body spun in place like a top. The moment the whirling blur of his body faced front again, his right arm lashed out and hurled a stone. The stone's original speed, layered with the momentum of his spin, made it invisible to the naked eye.
"Guh—!"
Tak Cheondo's eyes went wide with alarm.
It had never once crossed his mind that the boy might throw something. And it was far too fast to see, from far too close.
The instant the stone reached his face, a dark crimson aura converged over Tak Cheondo's features.
CRACK!
"GAAAH!"
A scream tore out of Tak Cheondo's mouth.
His protective gang-qi had failed to stop the stone completely, and it had smashed square into his mouth. His teeth were clenched, but no teeth could survive an impact like a sledgehammer swing. Several upper and lower teeth snapped — a small massacre in his own mouth.
"Ga—lh!"
He had tried to shout gal — 'take that' — but the broken teeth garbled it into nonsense.
Out of his mind with fury, Tak Cheondo hauled up every ounce of his inner power and thrust out a fist.
BOOM!
"KYAAAAAAARGH!"
Jin Yigang shrieked a hideous scream and was hammered into the lake's surface.
SPLASH!
The three Immortals Beyond Heaven stood poised to strike, staring at the water. The moment Jin Yigang surfaced, they intended to attack. But a long while passed, and he never came up.
"Looks like the boy's dead."
The Sword Immortal Wijimanseung said.
"So it seems."
The Fist Immortal Tak Cheondo nodded, yet his eyes never left the water. It didn't sit right with him. He had fought countless battles in his long life; the feel of a blow alone could tell him whether an enemy was dead or merely wounded.
But the sensation just now was hard to describe. It felt certain, and yet something about it nagged at him.
And that scream just before the fall...
It had sounded almost like someone snarling, 'Don't make me laugh, you old bastard...'
A long time passed, but Jin Yigang did not surface. In the end, Tak Cheondo left the spot with that unease still lodged in his chest.
Meanwhile, the Jin Yigang who had plunged into the water was clinging to the cliff face, biding his time for a chance to slip away.
'What is this, a hot spring? Why is the water so warm?'
Jin Yigang was puzzled. The water was warm, as if he'd slipped into a bath.
'Warm's fine by me, though.'
Unable to hold his breath any longer, he climbed slowly, hand over hand, along the rock wall.
'Huh?'
Jin Yigang's eyes widened as he neared the surface. Right where the water met the cliff, there was a cave — mostly submerged, with only its upper rim breaking the surface.
'Might as well have a look.'
Jin Yigang slipped inside at once. The cave was swallowed in utter darkness; he couldn't see a hand in front of his face.
'Good thing I brought it along.'
He drew out the Luminous Pearl Lantern Je Ha-yeong had given him and raised its glow. It took no time at all to realize this was no ordinary cave — the hand of man was all over it.
"So it's safe to go in, then."
Jin Yigang pressed deeper.
He turned right once, then left again, and finally a new space opened before him.
It was a stone chamber, with stairs leading up out of the water. He climbed up, stripped off his clothes, wrung them dry, dressed again, and surveyed the interior. Unlike the narrow passage he'd crawled through, this place was quite spacious — nearly ten jang across, with the stone chamber taking up about three jang and the rest all water.
"Looks like someone swam for pleasure here. Or went boating. Either way...!"
Holding up the lantern, Jin Yigang searched for a passage. Before long he found a doorway and stepped through. What lay beyond was not a passage but another stone chamber entirely.
"Hm!"
Jin Yigang's gaze went to the corner of the chamber. There sat a corpse in the lotus position.
He approached it and shone the lantern light over the body.
"Dressed in ancient garb and still unrotted — you must have been a tremendous master. Who might you have been, good sir?"
I am Dam Dae-gyeong, the Fist King.
How foolish I was, to place my faith in that man Jecheon.
If there is any mercy in my fate, it is that I smuggled my family to safety first. Now I may face him with a heart unburdened.
— Jecheon was mighty, as I knew he would be.
Let no one plead that poison robbed me of my strength. I was defeated, and here I die.
If you are my heir, take the inner core from my dantian. And destroy that wretch Jecheon. Bind my core to your own inner power and learn the Red King Heavenly Emperor Dance, and you shall have strength enough to end him.
"Jecheon... one of the Five Heavens of Past and Present. So you lived in the same era as the Five Kings, then. Well then..."
Jin Yigang stepped up to the corpse.
The man was telling him to take the inner core. There was no reason on earth to refuse. When he brushed the body lightly, it crumbled into powder and collapsed in a heap.
He carefully swept the powder aside, and something odd-shaped emerged. It looked, of all things, like a mushroom.
'No way...'
Then he remembered something he'd once read in a book.
A spirit creature of several thousand years forms an inner core within its body. That core is the elixir of elixirs. One who consumes it will rise from a deathbed as if waking from sleep; the common man gains long life free of illness, and the martial artist becomes an absolute master. But the spirit creature that formed the core, too, must in the end die.
The core that remains absorbs the creature's stored essence and the vital energy of its surroundings for thousands of years, taking the shape of a mushroom — this is called the Ten Thousand Years Limitless Essence Fungus. Its potency surpasses that of an inner core many times over.
Astoundingly, the Fist King's inner core had become a Ten Thousand Years Limitless Essence Fungus.
"This is the kind of thing you never, ever refuse."
Jin Yigang picked up the fungus at once and brought it to his mouth.
"Tastes exactly... like a mushroom."
The fungus melted almost instantly into liquid and slid down his throat.
"Now, then. Time for the Third-Rate Cultivation Method."
He sat in the lotus position where he stood and began running the Great Heaven-and-Earth Flowing Universe Art.
'Hm?'
Jin Yigang's eyes widened slightly. The fungus carried more than the mere energy of a spiritual elixir.
He sensed something terribly familiar.
An energy strikingly like the things he had been swallowing on a regular basis for the past five years.
It was—
'Poison.'
Then it came back to him: the Fist King Dam Dae-gyeong had been defeated and had fled here. With Jecheon sure to hunt him down, announcing to the world that an inner core sat inside his own body would have been a fool's move.
Most likely he had turned his core into poison — a poisoned lure — hoping to destroy Jecheon with it.
'Well, I've got one of those myself, friend. Not an inner core — a tumor.'
Not that it mattered if he'd planted something even more dreadful than poison inside himself.
Because nothing in this world was scarier than a terminally ill bastard.
He could feel the energy of the inner core settling into every meridian of his body.
Before long, Jin Yigang opened his eyes.
Even the trap Dam Dae-gyeong had laid to catch Jecheon could do nothing to him.
"Shall we have a look at this Red King Heavenly Emperor Dance, then?"
Jin Yigang pushed the powder aside. Where Dam Dae-gyeong had sat in meditation, writing appeared. It was the Red King Heavenly Emperor Dance the Fist King had spoken of.
The characters were so small that without the lantern he never could have read them.
"I owe Je Ha-yeong a proper thank-you."
Tilting the lantern to light the floor, he memorized the forms line by line. When the memorization was done, he sat cross-legged with his eyes closed and sank into thought. The Red King Heavenly Emperor Dance, too, could only ever serve him as reference material. It would be lovely if his dantian developed, but with less than a year left to live, expecting such a thing was a fantasy.
He leaned back against the wall and let the art steep in his mind. Going over it from first line to last took half a shichen. Then he opened his eyes, looked down at his right hand, and drew up his inner power. The Heaven-Covering Divine Shell, sunken until now, slowly surfaced — first wrapping his fist, then emerging fully outside the skin rather than beneath it.
"If this is all there is, nobody would call it the Shadowless Demon Beast."
Jin Yigang had paid more attention to the word demon beast than to shadowless. There would have been no reason to call an ordinary fist a demon beast.
This time he clenched the fist hard.
The Heaven-Covering Divine Shell changed. Tiny spikes sprouted across its surface.
They were short, but they radiated something vicious — like a porcupine with every quill raised.
Holding his palm flat in that state, he scraped it across the writing Dam Dae-gyeong had left. The stone floor shaved away, and the characters vanished with it.
"Nice."
He smiled faintly and wiped away the words carved into the wall as well. He hadn't even pressed hard — just pushed lightly, the way you'd brush dust off with a palm.
"One pat on the head, and your scalp would come off in one clean piece."
He shuddered and released his power. The Heaven-Covering Divine Shell sank back beneath his skin.
"So. What now?"
he muttered, leaning against the wall.
"Nothing in here I need. Let's get out."
Decision made, he dove straight back into the water.
Leaving the cave behind, he swam across the lake.
Shaking the water off, he headed for his own grotto, gathering a generous armful of branches on the way.
The moment he stepped inside, he got a fire going first.
Once the flames caught, he fed in more wood. He stood logs upright around the fire, stripped off his soaked clothes, wrung them, and hung them to dry. Then he fetched the box, pulled out the wild boar meat he'd stored inside, and hung it over the flames like laundry.
"Let's see... the Earthly Nourishing Pill..."
He fished a pill out of the box, gave it a sniff, and popped it into his mouth. Chewing idly, he turned the meat. Soon fat began to sizzle and drip, and he sprinkled salt over it in a fine shower.
Roasting meat needs nothing else. A pinch of roasted salt is plenty.
"Roasted meat demands white liquor. Nothing else will do."
He pulled a bottle from the box. Mootae liquor, tucked away from the Boowoo Guesthouse. Mootae was a top-tier white liquor — sorghum fermented with yeast, distilled for ten months, sealed in jars, and aged at least three years.
At fifty to sixty percent alcohol, it was brutal stuff. The owner of the Boowoo Guesthouse had diluted its proof to half with his own secret method, and the difference in taste from true Mootae was nearly imperceptible.
"One drink to start."
He tipped the bottle to his lips and took a long swallow.
"HAH! Now that's the stuff!"
Gripping the skewer of meat, he tore off a bite. The salty, nutty meat and the Mootae were a match made in heaven. Just two ingredients, and fireworks went off in his mouth. Before he knew it, the meat and a whole bottle of Mootae had evaporated into nothing.
"A shame."
Feeding more wood to the fire, he looked back into the box. Full of regret, and no meat left. It was then that a small box rolling around in one corner caught his eye. Inside were fishing hooks, line, and sinkers.
Things he'd used back in the day, cramming for the examinations.
"Time to catch some fish, then."
Box in one hand and a weed hoe in the other, he stepped out of the grotto. The weather was rather chilly, but he didn't feel the cold at all.
"At last, I've become a caveman."
He grinned and started toward the lake.
"First, I need to dig up some wor—"
Swish!
He leaned his upper body to the right and shot out his left hand, catching something. Gripped in his hand was a half-span dagger.
Jin Yigang turned around.
Some twenty-odd men were staring at him from the shore.
"And that's my problem, why?"
Jin Yigang asked, pointing at himself.
"I don't know who you are. But I know you're a man who has to die."
answered the man standing at their center.