The Venom Demon frowned.
“Hey now, what’s with the dramatic pause? Out with it.”
The Medicine Immortal spoke mildly, but he was just as curious.
“So how did your body react?”
Jin Sohan shook his head slowly, as if peering back at a distant memory.
“I slept for three days straight. I had a very long dream. I don’t remember it, but they said I kept talking in my sleep the whole time. On the third day, I woke up and my body felt unbelievably light. That was it. I wasn’t hungry, and my energy was overflowing. Because I sleep-talked for three days, the troupe gave me a new nickname—Dream Kid.”
“How old were you then?”
“Thirteen.”
The Medicine Immortal praised him openly.
“Impressive. Well done.”
The Venom Demon, on the other hand, still looked half-skeptical as he smiled.
“It was entertaining. Your Divine Art of Lies grows deeper by the day.”
It was his way of saying he’d decided to believe it purely because the story was good. And of course it was: Jin Sohan knew exactly what kind of tales his masters liked.
He answered carefully.
“Thank you, Master…”
Whenever Jin Sohan used his Divine Art of Lies, he stayed completely serious. No matter how absurd the story, the teller’s gravity was what mattered most. The details might be flimsy, but the Demon-Immortal never cared.
The whole thing was a game between the three of them.
He was, after all, a former performer. The way he moved his hands, the cadence of his words, the pitch of his voice—he’d trained all of that from childhood. He could make his lies feel like real memories.
While his two masters were laughing and enjoying themselves, Jin Sohan suddenly put both hands on the floor and bowed his head, then launched his follow-up attack in the most solemn tone they’d ever heard from him.
“The truth is… everything I just told you…”
“…”
“Was all true.”
The Venom Demon snorted at his earnest voice.
“Who said it wasn’t?”
The Medicine Immortal nodded.
“Of course it’s true. I’ve always believed you.”
Jin Sohan nodded back.
“It isn’t a lie. The year after that, the two of you came to the performance grounds and scattered Drunken Dream Powder over the crowd.”
“We did. It wasn’t a poison that harms the body. We merely wanted to test it on a large group at once.”
“I know. Either way, that day I was the only one left standing, not poisoned, and that’s how I came to meet you both. Thanks to that, I ended up here at the Demon-Immortal Pavilion, receiving an enormous debt of grace from my masters.”
The Venom Demon burst out laughing.
“And why didn’t you tell us this until now?”
“Because the story was too far-fetched. You wouldn’t have believed me. And if you’d decided my body could withstand basic poisons from the start, you’d have used far stronger ones on me from the beginning. I was… afraid of that.”
The Venom Demon laid a hand on his disciple’s shoulder, sounding almost impressed.
“Hm… Careful and calculating. Not bad.”
“I’m sorry. And in any case, for this descent… no, for this trip home, I’d already guessed you would grant permission. That’s why I decided to confess everything now.”
The Venom Demon asked:
“And what made you so sure we’d say yes?”
“Because you’re both out of ingredients at the same time. Usually, when one of you runs out, you take turns going down into the martial world to resupply, don’t you? But this time, you both need to go. While you’re out gathering herbs and toxic materials, I thought I might slip home and back as well. That’s what I’m asking for.”
“I see. You certainly took the long way around to say it.”
“Well, it is my first time leaving the mountain.”
The Venom Demon and the Medicine Immortal both nodded.
Thinking about it, Jin Sohan’s recovery ability really was too uncanny to chalk up to mere talent. The Medicine Immortal’s skill was extraordinary, yes—but to endure the Venom Demon’s poisons for over ten years with a single mortal body was astounding. And even as a child, he’d stood unharmed in the midst of Drunken Dream Powder—a drug that forced even top experts to circulate their inner energy just to stay conscious.
And that wasn’t all.
The Medicine Immortal’s treatments worked on Jin Sohan almost unnaturally well. To a man of poison and a man of medicine both, Jin Sohan’s body was something heaven-sent. Strangely enough, neither master tried to dig deeper into whether the story of the peach tree and the two-headed serpent was true.
They simply let it sit as it was.
Their eyes met for a moment.
So it’s farewell, then.
It has to be.
They’d already decided to let him go from the start; this was just how their reluctance chose to show itself. They were not men who could easily voice their hearts.
*****
The Venom Demon spoke in a flat tone.
“I liked the story. Before you go down the mountain…”
“Yes.”
He set two blades on the table.
“Take Twin Moon. They’re yours now.”
They were mid-length sabers, each longer than Jin Sohan’s forearm. Thin, like crescent moons. If you joined them at the ends of the hilts, they became a single, strange moon-blade—longer than any standard longsword.
They were the weapons the Venom Demon had once used in his youth—and of course, Jin Sohan could use them just as well.
He shook his head.
“I can’t accept these.”
The Venom Demon snorted.
“I’ve no use for them. I haven’t wielded them in ages. And as you know, those aren’t the only weapons I own…”
If poison was his greatest love, then his second was collecting weapons.
That was why he could give them away like this.
He repeated himself.
“In your hands, they’ll be of more use than in mine. Stop arguing and take them.”
The Venom Demon loathed repeating himself, so Jin Sohan could no longer refuse.
“…Yes. Then I’ll make good use of them.”
The Medicine Immortal held out his own folding fan.
“Take the White Fan as well.”
He’d never had any attachment to weapons to begin with. His affection was reserved for herbs, tea, sweets and tea sets, paintings and the like.
Jin Sohan was secretly delighted.
“Yes. Thank you.”
His favorite weapon had always been the Medicine Immortal’s White Fan.
Then the Venom Demon fished out a small wooden case from his robe.
“And take these Black Silk Needles. You’ll find plenty of chances to use them.”
“Yes, Master.”
From the Medicine Immortal’s robe came more: antidotes, salves for cuts, and a thick pouch of travel money. As Jin Sohan’s departure into the martial world became real, their worry finally started to show. Maybe it was because he was both their first disciple and their last.
At the beginning, they hadn’t seen him as a disciple at all, but as a test subject. Somewhere along the line, that test subject had become a disciple… and now, something like an adopted son.
The Medicine Immortal sighed.
“Sohan.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what the Venom Demon thinks, but… I’ve supported your leaving from the very beginning. Surviving twelve years under us is a miracle in itself. Keeping you any longer would be cruel. Let me nag you just once more.”
“Yes, Master.”
“The unorthodox bastards—whether they’re kind on the surface, sly, or just weak—you have to be constantly on your guard around them. They’re all crazy in their own way.”
Jin Sohan straightened his posture and bowed his head.
“I understand.”
But the Medicine Immortal wasn’t finished.
“And you have to be careful with the orthodox ones, too. They’re stubbornly crazy.”
Jin Sohan fought down a laugh.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The Medicine Immortal nodded and went on.
“And living in the martial world, you’ll eventually run into demonic cultists as well.”
“Yes.”
“Be especially careful with that lot. They’re a little different from the unorthodox or the orthodox. Just think of them as… simply crazy.”
“Yes, I’ll remember that.”
Once his lecture finally ended, the Venom Demon took over.
“We three have hidden away here together for more than ten years.”
“That’s right.”
“In that time, who knows what kind of experts have appeared in the world. The path to the peak is long and rough. Once you reach the martial world, you’ll have to figure out exactly where you stand and move carefully. Still, you’ve taken plenty of beatings here. I trust you’ll adapt.”
“Yes, don’t worry about me.”
From the start, both masters had known that once Jin Sohan left, he would never return—and they had no desire to hold that against him. That simply wasn’t in their nature.
The Venom Demon nodded.
“Go. Do well. Guard the back of your neck.”
The words carried a lot of weight. They sounded like: Don’t shame your master’s name. They also sounded like: Take care of anyone who gets in your way. But “guard the back of your neck” itself was ambiguous, like there was some private meaning tucked inside.
Jin Sohan lowered his head, turning the phrase over in his mind.
“Yes.”
The Medicine Immortal smiled faintly.
“I’ll hear of you through the reputation you carve into the martial world.”
Realizing at last that his masters’ nagging had come to an end, Jin Sohan smiled.
“Yes, Master.”
He met their eyes, holding the gaze of the two men he would be parting from for some time.
The Demon-Immortal said nothing more.
In its own very them way, the farewell ended just like that, and a slightly dazed Jin Sohan hurried to bow deeply.
The time had truly come to leave his masters and return home. What he felt, against his expectations, was a bittersweet kind of relief.
Jin Sohan set out for his hometown—back into the Unorthodox Faction’s lands.