The Woo Sword Vies for Supremacy
The Quanzhen Sect was a school that could be called the origin of all Daoist schools under heaven.
Though it had declined to the point where few even knew someone still carried on its lineage, it held within it a deep history and countless secret teachings.
The Quanzhen Sect had not fallen because its teachings were lacking—rather, the opposite. They were too deep and too vast.
The immense body of knowledge the Quanzhen Sect had built over generations was by no means easy to master.
Moreover, instead of being passed down in a single line, the teachings had splintered into numerous branches, and the complete teachings could not be preserved intact.
By contrast, later Daoist schools like the Wudang Sect and the Mount Hua Sect had steadily passed on their secret teachings while expanding their influence.
Furthermore, both sects were situated in key regions of the martial world, making it easy to recruit talent.
Thanks to this, the two sects flourished with the passage of time, while the Quanzhen Sect, unable to properly recruit talent, declined again and again.
As a result, the Quanzhen Sect's presence in today's martial world was vanishingly small.
Unless one was a martial artist with a stake in the martial world, hardly anyone had even heard of the Quanzhen Sect.
That was how thoroughly the Quanzhen Sect had been forgotten by the world.
Yet the Quanzhen Sect still endured.
Baek Ho-yang was the legitimate successor who carried on Quanzhen's original line.
Though he had not mastered every martial art of the Quanzhen Sect, he remembered all of the important ones.
Among them was a life-saving healing art.
The life-saving healing art known as the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art was a technique that consumed an enormous amount of martial power in a short time.
For that reason, it was a treatment that could never be attempted without deep and abundant martial power.
Fortunately, Baek Ho-yang possessed vast martial power accumulated over many long years.
His inner force, cultivated through the Quanzhen Sect's secret mental art, was purer and deeper than that of any other martial artist.
In terms of purity of inner force alone, there was scarcely anyone under heaven who could match him.
Baek Ho-yang fed the boy—who lay utterly motionless—a spirit pill to bolster his vitality, then performed the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art.
The Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art was a form of meridian-pressing and acupoint-activation technique.
By massaging the boy's entire body to improve blood flow while infusing his own inner force, he would awaken the boy's innate vitality.
As he applied the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art and worked over the boy's body, the spirit pill he had administered dissolved rapidly and was absorbed.
The spirit pill Baek Ho-yang had given him was crafted by blending dozens of medicinal herbs according to Quanzhen's secret formulations.
It was more effective than any other medicine for the kind of fatal external injuries the boy had sustained.
When the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art was added to the spirit pill, a faint flush of color gradually began to return to the boy's deathly pale face.
Even as some color returned, Baek Ho-yang did not stop the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art.
He continued to meticulously massage the boy's body, infusing martial power all the while.
He felt resistance from within the boy's body.
The boy's inner arts were reacting against the foreign inner arts entering from outside.
The resistance was extremely brief.
Like the wick of a candle at the end of its life, the boy's inner arts had almost nothing left.
Tragically, even that last remaining drop of inner arts was on the verge of scattering.
'So the child had trained in martial arts.'
From the boy's physique—suited for martial arts—and the calluses on his fists, hard as nail heads, Baek Ho-yang had already suspected as much.
Those nail-hard calluses showed just how rigorously the boy had trained. But tragically, the boy's right fist had been shattered beyond any hope of returning to what it once was.
They said broken bones grew back stronger, but that only held true up to a certain point.
Bones shattered into such tiny fragments were not only difficult to set properly, but even if by some stroke of luck they healed completely, they would be as fragile as glass.
A single heavy impact would break them beyond repair, making it impossible for the boy to train in fist arts as he once had.
Baek Ho-yang carefully caressed the boy's right hand.
With every supporting bone shattered, the muscles and fingers dangled limply, like the tentacles of an octopus.
"Haah......"
Baek Ho-yang let out a thin sigh and began the delicate task of setting the boy's bones back into alignment.
The one small mercy was that while the metacarpals and phalanges were all broken, the carpal bones of the wrist remained intact.
Had the carpal bones been crushed as well, even with all the power of his Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art, Baek Ho-yang would not have dared attempt to set the pulverized bones of the right hand.
Upon the intact carpal bones, he fitted the five broken metacarpals one by one, setting them upright like posts.
CRACK—!
Each time he set a bone, the boy's face contorted.
Even unconscious, his body reacted to the excruciating pain.
"It must hurt terribly. How could it not? A human body cries out in agony at the prick of a tiny thorn. I do not know what horrors befell you, but you must endure. The pain you bear now is what will let you live."
Baek Ho-yang consoled the boy as he calmly set the remaining bones.
Each bone was broken into at least two pieces.
With nineteen bones in the fingers and hand, that meant no fewer than thirty-eight separate fragments.
Assembling such thoroughly shattered bones demanded extreme concentration.
Even once all the bones were set, the nerves were already damaged and the muscles injured, so the hand would not recover its original function.
That was how grave the condition of the boy's fist was.
After roughly setting the bones of the boy's fist, Baek Ho-yang used the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art to awaken the hand's vitality.
Now the boy's hand had left Baek Ho-yang's care.
Instead, his attention turned to the boy's chest and lower abdomen.
In some ways, these wounds were even more serious than the hand.
A crushed hand would not kill, but grave wounds to the chest and lower abdomen could cost a life.
Indeed, the wounds the boy had sustained were so deep that it was a miracle he was still alive at all.
"How vicious, how cruel! What grudge could someone possibly hold against this child to use such a lethal hand?"
Baek Ho-yang shook his head and examined the chest wound first.
The one small mercy was that the wound was offset by about an inch from the boy's heart.
That was the only reason the boy had survived.
No being in the world could live with a hole through its heart.
Baek Ho-yang performed the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art to help the spirit pill's energy stimulate new flesh to grow over the wound.
"Haah......"
Baek Ho-yang let out a sigh.
Beads of sweat streamed endlessly down his face.
Under normal circumstances, expending this much martial power would never have exhausted him to this degree.
His martial power was both vast and deep.
The problem was that his body was far from normal right now.
After leaving the Heavenly Mandate Society's stronghold, Baek Ho-yang had neglected his wounds.
He had believed he did not deserve to live.
For the first time, Baek Ho-yang reproached himself for that choice.
Had his own condition been sound, he could have treated the boy far more easily.
'It cannot be helped. All I can do is give my best......'
Baek Ho-yang infused his inner force and examined the boy's lower abdomen.
The moment his inner force touched the boy's qi center, Baek Ho-yang could not help but furrow his brow.
The state of the boy's qi center was utterly wretched.
Whoever had dealt the lethal blow seemed to have used a penetrating force technique to wound the boy's qi center directly. Because of this, all the inner force the boy had painstakingly built up had been lost. That was why the resistance he had felt earlier was so feeble.
Just like the shattered right hand, even if the qi center were healed, there was no guarantee the boy would ever be able to store qi normally again.
Still, Baek Ho-yang did not give up.
Whatever the outcome, he had to at least try.
'Healing the qi center with the Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art alone is beyond reach.'
The Nine Heavens Soul Recovery Art was, without question, the finest life-saving healing art. Most internal and external injuries could be treated with it.
But the qi center was fundamentally different from all other organs in the body.
It was the only organ in the human body capable of holding inner force.
A martial artist used a mental art to draw external qi into the body and store it in the qi center.
Depending on the type and nature of the mental art, the kind of qi stored in the qi center also differed.
Some accumulated blazing fire qi, while others contained frigid water qi.
Inner qi built through the Buddhist arts was mighty and imposing; that of the Daoist arts was pure.
Some qi was sharp as a sword or spear, and some was blunt as a hammer.
Because the nature of qi varied from person to person and from mental art to mental art, carelessly infusing one's own inner force into another's qi center was an exceedingly dangerous act.
When martial power of a different nature penetrated the qi center, collision was inevitable.
For that reason, it was taboo to recklessly infuse one's martial power into another person's body unless they were fellow disciples trained in the same art, or one's own master. But this did not apply to Baek Ho-yang.
The Quanzhen inner arts he had cultivated were the purest and most harmonious under heaven, able to embrace any other form of inner arts.
Baek Ho-yang carefully infused his own inner qi into the boy's qi center.
Unlike before, no resistance arose.
His inner arts were extraordinarily pure, and the last drop of inner arts remaining in the boy's qi center had already evaporated entirely.
Baek Ho-yang's inner force gently cradled the boy's qi center. But the boy's qi center, already dried up, showed no response whatsoever.
Still, Baek Ho-yang did not give up and continued to gently stimulate the boy's qi center with his inner force.
It was an agonizingly arduous task.
It would have been impossible for anyone who had not built up the depth of inner force and the profound patience that Baek Ho-yang possessed.
Baek Ho-yang himself lost track of how much time passed.
He had already sunk deep into concentration.
His entire body had long since been drenched in sweat.
Yet Baek Ho-yang did not stop, continuing to caress the boy's qi center with his own qi.
Whether his efforts had reached through or not, a faint response came from the boy's qi center.
It amounted to no more than a single raindrop falling on cracked, parched earth, but for Baek Ho-yang, that was enough.
'A single drop of water can breathe life into barren land......'
The highest virtue is like water.
The greatest good, like water, flows from high places to low, filling what is lacking and conforming itself to its surroundings.
Yet even a single drop can defy its own weight and rise to a higher place.
Qi, too, possessed the same nature as water.
Baek Ho-yang gently enveloped the boy's inner force with his own, helping it grow in volume.
Through this process, the stimulated qi center was slowly healing.
The process, however, was excruciatingly slow, demanding immense patience.
Fortunately, Baek Ho-yang was a man of extraordinary patience.
No matter how long it took, he was confident he would hold on to the boy and not let go.
Baek Ho-yang stayed awake through several days and nights without rest.
As a result, he managed to heal the boy's damaged qi center to some degree, imperfect though the repair was.
"Hoo......"
Baek Ho-yang opened his eyes with a thin sigh.
Exhaustion was written plainly across his face.
His already pale complexion had withered to the point of resembling a beggar who had gone days without food.
Yet his eyes alone blazed with piercing intensity.
Even in darkness, his eyes shone like lanterns. But it lasted only a moment before their light faded to something ordinary.
"I have done all that I can. The rest depends on his own effort and the will of heaven."
Thanks to his labor, the boy's qi center had healed to a degree. But just as a mended vessel loses its strength and can shatter again at the slightest impact, the boy's qi center remained precarious.
No matter how much qi the boy tried to store, his qi center would never return to its former, unbroken state.
He would have to live his entire life carefully, ensuring it never broke again.
For a boy still so young, it was a cruelly harsh trial.
"Still, I hope he can find some small measure of comfort in the fact that he is alive......"
Baek Ho-yang's efforts had not been in vain—color had returned to the boy's face.
"Now I must tend to myself."
His body, already battered beyond measure, had deteriorated further while he cared for the boy.
Both his energy and his mental stamina were drained; he had not the strength to lift a single finger.
At this rate, he would die before the boy.
He began his qi regulation meditation right there beside the boy.
Free yourself from the affairs of the world; place your heart upon nothing.
Like the high, clear sky, cast off all distinction and attachment.
Without attachment, the heart flows; and when it flows, qi, too, moves without obstruction.
When qi flows without obstruction, great and deep inner force shall naturally be achieved.
Reciting the teachings of the Quanzhen Sect, Baek Ho-yang sank deep into the depths of his consciousness.